Arcturis, the Spirit Bear

Shøttzz, currently Beast Mastery specced, with newly tamed Arcturis the Spirit Bear. Tamed at Amberpine Lodge at 3:36 p.m. 3/29/2011

At about 3:00 p.m. I was trying to get my Shadow Priest to level 75. My priest is only going to level 75 right now because I only want her so I can have a 525 Alchemist and with all of the materials in my bag the final level grind was honestly taking forever. As I began farming for Grizzly Pelts in the river near Amberpine Lodge in Grizzly Hills I had a sickening thought. Wouldn't it be funny if Arcturis has spawned here. I have been looking to tame Arcturis for at least the last 6 months and I spent many a day sitting on the spawn point while queued in the Random Dungeon Finder. And as I turned towards the spawn point, sure enough, he was sitting there. I asked if any of the Hunters in my guild wanted to tame him. When everyone said no I sadly killed him and looted his useless Blue and Adventurer's Satchel. Then I got to thinking. If he had spawned on this server, maybe he had spawned on my hunters server. So I switched over quickly and took the long trek over.

I was on top of Bastion of Twilight, where I had logged out nearly 20 days ago. I had to hearth to Stormwind, unlearn my PvP Marksmen spec and quickly throw talents into Beast Mastery as I ran to the docks. I barely missed the boat and had to sit and wait for the long turn around period. Then, as the boat landed in Borean Tundra I made the long ride back across Northrend to Grizzly Hills.

I had all but given up hope when I had landed. I was positive that either he wouldn't have spawned on my Hunter's server or someone would have gotten him since I took so long. But, as I landed, he was there and there wasn't a soul in sight. With shaky hands I clicked the Tame Beast button and watched as he shrinked and appeared at my side as if he had been there his entire life. Very excited to have a new tanking buddy. One that won't bitch about low dps or accidentally pulling more than he wanted.

In other hunter news, I am going to be writing an article about the new Hunter changes in 4.1.0 and my thoughts on pushing back raids until the next 4.2.0. As well, I have separated general/personal posts that don't particularly pertain to my Druid/Hunter columns. The new spot for them will be in my new blog /1 General Chat that will be up soon with my first post that will explain a bit as to why I haven't been writing anything lately.

Also, I will be opening up a new blog entitled Healer's Shadow. This will follow Shadow Priests since my next 85 will likely be one. First post will center around my leveling experiences and will meld into PuGing Raid experiences on Illidan.

Lastly, Shøttzz and Pänzër, my last two 85's on Garona will be moving to Illidan and turning Horde as soon as I have the funds to cough up the $100 to Sever/Faction Transfer the two characters. I just don't like Garona anymore. I gave it a second chance with my Hunter and they only have one 25 man guild that is doing any sort of progression and they are great people but they are looking for more experienced and better dps than I can pull right now. So I am just going to bring my last two 85's to Illidan and just PuG when I want to run on one and leave them alone when I want to play something else.

Thanks for reading!

Lok'tar Ogar

346 iLevel and Raid Ready!!!

12:30 am on February 13th, 2011, a little under 5 days after Shottzz hit level 85 she now has a 346 item level rating and is technically raid ready. Some of my gear doesn't have all their gems or enchants yet but I'm workin' on them and I still need to get the Hyjal Exalted Boots. But it took me 5 days to get raid ready! /flex

I am amazing with Paint breh. Just sayin'.

Dungeon Etiquette: Disrespectful Players

Etiquette in dungeons is something that I try to uphold as much as possible. I am by far not 100% nice 100% of the time but I try my best. I join in in conversations when I have something important to say. I help struggling healers and tanks by explaining fights a little bit better. And I help other DPS if I know their class and suggest gearing stats or rotation help if they ask for it.

Tonight, I encountered something that I have never encountered before.

Backstory: I finally reach my item level 329 and was able to Queque for my very first Heroic on my hunter. I waited around beside Amberpine Lodge awaiting the dismal spawn rate of Arcturias the Spirit Bear to reset for about twenty minutes for my DPS que to pop. And it did. I was excited and was transported off into the Stonecore. I groaned at the possibility of my first CC Dungeon to be hellish Stonecore and was pleasentaly surprised to find that all of the trash up to Corborus was already killed and a few of the players were doing a corpse run. So I put two and two together and assumed they had wiped on Corborus and a dps was either removed or dropped group.

So we killed Coborus in one shot and the tank and healer dropped the group. A few seconds later a DPS spontaneously DCed. So we kicked him and the Paladin and I decided to Que. We both left the dungeon so I could continue to stalk the spirit beast and he was apparently questing out in Winterspring somewhere. After about 3 minutes we received 3 new group members. I attempted to return the dungeon and it gave me an error message. You are already Locked to Stonecore (5 Man (Heroic)). Very confused I attempted to figure what was wrong.

The entire time I was attempting to figure things out I had a really obnoxious asking me "Where the fuck I was? Why was I making them wait?" and complaining that I was being selfish by holding the group up. I attempted to explain that I was not able to enter the dungeon. The Paladin that was with me earlier was having the same problem as I was. Eventually the tank and myself got into an arugement and I said "You know what, you just got here, we have been trying to do this dungeon for about 20 minutes with people who bailed after the first boss." And he retorted along the lines of "You haven't been in our group. You're making us all wait here and we're one boss from finishing."

I blinked. Myself and the Paladin had gotten grouped with a different dungeon group, in the same dungeon as us, but on different boss progression so we were on separate locks. As I was attempting to explain the situation the mage retorted to spewing profanities and I was removed from the group.

So I guess, I'm trying to say that you when you decide to PuG and not run strictly with a set group of people you need to be at least midly respectful to them. We were in a situation where we were unable to enter the dungeon and were trying our hardest to get back and having someone calling us "Selfish Jew Pigs" and "Faggots" was not especially helpful. There ARE people at the end of every avatar that you see and MOST of them have feelings and are not out there trying to make your game play as extremely difficult as they possibly can.

In conclusion, I opened a ticket for the situation. I kept the players attitude out of the ticket and just let Blizzard know that something went wrong with their Dungeon Finder Tool. I have been using it for over a year and have never heard of anything like what I experienced and with the issues Patch 4.0.6 brought to Race Changed Worgens and Goblins I wanted to let them know about this minor bug. The GM was very nice and assured me that the issue would be forewarded and had a good laugh when I jokingly asked her to reset the Spirit Beasts spawn timer so I could go do something else when they asked me "If there was anything else they could do for me today".

Reactions to 4.0.6: It's Not As Bad As It Seems

Taken post Patch 4.0.6. Survival Hunter, February 10th, 2011. Kill shot of Erudax in Grim Batol. He dropped a ring that brought me to item level 329 and Heroics! But look at the dps and my competition. Yep!

As a Survival Hunter the Patch 4.0.6 Notes kind of hit close to the heart. The initial patch notes were fine, the only thing going away were the 5% decrease in our passive Into the Wilderness. But then the updates came in and we got nerfed intially by 25% to all of our signature shots (Black Arrow and Explosive Shot) and our Serpent Spread was now only hitting 4 targets. And I'll be honest with you all, since we're all friends here, I cried. But then they changed their minds and changed it to 15% and removed the Serpent Spread nerf. And a lot of Survival Hunters were crying that we were going to be at the bottom of the meters again and QQ, QQ, QQ, QQ, Q...

And then February 8th came around and the servers were up early and I anxieously logged in. And I found that my DPS had not gone down all that much. I am still topping meters in my normal modes for most of the time. Unless it is a switch to adds boss where I dip really really low sometimes I am pretty much doing as well as I was. My DPS is a little lower, less than 500 less most of the time, so personally I am not fairing any worse then before the Patch. So I guess it comes down to skill. Retribution paladins were getting buffed and I see a lot of them still only pulling 3k  single target damage on bosses. I have not yet had the ability to put myself up against other Hunters but I am still doing really good.

So really, don't worry about Nerfs so much. If you know how to gear your class and understand your rotation and get your shots off correctly you will be fine no matter how much nerfing they do to you resonably. It's about loving and playing your class well. I hate to say it, but if you're doing bad after being nerfed as a Survival Hunter than it comes down to looking at your gear or rotation and well...

L2P? :(

Introduction to Right Click AFK

Photo taken on February 8th, 2011, trash pull inside of the Vortex Pinnacle when I dinged level 85.

Hello everyone! And welcome to my awesome Hunter blog of awesomeness. I figured I would use this first post to just talk about some random things about my character.

A little information about myself. My old main character is a Restoration Druid on US-Illidan and I just got super burned out just constantly feeling worthless and having Wrath mentality still blaming healers for absolutely everything when it isn't their fault and Restoration Druids just aren't in a good place right now as far as healers are concerned anyway. So I decided to dust my bow off and level my old Hunter to become my second 85 character of the expansion. Hunter was my very first character in the game nearly two years ago and it's nice to bring it back as my main character again.

As of February 9th, 2011 my characters item level is around 232 right now and I am attempting to get her geared enough to start Heroics. She is currently Survival Main Specced and has a Beast Mastery Off-Spec for questing and soloing content, I don't personally like Marksmenship I don't feel like I have enough buttons to press and I just love Survival.

I am a well-rounded Hunter. I do both raiding and PvP. Hunter is the only class that I actually enjoy PvPing with especially in WSG. Roof + Trap Launcher + Ice Trap + Pet Placement + Survival DoTs = Dead Everything. And I raid competatively as well. I haven't raided on my Hunter yet but my Druid is currently 9/12 in current content and I hope to push past that with my Hunter and I have enjoyed doing dungeons so far. I love CCing and Misdirecting stuff to the tank. I feel like such a Trash Hero when I get to Launch a Freezing Trap and a Wyvern Sting and two mobs aren't killing the tank. And oh my gosh another mob is pulled and is running at the healer! Disengage + Misdirect the tank + Multi-Shot. Bamb! Healer saved and you are a hero! I love epic Disengages, it makes me happy.

Current Rotation: Black Arrow => Serpent Sting => Explosive Shot => Cobra Shot x3 => Explosive Shot

Current Pet: My current DPS pet is a black fox from Redridge Mountains. They aren't the best DPS pets but I like the new model and I am waiting to find a new Cataclysm Wolf/Cat to replace it with. For my BM set I have a boar. My boar is an Rotting Agamar from Razorfen Downs and he's black with silver and blue plated armor and looks amazing. If I am ever able to tame Altarius the Spirit Bear he will be my permanent tanking buddy but he is currently very elusive.

Professions: My professions are Engineering and Alchemy. Engineering for my PvP needs and the awesome tinkers and Alchemy for the PvE benefits. Neither are maxxed as of yet because I've been trying to get myself to max level and getting some gold by doing all of the quests in all of the new zones. I haven't done any quests on Alliance since my toon was Horde until around 77 so all of the Alliance quests across the world are open to me to do.

I am currently working on quite a few things with my hunter. I am working on getting her a 346+ item level so I can begin raiding as soon as possible. I am working on getting my two professions maxxed in time for raiding. I am working on getting a full PvP set so I can find an Arena partner and get some titles. I am working on Loremaster because I am kind of a Lore Nerd and I RP from time to time on my hunter and want to actually do the quests all over the world. I have only finished Mount Hyjal in the last few days and about 15 quests away from getting the Vashj'ir achievement. And I am working on going back and collecting Tiers 1-11. I want to go solo the old dungeons and collect the older Tier Hunter gear. Oh, and I want to kill Sinestra. Just sayin'.