Loque'Nahak Again!

Go go heart attack!

Turby is currently on an epic journey with the lofty goal of taming and eventually travelling with every single spirit beast on Azeroth. (The only one missing now is Karoma of Twighlight Highlands)

Just earlier this week Turby came home from a late night of wine and cheese and he decided to log on and wait at one of Loque'nahak's known spawn points while he went to go take a shower. When he returned, his NPCscan had not gone off so he flew his usual circle-route around Sholazar counterclockwise from where he had been waiting. Just as he flew by the very next known spawn point his Macro picks up Loque'nahak, alone just west of the Skyreach Pillar. He swooped down off his mount and tamed this very beautiful snow leopard. (Great, now I have to make a page for this over at growlandcower)

Yes, the Loque you see here is not the one in discussion. As you can see, this spawn point is the one directly East of the Skyreach Pillar. This picture was taken last night as Turby was flying around the Basin looking for King Krush, the green Devilsaur. Loque'nahak had spawned again! Turby quickly checked the /who hunter and /who 72-85 and saw that he was the only Horde hunter online in Sholazar. Then he thought to himself: "Wait, do I want to kill Loque for the Frostbitten achievement? Or should I leave it alone? No one else would tame it, and I don't want to see it dead.....", so he tamed it.

What would be a logical explanation for one hunter to have tamed two of the same unique pet? It's kind of like saying I killed Lord Raid Boss and he shows up again in a week and you kill it again? Oh wait...that already does happen. Ok bad example.

What if Harkoa goes and finds a *different* mate everytime someone kills or tames Loque? But how would she know? Is she psychic? Do the tickbirds email her or bbm her? Does she even use a Blackberry? Cause I think Harkoa is more of an Android user. Err, and all her mates must be named Loque'nahak due to ritual purposes? Why is he all the way in Sholazar? Hunting? Wouldn't grizzly hills be closer? Are the animals in Sholazar more nutritious or plumper and more delicious? How did he get to Sholazar from Zul'drak? Did he fly? Did he travel south through grizzly hills then bore west through Dragonblight to Borean Tundra and made his way through the only entrance that could be traversed by foot?

I'll get to the bottom of this!

Turby the Hunter

Dailies: Slow Down and Sip the Flowers

I hate daily quests. First we have Tol Barad. Ugh there are SO many cool items from their Quartermaster. Trinkets, TWO mounts, Seagull Pet. Ugh. I have been refusing to do any of these tedious quests other than the Skin 8 Crocodiles one. I am a skinner, and with the two or three stacks of leather I find, I send them off to Turny so he can make them all into ONE piece of Heavy Leather.

How much leather do leatherworkers need to max out their profession like 5,000?

Do I need all these cool items? No.

Therazane. I refuse to do their dailies as well. Pebbles. Enchants. No I refuse.

But, rep! Yeah reputation, I am wearing the Guardians of Hyjal tabard and the only place for me to gain rep with them is through dungeoning. The one dungeon as I only have time to queue for one dungeon, given it is successful. 30 min queue + 45 min run. Can only do that once.

Why do I run dungeons? Cause I get to trap things. And use a spec I don't really like to help kill things faster. I could suck it up and stick with my old trusty Beast Mastery. I've caught a plethora of cool and crazy pets that I can't even use because the spec is just so much behind Survival. Given the Rage-groups nowadays it seems best to sticking with killing faster over aesthetics and roleplay, that's not even part of WoW anyways. There are role-play servers for taht aren't there?

My new blog will be up soon once I find my focus and intent for it. I know there won't be talk of gear nor will there be much useful hunter tips on it. Not that Kluptomania was of any use to any Warlocks with Truny babbling away randomly. It takes a certain know-how to read through all her underlying text to get to the main point, which is usually random rambling.

I am thinking of taking a more casual explorative approach to this new blog. To bring back the feel of starting from scratch. 0 gold. ilvl 0. 4 attack power. You are in southern durotar, with no sense of how big the world is. You've never seen Org, nor have you even HEARD of a place called Outlands. You're constantly lost and you have no care in the world to maximize your stats, if you are even lucky enough to know what benefits your class.

The thing with WoW now it seems, is that from level 1-84 you can just muck about casually face-rolling through everything, then once you hit 85 BAM. Hello Mr. Wall.

You'll realize a few things:

1. You must find a guild or have a great assortment of friends to continue your enjoyment. For example: Tol Barad dailies. If I were to queue up for a heroic alone, then waltz into Tol Barad to (attempt to) do the daily quests, it's quite difficult to group with random single people who want to finish quests quicker. Say Foreman Walson or whatever the hell he's called. At any given time there are about six to seven thousand people waiting for him to spawn, and everyone is spamming their aoes to get the first tag. Ugh. If I were to group up with someone just for this quest, my heroic queue would disappear. Ideally you would queue up with a friend or guildie to alleviate this problem. Good thing this has been changed where anyone who even touches these mobs ankles get credit for the kill.

2. You can't play as you have played from 1-84. I'm having a blast on my Prot Pally right now, she's rockin Outlands straight out the door! If she were to do a heroic our group would probably wipe. Slow down and sip the flowers. Ugh I gotta get into my slow and methodical strategic mode. Then again, our guild heroic runs are quite entertaining especially when there are three hunters. We will trap wordlessly, and things get downed. It all depends. But see our tank can't just run into a group of mobs recklessly, and yes...we had to trap. When was the last time you actually felt the urge to trap from levels 1-84. Like REALLY needed to?

3. Blizzard is indirectly saying "If you don't need this gear, you don't need it so don't complain". If you have no intent on raiding/dungeoning then there is absolutely no way to gain rep with some of the new factions. This would include hmmm Ramikens, Earthen Ring, Guardians of Hyjal. Am I missing any? Too tired to count. You could run normal dungeons and gain some slow rep but then again you don't really need that gear. And in all honestly you really don't.

Hunters can hunt for pets in their downtime. Northrend is practically desolate and there are a lot of rare cats (apparently) available to be tamed if you're not beast mastery. Patch 4.0.6 brought about many many cool pets as well, though right now I am trying to hunt down all the various colors of Madexx!

Archaeology. Oh god no. I can see this as a great off-thing to do while levelling. But trying to level this from scratch on a high level toon is tedious. At least you can fly around. This profession should only be done in short bursts. What I tend to do is see if a dig-site is close to where I am, and if there is I will do that ONE and that is that.

Once again I'm not even sure what I was originally talking about. Oh right, let's give hunters a generic interrupt. Come on, we are the ones calm and steady in the back. If there is anything to interrupt just let us do it. "Warlocks need one too!", says Truny.

I found that when I am on my Death Knight in an Interrupting Scenario I sometimes get so worked up at my "spell priority rotation crap" that for 80% of the fight I'm really staring at my action bar. How fun is that? If I know there is something to interrupt I literally have to stop what I'm doing, hover my fingers over the buttons that I can spam, such as frost strike of obliterate but also hover my mouse over my interrupt. It's not all about the numbers and go go go go go, but wow makes it so easy to get into that mentality.

And what's with Ret Paladins nowadays? They used to be POW POW BAM 1482k DPS and everyone within a 45 yard radius is dead due to their wrath. Now they seem to be just...I don't know how to describe it but....less. Though I did see a ret pally top the charts in Argaloth? Maybe I haven't ran into any crazy-sauce ones or the Argaloth fight is just rather simple with no interrupt mechanics.

Ok I'm going to take up an experiement, and that is to suck it up and run a full heroic as BM. If I don't get kicked from group I shall report back just like Truny did. I believe she had reported on most if not all of the heroics already so you might as well take pleasure in reading them from a Beast Master's perspective (LMAO!)

This post seems to be quite ramblish as well if I say so myself!

Oh remember when individual pets had individual abilities? Like Monstrous Bite, when it was cool? Now they are all standardized!

They all come with:

Generic Bite/Claw/Maul/Mangle/Whatever

Generic Debuff/Buff

Sometimes Another Skill

Hey! Let's use the pet model as the perfect basis to homogenize all the classes!

/gasp

The "new" Beast Mastery is kinda interesting right?

How was the old one played again?

Send in pet. Serpent sting, stand there and steady shot, and hit arcane shot. Use Kill Command and Bestial Wrath. Done. Kill shot when it pleases you.

Now it is, Serpent sting, stand there and cobra shot, kill command, watch focus make sure you have enough focus for an arcane shot given that kill command isn't coming off cooldown, if not then cobra shot for focus and kill command, and use it if it lights up. BW when it pleases you.

It's more cerebral. Sort of. Very bursty and lets you interact with your pet. Your PET is giving you your huge crits, not your own bow!

Ok I am completely lost as to what the focus of this post is so GOOD DAY!

Turby the Hunter

High-End Asshats

I don't know about everyone else, but everytime I accidentally end up on an elitistjerks link or page while looking for some general information all I see in the threads are:

Ok from my preliminary results my findings for stats A,B,Y, and Z are as follows:

A: 1.5 (1.05*x) + 2.5(FAP - LMAO): =.95 of the expected variance
B: 1.4 (1.06*y) + 2.34(LOL + WTF): =.90 of variance

It is clear that the 0.005% gain is definitely superior to what you previously stated as my test results are conclusive and blah blah and everywhere like such as.

And given optimal environmental factors, with five fireballs per fight your autoattack should look like:

AUTO = 1.5 + your face + {(9.5xAP+1.05*RAP)+Your Bow-(Boss' Face + Your friend's face)]

Given that you are talented for 1/2/3% increases the formulas change based on the color of your pet's favourite toothbrush such as:

TB * 1% given 95% uptime = your face
TB * 2% given 95.22% uptime = more face and so on and so forth

WTF? I was just looking to see if my hunter should have some haste to help with regen and cobra shot? However from my own findings it seems I want about 8%-ish haste. I *think*. It is sitting at 4% now and is FINE but a bit more haste never hurt nobody.

Also, on a completely unrelated note I am intending to drop my 525 skinning and persue one of my hunter's original professions because it can produce some shiny and useful things: Engineering.

I do have a question, in terms of end game is there much different between specializing between Gnomish or Goblin engineering? This is crucial because it seems each specialization can make their own mini-pets. The De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion, and the Personal World Destroyer, respectively. This is a crucial decision because I have decide between an awesome robo-bunneh, or a mini-fel reaver! (Though they sell for 1K g anyways.....)

Turby the Asshat Toothbrush

Beast Masters Unite!

Turby's back and I have an array of brand new pets to wreak havoc upon all of Azeroth! But wait! Exotic pets means Beast Mastery mode which means I'm pretty...odd!

I remember reading somewhere that Cobra Shot was supposed to be buffed by "SOMETHING" to make it a BM's signature shot am I correct? I read through my talent trees and hidden spells in the book and the only thing that "BOOSTS" Cobra Shot is this weird Frenzy talent where I consume some sort of frenzy to make myself..err shoot faster. Hmm.

That's it?

Bestial Wrath, wow so many changes, can its duration be any shorter?? Sure I feel like a machine gun for the FIVE seconds it is up but ok then that's it?

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE EYES OF THE BEAST SPELL??

If there was ONE single RP-ish spell in the game it was this spell, I would "switch" over to my Puppy and help out lowbies, or jump around, or explore, or scout, kill some critters, harass people. WHY?? According to Truny, she says its "probably another fuckin' PVP nerf". I disagree.

I think it was one of the spells that got CUT, because it was not so useful in PVE or PVP. SO what?? Eagle Eye is kinda useless when you can fly around, sure it's kinda useful in PVP but...STILL!

This is completely lame, after my small Mini-Rant on Spirit Beasts I actually found TWO within a 10 minute time-span and wanted to muck about as a spirit beast healing people but NOO Eyes of the Beast is gones forever, we hates it...forever!

Also, do you have a favourite pet you stick to? Mine used to be the Devilsaur, Puppy. But now that we can carry FIVE pets I find myself switching pets after every pull, using Charmaggon for Blood Lust, using Jojen cause he's sparkly, or Turny cause he's...a Turny or even Torby. Yes I named my Terrorpene Torby, this might change in the near future.

ALAS, I also finding myself switching specs every pull. The Bestial Wrath Machine Gun Effect is nice, but I am finding in groups that need more damage to get through tough bosses/pulls or that I need CC I prefer Survival over BM. Just to..survive. Wyvern Sting is kick ass. "I will freakin' trap AND sleep these two mobs yeah!"

Changes Required to BM

Truny says "YOU MUST UNDERLINE YOUR TITLES DAMMIT!"....ok I did!

1. Cobra Shot does..something. No that wasn't very helpful was it. Let's try again.

1. Cobra Shot leaves a Cobra Poison on the enemy, dealing a small amount of nature dot, and increasing our pet's critical chance against the target no scratch that, and increases our pet's damage against that target by 5%.

2. Kill Command's focus requirement has been reduced to 30. Cooldown is four seconds. Damage has been increased by 50%. On a sidenote, at level 84 I've seen Kill Command crit for 15K on my level 84 pet. But then again other classes can chain together 30K crits so, yes that should be fine.

3. Bestial Wrath lasts LONGER DAMMIT!

4. Eyes of the Beast is back. Feck around all you like!

5. Arcane Shot. Ok, I am having some relationship issues with Arcane Shot. I will spam it during Bestial Wrath. That is fine. But during "normal" fighting, I tend to have enough focus for ONE extra Arcane Shot before Kill Command's cooldown is up? I also use it at the end-leg of fights where Kill Command is on cooldown, Kill Shot is on cooldown, and I need to move. Or something. Arcane Shot is...weird. Get rid of it. Change it to Beast Shot. Who knows.

Solution: During Bestial Wrath, COBRA SHOT becomes spammable instant cast shots. This way, we can regenerate our focus like crazy, executing more Kill Commands, and not having to use Arcane Shot. Ever. This also solves the "BMs love Cobra Shot" bullshit.

6. Army of the Pets. Come on, we can "carry" around five pets with us, why not summon all of them out in a dazzling flourish of bestial fury "GO PUPPY, PUPPY, PUPPY, PUPPY, and Gregory! Show them the true meaning of despair!! MWAHAHAH!!"

Solution: New Spell

[Army of the Pets]

Focus Cost: 100 <- You bet your butt it costs 100 focus!

Instant Cast

Cooldown: 5 minutes. (Chance to be reduced by 3 seconds everytime your pet farts, no just kidding, everytime you use Kill Command)

In a true display of Bestial Mastery, you call upon all of your active stabled pets to ravage your foe for 25 seconds. During this time you and your pets' damage and attack/casting speed is increased by 15% and you feel no fear or remorse and can not be stopped until ALL of you are killed. (Effect stacks with Bestial Wrath)

It's on a Five Minute cooldown so it won't be game-changing in terms of average DPS output but it'd be a Kick Your Ass Down the Street type of Cooldown don't you agree?

Turby the Crazy Hunter

20 Minutes Later..Terrorpene!



Flaming Turby of Raaawr!

A few days ago while doing the boring dailies in Tol Barad I noticed a hunter with a very distinctive FLAMING TURTLE pet and I said to myself: "MUST HAVE!"

For more information on taming Terrorpene please visit my Terrorpene page!

I tabbed out and googled something along the lines of "wow flaming turtle pet", and this awesome looking turtle was called Terrorpene (Fear Penis), and spawns in the fiery area of Mt. Hyjal.

Excellent. With some research I brought along with me a prismatic elixir, which provided me with 90 fire resist. This mob channels a deadly fire beam at you but it is four-times weak against resistances. So with 44k HP I barely survived the taming, but survived nonetheless.

I made a macro, turned on track beasts, remembered where I put the tame-beast spell and flew off to Mt. Hyjal. I hung out around the eastern side of the fire lake for about 10 minutes and mined the stray obsidium nodes and got bored and logged out. Whatever.

The next day, after a failed run of trying to find the DUMB spirit beasts in Northrend I decided to log off at the Throne of Flame again so I travelled back to Mt Hyjal and proceeded to find a nice place to log-off. As I was doing all this, good habits had me spamming my macro all this time. That was a failure, as I didn't even notice it blaring in my chat window:

>TERRORPENE<
>TERRORPENE<
>TERRORPENE<

I guess he had JUST spawned, since at the moment before I was going to hit Logout, I saw that I had a Silver Ringed Mob targetted: Terrorpene!

/GASP

I panicked calmly. I landed on the nearest safe stone platform near him, he was in the lava at the north-eastern part of the lava-pool at this point. Popped my elixir and began to tame him.

Competition: In the corner of my eye I saw that someone was seemingly camping this area as well, I mouse-overed them to see it was a warrior and I thought "FCK DON'T KILL IT YOU CAN'T TAME IT GO AWAY!"

My focus at that point was to tame it before this random warrior came and killed Terrorpene out of spite.

He didn't. Then why was he hanging around there?

Anyways, with the prismatic elixir his fiery hatred only ticked for 5k a second leaving me with about 8K hp at the end of the ordeal!

THIS is what we've been wanting in a pet all this time, it GLOWS and smoke fumes out of his horn, aka utilization of modern graphics.

He is currently nameless and goes by "Turtle".

Turby the Turtle

Lootlicious Day

When I got really bored one day so many months back and spent most of my gold on a battered hilt for my Warlock, she officially became my main character and the rest of my toons just sat around casually doing dungeons and the occasional raid to gear up.

Turby. The hunter. Still remember him and his quest for the Pit of Saron crossbow?

Well, he was very much the loot-whore yesterday being super undergeared but still pulling his weight floating at the mid 5k dps range. Essentially before we needed a third healer, which is Turny the Restless tree, each of the first five encounters dropped a significant upgrade for Turby!

Isn't that gross? An entire dual-wield set of Axes, which both look the same, a new BOW, two rings, one from rep, and a necklace! Gross!! It's still sad how Truny can still do triple Turby's damage output....for now!

Turby the Huntard

On Beast Mastery

There once was a time before the Rain of Endless Gear where the difference between a Survival Hunter and a Beast Mastery Hunter's power was significant enough to push most Beast Masters to the former, to maintain their damage output.

I was one of those Hunters.

Wait I lie. It was because Dual Speccing came out so I chose Survival as my second spec, keeping Beast Mastery in hopes that one day it will rule again.

When Turby first started, apparently that was the "good time" for Beast Masters as they were THE choice for damage. I didn't know better, all I knew was I could tame all these crazy monsters that would otherwise bite my head off and I could rename them all to be called Puppy.

It wasn't until the demand for 1400+ dps that I realized I had no idea what my DPS was (never had recount back then either) that perhaps I would want to be more competitive just for the sake of it.

But now. Turby is practically T9 equivalent, though every socket is filled to the brim with Agility enhancements (vs the Attack Power I used to stack as a beast master), I decided to do some Random Groups as a Beast Master. No one would ever know.

First thing to notice: I ran out of mana way faster. Without the replenishment and mana-returning abilities I found myself having to recede into Aspect of the Viper WAY more often than in Survival.

Damage-wise I do not have exact numbers but it seems almost the same as Survival. On boss fights BM is completely fine with my personal dps at around 3200 and my Puppy's dps at around 1300, that's 4500 total! I only see those numbers on Survival in the new Frozen Halls or in raids because of the higher HP on mobs!

And 1300 dps for a pet?? I completely forgot about this! It was by the time Dual Spec came in that I had installed this trusty Recount tool so I never knew what Puppy was doing before o.O!

1300 was quite respectable given that one of our warrior dps was doing 1400 on the same boss!

What else? Oh yes, with BM I get to be lazier. I click that "Pet does more damage button" that makes the "GRAWRL" sound, use my shots Arcane, Aimed, Sting at Pleasure, and steady shot until the Cooldowns are up. Nothing to watch out for. No procs, no Black Arrows running out, the pet does most of the work on trash.

Come to think of it what IS that ability called? Bestial Fury? I just know its the button right on top of my #9 key and its RED.

So to end this off I shall make another ridiculous demand that shall be met soon:

Beast Mastery - New Talent - Aspect of the Pack (Redesigned)

The hunter takes on the Aspect of the Pack, bolstering their abilities to control the wild and dangerous creatures of Azeroth. The hunter under this Aspect has their damage and their pet's damage and attack speed increased by 10%. The hunter under this Aspect can take control of up to THREE pets.

Yeah. Three!

You'll have to manage each of them independently but with great power comes great button clicking skills....sigh.

Turby the Hunter

Patch 3.3 Hunter Changes

I shall post this before the Druid Changes as this one is short and sweet and my Hunter is beginning to collect dust once again!

Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

See I like to switch pets randomly, since I believe all my pets deserve my attention. Nejibana the dps dino needs to take a break while my Kitty Cat or my Turtle comes out to play...however I can only do this maybe ONCE per dungeon so this is a good change...though provides no real benefit...

Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.

Anyone with a ranged attack will hate us even more now that their critical nuke has missed!

Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

Finally a change to Misdirection. Any good hunter always starts the battle with this spell directed TO THE TANK! Right? You do use this right?? Now we have instead of three shots, four seconds to generate as much threat as possible and the good thing is we do not have to wait for another hunter's Misdirection to be used up before we can start Pew Pewing!

Talents

Beast Mastery
Intimidation: If the hunter's pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet's next swing or attack.

Excellent, now we can time those stuns much more accurately to stop your foe's casting or whatever it is you need!

Pets

Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Good! I hated having to put points in this just to make my Puppies more resilient! What's Culling of the Herd? It better show up soon for me to comment on!

Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet's movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.

Weird. Why does your pet need to Cower anyways?

Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.

Nice! So only pets that can Claw, Bite or Smack can use this ability, and depending on the internal proc cooldown of this ability I can see the 3% damage buff up at all times.

Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.

Uhh what is that? Bird attacks?

Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.

Ok so why are our pets cowering so much that we need to emphasize this talent with another talent??

Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.

Anything more convenient is good, in this case halved.

Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.

?? Spiders

Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.

?? Web people from farther away? Ohh pvp! See I use a dps pet for PVP because...you just can!

Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet's attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

Whatever the hell that is. Critical strikes probably occur more often than a dodge at max level so...good??

So in conclusion nothing really major for hunters except for a 3%ish dps increase.

Turby the Hunter

Turby the Hunter on Trial of the Champion Upgrades - True-aim Longrifle vs Drake Mounted Crossbow

As of yesterday, Turby will no longer receive any more of the crazy upgrades from the Heroic Trial of the Champion. The shower of epics is over.

It was a good group, great tank, awesome healer, dope damage per seconders. Also, having ran this both on Turby and Truny (as it was the daily), we both got the easy boss, Eadric the Pure.

It was on Eadric the Pure, a necklace I had never seen before dropped, and was the only one who wanted to use it: The Ancient Pendant of Arathor. Cool, it was a nice upgrade from the Heroic Badge necklace that everyone used to have. Good job!

The Black Knight went down like a piece of tissue in a toilet bowl, and lo and behold guess what FINALLY drops? Uh huh! The stupid gun! The True-aim Longrifle!

Now let us compare the change in stats and damage from the Drake Mounted Crossbow. Please note I am using the Engineering ammunition, Saronite Razorheads and Mammoth Cutters (everyone should to maximize damage right?)

Let's compare the total change in all the stats we see here:

Strength: +0
Agility: +5 Whoohoo!
Stamina: +38 OMG!
Intellect: +0
Spirit: +0
Armor: +10 Hell yeah!

Damage: +104-224 min/max damage, that's very good!
Average Damage: From 1549 to 1713! An almost 11% increase in overall damage. Wow.
Speed: -0.16 seconds. NOO I am slow!!
Power: +2 attack power. Hells yeah!!
Hit: +0, my hit is low isn't it?
Crit Chance: -0.51% GRR, its ok, in battle my Crit Chance usually soars up to 50% anyways!

Until next time!

Turby the Hunter

Turby the Hunter on Reins of the Green Proto-Drake

Tuesday. Seven days ago I had purchased one of them Mysterious Eggs from our scaly friends in Scholozar Basin. It had been a while since I had made the long and tedious flight to Scholozar, probably two months since I had last purchased an egg.

So remembering I had purchased an egg I log in to open it to receive the usual, Tickbird, egg-meat, blah. I start running from the spot I logged in at, which was behind the counter in one of the shops (don't ask), and click open the egg while heading to Krasus Landing to go and buy another egg.

The loot window pops up and it says "something Proto Drake" and I thought "well, at least I got the little pet this time", but wait....the pet shouldn't have purple text!

So there! The end.

Turby the OMG Finally One More Thing To Not Have To Do Hunter

Turby the Hunter - Trippy

Guess where this is?

Guess what that golden bird is?

Turby the Hunter

Cataclysm - What the heck omg? Warlock and Hunter Changes

Ok first of all: Whoa!

Warlocks around the world rejoice. No longer do we have to embarass ourselves, exposing our purple stringy soul-suck-finishers, and no longer do we have to keep an eye on the little number in the corner of our soul bags!

Apparently, our Soul Shard is part of our UI, making it a combat resource where we can burn up to three Soul Shards to boost various skills. Ie) Burn a soul shard, and your next Conflagrate hits for 500% more damage and hits everything on screen while your current demon multiplies to create an army, consuming the entire raid (jokes!)

This is very interesting. Not only can we hold more junk (*cough* cloth), but it adds a slightly more strategic aspect beyond "should I Soul Shatter, or shall I not Soul Shatter?"

Hunters around the world rejoice! Well, I know Turby is a happy Puppy collector now. Why? They removed our Mana bar!! Our mana bar is replaced with something we are passively familiar with: A Focus Bar. Yeah, the same thing as our pets! Just watch in the BM tree, our pet crits increase OUR focus regeneration!

I think this is great since it just feels more quick and fluid in battle when you see your energy come back rather than diminish.

And also...why did we use mana to begin with?

The last change I thought was iffy were the streamlining of stats. Removing ArP, Spellpower (huh?), Attack Power (what the?), and putting their equivalent effects into INT/STR/AGI, etc.

I don't know. Seems dumbed down to me. Armor Penetration, sure get rid of that. Never even noticed when they started to spam us with it. But Attack Power and Spell Power? The more the better right? Perhaps they need to do this to balance out...I have no idea what (and I'm not for critical thought on Mondays). It shouldn't be that hard to compare the relative advantage of one piece of gear over another with three or four variable changes right? Maybe not everyone's an accountant...whatever.

What else did I see? Oh! Stamina is apparently going to add more health than before, so no more "plate envy" as wowinsider says.

Turby and Truny are happy as that is one step closer for to wearing plate armour!

Yeah...no focus today (but will have a focus bar in the future! Ah sorry) so I'm ending it here.

The full shpeal can be found at http://www.wow.com/ of course.

Turny vs The Rest

Anub'arak Encounter

Turby: *Misdirects*, silence.

Truny: Let's do this!

Turny: Everyone know this fight? Ok, for this boss, when he casts "pound", run through him to avoid huge damage. This is very noticeable because I think it takes three seconds to cast. Also, when he's underground avoid the spikes coming up from the ground. And (to tank) make sure to pull the elites that enter from here *map clicky*. On the second wave, there will be Venomancers that have a nasty poison so everyone try to interrupt them.

Why am I a nicer person when healing?

Turby AND Truny on the Trial of the Champion Dungeon

Screw you. Seriously. This is getting annoying.

I log in and then wonder to myself "I wonder what will drop, maybe the gun will drop, but no look at all the hunters in LFG, but then maybe I feel lucky on this character..hmm...whatever I'll stick to it".

What?

Well...

Did the daily clear of the Trial of the Champion a few days ago with Turby, and *bam*, the Spectral Kris drops and is needed by a spellcaster. Whatever.

Did the daily clear of the Trial of the Champion yesterday with Truny, and *bam*, the Gun that will afford Turby an upgrade drops. No one needs it, it gets sharded. Whatever.

Did the daily clear of the Trial of the Champion again with Turby, and the gun does not drop.

Sound familiar?

Having A's item drop on B and vice versa ALL the time?

When will this end? I don't want to run ToC again! It's so easy, I just want to run around and .. MOVE! (And because I've collected all the necessary upgrades other than the fugging weapons HA so I should shut up!)

Also, I do not know why these mages and priests and every other class that can use spellpower and equip daggers are running H ToC. GTFO until I manage to roll higher than a 12 (please!). Super selfish but hey I'm just fitting into general public.

The Gun: Lower and Upper damage range increased. More agility. No Crit. Little bit less AP. More Stamina = good.

The Dagger: More Stam, more Int, a blue socket, 79 more spellpower, more crit, more haste. No hit.

Very good upgrades (so I can run people through SFK faster 你吹啊!)

Anyways, will try again today!

Turby the Hunter on Trial of the Champion - Crowd Control

You bet your ass I just used those two words. Crowd Control. It must have been ages since I have heard the words "want me to sheep/sap one?" since the days when Turby, the original Toon was just a wee hunter dungeon diving with (omg) four other people to down some elites!

See I guess when you are new, elites are scary. When you have not experienced the ultimate power that level 80 brings, it is quite a daunting experience to have a gold-rimmed monster attacking you and not the plate wearer. Sure, we would try to solo some group quest elites with our Puppies and Big Blueberries (oh, Hathnagma my dear Voidwalker where are you?), but dying in a dungeon is quite embarassing.

Remember the first time walking into Ragefire Chasm? At level 12? And going "holy F*ck they have 800 hp!"? And dying?

Ah yes, crowd control. See at level 80, more people of us are SO strong that in a one-on-one situation most classes can take down a single elite trash by themselves. Our spells and talents are SO strong, that we just kill and kill them all!

So... crowd control right? Trial of the Champion? What?

I know I know. Its use is quite limited. But, there is one place us Survival Hunters can use it. Well, any hunter really but it benefits Survivalists more.

You know the first phase of The Black Knight? Where he murders the announcer in cold blood right in front of your eyes? Where you then laugh and say he deserved it? And then you go and dance on his corpse? And then you wave to Thrall and wave to the excited audience? And when that announcer eventually is risen as a ghoul? Well, put a freezing trap or fire a freezing arrow onto his corpse. This way, right when the encounter starts you would have procced Lock 'N Load (survival yes), AND reduced the amount of time that ghoul has to beat on your team.

Hey, its not much but it works.

*This may fail in that the ghoul leaps over the trap right when it spawns! GR!

Turby the Hunter

Turby the Hunter on Loot Buffet Updates

Like I said, upgrades and drops and emblems and YUMMY!

I am not even sure how, I had not played on Turby for a while but when I logged in I realized he was really close to the magic 58 emblems for a T8.5 Helm! Yes, the Helm of Huntery Spike Death!

Also, running the daily heroic TOC, Turby got lucky with Marrowstrike..which is..a bonus I guess!
Now Turby has the 2-set bonus which "increases your damage of Serpent Sting by 10%"..what the hell? I guess for bosses that last longer than the duration of one sting....

Say hi to Turby and Puppy! (Showing off Marrowstrike as that is probably the best weapon I can get for a very long time lmao!) I also feel like I belong in Doom 3 rather than WoW with my metal spikey gas mask.

3.2 Emblem Changes - Its All Accounting

After my mini-rant yesterday I had come to realize, it's not about who or why people are getting shiny epics like they are at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but it's...the value of our existing system versus the new content has depreciated. Also, people need to realize that they are not special because in essence, we are all "equal" in the game.

The reason some people are mad, is because Blizzard altered space and time itself!

What the hell did you just say? Values? Bronze Drakes?

Think about it. Patch 3.1 brought to us Ulduar. When this patch was released, I am sure that most guilds have completed Naxx 25 and were just re-running it to gear up for 3.1. As you can see here, during this time-frame, Naxx 25 gear was probably the best in-slot and someone decked out in full end-game gear was well...pretty much at end game until the next patch. They have appreciated their gear to its maximum possible value.

As 3.1 hit, everything item pre-Ulduar depreciates in value. (This is of course in terms of stats, as I still love my T1 set) The depreciation term is relative to how long anyone has been decked out in Naxx gear to the start of the next patch. Now 3.1 came out so far out that most people were ready for the new gear, they were ready to give up their shinies for better shinies.

To make things more simple, say you are saving up towards buying a new car. It is a brand new 2010 model and there are only four in the city (*cough* I'm talking about YOU Lexus IS-F-back-in-the-day...sorry), ok maybe not four but a very limited amount. It's nice, you buy the car first, you're ahead of the game, it feels good to have this car whilst everyone now must wait for more models to be shipped in. By the time more people have it, you are already bored with this car and ready for a new one. Yes, essentially this a very materialistic.

Now, Patch 3.2 is a different beast. Ulduar hard-mode is I assume, way more difficult than Naxx 25 and by the time 3.2 hit, most people had NOT completed Ulduar, and had NOT received all their end-game shinies. Hence, not a lot of people were end-game pre-3.2 and are now seeing what they have been working towards depreciate in value before they could fully appreciate it. Time had been compressed, the rate at which the value of everything decreases has accelerated!

Same example again, you are saving up for that oh so shiny car and are so close to saving up that last $15k, and all of a sudden a mass shipment arrives, supply increases and prices drop (though only slightly) and now you are indignated that you are now not the "special" one. What you were saving up for is not so special anymore.

See, the car example is nice, however the one flaw is that even though there was an influx in supply, only others as wealthy as you would flock towards purchasing it. "Normal" people would probably not even care.

See what I am getting at? Everyone likes to think that they are unique and special flowers and everything is for them. There is no "I" in Team, but there is "me me me!" The truth is, you are not special. No one is looking at you. They do not really care what you are wearing (unless it is dreadfully distasteful) or what phone you have or what color or flavor your underwear is..err...

You should know from day 1 when you made your first toon and realized you will be staring at their BACK and is not distinguishable from anyone else that you are probably not going to stand out unless you were somehow bright pink and super massive no?

And really, there is not a class system in this game despite people classifying some players as "casual" versus "hardcore". Are the "hardcore" people the wealthy folk?

No.

Essentially everyone has the same access to every single dungeon/raid/event that is thrown out, it is just a matter of time devoted towards each item. So when the new patch arrived, everyone is affected. A non-raider who was thinking of raiding might appreciate the Ulduar weapons a little bit less just like everyone else.

Am I straying off topic? Well it doesn't matter this isn't an assignment screw you! Sorry *cough*

Truny and Turby of Kluptomania

Patch 3.2 - What the hell?

Wow, so fast? I had really thought the next patch would not be out for at least one more month. Now I am stuck at work trying to see what Turby/Truny will be doing at the end of the day (I have to download the rest of the stupid patch don't I??)

Here are the points I found interesting:

1) Titanium Ore is now prospectable into epic gems.

Are you serious? This is GREAT! Turby literally has HUNDREDS of them collecting dust in his mining sack! I had started collecting them ever since I realized how profitable selling a Titansteel Bar every day was, but the ores just started piling up and I did not want to part with them ever since.

+5 points!

2) Emblem of Conquests

Nice! Heroic Farming anyone? Now Truny has a viable method of obtaining her T8.5 Helm Of The Awesome Death Bird! Fits well into RP purposes and its a great upgrade from my Hat of Wintry Doom. Turby can farm heroics too but I think he's lost his RP element (pets did not get armor). Why am I at work again? I want to farm NOW! Oh well, as a non-raider I am already behind ....

+10 points!

3) Druid Form Changes

Cool! Now instead of looking to heal for people to gain exp, Turny can actually TOLERATE being in cat form for more than 5-min and actually RIP things to death himself!

+5 points!

4) Mount Changes

FINALLY! I had realized after playing Turny the Restless Tree up to Northrend, I had preferred to insta-cast into travel mode or even stay in Kitty Form just because it felt good and allowed me to avoid the THREE second cast time to mount a Kodo (which felt slow to begin with).

The required level to receive your mounts have also decreased, which makes levelling alts THAT much better. The 150% "slow" flight speed is also a bonus, but for those who have already experienced 280%+, you will probably still use the money sink to speed yourself up.

(Sorry, I am starving and eating hence I am not being very coherent now LMAO)

+10 points!

5) Class Specific Changes

Turby the Hunter, Beast Mastery and Survival

-"Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds"

Nice!

+2 points!

-"Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap. "

I don't think I use that..

-"Lock and Load: Now has a 22-second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used."

What? No back to back procs? Oh well....boohoo.

+/- 0 points!

Truny the Warlock, Demonology and Destruction

-"Shadowflame: The angle of the cone effect on this ability was inadvertently very small, making it difficult to use. Its cone is now the same size as similar spells, such as Cone of Cold. "

Never used Cone of Cold before but it'd better be wider than 2mm. dammit!

+ 2 points!

-"Soulshatter cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes"

Well, better than nothing. Though I've been practicing and have been keeping threat just under the red danger zone now!

+ 2 points!

-"Fel Domination cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 15 minutes."

Very nice, though my pet only tends to "die" when I die. And I do not die every three minutes. But still, this will ensure that it is almost always off CD. (And saves a 10 second cast)

+2 points!

-"Empowered Imp: The warlock's critical hit chance is increased to 100%, up from 20% for the next spell cast after the Imp critically hits a target."

I was just thinking the other day how underwhelming this talent was, now...!

+2 points!

-"Fire and Brimstone: Reduced to 2/4/6/8/10% increased damage from Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on targets afflicted with Immolate, down from 3/6/9/12/15%."

5% less damage does not equal 5% less fun....so now our 16k crits are 5% weaker? Boo hoo.

-2 points!

Turny the Restless Tree, Feral and Restoration

-"Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient."

20%?? So its base healing and the bonus healing from my own spellpower is 20% less?? Ugh, oh well...at least it can still crit.

-2 points!

-"All those feral abilities"

See, I don't really remember what my attacks are. I just know Mangle is pretty good. And some bleed that I do can crit (button 5 on my binding), be it Rake/Maul/Claw/Shred/Rip/Bleed/Tear/Scratch/Fury Swipes I do not remember.

Well, looks like most got damage reductions which is always a =(

Enough for now!

Must...farm....!

A Commentary on Dungeons - Part 1

Ahh, the instances of WoW. Places for us to adventure with with a group of friends (or idiots), to hone our skills, and *omg* socialize and communicate with others!

Do you have a favourite dungeon? Or hate one so badly for whatever reason?

Ok let's get started. Turby is now going attempt at giving his $0.02 for ALL of the 5-man dungeons in the damn game save for one (Acatraz /shakefist key), from the lowest level to the highest.

Ragefire Chasm
Who would have known? Underneath our peaceful home city is a fiery burning pit of evil fillled with troggs and demons? The first time Turby strayed into there as a level 15 Huntard his first thought was "holy fuck they have 800 HP!"

This dungeon however, is a great place to go practice the basic five-person composition, though at such low levels most of us do not have the tools to play their role effectively but then again..who cares? The pulls are a good size, and pats and random aggro are a go here!

Wailing Caverns
Who else fucking hates this place? I do. The caves and twists are sooo annoying! This is when we ask "if maps were implemented for Northrend dungeons, WHY NOT HERE??" The fact that you have to kill four dudes and triggering an event was pretty cool but this place is just a lot of walking! And why can't our druids turn into friggin' snakes??

The Deadmines
An awesome pirate ship and an NPC boss called Cookie? What more can you ask for?

Shadowfang Keep
My favourite dungeon of all time! I am not sure what it is about this place, but it just feels so...real. Maybe it is the integration of the outdoor court with the indoor halls and all the stairs and such that make it that good! It gives the level a real "3-D" feel..yes kind of weird in a 3-D game but unlike most instances that are just a giant sprawl of land, SFK is actually...dimensional. Perhaps it is the can't-escape-from-this-haunted-house feel, just the overall design of this instance that makes running it over and over and over and over again actually enjoyable. Or maybe because you can murder innocent horses.

Blackfathom Deeps
I had discovered this instance by accident at level 20 whatever. If it were not for some guard at the crossroads who told me to go to some post in Ashenvale that led me to another guard that told me to head towards the water on the west side, I would not have even thought that an instance would be located here. I remember how the nagas outside of the instance were chain-aggro pros. Who knew death-mermaids had such good vision?? One notable point within the dungeon was that...wow there is a part where we have to swim! I fuckin' hate swimming! It's slow! Turny was fine, he could turn into an ugly seal/walrus thing while Truny could Unending Breath herself. Turby on the other hand was...SLOW!

Stormwind Stockades
What the hell? I risk my life running through this confusing city to get to this dungeon and there is no loot at the end of the rainbow?! Whatever, free achievement. Hearthing.

Razorfen Kraul
It was here where Truny decided he would spend the rest of his days as a Resto Druid as it was near impossible to find a healer and he ended up healing in a feral spec (which worked fine at that level). Good loot, but nothing special.

Gnomeregan
Another one of those "oh crap this is one of those dungeon things isn't it" moments comes to mind. So Turby's engineering trainer (yes he was Eng for a bit) told him to sail over to Booty Bay and teleport to this amazing place full of gnomes and technology. "Sure, why not?" as I enter the teleporter and get killed by some crazy trogg. Hmm..the part where an entire wing of the instance aggros you randomly and you have to AOE like no tomorrow is always fun! The last boss fight felt pretty epic, perhaps due to the HUGE room that he sits in!

Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard
Not combining all four into one. I have one word for Graveyard: "What the f-, we're done?"

Razorfen Downs
More piggies and OMFG there's an awesome LICH as the end boss, again what more do you need?

Scarlet Monastery: Armory
A large courtyard full of mobs, and a long windy hall to the end boss packed with mobs. Free exp anyone? Herod's axe is also the only weapon in game that can make anyone who can wield an axe spin! (Is this still true?) You can also poke his butt when he jumps....

Scarlety Monastery: Cathedral
Have a lowbie friend that needs quick exp? This is the place to do it. Fast access to about a gazillion mobs makes for exp bars jumping three..four bars in one shot. The lady boss has THE MOST OP sleep spell in the game and the pally bubble that her friend does is again, super annoying!! The loot here is quite limited however so they can just rot for that.

Uldaman
Uldaman is fun. Yes, one can simply get lost in its twisted caverns for days but the amount of things you see in there is worth the time. Here we are introduced to golems and more dwarves, and some titan's daughter. Opening that door to summon her is so epic!

Zul'Farrak
Ahh finally the trolls take the spotlight and ZF was a great way to show off how fun it is to kill trolls! The first time doing the stair event was quite daunting like "OMFG we're gonna die!", and also there's a freakin' GODZILLA in here!

The rest later!

Turby the Hunter - Vault of Archavon Lottery

About to go to bed last night, Truny was chilling near the AH in Undercity selling some weeds and drugs when a "LFM VOA 25" popped up randomly.

"Hmm it is late, I can go tomorrow." I thought. "But I am feeling lucky"

"I'll dps!"

Truny gets the invite and it took a while to get together a full raid. As the 20th person joined I thought "Oh crap, am I on lockout?"

Push "O" to check Raid info. Yes, apparently Truny still had nine hours to reattempt the lotto. Having just turned 80 she had been there once with not so stellar meter results.

Whatever, so I whisper the raid leader that I would switch onto Turby and off we go. There were three other warlocks already so it was ok.

Our first few attempts were really close, with the boss down to about 100k when a storm guard went kaboom on one try. Most of us were about to call it on the last shot, but...this last time went very smoothly.

I still don't see it, but Turby's average damage is over 1,000 dps higher than Truny's (from the last time she was there). I guess pew pew is just that good over the slow and steady hits-like-a-truck shadowbolts (for now!). (Or maybe because Survival is to Destruction as Beast Mastery is to Demonology...considering respeccing Truny but I refuse to use fire!...)

So Emalon goes down and of course I am curious to see what dropped and "hey!" some pants!

Very interesting! Turby already had these pants along with the matching gloves which granted the 5% Puppy damage bonus, which I found only really benefitted being in Beast Mastery mode while doing dailies or running people through dungeons.

So the two hunters roll, and Turby wins them (duh why else am I writing this?), and we head off to do Archavon.

No Warlock gear dropped last night, so that was a relief. And I know that at least two Warlocks are locked out for it haha!

By the end I was so tired I did not even put the new pants on to compare the changes or gem them or enhance them (why do people NOT enhance their gear? More on that later).

We will see if Truny is so lucky today.

Turby with Ungemmed Pants