Hunter Techniques for Sartharion and Gluth

In a comment discussion following a post on BRK's site, there was a hunter asking for some help on learning how to play hunter in two specific encounters: Pet Survival against Sartharion, and kiting Zombie Chow on Gluth.

Well, to be fair, given the context of his question, I think he's looking for some help with a variety of bosses, but only specifically itemized these two, and he was looking for video footage, which I don't have.

That said, I figured I'd give my Hunter techniques some air time regarding the two fights in question.

Pet Survival in Obsidian Sanctum

Pet survival in Obsidian Sanctum with drakes up is pretty brutal. However, even a Survival hunter gets 15-20% of the total DPS from the pet, so we all want to pay attention to it.

I have found some keys to keeping my pet alive when fighting Sartharion:

Run away, little girl! Run away!

Condition the stimulus response.

Stimulus: Ears hear "run away little girl".

Response: Recall pet and locate safe spot in flame wall.

Even with full Avoidance and Resistances, I have found no way for my pets to survive a flame wall hit. Recall pet, find safe spot in wall, watch wall pass, send pet back in, and resume pew pew.

Twilight Torment

Twilight Torment is a sneaky mechanic. You take damage as you do damage. You need to monitor your pet's health very carefully on this one and keep him by your side if need be during the Torment stage of the encounter.

TT is tough for the Hunter too, so you need to monitor your own health very closely as well. Mend pet, even the dull boring non-talented version that SV hunters have, will help your pet stay in there a bit longer, but be vewy vewy caweful.

Fissures

This one is tough. With your pet positioned behind a Drake, it can be very tough to spot fissures back there.

It is a shame when you see two or three hunter pets die simultaneously when a fissure comes up in a bad spot.

The flame wall and Twilight Torment are avoidable. The Fissures must be avoided without fail by the Hunter, and do your best to also spot pet fissures.

Hunter Kiting adds on Gluth

This is a fun one. If you're assigned to Zombie Chow kiting duty, you will be playing a role that is entirely different than your job on every other boss in Naxx.

Bye-bye, Pew-pew. Hello, Frost Traps.

In 10-man, this is fun as hell, because you'll likely be the only person doing the job. In 25-man, still fun, but you'll need to coordinate your efforts with other players (other Hunters, and some Mages, in my experience).

The short version of the story is: Drop a frost trap and run circles around the perimeter of the frosty area, shooting at all the Zombie Chows you can see. Drop new traps whenever the cooldown is available.

Step 1- Drop Trau Trap: After you jump down from the pipe, run in a few steps and drop a Frost Trap as soon as possible. You want to get your trap cooldown ticking right away.

Step 2 - Blow the Whistle: Recall your pet (since you dismissed prior to entering the tube, yes?) and sic her on the boss. I just leave my pet chewing on Gluth to help out with the DPS efforts. I'm sure that more creative hunters can make use of their pets in kiting, but that's not me.

Step 3 - Pull Aggro: Look for Zombie Chow. They'll generally bolt straight for a healer. You need to nail them with enough damage to generate sufficient threat to keep them off your healers. I find Explosive Shot works nicely. If I have some distance between me and Chows, I'll stand still for a moment to fire an auto-shot for added threat.

Step 4 - Position for Trap Activation: Move your toon such that the Zombie Chow you just aggroed will pass over your un-triggered frost trap.

Step 5 - Round and Round We Go: Run in a circle around the perimeter of the frost trap. The Chow will basically remain stuck sorta in the middle-ish of the trap AoE, continuously turning to follow you, thus keeping himself slowed by the trap. Meantime, you run at full speed, so he never catches you.

Step 6 - Pickup Adds: Keep eyes open for additional Zombie Chows. Here is where it gets a little tricky because you use your mouse for movement to keep yourself running around the outside -BUT- you need to target the new Chows. So I usually briefly use my left hand on the keyboard for movement while I target a new chow via the mouse. It happens very quickly, so there's nearly zero interruption to the movement.

Step 7 - Renew Trap: Ensure frost traps drop as soon as the cooldown's up.

Step 8 - Other CC: Depending on how well the "round and round we go" technique is working for you, you may need to Concussive Shot and/or Wing Clip. A jump shot here or there can be added in for some style points.

Step 9 - Volley: At certain points, all the Zombies will run for Gluth. It'll be pretty noticeable because you'll think you just lost aggro on the entire pack you were kiting. Volley the hell out of them because it'd be bad for them to reach the boss.

There you go. Nine simple steps to kiting Gluth's adds. When done well, Step 5 in Naxx-10 is a sight to behold, as you'll have this nice tight pack of 6 or 8 Zombie Chows just spiraling in the middle of your frost trap.

Who's next?

I'm not claiming to be an expert on any of this stuff, but I do like sharing methods that have proven successful for me.

What other bosses would you like hunter advice on?

Ten Naxx-10 Quickies

Enough walls of text and psychological babble. Lets have a quickie, mostly but not all, about a Naxx-10 run:

1) Bring the player, not the class -BUT- don't ever forget to include at least one player who can replenish mana (ret pally, shadow priest, survival hunter). Jimminy Christmas, last night's Naxx-10 was one solid block of mana management, resulting in one of the most challenging and yet fun Sapphiron kills I've been part of. All Hail King Mana Tide.

2) I love Druids with a sense of humor. Especially when nobody will rez a dead one, and a snot-nosed hunter says he'll cast Revive Pet if she just changes her corpse over to bear form. /sorry

3) More with the replenish. Seriously, though. I spent more time in Viper in one raid than I have since dinging 80. Suddenly 4 piece T7 doesn't sound so bad.

4) Amava Knows Ammo. Four hour marathon in Naxx. 28 Slot Pouch full at the beginning, mostly Timless Shells, and 8 stacks of Mammoth Cutters for boses. Blew through all of it, and had to mount up and buy 8 stacks of bullets from my Traveler's Tundra Salesman. These bullets don't grow on trees, people! Ok, they kinda lay there in nodes on the ground, but that's not the point.

5) Not about Naxx, but immediately before the Naxx-a-thon. Easily found 2 low level quests in Area 52, so I am now an Outlands Lore Master, although I still couldn't tell you what a Naru is (perhaps a god of the space goats?) or why Illidan is a Bad Guy (maybe he just needs a Tasty Cupcake).

6) More with the ammo. Seriously, though. Getting near the bottom of the barrel, during a single KT attempt I swapped ammo twice. Started with Timeless Shells for the trash waves, switched to Mammoth Cutters for KT himself, ran out of those, and swapped in the vendor bullets at the end. That 28 slot bag takes up half the damn screen.

7) Lore or Nostalgia? I'm sure there's a good reason Magtheridon is locked in his chamber, but I dont know what it is. I think he pissed off Illidan (took his tasty cupcake?). But, boosting an alt through Blood Furnace and seeing Maggy down there brings a smile to my face.

8) DPS Races Are Fun. Sometimes the over-competitive nature of DPS'ers causes unhealthy situations. But, when the tank dangles a carrot out there (which ever hunter comes out on top on Patchwerk doesn't have to kite on Gluth!!!!), its GO TIME. Brass beat me by 5k damage, which I attribute to him having slightly better timing with one of the BW calls. I suppose it serves me right for letting him do the opening Misdirection :-). And Dusty Miner's Leggings the Mage tried to keep up. Did a miraculous job, but there's something sweet about the Sustained part of MQoSRDPS that a Beast Master brings to the table (at least for now).

9) Dinging "Mama Said Knock You Out" is just plain old fun. Achievements really are full of win, especially when you're not expecting them and then they pop up with a funny name.

10) I openly admit I died in the fire on KT during our raid vacation week. This does not give a golden ticket to say "What'd Amava die from? Void Zone?" any time we wipe on KT now. I share brain dumps of whatever's on my WoW-mind, whether it be ego-stroking or things I think need improvement. My writing on a public blog shall not garner special treatment, either via ass kissery directed at the Loot Council (keep em coming ;-) or via my admitting to mistakes. Future abuses shall receive a thumping, and I'll warn ya, I've got the Knuckle Sandwich achievement!

That's what she said

The raid environment in Conquest is pretty intense.

I have no idea where we stand in the Hardcore-Casual spectrum, but I'll go out on a limb and say that while not full-on hardcore, we definitely tend in that direction. Somewhat casual hours (10-12 hours raiding, unless we kill everything in 6), but pretty hardcore approach during those hours.

And the resulting raid atmosphere is one of efficiency, performance, focus.

Not a whole lot of room for joking in there.

Vent is kept relatively clear for the GM and Officers (although there's one or two non-officer coconuts who chime in way too much during boss fights, but that's just my opinion).

Sure, we've got the ongoing Choo Choo Train thing to keep the smiles on, and nobody gets yelled at for slip ups. But the sort of raid we've all sought out in Conquest has a very professional feel to it, and we've done a great job fulfilling that.


But vacation and holiday time is another story, all together.

Tuesday night was the first night of unofficial vacation raiding. I think we had 19 people available to raid. Why not give Naxxramas a try.

Was certainly a bit trickier than doing it with 25, and the boss fights took a few minutes longer. Had to pay more attention to mana endurance, which is not a bad thing, honing the skills and whatnot.


But the atmosphere was noticably different. Maybe everybody was drunk on egg nog, or just giddy with thoughts of presents and elf bowling.

All well and good, we're "accidentally" pulling 2 or 3 more packs of mobs than usual during trash, which actually took some tapdancing because we were short handed (mabye up to 21 or so during the course of the night)

And then it happened. We kill boss some-such. And the RL says....

Wow, that was way harder than usual.

Normally, we'd leave that one right where it is and move on. Professional raid atmosphere and all.

But not on slap happy vacation night.

Somebody chimes in with the natural spike to the RL's bump and set...

That's what she said.

Wakka, wakka!!!

We all have a brief chuckle and it kinda dies there, like it should.

Of course, within a few seconds of the lol's dying down, RL happens to say...

Why so long?

And another character cant resist the setup...

That's what she said.

And the lol's and /rolleyes are getting a little more active.


And then, to seal the deal, seconds later, we're fighting Gothik (I think. The one who hops between his alive side and undead side. I wonder which side likes the frosted miniwheat side?)...

RL.....

Gahhh! There's something on me! There's something on me!

WHOLE RAID.....

THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds pretty corny on digital paper here, but every mic that was keyed was filled with roaring laughter. Not the phony typed out lol crap, but real honest to goodness laughter.

Probably laughing at how stupid the whole thing was, but its our $15 bucks, and we'll laugh at the dorky jokes if we want to :-)

And the RL "threatened" to enforce normal communication rules and buzz kill the whole event, but instead he "chose" to die 18 times to ghosts while clearing trash.

A fun time had by all !!!!

Merry Christmas!

The Karma of Enhancing Gear

You hear lots and lots of people say that they don't want to enchant a piece of gear, or equip a scope on a ranged weapon, or put in gems, or whatever costly enhancement, because they're just going to replace the item soon anyways.

I go the other way. Through out my raiding career, starting with a nearly fully greenie set of loot stepping into Karazhan a year ago, I've tried to take good care of the gear.

And if there's a specific item I want upgraded, to appease whoever or whatever controls karma, destiny, and pseudo-random numbers, I try to find the best upgrade possible, apply it to the item I want to eliminate, and sure enough, a replacement comes along lickety split.

Ahhh, Hodir

Got home tuesday night, a mere 750 rep away from Exalted.

Wanting to do it with a little artistic flair, I do a little math, and dig up a little angst.

Math: One quest gives 500 rep. Another one gives 350. Do those two, and you'll ding.

Angst: That Grippy/Stabby quest o' bugginess has been the bane of my WoW dailies for several weeks now. The proper way to ding is by submitting this quest.


So I did the hot/cold one, and then actually, in a rare feat of amazingness, I one-shot the grippy/stabby.

Ding.

Quick like a bunny, I hop on over to the quartermaster, get my upgrade of a total +10 attack power and +5 crit.

Yes. Weeks and weeks of ganks, griefs, bugs, low drop rates, horn blowing ninjas, hard to find chips, that stupid wolf spirit who can't seem to find the spies in any straight forward fashion.... All of that endured for +10ap and +5 crit over the lesser inscription. Out-f'ing-standing.

I happily applied the update to my shoulders.

Raided Naxx-25 with 19 or 20 people.

The short-handed Loot Council saw it fit to smile upon me with the T7 shoulders, providing the sweet sweet Beast Master me-love-you-long-time +5% pet damage.

I happily flew back out to Dunder Nifflem to buy my second greater inscription that very same day.

OCD

And what is it about my OCD that makes me keep grinding rep after I'm exalted.

Once you ding Exalted with a faction, there's still 999 rep you can gain with them.

I hate partially filled progress bars.

If there's one thing in this world that I hate, its a partially filled progress bar.

So I finished off some more dailies at Hodir to get the 999/1000 progress bar fully and completely done.

Am I weird, or does everybody do that?

Raid Progress Report - Drakes Up, Ho's Down

Just a real quickie for anybody who cares.

First night of new Raid ID's. Three Hours.

1) Heroic Sartharion + 1 Drake (Tenebron) progression attempt. One Shot. Cool as hell, added a bunch of complexity. Pets are so squishy in this fight, Princess Vespa was dead or at my side for much of the fight. /cry Hopefully we'll try 2 Drakes next week.

2) Heroic Malygos second kill attempt. A few shots, but dead dragon in the end. Several players in the raid who weren't part of the progression kill, so should be pretty close to farmable now that they've seen it top to bottom.

3) Heroic Naxxramas - Spider Wing and Plague Wing Cleared. Most importantly: Heroic Safety Dance Achieved with zero deaths on Heigan the Unclean!!!!!!!

Collectively, the DPS was up quite a bit, and nearly all boss kills were Guild records for speed.

Speed through trash was also much improved. That's a good thing, but unfortunately, it may build bad habits over time. Its good because I dislike wasting time unnecessarily. Its bad because we can just sorta pull entire rooms now (through gear and familiarity). With only half the raid, and the other half still standing by a corpse figuring out what to do with the stuff in the corpse's pockets.

Actually, strangely enough, it might be building even stronger need for skill, because clearing 4 or 5 packs of spiders in a single swoop requires you to be a bit on your toes, rather than sitting down, setting up, and just mindlessly AoE'ing small groups at a time.


The goal for the week is to clear everything in two nights.

To do that, Thursday night would need to be Naxx Construct Wing, Military Wing, Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad, and then fly on over to Wintergrasp to take down Archavon.

Given the pace we moved at on Tuesday, seems pretty reasonable, especially with the two iffy ones out of the way (Sarth+Drake and repeat Malygos kill).

That is all.

Daddy's Back

Alternate title: Second Progress Report on the Amava Improvement Project.

So, Daddy's Back. Kinda. In a very preliminary way.

Lets recap the past couple of weeks, performance wise....

1) Amava makes the plunge and switches servers. No friends, one level 72 gf, and a Guild who doesn't know me at all.

2) Raid with new Guild, chock full of min-maxers who really know how to pump out the damage.

3) WWS analysis shows our favorite Hunter as piss poor contributor, barely able to shoot a flea off of a mammoth's back. Scary situation in a scary new Realm.

4) The first Five Step Improvement Plan is put into place.

5) At the next raid, initial results are positive. Not quite as scary, but I like to have anxiety about, well, just about everything. So still scary.

6) Plan is updated and the revised Five Step Improvement Plan is put into place.

7) And then we raid.

There. You're all caught up to the present.

Lets see how each of the revised 5 steps is going....

1) Hodir. Been doing all three dailies daily. Reached Honored, which opened up a few one-time quests and two new dailies. One of which is absolutely cool in concept, and royally awful in implementation. Grab a dragon, keep your grip tight, dodge his claws, stab him with two different stabbers. Glitches 3 out of 4 times, and when it doesn't glitch, still feels completely random. I hate this. But will continue doing it till Exalted, just because. At Honored, was excited to get a new Shoulder Inscription. Only to discover that the Honored Hodir one is the same as the Exalted Aldor one. Ho well. However, they did give a nice belt at Honored, so I got rid of the Guardian's Belt from S4.

2) Chesty Le'franze. Still pushing slowly towards Argent Dawn Crusade rep. Tabard is worn in all dungeons. Some quests in Icecrown are giving AC rep, but not really and truly focused on this one. This is sort of a background process, I'll get there eventually.

3) Pet. Tamed a Cursed Offspring of Harkoa. Cat. Red Glowing Eyes. Black with white speckles, kinda shiny coat. Love her. Named Vespa, after Princess Vespa of Spaceballs fame. Her damage output is outstanding, and I happily put Skittle the Wasp in the stable.

4) Get Ready for Readiness. Been practicing use of Readiness. On trash, just use it whenever its up for a little extra BW oomph on trash mobs. On bosses, inspect the following before triggering Readiness: BW, Rapid Fire, Kill Command, Call of the Wild, Kill Shot. If any is ready to use, use it first. Then check boss health. If close to 20%, wait a few seconds for it to drop below 20% so you get an extra Kill Shot. So far, that's about as sophisticated as I've gotten with the Readiness.

5) Head Gear. Didn't get any new helm before Saturday's raid, so I was still sporting S3 Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Helm. After the raid, got a nice blue upgrade from Heroic Something[ran 3 of them and forget which dropped the helm].


So, between Thursday's raid and Saturday's raid, I changed the following DPS-influencing things:

1) Naturally, +40 crit scope to the new Arrowsong bow which LC gave me during thursday's raid.

2) New belt (Hodir Honored). Got a belt buckle on that puppy and threw a decent attack power gem in there.

3) Gloves. I'm pretty sure these were new for Saturday, although they might have dropped before Thursday. Its starting to blur a little.

4) Vespa. Kitty, FTW

5) Went and bought a new ring for 25 Badges of 25-man raids. (valor???)

So a fair number of changes going into saturday's Naxx parade.

How'd it turn out?

I'd post a WWS snapshot, but I neglect the blog while I'm at home home and they block WWS while I'm at work. So you gotta take my word for it...

Just snapshotting a single boss fight...Sapphiron...Guild progression kill....#2 in damage done, with only Brass (my new name for the other hunter, because he's got a temperment like Brass from CSI, and he's also got a brass pair) ahead of me!!!!

Felt pretty cool (A) killing a new boss, (B) NOT feeling like I was being carried, and (C) actually doing pretty damn good.

Granted, this is just one fight, and I'm assuming it favors ranged pew pew, but even on the overall report, the performance was solid, and gave nice feedback that the Amava Improvement Plan is actually working. One week. Started out scrambling to compete with the tanks. Now competing for a position in the top 5. Rock on, and keep revising the plan for continuous improvement!

We went on to kill Kel'Thuzad as well, thus completing the full clear of Naxx-25 in our first week of official Guild raids. Is it too easy? I dunno, and I duncare, because its been fun as hell.

So, what does the updated plan look like, for anybody still reading....

1) Hodir. They remain in the plan, if for no other reason than for me to re-affirm to myself that despite starting to hate the dailies, I want to maintain progress through Exalted. Lots of work for a small DPS upgrade, but such is the life of the hardcore. Blizzard was smart to put the exceptionally fun Land Mine quest directly on the path I take when flying from Dalaran to Hodir.

2) Knights of the Ebon Blade. I got a new blue helm, and had to port/fly out to Cenarion Refuge in Zangarmarsh to get the old school Arcanum. Figured I ought to begin the journey to Revered so I can get the new Arcanum. In any spare time, quest in Icecrown. By end of Sunday, I opened up the Ebon Blade dailies, so if Hodir are done and I've got spare time, Ebon Blade dailies is where you'll find me. Again, lots of work for small performance upgrade, but its all good in the end.

3) Shoulders. With my new blue helm, the single most visible piece of gear is the T5 Shoulders. Must. Find. Upgrade. Sure, I need a better helm, but it takes back seat to the eye sore of an Outlands antique that I wear on my shoulders.

4) Wrist. Still sporting Vindicators Chain Bracers. Its my last piece of PvP gear, and I want it OUT!!! For this one, and number 3 above, need to revisit my loot wishlist and Kaliban's loot list to find which Heroics provide the best rewards.

5) Cooldown Timer. I don't run with any cooldown timer. In the past, it wasn't an issue, since the only real cooldowns I was concerned with were Feign Death and Bestial Wrath. Now I'm using a whole heap of abilities (bye bye 1:1 steady:auto macro), and it takes way too much of my concentration during boss fights to manage all the cooldowns.


You'll note Chesty Le'franze is out of the list now. She's still on the plan, but I'm not actively seeking out AC rep, just serving as their Champion in Heroics. So this one will only make the Top 5 if I cant come up with 5 others.

Thanks for reading this latest update of Amava's Improvement Project. Lets see how it works out for Malygos Monday.

Preparing for Sapphiron

Saturday night's raid is planned to hit up Sapphiron.

One of the Guild Officers puts post on the forum saying we all need to show up with frost resist gear, along with a list of recommendations for each armor type.

Oky-doky, lets get to it.

Icy Scale Belt, Boots and Chestguard.

Lots of frost resist (duh, that's why you're getting them), and lots of stamina. Not so much on the other stats, but I suppose the fight is more about surviving. Dead toons do no DPS.

Which, as a side note, I haven't died in a WotLK raid yet (sht, don't jinx it, keep your mouth shut, doh, too late) other than full wipes. Hopefully its a testament to me trying to stay the F out of the fire, but I think its more due to the healers keeping an eye out for me. Thanks guys! Oh, there was one stupid out-of-combat death to a frogger slime blob. All you need to do is not touch them, and they move very slowly and predictably. But I wasn't the only noobtard to lose at frogger, so I don't feel bad, and I'm not counting it as a real death.

I've never actually specifically geared for a resist fight, other than the basic Violet Badge for Void Reaver and that sort of stuff. In my old guild, we did gear our tanks for Nature and Frost resist for Hydross, but not the other players.

So I got my three pieces crafted, and I'm ready to try out my new bow on Sapphiron.

Now the question on Gems and Enchants.

Any veterans out there have advice?

Do you go with normal DPS gems in this kind of gear, or do you go after stamina (or do frost resist gems exist)?

How about the legs. Do you get a frost resist armor pack, or a DPS armor pack, or a stamina armor pack? Likewise for enchanting the chest?

Or do you skip enchants and other upgrades for these types of single-use gear items, since the return on investment is limited to only one encounter?

I'm thinking DPS gems (maybe greenies to reduce costs, I'm already at 650g for just the three items) and Frost Resist enchants/armor packs, but I'd love to hear what experienced raiders have to say.

I can haz Humble Pie

Monday night was the first All-Conquest 25-person raid. It was my first raid with the new guild, and in fact, its the first group activity with the new team, since all my focus since the server transfer was power leveling and power turkey-eating.

Short Version: 3 Hours. Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum Dead. Naxx Spider and Plague wing cleared. Mama got a new pair of boots.

Medium Version: Matticus tells the medium version better, so go read it there. This is my first raid with a brand new team. I had no idea what to expect: from the environment/culture of the raid, from my own personal performance, from the performance and expectations of the players around me, from the mass quantity of new bosses we'd be facing.

Lots of uncertainty. Lots of change. To summarize the end result of each of those uncertain expectations listed above: perfect blend of professional execution while still laughing at fart jokes, piss poor, absolutely stellar, not too bad given the concise explanations from the experienced raiders.

If you're the type who generally loves the ego stroking, I highly recommend raiding with a Hunter who has Balls of Steel for a nice serving of Humble Pie. And, contrary to most historical posts on this lovely blog, no, folks it wasn't yours truly. The other hunter, did well over double my damage output, is carrying the Legendary Thori'dal bow, 4x T6, and everything else level 80 epic already. Just....wow. Out of 14 DPS, I was generally 10th or 11th in DPS. Me thinks hardcore isn't a strong enough word to describe this crew. How's that for a rude awakening for a Night Elf dude/chick alone on a brand new server?

In other news, Mama got the first piece of phat level 80 lewtz off of his/her loot wishlist. Long live the Loot Council. And Long Live the other Hunter and Shammy who chose to defer on the boots, thus making the Council's decision pretty easy.

Long Version:

And I do mean long. And thick, too.

Where to start? Where to start?

How about "at the beginning"?

The big boss man with the corner office at work got a bug up his butt about something. Something that I take care of for him. So my trip home was delayed by an hour and a half. As if you, my precious reader, actually care about my trip home, or my boss's boss's random whims and sometimes agonizing sense of urgency. But I digress.

The bottom line was that I had a very small window of time in which to square away the 101 Details of Raiding, all of which are unfamiliar since they moved my cheese from 70 to 80.

Fiddlin' with Gear

Start with Hit Rating. I'd like to be as close to Hit Capped as I can be. I was still sporting nearly entirely level 70 epic gear. And pretty far from the hit cap for level 80 (296 with no talents, 197 with 3 points in Focused Aim).

So I browse my bank of random quest greenies and bluies that I'd collected along the way to 80. Painful level of detail trying to choose between roughly 25 pieces of gear, balancing across all the families of stats that BM Hunters like, while pushing as far into the Hit Rating as I could.

Not sure if it was the ongoing discussion at BRK about entry-level Hunter melee weapons or not, but I've always hated the look of the Season 3 axe that I've been carrying for nearly a year.

Decided to go for the dual Fang of Truth. This requires Honored with Wyrmrest Accord. I was 450 rep away from Honored. Ok, quick like a bunny, get over to Dragonblight and do that annoying flying dragon fight daily quest. I say "annoying". I actually hate that quest. It reeks of something very grindy that I don't enjoy, is kinda buggy and the interface is sloppy and they just rushed it out the door to make something "cool". Meh. But, in a pinch, I've got no problem with grindy or annoying. Gimme shiny!

Complete the quest, hoping for a nice fat 500 rep reward. Nope. 250. F#$K! Time's ticking!

Some guildies advise me that there's a daily out in Coldarra. Ah, yeah. I remember that one. Harpoon a Dragon. Long ass flight out to Coldarra. Quick quest completion and turn-in.

Ding Honored, ding long ass return flight to Wyrmrest, ding dual Fang of Truth.

Ding Weapon Skill of ONE (1) in 1H Swords. Ding LOL.

STFU with the "dings" already.

Back to the bank. Time still ticking, and invite time is getting closer.

Decided on replacing some of the level 70 PvP gear as a first step towards the Hit Cap. Green chest replaces Merciless Gladiator's, Green boots replace Vindicator's, Blue Fangs of Truth replace Vengeful Waraxe, Blue necklace replaces Guardians. I didn't have anything nearly powerful enough to make me consider dropping my T5 2-piece bonus just yet, but I'm sure that sad/happy day will come soon enough.


An Enchanted Evening

Time pressing ever onward, I venture off to the AH.

These new puppies are gonna need some polish.

Decided to check the price of Enchanting mats. If the cost for 2x Enchant Weapon - Accuracy was reasonable, I'd go for no talent points, and get close-ish to the 296 hit cap. Otherwise, its 3 points in Focused Aim.

Yeah. Lets just say...respec. The mats available on the AH at the time would have put the cost at 1,200g for each Accuracy enchant. 2,400g on some blue weapons? I know I bought a Mini-Van, so you guys already question my sanity, but this just ain't gonna happen.

As always, WoW Wiki's Enchants by Slot page is outstanding. Although their links to each specific enchant are bunk, and you have to manually go over to WoW Head for details. But the Wiki summary is the best launching page I've found.

Settled upon roughly 1,500g worth of enchants, a new Meta Gem, and one or two new regular gems. Annoying as balls to have to buy individually listed pieces of Infinite Dust when you're buying 50 or so, only to have to go to the mailbox and individually click on all 50 again.

Bottom line is I'm hit capped with the 3 talent points, and I'm pretty happy with the balance in my stats, maybe a bit too high on the Stamina for my point in raiding, but whatever. Hopefully the next few weeks will see a full swap out of all this level 70 crapola.

Quick respec to 53/18/0. Not sure if I'm 100% happy with it, but I was in a rush, and its reasonable if not perfect. I sense tweaking in my future.

Fill 'er Up

Time to fill the bags with consumables.

Wyrm Food (+crit), check.

Kibbler's Bits, check.

Mix mash of Outlands potions, flasks, elixirs, and Northrend potions, check.

Heavy Frostweave Bandages, check.

4 Saronite Arrow Machines, check. I have no idea how the change to "Steady Shot now Uses Ammunition" will impact my quiver. (EDIT: 3 hours of near constant firing used 75% of the 24-slot quiver. Upgrading to a 28-slot should eliminate any worry of running short on arrows).

So where's the instance?

Little things you take for granted. Karazhan had this long windy path that takes you right to the raid portal. Pretty easy to find, especially back when you had to do the Master's Key quest chain, since that guided you right to the door.

Where the f is Naxx? Wiki and Head only give some screen shots of what it looks like, and what zone its in, but no specifics.

So I figure I'll hang out near Wyrmrest and work on my Sword weapon skill until invites start up.

They tell me we're going to Obsidian Sanctum first. Ok. Where's that now?

I see all the little mini-map dots representing my teammates, all right on the spot that I'm on. But where the f are they? That stupid Wyrmrest tower....must be on a different level. Check ground floor, middle floor, tippy top of tower. Nobody.

Ok, I'll be the new guy....."so where's the instance?"

Find the crack in the ice and go underneath the tower. kthx.

And all the rest

Lot of build up in this story, but honestly, from here on it, it was....follow the Main Assist (who of course has a ridiculous "é" in his name so I had to ask how the F do you type that accented e so I can make my assist macro, thus cementing my position as team noob), manage your cooldowns, stay out of the fire, and just generally don't do stupid stuff. Every now and again, take a peek at Recount, and cry as you watch the others absolutely crush your damage output. Don't forget to loot your emblems.

The night went exceptionally smoothly considering its the first time most of us have played together, although many of the team used to raid together in a previous life.

Swift pace, effective reactions to mis-pulls or unforeseen pats, concise boss explanations and assignments, and efficient Loot Council activities for loot distribution.

Kicked the sht out of Obsidian Sanctum, Naxx Spider Wing, and Naxx Plague Wing. One-shot everything, until with only minutes till quitting/bed time, we took one stab at Patchwerk and he made Quickwerk of us.

What Next?

So what's next for Conquest?

Raid ID is due to reset so Tuesday's run will basically be the exact same thing, only focused on more speed. Clear the farm stuff like its going out of style, and have more time in the week for progress. Considering we one-shot everything in the first two wings with only 6 healers, the goal is pretty realistic to fully clear Naxx in our first week.

So what's next for Amava?

Hanging out in vent after the raid, randomly end up with just me and the GM/RL in the channel.

"Amava, you still awake?"

Oh, sht. Time to get chewed out for being absolutely piss poor DPS'er :-( "um, hey, how's it goin" (averts eyes to the ground and kicks stone around nervously).

"What'd you think of the raid? How do you think the officers and I did tonight?"

What now? No beating? or is he just softening me up for the kill? "pretty cool. [this] was awesome, [other thing] was good enough, [yet another thing] could improve, but will surely get better as the officers and the team work work together over time"

"Thanks, keep letting us know if there's anything we can do better."

"Ok, cool. ttyl. Oh, and btw, if you happen to NOT look at WWS for tonight, that's fine by me XD"


Along the way, spoke with the DPS Officer. Nice to hear him reassure me that they're withholding judgment until everybody's on a vaguely even gear scale. Good, because I'm gettin ready to delete my account after tonight's performance, but maybe i'll just log out and go to sleep and reconsider the delete in the morning.

Time to get some Heroic action going and get those next couple upgrades that're right within reach!


Oh, yeah, and while trying to find some Chilled Meat for the daily cooking quest after the raid, ding 400 Swords weapon skill.

Oh oh, yeah, and as always, its a pleasure to have an enchant on the green boots that got replaced who's lifespan was roughly 2 hours from the time the Greenie got enchanted to the time the purple was equipped. I fully believe in the old adage "good things happen to those who enchant".