The process of application.

Well, I've now been on three raids with Adventure Lovers as a candidate. It's been fun raiding again, and they're good people. Haven't had much feedback, good or bad, yet but the chat's always friendly.

Last night, I was with them on an attempt at Nefarian, the final boss in Blackwing Lair, who they had yet to kill. There were a few wipes, and it seemed that even the server was against us as most of the raid (myself included) sufferred the most horrific lag. We decided to make one more attempt and then call it a night, and on that attempt, everything clicked.

Ten minutes later, Nefarian fell to the Adventure Lovers for the first time. I'm honestly chuffed I could be part of it. The Nefarian fight is still one of my favourite fights in the game, and I'm glad I was able to experience it again.

One down...

Well, it turns out I had my first run with Adventure Lovers last night, to Blackwing Lair. There were a few wipes and it was apparently an unfocussed raid for them, but we still cleared as far as Firemaw.

It was a lot of fun being in a raid again, the folks there are every bit as friendly as Chaotic Divinity and almost as nuts. Hopefully my incessant banter hasn't turned them off me yet. Their tactics are slightly different to CD's, but similar enough that I was able to adapt quite quickly (90% of Hunter tactics are knowing where to stand before we hit Auto-shot. ;))

Since it's looking increasingly like we'll be getting the new patch (2.01 I think it's been designated as) next week, I'm going to have to look into how that affects my playstyle. Rather than just diving immediately straight down the grinding/soloing/levelling utility of the Beastmastery tree, I might have to give a serious look into deep Marksmanship for the upcoming raids.

Plus ca change.

As of my writing this, it looks like Wulf's time as a CD member is coming to a close. With the recent collapse of our 40-man raiding, I found it harder and harder to work up any enthusiasm to log in. This was brought into sharp relief by the fact that many people I relied upon in CD had chosen to be elsewhere, or had elsewhereness thrust upon them. I decided to stop coming to ER, rather than sit on my hands in Ironforge or spend my time mindlessly grinding cash.

I spent two weeks playing Stormpaw (who's now lvl 51) and I found that to be much more rewarding. I pretty much decided to mothball Wulf until the expansion and made a post on the CD forums to that effect.

Then two hours later, our erstwhile hosts, Adventure Lovers announced they were looking for another Hunter. Having spent a month or so chatting to folks on there, I've found them similar enough in temperment and experience to Chaotic Divinity that I felt I could fit in and be useful. I figured I'd take the shot at applying to them with Wulf rather than spending the next couple of months saying "what if?".

As it turns out, I've been accepted as a candidate. I should hopefully be coming on my first trial run this Friday. Of course, I feel bad about leaving CD, which has been Wulf's home for fourteen months now. But as it stands, CD is restructuring and realigning itself, and if I had to leave, I believe a time of change and reorganisation is the best time to do it.

Back to the matter in hand!

Well, looking back over my last few posts, there's been a lot of moping, moaning and angsting about the logistics of trying to hold a raid group together, and not enough about my exploits as a hunter!

Where to begin?

Recently, as part of an experiment, I got the pieces together for a set of epic gloves with an interesting ability:

"On successful melee or ranged attack gain 8 mana and if possible drain 8 mana from the target."

Given that Wulf's mana pool is something like 4110 at best, it doesn't seem like much, but I was interested to see how they'd work out in-game. Combining it with a set of gear with some additional mana regeneration on it, I decided to put it to the test. The results thusfar have been encouraging since I can now happily grind upwards of a dozen elite dragonkin before running out of mana, which really boosts my grinding efficency.

Might see if I can get a group willing to go to Dire Maul West at some point to try and get me one of these beauties to boost my efficency further. :D

Speaking of grinding, that's pretty much all Wulf's good for atm, so I've repurposed him slightly for that. I was holding off changing his talent spec until the 1.13 pre-BC patch, but in the end weakened and went back to a 20/31/0 spec to boost my pet for grinding. Still can't solo the demons in southern Winterspring though. That said, I'm finding I have next to no downtime against the Dragonkin, and I can grind them faster and easier that the supposed cash cow that is Tyr's Hand. I'm currently about 300G short of Wulf's epic mount fund, and I'll hopefully manage that at the weekend.

CD RIP: A Retraction.

Well, given that the title and somewhat tired, resigned tone of my last entry gave folks the wrong idea, I'd like to state, for the record, that Chaotic Divinity is most certainly not dead. It's merely resting, and not doing any more 40mans.

Various circumstances meant we were haemmoraging members at a faster rate than we could recruit them. Also, the quality of applicants we were getting were fine for a group starting Molten Core, but they wouldn't have helped us get back into Blackwing Lair or beyond with much hope of success. It didn't seem to be worth recruiting another twenty people for two months of Molten Core runs, after which we'dve had to shed most of them as we slim down for the Burning Crusade's 25-man raids.

It hasn't helped that a blizzard seems to have taken out (erstwhile CD Leader) Gunvladh's server, which hosted our forums, our DKP records and our Ventrilo server. We have found an online refuge thanks to Sialilyth and the lovely folks at Adventure Lovers.

That said, CD continues, diminished, but clinging to the values that have made me stick with it to date:

"Peace, love, and pew-pew-pew!"

CD RIP.

Well, Chaotic Divinity's been caught in something of a spiral for months now. Folks leave so we can't raid. Because we can't raid, more folks leave. Worse still, some of the old-timers start eyeing the door, but don't want to be seen as turning their back on their friends here.

It all came to a head last night, when it was decided that our days as a 40-man raid group were over. We'll still do ad-hoc runs to 20-mans, but no more Molten Core, Blackwing Lair or AQ40. Folks are welcome to go try out for other raid groups for the last two months, and hopefully, we'll all reconvene when The Burning Crusade's out and we can start levelling and exploring the new content together.

I'm deeply saddened by this. After fourteen months with the group, they are, in a very real sense, my home on Azeroth. As it stands now, I have the option of either trying to find another raid group for the last couple of months, or just giving up Wulf until TBC hits. There's really not much out there for a well-geared, raid-specced Hunter other than more reputation grinding or running countless battlegrounds. Neither option is particularly appealing to me.

I could attempt to level an alt, but outside of Stormpaw, I really haven't had much success on that one. Solo-levelling is a bore and if it wasn't for my CD mates pushing me on, I probably would have abandoned Stormy a while ago. So I guess all that's left to me is spend the next two months on Moonglade levelling my Horde alt away from most of the CD folks.

More on the cancellation of Christmas.

Well certain friends like to say "I told you so", but I genuinely (if foolishly) belived that Blizzard would make The Burning Crusade available before Christmas.

What they have said is that there'll be a Content Patch before Christmas which will essentially make most of the changes to the game that will ensure compatability with the Expansion. So we get the new talents, changes to the UI and also to the way hit/crit/defense and other abilities of that nature are calculated, but we can't level past 60 or access the new content in Outland.

What this means for Hunters, essentially, is that we'll be smacked hard with the nerf bat. There will be substantial changes in the class that will only be balanced properly when we attain levels beyond 60. Aimed Shot will be changed so that it can only serve as an oppener, but we won't get skills to boost our normal damage rotation like Kill Command and Steady Shot until level 62 and 66 respectively.

That said, I'm wondering which way to go with my talents. When it looked like I'd respec at the launch of the expansion, then I was going to go for a Beastmastery Spec for levelling and five-man instances. That said, given I'll still be raiding for a month or two now before I start levelling to 70, then I wonder if a Marksmanship build might be more appropriate.

It's a tough choice, my heart says "Beastmastery" but my head tells me "Marksmanship".