Oh, what a dork am I

I've been listening to the Wrath soundtrack in my car. You know, the one that came in the Collector's Edition. I got the CE specifically to get the soundtrack. >.> Yes, yes, skeletal whelp pet, blah, blah, blah... I had heard great things about the soundtrack, and... well, they're all true.

The cinematic trailer's music is on there, and the Wrath main title (I have no idea if or where it's in the game) is basically one part Star Wars, one part Lord of the Rings, and one part Pirates of the Caribbean. All that adds up to auditory awesome.

Now I just need to get my hands on Echoes of War. The music from Tristram (Diablo series) that I get stuck in my head is on there. Alas, I have no iTunes, nor a desire to have iTunes, so I have to wait until it's back in stock. Or until they start selling it as digital download on Amazon. (Dear Blizzard: I bought Wrath at Amazon, and I want to buy your music there too. kkthxbai, Duskhawk)

Patch notes! Mmmm, patch notes.

The PTR notes are up, and although they say nothing about the female Tauren problems in Wintergrasp (if you take the portal from Dalaran, you can't get out of the room you port into - the doorway just acts as if it's too small), there's some hunter stuff (from the PTR notes page):

Hunters

• All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.
• Aspect of the Wild - This aspect is now raid-wide.
• Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.
• Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to "deflect" spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.
• Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
• Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.
• Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
• The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered.
• Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
• Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
• Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
• Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
• Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
• Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).
  

1. Taking things like Taunt (3 min. cooldown) and such off the global cooldown - heck, taking anything off the global cooldown is nice.
2. Aspect of the Wild becoming raid-wide means your shaman don't have to give up their water totem for NR to the raid - and the rest of a hunter's aspects are a self-buff, whereas water totems may be something like poison cleansing. And you don't have to worry about the boss's crazy aggro mechanics killing the totem. :P (Netherspite had a strange affinity for Searing Totems.)
3. Call of the Wild: Hopefully this means that Battle shout doesn't negate its utility anymore? I spec'd puppy out of it because there didn't seem to be a point to it, as it didn't stack with Battle shout.
4. Deterrence: Now a frontal "bubble"? o.O
5. Improved tracking change: Yay. For pulls with mixed mob types, or instances with multiple mob types (example: Sunken Temple has 4 - humanoid, undead, beast, and dragonkin), you don't have to micromanage your tracking. (Sunken Temple was the first time I realized just how useless tracking in an instance sometimes was - first for the multiple mob types, and secondly because of the layers. Karazhan was even worse for layers, even though pretty much everything was undead, with a few demons (and we never bothered with the beast wing).)
6. Kill Shot - yay! The reduced cooldown means I maybe get to use it more than once on a boss, and it will be much better for both soloing and PVP.
7. Kindred Spirits: BM, I don't care. :P
8. Rake seems to have been nerfed a little, but that's okay - kitty has been having aggro issues in groups, even if I consistently pull aggro off him while solo.
9. Readiness/Bestial Wrath: affects BM, not me.
10. Steady Shot nerf: anticipated. I stack for agi/crit/hit/int before AP, so meh.
11. Serpent's Swiftness: BM, so mostly meh, but - it does deal somewhat with the pet DPS overages without diminishing the hunter's DPS further.
12. Unleashed Fury: BM, so not me.
13. Viper Sting: I won't know if this is good or bad until I try it - depends what the %'s are.
14. Volley nerf: anticipated. While 11k DPS on a trash pull was pretty... Volley tended to make me the object of AoE pulls' aggression. Hopefully the reduced damage doesn't diminish its utility but helps some with pulling threat off the tank during AoE pulls.

I don't think this is going to close the gap between my DPS and the BM hunter who was kicking my ass on the meters, but she's probably going to see her numbers come down some. I don't think mine are going to be seriously affected in terms of boss DPS except by the Steady Shot change. I'm in mostly quest, crafted, and instance blues, and haven't touched a heroic yet - I expect to see my numbers reach acceptable raiding comfort levels once I do start doing heroics. (Maybe tonight? If the ice is bad enough that I can't come to work tomorrow, maybe tomorrow...)

I will confess, I'm itching to get S5 gloves, even though I've taken Multi out of my normal rotation since Aimed got added to Barrage/Imp. Barrage. The season starts on the 16th, though, and I don't think my husband is going to be ready for 2v2 - I may have to see if I can put something else together in the interim.

O.O Naxxramas

Sunday evening, one of the guys who regularly runs our guilds' raids posted sign-ups for an exploratory Naxxramas run for this Wednesday. Given the pains of getting into Karazhan, I didn't expect anything out of it, but after Tuesday's impromptu 9-man Sartharion attempt (all three drakes down before the tank had to leave - they're going back this Sunday to finish it, but I have to work), and after all the reports on how easy Naxx is supposed to be, some people were very optimistic.

I have qualms about raiding this early into the expansion, but mostly because when we were raiding five nights a week, if I wasn't working on those nights, I was raiding five nights a week. We're a casual guild - seriously, no one has to raid, you can raid with whatever spec you want as long as there's room for your role (tank/heal/DPS) (although if you don't meet minimum requirements for your role, be it survivability, heal output, or DPS #'s, you may not get to go), and raid progression is not the core purpose of the guild. But it doesn't have to do with the health of the guild - it has to do with my time. If we're raiding, I'm probably raiding. And I still have to finish Zul'Drak, and I haven't touched the Storm Peaks or Icecrown.

(Well, ok, I went to the Storm Peaks specifically to get the Scrapbot, and I've been to the Halls of Lightning twice, but those don't count.)

I keep thinking that I haven't replace much of my gear, but once I started enumerating in my head what I was running with last night - new engineering goggles, Kirin Tor honored shoulders (ugly as they are >.<), a level 78 leatherworking crafted chest my brother sent me when he was skilling up, level 74 BoE bracers of which two dropped my first time through Drak'Tharon Keep, belt from the Violet Hold, pants from Loken in the Halls of Lightning, one ring from a quest in the Borean Tundra, another from a quest in Drak'Tharon, a quest trinket (with an emergency heal!), the halberd from the Ring of Anguish (alternately, the harpoon from the Kalu'ak for raiding, for the hit raiting), and the gun from Loken. That leaves my neck and cloak from Karazhan, my PVP boots, and the other trinket slot, which is most often nowadays occupied Madness or the Mark of Conquest.

I don't get rid of trinkets. This has been running me into some space issues, with the prolificness of trinkets as quest rewards in Wrath, but I decided if it's something I'm not going to use and there are non-trinket reward options, I'm going to take, say, the plate piece to sell. I'm mostly using the Darkmoon Card: Madness for soloing (although, looking at my armory, I apparently wore it through Naxx), since the proc buffs are kind of neat, and the stamina doesn't hurt for soloing, and what else am I going to use? More crit rating? Madness is fun, and the /emote proc is awesome. (This is madness!)

The Mark of Conquest is a level 62 trinket bought in Zangarmarsh for Hellfire PVP marks. I use it for raiding (and usually instances), because the mana it returns is approximately the cost of a Steady Shot. It procs a lot, and if I get pressed into melee, it still procs, but with a health return. On top of that, it has a small AP bonus. It is one of the most useful trinkets I've ever owned - I got it around level 63 or 64 and have used it consistently since. Yes, it's a level 62 trinket. I raid with a mana intensive spec and rotation, though, and I need all the mana return I can get.

As for the actual raiding - we went in last night about 9:30 EST and walked out at midnight with the spider wing cleared. We probably could have gone faster, but halfway through our Anub'rekhan attempts, our main tank got an emergency call from work, and we ended up having to swap out for the paladin tank that had rolled out earlier. Yes, still a few days shy of Wrath being out a month, we had rollouts for our first Naxx attempt. Rollouts for tanks and healers. And here I was worried in the back of my mind about not touching my priest yet.

I had gotten my ass handed to me while we were doing the drakes at Sartharion by one of the phenomenal BM hunters from Daughters of the Horde in terms of the damage meters - on the drake where I put out 1700, she put out 2200. O.O The numbers for me in Recount for the bosses in the spider wing ranged from about 1350-1550. Trash numbers, since Volley hasn't been nerfed yet, hit upwards of 9950 and 11000 on individual AoE pulls, which was very amusing; they pulled my overall average up to something like 1600 for the night.

Anub'rekhan was the most difficult for us - mostly in figuring out how to control the little scarabs and to survive the locust swarm (healers had to learn where to move to not get silenced, and I switched to dropping frost traps to slow the little bugs down so we could grab them better). The Widow we one-shotted, with most of the 15 minutes we spent on her spent explaining how she worked. Maexxna was two-shotted, since we didn't realize at first where she would be throwing webbed people. (I died on our kill attempt - getting webbed at about 8% meant people were a little more interested in killing her than busting me out, plus I got thrown way far away from the rest of the DPS.) Mostly tanky plate and cloth drops.

I have 6 Emblems of Heroism. I still haven't run a heroic. >.>

Revised Shot Macro

Okay, Duskhawk has been 80 since Tuesday evening, and has had Chimera Shot since this weekend sometime. (And got the 3000 quest achievement done on Monday night. >.>) I ran Drak'Tharon Keep with some Daughters of the Horde on Sunday night, and about halfway through it, I determined that just plopping Chimera Shot into my current shot macro didn't work if I wanted it to keep refreshing Serpent Sting without having to reapply the sting. (Although if I hit extra buttons, like Feign or Readiness (followed by Rapid Fire), it still requires a reapplication.)

So now I'm running with this:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

Yes, I've lopped out an Arcane and a Steady - it has to do with getting a Chimera Shot off roughly every time the CD is up, in order to try to keep Serpet Sting up. There's something like 11.5 seconds of cast time and global cooldown in that - it won't keep Viper Sting up, but I couldn't do that, anyway. Scorpid's even longer than Serpent, so I should have no trouble with that. Kill Shot doesn't go off as often as I'd like it to (when it's lit up) - I probably need it before the cast sequence, but I haven't thought about it while logged in to change it.

I'm still pushing only about 1300-1400 DPS on bosses, but I'm still mostly in level 70 gear, and just got the gun off the last boss of the Halls of Lightning, which is where I last watched my meters. Once I'm not wearing a mix of level 70 arena and badge gear, I figure I'll start seeing my numbers creep up more. (And once my crit% is back over 30%, and my hit% is better than a measly, what, 6% with talents now? Meh.)

I still have 3 zones to quest in. Whee.

(Started herbing on my rogue - it has been disappointing so far. I've found... 2.)

PVE shot macro

Note, 1/18/12: If you're looking for a macro for 4.3, check here or here (the 2nd if you have 2 piece t13).

I don't use one of the standard shot macros. This is mostly because I have buttons to push, and I like to push them. I also don't have Chimera Shot yet (probably at 78), so it hasn't been reconfigured for that.

Originally, the macro looked like:

#showtooltip
/castrandom Kill Command
/castsequence Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Multi-Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

It basically cast Kill Command when it was available, and ran through the rotation I was doing manually. But after the Kill Command change, I took that line out. With the change to Aimed Shot, I also made a second shot macro. That one looks like:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

This basically replicates the order I was pushing buttons in, but compensates for that I'm easily distracted by motion on the screen. (So much so that I turned off all of Omen's and the in-game threat meter's aggro warnings - if I have to watch the whole screen, my performance suffers; it's better if I can focus on the lower... 1/3. This does unfortunately conflict with my health bar being in the top corner still, although that's generally more of a problem when I'm healing. Maybe this is why I find healing more relaxing - all I have to look at is health bars, and not actually pay attention to the fight. Even then, I still have problems with clicking between buttons.)

The standard macros I've seen are usually just Steady and Chimera; quite frankly, I'm a sucker for instant gratification. The more buttons I get to push, the better. Being a Hemo dagger rogue was never ideal for DPS, but Hemo cost less than Sinister Strike, so I got to push it more often. (The new thrill? Chain Ambushing. O. M. G.) So way, way back in Molten Core, when the whole watching the Autoshot timer theory first came in, my shot rotation called simply for hitting Arcane and Aimed every time their cooldown was up. I couldn't time them with Autoshot, largely because the only mods I was running at the time were CT Raid Assist and the SK list, and I can't distinguish Autoshot from the others. (I believe this was post un-linking the Aimed/Arcane CD, and before Aimed was reworked to reset the Autoshot timer.) I never topped the DPS charts (the mages and locks in our guild tended to trade that spot around), but I wasn't a liability.

Steady Shot messed with my habits. I like instant shots. It was a while before I settled into the alternating of Steady with my other shots that I liked to use - I have the Arena gloves, and both Barrage talents, so Multi was always part of my raiding rotation. I chewed through mana like there was no tomorrow - I raided almost exclusively in Viper (except for a few lucky occasions where I had a shadow priest), and I made heavy use of Mana Potion Injectors (and, after my rogue/potion-alchemist got the drop, Fel Mana Potions, which are amazing for a hunter). I was most certainly not as mana efficient as a BM hunter, who could, by and large, must spam a Steady Shot macro, and Serpent's Swiftness and pet DPS would carry them to great DPS numbers. (I realize BM could be more complicated, especially pet management, and non-macro BM hunters would actually have to time their shots.)

However... Even if I didn't top the DPS charts, I was often in the top 3 (competing with a warlock and an enhancement shaman, or sometimes behind a feral druid with good cat gear or one of two great BM hunters I've raided with regularly). But for overall damage done? I was basically competing with the enhancement shaman and the warlocks when they were there. On the last Gruul's Lair I went to, Duskhawk was 11% of the total damage done to him. I even managed to keep Scorpid Sting up on that fight. (Shots not in my macro I often zone out on and forget.) And I bandaged! At some point after I started running a damage meter (currently Recount), I realized that DPS and overall damage done didn't necessarily sort out the same. (I don't know why. The logic breaks down when I try to figure it out. Maybe because my shots are spikier than a BM spamming Steady, since I rely on the crit damage I'm spec'd for? No idea.)

So although I often topped out around 800 DPS (mid-700s was more common, as even with the macro I have focus problems), I also often did more overall damage than some of the people who had higher DPS. I suppose basically I felt as though raiding as a MM hunter was not a liability. Which is good, because BM just didn't appeal.

I still have the Multi-Shot version of the macro, but for the most part right now I'm using the Aimed Shot version. It's not for efficiency - soloing, I just can't burn through all my mana with Rapid Recuperation. I run around in Hawk or Beast anymore, too - I haven't needed Viper. Maybe for raiding at 80, again, if the fights are long enough, but right now, no. I just switched over to Aimed because I got tired of pulling the 2nd and 3rd mobs off my bear with Multi. :P (It's also useful in instances if CC is involved - which it hasn't been yet.)

I'm not sure yet if or how I can or should add Chimera or Serpent Sting to that cast sequence. I played with Chimera a little bit on the 3.0 test server, but not much. I don't know that I want to lock Serpent into the rotation, either, since some fights I may want to be using Scorpid or Viper instead. Automatically DOTing things that may subsequently need to be crowd controlled probably also isn't ideal.

Kill Shot, take 2

Okay, so I'm still not greatly impressed with Kill Shot, but... I went to do the Harold Lane quest last night, all by myself, since I've been able to, for the most part, kill equal level elites without a ton of problems in Wrath thus far. And Harold Lane is a 72e, and Duskhawk's currently 73.

I had to wait through two Alliance groups killing him, totally guessed wrong on his spawn point with my explosive trap, and had to Misdirect onto the bear every time it was up. (I'm also experimenting with Aspect of the Beast, since, having soloed in Viper for over a year, I'm not going to cry about not having Hawk up when I don't have points in Imp. Hawk. I don't know yet if it's helping on the bear's threat.) But anyway, I basically popped Misdirect, hit Rapid Fire, and started mashing my boss rotation macro, with occasional Serpent Stings, since I've got the glyph that gives me back mana from my Arcane Shot when I have a sting active. I pulled aggro once, didn't dare Disengage for adds, and between Feign and MD got him back on the bear. But I also had to pop a potion because of the fur throwing (has to be the greatest ranged attack animation in the game that I've seen). Then I noticed that I'd hit the %'s where Kill Shot was up, and, wanting to get the fight done as fast as possible, I tossed one off. Crit for ~4550.

Now, I've always been a Marksman hunter (other than the two hour BM experiment, and Mabs's 2 or 3 days trying out Survival). I've always had Aimed shot, from its glory days sniping out of Shadowmeld on defense in Arathi Basin on down till now. And while I am one of the hunters who feels it's been gutted* (low level hunters have no real burst damage now - Chimaera is level 60 minimum, and Kill Shot is 71), 4500 crits are bigger than I've ever seen before - and I'm using the same gear set as I was raiding at 70. (Well, ok, I swapped out my Violet Signet for the ring I got from killing Harold Lane.) Aimed shot topped out for me around 3500. Occaisionally, on a fully sundered mob, I'd flirt with 4k. 3k-3.2k was much more common, and on anything with decent armor, I was probably looking at 2.8k. I'm not sure what kind of armor Harold Lane had, but if I can find mobs that actually flee, it's probably going to be a nice closer.

*At this point, Multi and occasionally Arcane are critting harder than Aimed for me. If I can train myself to think of Aimed not as a massive critcal and as more of a called shot, I'll probably be less disappointed with it.

Busy weekend!

So, after finishing off what I could of the DK's cooking and inscription, as well as what I had mats to do with my rogue's alchemy and the priest's tailoring and enchanting, I spent pretty much the entire weekend focused on Dusk.

Saturday I spent almost entirely in the Howling Fjord, with a couple side trips to Dragonblight for 'go talk to that person' quests. I did run Utgarde keep with guildies at one point; it looks amazing on the outside, but the inside? About as interesting as Blackrock Depths, without the benefit of the bar. Oh, and there was the incident with Frostblade Peak... I equipped my parachute cloak (I have +12 agi on my current cloak, and I don't want to lose that), but hit it too soon, and landed somewhere I couldn't reach to rez. It had popped me into the Grizzly Hills graveyard, so after spirit rezzing, I ran over the entirety of the Grizzly Hills for the exploration achievement. I got into a couple random groups for things like March of the Giants and Megalith, but mostly ran around solo. Whisper Gorge is also visually amazing.

Sunday I finished off the last 4 quests I needed for the Howling Fjord quest achievement, plus one extra that pushed me to 72. I then transported to Everlook and flew down to Orgrimmar for training. This was strategically planned so I could take the zeppelin up to Borean Tundra. I don't really like Warsong Hold - it's confusing to get around in, and the quarry made finding my way back inside confusing. The seige tank quests are fantastic, though - I was cackling. And Saurfang's rescue was awesome. The mist I initially didn't like, partly because I ran into it by accident, and got sidetracked into a different chain of quests, but it is, overall, pretty neat.

By and large, running around in the gear she is, things feel easy. I haven't upgraded anything yet - I probably could have swapped out the ring and necklace from the Utgarde quests, but ultimately decided not to. The ranged rewards are all still 20 points below the badge crossbow; but I haven't gotten out of the two starting zones yet, except for...

My trip to Sholazar Basin! It was getting late, and I decided to run around the rest of the Borean Tundra for the exploration achievement and the flight paths, and when I got done, I was right by the entrance to Sholazar. And I thought, hey, maybe I'll get the flight path there while I'm so close. I never found a flight path, but... the place was practically deserted. It was just me, my hammer-pick, and enough nodes of saronite to net me 44 ore. I can smelt it, but my engineering isn't to where I can use it yet. I did hit 73 off the quests in Coldarra, though, and I think when I get there, I can use the saronite arrows. It'll be nice, since I'm out of fel iron bolts, and I'd rather not have to buy more.

The only new skill I've picked up is Kill Shot, which has not impressed me. Yeah, it hits hard, but I tend to have to finish off stuff in melee range, and the old-style execute (requiring health below a certain %) means that I've actually managed to use it... twice. Most of the time it lights up as available right about when I've pulled aggro off my pet and the mob has hit melee range. For grinding, I'm not going to hit Disengage just to pop a Kill Shot. Arenas are another matter - that might be a good macro, actually...

To-do list: update

Ok, the list was:

• Take the rogue & the priest to Northrend & train professions (probably as soon as I get home) - DONE
  
• Finish grinding inscription on the death knight (tonight or tomorrow) - DONE
  
• Send leftover herbs to the rogue (right after the previous) - DONE
  
• Get old world flight paths for the death knight (maybe Sunday) - already had them! woot!
  
• Do the 225 Cooking quest on the death knight - Giant Egg (12), Zesty Clam Meat (10), Alterac Swiss (20) (whenever I do the previous) - DONE
  
• Auction leftover cooking mats (after cooking is at 300) - DONE
  
• Level death knight's Herbalism to 300 (while getting flight paths)
  
• Take death knight to Thrallmar (after finishing Herbalism)
  
• Buy first aid books for death knight (probably before I take the rogue to Northrend) - DONE
  
• Send leftover cloth to the priest (after previous) - DONE

So all that's left is leveling the DK's herbalism and then taking her to Outland. I'm not going to do that for a while, though.

Current Wrath to-do list

Right, so after having my DVD-RW drive crashing my system twice, the old DVD-R drive that hadn't worked for... two years? let me install from it, and I finally got into Wrath at about 6:30. A disconnection bug or so later, and I took Duskhawk up to the Howling Fjord to see the engineering, cooking, fishing, mining, and first aid trainers. Once she was all trained up, I parked her in an inn, and rolled my death knight.

Yeah, yeah... this blog is about my hunters. And the death knight by far isn't going to take their place. The mechanics are very different from what I'm used to (I'm still figuring out what of what I can do applies my diseases, and I kept forgetting to spend the talent points as I got them), but my DK is my scribe, and I wanted to get that out of the way. I did, after all, spend a lot of time farming herbs for her to go straight to 300. And, um, probably 300 cooking. After 3 hours, though, the DK was 58 and sitting in Orgrimmar with her cooking at 225 and her scribing at 120, and I wanted to play Dusk some before I had to go to bed.

So I logged back over to Dusk, got a couple of the initial Vengeance Landing quests, did the plague cannister collection, and then went up the elevator. I wandered along the road a while, marveled at the shoveltusks, went down another elevator, wandered up the coast, found myself in an excavation. Going up that elevator took some doing, and I found an Explorers' League camp. Alas, I'm a cow, and they weren't friendly.

But! There was a flock of turkeys by the road there, and remembering the General Achievement list, I quickly got 15 of them in the bag. Their corpses look like roasted turkeys, but alas, you cannot loot or eat them. (I was subsequently swarmed by a flock of angry turkeys. Go-Go Gadget Volley!)

By this time, I had decided to do the exploration achievement for the Howling Fjord and pick up all the flight paths there. So I spent the next forty-five minutes or so picking up every quest and flight path I could find, drooling over the Underwater Breathing on the Tuskars' (sp?) reputation fishing pole, and accidentally getting too close to another Alliance settlement (and getting flagged while mounted... yet again >.<). I found Arctic Clouds from which to extract air and water crystal thingies, as well, and they came in swarms! Well, like, six of them. And then subsequently got ganked by an Alliance mage riding past while I was blissfully extracting motes. (I thought I had aggroed an elemental, maybe, and kept extracting, figuring puppy would pick it up, and then I realized, wait, those are pink-purple arcane bolts... and then I was dead.) Wandering through the wolverine-men like village, I got swarmed by about 8, and took down 5 with Volley and puppy before getting killed. They have nets. >.<

And! I saw a Storm Giant - they're huge.

After I finished off the map, I hearthed back to Vengeance Landing, and I swapped out puppy for Hadrian, since I figure I'm going to want the bear for leveling. I had acquired 10 cobalt ore in my trip, which is a vast improvement from the nothing I managed to mine for the first few days of the Burning Crusade. I even have a whole water eternal, and over half an air one.

That was nothing about my to-do list, though. My to-do list for Duskhawk is entirely: Howling Fjord quests + mining right now. But what I need to squeeze in so I can do that without it nagging me:

• Take the rogue & the priest to Northrend & train professions (probably as soon as I get home)
  
• Finish grinding inscription on the death knight (tonight or tomorrow)
  
• Send leftover herbs to the rogue (right after the previous)
  
• Get old world flight paths for the death knight (maybe Sunday)
  
• Do the 225 Cooking quest on the death knight - Giant Egg (12), Zesty Clam Meat (10), Alterac Swiss (20) (whenever I do the previous)
  
• Auction leftover cooking mats (after cooking is at 300)
  
• Level death knight's Herbalism to 300 (while getting flight paths)
  
• Take death knight to Thrallmar (after finishing Herbalism)
  
• Buy first aid books for death knight (probably before I take the rogue to Northrend)
  
• Send leftover cloth to the priest (after previous)
  

I'll see what points of tailoring, enchanting, and alchemy I can grind with the materials I have on hand. I have a stack and a half of void crystals for ring enchanting, as long as that lasts me, and I'll see what I can do with the Arcanoweave Robes. Alchemy I may need to invest in some Nightmare vine, since I have enough Mana Thistle to do quite a bit of Fel Mana potion crafting. I also have a crapload of Felweed right now. But I really want to spend time on Dusk and her engineering. And... reputation for the mechano-hog. Mmm, hog.

The neglected paladin

You know, it occurred to me when I was adding tags to the toons post that I forgot to mention the only character I've ever transferred. Back when I was still playing mainly Alliance, I had a paladin. Said paladin even has her alchemy in the 280s. She's level 36, and has been for three years. I transferred her off Bronzebeard when it was free to free up space to roll my shaman. I've done two things with her since her transfer: get her free pony when the level for it was reduced to 30, and change her hairstyle when Duskhawk was trapped in the Stockade for two or three hours (oh, the irony) following a server crash a couple weeks ago. But you can add paladin to the list of classes-played-more-than-20-levels.

PS: She now has the same hair as my Blood Elf bank rogue. It's very cute on humans.

UPS says...

Delivered! Wrath will be waiting on my doorstep when I get home!

... I suppose that doesn't sound like something I should be happy about. >.>

Even Marksman hunters have pets!

I started playing a hunter initially because I like combat at range, but I'm not that big on spell casters. Still, I'm fairly loyal to my pets, and on Bronzebeard, I'm currently running with the following:

Duskhawk has:

• KitTabik (70) - a prairie wolf from Mulgore. First pet. I ran with "puppy" almost exclusively for a good year and a half, since the howl buff was okay and raiding in MC mostly meant standing there, pet at side, and spamming. He was never terrible for DPS. I occasionally tamed other things, such as the Clutch Mother or the rare black boar in the Blasted Lands, but I never really played with anything but puppy. Until...
• Violet (70) - a (now former) guildie discovered the purple tallstriders in Terokkar shortly after they went in, which coincided roughly with when he got his flying mount and took a world tour. I immediately flew down and got one after he whispered me, and for quite a while I was getting whispers asking where Violet was from. I raided Karazhan with him for a long time, until I wanted to push my DPS up a bit (and was getting tired of buying bird food, when I was drowning in cooking/fishing daily foods), and then came...
• Olin (70) - a snow leopard from Dun Morogh. He was level 8 when I got him; leveling him to 60 after the first pet XP change went pretty fast and made me 800g (thanks, Terokkar basilisks!). 60-70 took longer, but Olin was my regular raiding pet once he hit 70. He wasn't the first snow leopard I tried to tame; a level 6 gnome rogue killed that one. >.<

Then I got two more stable slots on Dusk, and the patch meant that all my pets I had before were now Ferocity pets. I decided I wanted a Tenacity and Cunning pet as well. The acquistions were...

• Hadrian (70) - a Dun Morogh black bear. I like the Dun Morogh bestiary, apparently, as they have wolves similar to mine, as well. Of all the Tenacity pets, the bear was the option that interested me most. Hadrian has tanked the Headless Horseman, and when he was still level 65, we went into Zul'Gurub alone (with my husband who was doing battlegrounds making it a raid group) and killed off a couple croc packs so I could fish up Gahz'ranka for the achievement. (We, um, didn't survive post-fishing.)
• Chad (70) - a spore bat from Zangarmarsh. He's one of the ones with the orange belly, and basically matches the Sporeggar pet. I'm not sure what I think of him yet for mechanics, but he's kind of pretty, and I wanted the armor debuff with the change to boss armor.

Mabs is an entirely different story for pets. Mabs only has Kitty, now 70, the basic nightsaber from Tel'drassil. I tamed him when he was level 5 or 6 and kept him forever. I bought her other stable slots so she could train pet skills, but other than once briefly having Humar, the pride lord, in the stable, they've been empty.

Duskmoon has the bright red cat from Eversong woods, one of the Springpaw Lynxes or some such. He's about at level with her, and is named Thirteen. Bright red cat... named Thirteen. Yes, it's a FF7 reference. Red XIII is my favorite character from that one. :P

So, my toons...

So, I have two level 70 marksman hunters on Bronzebeard: Duskhawk, a Tauren rolled in February 2006 when I went Horde full-time, and Mabs, my original Night Elf created on Easter 2005. Duskhawk is a goblin engineer (another of my... obsessions), and Mabs is my original dragonscale leatherworker, who paid 220g for the black dragonscale leggings pattern on the auction house, and accidentally deleted the 76g from auctioning the third pair she made. These aren't my only hunters, however. The others:

• Duskmoon, a level 34 Blood Elf, rolled to be my jewelcrafter on Bronzebeard. You can see how far that's gotten in a year and a half. :P Duskmoon is theoretically going Beast Mastery, but we'll see how long that lasts. (Last time I was leveling her a bit, I mentioned how I needed people to remind me I didn't need three marksman hunters on one server, and one of the other officers put it in the GMotD for several days. >.>)
  
• Kayera, a level 13 Troll on an RP server, rolled to try out RP. I haven't played her much since achievements kicked in.
• Duskhawk the level 16 Draenei, rolled to try out the Draenei starting area and because Bronzebeard was down at the time.
  
• Mabs the younger, a level 11 Night Elf rolled on a server where I had relatives playing (who subsequently transfered off, and as such, this toon is basically abandoned).

Those are all the hunters I remember having. >.> I may have a few others hanging out on servers where people I know offline play, but they're all level 1-4 or whatnot.

I do play other classes! I have (all on Bronzebeard)...

• Level 70 Undead priest, Disc/Holy hybrid, emphasis on Disc. She'll probably be 40/31/0 at 80. Mooncloth tailor.
  
• Level 70 Undead rogue, Subtlety. Pretty, pretty Subtlety. I'm as die-hard about the tree as I am about Marksman. Potion Alchemist.
  
• Level 66 Orc shaman, Elemental. The 3-foot braid is awesome with the caster animations. Dragonscale leatherworker.
  
• Level 52 Troll warrior, mostly Fury. She has the matched swords from Zul'Farrak, and will not be combining them. Swordsmith.
  

My bank toons are currently a level 30 Night Elf priest and a level 26 Blood Elf rogue. The Blood Elf has her own guild bank, because buying every vendored cooking pattern in the game for the future Death Knight (I don't get to install Wrath till I get home tonight) takes up a lot of space.

Right, no mages, no warlocks, no druids. The mage made it to level 11, the warlock to level 8, the druid to level 20; I just couldn't get into any of them.

Hey, look! A bandwagon!

I've been playing a marksman hunter in World of Warcraft since the day I hit level 10 on my first hunter (which may or may not have been the day I started playing - it's been over three years, and I don't remember how fast I leveled).

After this long, one develops quite a few opinions on the class, changes to it, problems with it, and what it just so damned fun about it. (The new Volley + someone capping Snowfall in AV = lots of pretty numbers all at once! Um, don't tell anyone I like when they cap Snowfall.)

So, especially since Wrath hits... tomorrow, I figured I would put something out here. (My CE is still 'shipping soon' according to Amazon, but supposedly will still be here tomorrow...)