Almost a year has passed and all has changed in The House of Anj. Principally, Anj went Marksmanship to support a guild’s running of Trial of the Grand Crusader. Stuck with Beast Mastery until the bitter end but the question had to be asked: “Which do I love the most, the class or the spec?”. Incidentally, totally enjoying Marksmanship.

Winterstar fell a little from the rotation and switched to Balance, firstly because her tanking just wasn’t good enough for the demands of the new LFG tool random parties (“Pull moar ffs!”, *sad panda*), and secondly because Girlpants the enhancement shaman migrated across from the old PvP realm, became Bluesonja, got to level 80 and took up healing, and healing is FUN. Granted, both can get stressy when the poop hits the fan but the added bonus of healing over tanking is, when everything goes crazy, she can stay stood in roughly the same spot.

Bank warlock Cherrytea even got to 80 and has been running daily randoms for the Frosties to sell for nice money. The sort of money that, say, bought Anj a Battered Hilt because she was tired of either not seeing it drop or seeing it drop and someone else winning the roll, and… paying for Anj to switch Herbalism for Engineering and levelling it across two days to enjoy the fun of haste-boosted gloves, not having to rely on others to make Iceblade Arrows, parachute cloaks and ROCKET BOOTS! She had, of course, always been a little distrustful of engineering thanks to her Night Elf roots but could never deny that what she saw with the bio-domes in Netherstorm a few years ago made her realise just how well nature and technology could work together. Plus she can feel smug about finally being able to feign death and ressurect someone. Yay!

Cherry kindly agreed to drop her vague tailoring interest to take up herbalism to keep the flow of plants coming in. What a trooper.

So there you go, the little update. Many raid bosses have perished, guilds have changed (twice, and fellow-hunter guildies have been lectured long and hard about the follies of having their pet stood by their side while kicking bottoms), professions have changed, play-styles have changed. And it’s not long before it all changes again. These are indeed exciting times.

Take THAT, the 28th of February 2009! Ha!

We’d taken down Grobbulus, had a little break and a talk-through tactics before heading down the slimepipe towards Gluth. Anj was assigned to Zombie Chow kiting duty along with a couple of other ranged DPS, and there was much rejoicing.

As soon as the fight started, it was clear there was a problem.

Um… I’m not firing.

Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot… nothing.

Back in the Burning Crusade days, every so often, I mean it was pretty rare, I would become the unwilling victim of some kind of a bug where my Auto Shot would stop working, I’d have to relog to get it back again, but this was different. No shots were working at all! What? What?!

Panicking, checking various possibilities commenced while zombies were making their way ever closer to Gluth. Then in my character window I saw a strange red border around the icon for the crossbow. Checking the tooltip was not pretty.

Durability 0 / 90

Oh noes! How did this happen?! Seriously? Okay, so I was summoned to the raid without time for repairs but no big wipes were planned and DurabilityFu showed an average of 55% for all gear! All, it seems, except the one weapon any hunter simply cannot exist without. And it chose the one encounter where it was needed more than anything else to present itself.

So…

So I…

Elune, forgive me…

I had to run up to Gluth and use (jarring chord) a melee weapon, up to this point largely uncontaminated by the blood of various baddies! Oh, the deliciously-inconceivable shame! That included clicking Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite from the spellbook when the cooldowns were up because, to be honest, I just don’t have them on my action bar! Why the hell would I? There’s a Wing Clip Plus Raptor Strike macro, that’s about it, it was only about a week ago that I discovered Mongoose Bite didn’t need a dodge to be usable any more.

Of course I still did my bit by breaking away every so often to set down a Frost Trap, but still. My name is Anj, and I’m a Melee Hunter. Hi.

I can only thank my guild for being a kindly, forgiving bunch and laughing it off while clearing trash as I hearthed back to Dalaran, got repairs and flew back in time for Thaddius.

It will make a great story for the grand-kids some day… :\

But tonight’s Malygos25 bagged Anj a pair of Boots of the Renewed Flight and they look gorgeous. Big, stompy, chunky, goth boots that look like they Mean Business! Kick-down-the-door-and-drink-dwarves-under-the-table business, f’reals!

I’m really enjoying my newly-discovered love for raiding which I never really felt in Burning Crusade, perhaps mainly because when everything was brand new and people could fill a Karazhan group in a matter of seconds, I hadn’t even reached level 10. Yeah, I did Kara enough to get to exalted with Violet Eye but it was still always more stress than fun, and that stress caused me to decline a lot of offers for groups that I could have easily have accepted. I never got the imba bow, the tier armour set or the number of Badges that would allow me to buy decent alternatives, but this time round I’m in there from the beginning and it feels amazing.

There’s also the fact that I’m in a guild that is geared enough to have Naxxramas on farm status and I am, with my friends, for the most part, being carried while I slowly creep up the DPS charts, even though topping the meters is no longer my priority over plain, basic Having Fun and enjoying my role and contribution to the group.

Not that it’s all been easy! Sartharion plus two drakes was a trial and there’s still the same plus three drakes to come before Patch 3.1 and Ulduar when the guild playing field levels a little bit. Not to mention the bosses that you can be as geared as you like for but still require a lot of co-ordination, I haven’t lived through Heigan yet but felt a true sense of pride when I finally got Thaddius (yes, I’m slow). There’s still the stress but it’s stress without the sense of hopelessness which makes a big difference. Here’s to the future, I honestly can’t wait.

Does anyone else get Malygos mixed up with Fleet Foxes’ Mykonos? Just me? Okay.

Dropped from Heigan The Unclean, a fight in which I was the only one to die. Pretty early on too. A kindly druid had to battle-rez me and I ruined everyone’s chance at The Safety Dance. *shame!*

So, you know, as beautiful a staff as it is, ’twill forever be tinged with tragedy. I’ll get over it. Tomorrow is another day!

Oh, and Torn Web Wrapping too, once again I find myself way over the hit cap.

Between Misdirecting to various tanks, Tranq-shotting enraged fire elementals, avoiding void zones and fire-walls, leaping through portals and then back out again as well as keeping a suddenly-suicidal kitty alive all under 10fps, it counts as probably the most stressful WoW experience I’ve had so far but, after it all, looking back, the most blissfully satisfying. Especially considering that on the last attempt, the one that mattered basically, I managed to stay alive through it all, uncredited on the raid leader’s add-on that lists Those That See A Blue Circle Or Wall Of Fire And Say “Ooh pretty!”.

“Next week,” quoth the raid leader once all the loot had been distributed, “We do it with three drakes!”. /feint.

A few weeks ago I was going to write a post on how I wasn’t too bothered about raiding and am always happy to fall back on questing with just my kitty by my side but it’s amazing how much being in a guild that sets raids and actually goes and does them has changed all that.

Already, so early on within the development of the Lich King storyline, Anj is more accomplished with progression than she ever was over more than forty days of level 70 life in Burning Crusade. I can say things to myself like “Arrowsong! The Undeath Carrier! Tier 7! These are the things that will be mine!” safe in the knowledge that they could well be, rather than some peppy pipe dream.

Huzzah!

Still no sign of the Truesilver Shafted Arrow, not part of the meta-achievement but I would like it anyway. By contrast, having now had three Lovely Black Dresses, the luck suggested in that achievement is vastly overestimated.

Anj spent eighty Emblems on Heroes’ Cryptstalker Tunic, her first ever piece of Tier armour pushing her unbuffed mana up to 11111. That’s pretty snazzy. Only 38 Emblems needed now for the gloves…

A hit rating of 7.99% required a minor gem-replacement adventure though. How cruel to tease a poor Love Fool with 0.01%! That’s even without points in Focused Aim and Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood equipped, mind you. Throw them in as well and she would be in very real danger of aggroing a boss from the next expansion.

(extra: gaze ye upon the segment of guild chat and wonder what on earth the conversation was about. also: the damage meters. BM ftw!).

Changed the colour of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

Ummm… Do you fancy doing the same for Kill Shot? Is it just me or does that ability seem to require something a little bit more impressive? Most of the time I’m wondering if it has actually been cast at all, having to rely on checking whether the cooldown has been triggered because a high-speed, lower-case “o” just doesn’t cut it for me. How about making it like Arcane Shot but red? That would be nice.

As it stands, a brand-new scratching post for kitty to sharpen her claws on is as much as you can ask from a small stop-gap patch, so who can complain?

In preparation for Patch 3.1 and the removal of consumable ammo, Anj joined in an overpowered Zul’Aman raid purely for the quest “Promises, Promises…” and its 20-slot bag reward. That’s safely in the bank, unlike the Ancient Amani Longbow which was held for a bit, admired for a bit longer, used on a few of Northrend’s creatures just for the fun of it and then exchanged for 10g at a vendor. Anj’s bank already has enough sentimental items, I really don’t think there needs to be another. ;)

Now, I’m technically British. I’m not sure how much weight that carries for it was, after all, the sheer chance of birth location and I have no love for the concept of patriotism, but being as how I hang around with a lot of other British people I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has said “A queue?! Where! Get me to the queue!”. Queues are annoying, but I think it is true that your British people will join them begrudgingly and silently seethe to themselves whereas your Americans will just flip out and splash Uzis around semi-colon, close bracket.

But look! Look!

Naxx25, after the Four Horsemen encounter and instead of everybody jostling to the front and clicking like mad on the chest (as happened countless times in Karazhan), almost without any instruction whatsoever everybody formed an orderly line. There’s me and Bups at the back there on the top picture, dancing and talking amongst ourselves as we filed gently to the front. So civilised! As queues go, it was a joy to be in it.

So, yeah, Naxx25. In with a group that could officially label me as “Being Carried”, I found out a few things:

1. I am saving up for a new compuper but I am sure that this one cannot do twenty-five player raids. My framerate was below ten for most of the fights. For all I said about The Macro a few posts back, it was only the fact that I was spamming one button that got me from 16th (a few fights in) to 13th (at the end) on the damage meters. Sorry, The Macro, you have your place.
2. Turning Spell Detail right down to the minimum is all well and good, but I honestly think that I’d be doing okay for FPS if there was another option to turn everybody else’s spell casting effects off! It wouldn’t be ideal but, hey, my poor elderly compuper. :(
3. All video effects down to a minimum and 1024×768 :O By comparison it had the look of a cute 8-bit game bringing back lovely memories of my happy Amstrad CPC6128 days, which was okay I suppose. Maybe next time I’ll try 800×600 and keep living on pasta so maybe I can get a new machine next month.
4. We didn’t do the Plague Quarter so I didn’t see if Arrowsong dropped, although I did get some new boots. However, having decided I needed to replace my boots to drop some haste, I managed to collect a replacement pair with even more haste. I have too much haste! WHY IS IT SO HARD TO AVOID HASTE?! My Steady Shot cast time is just over a second! :p More apologies and defense for The Macro, at least spamming that keeps my rotation in check without going mad.
5. Finally, Naxx25 is really easy! When…  you’re in with a group that downs a boss under two minutes. :\

Welcome to the “I’ve Slapped Kel’Thuzad, Big Style” Club. Thanks, ooh a card too? Marvellous! :D

Okay, well, Wraith Spear if you must know, enchanted up to the nines with Massacre (850g spent on a single enchant, a new personal best), to replace the Icier Barbed Spear from Amphitheatre of Anguish back at level seventy-faaahve. I’ve also moved into a guild that has Naxx25 on farm and they’re going to run me and my friends through it quite soon, to which all I can say is: OMG! Arrowsong!

Talent-wise, I shifted a point out of Mortal Shots to put back in Beast Mastery because, although people say that you can still get as much DPS from sixteen pet talent points as you can from twenty, the increased survivability of kitty from the extra points should not be underestimated. Still no exotic pet, I mean if I was around in the area and Loque’nahak showed up, I’d make an effort to tame him but I certainly ain’t going out of my way.

Besides, I’m glad I did, an extra tier of pet talents sounds pretty nice. I am, of course, assuming that this extra tier will only available to members of the BM51 Club… ;)

And that’s it really. Not much else going on. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important to us.

(photograph by architekt2 and shared under a Creative Commons license)

Popped them both, giggled maniacally and teased my finger over the button for Kill Shot…

Press!

MISS!

Oh. Em. Gee! That was the one shot that missed! A bitter lesson learned the Hard Way once again. Hit rating, anything less than the cap just isn’t worth risking.

some time later…

I played with this idea today, touching on subjects as to why a random number generator would miss the one shot that was going to be so effed up and linking it to why, when peeling an orange, if a squirt of tart citrus juice is going to squirt out it is more or less guaranteed to hit you RIGHT IN THE EYE and where this places the notion of fate, predeterminism and the idea of a non-existent god. I came to conclusion that it was all just mindlessly keeping my mind busy to shield me from a dull day at work and that it doesn’t mean anything. The fact that a random number generator will sell your whole family into slavery at a moment’s notice and an orange being malevolent enough to want to blind you is only because these outcomes are infinitely more memorable than the millions of other times they do pretty much what you want or expect them to them to do. Plus it wasn’t the only shot that missed, there was one other but it was an auto shot which probably wouldn’t have crit so that put a stop to that. Yay Teh Godless Universe!