The lonely path...

Since the faculty things finally caught up on me (luckily they did, I've been slacking more then I'd want to), my raiding situation is kinda fragile at the moment. However, considering how my gear levels went up in the past month (replacing 75% of Naxx 10/heroic level items with Ulduar 25 or Ulduar 10 items), and a limited playtime, I reconsidered soloing the old (and new!) instances for fun and profit. Reconsidered and decided, actually.

I've already got my Gorilladin on the way to 80, since it was so easy to AoE farm and level with it. The "only" thing to start on this project was to pull out my rusty Gorilladin from his stable, go to class and pet trainer and respec my secondary spec (which is, btw, already BM - for Spirit Beast) to a pet tanking spec, and my Gorilladin spec to kind of optimal pet tanking spec. That was the easy part though. The harder part is to get sufficient gear for pet tanking.

For non-hunters, our pets get percentage of hunter's Stamina, Attack Power, Hit, Armor and some other, not so important stats.

The formulas are quite complicated (you can check them at Big Red Rhino though, it's an awesome resource from which I learned a lot of information) so I wouldn't discuss them here, but pet hit is 8%, and it scales 100% from hunter. The problem is that "tanking" gear doesn't have much of it on, hence the +3% from talents. Of course you want tank to be hit capped.

Now the biggest crack is to get a great tanking gear, which means loads of stamina, all mail, and still not completely ditch AP and hit, since my pet will have to hold aggro, and that means it needs Attack Power that it gets from hunter. Luckily, since most of my gear is close to BiS, or at least from Ulduar 10, that means I can basically replace half of items with pure tanking items and the other half of pure PvE dps pieces will still compensate for a good amount of attack power and hit, thus maintaining pet threat while greatly boosting its survivability.

I've already got 2 pieces of Frost Resist mail gear (Icy Scale Boots&Belt), which is attractive not because of frost resist but because of large quantities of stamina, and 4 sockets. Combinating that with Deadly Gladiator's Chest (which I regemmed with 2 stamina gems and +18 LW enchant), and Deadly Gladiator Neck, the only armor item I'm currently still in process of getting is WG mark epic PvP mail helm, which will also get the "+32 Stamina and 2% more armor from items" meta gem. And one of the "+Stamina +Res" head enchants (sadly, defence rating doesn't transfer to pet). Then I'm all ready.

I've also reglyphed. It was a bit hard on this part since there's no definite guide on what to glyph. 2 are quite obvious though, the new Glyph of Mending is awesome because it boost our Mend Pet by 40%, and Glyph of Bestial Wrath (reduces cd even more) is also a no-brainer.

The only thing I really lack is 2 pieces of Tier 5. Tier 5 set bonus is just so awesome for soloing people on 80 that do solo stuff still wear it, regardless of its low stats budget. Sadly I don't really have time and will to organize old raids just for that, so I'll have to do it without.

But I'm really happy. This is one sphere of hunter playstyle I haven't touched much yet, and it's awesome doing something new and it's just great because it's not practised by the masses of huntards all around.

I've still got loads to learn, but so far my pet has off-tanked Attumen, Moroes, main tanked Maiden and main tanked Big Bad Wolf (this boss is sooo soloable, wasn't even hard). And didn't really had much problem outlasting it, friend said he rarely even fetched a heal (that was before I got new gear and glyphs). I'll definately be soloing at least some Karazhan (gief mount! :P) on a weekly basis if I'll have time.

Especially now I feel more powerful with new items and glyphs.

The other objective I currently have is to start doing ZG... some bosses are quite nasty, but most of them are soloable. I wonder how will I fare without the 2t5pc bonus though, but I suppose it's best to just give it a try. The attractive thing about ZG is also the fished boss, Gahz'Ranka, that has like 25% chance to drop Book of Polymorph: Turtle, which is still a good money-maker (ppl were buying that for 6k at the end of TBC on some servers!), and it only takes a minimal effort to get it.

So, that's it, there's way more to tell, but well, I don't have all day. I can just say it's awesome doing and researching something new.

Oh, btw in old days Gorillas were taken as a tanking pet of choice because of their ability, Thunderstomp, which is basically a pet Consecration :). But now Blizzard gave that ability to all Tenacity pets (well, a talent), and Gorillas get a Pummel, which I hope will still prove useful - it's a normal spell interrupt. The pure tanking pets now became Turtles because of their special ability Shell Shield, which is basically a pet Shield Wall.

Happy hunting!

The Aftermath

On that bloody tuesday, we finally killed Yogg-Saron. I just didn't have will to write of that yet, but I was quite relieved after finally managing to bring the Old God of Death down. T'was no easy feat, and I'm bloody proud of everybody that night, we actually had quite a bad start in phase 1, but perfected phase 2 and phase 3 laters on, so that was about it. For you unbelievers, here's the proof:


So yeah, that's it. Now it's time for hard modes. As I knew before and told to my guild, I won't be raiding much but I do wish them all best with hard modes, I intend to hop on the crazy train later on when I clear faculty things :).

I still insist that the fight is annoying, but seeing how good we did last night while also having some bad luck, I guess I was exaggerating about RNG and it was just that not all 25 people got the fight properly yet. I still can't imagine him with 0 watchers though :O.

Oh btw, it's really not a good fight for hunters on damage meters, especially if you're on finishing duty in p1, in portals in p2 and on adds in p3 ;).

Ramblings&Yoggy

Yesterday we've been wiping on Yogg-Saron again for 4 hours. I'm really starting to hate this fight. After like 5 nights of wipes (or something, lost count to be honest) we can dish out a perfect try, and yet RNG's gonna screw us in the end. The only positive thing about last night was that we really got some tries in phase 3.

Our best attempt was 2.9%... Yes, bloody 2.9%! We basically all thought we had it. If couple of people wouldn't have died at the 30%-20% period, he would be dead. And when you miss a kill by mere 3%, you know you get pissed when you reach that in first hour of the raid and, for the remainder, barely scrap to phase 3. It's so annoying and demoralizing, and mind you that I (well, besides a laggy attempt when I screwed up entire raid) was doing my best and was focused basically 100%.

If I was in Ensidia I'd probably say Yogg-Saron is awesome. If we had 100% focused and skilled people we would have reached the stage we reached today weeks ago, and we would have enough tries to get Phase 3 down as well. But even then, the fight would have way to many RNG elements for my liking.

I'll take an example of our last try, when everybody did their best. We wiped at around 28% in phase 3 or so. The first critique I have is transition from phase 1 to phase 2. On our best attempt (2.9%) we screwed up 2 adds (meaning we didn't kill them near Sara). Yet we managed a transition from phase 1 to phase 2 with only 1 add alive on low HP to nuke, therefore the dps outside could start nuking Crushers in time. However, on our last attempt last night we had perfect phase 1 (no screw ups), yet we had 3 adds on transition from phase 1 to phase 2. It's not completely random, but it's way from controllable so it's pain in the neck. If you don't have good transition here the only reason you want to carry on is if you want to get some more practice on phase 2 (which we frankly master now). That's the problem with Yogg-Saron fight, if you screw up transition from phase 1 to phase 2 it's game over. You can make phase 2 (easily tbh), but you won't make phase 3 as there'll be Crusher and lots of Corruptors which will eventually drain your raid in phase 3.

My second bitching goes to how Crushers&Tentacles spawn in phase 2. Tentacle grabbing a melee that's supposed to go in the portals (mostly on the opposite side of where majority of the raid is, which means he's gonna miss the portal anyway) happens almost every second attempt. Still, we somehow have some backup (mostly me or another melee/hunter), so he jumps in instead if there's a need. Okay, still it's managable, but very annoying.

Last but not least, Crushers. On our last attempt, as I said, we had a perfect run in phase 1 and phase 2. Now after meleers got brains to 30% inside Yoggy's mind, just before the transition, a Crusher spawns right at Yoggy's mouth. Imagine 10 ppl being thrown right into the untanked Crusher. I somehow managed to survive by using Deterrence while being thrown out, sadly most people didn't have the reaction to pop survival mode. Or their classes don't have a form of such defence. Basically we wasted like 8 minutes in phase 1 and 2 just to get instagibbed in phase 3.

I'm disappointed by Blizzard's preferrence to random encounters. I guess since this is the "final" boss of the instance the only way they could guarantee it's difficulty was to incorporate some RNG elements. Which sux to be honest. It's just a stupid little timesink that makes longer to kill a boss and is frustrating as hell.

If he doesn't go down tonight I quit raiding for a long period. Not because I'm beaten but because IRL's gonna press hard and I've (apparently fruitless) put much effort into it just to come on Yogg progress raids.

Spirit Beast

So today I've just decided hey, if I'm already BM specced I should really get the Spirit Beast. That was my original plan why to spec BM, and it's only because of this I've replaced MM with BM as my secondary spec. So I've been easily farming Loque'Nahak, but the devil's really hard to tame. So hey, today I decided let's try this other Spirit Beast, Gondria from Zul'Drak. Got him (her?) on my first pass in the northeasternmost spawnpoint. Damn I'm lucky, first Time-Lost Proto Drake, now this beauty :D.

Glyph of Kill Shot

After slacking with my farming, I finally took time, get the funds and replace my Glyph of Steady Shot with Glyph of Kill Shot. On paper, it doesn't look that awesome, basically way less awesome than the Steady Shot Glyph. I must admit Glyph of Steady Shot was my favurite simply because hunters lack any imaginative designs already. Just check our Glyphs or better, tier set bonuses. This Glyph wasn't a reduction in CD, nor a 10% increase in something. It always feels better when there's some fancy combination/synergy behind.

Sucks even more that our Steady Shot was nerfed to ground and is really useful only as a filler nowadays. Any other shot is better, and as such we don't use Steady Shot nearly as much as we used to in TBC (that was overkill as well, though).

Still, CD reduction on Kill Shot doesn't sound that good either. From the first glance that is. Even on a single boss with no adds, which basically means he got quite some HP, this CD reduction helps a lot at putting his 20% life down faster. Dishing 13k crits with 6 seconds less CD is, even here, not bad.

But so many bosses have one way or another to bring in some adds that Kill Shot will be used even more frequently. And that is why it's way better than 10% better damage on Steady Shots, which really hit like a cow nowadays.

I'll just focus on Ulduar now, but the list of bosses on which Kill Shot is useful besides normal 20%-0% spammage, is still massive:

XT-Deconstructor - bomb adds
Razorscale - loads of adds, especially on big ones
Iron Council - 3 bosses, 3 times to spam Kill Shot
Kologarn - 2 arms, 1 boss, that is 3 targets
Auriaya - meh, only if you decide to go for achievement, then it's 9 times for the kitty
Hodir - iceblocks, every time he casts freeze
Thorim - gauntlet/champions in ring
Freya - big adds, the three elementals that have to go down together, Life Binders
Mimiron - Phase 1 spammage, Phase 2 spammage, Phase 3 - Assault & Bomb Bots, Phase 4 - all 3 parts spammage
Yogg-Saron - adds in Phase 1, tentacles in Phase 2 (outside and inside), adds in Phase 3

That's 11/
14, not counting Algalon. Believe me, it's totally worth it.

/rant

Okay, so today I'm gonna write about the phenomen WoW is to a normal, sane person that never experienced serious gaming before. Lots of people have, at one point or another, had the struggle that World of Warcraft was carrying them away. Basically, the situation looks like this: your girlfriend starts complaining you're wasting your time and not focusing on her, and it might actually go much further than that (just check some youtube videos which are made for fun, but still); ravaging parents on their battlemarsh against computer gaming which glues you to the computer and ruins your future careeer, or any other friend telling you you're wasting your life and you'd be better be ff joining them in getting drunk the 721th time.

Now I've experienced all of those situations (well, except the girlfriend part tehee), and I'm fed of people comparing computer games to an addiction, social problem, waste of time or anything partially related to "you're ruining your life" sentence. Computer games are games indeed, but they're much more.

I don't say the general public view doesn't have a grain of truth in there... Definately there are many people who start doing this stuff and can never end, they lose al creativity and initiative they had and become "hooked". The real problem, however, is that those individuals have mostly been unwilling, unenthusiast, uncreative and jerky before starting playing. I know couple of such cases myself, and it's not a game problem. It's like if someone's depressed and falls into drug business, and we blame ONLY drugs for that. What about society that refused and depressed this man, what about his environment?

On the other hand, individuals that are constructive, initiative and productive won't start their downfall after picking up gaming. Now I agree there are many hobbies out there that are awesome as well, and it's common perception they're better than gaming, but besides sports, I think not (sports are first choice because they provide healthy life, calm your mind down, give self-respect and provide others with an idea you care a bit about yourself - that's of course my opinion). Other than that, EVERY HOBBY IS A WASTE OF TIME in that light! "Sorry mum, I know playing computer games will not help me in my future career, but playing the flute will!?? Or oh yeah, sorry, forgot that collecting stamps is so productive! I feel so enlightened after giving half of my income for a piece of paper.."
From what I hear, girlfriends would also rather see us lying on couch than playing computer games. I just don't see how folks can still, in 21th century, got such views, even now computer games are actually becoming mainstream. For those of you that don't know, computer game industry earns more in one year than Holywood and music industry together.

And I, and I know a great deal of others, are not brainless zombies who stare into monitor 24/7 (well, we do) and pour money into great corporations, but we learn a great deal of things. As any hobby, we do stuff with our heart. Believe me that every computer game player, in the end, does it because he likes it. Even those for whom WoW becomes second jobt. Even if it's all zeroes and ones in the end.

I'll give you my example: Since getting into high school, I've started having more interest in computers in general. After playing Thief and getting hooked with it for a time, I joined a team of fans with an idea to make our custom campaign. And I did some level designing with Unreal3Ed, while also experimenting a bit with Milkshape (now old) and 3D Studio Max. Frankly, I lost interest, but I do know how those things work now very well. Later on, I was also fiddling with composing some music, although I found out pretty soon I'm not a virtuose :). During Warcraft era (strategy game) I learned how to skin and how textures work.
Then came the WoW era. Obviously, first months it was just playing and having fun. But before getting to 60 I started using addons. It was not until level 70 that I really realized the potential WoW had to hook you up, not just about playing the game but about socialising as well. I continued to use addons, and at the end of last year, started to learn LUA programming language a bit, connecting it with XML. Last year I've also been filming some thingies in WoW and started fiddling with film editing, using program Sony Vegas. I'm also thinking about joining an open source project that's basically a program that calculates everything that can in WoW conserning your characters. With former co-worker we might also start doing a new portal for our guild.
Also playing in a pure english environment for 3 years definately makes sure your english never rusts and you learn many new things.

I know if I've been working in this sphere I'd learn more, but for a hobby, this is damn lot! Now how on Earth is watching movies/series, hanging out randomly, wasting time doing nothing, oversleeping, drinking or going into fitness more productive??? Tell me, please, because I don't know. The only reason those activities are (or so they say) better is that you socialize, but people with their right mind won't have a problem with that if they're spending their time in front of the computer or not! And I'd pick 2 hours of WoW over 2 hours of Facebook (which I consider a waste of time!) any time you want.

Inconvenience

As always, Wednesday means server and instance reset. That basically means we got to kill all bosses again, and grab all the new shinies by the way. Since we're still in race for some realm trophies, we're not really doing any hard modes, which means Wednesday's basically "on farm". That means lots of bosses and drops and not much progress work.

The thing with that, however, is, that at the time we started making a raid group there were 37 guild members online. Obviously, everybody wants easy epics, so even most casuals come online. I must say that it's not a bad thing so many people are online, but the fact that when we come to progress days we can barely scrap up a whole 25-man raid group isn't encouraging in light of this. As usual, you can see who wants progress and fun and who wants epics.

Still, I've luckily got an invite. I guess Raider status does have its privileges. We go in, steamroll (literally!) Flame Leviathan, and carry on. Next's XT 002 Deconstructor, where I die in first minutes! Obviously it was my mistake, since I never heard any real strategy for this dude I assumed that if I get a bomb (and a huge skull above my head!) logically I'd run away from others as far as I can. That's not really the case here, so all I did was outrange our healers so they couldn't fetch me a heal and save my life. You can imagine I didn't feel I deserved the staff the boss dropped, the best-in-slot melee weapon for hunters at the moment. Still, we got no feral druids and our other hunter already has the weapon, so it was still self-explanatory I wishlisted (frankly, I screwed up here as well - read on) the item.

We left Razorscale and Ignis for later lulz, and proceeded into Antechamber of Ulduar, where we left Iron Council and went for Kalagorn. Where we had 1 (or 2?) wipes, trying to beat the hard mode, and actually not missing it by far on our last attempt. Doesn't seem too bad for hard mode to be honest, we should be able to do this once we get a bit more practice and gear. Now here comes the "inconvenience" part. He drops the gun. Obviously it's expected hunters need on this. Frankly, I didn't.

Reasons are 2: firstly, I hate guns. With all my heart. Now if I was playing a dwarf, I'd hate it, but dwarfs at least look cool with a huge boomstick in their hands, but night elves... just no. Also, gun shooting sound is the most annoying sound in WoW (besides Screech, that is!). There actually exists addon called "Gun Silencer" and all it does is it mutes your gun firing animation.
Second reason is the fact I was still hoping I'd get the bow on next boss (seriously Blizz, good thinking, 2 bosses in a row that drop hunter ranged weapon), called Siren's Cry and is best-in-slot at the moment.

Our other hunter, on the other hand, did need on the item (no hard feelings for that, since it'd probably go to some melee class otherwise, and the fact is that it IS an upgrade, gun or not), and of course got it.

We proceed on the next bad lady in row, Auriyana. Guess what drops! Siren's Cry. Now here comes the weird part. As you know I'm new to this guild. So when raid leader says whisper for the bow, I whisper "mainspec". Nobody told me I have to whisper "wishlist" if I have that item on wishlist, which I have. So other hunter gets the bow instantly, while I go like wtf. Luckily, he agrees that we roll for it after I explain my situation on ventrilo. I roll higher and win.

So now I'm here, waiting for GM to contact me, which will probably have to wait until evening. The other hunter made a ticket and that's it for now. We then proceeded to kill couple more bosses eventually, but this was one hell of a stressful raid. Now say epics don't give headaches!

Promotion!

I finally got promoted to Raider status yesterday. Since joining the guild on Monday, 2 weeks ago, I've been attending raids like crazy, regularly lurking in-game and trying to prove myself worthy of a true FTW member. I finally got rewarded yesterday, although I'm a bit sceptic how long will I be able to have the Raider status, since off-game matters will soon take even more time. I might have to consider taking the Casual status for the time being.

No matter though, now it's Ulduar clearing time, and we're still in race to get the 2nd realm kill of Yogg-Saron (basically Ulduar final boss, although there is one more coming later).

Still, getting the Raider status was kind of relief to me. Through all 2 weeks I've been attending raids, even the ones from 1 to 4 a.m., those being 10-mans because that was the only place I had a chance of getting some items. And the thing is, I'm far from being loot-whore, but I got "horrible" gear when I joined the guild, at least for FTW standards. I was doing content suited for T7.5 with some wannabe T7 gear. Ulduar 10-man did deliver quite some upgrades though, so I'm really grateful guys in FTW realized I could really use that stuff and give me some of it even if I was still a Trial.

Now there's a whole new story though. As pointed out earlier, I'm not at all a loot-whore, but passing all kinds of items from actual Tier Tokens to normal heroic Ulduar drops to enhancement shamans, or our other hunter, being very "slight" upgrades for them, while I was wearing blue leggings from level 77 instance!

I understand the situation very well though, being in leadership of a guild for like a year, it's first rule of business. Give it to trial only in case it'd get DE'd otherwise. You just get so many ninjaers nowadays that abuse your system, grab the loot and leave with everything but nice words. To be honest now that I think of it, that actually proves that guild is serious and stable if they do consider trial seriously and promote only when they're certain.

As for me, there's no need for them to worry about me. I got my real life friends there, and that's gonna be enough for quite some time. Especially if we plan to do a new guild site with one of them, but it's still mostly an idea though.

Tonight is Ulduar from scratch again, and first time as Raider! I must say I will be more firm considering I have some chance for upgrades. Plus, if not else we'll get plenty of Emblems!

Over and out until next reporting.