*As of the past weekend, I'm taking a break from the Tier 4 instances (Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon). At the moment, Ulu outgears the instances something chronic, there's next-to-no drops he requires and CD have an abundance of tanks who can run them. Not to mention the last two times I ran Gruul/Maggy with Cd I ended up running the raid because of the raid leader's incompetance/preoccupation. I fancy a bit more time away from the game this year.

*CD got Morogrim Tidewalker to 38% on our first night of training him. I anticipate a kill next time we take him. I'll post a Pally-tanking strategy when we do, but it's a fun fight from a Pally tank's perspective.

*Tonight I'm leading a Zul'Aman run. We've kinda let it fall by the wayside. It's not an easy zerg like Karazhan is for a group at our level, in fact the groups that farm it seem to be all in T5 or better gear. We'll see how it goes, but I doubt tonight's gonna change my view of the place.

*I should also point out that the recent patch changed Wulf's EZ-Mode Macro. The newer, sleeker version is:

/cast !Auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/cast Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

No need to note speed anymore, since Autoshot should remain toggled now.

EZ-Mode Beastmastery.

Over the last few days I've been asked by literally two people about Beastmastery shot rotations. In response, I'll point them at the following macro, liberated from TKA Something:

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=1.96 Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Replace the 1.96 with your ranged weapon speed after any persistant haste buffs (Serpent's Swiftness, Quiver bonus, etc) and spam away. For best results, use a weapon with a base speed of 2.6-2.7.

Where's Wal-erm I mean Wulfie?

Well you may have noticed that since 2.3 I've had a lot to say about Ulu, where does this leave our Titular Protagonist?

The simple answer is: In the Arenas. Whilst 2.3 enabled Tankadins to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other DPS classes, it also gave some enhancements to the Hunter's viability in PVP.

Given CD is generally strong on DPs, I've repurposed Wulf to pander to my occasional desire for some PVP action. The gearing philosophy's quite different. In raids, my main concern is to make sure Wulf's Hit Rating is as close to the 140 cap as possible, then after that I ramp up his attack power, since that boosts both him and his pet's overall DPS. In PVP, my damage output is secondary to survivability. I've ramped up his Stamina and Resilience, and then focussed on his Crit Rating for more burst damage.

I have fun now when I'm doing PVP dailies or playing Arenas with friends, although scheduling time to play the weekly matches around raids and other commitments is a challenge in itself.

They'll nerf it in the next patch...

Apparently Feign Death works in real life.

Events are proceeding as I have forseen.

Well it's been over a fortnight since my last post, guess I should update on my progress:

Wulfsblood has completed the list of things mentioned in my last post. In addition, he's spent a lot of time in the Battlegrounds and Arenas building up a strong PVP set. This has become important since he seems to be the first target for 90% of the Arena teams he faces.

As a result of the time spent PVPing, Ulushnar has done less well. He's only gathered another 30 badges since last we wrote, putting his total at just over 60. However, he was lucky enough to get the Tier 4 Chestpiece from CD's second Magtheridon kill, which has changed his priorities somewhat. I've decided to focus on getting the Boots and Belt first of all on Patch day. This, combined with the changes to the Paladin class I mentioned previously will put him at over 15k health unbuffed, which will be exceptionally respectable. It'll also give him a lot more Spellhit, which will help his aggro generation.

Along with the T4 chest, Ulu was able to grab the leggings from a Gruul Kill, so I now have 4/5 Tier 4 (all except the Faceguard). This means I've been able to create a threat set, which focuses on getting as much spelldamage as possible and utilising the two and four piece set bonuses. Whilst in this outfit, Ulu sacrifices a lot of health and avoidance over his regular tanking set, which makes it bad for bosses. On the flipside, the higher damage output and decent tanking stats make it useful for clearing trash and also for tanking content where Ulu is currently overpowered (regular five mans and the easier Heroics).

Finally, I've dropped Blacksmithing with Ulu in favor of Jewelcrafting. If nothing else, mining and prospecting gives Ulu access to a supply of cheap gems for his gear, and in six more points, I'll be able to make a nice 18 Stamina gem for one of his gem slots (I'm currently considering replacing the +6 Stamina/+4 Defense gem in his bracers for a tasty 12 Stamina boost.)

Qapla!

Well was away with friends on Saturday, and I got back one hour before our Gruul's Lair attempt on Sunday. I decided to bring Wulf to the raid since three full tanks would have been a waste and high DPS on Gruul's a good thing. The raid started at 20:00 CET...

...And by 21:15, Gruul lay dead at our feet. We had one wipe at Maulgar and one at Gruul, but both died on subsequent attempts with only a couple of player deaths. The DPS was especially high and Wulf in particular finished third in the DPS stakes behind a Rogue and a Shadow Priest. Wulf was rewarded for his efforts with his T4 leggings, which stands as one of his last few available upgrades atm.

Afterwards, he took a run to Heroic Mechanar to help a tank acquire a new sword. The sword didn't drop, but the run went smoothly.

And tonight, we try Magtheridon for the first time!

Ever-decreasing Full Circle.

Well I decided to rejoin Chaotic Divinity last night. I realised that there were only two other raid groups I'd consider applying to. One was less-advanced than Chaotic Divinity and was, by all accounts, having similar problems to us. The other one has a few ex-CDers in it with whom I'm less than friendly, and if I joined it would only be with Wulf, leaving Ulu hanging around in limbo doing heroics with friends around raids.

All in all, despite my problems with CD, I anticipated greater problems elsewhere. So I returned, predictably, to my safe place.

So we went to Gruul. Originally, I had intended taking Ulushnar, but it turned out we didn't have any Hunters in the raid, so I ended up bringing Wulfsblood instead.

After a couple of accidental pulls by yours truly, we ended up taking High King Maulgar down on the first attempt. Wulf's job was to act as back-up "tank" on Kiggler The Crazed, but when the first tank (a Moonkin Druid) died early, it was up to Wulf to step up and take over.

So I didn't play Ulu, but i did get to tank. Luckily the shoulders token for Paladins didn't drop, so I didn't feel too bad about missing it.

After that we made about 5-6 attempts on Gruul himself. We did pretty well, getting him to 37% on the last attempt. Biggest problem seemed to be that the warrior acting as MT just didn't have the Stamina to survive his damage.

All in all, the raid was excellent, and hopefully the shape of things to come.

Now I spend my time looking all around.

Well on Saturday, Ulu was knocked back for the raid group he applied to. Lack of gear and experience it seems. Was kinda expected but it does mean that Plan A went out the window.

I ended up taking Wulf to Karazhan on Saturday night to help CD out. Went pretty well, we ended up killing the Shade of Aran, Prince Malechazzar and Terestian Illhoof. It reminded me why I liked CD, but it also annoyed me that we can't perform like this most of the time.

On Sunday, I decided to take a change of pace, and I returned to Moonglade, home of my Horde toons. There I did the unthinkable and rolled a Blood Elf Paladin. Worse than that, I intended to make him a Retribution-specced one. Naming him Rachskind (butchered German for "Revenge Child", which I use to evoke both "Retnub" and my favourite Iron Maiden song.) In one day, I got him up to level 16. I'm intending on getting him to level 19 and then taking a break from levelling to concentrate on doing some PVP in Warsong Gulch for a bit. Once I get bored of that, I'll level him to 29 and do the same thing again.

Tonight though, it seems CD are short of tanks for their attempt at Gruul's Lair, so I'll be loaning them Ulushnar again for that.

Back to the Beasts

Well, after spending a week catching up with the current theorycraft regarding Hunters, I respecced Wulfsblood to Beastmastery. With Feature, his trusty old Ravager in tow, Wulf's DPS shot up by around 200 in Karazhan. Quite impressive. I've since started training up a Scorpid to be his instancing pet, since apparently the Scorpid Poison ability does nice things with the Spell Damage bonus pets get from the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power. Can't wait to give him a trial at some point soon.

Apart from that, Ulushnar's Mining and Blacksmithing grind continues intermittantly. He's currently sitting at 224 Mining and 243 Blacksmithing. Once I can get his mining past about 245 and start mining Thorium, then things should speed up for a while.

Arena Angst and Redoubt Rant

Ulushnar's been doing Arena's now for three weeks, Wulfsblood joined the team last week. We've averaged something like 270 Arena points a week, which leaves Ulu just over halfway towards his new Shield, but Wulf a little under a fourteenth of the way towards his new Crossbow.

The grind's long, no doubt about it, although I've heard a rumour that some of the Hunter-friendly arena weapons may be getting a pricecut to compensate for the fact that we have to buy 2-3 weapons (a ranged weapons and 1-2 melee weapons). I'm intrigued to see if this will happen. That said, i'm also going to sign Wulf up for a 5v5 team to help boost his income.

Rumors continue to abound of an reexamination of the viability of Paladin Tanking in the endgame. A thread has been opened here discussing vital and useless talents in the various paladin trees, prompted by one of Blizzard's own Community Managers.

I only hope the overwhelming amount of Tankadins who tell them that the present form of Redoubt sucks will cause them to rethink it. As it stands, it's useful for a levelling tank, but it's near useless in the endgame. Because it's a proc, you can't count on it being there in boss encounters. As a result, a raiding tankadin has to stack enough avoidance to become uncrushable without it. As a result, if it procs then it's wasted, since you already have enough block/parry/dodge with Holy Shield up that the extra block gets pushed off the table.

Why do I even bother with this useless talent? Because it opens up Shield Specialization, which provides some useful mitigation when we do block. Ah well, it'll all come out in the wash, hopefully no later than patch 2.3...

Back in the Saddle.

Been on holiday for two weeks. I'm not going to fill you in on all my doings over that time, but I'll go over the key points:

*Wulfsblood completed his Epic Leatherworking set. Along with a few more epic items picked up in Karazhan, he now stands as one of CD's better-geared Hunters. He's altered his talent spec slightly for something that's slightly more optimised for raiding damage whilst still giving him trapping utility and enhanced survivability.

*Ulushnar and Wulf have both joined an arena team with a few folks from Surpised Survivors. We pretty much suck, but we have fun and it opens the door for teh imba purplez.

*Because of a lot of our main raiders being away, CD hasn't done much more than Karazhan for the last few weeks. Since we normally have tanks that need the Kara gear more than Ulu, I've been bringing Wulf more to them. I'm really enjoying Wulf again after months of not being able to stand playing him.

*Ulu's changed spec to a Holy/Prot Hybrid spec. Losing the parry talent means I have to sacrifice some of his stamina gear for block and dodge value to maintain uncrushability. Ultimately he can Main Tank Karazhan fine, but I'll probably relegate him to an Offtank in the bigger dungeons. The side benefit of his spec is he's a more effective healer in Arenas and can probably offheal when not required to OT in raids.

*Blizz announced the new expansion and I'm underwhelmed. Another ten levels, another bunch of new zones and a new profession. The Death Knight Hero Class might be interesting but I'll await more details before I get too excited.

Grinding and Downing.

Last night was all about teh Wulf. I started grinding the Primal Fire he needs for his Epic set. After stumbling around the various prime grinding spots I found one that was out of the way, not extensively farmed by other and with a lot of mobs. In two hours I was able to grind enough motes for four Primals. Not a bad start, I now only need another 18 to be done with that. Then it's on to the Primal Shadow!

After doing this for a while, I went off the Karazhan to help the Late Shift again. We downed the Curator on something like the fourth attempt, and then went on to do the chess event. It wasn't exactly the smoothest run, but we're definately learning the encounters at a similar pace to the early shift raiders.

Weak-end.

Well this weekend Ulu played the game of "no loot for you" in Karazhan again. Bosses died, DPS was given happies over the shinies, but nothing dropped of interest to Ulu. I'm kinda tired of the place and I've decided now to stop running it for a while and let other tanks in CD get the chance to kill bosses over and over for nada.

I don't mean to sound like a shallow, purple-chasing lootwhore, but I am so that's kinda how it comes out.

Speaking of Purple-chasing, Ulu joined up with a couple of friends to try 3v3 Arena. He was supposed to be a healer, but I frankly sucked the big one. We only won one of our ten games (for some reason the opposing team consisted of one suicidal Troll Mage). Ah well, apparently even if you suck, the points roll in, so in a few weeks, he should be able to acquire a nice epic Shield.

In other news, after making a sizeable dent in the Nagrand Clefthoof population, I finally got Wulf's Leatherworking up to 375 and made the bracers of his Epic set. Currently I "only" need about another 20 Primal Fire and Primal Shadow to make the rest of the set. It's a shame that Primal Fire is one of the most expensive and heavily farmed primals in the game. Ah well.

Well it was a long time coming, but I've decided to stop procrastinating and work on Wulfsblood's Leatherworking. He's been stuck at 366/375 for a while now, so I bit the bullet, got a load of Primal Earths cheap off the AH and started grinding his skill. As it stands, he's at 375 and I'm going to try and grind another couple of points worth before tonight's raid. Ultimately, the set he gets to make at 375 isn't the best for his current spec, too much focus on AP over Agility, but the Stamina and Intellect alone should help his raiding performance.

Speaking of tonight's raid, we're going to try and make a run at Gruul's Lair. Initial sign-ups look promising, but only time will tell if we're standing over High King Maulgar's corpse tonight.

Honestly, though, I'm starting to feel the need for a break from the game. We'll see how things go and wether or not I get envigorated again.

Where to go from here.

I'm feeling at a crossroads atm. Friday's Karazhan re-awakened my love of playing Wulfsblood again. I felt fairly useful with him in a way I hadn't in ages.

As it stands, the tanking shortage in CD that prompted me to roll Ulushnar has diminished. It's no longer a massive issue, and having more than one protection-specced character on a 10-man run is a detriment to the group's DPS.

Tanking has, of late been more frustrating than anything else. I'm not sure if it's a problem on my part or on that of the rest of the group, but Ulu has struggled his way through encounters which have proved no problem in the past. My last few excursions as main tank on content that was in any way challenging have been doomed to constant wipes and frustration.

I wouldn't mind playing Wulf more, except that the tanking shortage in raids doesn't seem to extend to five-mans. When it comes to those, folks always seem to want Ulu, and rarely do they need wulf. Part of me kinda regrets not taking the offer that was alluded to in an earlier post.

But only part of me.

Back to the Wulf!

Well last night's Kara with the early shift was interesting. We cleared seven bosses in one evening with no noticable difficulty. Moroes and The Maiden of Virtue managed to confound me by dropping long saught-after tanking items that Ulu would have loved. Still I'm chuffed for the warrior who got them.

That said The Oz event (first time I've seen an opera event that wasn't big Bad Wolf) dropped some nice shoulders for Wulf, the Curator dropped the token for his Tier 4 Gloves and the Shade of Aran dropped a nice Cloak for him! On top of all that, Wulf got Honored with the Violet Eye and got an epic Ring.

I should start bringing my Hunter to raids more often...

Kara and a return to DPS.

I was bored before Karazhan last night, so I tried to get a group together to zerg through Arcatraz. I ended up with Ulu, another Paladin (who I thought was Holy, but turned out to be DPS specced), a Rogue, a DPS Shaman and a Feral Druid. Notice what was missing? That's right, primary healers. After some humming and hawing, I got my healing gear out the bank and with some support from the Paladin and Shaman, we healed our way through the instance with only a few deaths,

After that, it was time for the CD Late Shift to go try Kara. We cleared and took down Attumen fairly easily, but after that we spent the rest of the night making about a 7-8 attempts on Moroes. It was a difficult fight with our composition and ultimately we called it a night from that point. There's an aftermath thread here that denotes the various problems we had, and it has a lot of backseat raiders saying the same things over and over again.

Tonight it's the turn of the Early Shift to give it a go. Given the shortage of sign-ups for that run, I've decided to drag Wulfsblood out of semi-retirement to give it a go. I've respecced him to Trapbitch after a brief flirtation with a Marksmanship build. We'll see how it goes I guess.

It is better to Tank in Hell than Autoshot in Heaven

My apologies to Milton for paraphrasing and to Chaotic Divinity for referring to them as Hell. I just liked the phrase and CD're definately more like Purgatory in any case. ;)

A week ago, I was tempted to leave Chaotic Divinity. CD have been a constant in my playing now for about 21 months give or take. I've seen them through highs and lows, and we've stuck together as a loose confederacy of friends who wanted to try and see the end game content together. As a single guy with no dependants, and an undemanding job, I can arguably afford to be more "hardcore" in my playing style than those with spouses, partners or kids. As a result, I do spend a lot of my time backtracking through content I was finished with weeks ago to help folks catch up with me. Most of the time, it can be fun, but occasionally, it gets wearying.

Anyway, a week or so ago, I noted an old friend of mine was recruiting Hunters for their raid group, one of the older and more established groups on my server. Given the rarity of Hunter slots in the endgame guilds, and the fact that the aforementioned friend was the reason I started playing the game, I thought about offerring them Wulf's services. I can't deny it was a tempting chance to see some of the later stuff.

I started playing Wulf again to get a feel for him. It was bizarre to play a ranged class again. I felt removed from the action, and after months of AoE grinding with my Paladin, it was frustrating to only be able to fight one or two mobs at a time.

On Friday, I even went as far as to announce my intention to leave CD and posted an application to the other group. It seemed only fair to let them know the situation before I went on any more raids with them. They were upset, but supportive in general.

Then an applicant who was shaping up to be a good Main Tank for us basically announced that he didn't think CD was good enough for him and quit. I can't adequately describe the thought process at that point, but it made me realise where I belonged. CD needed a tank, and I realised I didn't really, truly have my heart in playing a Hunter anymore.

I asked to reverse my resignation and retracted Wulf's application to the other group simultaneously. I might spend the next few months on Karazhan and Heroics with these guys, but I'm honeslty not bothered. When I go to the big instances, I want to do it with sword and shield equipped, standing in the shadow of some hulking monstrosity between it and my friends.

This... Is my BOOMSTICK!!!

Apologies for the caps gentle reader, but last night, I had a peice of uncommonly good luck. On a run to The Mechanar with some folks from CD, an exceptionally nice gun dropped. I've seen asking prices for it in the AH of around 2000G, and it's basically the best pre-raid ranged weapon in the game (and arguably the equal of many of the ranged weapons that drop in Kharazan). As the only Hunter in the run, I was allowed to take it!



Ain't it beautiful? :)

Last night was nice. Whilst CD still hasn't started raids to Kharazhan yet, we've arranged for Wednesdays and Fridays to be days where we make a concerted effort to work together and get help for everyone who needs stuff done. We aim to have one lot ready to go at 18:30 game time (17:30 in the UK) and another lot at 20:00 (19:00). In practise, because I have no life and live within walking distance of work, I was able to help at both times. It's kinda cool to be able to do this stuff, helping keep the core of CD together even when we don't have raids.

In other news, it seems that Blizzard have bowed to the popularity of profiling sites like Allakhazam, RPG Profiler and CT Profiles, and started their own profiling site, the Armory. More disturbing, it seems I have a Horde namesake. I wonder if he's a fan? :)

I'm a (Surprised) Survivor!

Ok, so last night I gave my new Survival Spec it's first proper run for it's money on a Guild run to Steamvaults and some solo-questing afterwards.

The Survival style is a little more "active" than Beastmastery, since it relies on my skill with traps much more than the pet's AI.

I have to keep a close eye on my trapped target in case the trap breaks and it then makes a run for me or (worse) the healer. I have to work out where to place my trap so that only the intended mob will get trapped. Dealing with trapped mobs correctly is something of a learning curve for the group in general as well. The tank I normally work with has the basic mentality of "if it's loose, it's mine" and he's occasionally hit a target just as it's made it into the trap, or one that's left the trap and I'm trying to coax into a second trap. Still, we were starting to get the hang of it pretty much by the end of the run. Having the ability to take a mob out of combat for up to 26 seconds every 20 seconds is exceptionally useful in the higher end dungeons, where even the best healer and tank are going to struggle with more than 2 mobs.

Wyvern sting, my other CC move, is an ok opener or useful if you get an unexpected add. However, the 12 seconds it gives you is rarely enough to down one mob in an instance, and the poison effect it applies afterwards makes trapping difficult.

Damage wise, it's also a big change. When I was Beastmastery, I fired a lot of fast shots that added up to respectable damage, but one without as many damage spikes from critical strikes to draw additional aggro. Survival feels slow in comparison and you crit a lot more often. The crits seem to make up for the loss in attack speed, but it also means that your output's a lot less dependable and you have to be careful with your aggro early in the fight.

Soloing is now more of a chore. The effect of weakening my pet and increasing my own damage is that my pet now struggles to hold aggro off me and I'm often finishing a mob in melee range. Downtime isn't as much of an issue as I feared though, as I'm killing mobs faster and not using as much mana, although I do need to heal my pet every third or fourth mob.

All in all, Survival spec's pretty fun. It's too early to say if I'll enjoy it enough to stick with it, but it definately gives me an interesting set of tools that enable me to be useful in pet-unfriendly environments.