Poultry in Motion

The [Choco-Bow] now belongs to yours truly and I am down to 3 Badges of Justice.

I also had to dip into my epic flyer fund to nab enough for a [Stabilized Eternium Scope]; this means I'm going to be spending all day tomorrow farming... which at first had me questioning whether the splurge was worth it or not. Well...


Tux and I headed to Shadowmoon to try it out. (Poor Tux had to get out of the stable; I've been using Locke for raids/instances and Eltanin for dailies.)

Guys.

I know the [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] is sexier. I know the Choco-Bow looks like a peacock.

But this bow.

Is.

Beautiful.

My shot rotation feels as smooth as butter.

Our DPS... our regular ol' non-raid-buffed DPS with an owl pet and Aspect of the Viper... is over 1000.

It's gorgeous. I'm in love. Pike/Choco-Bow OTP.

Window Shopping

Firstly, thanks for all of your continued kind comments! I received a lot of requests for more hunter kindergarten posts and guides for lower-level hunters. Well you've come to the right place: ask and ye shall receive! I'll be working on more Hunter Kindergarten guides shortly.

Lemme tell you a little about today, though. I got home from work, logged onto WoW, and noticed I had a mail waiting for me from Blizzard Customer Service. Excitedly I ran to the mailbox, eager for my boots, and found... two badges. Just those. And a letter from Blizzard that seemed to be closing up the whole issue.

They also had an e-mail address, though, telling me I could e-mail them if I had any further requests, so I quickly fired off an e-mail to them telling them about my boots and how I saw them and couldn't get them, and could they pretty please get them to me?

After that, though, I was in sort of a low rut of a mood, stressing about my boots and all. So I went and did some Sunwell dailies and then went to the new badge loot vendor and decided to take a close look at the badge stuff because to be truthful all I'd really paid attention to before was the Choco-Bow.

But today I saw this and immediately began drooling. And it cost 100 badges. I had more than enough.

And I wavered. I was suffering from No Boots Syndrome and I needed something to lift my spirits and ohhhh that chestpiece is about a million times better than my current auction house blue which I've been wearing since about ten minutes after I hit level 70.

But the bow that I'd been wanting forever...

But now I have this rifle which is still pretty darn good and which just plain looks sexy...

And I hit this horrible crossroads where I couldn't make up my mind and I didn't know whether I wanted to spend 100 hard-earned badges only to later decide I'd made a terrible mistake and would rather have the bow or something, and then have to earn 100 more badges.

So I decided to do something I'd never really done before and consult The Spreadsheet. Most of you probably know what I'm talking about. Basically a hunter sat down and coded up this ridiculously complex and awesome spreadsheet where you can insert all your stats and it will cook up your DPS and your shot rotation and you can sit around and fiddle with stuff to your heart's content and decide what is optimum for you.

I've never really used The Spreadsheet before; I tried it once before and got confused and quit. (I get confused easily. >.>) But this time, armed with Drotara's guide, I plugged in all my stuff by hand (the Open Office version, which is the only version I can use on Linux, does not let you import info from the Armory) and did some research.

Turns out that by either getting the Choco-Bow and keeping my current chestpiece, or getting the new chestpiece and keeping my current gun... I get almost the same exact DPS increase. I think the bow gets me a very slight edge (less than 1 DPS). Either way I do gain about 18 DPS. The super interesting part was that with the bow, I'm the one getting most of the DPS increase, whereas with the chestpiece, a lot of the DPS increase will come from the pet. So I suppose it's really a choice of whether I'd like to have more of a pet-DPS increase or focus on the hunter-DPS increase. And also a choice of whether I'd rather spend 100 or 150 badges to obtain roughly the same increase. And a choice of whether I'd cheat on my rifle (my preciousssss) with a Choco-Bow.

Leanin' towards the chestpiece but I don't want to make any major decisions right now. Especially because I sort of wonder if the haste rating is going to make things harder on my hand-woven shot rotations. So for now...

I will have patience and will think about this some more.

And I will wait for my boots.

/twitch

This Is My Rifle

"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will....

My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit...

My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will..."

- Rifleman's Creed



So yeah, cookie for the first person to guess what exactly about this picture is making me grin like a lunatic!

/continues grinning like a lunatic

My Kingdom for a Choco-Bow

In a comment in my last post, Sonvar asked me when I'm going to be replacing my PvP bow with a good PvE bow.

Sonvar, I am the first person to admit that my bow is not the best bow for PvE. Not by a long shot. The reason I've been using it this whole time is because I got sick of [Valanos' Longbow]. Every new-70 hunter and their ravager has Valanos' Longbow. And no upgrades to it were dropping for me (none has ever dropped for me actually) so I did the honor grind and got myself a spiffy and oh-so-shiny [Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow]. It's slow, it's not an optimum PvE Beast Mastery bow by any means, but it's served me well regardless.

As for when I'm going to replace it... the answer is... the very second I loot my 150th Badge of Justice. Currently I'm sitting at 93 of 'em or something similarly abysmal. "Pike, why do you need 150 badges?"

This:

[Crossbow of Relentless Strikes].

This is delicious on so many levels. Improves your hit rating. Improves your crit rating. Improves your attack power. 2.80 speed. 93 DPS. Probably tastes divine when plucked, roasted, and lightly seasoned.

It may be a Choco-Bow (This is the new name of this weapon. So let it be written, so let it be done), but I will be doing heroics all weekend and it will be mine.

Tawyn's a Happy Hunter

To start out with an update on my custom avatars; basically I've looked into it and I've run into some problems involving the legality of selling them because they're renditions of Blizzard's property. Yes, you could argue that I'm just a small little bug compared to their big corporation, but I dunno, I've been big Blizz fans since my StarCraft obsession phase almost ten years ago so I'd like to play it safe when it comes to my relationship with them. =P

I did get a lot of interest in my avatars though and I'm still sort of trying to come up with a way to offer them without making them entirely free, simply because while I'd love to give them away for free, the fact of the matter is that it takes a few hours to make each one and it'd be difficult to squeeze them into my time. One of my ideas is maybe setting up a little charitable drive, sort of like The Bronze Kettle did, only not on as big a scale. But I'll keep brainstorming and keep you guys updated. If you were interested in an avatar I apologize for keeping you waiting on any final decisions.

Anyways, let's discuss WoW.

Yesterday, I ran both Steamvaults and Shadow Labs.

Steamvaults dropped a very nice [Beast Lord Mantle] for me, which I promptly gem'd up and threw a Scryer inscription on.

Shadow Labs... well, I was praying to the hunter gods for Sonic Spear, especially because our motley crew had to endure several hours of pain in this particular instance (we went through three different tanks, one of which decided to leave the party without saying a word... and Grandmaster Vorpil... oh Grandmaster Vorpil... *shudders* ... we wiped on this guy no less than five times)... so yeah, Sonic Spear would've been an awesome consolation prize but it appears that the hunter gods have more Shadow Labs runs for me in the future. I did, however, get the first fragment of the Kara key.

So! Not content with that outcome, I headed to the Auction House and bought myself both [Breastplate of Rapid Striking] and [Crystalforged War Axe]. Then I bought all the mats for Savagery and got the latter enchanted with that. My wallet is getting pretty thin and I've got some farming ahead of me but mmm. My un-buffed agility is now 434 and my crit is 18.85%. You should see me with Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings. Mmmmm. *eyes glaze over*

Ahem, sorry.

I think I'm doing okay for a pre-Kara hunter. I'm slowly replacing my greens with blues and getting enchants for them. Expensive? Yeah. Worth it when I open up my character sheet and see my stats? Oh yeah.

I've got more Steamvaults and Shadow Labs runs ahead of me, because I'd like the other piece of Beast Lord that you can get in SV (decreased trap cooldown... mmm hunter gear is yummy, no?), and because I'd still like Sonic Spear if I can nab it.

Oh, and /wave at Mirshalak and Pelides, both of whom have now made characters on Silver Hand to say hello! I owe you both a visit on your servers now. =P

Since I'm getting more visitors that way, I figured it'd be good to mention a few things. Firstly you are more than welcome to say hi to me and chat it up with me, so long as I'm not in battlegrounds or an instance. =D If I'm bored or not doing much I'll even come find you "in person" and we can have a little visit.

If you would like to make a more dedicated alt on Silver Hand, to try out RPing or whatever, I should mention that while our guild Entelechy is usually open to anyone interested in having a good time with some fun (and just a bit weird) people, doing some instances, and casual roleplaying, our recruitment is sort of semi-closed at the moment due largely to rapid growth and wanting to concentrate on our current members, so I can't guarantee you a spot in the guild if you're interested in one. Besides, very, very few people in my guild know I have this blog anyway. Partially 'cause I've never really had a reason to bring it up, and partially because there are a lot of very good players in my guild, both hunters and non-hunters, and I wouldn't want to steal anybody's limelight by being "the one with the blog". Heehee =P

Oh, and you are also more than welcome to try and catch me horde-side on The Venture Co. as well. My main character there is Lunapike, and I play her a few times a week, usually in the mornings. The Venture Co. seems to have more RP going on than Silver Hand (admittedly, Silver Hand isn't exactly known as a mecca for RP), so you might want to try that out if you're curious.

Today's question that I pose to you: where do you do your farming? ...and no, you don't have to give away your super-secret location to me, if you don't want to. =P