[generic hunter blog #3412]

The Midsummer Festival draws to a close and, sadly, Anj didn’t manage to see Ahune die. A last-minute try was attempted and theoretically it should have gone well, I was in charge of killing the elemental adds while the rest of the group repeatedly hit the big rock guy until the Nuke Ahune window opened. I’m pretty sure I was doing my job well enough but the healer kept getting aggro and we died. A few times.

Ahune, the Frost Lord, didn't bring a bottle.

Ah well, never mind. Both Anj and Alysha managed to honour or desecrate every available fire including the Horde cities while the other girls all got a nice dress out of it with matching shoulder pads, not to mention getting every last drop of value from those lovely buffs. The Festival Fire buff alone was almost always my second-highest damage output, it was very impressive! Life is harder now. No pretty tabard, but fun times a-plenty so it’s all good and who’s complainin’?

That and Wintersong has her first proper go at tanking! Went pretty well all points considered, even though level 46 in Uldaman is a little above the requirements. You’ve got to be gently eased into these things.

Midsummer Festival is only a few days from drawing to a close, oh noes! Time to pop the alts aside for a short while and get stuck into the job of taking down that Ahune chappy.

Logging in as Anj I joined the LFG for a group to heroic Slave Pens and quickly found one. “We doing the whole instance or just Ahune?” quoth I, “Whole, since it’s the daily”. Ooh! *Gets quest*. So off we went. Now, with my brain all filled up with alt controls for the last few weeks, to say I was clunky to start off would be Understatement of the Year, but we marched on regardless. Boss one fell down, hey, hang on, isn’t Ahune… back there somewhere? Aah, we’ll be doing the instance and then coming back for Frostychops, yep, that’s what’s going to happen, don’t question it and for the love of Elune stay focussed on the task at hand.

After Quagmirran, the party started the quintessential “gr8 job” platitudes and started a portal back to Shattrath. ?!. So there you go. No Ahune for me, I should be less quiet during instances I think. All was not lost though, handing in the daily brought my Badges count up to forty-one and, hey, hang on, doesn’t that Bloodlust Brooch cost about that? Why, yes it does!

So, woo! No Ahune, but I don’t care. I’ll do him with Powdor and Ghem tonight or something. Bloodlust Brooch! Go me! /dance.

To further celebrate, I’ve dipped my purple toes into the waters of the Outfitter Trinket Queue to swap between the Brooch and Bladefist’s Breadth depending on whichever is available. That’s on probation but should work out. Extra critical strike for equipping the Breadth or extra ranged attack power for the Brooch is a tricky choice, so the cooldowns can be the sole arbiter of that decision.

I’m told with a certain degree of confidence that the new patch will be applied this Wednesday, and not before time. With Wintersong at 42 and Girlpants now at 40, the whole issue of mounts at level 30 turned out to make very little difference for me, although both characters are still relying on their own feet for travelling because it would be crazy to ignore the price drop. It also means, with G-Pants being draenei, that I get my first ever elekk mount which I’m quite excited about. I love the way they jump, they look so cute.

It got me thinking though: Is there a town anywhere in the world (for some reason I’m imagining America) called Moot Pointe? Serious contender for the award of Second Best-Named Place In The World, after Nova Scotia. There must be only two roads leading in to Moot Pointe, both of which being the same distance and complexity. “Which exit do you want to take into Moot Pointe?” “I don’t know, any. It doesn’t really matter”.

Two chunks of interesting news over at WoW Insider for hunters, here’s a bite of one:

“One of the other major complaints of Hunters is the lack of pet diversity. It is generally expected that if you are min-maxing, you will go for a Cat, Ravager, or Scorpid and nothing else, because they are the only pet families that have the right combination of ability and DPS to get their jobs done. Some pet classes, like Sporebats, languished due to a complete lack of useful family skills.

“That will be changing in WoTLK, as the pet skill system is being done away with for a pet talent system. Every pet family will have a set of talent trees, similar to player characters: A Utility tree, a Tank tree, and a DPS tree, which will contain unique abilities for each family.”

Oooh. Maybe. I dunno, something about it sounds like a wind-up, but we’ll see. As far as I’m concerned, all Lich King announcements are to be served with a pinch of salt in a handy sachet.

(photograph by StrudelMonkey and shared under a Creative Commons license)

The fact that I never expected a class to be as fun as hunter for levelling showed little more than a staggering lack of research. To be a shaman is to be almost stupidly overpowered that it’s not even funny, except… well, it is funny. And tons o’fun! Twas only yesterday while en route to Badlands for a Uldaman boost that I was challenged to a duel by a level 45 rogue. I accepted, given that PvP is something I badly need practice in and, well, the upshot of the event is that the rogue fled the duel with about 20% health. Are you stealthed? Not while I have a Magma Totem lying around, you’re not. Can’t believe she actually ran away…

Out in Dustwallow Marsh with Bupu and Verity (priest and paladin respectively) we were on the trail for some Murloc heads to satisfy some ogre, and had one of those moments where two people simultaneously decide for themselves that they will pull the next group of mobs which just turns out to be two separate groups and, before you know it, we’re surrounded by about ten to fifteen Murlocs.

Listless at first with that resigned sense of “We’re not going to survive this!”, we quickly gained some kind of consciousness, Verity hit Consecrate, I dropped a Magma Totem (my favourite totem) and burned most of my mana on Chain Lightning and Shocks while Bupu threw out the DoTs and heals. Before you know it, we were surrounded by about ten to fifteen dead murlocs. Like a water slide on a hot day, “Let’s do it again!”. Turns out that shaman, priest and paladin actually makes for a pretty shatterproof team.

Totems, though. Oy vey. Where does one put them all? My action bars are desperately in need of a serious reorganisin’, I have my most common totems easily reachable but as soon as I need some of the more situational ones, I’m lost. The best hint I’ve had so far is to make a bunch of castsequence macros to set down combinations of air, earth, fire and water but I’m not keen on the idea, when I tried that with my warlock’s DoTs it was fine for some of the time but lacked any real flexibility to make it worthwhile.

So I’m thinking about bringing the numeric keypad in for the job, a 3×3 block of keys with air, earth and fire taking a column each and… finding somewhere else for the water. It’s then simply a matter of having various three-figure codes to suit (almost) any situation. It sounds pretty good in theory, but that theory has a wicked sense of humour sometimes… We’ll see.

I was woken up this afternoon today by an attempted call from Bupu wanting to know if I fancied joining her in doing an instance. I got this information from the text after the call because, one, my ring-tone is Homestar Runner singing “Everybody Knows It” and it’s a fun song so I kept my eyes closed through it and, two, no-one needs to hear my Forsaken NPC morning voice. “Helloooo? What would you ask of death?”.

Anyway, it turns out that I can’t get on to Talnivarr, which is just plain weird because I know for a fact that Bupu’s connected fine and she’s having a great time. Probably. Chromaggus connects without any problems but psh! That’s the Horde server, currently filed under “CBA TBH LOL”.

So there we go. Alliance denied. Bums. Elsewhere, Pike has written a great article on the ways and means of people being creepy in MMOs forming a kind of “What Not To Do” guide for raising your rep with the faction “Women”, and TyphoonAndrew’s Swearjar is getting dangerously close to the “That’s Putting My Kids Through College” status. I’m going to try the server again and if that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll just shoot up heroin. How would you like that, The Blizzards? ;)

Don’t ask me why I said it. Because I already forgot.

Today’s Top-Corner Picture is something I did with the intent of working it into the masthead somewhere, but it never looked right and, well, I’m not wasting it! On the subject of pictures, I’m going to turn the WordPress Snap Shots “feature” off because it’s far too annoying. Is there a way to get Wowhead item tooltips into a regular, free WordPress blog? Anyone?

Every Alliance fire has been saluted, every Horde fire has been stamped on, flames stolen from four cities… That’s the Festival in the bag for Anj. Throw in earnings of over 500g, a pretty Crown of the Fire Festival to go with the dress and a Brazier of Dancing Flames as a stylish booty-shakin’ companion. Now to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labour, the warmth of the fires and that gorgeous bunting that gets attached to almost every vertical surface.

Incidentally, taking the city flames if you’re a night elf hunter: All you’re going to need is Feign Death and Shadowmeld. Mount up and ride into the city as bold as you like. Miss! Dodge! Parry! Should you get dazed and dismounted, hit the FD, wait for the grunts to go back to their posts and come out of that straight into the ‘Meld until the cooldown is up and go again. I went very early in the morning and Orgrimmar was still expected to be problematic but the troubles never came. Turns out there was a big Horde raid going on in Ironforge at the time. That will have taken care of a bunch of players who, as we all know, are notoriously unfooled by amateur dramatics. More fool them, I say!

While we’re being honest, as for the “in the bag” statement, well… There’s still fires at Brill, Booty Bay and Area 52 to do, oh and the Frost Lord because I like having tabards even though the choice is cruel! Red or blue? Blue or red? … OMG! No time for dancin’!

Blizzard’s efforts to ease the one to sixty levelling stretch without making it ludicrously easy have been admirable, and the current Midsummer Fire Festival offers a great bonus opportunity to boost up a few levels. Just with regular questing the (level * 10) damage buffs, +3% critical strike and +10% XP gain help you kill mobs a little quicker and gets you more of a reward for doing it.

Also, touring the worlds honouring your own fires while extinguishing the opposing faction’s is surprisingly rewarding. Caitlin’s shifted up to level 60, she’s on a brief hiatus now to fill up that rest time ready for Hellfire Peninsula and beyond, while Winters is sitting pretty at 40, waiting for the chance to get into a dungeon and try out tanking. There’s no real XP to gain for Anj but fire-work around Outland and Eastern Kingdoms, starting in Blasted Lands and heading steadily North, netted a keen 225g plus more than enough Burning Blossoms to get her a beautiful new dress. The Lunar Festival Dress is all very well, but you can’t expect a girl to wind down outside of battle gear with only one alternative wardrobe option. That’s just being silly.

Wintersong saw something amazing:

Outside WoW: RIP George.

Woot! Here’s an event I honestly never thought would come, Caitlin becomes my third character to reach level 58 and enjoy the crazy money and gear rewards that Outland has to offer.

First order of business was a mad dash to Shattrath to pick up the flightpath, a job made a hell of a lot easier by having a two-woman advance scout party already well-acquainted with the place and knowing the route from anywhere to anywhere else like the back of their hands, then three quests for Honor Hold to get a new top (replacing - omg - Pratt’s Handcrafted Tunic! That was from a Feralas quest, the better part of eighteen levels old!) and two new daggers.

And then… Back to Azeroth to tidy up a few left over quests there and get my level up to 60. It’s just going to make life a lot easier, and little less interrupted by death…

I’d just finished the Bride of the Embalmer quest with Girlpants, the first time I’ve done it and had a use for the shield reward (at least until level 34 when I can use my super-pretty, auction-bought, Alysha-enchanted Trickster’s Protector of Intellect), go away to cook some food, walk out of the Town Hall when I return and see this:

Hurray! Midsummer Festival! I loved this last year, not only because it was my first official WoW holiday (not counting Children’s Week). The decorations, the fires, the maypoles, the damage and XP buffs (yummers)… It’s just a beautiful festival, and with a very Glastonbury feel to it, since I’m not going there this year (boo!) I’m happy enough to have this instead. I’ll just cake myself with mud, maybe.

While we’re in a screenshot mood, here’s what happens when you get a little too big for your level 70 boots when soloing Zul’Farrak for cloth and stuff and entertain the idea of not pulling the crowd of mobs that spawn at the base of the pyramid in easy-to-manage chunks:

Oops. Sorry, Sergeant Bly.

Alysha’s enchanting slouches onwards at level 236, and it turns out that soloing instances is tragically disappointing for collecting green items to turn to dust. Deadmines was a great start, but the ones I’ve tried after that, Gnomeregan, Scarlet Monastery and Zul’Farrak, have failed to yield any more than maybe three greens each, I got more than that on my Murloc Genocide mission around Southshore to level Girlpants’ and Winters’ cooking! In fact the only good things to come from instances are the few BoE blues for the shards from the bosses and lots of cloth, praise Elune for tailoring!

So according to Wowhead, White Bandit Masks and Black Mageweave Headbands have impressive enough cloth:dust ratios for me to get the profession closer to 300. Next stop: A kill frenzy around Feralas before a return to Stormwind, bags bulging with Mageweave, and we’ll get cracking. Having seen the prices for levelling mats on the auction house, I’ve been refreshingly thrifty with my progress so far. Always good news. :D

Obviously the big news from Patch 2.4.3 is the ten-level drop in mount accessibility, great news for Girlpants (just hit level 31), but would fail to raise an eyebrow with Wintersong (just about to hit 40). Druids in general will have it weird though, don’t they get their fancy-schmancy travel form at level 30? Well either way, the drop in training price means it’s not going to make much sense for Winters to get her mount straight away, might as well wait until the patch comes out.

It’s going to be super news for Powdor’s priest Bupu, being a class that doesn’t have the option for any form of faster travel and some of those long walks can be drag, she’s questing like mad to get up to 40, she can take a chill-pill now.

Best news for me though is the new herb bag patterns available with Sporeggar rep. Having recently spent about an hour a couple of weeks ago attempting to grind old-world Cenarion Circle rep for their herb bag pattern before getting bored, I’m going to want to provide Anj with one of those as soon as possible. It took the best part of ages to gather the Un’Goro Soil for the Morrowgrain needed for the 20-slot herb bag and I’ve been doing it again recently because someone in the trade channel wanted a herb bag and I was feeling kind. Let’s hope the required mats for the new bags aren’t crazy, like four Primal Mooncloth, ten Primal Life and five Mana Thistle.

How come there’s vendors in Outland that sell pretty much every other kind of gathering profession bag but not herb bags?

Okay, so I might be alone in thinking the Tier 5 hunter garb is hideous to look at (oh, but it so is). Maybe it wouldn’t look quite so bad with a hidden helm and those… things… on the shoulders chucked right in the bin where they must surely belong. Look! They’re even strapped on! With belts, probably found laying around the workshop floor! Does anything scream “unfortunate afterthought” louder than that? But I digress, the 2-set bonus:

(2) Set: Causes your pet to be healed for 15% of the damage you deal.

…just looks so deliciously pumped full of the awesome. I’m maintaining a near-perfect ignorance of most Lich King details because I like the surprises and the giddy anticipation when finally installing it, but if this were to turn up as a three-point talent for 5/10/15% damage-based healing on the Beast Mastery tree, I’d have no complaints. Hecks, you could even make it 4/8/12% if you liked and I’d still send multi-hugs and cotton sock-blessings aplenty.

Come on, The Blizzard! We need this! And not just us, think of our poor healers!

We had our chance and we blew it. With linky exposure on Kestrel’s Aerie and BigRedKitty, the number of people looking at this site shot up to a quite frankly ludicrous two-seven-two, literally dwarfing the rest of the graph on my Blog Stats. Witness the fitness:

Wow, okay, here we go, the only thing to do is bang out a few posts, you know, one a day, keep ‘em keen and that but… nothing. Truth number one: I honestly never expected anyone to read this, I didn’t know about the Blog Stats graph until a couple of months in, seeing that and a steady stream of about twenty people daily all I could do was wonder what on earth they were getting from it. Not that I don’t appreciate it! I shall endeavour to keep you at least marginally entertained.

Truth number two: Nothing much has been going on. There’s been a fair amount of alt-levelling going on with at least one of the two ingredients needed to make such activity fun; either doing it with friends, or with a crazy amount of rest time. The only times my level 70s have been taken from their well-earned break was for Anj to gather the mats for some Shadow Oil so Wintersong could make a snazzy new top and advance her leatherworking, and for Alysha to go crazy in Duskwood and Southshore gathering enough Gooey Spider Legs and Tangy Clam Meat to bolster up the cooking skills of both Winters and G-Pants. Oh, and some solo instance runs for Alysha’s enchanting. She’s currently at 204.

And all this from my sudden despondency about raiding. I was kicked from my last guild for being away for three days, more serious guilds will have more successful raids but demand a commitment and start times that I’m sure I could regularly deliver. And with Lich King fast approaching, how much of my time do I need to be spending getting super-duper gear only for it to be replaced within a few quests in the next expansion?

Apart from anything else, although the 2-set bonus from the Hunter tier 5 armour is an attractive proposition, if I’m honest, every single piece of that set looks freakin’ ugly. The shoulder pads, doubly so. Tier 6 doesn’t look that much better, I can’t remember any rules of battle being the need to strike hilarity into the hearts of your enemies. I still want that bow that Malchezaar drops, and a few extra badges for the Bloodlust Brooch but other than that, pfft.

And so I fall back on the alts. I’m going to see if I can get them up to 70 by the time the next expansion hits along with Swift Flight Form for my druid. The clock’s ticking, Caitlin’s three levels away from Outland but I bet she’s jealous about her feral druid sister when she’s stuffing her bag with healing potions and all Wintersong has to do is pop out of cat form and cast a couple of heals. It’s simply fuss-free!

How far is too far? I mean, when you find yourself using a buff duration as a hair dye timer, is that too far? But I was thinking about proposals for new colours of hair dye: Uncommon Green, Rare Blue, Epic Purple. I think it’s a good idea, I might send it in… To… Some people that do hair dyes. Legendary Orange! :D

After what must be months of thinking “Hmmm, should I?”, I finally coaxed Alysha into forgetting everything she knows about skinning (give her a skinning knife and she doesn’t even know how to hold it properly now, she just drops it. Bless) and take up enchanting. Of course, this wasn’t until I’d decided to give the job of enchanting to li’l level 27 Girlpants and realised how stupid it was to be using Alysha to run low level dungeons for stuff to turn into dust. The bind-on-pickup items were unnecessarily eschewed.

So Girlpants took up the mining again to support her Jewelcrafting (a profession that I’m really enjoying, truth be told, certainly enough to counterbalance the pain that is Mining), bought a load of raw copper and tin ore from the Auction House to get her old skill level back up and then went on to make the materials’ money back from home-made rings and necklaces. Jewelcrafting FTW. Meanwhile, Alysha is at Enchanting 124 and becoming something of a regular face around Deadmines. Seriously, Mr. Smite now yells “We’re under attack! Ge… Oh. It’s you. Should we just lie down then?”. Time to step it up to Gnomeregan, I think.

Caitlin, not having much fun with Subtlety, respecced to Combat and is becoming quite enjoyable again. The regular yardstick of how much health at fight start compared to health at fight finish is nothing to be sniffed at, even being able to do the Chasing A-Me escort quest which I’d pretty much given up on the idea of. Bake me a delicious pie of Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush!

Finally, when Anj got the Transmute: Primal Earth to Water recipe from the cute Sporeggar people, it pretty much put an end to looking out for Primal Might requests in the trade channel. Now that she’s discovered how to turn super-cheap Earth into Primal Life as well, anyone wanting anything doing for them can just forget it. Primal Earth can be bought for 2g 50s, Life and Water goes for around 25-30g, I feel pretty cheeky asking for anything more than 10g as tip for a transmute, do the math(s). I have alts that need putting through college! Unless a friend asks, my cooldown is busy, blame Transmutes Mastery if anything. At least that’s started paying for itself. :D