Mend Pet

First of all, a big CONGRATS to the Unemployed 10-man achievement team on getting [The Undying]!

Tuesday night was, as usual, “clear most of Naxx” night.  I was really excited to get in there and test out my new Marksman build… at least that would give me a reason to want to be there!  I’d also been giving one of our other hunters some advice and wanted to see if she got any benefit from it – and she certainly did!  Even beat me on some fights.

We missed out on Immortal from the very first fight, unfortunately.  Our Enhancement Shammy got disconnected which lead to his death during Razuvious.  To be honest, I think people who are known to have horrible connection issues or just plain “dies-a-lot” issues might need to be benched for Naxx while we are working on finally grabbing that title.

Anyway, we plowed through without thinking too much, since Immortal was no longer on the line.  It was a good night to be a Hunter in Unemployed… [Arrowsong], [Leggings of the Lost Protector], [Strong-handed Ring], [Fool's Trial],  [Leggings of Failed Escape] and I even picked up [Tunic of Indulgence] to replace my [Cult's Chestguard]!  It was actually a pretty good loot night overall, with only a couple of pieces being sharded rather than the majority of drops.

We beat a few of our record times, our Grobbulus record was reduced by over 20 seconds, and our Faerlina fight was so fast you probably would’ve missed it if you looked a way for even a scintilla of a second!  We were certain to get [Heroic: Make Quick Werk of Him].. we’ve had bad luck on that one due to disconnections and things lately.  Well, we didn’t get it.  What was our time, according to DBM?  Three minutes and one second. ONE SECOND. It turns out our Shaman was disconnected the entire fight, so not only did we miss his DPS but we also got no Bloodlust.  There’s our 1 second.  BLARGH!

Wednesday night we were all set to take down Sartharion with all 3 drakes up.  We brought our top DPS, we discussed our specific healing strategies before hand, we were ready.

… but it just was not meant to be.  21 attempts – only once did we last long enough to get 2 drakes down and hop into a portal, at which point everyone who was heading to the portal got smacked by a fire wave!

It was pretty uninspiring and a bit of a smack to our morale as a whole.  Luckily we’re a pretty calm group and no one began seriously lashing out at any one.

But seriously people, DON’T STAND IN THE VOID ZONES. I know who you are.  I hope you do too.  We had at least 3 people who were consistently dying to the void zones – and we can’t afford to lose that many people from the start.

I admit to standing in 2 zones (not including when we were told to wipe it up).  But 2 out of 21 isn’t so bad.  5 or 6?  That is bad. Dying in the very first void zone?  That is bad. And it’s unacceptable.

If we want to progress further, we need to get rid of these errors.  Otherwise we’ll be stuck here, on the verge of Twilight Vanquisher, knowing we’re just not quite good enough.

I was supposed to take Thursday off because of a big assignment due Friday morning, but I figured… we just had Plague, Sapph, Kel and Maly to do.  That’ll take no time!  Well… I was wrong.  I don’t know what our issue is, but we wiped several times between Sapph and Kel, and by the time we got to Malygos we only had time for a couple attempts, all of which were laclustre.

So there was good and bad news on Thursday.  Good news:  I got the Key to start the quest for Favor of the Dragon Queen.  Bad news: We didn’t get Maly down, and we’re not doing it next week.  Booo!

This Week in Raiding… is my weekly Saturday post where I allow myself to brag about new gear, bosses, achievements, and such.

Come back next week for another dose of epeen and QQ!

A raiding guide, from a newbie, for newbies @ Master’s Call
Faulsey has written a great 3 part guide on getting yourself ready to hit the raiding scene for the very first time.  It’s even a good refresher for those who have been raiding for a long time, to make sure you’re doing everything you should be!

BigWigs vs Deadly Boss Mods Showdown @ Omen of Clarity
Come witness the long awaited battle between the two top contenders in the Boss Mod world!  Who are you rooting for?

Hunter Techniques for Sartharion and Gluth @ Amava Knows Aggro
I always love seeing guides about pet tactics for Hunters (even if it’s from a Survival hunter!)  Amava has some tips for pet survivability on Sarth, as well as a guide for kiting Gluth’s adds.

Fun and Silly Guild Activities @ Tree Bark Jacket
As the “Guild Events Officer” of my guild, I like to run events for my guild.  Keeva writes about one in particular that I’d now like to try, a speed clear through Karazhan with level 80s.

You can check out all the blogs I read on my list of Other Peoples’ Blogs!

This post began as a comment in response to Gnomeaggedon’s post about Neutral Auction Houses, but I have a habit of getting wordy and didn’t want to flood his comments   So I decided to write my own quick post on the topic!

Basically, Gnome proposed putting Neutral Auction Houses in Dalaran and Shattrath.  I’d never really heard this idea before, I’d only heard of people asking for regular AHs in these cities.  And I can certainly see his points, the neutral auction houses have barely a scintilla of activity now, and this would give them a nice boost.  Plus then of course you wouldn’t have to go back to the old world any more.

I know the first time I was in Shattrath and looked for an Auction House, I was pretty annoyed when the guard simply pointed me at the portals to the old world.  But when I consider the following issues, I’m actually kind of glad there aren’t any in the sanctuary cities.

Firstly, Dalaran is already populated enough, and the major cities themselves are still always quite busy – imagine throwing all of those people in Dal too?  Yikes.  Lag mitigation is huge by having people spilt over old world and Northrend servers, and I’m sure no one would be happy if it took them even longer to load Dalaran than it does now.

Secondly, there would be flooding in the market.  If they put a neutral AH in Dal, let’s face it, no one would use the faction based ones.  Even if the AH cut was higher, I think the laziness of people outweighs it, and they would just up their prices to help make up for the cut.  Even though the number of customers to the AH would double, there would be at least double the goods being sold causing more competition and causing major economic issues.

If everyone is just going to be hanging out in the same city and using the same AH… why not remove faction restrictions all together?  Once you hit level 80, there would be no difference between Alliance and Horde, they’d be one happy family sharing a home, bank and AH!

Lastly, (and I think they mentioned this in The Instance), can you imagine leveling a character from 1-70 and almost never having contact with anyone?  Might as well play a solo RPG.  You’d also never be able to buy anything on the AH, since it’d turn into what the neutral AH is now – overpriced and understocked.

Luckily, they are cutting the hearthstone cooldown to a mere 30 minutes, so it will be even less of a big deal!

I’d rather hang out in IF or Org than Dal anyway

So those are my thoughts on the topic – thanks to Gnome for giving me something to write about!

Disclaimer: This post was accurate as of patch 3.0.9.

How can I write a guide about an achievement like [World Explorer]?  It’s a pretty simple concept, just ride/fly around and discover all the areas.

Well, this isn’t so much a guide as it is a hand pointing you to a pretty helpful resource, in case you haven’t found it yourself already:

http://wow.gamepressure.com/

This site has maps of every zone including the subzones which are required for the achievements!  It also has both a compiled “satellite view” map along with the regular in-game maps.

I found it when I was doing my own Explorer achievements, when I simply couldn’t figure out where some small zone was.

So, if you haven’t done this achievement yet and you don’t feel like running around a zone searching aimlessly for that last scintilla of the zone you have yet to discover… check this site out!

Edit:  A few addons which highlight unexplored areas of your map have been pointed out to me.  If you’re the type to rather keep all your stuff in your game and not have to deal with a browser while you play, these addons might be for you:

• MozzFullWorldMap
• MetaMaps

Last night I headed into Naxx donning my shiny new 13/53/7 spec.

I’d only tested it out briefly, a few minutes with the Target Dummy in Silvermoon (no one else ever uses the ones in Silvermoon!) and then a short romp through Heroic Violet Hold this weekend.

My overall impression from the raid?  MM is fun, but sometimes watching all the cooldowns feels like it’s just busywork.  But I think I’ve found my temporary happy medium between the horrible DPS of Beast Mastery and the unbearable clunkiness of Survival, so I’ll probably stick it out at least until 3.1 hits.

When the raid started, I was… a bit lost.  I am still new to this, and I’ve had to move my buttons around.  “Where’s Volley?!” I found myself panicking.  I couldn’t remember what the icon even looked like, I just knew it was always ’6′.  Well, now it’s ‘Alt-2′ apparently.

The first thing I noticed was my Volleys were critting SO much.  I check my character sheet… I’m up to nearly 47% crit while raid buffed… holy crap!  I’m sitting at 36% unbuffed, which is a lot more than my 30% in BM.  Crits are shiny.

The second thing I noticed was on our first boss fight – we started with Military, and we were fighting Instructor Razuvious.  About 30 seconds into the fight, I glance at my mana bar.  I’d used only a scintilla of mana, sitting at 92%!  CRAP!  I forgot to take Viper off again! I thought to myself.  But I check and double check, and I’m most definitely rocking the Dragonhawk.

Even with just 2 points in Efficiency and 1 point in Rapid Recuperation, I don’t think I dropped below 50% mana on any fight.

/melt.

Things I’ve learned:  I need to bind Readiness to a key somewhere.  I have all my cooldowns bound to mouse buttons, except for that one.  I wonder if I can find another button on my mouse that I’m not using…

I also need to pay more attention to when I need to use Aimed and when to use Multi.  I try to switch between them depending on how many mobs I’m fighting, but sometimes I just hit one without paying attention.

I’m glad I’ve decided to try this spec out, though!  And I was happy to see myself hit 3rd on DPS for one of the boss fights It’s no 1st place ZOMG OP BM, but it’ll do!