Wow, okay then! I know I’ve been a bit sporadic lately, but I blame that on real life. >.> On the plus side, my new floors look awesome. (And yes, for the morbidly curious, I will post pics at some point.)
I’ve made some nice personal WoW progress, actually getting dailies done (shock!), helping with the SSO faction, and getting closer on getting some other factions to exalted. I even had some time to get some SSO dailies done on my mage, which was a REAL shock to me. Raiding has been a bit slow recently, as we have quite a few people away on vacation, personal time off, or dealing with the last few weeks of school. But last night, we tried something crazy. Really crazy.
We tried to kill Doom Lord Kazzak.
Yeah we failed spectacularly, but I don’t think anyone really expected us to take him down. What we did have was a great time being silly and making a group effort at something none of us were anticipating doing when we all logged in. So what if we didn’t kill him. We had fun, and that’s what this is all ultimately about.
All that said, I can’t wait til we get more people and higher DPS and we go kick his tail around til he begs for mercy. ::evil grin::
In real life, I’ve been preparing a house to sell. Yeah I know, crappy timing with the market being what it is, but I have a nice job change waiting for me in another state 5 hours away. That kinda necessitates selling my house. It’s also becoming spring where I live, which means Spring Cleaning in all it’s insane glory. So I’ve been cleaning out the house of old things I don’t want/use, visiting home improvement stores practically daily, and talking to installation people about appointments to come to the house. It’s more than a little hectic over here.
I’ve found that the “change everything!” mindset has invaded my WoW-space as well. In my collection of alts, I had a human rogue named Duvesa, that I’d gotten to level 57. She was my first major alt, and until I got off my butt and leveled my mage up, she was my highest level alt for the longest time. However, she was permanently stuck at 57. Why? I just couldn’t get into her anymore. I’d loved playing her, but somewhere along the way, I fell out of love. It just wasn’t fun for me any more. I could not find anything that made me interested in playing her anymore. So yesterday, after not playing her (other than hopping onto her and unlocking a low level lockbox for a friend) for almost 2 years, I sold all of her equipment and items, mailed the proceeds to my bank toon, and deleted Duvesa.
Did it hurt? A little. But I’d found myself with no connection at all to her, and was starting to hate the fact she was in the second slot on my list, right behind Siana. Why have her there if I was never going to play her? So I deleted her and once the faint pangs of character deletion were over, it felt as if a weight had been lifted. To celebrate, I did the next obvious thing: I deleted another character. This time it was a Night Elf warrior, Ravaria, that I’d had wandering around. Only level 27, but she’d been a NE priest, a human pally, and then a NE warrior before getting deleted yet one more time. That name is one that I’ve had in previous MMOs and I have sentimental attachments to it, so I created a placeholder character with it. Will I ever play it? Who knows.
So after deleting two characters, I decided since the house feels weird with all the new paint and what not going up, I needed to change up Siana a little. So I did something that made several friends fall over into shock: I respec’d. Right now, she’s the “standard” 41/20 BM spec after being heavy MM spec (my usual choice). I raided last night with it and said I’d give it a couple more days of playing around with it. But once the time is over, I’ll be respec’ing again, this time to one of the MM/SV builds.
Why am I doing this? I’m trying to shake my mind out of any hunter ruts it’s gotten itself into. Specs are always a polarizing element in WoW, with this build or that build being held up as the Holy Grail for whatever your attempting to do, whether it’s PvP, leveling or raiding. But it’s not that simple. There’s not really one “perfect” build for each class/situation. There’s always something that affects the end result: latency, gear, random chaos, and most importantly, the person actually playing the character. It’s that human element that makes two identically geared, identically spec’d hunters have different DPS. It’s what each person brings to the table in personal experience and gaming style that affects the end results.
So I’m playing with specs, rediscovering what does and doesn’t work for me, and having a grand time doing it. I have a feeling I’ll be going back to my usual spec, but it’s always good to shake things up.
Tomorrow? I’ll be watching guys install new flooring into my house and trying to minimize the destruction to my belongings. I’ll get some daily quests done, maybe even work on some quests with my mage, or over on Moon Guard with the About Last Night group over there. Or I could say to hell with it all and hide in the bedroom with the two freaked out cats.
No pranks from me, but please feel free to check out the official WoW website for the annual silliness. A host of bloggers all have “questionable” blog posts, and I encourage everyone to go read them and enjoy.
I have -finally- gotten back to WoW and took my first rather, erm, whirlwind look at the Shattered Sun Offensive quests, along with the other new dailies. I can say that the new dailies look interesting and I’m sure I’d say the same about the SSO ones, except I don’t really remember them. I got dragged around at top speed, so all my impressions are of the quests are killing and mass destruction with npcs randomly handing gold and packages out. I’m hoping that I can get some quest time early in the mornings this weekend to really take them in.
Tonight, the guild goes back to raiding, after having a week off. It’s back to SSC and here’s hoping we kick much butt again. I did notice that the mana drain was a lot higher last night for me, as well as pulling aggro off my pet a lot faster than normal. :;sigh:: bloody changes.
This weekend I finished up the majority of the painting that was keeping me from WoW, so now I’ll be back to actually playing WoW instead of wishing I was playing WoW rather than putting pale sage green paint on the walls of my den. Of course, now that 2.4 is out, there’s all these dailies for me to try (ha!), and a new 5man to go into (maybe tonight), but I also would like to get back to leveling my pally and working on my mage. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen for a while, at least not on a long-term basis. ::sigh::
But I did manage to get some WoW time in this weekend, mainly on Sunday. I started getting back into the groove of the daily grind, and wow, the hunter mana issue sucks. I’m already dreading the first raid back on Tuesday. After doing some of the dailies on Siana, I wandered off to the Moon Guard server to the latest project I’m in: About Last Night. Yep, another toon, this time, one that’s on an RP server. I’m doing something I haven’t done in a loooooong time (RP), on the Horde side (all my toons are Alliance), as a male Blood Elf priest (I play nothing but female characters, and mostly DPS). This… should be interesting. Right now, we’re all working on getting to the same level so that next weekend we have a full group ready to rock away. Now to remember to set up priest-y addons. ::makes notes for later::
Listen, I know I didn’t see you on our usual day last week. I know I canceled on you on pretty short notice. However, I really was ill and under the Nyquil fog. I told you I wasn’t coming in good faith.
So meeting up with you last night, I foolishly expected things to be okay. I mean, I communicated. However, all I got from you for the first 30 minutes were rejections, snippy comebacks, early trap breaking, trap resistances, and just plain weird behavior. That’s not like you. I know you’re better than that. Granted, I will give you points for finally acting like your usual self towards the end of our evening. But really, was that prior 30 minute span of snit-fits the best way to handle things? The most mature way?
::sigh:: It really pains me to say this, but I think I might have to start seeing other bosses in other instances. I’ve talked to Void Reaver a couple of times and he’s quite the charmer. I mean, he drops T5! And those Greaves of his. Oh man. It’s enough to really turn this Hunter girl’s head.
Bottom line is this: unless you put more into this relationship than you did last night, I’m going to have to call off this relationship, because I don’t really see this going anywhere. I would like to say though, thank you for the shards. They were lovely and look great hanging in the guild bank.
Yes! I’m alive again! Geez, I’d forgotten how bad the creeping crud is. Thanks for all the great replies to the pet names post. They made me giggle in between Nyquil-induced comas. Next on the Hunter hit list: stupid pet tricks! No, not really. But it sounded good. >.>
I pretty much missed all raiding last week. Well, no “pretty much” about it. I did miss all raiding. I’m hoping that I can get in some quality WoW time this week, maybe even do a daily or two. Might help, especially since I’m starting to get lean in the pockets again. Need more raid consumables!
One of the big things about being a Hunter in WoW is getting to tame an animal and have it be your companion, dishing out damage and being your own personal meat shield. Even better, you get to name the critter once it’s succumbed to your charms. This has lead to some truly stellar names in the annals of pet naming history, along with some, erm, questionable choices.
The tale of my taming Mirya the Teal Kitty (yes, Matticus, she’s teal, not blue), as well as the reasoning behind her name, is well documented. But then there’s the other pets I’ve had. There was the black kitty with the white spots very early on in my hunter career that was named Sylvie after my then real-life kitty. I tamed a white windserpent once and named it Pip, after a character’s pet from a book series by Alan Dean Foster (excellent series). Then there was a leopard-spotted kitty I tamed that I named Kibble. Why? It amused me and still does. When I got my warpstalker, I named him Kieru. One of the definitions I found for it is “Vanish”, which of course is perfect for a warpstalker.
But then there’s the other pets out there. There’s the turtles named “Soup”, the “ugly” pets named “Pookie” or “Muffin”, or the odd gorilla named “Dkong”. Some of the best fun I had in beta testing TBC was when my class leader named her new pet after her hubby and I named my new warpstalker after The Boyfriend. Both gentlemen felt less than honored, while everyone else in the guild got a giggle or three watching “GuildLeader” die over and over while we were learning the new instances. I know I saw an owl wander by the other day named “Splat”. At one point I’ve seen a bat named “Booya”. There was a pink tallstrider named “Shrimp” that I used to see a lot, but not so much anymore. And then there was the one person that named their pet a very mundane name: “James.” I got curious and asked why they named them that. Their response? “It’s my soon-to-be-ex-boss. i like watching him get slapped around then stomped on. It prevents me from yelling at work before I put in my two week notice on Monday. ^^” There ya go, pet destruction as an anger management tool!
Anyone else seen any oddball pet names or just have a name you use over and over cos it tickles you?
Class Lead: ok I want to make sure Pally Tank has aggro on Leo during elf phase.
Class Lead: no more dying!
Me: I’ll try!
Class Lead:
Class Lead: well if you die, I have to molest your corpse
Hunter #3: well dang, that’s what I’ve been doing wrong!
Me: you realize you’ve just given me reason to die, right?
We’re getting good at ZA. WE still have our stumbles (a couple of “oh god, THAT pull now” spots I can think of), but for the most part, we do good on the 4 animal avatars. Now, we’re really putting time in on Malacrass. Last night was one of our better nights, one that even with the frustration of waiting to get the group filled and into the instance, kinda made it all worthwhile. We finally got to see Malacrass hit below 20%. I know I saw 14% at one point, and someone else said they saw 11% before he started healing himself. The problem we’re running into is that every mana user is running out of mana before the fight ends. Yes, pots, mana oils, you name it are all getting used. Bandages and heal pots are all getting used by everyone to try and help out the healers. Hunters do the Hawk/Viper dance. Mages evocate. Everyone’s doing their damnest to help even the smallest bit, and we’re still dying because our healers start calling out “OOM” with everything on cooldown. I hear the frustration in their voices and know it’s bugging them even more than it bugs me.
At the same time we can be very pleased with ourselves for the work we did on Malacrass last night. We tried a couple of different methods and finally hit a good groove on the kill order of his adds, and really settled into handling the various specials he throws out. We would have had him that one time if we hadn’t all run out of mana, healers and dps alike, all at the same time. So we know we can do it. It’s just a matter of mana.
For those that might miss it, Matticus over at World of Matticus does a “20 Questions” every week or so with other bloggers. This week, I was his unlucky victim choice. Thanks Matt for the questions and thanks Big Bear Butt for poking Matt every time you saw him to ask “Hey, you finished those questions for Nightravyn yet? Wait, where’d she go? Is she hiding from Matt and I again? Oh Nightravynnnnnn!”
I currently play:
Siana, a level 80 Night Elf Hunter (my raiding main)
Wrenn, a freshly dinged 70 Gnome Warlockette
Etaine, a level 70 Human Mage
Onihime, an under-70 Draenai Paladin
And an assortment of other alts on Doomhammer(A)-US. Hunter has always been my favorite class though, through the good and the bad.
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