10 Things I think I think About WoW (10-6)

My guild has had some trouble lately with attendance (it’s that summer feeling, I know, and I am sure you do too), and it had gotten to the point where my good friend left the guild.  I was inches from going with him, but a talk with my raid leader changed my mind.  Stricter attendance rules and a better plan to gear up new members kept me around.

Anyway, without further ado (was there any to begin with?), here are 10 things I think I think about WoW, numbers 10 to 6:

10. The best part of the game is no doubt the people.  You have to admit, even the trade chat “anal [insert spell here]” makes you laugh sometimes.  The guild I’m in has some poeple I love bitching with, some I love doing dailies with, and some that I admire for their dedication and commitment.  There are also those few that I cannot stand, but that is what makes a guild so diverse and interesting.

9. Marksman is good, but I just don’t know how to play it well enough I guess.  Survival continues to rock the Recount Charts, so I guess I’ll be sticking to that, even though I leveled Marksman and would love for it to work for me.  Oh well.

8. The alliance side on my server is terrible.  There are good players, but with 3 raiding guilds running Ulduar at the moment, there just aren’t enough to go around.  Horde outnumber us 3 to 1, we have defended Wintergrasp 35 times total (read Archavon’s Journal inside the Keep), and one guild has killed Thorim (and only once, mind you), and nobody has killed Mimiron.  Horde side has 3 guilds that have killed Yoggy.

7.  I love alliance.  I have a horde character at level 25, a Tauren Warrior, but I just simply never play him because I love the alliance feel.  Horde has always intrigued me, but I started Alliance and will remain so, even with all of these new reports coming out about a faction change service.

6. Holy Paladins are getting beat into the ground in 3.2.  I played one through Naxx before switching to my hunter, and I think the Illumination nerf is going to really hinder them.  Blizzard gives Healadins talents like that to push Crit as a stat, then in Ulduar they move away from Crit completely, with blue sockets and haste/Mp5 being the focus on plate healing gear.  I don’t understand.  The beacon of light change pretty much ENSURES that you will overheal constantly, and the Flash of Light HoT with Sacred Shield is counter-intuitive to what they are trying to do with Beacon!  Put Beacon and Sacred Shield on tank, then heal EVERYONE ELSE because of the removal of overhealing loss on Beacon of Light.  Healing the tank seems to be what Blizzard wants to move paladins away from, yet they give sacred shield (which you will not be putting on randomly targeted DPS while healing the raid) a heal over time effect when it is quite obviously going to be on the tank.  Makes ZERO SENSE to me, and I don’t understand the need for the change.  Maybe I am just out of the loop, having played hunter instead of paladin for the last couple of months.

10 Mans

I have to say, I enjoy 10 man raiding much more than I enjoy 25 man raiding.

BUT THE 25 MANS HAVE BETTAH LOOTZ!!?!?!?!?!

Well, yes, they do, and that is why my guild continues to run them and struggle to progress in Ulduar25.

10 mans, however, still have excellent loot, and provide much more opportunity for success, as far as I am concerned.  I love the smaller feel.  There are less people in Teamspeak trying to talk, so the 10 that are in there can chat freely and work together much more effectively.  Also, there are no people that need to be “carried” through the fights.  We bring our best 10 to Ulduar10, and nobody is holding us back.  There isn’t that ret pally or huntard that doesn’t know how to play their class doing 2200 dps, which happens all the time in 25 mans.

My 10 man group has cleared Hodir and Freya, and with only 1 or 2 nights a week of throwing the group together on off-raid nights.  The 25 man group we have has only cleared Kologarn.

I love 10 mans.  The close-knit atmosphere, the higher chance for success, and less weak players that need to be carried make it a much more enjoyable experience for me.

Hunter Skills: Misdirection

Skill: Misdirection

Level: 70

Use:  The threat of your next 3 attacks is redirected to the target of Misdirection.  Only one stack of Misdirection can be on a target at a time.

Basically, this ability is used to mainly pull mobs without aggroing them yourself.  On boss fights, it can be common for you to be asked to “misdirect the tank.”  If you cast misdirect on your MT and attack the boss, the boss will go after the MT instead of you.  Keep in mind, however, that only your first 3 attacks get redirected, so you still need to watch your threat and make sure you are behind the tank on Omen!

For soloing, this can be useful too, especially for SV or MM hunters, whose pets aren’t as strong as those of the BM hunters.  If you misdirect to your pet before you pull, your first 3 attacks will generate threat for your pet, giving him/her a head start before you start to blow up the poor, helpless target of your attacks.

As far as PvP, I can’t think of any use for this.  If I am wrong, let me know!

Now, if I only had this skill for my GF aggro….

Hunters & Ulduar – Flame Leviathan

This is the first in a series of posts about Ulduar, its bosses, and the hunter class.

Flame Leivathan is the first boss encounter in Ulduar, and the raid must use three different types of vehicles, which all have different jobs, to bring him down.

Demolisher: Driver and Gunner.  Driver has ranged attack and must light the oil on the ground that the Choppers drop.  Gunner has 2 ranged attacks, one single shot boulder throw and “anti-air” missles that must be used to take down enemy Copters when making way to Flame Leviathan.  Also, the gunner can load himself into a catapult, and the driver can shoot the gunner up onto FL itself, which we will talk about later.

Siege Engine: Driver and Gunner.  Driver has close range ram attack than can interrupt FLs Flame Vents.  Gunner has a ranged attack and the ability to shield the tank, reducing damage.

Choppers: Ride around, drop oil in front of Flame Leviathan to slow him down, and have a single attack that hits a frontal cone of enemies, but deals minimal damage.

The fight starts with a gauntlet type “event” where your raid has to move through a large area with mobs, towers, and helicopters.  After this area is cleared, you can confront Flame Leviathan, who arrives through a gate after you kill the mobs guarding it.  There are Storm Towers that the mobs spawn from, so killing those will stop mobs from spawning from it.  The Demolisher gunners must use their anti-air missles to take down the aerial units that come periodically.  There are 4 towers, 2 on each side of this middle area, which do NOT have to be destroyed unless your raid starts the hard mode of the encounter.  Each tower, if left up, will give FL more health and extra abilities.  If you do not activate the hard mode, these towers can be left alone and your raid can move straight up the middle of the area to Flame Leviathan.

During the fight, FL will pursue either a demolisher or a siege engine, which have to simply drive away as fast as they can in order to not get rammed by the boss.  Demolisher gunners can use a speed boost, which uses the Pyrite Power, and siege engine gunners can use a shield.  Choppers should be constantly dropping oil slicks in FL’s path to slow him down, and if Demolisher drivers can light the oil, FL will take damage.

For hunters, something else might happen in the fight, mostly because you are ranged DPS.  Flame Leviathan has turrets on top of him (2 on normal, 4 on heroic), and if they are all destroyed, he will “Overload” and shut down for a short amount of time.  He will take increased damage, and using the Pyrite attacks here is advisable.

Ranged DPS is ideal for the being shot up to these turrets, because you can attack more than one.  You must be a gunner in a Demolisher, and must load yourself into the catapult and your driver must ACCURATELY shoot you up.  Get up there, bring the DPS to the turrets and shut FL down so your raid can pummel him.

You will get thrown off the top after the turrets fall, and a chopper must pick you up and bring you back to a demolisher.  Look for those choppers, because if FL comes back to working order and you aren’t in a vehicle, you are going to be dead before you can even call for help.

Coming Up

Starting (hopefully) tomorrow, I will be writing about Ulduar.  Specifically, about each boss, but not just the strategies, but the key abilities and situations that hunters need to watch for in these fights.

Now, I have not cleared Ulduar yet, so obviously the bosses I haven’t done will not be featured until my guild downs them.  I will start from the beginning, however, which will hopefully buy my guild (at least my 10 man group) some serious time to get things done.

Also, a new Hunter Skills article will be going up soon.  Please leave comments of what you want to see in regards to both this and the Ulduar boss guide!

Arenas

Between raiding on my hunter, I have been playing my paladin in 2v2 arenas with a mage friend of mine, and it has been really fun.

I was playing Retribution with him, and we were winning just under half of our games, and I chalked it up to a lack of experience.  However, I recently switched to a healing spec for it, and we have been doing MUCH better, going 22-15 this week, which is a significant improvement over our previous showings.

The spec, however, isn’t a normal healing spec.  It actually goes into PROTECTION, and I have to say it is incredible.  Talents like Touched By the Light (30% of your stamina as Spellpower) help keep spellpower up to strong levels, and I get a great boost to stamina and survivablitity.  Avenger’s Shield is also a great damaging attack which also has a 3 second silence with another talent.  If you glyph it, it does even more damage to the single target.

The spec is 19/52/0.  You can probably look it up anywhere (I forget where I found it, but there are threads about it on many forums), and I encourage you to try it out if you are a holy paladin doing 2v2.  My mage friend totally failed and didn’t iceblock against a hunter/rogue team last night and got bursted down quick.  So it was me with a rogue at 100% and a hunter at about 80%.  No worries, I just slowly worked down the hunter, then killed the rogue.  Holy Shield and Redoubt help against rogues, and I just healed myself when I needed to, and we had a win instead of what seemed like an imminent loss.  It was awesome.

I encourage everyone to try NEW specs and different specs, because you never know what you will find.  There are vast amounts of sites and forums out there where you can find cool and interesting ideas for specs and talents, so give them a read if you are struggling or just simply want to improve.

More Raiding

Lately, I’ve had little time for anything but raiding for a couple of hours at night.  The summer is supposed to be relaxed and refreshing, but for a college kid like me, it means working my ass off to help pay for rent/tuition next semester.

My guild is having some trouble with Auriaya and Iron Council.  I think it’s just a healing issue…both nights we haven’t had our top healers online, which is never good.  The pull on Auriaya is the most important part of the fight, and after beating our heads against IC for an hour we weren’t in any mindset to get it done.  Maybe this week.

In a 10 man Ulduar last night, our core group got to Hodir, and I have to say the fight is awesome.  Our best attempt was 35%, and we definitely could have had it.  Just a small healing problem that can be remedied for this coming week.  

Good luck out there in Ulduar this week!  The place really is a step up from Naxx, as my casual-ish guild is finding out, but we are plugging along, doing our best.  Maybe we’ll see a world first Algalon this week (not from us obviously), who knows!

Finally!

Well, Kologarn has been tough for my guild, usually because by the end of our raid time we only have time for about 1 or 2 attempts at him, which usually don’t go well.

Tonight, after downing Ignis, we had a good hour and a half to get a good run at Kologarn, and after 3 or 4 attempts we finally got him with a flawless attempt.

AND! Giant’s Bane dropped, and I used a lot of DKP on it.  It was a huge upgrade from Final Voyage, especially with the recently buffed ilvl226+ ranged weapons.  I noticed immediately a significant DPS increase on our Iron Council attempts, which went well but not well enough for a down.  We will definitely get it tomorrow.

In short, get yourself either Envoy of Mortality or a Ulduar ranged weapon, because the DPS increase is not only noticible, but impressive.

Hunter Skills: Disengage

Skill: Disengage

Use: Leap backward from combat 10 yds

Cooldown: 25 seconds

 

This skill, for any experienced, knowledgeable hunter, is invaluable.  It is great for PvP and PvE.  It allows for quick movement away from your target or a hazardous area, and can be useful in many different situations.  Let’s look at them.

PvE:

Lets say you are running Halls of Lightning, and you meet up with Loken at the end of the instance.  Now, you need to stand close to him in order to take less damage from his aura, but you also need to get away quickly when he starts to cast his AoE Lightning Nova.  Most groups start him near where he sits and slowly move down to the circle in the room.  Disengage is PERFECT here.  When he starts to cast, hit disengage and instantly move 10 yards back.  This will put you out of range of his AoE in a much quicker fashion than turning and running would.  This works great for Ionar in HoL, too.  When he splits into the 3 or 4 different lightning crawlers, just hit disengage to get a head start on running away.

On Heigan in Naxxramas, you can use it to quickly get back up on the platform after you do the “dance.”  When you reach the end of the dance, and Heigan rushes back in, just jump-turn and hit disengage to get back on the platform quickly and get back to doing your DPS.  You can use this to get over the Thaddius jump as well, although that is more just for fun than actual utility.  

Are adds coming from you corner on XT002?  After you DPS the heart for a few seconds, just hit Disengage to get back to your corner quickly and drop a frost trap to slow down the adds.  Are you on harpoon duty on Razorscale? While you run around kiting flames in the middle, just hit Disengage to get back to the harpoons once one is ready.  The uses for Disengage are countless, and are certainly not limited to these particular suggestions.

 

PvP: 

Obviously, this gets you away from your enemy, and it does so quickly.  You need to be at least 5 yards away from someone to shoot them with your gun/bow/xbow.  If you are in melee range, you are probably (definitely) in trouble.  You want to save this for certain situations, mainly after someone has used a cooldown to get you INTO melee range, like a DK Deathgripping you in.  When he deathgrips, just hit disengage to get back to range and start dropping your Frost Trap or shooting Concussive Shot to keep him away from you.  His Death Grip is now on cooldown, and you are at range.

 

Disengage is an incredibly useful skill for the hunter class, and it surprises me how many hunters fail to use it when the situation  allows for it.  Not only is it useful, it can be incredibly fun.  Find it in your spellbook and bind it to a key, because you when you need to be somewhere (or away from somewhere), Disengage can do the trick.  The terrain you are standing on makes a difference as well.  If your back is to an uphill slope, you won’t go very far, but if there is a downhill slope behind you or a drop off, you can go quite a distance.  Just be careful not to drop too far….

Tough Week

Not WoW-wise, but physically.

Sunday, I scratched my cornea right over my pupil and I could hardly see for two days.  I am now stuck wearing my glasses (normally contacts) from 8th grade that don’t have an updated prescription and are clearly outdated style-wise.

About 2 hours ago, I got my wisdom teeth taken out, and as I sit here writing this I am biting so hard on gauze my head might explode.  I just want to eat this omelet next to me, but my face won’t stop bleeding so I can.  

In spite of all of this, I have been able to raid a little bit and still write, which is good.

I will be working on a new series of posts called “Hunter Skills.”  I will focus on a new ability of the hunter class and talk about the importance and utility of it in (mainly) the raiding environment and to the Hunter in general.  I will start my first post later this afternoon and hopefully have it up tonight or some time tomorrow.  First up: Disengage.