Mend Pet

Disclaimer: This post was accurate as of patch 3.3.2.

It’s been a few months since the latest overhaul of misdirect (v1 being the 2 min cooldown 3-charge style, v2 with 30 sec cd and 3-charge).  I was unsure how I’d feel about this new Tricks of the Trade version, and I’m still not completely used to it. On the surface, it almost feels just like the old MD, but there are a few small but noticeable things that I miss.  Allow me expatiate on them:

No cooldown. Ever since the cooldown went from 2 min to 30 seconds, I have become used to being able to pop MD while waiting for the tank to pull, and if it expired before he pulled I could just pop another right back up. Not anymore! While it seems like there’s still just a 30 second cooldown on MD, the 30 seconds doesn’t begin counting until your MD has expired (either through using it or through it falling off). This means if the tank takes 31 seconds to get ready to pull, I have to wait half a minute before I can put MD back up.

Selective MDing. This is a pretty specific case, but it still happens. An example is when we were working on Blood Princes. I was happy to help the shadow tank by MDing the purple balloons to him, but that would have been a lot easier with the old misdirect. Since it was 3 shots, I could take my time and target 3 different things with each shot and send them over to their target. But now I’ve only got 4 seconds, which really only lets me grab 1, maybe 2 if they’re close together.  Also used to do this when farming Gorillas with my Gorilla.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of benefits to make up for it – the most important being:

Volley! Need I say more?

Multiple MDs from multiple hunters. Boostah and I used to have a nasty habit of casting MD at the same time back in my 25-man days, which you might remember caused them to actually cancel each other out sometimes.  It was almost not noticeable (until one of the hunters gets aggro off the bat, of course).

What do you think?

There’s a new player in the Hunter blogging community, called Hesson.  Hesson has started a Beast Mastery Hunter Blog called The Spirit Beast recently, and I’m glad I’ve come across it.  While it’s still new, the content is very interesting and I’m sure there will be great things coming!

Hesson is also a fellow web developer, and has done something I couldn’t even hope of doing – he’s designed and developed his entire website himself!  That means no WordPress, no Squarespace, no pre-built themes… too much work for me!  But his hard work has paid off and the result is a beautiful website with the potential to bloom into a great hunter resource for the community.

So check it out!  I recommend taking a look at his post discussing his choice of talents in the BM tree… maybe you’ll even be inspired to start camping for your very own spirit beast!

In nearly 5 years of playing this game, I’ve gone through many different stages.  There have been times when I’ve come home after school/work and played WoW until nearly bed time every day.  Then there are the times when I’ll go two weeks without playing and not even notice.  Most of the last few months has been somewhere in between: I’d log on to my main for most raid nights, and then on days when I find a few spare hours I’ll level an alt.

I realized I was no longer Brajana, the Troll Hunter.  I was a group of alts of various faction and level. (As evidenced by my ever growing blog banner)

There’s nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to figure out what changed and to go back to being a Hunter full time.  Unfortunately, I also haven’t been able to commit to raid times lately.  Some days I find the time to log in, but with my hectic student life, I don’t know when I’ll be able to log in most days until it’s time to raid.

So I began logging into my Hunter, day after day, but not at raid times.  I opened my social tab to see which guildies were on, and it was empty.  Almost every time.  So I ran circles in Dalaran, and then logged off and switched to playing on a server where I have friends to talk to.

Unemployed has been my home for two and a half years.  I’ve been an officer most of that time, and I’ve even organized a guild trip to Las Vegas!  You make great, lasting friends playing a game with people for such a long time.  That’s why I couldn’t leave.

But then it hit me – out of all the people I feel I’ve made lasting, meaningful friendships with… only a handful still log in on a regular basis.  Of those, they are almost only online from 6:30-10:00, raid time.  However, they’re all available and easy to get in touch with through things like Facebook or Twitter.

And that’s how I realized they aren’t my guildies anymore, they’re my friends.  Sure, the guild is how I met them… but I don’t need to be in the guild to keep them as my friends (hopefully, at least).

And so when I was approached by some former guildies and friends eager to start a new 10-man raiding guild with a relaxed, flexible schedule, I got quite excited.  It was something new.  They wanted my help to organize it and get it up and running, and that seemed like a really exciting prospect for me.  So I jumped on it.

And the moment I made the choice, I felt myself drawn back to my Hunter, almost as if I’d just hit the level cap again and realized there is so much for me to do! I began running dailies again!  Finishing up achievements!  Getting my leatherworking those last 6 points!  RUNNING BATTLEGROUNDS!  (Ah, how I’ve missed the BGs!)

It’s a whole new world for me, and I hope the feeling lasts.  I will miss my guild, but I don’t feel as if I’ve truly left it.  It’ll always be a part of me, and I’ll always picture that flaming badger burning brightly across my chest!

If you hadn’t noticed by my lack of ‘This Week in Raiding’ posts lately, I haven’t been raiding much.  There are many reasons for it, school and work have been keeping my schedule unpredictable, and our guild has lost many key members, and we can’t pull together much on our own anymore.

Well, a friend of mine tired desperately to get me to faction & server transfer to raid with her…

AND I DID IT!

Just kidding.

There’s no way my Troll could ever be anything but a Troll!  It just isn’t right.  And I’m just too cheap.

So instead, I rerolled a new Dwarf (yes, a female!) Hunter on Skullcrusher to quickly level up to play with her.

Meet Ailsa, and her fuzzy bear friend Righneas (it means Tenacity in Gaelic or Scottish or something.  I’m that clever.)  And yes, she uses a bow. Remnants of my Trollish tendancies, maybe?

Observations

It’s been a long time since I leveled a hunter… nearly 4 years, actually.  And a lot of things have changed.  But it’s interesting to level a class you already know very well, and I’ve discovered a few things:

• With the removal of the dead zone, leveling 1-10 with no pet is so much easier.
• Kiting is your best strategy for 1-10, not melee.
• Make sure you keep those ammo stacks at 1000!
• Not having Feign Death, Intimidation or Misdirect makes me much squishier, and there’s a lot less room for aggro.
• OMG HOW DID WE EVER LEVEL TO 40 WITHOUT A MOUNT?!  MADNESS!
• Blizzard seriously needs to add Hunter loot to quest rewards, I’m sick of all this cloth and plate or spirit leather crap.
• Female dwarves have extremely bouncy boobs.  Every heard of a bra?  Seriously, ouch.

As of writing this, I’ve just hit level 36.  That’s 36 levels in only a week and a half! Not too bad for me.  Now just another 44 levels to go!  *sigh*

Let me get right to it… we’ve been working on Mimiron for several weeks now.  Our first week, we got so close we could taste it!  But haven’t seen anything quite that close for a while.

Well, it finally happened.  We took him down!  After battling with disconnects and bad storms and silly mistakes… we finally pushed through.  Vent exploded with cheers and laughter!  I love that feeling after finally achieving something so big.  And while this might not seem like such a big deal to some… it was very important for us to finally get that fight down.  Of course, this doesn’t mean we won’t have issues with him next week, but at least we know we can do it!

This week was also quite the gear fest for me!  I picked up my BIS pants, Saronite Mesh Leggings off of Razorscale, and FINALLY got my hands on some of that oh so desirable tier 8.  Picked up the chest from Hodir, and bought the helm with my saved up Emblems.  It breaks my T7 bonus, but the T8 one is so much better!

In fact, I was so excited after picking up the gear that I proceeded to run the wrong way and aggro several Jormungers onto the raid, and keep Aspect of the Pack up for at least one trash pull.  Yeah, that’s how I earn my tier pieces. 

Unfortunately, Thursday night didn’t go quite as well.  We found ourselves stuck on Thorim.  So very, very stuck.  I still don’t really know why it was so different from the other times we got him down… but it was a very sad ending to a raid week.

Hopefully next week we’ll be able to get to General Vezax!  I hear that fight is a lot of fun!

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!