Ask Colemand: How Not To Be Eaten By A Dead Guy

WARNING: Will eat you in your sleep.

Hello.  My name is Colemand.

… and I’m a chronic eater.

I don’t eat normal everyday things all the time though.  You see, unlike you poor, unenlightened people, I’ve managed to do what you think unthinkable: eat humanoids.

Now, see here, not everyone can do this.  Being undead twice over might help, but I’d like to think I’m into “aggressive expansion” of ideas.  I’m an apprentice chef, and a great chef looks for ingredients all over the place.  Even inside your face.

Some people don’t like being eaten.  Okay, that’s fair.  But if you’d all stop making it so easy, then I might actually have a challenge.

So, without further ado,

HOW NOT TO BE EATEN BY A DEAD GUY

1.  Don’t run into one.
Honestly, this is self explanatory.  If you don’t meet a dead guy, you won’t be eaten by one.  Simple as that.

2.  Don’t look delicious.

I know this is hard for some people to do, but try not to seem so delicious.  I remember this one gnome I saw who, despite the plate armor, looked so tasty that I had to try to eat him.  Simple ways of looking un-delicious include demons, smearing yourself in felhound feces, and bathing in tonic water.

As a side note, tonic water is the only un-delicious soda to date.  It’s remarkable!

3.  Commit suicide.
I was in Hellfire Peninsula this one time, and I was capturing the Overlook for the Horde.  An Alliance member was obviously there, as the Overlook simply would not be captured.  I searched for him, and found him.

He was a human male, dressed in bright colours.  His muscles and flank were nicely toned, and he simply looked delectable.  So, I cried out to him, “Paladin! Stop there! I simply must have a piece of you to taste!” The human simply looked at me, incredibly puzzled.

Honestly, I’m not Galertruby or anything! I speak perfect common!

So I chased him, and attempted to grab a piece of his arm to taste.  That’s all I wanted to do.  And you know what he does? He jumps off the cliff! Bam!

He’d rather die than let me have a bite? How rude!

This was after he commited suicide. I asked him again, and he went to option 4, which led to option 5, which led to 7.

True story: Paladins are suicidal.

4.  Run away.
Tried and tested, it’s the most common choice.  Doesn’t work all the time though, especially not against myself.  Death Knights have a spell called Death Grip, useful for catching runaway food, picking apples, and tidying my chambers.

5.  Become one.
Typically, other undead taste fairly bad, and I will not choose to kill one to eat it.  The only time – only time – where I would eat another undead is if there are some mushrooms nearby.  Undead meat and fried mushrooms go well together.  Wait… after that, I could toss them into a pot with some leaks… add some onions… a pinch of sugar… some wine… serve on top of a steak or some pasta…

/sniff
/drool

Scratch that.  Becoming undead doesn’t work.

6.  Be a Warlock.
I apologize to all the warlocks out there; you all taste like crap.  Really, there is nothing, nothing more distasteful than warlocks.  They’re as bitter as 65 orange peels mashed together with banana peels, cabbage, and rotting garbage.  On fire.  In an Undercity sewer pipe.

Covered in grave moss.

Really, warlocks are the worst taste of all time.  Even Gome warlocks taste bad, and Gnomes taste like candy usually!

7.  Log off.
Not much to be said about this, but use only as a last resort.  Otherwise, you might be losing delicious playtime.

Remember, eat your Fel Orcs! It's good for Iron!

That is how to avoid being eaten by a dead guy.  I hope you all take this information to heart.

This kind of fear, by the way, tastes delicious.

A Pause Button Would Be Nice

... I'm going to need a bigger button.

I am sorry I have neglected to write the PvP guides I have been wanting to this week.

As everyone knows, I like writing guides.  They’re fun to do, and they are a great way to teach people about a certain aspect of the game.

However, with a game like WoW, it’d be nice if content stayed stable for a bit before changing all crazy-like.

With patch 3.1 coming out, I can’t post on the topic.  I mean, I could, but it would be obsolete the moment that the patch went live.

I am not going to waste time if I can help it.  Some of the guides I have written have already become obsolete, or dated at least.  This makes me sad: I put a good amount of work into those articles.

As a result, I am not sure I will continue to write guides.  Although they are fun to do, it’s not fun to write about so much stuff every time that changes, which happens to be every goddamn month.

So, I will not write guides until the game becomes more stable.  The only exception would be if someone asked about it specifically through an e-mail or a Twitter.  Either that, or I chose to write about less stuff, but that’s not an option as I want to write about the hunter class as a whole, not just specific sections.

Short version: no more guides unless I get requests.

Sorry if people were looking forward to anything I was going to write, but now won’t for some time.  If you really want me to write about something, send a request, and I’ll do the best I can.

Thank you all for your understanding, it means a lot.

Now! Back to your blogroll.  Go! Shoo!

Creature Feature: Warpstalker

Chameleon + Mage = Warpstalker?

Arguably the strangest creature in the World of Warcraft, and cetainly the strangest I’ve covered so far, Warpstalkers are nearly unchanged from their inception in the Burning Crusade.

From the beginning, Warpstalkers have had high armor and hp, low damage, and the ability to teleport instantly.  Since patch 3.0, however, Warpstalkers are now much better versions of what they were before.  They deal more damage, take more hits, learn better moves, and are still just as freaky looking.

GENERAL STATS
Warpstalkers are Tenacity pets, which means they are primarily good for tanking and soloing.  This is evident, seeing as their stat bonuses are 5% to armor and 10% to hp.  Tenacity pets are the opposite of their squishier cousins, ferocity pets, and can take quite a number of hits.  They also benefit greatly from healing.

The Focus Dump skill for Warpstalkers is Bite, and their special move is completely unique: Warp.  Like the majority of pets, that is a Warpstalker’s only special move.

Warpstalkers are an entirely unique and strange pet.  There are only 5 beautiful skins for these creatures, but Blizzard saw fit to only make 2 of them tameable: the white one and the turquoise one.  Warpstalkers can only be found in Outland.

ABILITIES
Warp: Allows the Warpstalker to warp next to a target 30 yards away.  The Warpstalker is still a little phased from the warp, making it harder to hit for the next 3 melee hits or 4 seconds.

Warp has a very pratical application in soloing: it teleports, then becomes hard to damage for a couple of seconds.  This means that your Warpstalker can tag opponents faster than you can shoot to tag it.  If the mob is an elite, your already tanky pet gets a boost to survivability too!

In PvE, the only benefit to warp is that it allows your pet to move into combat faster.  This means an incredibly slight DPS increase for about 1 second.  Either that or you can use your Warpstalker pet as a utility pet, as I have detailed in an ealier post.  Thanks to Warp, your pet doesn’t have to run anywhere: It appears at a mob and then tanks it.  No hassle, no running, no problem.

For PvP, Warp is a lot more straightforward, and has some pretty creative uses for it.  Like when soloing, Warping gives the warpstalker a slight boost to survivability every 30/21 seconds.  In combination with the other powerful PvP abilities of tenacity pets, your Warpstalker will not die very easily, not that it was going to die easily anyway.

This has another cool application, particularly for Beastmasters.  Instant warping allows your pet to start interupting spell casting a lot faster.  As a beastmaster, this also has something else of import: instant landing stun.  Cast Intimidation on your freaky pal, warp him next to a healer in mid cast, and bam.  No more heal.  This works for burst damage too.  Out of nowhere, this pet pops up and starts bashing your face in, stunning you, Kill command is active, shots are raining down…  it’s not fun to be on the recieving end.

One last important thing to note about PvP and warp: when something as scary looking as a warpstalker pops out of nowhere, this might cause people to freak out a little.  People will turn around and try to instagib your pet, leaving their backs exposed, or they will ignore it at the cost of their healer.  Needless to say, warping has a lot of practicality for those who are creative, and I know you can find some out for yourself.

NATURAL HABITAT
Warpstalkers commonly make their homes in Solo and PvP environments mostly, unless they are found being utility in PvE.  This means that Warpstalkers are great pets for grinding, questing, Battlegrounds and Arenas.  Warp is great in any situation, as teleporting has all kinds of fun attached to it and the buff granted by Warp causes people to miss attacks.  A missed attack is a missed attack, no matter how many people attack.

Warpstalkers are meant to survive, however.  Thanks to great talents like Blood of the Rhino and Last Stand, Warpstalkers have a hard time going down for the count.  It’s important to remember that your Warpstalker won’t be doing as much damage as a cunning pet or a ferocity pet, but the utility you get out of it more than makes up for it.

KLINDERAS’S THOUGHTS
They’re big.  Freaky.  Have a thing for chewing on my hand.

They’re absolutely great.

I had a Warpstalker named Stryker a long time ago.  By learning the intracacies of warp, I managed to finish dailies incredibly quickly by tagging enemies before anyone else could.  I managed to annoy opponents past their sanity by sending Stryker to smash their faces in when they least expected it.  I also bought more fruit than ever before… they eat a lot.

When facing members of the Alliance, or fighting in a duel, I find these creatures to be incredibly practical and a joy to work with.

But when facing dangers like those found in Naxramas, their power is better used for protecting others.  Unfortunately, this job is usually taken by our resident Warrior, Druid, Paladin or Death Knight.  As a result, there’s not much use for Warpstalkers in these situations.

COLEMAND’S THOUGHTS
Like Gnomes, Magic runs through these creatures like blood.  Their flesh is incedibly sweet, almost candy-like.  It helps that all they eat are fruit and bread…

Hmm.

They’re like pre-stuffed turkeys, but twice as big!

Discipline Comes With A Price!

Now, if you look closely... there! Ear fungi! In the form of tentacles...

The price is… well, apparently, not having enough time for a bath.  Look at her picture!

You must always wash behind your ears people!

Anea from Holy Discipline is another blue spacegoat! That makes… at least 4.  That’s a lot of livesto-errm, blue people.

In any case, Anea’s blog proves that, despite a total lack of sidebar, one can achieve a great blog through a great banner and(more importantly!) intelligent writing that comes from being you, and not from trying to write like someone else.

So, with much fanfare…

AH! LINK! For the love of the Sunwell, stop howling! It’s not necessary! That’s not what I meant! No! NO! Stop! Bad!

I’ll give you Kibler’s bits!

/arf

*munch* *munch*

There, good boy.

Fine.  With a complete and total lack of fanfare(or else Link won’t be silent), I welcome Anea to my sidebar.  Welcome to the pack!

On a side note, can anyone debunk this theory? Dranei have tentacles.  You can shave them, so it isn’t permanent… Is it possible that they are a symbiotic fungus, from the mushrooms in Zangarmarsh?

A Game Of 7 Questions… Twice

Questions? For moi?

Harii over at Control-Alt-L33T decided fit to tag me in another deadly game of… tag.

Well, gauntlet thrown, gauntlet picked up, and now I will beat your game over the head with it!

So what are the conditions of the tag?

… answer questions? Oh my.

Colemand, get up here.  We’ve got work to do.

THE QUESTIONS: KLINDERAS

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?
   My name is Klinderas, but you can call me Klin.  It might be simpler for you.  It comes from a mix of two things: first, Klin is a namesake of the legendary hero, Link, who I named my wolf after.  The second half, Eras, means “Light” from where I’m from. My name means, in laymen’s terms, “Light of Link” or “Light of the Hero.”  My parents were a little pompous, even by my modest standards!
2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?
   My age is not of concern to anyone here.  The only thing I will tell you is this: I never was purple.  I hope it helps.
3. Are you in love, and with whom?
   Ah, love… that happened once.
4. What is your favorite mount, and why?
   I happen to like my Hawkstrider quite a lot.  His temperament is similar to mine, and he doesn’t eat all the meat.  Plus, his plumage is simply fabulous!
5. Do you prefer a certian type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from? Take out, or dine in?
   I am a sucker for Elvish pasta, particularly any dishes with seafood in them.  My favourite at the moment is Seafood Elfredo, a marvelous dish with a specifically made elvish sauce.

   Unfortunately, I can’t eat like this all the time.  I normally like to eat Clefthoof ribs otherwise… and milk.  Love the stuff, don’t really know why.  Goes straight to my waist…

   I avoid anything that Colemand cooks! At all costs!

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why they are so huge?
   Simplicity itself, really.  Mushrooms existed on Draenor long before the planet blew up.  The energies released from the explosion stimulated the growth of that particular strand of fungus, and up they grew.  The blue in the air is likely caused by spores.

   Happily, it seems a hot bath causes all those spores to disapear from your body.  So take my advice: bathe, everyday, or you might end up choking yourself on mushrooms.

7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?
   Ha! Arthas? I’d shoot him in the face!.. then lay down a trap, use the Lollerskates, and run like hell! What the hell else would I do!?

THE QUESTIONS: COLEMAND

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?
   My name is Colemand.  My last name used to be Briggs, but since my undeath and re-undeath, I’ve decided to drop it.  It came from my father’s somewhat drunken stupor, and my mother’s complete inability to name things decently.  She named my poor dog Zanzibar.  Zanzibar? Honestly?
2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?
   Age… hmm.  Here’s a new concept for you: I honestly don’t give a shit.  Age? Pah! It’s a waste of time, that is.
3. Are you in love, and with whom?
   The only thing I was in love with was my faith.  I had no time for women, for anything… and then faith backstabbed me.  The light turned on me and now… well, I’m this charming pile or rot sitting in front of you.  My only love now is cooking, and possibly Mike, my pet cockroach.
4. What is your favorite mount, and why?
   Favourite… mount? Why do people get attached to these things? They die, we bring ‘em back, we use ‘em, the re-die, we do it all over again.  Honestly, it makes no godamn sense to get too attached to these things.
5. Do you prefer a certian type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from? Take out, or dine in?
   Ha! My favourite dish, eh? That’s simple: Gnome Magepie.  Gnomes are inherently sweet thanks to their small, pint sized bodies harbouring the energy of a small locomotive.  In addition, the arcane magic which flows in most gnomes adds a sweet ‘n’ sour taste to them, making them delicious.  Your bake your Gnome in a pastry crust, then eat like a meat pie, except it tastes like lemon ice-cream! It’s delicious.

   The only gnomes you should watch out for are the Warlocks: The bitterness of a warlock seems to beat any amount of sugar you put on top of them…

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why they are so huge?
   Dunno, but it’s certainly not helping.  I would rather they were smaller so I could taste them…
7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?
   Ask him to apologize, dammit.  I was perfectly dead, and then he waltzes in and steals my rest from me! The prick… I would walk up to him, and make him apologize.
   /harumph

And that is all the time we have, Harii! Thanks for asking us these questions, I’m sure Colemand would love more in the future.

Seriously.  He’s been begging for questions.

Well, now the last part of the tag… tagging others.  Well, I’m sorry to say, but I’m taggin everyone who read this.  Either write it in the comments, or write your own post if you have a blog!

So, for now, I bid everyone adieu.  It’s time to go and sleep for the night.

Once again Harii, thank you for coming, and don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

Blasted night elves… does she have ANY clue what time of night it is right now?! It must be daytime for those crazy, moonlighting hippies!

Hey Look, A Quarter!

Plus, it's Canadian!

Neggles over at The Angry Butterfly wrote a post and showed off her very own Dalaran Fountain Coin!

I thought that this was an awesome idea! I’m going to make one too, I thought.

Here’s my coin!.. and Colemand’s.  He wanted in on it too, so…

Headache Inducing For Patch Producing

It's big. No, really big. Bigger than that...

Well, the PTR is up and running, and hunters are reporting changes everywhere.  Honestly, there are so many changes at the moment it’s making my poor, delicate, and valuable head spin.

But, the thing to remember is that many of these changes are going to change, be removed, or otherwise “not be technically feasible.”

Either way, it’s a good idea to look at them as they stand to better grasp what might happen to them later.  So, lets take a look at them…

Oh man, I have a feeling about this…

You can find the list, by the way, on MMO Champion.

Talents

Beast Mastery

• Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
  Like the stacking of clams, this will be seen as the most broken change in the history of the game! Can you imagine? Beastmasters will be over the top!

  Actually, this is bullshit.  We’re the lowest DPS spec, and we get… well, this.  Woo.  I suggest every Beastmaster out there to brace yourselves, as your Marksmen and Survivalist cousins actually get useful changes.

• Pets get a new tier of talents!
  Well, we finally got some news on the talents.  If you want to see them, I suggest taking a look at Less QQ, More PewPew.  Drotora has some screenshots of the talents.

  Will this give the BM tree a much needed buff? I doubt it.  The problem with BM lies not with the pet anymore.  The hunter needs to deal more damage, as most of the fights in raids right now are very pet unfriendly.  I suspect that this will continue throughout end-game raids, as to do otherwise would severely limit Blizzard’s ability to creat challenging and interesting content.

  So, even more reason to keep a pet alive.  As if we needed any more.

Markmanship

• Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
  Thank goodness! You marksmen people don’t have to sink so many points into here now! Because, now you will be putting them into Piercing shots.  See why below.
• Wild Quiver (Tier 9) now increases your chance to shoot an additional shot when doing damage with your auto shot, dealing 80% Nature damage, by 4/8/12%. (Previously it dealt 50% nature damage and had a 4/7/10% chance.)
  This is good.  The talent was lackluster before, and it’s somewhat less so now.  Actually, a 30% boost in damage isn’t bad, but the chance for it to procure still… kinda sucks.  Sorry.
• Piercing Shots (Tier 7) Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec. (Previously triggered 2/4/6% armor ignore).
  Where before this talent underwhelming, behold.  It is now big, and scary! Or at least, that’s how it looks.  Unfortunately, we still don’t have a clue whether multiple crits in a row refresh the bleed, or add multiple bleeds.  Look at the marksmen blogs as time goes on: they’ll have an answer.

  Either way, this is a great change to Marksmanship, and hopefully a useful one.

Survival

• Hunting Party (Tier 10) is now a 3 point talent, increasing agility by 1/2/3% and your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot critical strikes have a 33/66/100% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.25% of the maximum mana per second. Lasts for 15 sec.
  Well, now we know what the “passive bonus” is.  3% more agility.  Just when you thought 15% was enough, they make with another 3% for 18% total.

  This makes Survivalists happy.  Understandably so, too.  Less points, more bang for your buck.  Everyone will put 2-3 points in this talent, no matter what.

• Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.(Previously worked on all traps and included serpent sting)
  A mouthful, but the basic gist is this: no more trap dancing.  For PvErs, this is a sad day, for your unique playing style will be missed.  For PvPers, this changes nothing.  With the other changes that follow, it will be imperative that Survivalists remain at range.  Continue reading to find out why.
• New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
  If the earlier L ‘n’ L change didn’t make it clear, this sure did.  People have been begging for something like this to come out for some time.

  My issue is this: now that it’s a talent, our Frost Arrow is useless to Survivalists.  Why on earth would you use a trap that doesnt necessarily land(Frost Arrow) when you have one that gets shot directly at the unfortunate victim(Trap Launcher)? Survivalists got a boon here: but at the cost of your lvl 80 ability.

  Heh.  Not really a loss anyways.

• T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%, and gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.
  Trap-dance… is deader than de-ead…

  You shoot your imolation trap, then use explosive shot to keep the imolations trap running.

  Trap dancing dies in 3.0.1.

• Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.
  Well, this is good and bad, obviously.  In PvE, Wyvern sting can now be used to help control a situation gone wrong: just use it on the mob that’s out fo control, and you have yourself 30 seconds take care of everything else.

  PvPers will start crying though, as this wonderful 10 second CC has been nerfed into almost half that amount.  It’s still very useful, but it means that hunters can’t perma CC someone for awhile now.

• Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.
  By the way, this change was labeled under “Beast Mastery.”  Yeah… this was actually a survival talent.

  This talent was useful for PvP only, but it was actually pretty good when it worked.

  With all the things Survival is getting though, I wouldn’t be sad at all.  This talent was useless anywhere other than PvP, and even then, it wasn’t a sure thing.  Less Random Number Generator is a good thing.

• Trap Mastery moved from Tier 9 to Tier 2 and is now a 3 point talent. Increases the duration of Frost and Freezing trap by 10/20/30%, Periodic damage of Immolation and Explosive trap by 10/20/30%, and number of snakes summoned by Snake Trap by 30%. (Previously was just 1 point)
  This is hardly what I would call a “replacement.”  In TBC, this was the exact same thing, except one tier lower and it was only 1 point.

  Now, it’s a tier higher, and it’s another point sink.

  Personally, if they had just left it at one point, it would have made more sense.  Plus, Survival hardly needs more point sinks.  Survivalists already have Master Tactician, Expose Weakness, and at least 3-4 more point sinks in the tree.

  What I think will happen is that this change will go through, and most people will pick this over Hawk Eye.

• *New Talent* Black Arrow (Tier 9) – Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [ 10% of RAP + 785 ] Shadow damage over 15 sec. Costs 6% base mana. 5-35 yard range. Instant Cast. 30 sec cooldown.
  I think I am going to dub this the beginning of “warlock syndrome.”  Another shot added to an already very complicated shot rotation adds even more difficulty and cumbersomness.

  Either that or it doesn’t stack with serpent sting, and this will be a replacement.

  Either way, Survivalists get a shot that hunters in general have been begging for since Vanilla WoW.  Lucky bastards.
  

• Sniper Training (Tier 9) has been changed to increase the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 5/10/15%, and while standing still for 6 sec., you gain Sniper Training increasing the damage done by your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot by 2/4/6% Lasts 15 sec. (Previously increased damage and critical strike chance based on your range to the target)
  This puts the nail in Trap-Dancing’s coffin.  Stand still, at range, and get a damage boost.  Trap-dance, and you will fail.  Simple as that.

Skills

• Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range. It can now be used in melee range.
  This is good! Kill shot is now a ranged execute in every way.  Not too shabby for PvP, useless for PvE.
• Disengage cooldown increased to 30 secs. (Previously was 25 secs)
  This just in: a Blizzard employee has been found dead in the Hudson River.  Police suspect that the culprit might have been the crazy canadian shouting “death to blizzard” on the waterfront.  More at 11.

  In short, this sucks.  Try again, Blizz.
  
  

• *New Skill* Call Stabled Pet – A pet of your choice busts out of its stable and joins you no matter where you are, replacing your current pet. Cannot be used in combat. Instant. 30 min cooldown. Requires Level 80.
  Believe it or not, this was also filled under Beast Mastery, although this change affects everyone.

  Needless to say, this has been a long time coming, and so long as they don’t pull a “technicality” out of their rear, this change should go through.

  So, dance for now.  Be happy! Be merry! But hope like hell that you can learn this ability at a lower level, cause learning it at 80 is way too late.  Like, lets learn this around 30, so we can level 2 pets at once while out and about.

  Oh, and imagining Link “busting out” of his stable reminds me of Homeward Bound.
  

• Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.
  Well, aint this a load of crap.  It’s not a big change in the least, but it still annoys me.  My AoE trap becomes useless if one person who’s immune steps on it.  Harumph.

Glyphs

• Glyph – Aimed Shot  — Reduces the cooldown of your Aimed Shot ability by 2 sec. (Old: Reduces the mana cost of your aimed shot ability by 20%)
  There goes my reason to keep Aimed Shot in any way, shape, or form for PvE.  Good for PvP though.  Why? Well, less cooldown time means more aimed shots, more aimed shots means more damage while kiting those pesky melee classes, and that make Klin a happy elf.
• Glyph of the Monkey  — While Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Dragonhawk are active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec.  Can only occur every 20 sec.  This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects. (Old: Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey  — While Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Dragonhawk are active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec.  This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.)
  Well, I hope everyone had fun with getting 3 or so dodges in a row with this glyph.  It’s still very useful in PvP, but it means that you can’t be Speedy Gonzales anymore.

  More to the point, the 20 CD shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place, as you should have been out of melee range for that long anyway.
  

• Glyph of Wyvern Sting  — Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 6 sec. (Old: Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 15 sec., but decreases the damage it deals by 20%.)
  Woopdedoo.  Not much to say here folks: nerfed.  Wyvern sting has a 60 second cooldown.  Reducing it by 15 seconds, but losing damage, was much better than reducing it by 6 seconds.  This ability was meant to Crowd Control, not deal damage.
  
• Glyph of Snake Trap  — Snakes generated by your Snake Trap take 90% reduced damge from area of effect spells. (Old: Your Snake Trap creates 2 additional snakes)
  PvP just got a new glyph.  This alone should make snake traps much more worthwhile in PvP, as the only reason we didnt use it was because everyone had AoE  and killed them instantly.

  Now our little snakes can live long enough to poison some people.

  Happy? I know I am.
  

• Glyph of the Hawk  — Increases the haste bonus of the Improved Aspect of the Hawk effect by an additional 6%. (Old: Renamed from Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk)
  Wow.  Aspect of the Hawk is getting love this patch.  A new spell effect, and and renamed glyph.  This will surely upset the balance.
  
• Glyph of Chimera Shot *new*  — Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.
  I’m going to leave this one for the marksmen, but 1 second off of a very powerful shot is never a bad thing… but it’s still only one second.  Take it or leave it, I guess.
• Glyph of Explosive Shot *new*  — Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.
  This will be a must have for Survivalists.  ‘Nuff said.
  
• Glyph of Kill Shot *new*  — Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.
  Errrm, okay.  I like it.  It’s good for PvE on a boss fight, as it means you can get off 3 now instead of 2.

  In PvP, your kill shot should kill them, so this shouldn’t be too big.
  

• Glyph of Explosive Trap *new*  — The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.
  Good for AoE fights, just launch an eplosive trap into a group of mobs and watch em burn!
  
• Glyph of Scatter Shot *new*  — Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.
  My experience with scatter shot has been this: use it when your opponent is too close.  Otherwise, don’t bother.

  So, I think it’s safe to say that this glyph is made of suck for now.
  

• Glyph of Raptor Strike *new*  — For 5 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.
  Adding… more activated abilities?

  /twitch

  This is good, but it’s already hard to find room for glyphs in PvP as is.  This will have to be one of them though, as 5 seconds of 20% reduction is not to be messed with, especially when confronted with angry rogues, warriors, paladins, just to name a few.
  
  

Pets

• Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
  Nerf.  No two ways about it: Roar of Sacrifice isn’t nearly as useful.

  Before, you could use it on a healer to give them the boost they needed.  Now, not so much.

  Still good for you, but not for the team.

• Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.
  This is not cool.  The one thing… one thing I really thought was pure fun has been smashed, bashed, drawn, and quartered.  It’s still good for PvP, as a bleed effect is always welcome, but the lack of multiple targetness makes rhinos a lot less desirable in Battlegrounds…

  /sniff

  Goodbye, Rhino bowling.

  Rhino.  We Win.

  CONCLUSION

  My prediction is this:

  Blizzard is going completely crazy.  Survivalists are getting huge, flashy buffs.  They are already the top DPS spec for Hunters.

  Beasmastery, the lowest performance spec for DPS, got some visual changes mostly.  Yay.  Now my tier 1 talent that everyone can get looks spectacular.

  Marksmen got a buff too, although they aren’t nearly as spoiled as Survivalists right now.

  The short and skinny version?

  BRK should stick to Survival, it would save him a lot of gold.

  Marksmen and Beastmasters will fight each other for 2nd best, but MM will likely win that one.

  Rhino Bowling will get a massive funeral.  Trap-Dancing will go unmourned, despite how interesting he was.

  The sales of Tylenol and Advil will go through the roof as people read these notes and an epidemic of headaches ensues.

How You Got Started?

Where it all started...

For once, it’s my turn.

To start things off, I mean.

Let me share something about myself, to all you fortunate people.  I love stories.  I love hearing how things start, I love how they eventually end, and I love all the juicy stuff in the middle.

I love seeing how things develop, and I appreciate the little intricacies.

For example, one of my favourite movies is “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”  It has a lot of little expressions, facial ones that last only a second… but tell a great deal about a character.  The last 15 minutes of the movie in particular has a lot of these moments, and the entire story is worth seeing just for that part of the film.

But, in the end, a story ends how it began.  There’s a reason for everything that happens in a good story.  It may be twisted, cruel, unexpected, or right on track.  Either way, the reasons make sense.

From all this comes the beginning.  The start, the little line you begin a race and your heart begins pumping.  Your sweat starts running down your forehead, and you wipe a bit off with the back of your hand, only to smear it all over your face.  Then, Bang, off you go.

So, for everyone out there… I’d like to know how you began your blogging career.

For me, I had been reading many blogs for many months at this point, and I had become sick of the forums.  The incessant crying, insulting, and whining had driven me mad, and I stopped really reading them and posting in them.

Then, I sat down one day.  I was reading BRK‘s website, and something clicked.  I looked at my roomate and said, “You know what? I’m going to start a blog.  About WoW.”  He said something along the lines of “Cool Beans” and “I’m sure you’ll do well.”  So, I sat down, signed on Blogspot, and made a new website.  I spent a good 5-6 hours getting the design just right, and then I realized… I needed a name.  After some brainstorming(Terrible, terrible ideas… ElfTard, Roflmahcopter, among others…) I just started ramming random words together.  I came up with Slow Wolf, and it stuck with me.

The idea of a really fat wolf trying to catch someone made me laugh, and the Slow Wolf was born.

That’s the beginning of my story.

I am going to tag everyone who reads my blog, with some notables: Pike, Rilgon, Faulsey, BRK, and Drotora.  The 5 of you are a daily part of what I read, and I would love to hear why you all started your careers in blogging especially.

Although some chapters end, some of ours are just beginning.

Resto4Life Is Not Blogging4Life

The tree, the woman... the legend.

I have been reading around today, and there is an uproar in pretty much all the WoW blogger communities.

Phae, A.K.A Resto4Life, is leaving our blogosphere.

I’m not going to lie: I didn’t read Resto4Life for very long before this announcement.

From what I’ve heard and experienced, she is an intelligent, capable, and very informative blogger, who’s blog has been around much longer than most.  Her tree-form looks bad-ass, and she enjoyed doing everything she had done.

She is leaving however, and that’s not going to change.  She and Mr. Phae have had a baby it seems, and coupled with work, time with baby, and time for WoW, Phae had to drop something.  Blogging was it.

The Godfather has a very good quotation for this: “I live my life, I don’t apologize to take care of my family”.

Phae, good luck with everything you endeavor to do, and everything else on top of that!

If there is one thing I am sorry about, it’s not reading your blog as much as I would have liked.  Everytime I did visit, I learned something new about this game we all love so much.  I hope your child learns from you 10 times as much as we have, and we will all miss your leafy self.

Everyone, go to her site! Say goodbye to one of the most well-respected bloggers on the intertubes, and wish her the best of luck.

Moviewatch: Phailhaus 01

By the boatload!

Ever had fail so epic, it just makes you facepalm?

Well, Phailhaus is a videoblog dedicated to a few of these epic fails.

There are 21 episodes of Phailhouse alone, not counting the 2 other regular video shows these guys make on their site, Loading Ready Run.

This is Phailhaus, and it boatloads of laughs… from fail!

DISCLAIMER: Phailhaus may or may not prove offensive to some people, especially those with incredibly awe-inspiring fail ideas.

You have been warned!