Changes

The Sitch

Tracking time is a lot harder than it looks.

So the idea of posting and redoing all of my awesome guides in a prompt and quick fashion? Totally not happening.

My workload, despite my fabulous ability to do anything, is actually  far too large to leave hanging.  I will NOT be updating as frequently as I would have liked, but that’s just what happens when you’re being fabulous everywhere.

So please don’t expect daily posts, or even 3 times a week.  Maybe 1-2 posts, tops.  And that will do, because otherwise I would die.

So stay tuned, but be prepared for some wait times.

My Final Countdown

This post might hurt.

Me more than you, I mean.  By writing this post, I am going to be putting a lot of memories, good and bad, in the past.
CancellationYes, this means I am quitting WoW.  I am putting the World of Azeroth, the lore, the game, behind me.

Apparently, this is a big deal.
Crying Peon

After I explained to the Peon why I was leaving, his situation seemed to get worse.
Weeping Peon

But it pains me to say it.  As you may or may not know, I do love this game.  Or loved.  I mean, I loved every part of it! PvP, PvE, exploring, the lore, the achievements, the look, the feel… every inch of this game was something I’ve been waiting for as a kid.  I’ve always wanted to be the hero, to defeat my enemies, and to stand proud and tall when people give me praise.

Today, I’m typing this to you with shoulders slumped and head bowed, for I have lost my feel.  The game no longer inspires the same feeling it once did.  Not from burnout, no.  I never suffer burnout; but I do feel like I’ve been playing this game for so long, and it’s been affecting me adversely.

15 secondsFor starters, my job hunt did not go well this year.  I believe that if I had spent less time working for WoW than I had, I would be happily sitting on a pile of money right now.
10 seconds
If I was sitting happily on a pile of money, then I wouldn’t have the arduous choice of picking another year of school and therefore being successful, or work for a year; my course is clear though, and I know what I’m picking because I have something else I don’t want to leave behind.  Not again, not for a long time, not ever.  Some people measure success by money, some by fame.

5 seconds
Mrs. Klin is the most precious thing to me in my life.  I had to go to school for a year, seeing her over Skype and talking to ehr every day of every week of every month.  I came home to visit once a month without fail… and yet it wasn’t enough.  It never was.  Once I got home, Mrs. Klin and I have spent so much time together that I never want to let her go again, ever.

Mrs. Klin, I love you, and I want to stay close to you forever.  To do that, I’m going to have to work hard for you, but I’m prepared to do anything it takes to stay by you for as long as I live.

Some people measure success by money, some by fame.  I want to measure my success by you.
4 seconds
It’s weird, to know that your time with something you love is limited, to wonder if you’ll ever go back and see the things you’ve accomplished.

Klinderas is my finest achievement in a game.  Smart, efficient, and able to beat the odds when it really counts.  Klinderas is likely a name I will never forget, and a character I will continue to use throughout my life as an example of a good person, even if he was a little full of himself.

When I made Klinderas, I was modeling him after me.  Tall, not too bad looking, and a little frail but good with a bow.  After I made him, I began to realize he was becoming a different character than when he started: noble, active, just.  A man who wouldn’t put up with bullshit if he saw it, who would help out those in need, who would hold the right people accountable for their actions and persecute them for what they did wrong.

I’d like to think I grew up with my character, and my avatar on the fields of Azeroth.  I’d like to think I’m a little more Klin than I used to be.
3 seconds
Before I go, there’s a few people I want to thank for my time here in Azeroth.

To Eldadres: my man, you and I have been playing together for long enough that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to play without a friend.  Where my friends were busy raiding BT or quitting, you were playing right alongside me.  We’ve earned our glory in arenas, mopped the field with our enemies in BG’s, and made the Bosses in raids and heroics piss their pants when they see us coming.  We were a %$#&ing awesome team, dude.
2 Seconds
To Dan “BRK” Howell: for inspiring me to become the hunter I became, and then reminding us what’s really important… hopefully before it’s too late.  I think I’ve managed to do that okay, for once.
0
To all the friends I made in game: It was a pleasure playing with all of you, raid leading you, or otherwise just dickin’ around with you.  I hope my old guild leaders have successful new guilds, that Gradii enjoys his new writing career and tanks his way to Arthas, that Hannah gets some shoulders to match her new chest piece, that Connected gets his Protodrake, and that the many, many people I’ve met lead happy lives.

Lastly, I’d like to thank the people I’ve met through this blog.  Everyone I’ve read, who’s read what I had to write, and everything else that involves this blog… none of it would have happened without you guys.

Yes Link, we're staying here boy.  We're retired, see? Means "no more quests".

Yes Link, we're staying here boy. We're retired, see? Means "no more quests".

Link and Radix together again at last.

Link and Radix together again at last.

/bye

/bye

Now Mikey, there aren't any fresh corpses where I'm going.  You sure youw ant to come?

Now Mikey, there aren't any fresh corpses where I'm going. You sure you want to come?

Mikey stays.

Mikey stays.

Now, let's see what's over that horizon.

Now, let's see what's over that horizon.

Klinderas: You know, Colemand? We had a good run.  We got pretty damn far, and did a whole damn lot here in Azeroth.
Colemand: Indeed.
Klinderas: I’m going to miss this place.
Colemand: Agreed.  So where are we going next?
Klinderas: … No idea.  I have an option though: let’s walk that way until we find someplace nice to stay.  An ocean, some sand, maybe some game for me to hunt once in awhile.
Colemand: Can there be gnomes? I’m going to miss them… they make funny popping noises when they die.
Klinderas: We’ll see, Cole.  We’ll see.
Colemand: Will we ever come back?
Klinderas: Maybe; but it’s going to be a long time from now if we do, so don’t pack lightly.  We’re going to be gone awhile.

QUICK NOTE: I’m not done blogging, just done blogging about WoW and playing WoW.  If you want to keep reading what i have to say about stuff in general, you can find me at Phil, Meet World.

Drama Is A Combustible

It's more impressive in person.

It's more impressive in person.

Well, after a long time coming, my guild has exploded.

The ground zero that once was God is AFK split into 3 parties: Those who stuck with Friedlichxx, those who followed Castrodemic, and those like me who have gone freelance and are back on the guild market.

To my knowledge, there’s only me and Eldadres who are going freelance, but who knows.  Either way, with how good I am, I should get paid to PuG, be a mercenary.  See the world or something.

I don’t completely understand why it happened, but here’s the gist of it: power struggle.  Castro ran God is AFK by his lonesome, and then Friedlichxx was made co-GM.  By the end of it, Friedlichxx was getting on Castro’s nerves and vice versa.  This lead to an explosion after our (failed) attempt at Malygos 10 as a guild, for which Castro was not present (even though he did sign up).  

Many heated and unnecessary words later, Castro broke off and brought with him a number of friends to start anew with the same idea of a guild, but more casual still and with a smaller group of people.  Friedlichxx is currently planning to replace them with some of her friends from IRL, effectively establishing her control of the guild and re-solidifying the guild.

Although both players are great players, I could not follow either.  Even if the outcome was inevitable, the way that the split was handled by my GMs was terrible.  Angry, bitter, annoyed, and altogether frustrated and vindictive.  Besides… I had been lead by both largely in one way or another, and I have this to say.

You’re great people most times, you two, and fun to play with, but you aren’t my GM.

Friedlichxx, you’re a great player, but an easily frustrated and angered GM.  I have been witness to multiple times where you’ve annoyed or angered your raiders, who then tell you so only to be the brunt of your wrath and (from time to time) a swift GKick.  Castro, you might be a decent GM but you’re idea of a guild is a little too stagnant.  I need something more than an occasional Naxx run, although I wish you the best of luck with your new guild.  You also have a tendency to get annoyed very easily, and don’t really have the drive to push through a rough patch, as evidenced by this guild bomb.

Lastly, both of you handled this about as poorly as you could have, to which you have both freely admitted.

The really sad part is that this happened immediately after I stepped down as raid leader because of an unpredictable schedule.  Although I had fun leading God is AFK while I did, I’m happy to be looking at new horizons.  Sunny beaches, big waves, and copious amount of ice cold milk.

This does leave me with a problem: when will I raid? I want to raid at least once a week, and now I have no guild to do it with, and there’s no way in hell I’m pugging it.

Well, if you can’t find a guild…

Make it yourself, I say!

/flourish

I’m Expanding!

A brand new place.

This is pretty big news, but our resident death knight has decided to write!

Colemand has been graciously allowed to write for Nance, the author of Alterac Volley.  Many of you know Nance’s work on the WoW Headlines and PuG Checker sites, so it’s a huge surprise to be allowed to write on his main blogging site part time.

Colemand’s shenanigans will be kept at this site.  What Colemand will be writing about includes death knights, death knights, and more death knights.  PvP, PvE, Tips and tricks… they will be all over there.  As this continues, I’ll be writing Hunter equivalent posts here if I’m allowed.

In the mean time, congratulate our chef extraordinaire on his first bold step into informative blogging!

Follow The Leader

... and my name isn't Mittens dammit!

... and my name isn't Mittens dammit!

You know that stupid game where you have to do everything the one guy does/says, without ending until he/she says to stop?

You know that period of history where people were called slaves?

You know that time when someone told you to do your chores?

You know tha-

*smack*

In any case, I have an announcement to make.  I have now officially led a raid, my first time ever.  I stood at the beginning of a Naxxramas run and didn’t stop ’til the server blew us up after 3 wings of victory.  I barked orders, snapped commands, cracked whips, made a sundae,  had a milkshake, and then did more ordering.

I also knit a sweater.

A week ago, I asked my raid leaders whether or not they would let me lead a raid a week later(now), and they agreed to let me give it a shot(then).  Which was surprising, seeing as I had just been promoted to class leader a week before that(way back then).  I had hardly been able to test my metal at all(now, then, and more then)!

Nevertheless, I was given the chance and I thought 1 of 2 things were going to happen: either I would succeed and go on to lead raids for a long time until I got fed up and just nuked the instances every week(with bombs), or I’d more likely be a failure and have to hide in Blackrock Mountain until the heat blew over(which, given the environment of my hermitage, it wouldn’t).

We(the guild), to my great surprise, did really well! I’m not surprised because our guild can do really well, I know it, but I’m surprised because… they let me lead them and they didn’t mind.  In fact, I think that everyone quite enjoyed that raid until Smolderthorn blew up in an explosion of lag which persists a little today.

For anyone from God is AFK who reads this blog, thanks a lot for being so nice to me my first time.  Really, I was expecting more hell and a lot less help.

Although I’ve heard rumors of bets being placed.  *cough*

After the lag, I decided to hop on over to the Alliance side of things to help deteriorate your infrastructure.

I ended up doing this instead.

Seems Eldadres can sleep on candles.  Figures.

Seems Eldadres can sleep on candles. Figures.

Help help! I'm bein' oppressed!

Help help! I'm bein' oppressed!

I'm trapped in a walnut! How'd I get in this nut?!

I'm trapped in a walnut! How'd I get in this nut?!

Jumping on the bed has never been this fun.  Except ACTUALLY jumping on it.

Jumping on the bed has never been this fun. Except ACTUALLY jumping on it.

It’s not raiding, but messing around with good friends for no reason other than to mess around is a great deal of fun.  Great stress relief too!

The New Tier 9

BAM, like that.

The old tier 9 armor is done with.

Finite.  Done with.  Done quick.

What were they? If I remember correctly…

I always do, by the way.

OLD TIER 9 BONUSES

C000445_L

Old Tier 9

2 piece tier 9 reduced your pet’s focus cost for his abilities by 50%.

Pointless, yes? Of course it is.  Since when has your pet ever needed more focus? If you’re talented properly, this should never have been a problem.

4 piece tier 9 increased the critical strike chance of steady shot by 5%.
Whoop de doo.  This is a 2 piece bonus, not a 4 piece.  Only Beastmasters really benefited from this in a big way, since Steady Shot takes up a lot of our DPS; but even then it sucks!

Happily, this aforementioned crap has been replaced.


NEW TIER 9 BONUSES

106_mobile_suit_gundam_seed_186514

New Tier 9. See the difference?

2 piece: The damage from your serpent sting can now be critical strikes.
For marksmen, this is big.  Their stings are the most powerful out of all the hunters thanks to improved stings, making this a buff to MM damage mostly; however, everyone benefits from this.  It doesn’t increase the base damage of the sting(which makes Chimera shot sad) but it’s still going to be a visible DPS upgrade.

To be honest, this should be baseline.  Lock DoTs can crit, so should ours!

4 piece: Each time you hit with a ranged attack, your pet gains 600(HOLY SHIT) attack power for 15 seconds.
Now, this is a buff.  I don’t know what the proc chance is, but I’m betting it’s high enough.  For beastmasters, this 4 piece is going to be a strong one I predict.  600 attack power is 50 more attack power than blessing of might! Blessing of might increases Dave’s(my devilsaur) DPS by something like 200-300 dps.  Another 200-300 DPS? YES PLEASE.

It’s also and incentive for all hunters to keep their pets alive, should the marksmen and the Survivalists want the set bonus.

This is good news; in fact, I’m really happy that Blizzard realized that the set bonus was balls.  Now if they could notice a few more things(Cower bug, more stats for our pets, ammo costs, etc), I’d be set.

Speaking of things, I’m going to look at those Engineering changes later.  Stay tuned!

Skoll Lightning!

Skoll

Drawn by MissMonster of Deviant art! Click for link.

I have an announcement to make.

I’m going to be hunting more than one spirit beast it seems.

There is a new spirit beast on the PTR! This is the 3rd spirit beast, which continues the tradition of 1 new spirit beast per big patch, and this is no exception.

Actually, there is one very big exception to this particular spirit beast: he’s a wolf.
skollwowI nearly died of shock when I saw this.  Apparently, he has electricity crawling all over him and his light blue fur glows with the crackle of power.  The picture does no justice to all these cool effects, so I order all of you to go drool over this video right now! Skoll in Video

He’s named after a character from Norse mythology: Skoll, the moonchaser.  Skoll chased the moon across the sky in an effort to catch up with her and eat her.  His counterpart, Hati, chased the sun for the same purpose.  On the day of Ragnarok, the end of times, Skoll and Hati would succeed in their ravenous quest and feast on the sun and the moon.

Skoll, the spirit beast, matches his namesake in almost every way.  His lightning fur matches the electricity that was wielded by Thor and other gods, so is a powerful symbol of his Norse heritage.  His fur is blue, the colour of the night he chases under.  His attack is a Moonstrike graphic, the last tie to his Norse namesake.

I, for one, am going to be camping this guy the instant the patch releases and I won’t stop until he is mine.

Loque will have to wait if I don’t have him by then, as I have bigger wolves to catch!

Special thanks to Tigerfeet for pointing out to whom the artwork belongs to(MissMonster’s portrait of Skoll is amazing, is it not? She drew a version for Hati as well!), to Mania for the screenshot of Skoll, and to zub for finding the video of Skoll in-game!

I’ve Been Tricked!

Boo?

Boo?

While making some chaos and wreaking havoc, I have come across something very important; for battlegrounds, you want a ferocity pet.

I learned this the hard way when another BM hunter sent a Spirit Beast into my face and I was unable to out-damage the mighty beast.  Fafnir is great for Arenas, but when damage is the name of the game a Cunning pet just cant do it as well as a Ferocity pet.

So, it was time to go hunting again.  I bid Radix goodbye as I felt it was time to try something new and learn more about pets.

Specifically, I got on the train to Wasp ville, and got one of the Sholozar wasps.  This is the picture on Petopia.

Bad.  Ass.  Twice my size.  Before Bestial Wrath.

Bad. Ass. Twice my size. Before Bestial Wrath.

Awesome no?

Here’s what I got.

Viewed from Hunter Zoomed Distance(HZD)

Viewed from Hunter Zoomed Distance(HZD)

This is, unfortunately, half the size I had expected, and this made me sad.  I almost dismissed the beast when… I discovered something amazing.

His wings sound like a cello.

That's more the size I was thinking of.

That's more the size I was thinking of.

But why nerf the size? How big of a problem is having a big pet? I suppose that having them be Boss sized is bad, but the LSD wasp of doom was huge… and we can no longer tame himher.  I see a trend…

Let’s just hope these purple guys don’t get the nerf bat.

He has a happy face on his forehead... Creepy.

He has a happy face on his forehead... Creepy.

Either way, the Drones in Sholozar Basin have been nerfed and I didn’t know until I caught one! They’re sleeker though…

Until further notice, Cello the Wasp is now a part of my pack! I’ll be using him in Battlegrounds and I will be attempting to see how he does in arenas as a ferocity pet.

I beg the question though: What do you think about large pets? Do you think they should all be roughly the same size? And what does nerfing them accomplish?

We’re Recruiting!

Watchoo want?

Watchoo want?

More blogroll updates!

I’ve been promising to do this one for some time, and yet every time I make to finally go through with it I forget.  Proof of a shoddy memory.

In any case, I’d like to present to you Kordwar, from WTF, Are You Survival?.

I’ve been reading from his blog for some time, and this Orc has got a great deal of PvP knowledge that has helped me to understand the Arena scene, what to do, and how to do it to an extent.  That said, the best piece of advice is to use your own brain and do what works for you.

Big, mean, and green, Kordwar is one of the only PvP hunter blogs I’ve found.  Actually, he’s the only one I’ve found.  Maybe I should give it a shot?

Welcome to the pack, Kordwar!.. wait, who are you bringing with you?

Samyon?

Huh? Who?

Huh? Who?

Why is he so important?

He writes a blog chronicling his journeys as a Human Rogue you say? Interesting.  So why is he here?

Oh.

He drew the pictures.  That is a very good reason.  Plus, he writes really well and has brought up some interesting stuff so far!

Welcome to the Pack, Samyon! Here’s to the Record of Samyon!

The Start Of Something New

... blue?

... blue? Why blue? SO uncouth...

Well, It seems blogging is a disease.

And I spread it.  Which means I’m not the cure.

Which means I totally ruined that line.

A good friend of mine, ex-guild leader(not his fault), and squeakie priesty in training Eldadres has decided it was time to make a blog.

Like myself he also has a death knight in his employ, named Elnoriah.  That took me awhile to learn how to pronounce.  It’s like the spanish word El, with Moriah on the end if Moriah had an N to begin with.

And you thought my name could be confusing.  Although his does certainly roll off your tongue when you get it right.

So here’s to a new beginning! He’s burning Plagued Candles over there, so be careful about the smell.  Don’t break anything.  Be nice.

And find out where he keeps his brownies.

Welcome to the pack Eldadres, and good luck with Plagued Candles, the newest priest/DK blog on the interwebs!