The Fable of the Gnome Rogue

The Tauren Hunter was merrily bounding into the Silverwing base in Warsong Gulch; she had been enjoying these player-verses-player excursions lately and was rather fond of her 25,000 honor that she had stockpiled for when she would hit 70 in a couple more levels and would need a nice set of war gear to go with her set of standard adventuring gear. She made it to the roof of the enemy building when suddenly she was jumped upon! By a very persistent gnome rogue.

Now, the tauren knew that many of her fellow hunters dislike the rogue because they are very good at taking away that which hunters prize most: space. However, she has an odd knack for managing to catch rogues before they catch her, and even when they do catch her first she has a knack for wriggling her way out of their grasp, so at first she wasn't afraid. She directed her trusty red lynx to Intimidate the rogue, during which time she laid down an Immolation Trap and got a little bit of range and then hit him with a Serpent Sting.

He was soon on top of her again though, and sadly his first initial strikes had taken a critical toll so she was down on her luck right from the start. Still, they tussled for a bit, before the hunter's health ran low and she collapsed to the ground.

She did not release her spirit though, for the rogue was himself weak, and he was still burning from the Immolation Trap and still feeling the ache of the Serpent Sting...

He saw her watching him, so he targeted her and /laughed.

Then, smugly, he started to bandage himself.

Serpent Sting removed the bandage effect.

The gnome's eyes widened. They say in this world of pixels and polygons, facial expressions cannot change. I swear to the Earthmother, though, that his eyes widened as he came to a sudden realization.

The last tick of the Serpent Sting went off and he fell to the floor.

They lay there for a few seconds, simply targeting each other. Then, when the tauren hunter was sure her message had clearly been sent across, she calmly released to the graveyard.

The moral of the story, oh best beloved...

...is do not /laugh at a hunter, for they have a disturbing tendency to have the last /laugh. Or the last /giggle, anyways.

Humble Pie

Today I got owned by a blood elf hunter. Twice.

Granted, she had a druid with her. But I had a T6 rogue with me. And later, a mage with me too.

The story? One of my good friends leveled a hunter to ten and asked what sort of pet she could get that wasn't seen every day. I suggested the cute red Springpaw Stalkers in Eversong Woods; it's certainly not every day you see a level 10 draenei hunter with one of those, afterall!

So we pulled together a group of buddies, nabbed a warlock, and us level 70s flew to Zul'Aman and headed into the heart of Blood Elf country.

T6 rogue (a heck of a good one, too) got there first, and I'm not exactly sure how it happened but somehow he got in a spar with a druid and a hunter. I dashed into the fray; determined to save him since his health was dropping quickly, and targeted the hunter.

I pulled out all my usual tricks that I do against fellow hunters; you know, the ones that ensure that I almost never lose against other hunters, as I like to say. And yet somehow they all failed miserably and I was laying rather embarrassingly on the ground before I could think.

Our magey friend showed up and quickly died as well, so the three of us-- rogue, mage, and hunter, decided to rez all at the same time, dispatch of the healy druid, and then proceed to the hunter.

That failed too, we did manage to kill the druid but he rez'd within two seconds and we were all dead again. Dang.

Well by this time more horde 70s were starting to show up, and it was painfully obvious that they were all PvP geared and we were sporting our PvE duds, so we all just sat around in ghost form and waited to deflag before rezzing. We did so, our Warlock pal showed up, we located a Springpaw Stalker and summoned our lowbie hunter friend who proceeded to tame herself a new kitty.

The curious horde showed up about now, all gathered around the unusual bunch that we were, so I /pointed at lowbie hunter and /pointed at her new cat, and /nodded. Blood Elf Hunter /cheered.

Afterwards I logged into a hordie and sent her an in-game mail telling her I'd enjoyed our spar (but she should catch me in my PvP gear next time, I added cheekily) and wished her hunt's luck.

We hunters, we've gotta stick together.

Return of the Grumpy Care Bear

I was on Lunapike, my level 63 Hordie Hunter, and I was camping out in the inn in Tarren Mill because I'd been helping a friend out. At the moment though, my services weren't required, so I'd alt+tab'd out to do some stuff.

Suddenly I heard a bunch of commotion on my screen and pulled up the game just in time to see a big red cat clawing my face out. I could barely move before I was completely demolished.

Eh, it's Tarren Mill, it's to be expected. So I went back to the Inn and rez'd and then alt+tab'd again.

Same story about a minute later, big red cat destroys me.

So at that point I was getting annoyed but there really wasn't a whole lot I could do, this being my highest leveled character on that server. I started to play a little game with the guy. I'd stand in my spot in the inn, I'd see "Noodle gains Bestial Wrath" and "Noodle gains Dash" in my combat log, Noodle the kitty would run into the inn... and I would log out. I can only imagine the confusion on poor hunter's face when his big red kittycat came running back to him emptyhanded.

I did that a couple times and thought it was immensely hilarious until one of these times I logged in and the hunter himself was standing in my spot waiting for me, and I got demolished.

Okay, this was all getting super annoying, and at this point I was having to wait around in Ghost Form to rez because I'd died so many times in such a short period of time. So I figured I'd head out of there. Which was in and of itself a major pain, because even my Frostwolf Howler is apparently no match for Concussive Shot + Intimidation + Full S2 Hunter, and I died another two or three times on my way out.

Now it was around this point that I think the other people at Tarren Mill were getting annoyed too because they started disappearing and higher levels started showing up. Mr. AnnoyingHunterGuy left somewhere around this time, headed south, and we all made a group to go track him down.

We didn't see him anywhere, though.

But whaddaya do when you're in a group full of ticked off Hordies whose lowbie alts just got camped into oblivion?

You raid Southshore, that's what.

We leveled the place. I mean, completely leveled. There were no NPCs left. There were no quest givers left. The poor level 30-ish Alliance that got caught in the crossfire? Rest in peace. They can thank AnnoyingHunterGuy and Noodles.

Now the respawn rate on the guards was super fast and we were just killing them over and over. So I was figuring the Alliance World Defense must have been exploding with "Southshore is under attack!" which is why I was expecting the Alliance Response Team to show up and put an end to our shenanigans. See, I say that as somebody with experience about the other side. I always have WorldDefense on, and if Tawyn sees "Southshore is under attack" more than a couple times and she isn't in Outlands, she pulls out her PvP gear and hops on her gryphon-- you'd better believe she does. Usually she shows up right around the same time as five or six other similarly-minded people and we successfully defend our town.

But you know what, on this server, it never happened. The Alliance Counterattack I was waiting for never came. Every so often a single level 70 would pop up and they would quickly get killed. That was about it. AnnoyingHunterGuy never even came back (although he did /yell something at us in the middle of it, so you know he was somewhere and knew what was going on-- he just never came out to fight us.)

So after about twenty minutes of having Southshore firmly under Horde control we left not because the Alliance came to take care of us, but because we just got bored.

Victory for us!

So there you have it. Has Pike crossed over to the dark side? Gonna go around ganking and camping lowbies on a regular basis? Nah. I still like /hugs for the most part.

But revenge is sweet.

The best part of the entire night though?



Now I've had people make alts on servers specifically to say hello to me, but I can only think of a few cases where people who already live on that server recognize me. Makes me feel special. <3 And to Mr. Moonkin who asked me that, if you are reading, 'twas fun! =D

Pee Vee Pee

Presenting Tawyn and Tux, all dressed up and having declared Lumber Mill as their property:



Now I have a confession to make. I've been a pretty big PvPer with Tawyn throughout her career, and she has over 9000* kills to her name. She goes into her battlegrounds with guns (or bows, or crossbows) blazing and ready to steamroll the competition given the chance; even if the Horde is stomping on us that day, Tawyn goes out fightin'.

BUT! I haven't PvP'd with her in a very, very long time. Until today.

See, it's partially because I realized PvP is more enjoyable for me overall Horde-side, but largely just because Tawyn is 100% geared and spec'd for PvE and level 70 battlegrounds just aren't enjoyable when you're sporting a whopping zero resiliance and under 8000 hit points and a pure PvE spec.

Today though, a Gruul's run I was going to sneak into failed to ignite (I think I just jinx Gruul's runs, seriously, I can never get into them), and I was bored, so I ran to Champion's Hall and squandered all my honor on Merciless Gladiator's Chain Spaulders and Merciless Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets, then pulled out my ol' Gladiator's Chain Helm (and I coulda pulled out my Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow, too, but then I decided to stick with the Choco-Bow), equipped my loveworn PvP trinket, and ran into Arathi Basin.

And we won, oh did we win, twice in a row baby. The first game was cake and we had the place five-capped in a matter of minutes; the second game was a very close one-- we won 2000-1850 or something-- and both were a complete blast. Epic battles, mass carnage, and the little periwinkle elf and her owl not lettin' you get near Lumber Mill. It's mine, all mine!

Then I took a deep breath and ventured into Alterac Valley and discovered that Alliance on Bloodlust apparently still fails at it (big surprise), but oh well. At least I live much longer with my new PvP stamina gear and can take a few hordies down with me. (In all honesty I'm starting to think Horde just manages to drag a few more healers into their AV than Alliance usually does.)

I am so glad that Blizz did whatever they did a few months ago that made it so queueing up for a battleground no longer pits you against premades. I'd gotten so sick of spending 95% of EotS my games sitting on the little floating island and letting the premade team just do their thing. I was so tired of getting camped at the graveyard in AB while the five-cap happened, waiting for it to end so I could grab my mark and do it all over again with a tear in my eye. Because that wasn't PvP.

The good ol' fashioned super-close battlegrounds, however, are, and it makes Tawyn a happy Tawyn.

Oh hey, fellow Bloodlust-ers, we should totally all plan a time to try and queue up into a battleground together. Even if you're a hordie. We can /wave and /hug have a friendly spar perhaps? /grin



*Did I seriously just sneak the phrase "over 9000" into a blog post? Dang, I should get a cookie for that.

The Carebear Unleashed

Many of you who have been following my blog or my comments in other blogs for a while know that I am a bona fide unabashed carebear. My main is on an RP-PvE server, and Lunapike, my level 62 alt, is on an RP-PvP server but has the tendency to /hug every member of the opposite faction that she meets, before continuing on her way.

But what some of you may not know is that... if you call down the thunder, you'll reap the whirlwind.

Today I reached into my Holding Bag of hunter alts and plucked one out to play in Stonetalon Mountains on that RP-PvP server. I was doing a quest that was orange to me and I somehow kept aggro'ing a mob who was some seven or eight levels higher than me who was immune to seemingly all of my forms of crowd control, and I kept dying. It was sorta annoying, so I figured I'd find another, easier quest. Just as I had rez'd myself for the third or forth time and was bandaging up before heading out, an level ?? Alliance warlock rode up to me, dismounted, and ganked me.

She mounted up again and rode away, and I noticed that she had a non-epic mount...

I logged out and hopped over to Lunapike, who was parked not too far away. Upon getting to Sun Rock Retreat, I mounted up on Snowball, my Frostwolf Howler, and barreled down the road towards my alt's corpse. And ohh, what do we have here, but that level 57 warlock...

She dismounted and popped a fear off on me. I used my PvP trinket followed by The Beast Within and sic'd my lynx Alyosha on her. Game over in about six seconds.

Right as I was finishing her off, a level 66 Alliance hunter... her buddy, maybe?... rode up. He was four levels higher than me, and five levels higher than my pet. He dismounted and stared at me and my pet, the two of us still big and red. I /waved at him.

He sic'd his pet on me, I feigned death to get out of it. And then he made a very, very bad mistake...

He queued up an Aimed Shot.

With me pounding away at him with Arcanes, Multis, and Autos, and Alyosha still big and red and Frenzy proc'd... interrupt city... he queued up an Aimed Shot.

By the time he finally got that Aimed Shot off, I already had his health down to 30%. In a last ditch effort he ran up and tried to melee me and actually proceeded in trapping me, but at that point his health was down to nil and my trusty kitty finished him off easily.

Afterwards I glanced around smugly at the two poor Alliance souls at my feet, then I hopped on Snowball and trotted off.

You mess with one of my baby hunters, you mess with Pike. /grin

Once Upon an Alterac Valley

A small sample of my thoughts from yesterday, after trying out the New AV on both Tawyn and Lunapike:

"So lemme get this straight... on my Alliance character's battlegroup, Alliance has apparently collectively decided that "Zerg Drek" is the new key to victory, leading to games that are a mere ten minutes long which usually end in an Alliance victory...

...and on my Horde character's battlegroup, Alliance still sucks at AV.

...this is the happiest day of my life *tears of joy*"

Momentary euphoria aside, the lag is horrendous on Bloodlust right now. I have never seen battleground lag that bad. In one game I was kicked off the server right as the "All in" call was given for Drek, I couldn't connect for about ten or fifteen minutes, and when I finally managed to get in... I was in the same spot I'd been when I disconnected and Alliance won about ten seconds later. Took 15 minutes to kill Drek even with the Relief Hut. DoTs became the key to victory for most people, because they would at least keep ticking when you couldn't move or cast spells or attack anything. People were joking that Horde had decided to revolt and use an "Alliance lag mod", though I think things were just as bad for the poor Hordies.

The face of AV really has changed though, it seems, in Tawyn's battlegroup anyway. Ever since the last time they changed AV, Horde has completely and thoroughly dominated AV in our battlegroup. But now... well, I played probably eight games or so yesterday, and six were wins (and I sort of think the other two would have been wins if it weren't for the lag-- in both cases, we had Drek down to about 30% health, or less). No more people spending the entire battleground arguing about what "surefire strategy" was the one that worked. No more 45-minute long painful battles of being killed over and over as you watched the Alliance reinforcements dwindle to zero while Horde still had 497 or something. Nope. Completely different.

Now the second I get into a AV, battleground chat has typically been taken over by one or two people saying "Rush to Relief Hut, take towers as you go, capture the Relief Hut, and kill Drek. Do not stop to fight Horde." over and over. And there are no questions. No arguments (other than from the occasional person who is perhaps playing AV for the first time since the new patch). Everybody sticks to the plan. Nobody takes Iceblood Graveyard (which is still a surreal concept to me. No... Iceblood...?) Nobody even thinks about Galv. A couple people take towers along the way but for the most part you get some 35 people at Frostwolf Relief Hut and then four minutes later you've got 35 people in Drek's fort. It seems as though the Horde has a similar strategy going on; there were many games where I never saw even a single Horde player and the BG announcements made it clear that they were busy doing the exact same thing we were: rushing to the end to see who could kill the boss first. And it most cases, it was Alliance who managed to pull it off.

In some ways, this is all really very ridiculous. I remember saying rather incredulously on Vent after a couple games: "I only have 3 honorable kills but over 1000 honor" and then the similarly incredulous replies from my guildies (which resulted in everybody going to try AV themselves, and getting the same result as I had). To me, it seems as though the new "Horse Race AV" (as I've heard a few people call it now) has sort of defeated the entire purpose of PvP. I can't help but wonder how long this is going to last.

So it's a bittersweet victory; yes, we win now, yes, I'm getting tons of marks and honor, but the victory is meaningless and hollow.

At least there are still epic battles on my hordie's battlegroup. The Horse Race mentality has not spread there (yet, anyway) and Horde still wins by 400 reinforcements after super long matches. Victories take longer but it's much more fun. (Oh, and no lag.)

How has everybody else's AV changed? Or has it for you?

Seeing It From The Other Side

So what's a hunter do the second she hits level 51?

Head to the 51-60 AV bracket, of course.


Not bad for being the lowest level they letcha in. I think so anyways.

It seems like it was just yesterday when Tawyn hit her early-50s and snagged herself Ice Barbed Spear. Well, today it looks like yet another of my hunters has achieved that rite of passage.


/cheer
/dance

It only took two games to do it, too. Just two! On Tawyn it took like eleven.

It was so weird playing this battleground from the Horde side for the very first time. It sort of felt like Bizarro-AV. To be honest I still can't figure out Horde's secret for winning. I was sort of hoping it would all be made clear, but honestly it seems like when I'm playing Horde we do the exact same thing as Alliance (only in reverse) and yet we win heartily rather than lose decidedly. Very odd. Clearly this requires further study.

Gosh I love leveling hunters.

My First Ever Arena...

...was a 2v2, me (BM hunter) and a warlock vs. a warrior and a priest.

I really didn't know a lot about what I was doing because I'd never even been inside an arena before. Somebody told me I should "run up the ramp" so I did. The warrior started pounding on the warlock first which gave me ample time to pop Beast Within, Abacus of Violent Odds, and Rapid Fire, and start devouring the warrior.

I actually got his health down quite a ways, but, ya know... he had a priest. So it was all to no avail. (In retrospect we probably should've attacked the priest first, but I didn't see him for a while.) I eventually died, which I expected-- I am so geared for PvE right now that it's not even funny how gimped my stamina and resilience are-- but to be honest I did better than I thought I'd do. I guess having 7000+ lifetime honor kills gives me a wee bit of an advantage despite my lack of gear.

I also played ten Arathi Basin games yesterday; I figured "why not" because it was still the holiday weekend for it and also because I had this sudden idea to record the results of the ten games, just for some fun statistics to look at.

Of the ten games I played, all PuGs, seven were against premades and were thus losses. (Though funnily enough, only two of those premades wound up actually five-capping us, the other five were all long grueling battles that lasted just as long as if it hadn't been a premade anyway. One comes to mind where we constantly had two nodes capped and the premade only managed to keep three... they kept trying to take our other nodes, and they kept failing.)

So only three of the games were good ol' fashioned PuG vs. PuG matchups. Of those three games, Alliance won two and Horde won once. For the first Alliance win, the Horde seemed to be off the ball right from the start, Alliance was ahead the entire way and won about 2000-1200. The second Alliance win was actually a very very close race for about 75% of the game, at which point Alliance somehow pulled off some crazy epic 5-cap maneuever and clinched us the victory. The one Horde victory was a pretty resounding Horde victory, they were ahead basically the entire game and it culminated in a 5-cap for them.

All and all I was satisfied; it showed me that despite all the premades you still get the occasional really fun matchups. I've been taking a break from PvP for a while but yesterday may have given me "the bug" again. I need to get some gear, afterall, if I'm going to be doing arena!

And now for something completely different: more and more WoW blogs are being hosted on Wordpress, and that's fine and all except that for some reason, blogs hosted on Wordpress seem to have a lot of issues loading for me. I think it has something to do with "Google Analytics" because that's always what shows up at the bottom of my browser, by the loading bar: "Waiting for Google Analytics". Seriously though, I had a Wordpress blog open in a Firefox tab just now and it took no less than ten minutes to load. They're all like that for me. And it takes me forever to leave a comment at those blogs, for the same reason. =/ Does anybody happen to know what's going on? So many good blogs are hosted on Wordpress and I'd like to make them easier to access.

Gettin' Stuff Done

I had a pretty productive day today in WoW.

For starters, my little hordie Lunapike hit level 38 and I decided to wander off to Westfall in the heart of Alliance territory and give solo'ing Deadmines a shot:

Ooooh, shiny stuff for my mount fund!



Aaaand, there ya have it, solo'd at level 38. A new record for me, because Tawyn solo'd it at level 41 (being primarily Marks-spec'd at the time.) Other then a few bad mistakes I made on Mr. Smite, and a VanCleef fight that was nearly too close for comfort (let's just say my health was down to about 5%), the run went quite smootly and I got a lot of stuff out of it that I was able to put in the Auction House. (Hehe, and did you notice the mini-Tux in a few of the screenshots? I love it.)

I've been having a lot of fun with Lunapike lately; I've been playing her a little more often and I've been inspired with new character ideas for her, roleplaying-wise. I think I want to write a short story about her. There is a special meaning behind her name afterall, I bet you didn't know that. Well two special meanings behind her name; one of them is in-character and one is out-of-character. I'll have to talk about those in a future post!

The second thing I did today was net about 2500 honor in PvP on Tawyn, thanks to randomly winding up actually in the middle of a few Alliance EotS premades (and yes, a few good old-fashioned hard-earned games as well) and EotS being the PvP daily. I now have 100 AB marks and 100 WSG marks, which is the most you can carry, so I'm gonna stick to EotS and AV for now-- sort of sad because AB and WSG are my favorites, but eh. Some of my guildies almost talked me into blowing nearly all my honor points and 30 WSG marks on some good pants... almost... in the end I opted not to because I didn't want to spend that much honor, now that I'm finally on the downhill side of the grind for my crossbow. If I decide to be superhardcore I might even have it next weekend, but I'm certainly not going to be holding my breath!

The third thing was a guild clear of Mechanar. We did pretty well, I think, considering that only one of us had ever run it before. Sure we had some wipes, but we also seemed to manage to pull off some crazy miracles on what otherwise might have been even more wipes. Having us all on Ventrilo has been a big help also. There's little I find more intense in this game, than something going wrong on a pull and somebody tossing out some crazy idea over voice chat, and then having it actually work. I even got to do some emergency trapwork a few of these times, and I think I did a pretty good job of it, too.

So now I've got the first half of the Arcatraz key, and if things go as planned I will be getting the second half tomorrow. I haven't gotten any "phat dungeon lewts" in a while so hopefully those are in the cards, but on the other hand, I'm really just doing these instances for the fun of it and for the whole experience of doing one. The loot is just secondary.

I have to say, WoW has taught me more about teamwork than any school "group projects" or even any real-life, money-making job. The only other thing I have ever felt so much teamwork in, was Orchestra back when I used to play the cello in school. There were times when you were playing music when you just really "got it" and realized that you were all working together, playing parts that all sounded strange alone, to make a beautiful song. Instances in WoW (and battlegrounds too) are really the same way.

I sort of had a realization today in Mech. Basically I checked the damage meters about halfway through, because I wanted to make sure I was doing okay, and because I won't lie, it's always thrilled me to be on top. But today when I looked at the meters, the first thing I thought wasn't "Oh yay I'm on top /flex". Nope. It was "Wow... look at how well we're all doing." The meters looked exactly like they should. Nobody was doing a bad job. Three awesome DPS/CC doing their job and an awesome tank doing his job and an awesome healer doing his job, and together we were clearing this difficult instance. It was really a neat moment for me to feel that same synergy that I haven't felt since my Orchestra days.

And yet again I realize that a video game has taught me a life lesson. Now if only we can get more people in the general public to realize that games can be good for you! =P

The Roleplaying Raiders. Or the Raiding Roleplayers, mayhaps.

I apologize for the lack of updates these past few days. I have a semi-valid reason, I promise:

It all started a week or two back. I think I've mentioned before that our guild is interesting in that it is a newer guild with quite a few people who are all in the same level range-- currently mostly mid-60s (and now 70).

We have also discovered that we like instancing together, a lot. We make a very good little team.

Anyways. A week or two back somebody mentioned something about Serpentshrine Cavern. Someone else said "Yeah, it'll be a loooong time before we get to that." "Wait, isn't that like... a 25-main raid?" "Yep."

...

And then somebody said it. "You know... we should become a raiding/roleplaying combo guild."

And everybody liked that idea.

So here we are, Entelechy, a guild full of roleplayers who have never done end-game before (or even hit 70 before), slowly keying up for Karazhan a year behind everybody else, and thinking we should do raids.

Crazy? Maybe. Awesome? Yes. We're gonna try it.

Now to why I haven't made any posts for a few days. Basically it was decided that if we're going to be a raiding guild, we need a Ventrilo server. (We have also wanted one for a while just to mess around and have fun with each other.) So we got one set up a few days ago. Problem: Pike runs Linux. Ventrilo does not play well with Linux.

Cue a few-day-long geekathon where Pike desperately tries to get Ventrilo and Linux playing nicely. Hardly any WoW. Just a lot of Dr. Pepper and keyboard pounding inbetween work shifts.

The sad news is that the whole attempt was pretty futile; it turns out there is some weird problem going on in my computer where microphones are not registered. I was able to get Ventrilo up and running, simultaneously with WoW with no slowdown, even... but it was pretty pointless if nobody could hear me talk, even if I could hear them. And the problem was complicated enough that I think it's beyond my meager abilities, at least for now. In the meantime, I still wanted a way to get on Vent so we could start practicing instancing while voice-chatting.

...so, I took a deep breath, sucked it up, and stuck a little Windows XP partition on my hard drive. I copied the WoW folder over, installed Vent, and... there ya go. I now have two different WoW installations, one on Linux and one on Windows. As much as it pains me to say it... I logged into Tawyn on Windows today. My initial impression was that it was pretty much exactly the same as on Linux with Wine. My second impression was that something was off somehow, which I couldn't quite put my foot on... the mouse was moving differently, or something. But, I'm dealing with it.

I'm on Linux now and it will remain my main operating system. I'll hop over to Windows when I'm instancing or get bored and want to dork around with the guildies for a little bit. But the rest of my WoW'ing and computer'ing in general will remain on Linux. And hopefully I can figure out the microphone problem at some point, and come back to "pure" Linux.

So that is why I haven't been around much.

I have one more story to tell. There is a level 70 hunter in my guild who is... maybe just a little less geared than I am, and his spec is similar to mine (though not the same-- there are a few notable and interesting differences). We both have the same ranged and melee weapons, except I've got Savagery on my axe and he doesn't. He's got a windserpent and I've got a cat.

We dueled today about... six times. And he won four of them. Rather resoundingly, too, a few times.

We had a good chat afterwards about the results and how we thought they may have come about. Because the duels really seemed to be going either way. To be completely honest he is a very good hunter and it caught me off guard. I'd never really seen him play his hunter before, usually he's tanking for us on his warrior. So I really wasn't sure what to expect. Anyways we compared specs and gear and strategies and had a chat. Here are my thoughts:

-Windserpents seriously do this thing where they pop up next to you and take you by surprise and throw you off, that's what they seemed to do to me anyway. His strategy is to dump as much focus onto his Windserpent as he can so it can spam Lightning Breath, so I was on the receiving end of that, too. Oh, and the thing about the big wings... yeah. So hard to target the other guy when something's flapping in your face. Definitely time to bring Tux to 70 (he's halfway through 67, currently) and make him the Official PvP Pet.

- He's a draenei and would use Gift of the Naaru on himself right when the duel began. He also has Spirit Bond. So he was regen'ing health the whole time.

- I kept trying to use my attack-power-boosting trinket without realizing I'd forgotten to equip it. Whoopsie... *shifty eyes*

- Also, he somehow has a different strategy than most hunters I go up against in PvP, but I've still got to figure out exactly what it is (clearly more research is required!)

Anywho, why am I telling you all this? Because if you play a draenei hunter and/or you have a windserpent these are awesome new PvP tips for you! I'm sort of jealous of the Gift of the Naaru thing. Granted, he told me a new tip about Shadowmelding at the beginning of the duel to annoy people while your pet eats them (haha) so it's a fair tradeoff.

After the duels though, I was feeling the urge to hone my skills because he'd won more times than I'd won and it was inspiring me to PvP and get better. So I went to AV.


Hey look, Alliance on Bloodlust actually won a "New AV" game and it was the daily too... yes I know, don't go into shock... but aside from that, I've got 239 honorable kills. And that's with the omnipresent Valanos's Longbow. I can't wait for an upgrade. That's what I'm saving up Honor for next, that ridiculous Crossbow. I can't help myself. I'm in love.

Hmm. Sorry that this post sort of rambled on and on and covered at least three different subjects. That's what happens when I put off making a post for too long. In summary: I like my guild, I like my Linux (honest!) and, when it's not frustrating the heck out of me, I like PvP.

And two more quick things: Armory is working again! My unbuffed crit is so very very close to 20%.

And a HUGE SHOUTOUT to Moonglo for coming to visit me on Silver Hand. You guys are all great.

Hunter vs. Hunter 101

Thanks for all the input on my last entry, regarding my custom avatars. I'll think about it some more; I'm sort of short on time these days, but I'm also short on money... so yeah! I'll be thinking about it. Thanks for all the feedback, I will definitely take all of your opinions and requests into consideration. I do want to stress that I'm not turning this blog into any sort of corporate showing-off-my-PayPal-button scheme. If I were to offer my avatars for sale it would probably be a limited-time-only thing. Because writing guides and telling stories is what I do best so that will always be the primary purpose of this site.

Anyways: Here is a story/guide combo (two for one!):

Earlier this morning I was in Stranglethorn Vale with my level 34 hordie. For those of you who are new or haven't been following; I've got my 70 Alliance hunter on an RP-PvE server, and a 34 (well, now 35... but 34 this morning) Horde hunter on an RP-PvP server.

Because this character is on a PvP server I've been explicitly avoiding STV for the most part, but I do want to do the Nesingwary Expedition "Mastery" quests that culminate in good hunter stuff.

So there I was, level 34 and searching around for panthers, and I saw this level 38 Alliance hunter out of the corner of my eye. I figured I would ignore him, hoping he would leave me alone. But nope, a couple minutes later he springs on me and attacks me.

I beat him.

I threw on a bandage and ate some food, and then resumed questing. I'm too much of a carebear to do any corpse camping or /dancing or the like. Besides, it's just not good form! Anyways, a couple minutes later, he comes back. He attacks me again, opening with Aimed Shot. Again, he lost.

...to make a long story short he attacked me no less than five times, and all five times he lost to me.

Now I won't deny it: it felt really, really good to know that I had consistently outperformed a hunter who was four levels higher than me and whose pet was at least five levels higher than mine (my poor kitty got kind of behind because I was working on another pet for a while.) Especially because he was always the one initiating combat, he always got the first shot off, and more than once it was Aimed Shot.

But I'm not one to sit around and simply be proud of myself (although as I said, it felt durn good), so I've thought of some mistakes that I either know he made, or think he probably made, which prevented him from winning. And I'm posting them here because hopefully they will be of some help to a newer hunter! =D

For the record, I can't find this guy's spec because Armory has been weird all morning. Or I would do a spec/gear comparison. So this is all based on my observation and hunches:

For Starters:

Buffs: I had both Aspect of the Hawk up, as well as Mark of the Wild which a passing druid had given me not too long before all the combat happened. I don't recall the other guy having Aspect of the Hawk up, though it's possible I just wasn't paying attention. Aspect of the Hawk will buff your ranged attack power. It's good to have. Mark of the Wild is a fantastic buff. Druids who put it on me and especially on my pet, make me happy. (Thorns on the pet makes me happy too.)

Hunter's Mark: I have a Hunter's Mark/Pet Attack combo button. This means that my pet and I are never attacking something without Hunter's Mark on it. The guy I was dueling never once put Hunter's Mark on me. Hunter's Mark is going to buff your ranged attack power and if you have Improved Hunter's Mark it's going to buff your pet's attack power... and on this particular character, I'd thrown a point into IHM before starting down the Beast Mastery tree, so I had that going for me.

As a bonus... and actually maybe this is just me, but I'm going to say it anyway... I honestly find nothing scarier in battlegrounds than a Hunter's Mark suddenly appearing above my head, followed by seeing a flash of a big red pet out of the corner of my eye. Because I know what's coming. *shudders*

Rapid Fire: This is the biggie. Rapid Fire increases your firing speed by 40% for 15 seconds. I love using this against other hunters, because it seems to me that other hunters often forget to use it in a duel or in PvP. It has a pretty big cooldown (which can be decreased a little through a talent in the Marksman tree, Rapid Killing), so I was only able to use it... twice, I think, throughout the course of our five spars. But it makes a huge difference. Faster damage = good, in the case of fights like this.

Trapping: He could have trapped my pet, but he didn't. To be fair, he did Feign Death each time to get out of it, but I quickly sic'd Alyosha right back on him. But remember that if you are facing a higher level hunter and the pet is big and red, well, there's not a whole lot you can do CC wise to him.

Knowing When to Use Your Shots: He kept using Concussive Shot on me even though I obviously wasn't going anywhere, and he wasn't going anywhere, so it really didn't make any difference if my movement speed was slowed. Now, maybe he had Improved Concussive Shot and he was hoping the stun would proc. Even so, I don't think it's worth it in a one on one duel of this nature. Also, using something like Aimed Shot or Steady Shot in the middle of your fight generally isn't a good idea. It's better to spam autos, Arcane, and Multi, and Serpent Sting really doesn't hurt, especially if you're a lower level and it's really all you've got... Viper Sting is fun against casters, pallies, and yeah, other hunters. Especially if it's in battlegrounds and so might be a longer fight than a one-on-one.

Have your Pet on the Other Hunter, Not on Their Pet: I see this a lot in duels actually. We sic our pets on each other. I feign death to get out of it. The other hunter's pet is set to defensive so he starts attacking my pet. This means that his pet is not focused on me and it's not really helping him out any. Be careful for this; in the heat of the battle (and the initial "surprise!" of me popping back to life... at least, I know it still always gives me a little jolt when another hunter does it), you might not notice that your pet is engaged on my pet and not on me. My own pet, personally, is almost always set on Passive. (Exceptions are when I am running lowbies through things... my strategy here is shoot everything once, and then have my pet wipe up the resulting mess... or when I'm grinding and I know it's okay for my pet to jump from mob to mob if he has aggro on a lot of them.)

Other Stuff: If you have trinkets that buff your attack power, etc. then use them. If you have time before the fight starts to turn Growl off, do that; your pet won't need it.

There were also other special circumstances that are somewhat less controllable that gave me an edge. For example, my character is a tauren. I have a passive racial increasing my health by 5%. I also have 5/5 Endurance Training on that character, that's another 5% more health. Some of the better gear I've got on that character right now come from PvP rewards; more stamina. So I probably had a better chance than a lot of other people at my level just because of that.

And lastly, I can't deny that I've already got a level 70 hunter that I PvP with on a regular basis, so there's always the experience factor.

Anyways! In my experience, a lot of hunter vs. hunter fights turn into tests of gear, stamina, and, in the case of higher-level BM hunters... whoever doesn't have Beastial Wrath on cooldown. So you have to look elsewhere to get the edge. Remember your buffs, remember your trinkets, remember Rapid Fire... remember you have a few different ways to avoid the other hunter's pet, and remember that they do, also... and with luck you'll come out ahead! As a closing note, I'd like to stress that this is just a very basic guide. There are a lot of little rules and nuances when it comes to PvP, and to be honest my hunter-vs.-hunter strategy will change depending on their spec and my mood.

Next on PvPing With Pike: Etiquette, taboos, and silly things that probably only Pike does! Stay tuned.

It's that time of the level-bracket again.

I've sort of been taken a break from leveling this whole past week. There were two main reasons for this. The first one is that The Boyfriend (hmm, should I call him Mr. Pike? Heehee) has been pretty busy, so he got about a level behind me. We try to stay equal in level, especially as we're approaching 70, so I told him I would wait to level until he'd caught up.

The second reason is that I decided it would be fun to focus on PvP for a while. The reasons for this include wanting to stockpile honor and marks now so I have a jump on the level 70 PvP gear (I learned the hard way yesterday that going into the level 70 bracket AV with level 68 gear is... not a pleasant experience)... and the fact that I just plain like battlegrounds. I think my PvP skill is improving, too... I will still refrain from calling myself very good at PvP, but it felt good to see this:


I am usually near the top of the "Damage Done" charts, but I am very rarely actually first, so it was a nice surprise to see this. I've also noticed that my kiting skills have improved lately, and I've discovered a lot of little things about playing hunters in PvP that I should have known before, but didn't. For example: Rogues love Serpent Sting. ...actually, they really hate it. *cough* Because they can't stealth if they've got it. I never knew this before! Fantastic. Oh, and The Beast Within handily works as, effectively, a second trinket. I didn't know this either. Oh the fun I've had since I found this out. Can't regain distance because of a warrior's Hamstring or a rogue's Crippling Poison? Pop The Beast Within and get back to business.

Speaking of which, I've noticed lately that there's sort of been a complete turnaround for me in terms of classes that I do well against and classes that I don't do well against. In my earlier levels, warriors and rogues were the bane of my existence. These days, I do quite well against them. Meanwhile, warlocks, who I was always pretty good at taking out before, have suddenly become near-invincible. I'm not sure if it has to do with the talents of our respective classes, or if it's just a change in my playstyle, or maybe both. But it's quite interesting.

Anyways, while I've had a lot of fun in the battlegrounds this week, I have been bitten by the dreaded Level 70 Bug, so I've started up my questing again. The newly-christened Mr. Pike is now at level 68 with me and we want to spend the weekend leveling. We'll see how far we get!

Lessons Learned in Warsong Gulch

People respond to kindness:

I'm sure most of you have been there. The battlegrounds game where within five minutes, somebody has, say... taken the flag but then something goes wrong and they lose it. And then somebody pipes up with "Wow you guys suck."

I'm here to say... don't let your team have that attitude.

"Nah, we don't suck, we just got off to a bad start", I said. "Come on, we can do it."

"Yeah," a couple other people sort of tentatively agreed.

And so we were off again. After some hard battling we managed to capture a flag.

"See? We can do it. Now we just have to keep it up."

That was basically really all I had to say. It took off from there, people encouraging each other, thanking each other, and helping each other out. Mr. "Wow-you-guys-suck" decided to be obnoxious again at some point, proudly proclaiming his top position on the damage meters to everyone and making a big deal out of "why can't you guys keep up", but a quick "Yes, you're doing a good job, keep it up everyone" reminded him that it was a group effort and hushed him up pretty quick.

Somehow, someway, after nearly an hour-long game, our scrappy little team won that Warsong Gulch game 3-0. Even with one of our members AFK nearly the entire time. Furthermore, while Mr. Originally-Obnoxious-But-Really-Not-So-Bad kept his top spot in the damage charts at the end, there were four more of us up there with him.

Was it my encouragement and our team's overall helpful attitude that gave us this victory? Maybe we'll never know. But I'd like to think that it at least helped a little. I've had similar things happen to me before; our team coming from behind and winning not because of our skill so much as because of our attitude. Don't underestimate the power of a little encouragement; it can go a long way.

I love worthy opponents:

I ran across a female orc hunter in a completely different WSG match. She was Beast Mastery spec'd, like myself, and she and her bright green Windserpent were good. At some point early on in the game, I think we both subconsciously decided that it was a matter of hunter pride to make each other our sparring partner, so throughout the entire game we were hunting each other down and taking each other on 1 on 1. Sometimes I won, but most of the time she did. I've long thought that most hunter-on-hunter matches come down to gear and stamina, but this orc had skill. You could tell. I wish I'd had time to /salute her before the game ended, she was a fun opponent.

Level 19 Mage PvP:

My mage got to level 19 and I took her to WSG a few times. It was my first time PvP'ing as something other than a hunter, and I'd like to think I did decently, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Not to mention that it's tough being a squishy in there.

Somehow I managed to do less overall relative damage than I do as a hunter, but got a lot more killing blows. It was kind of strange.

Not being able to track people was driving me insane, though, and I missed all the other hunter abilities too. After a few games I missed my hunter so much that I had to log out of the mage and onto the hunter, and that's where the previous WSG stories came from.

Just a few more levels until the level 70 battlegrounds! If any of you guys happen to play on the US battlegroup "Bloodlust" then I look forward to working with you... or sparring with you!... soon. Give me a /wave!

I couldn't help myself.

I got my tauren hunter to level 29 today, and as is the typical case with me when I get to the end of a "bracket", I'm taking some time out to go play in the battlegrounds.

So there I was, guarding Blacksmith by myself in Arathi Basin, feeling a bit awkward about not having Flare or other helpful higher-level skills and dreaming of the trinket I'm saving up honor for. We're winning this particular game and it's nearing the end, but I've still got a freezing trap sitting at the flag waiting for anybody who wanted to try something at the last minute.

Suddenly I heard a familiar noise. I turned around and, what do you know, a rogue is caught in my trap.

Now I try to be a friendly person and honorable fighter in PvP, and throughout the whole game, really. I thank players for their heals or buffs and in general I think I'm a pretty nice person.

But at this point all I could do was be amused at the hapless rogue as my mind cycled back through all the dozens of times I've fallen prey to the stealthed hand of this particular class...

/target rogue
/laugh

And then I sic'd my kitty on her and she went down like a fly, and it felt pretty darn good.

Dear rogue, wherever you are... I'm sorry for laughing at you when you were stuck in my trap. But you have to realize how funny it looked and how nice it felt to be the one catching you by surprise for once. I was laughing with you, not at you. I promise. ^^

My tauren also tamed a new pet today; the windserpent Arikara. He apparently makes quite an entrance when you summon him. And I've never had a windserpent before, so it'll be fun to try him out. I named him Ivan to go with the kitty Alyosha, and yes the third pet is going to be Dmitri. Cookie for anybody who gets the reference to my favorite book. *cough* =D

You know you're a Beast Mastery Hunter when...

...you're fourth in the healing charts at the end of an AV match:


Ahead of druids, pallies, shammies and priests. I found it rather amusing, but I guess that's what comes from spamming the Mend Pet button!

This particular AV match was a very good one, too. Highlights included a rogue and I taking on and successfully capturing Frostwolf Graveyard by ourselves (thanks to sap, some cleverly placed traps, and Tux amazingly managing to tank the 61 elite for a very long time), a very close race from both factions to killing the final boss, and my personal favorite part, ding'ing 61 mid-game in the 51-60 bracket (you'll notice my level in the screenshot, heehee).

It's moments like those when I really love battlegrounds.

I was asked a couple questions regarding Linux (and my desktop wallpaper too, haha) and I will be addressing those in my next post. Thank you giving me the questions and the opportunity to answer them, and do feel free to keep asking them!

Random Ramblings!

So my Sitemeter tells me that I've had like 100 new visitors just in the past few hours thanks to a link on Big Red Kitty. To coin a term, I have been BRK'd. Wow! Thanks BRK! And welcome to any new visitors. Please feel free to browse around my little blog, and pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable if you so desire. *passes out cookies and tea for the readers, and a variety of pet foods for their pets*.

(Edit: And a link on Mania's Arcania too? Wow, thank you!! I might just have to make another "shout-out" post sometime soon.)

Now then, Outlands:


This screenshot was taken shortly before heading through the Dark Portal to get to Outlands. Yes, I've had my hearth set to Shatt since level 50 or so, but there was no way I was going to miss out on going through the portal.

The irony is that the screenshot is already "outdated", so to speak, since in the short time between then and now I have already managed to replace two pieces of gear as well as my ranged weapon, all with stuff that is better than my old-world gear to a ridiculous degree. I already love Outlands though-- it's fun, it's challenging (the "yellow" mobs are more like "orange" mobs, and I love that challenge), and of course, there's all the new gear!

So here I am, on the fast-track to level 60 (ooh, remind me to do more farming... need epic mount cash) and enjoying every bit of it.

Other bits of interest: My teal kitty has been christened Locke. This name has a double meaning for me; firstly, John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher, just like Thomas Hobbes... so there is an in-joke there, a nod to both the Calvin & Hobbes comic and to BRK. Secondly, Locke Cole is a character from the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy VI, which is one of my favorite video games. Locke the kitty and Tux the owl have been taking turns playing in Outlands with me, all the while being lavished with roasted quail.

Also, I have decided that I'd like to improve upon my PvP skills. I've been doing a lot of battlegrounds recently (since once I hit a level ending in 8 or 9 I hightail it over to the battlemasters... you might say I have a bit of an addiction) and while I would call my self an "okay" PvPer and I tend to be towards the top of the damage charts at the end, I still am not a "good" PvPer. A lot of times in PvP I'll get caught of guard or people will sneak up on me, and then I seem to spend the duration of that duel trying to get back to range and doing very little non-pet damage. It's definitely time to practice my technique here.

I do have an interesting PvP story to share. I was in Alterac Valley the other day, and was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere when I ran across a lone orc warrior. He was level 51, and I was level 59. Now I know it's battlegrounds, I know player-vs-player combat is the whole point here... but I couldn't bring myself to attack him. Not with eight levels separating us. Besides, since we were both out in the middle of nowhere I figured he must have been doing a quest or something. So I hopped on my mount and rode right past him. Not long after this I paused to catch my bearings and decide where I wanted to go. And who should come jumping on me but that level 51 warrior! We fought, and obviously Tux and I triumphed. But I have to say that little incident left me admiring the orc player's courage and mindset. He knew what PvP was all about. He was willing to try taking on a player that was eight levels higher than him. Whereas I, well, I love a good battlegrounds game but I'm really just a carebear at heart. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two different playstyles and I /salute that orc warrior, wherever he is.

Alrighty, enough pseudo-philosophical rambling. Back to Outlands!

/cheer

Well, it took going from 0/3000 neutral to 2207/6000 friendly with Stormpike to do it-- but I've finally won an AV game and got my [Ice Barbed Spear]! (Testing the link pop-up there, let's see if it works! Edit: It works! Woot. =D )

Mmm... it's shiny.


I don't want to play another AV game for a long, long time though. But playing nonstop battlegrounds these past couple of days has given me some interesting perspectives on the differences in PvP with a BM spec and PvP with an MM spec. It is hard to keep your pet alive sometimes. And in a place like AV he seemed to be dead a lot, unfortunately. Many times I caught myself wishing I was spec'd Marks for this battleground, but I stayed with BM anyway, because I knew it would be good practice.

I seem to have caught on to the basic idea, though, although try as I might I couldn't keep Tux alive during the final boss fight. I just blinked and he was gone. I'm not sure if he grabbed aggro or if he fell victim to a bad AoE attack or what. We won though, and I have my polearm!

On PvP Servers

I've been wanting to make a post regarding my thoughts on PvP servers for a while now, and now, while my other computer is busy running a file system check, sounds like a good time.

I really, really want to like PvP servers. They add an element of excitement to the game that is lacking on normal servers. I like the idea of them in principle-- "in principle" being the key words.

The main problem, for me, is that the my idea of an ideal PvP server, and most other peoples' idea of an ideal PvP server, seem to conflict.

For an example, I will tell of some of my adventures yesterday. I was logged onto a tauren alt, questing in and around Tarren Mill in the Hillsbrad Foothills, which is arguably one of the most contested areas in the game. In my hour and a half of playing, most of which consisted of hunting bears and mountain lions for some quests, I was ganked... 8, 9 times? I lost count around there. One of those was a decently fair fight-- I say decently because the other person was four or five levels higher than me-- but it was still a fun enjoyable little skirmish and I dished out some damage before dying. The other 7 or 8 times I was ganked, it was by somebody who was level ?? and was able to one- or two-shot me.

To me, PvP servers would be ridiculously fun if most of the PvP went on like the first fight I described-- by people at decently similar levels. But in my experience, most of the PvP is high-levels ganking low-levels, when the low levels are trying to quest or something. That, to me, is not fun. It is just annoying.

Now I don't claim to be an expert on this subject; maybe it gets better later on, or maybe it's just like this in certain zones (like Hillsbrad and STV). And obviously a lot of people enjoy PvP servers, and I don't blame them. But my style of play is one where I like being able to go to Booty Bay and think "Wow, what an interesting place full of interesting characters", and not "Oh joy. Booty Bay. I wonder how long I can survive this time before I'm one-shotted, maybe I can last more than a minute and set a new record."

So there you have it-- why I'm not a big fan of PvP servers. I will continue to play on many of them because it's where most of my friends play, and because (as far as the aforementioned tauren character is concerned) I'm a part of some great guilds. But when given the choice... I think I'll stick to my normal/RP servers.

Closing Note #1: I am yet to try an RP-PvP server, I would definitely like to look into that.

Closing Note #2: Some interesting stuff does indeed happen PvP-wise. For example, the level ?? guy who went around and killed all the low-levels he found... except for me. And then he proceeded to help me kill a monster to finish a quest. I don't know why he chose to help me instead of gank me. I like to think that maybe he is a fan of Dostoyevsky's novels, after which my pet Alyosha was named. Much more likely, I was the only girl there, and/or he was planning on killing me later and I just left before he could. Either way, it was interesting and sort of fun.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Battlegrounds (A Confession)

I will start by saying that, in general, I'm not a huge fan of PvP. I'd rather be playing on a normal server with my PvP flag safely off than, well... the alternatives. I'd rather be /waving at and /dancing with members of the opposite faction, instead than ganking them. Yeah, I'm a carebear, that's how I roll!

But I have this thing for battlegrounds. Anytime one of my characters gets to a level that ends in 8 or 9, I'm off to Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin.

Now sometimes I feel like a masochist for this. Battlegrounds can be (and usually are) excruciatingly irritating for me... often filled with rude people and twinks. Now I don't have a big problem with twinks, they're playing the game the way they want to and I can certainly see the appeal of twinking... but it does make things hard for us "normal players" in battlegrounds. If the other side is full of twinks, and your side isn't, well, things just aren't fun.

So yeah. Often times I sit there getting my tail handed to me over and over by twinks, or our team refuses to work together, or a variety of things happen and I wonder "Why oh why am I doing battlegrounds? I hate this!" Then after the match I go right back up to the battlemaster and do it over again.

Why?

Because when things do come together... when your team does work well together and maintain and execute a tight plan... when it's not just entirely twinks and you find yourself locked in good solid battle with another guy... when the game is a close, close match and you happen to pull it off... it sure feels good.

I'm not a twink and I wouldn't call myself a PvPer. I just occasionally find myself gripped by this random addiction to battlegrounds. My fairly new tauren hunter Lunapike has been rocketing down the questing/leveling path but I've held her at level 19 for what must be a week by now because I can't bear to level her, I'm having far too much fun. The 10-19 Warsong Gulch bracket is painful and irritating to play, and it makes me want to kick my computer over, but it's fun.

And there you have it, that's my confession. Battlegrounds, I hate you, but I love you. And try as I might, I can't get over you.