Elekk Plushie - Draenor Tamers

Now that my Elekk Plushie is overstuffed, I decided to take it around to all the tamers on Draenor and start working on [An Awfully Big Adventure].  Some of them took more work to figure out than others.

Here's what worked for me:

Gargra, Frostfire Ridge:  I used a Fluxfire Feline (S/S) and Mechanical Squirrel (S/B) for this since her set up is three wolf pups.  The Fluxfire is set up with Pounce, Flux, and Supercharge; I started with it for some backline damage.  Once it dies, the Mechanical Squirrel (Metal Fist, Overtune, and Wind-Up) can take out the other one/two left.

Cymre Brightblade, Gorgrond:  Cymre took some work to figure out; she's got magic, undead, and mechanical pets.  Ultimately I ended up using the Anubisath Idol (H/H) with Crush, Stoneskin, and Deflection, paired with the Infinite Whelpling (P/P) with Tail Sweep, Healing Flame, and Early Advantage.  These two are actually one of my go-to pairs for working with carry pets, but I hadn't used them in a while.  Deflection has to be paired up opposite the Idol of Decay's Rot for this to work.

Tarr the Terrible, Nagrand:  Okay, so I hadn't actually beaten Tarr before I tried this, and doing it straight up with the Elekk Plushie took some work.  He's got three humanoids (murlocs), so I went with double undead pets:  a Ghostly Skull (H/P) with Shadow Slash, Ghostly Bite, and Siphon Life, and a Scourged Whelpling (P/S) with Shadowflame, Death and Decay, and Plagued Blood.  I opened with the whelpling, made sure to keep Death and Decay up (including refreshing it before he died), and finished them off with the skull.  There's some RNG involved in this combination, but it will be really close even when it fails.  (If I bump my whelpling from uncommon up to rare, it might be more consistent.)

Ashlei, Shadowmoon Valley:  She's got an Elekk Plushie slotted - how hard can she be?!  Anywho, her other pets are magic and beast, so I used the Emerald Proto-Whelp (P/P) with Emerald Bite, Ancient Blessing, and Proto-Strike and the Mechanical Squirrel (same set-up as for Gargra).  The Emerald Proto-Whelp will almost solo this.

Vesharr, Spires of Arak:  Vesharr has two flying pets and a mechanical that will briefly masquerade as a flyer.  I went with a Sprite Darter Hatchling (S/S) with Arcane Blast, Life Exchange, and Moonfire and a Crimson Geode (H/S) with Feedback, Amplify Magic, and Stone Rush.  I originally decided to level the geode because I've always found the Deepholm tamer annoying to beat, and it paid off for this.

Taralune, Talador:  Taralune has the standard Draenei pets, three moths.  I had good luck with a Disgusting Oozeling (H/B) with Ooze Touch, Corrosion, and Expunge opening for the Sprite Darter Hatchling.  The sprite darter's Moonfire will negate the Call Lightning, which can be really bad with Moth Balls.

Bonus:  Darkmoon Faire

I did both Darkmoon Faire tamers with the Elekk this week, too.  For Jeremy, with his magic/mechanical/beast team, I just used my regular Infinite Whelpling (same set-up as for Cymre) and Water Waveling (B/B - Ice Lance, Frost Nova, Geyser) set up and substituted the Elekk in for the Mechanical Squirrel, which is normally my third.  When the RNG is in your favor, the Infinite Whelpling will solo the first two pets, and eat the monkey's initial stun, and then the waveling can finish him off.  One of the keys is hitting the tonk with Early Advantage with the dragon buff, so you might need to pass a round (or heal or something) on the eye to get it active for the tonk.

Christoph took some experimentation to figure out.  He's got that initial fast magic pet with both a hard-hitting geyser and an attack-blocking bubble, and the obvious counter is a dragon - but which one?  It turns out the Silver Dragonhawk Hatchling (S/S) with Quills, Conflagrate, and Flame Breath can survive it.  Open with the Flame Breath to set Syd on fire; since it's a 100% speed breed, it's going to go before Syd's second-round bubble, so you can go ahead and Conflagrate on turn two, then basically Flame Breath or Quills till Syd's dead.  The tri-horn is going to kill the dragon, but a Mechanical Squirrel (Metal Fist, Overtune, Wind-Up) can take out both it and the cow.  Wind-Up will pretty much take out the tri-horn right away, but with the cow you may want to Metal Fist when you've got reduced damage to avoid wasting Wind-Up's big damage.

Garrison Choices

Now that we're a couple weeks into the expansion, I've had time to unlock Level 2 garrisons on several alts, and Level 3 on my main.  After playing around with it thus far, I think I know which way I want to go with the rest of them, as well.

Some observations:

• Having an Enchanting Hut on anyone but an enchanter can be... frustrating.  Not everything disenchants via the cauldron.  Work orders are quite expensive when you're not able to disenchant everything.  All in all, if you have an enchanting toon already... Let's just say I replaced my blacksmith's.
•  The Storehouse is awesome!  I have Jeeves and the guild bank button on my main, but I am so not regretting bank and guild bank access (and eventually transmog), and I am liking the extra work order capacity for the potential days I won't be able to check on them.  This is, in fact, what I replaced my blacksmith's Enchanting Hut with.
• I haven't figured out which, if any, toon will get a Mage Tower (whatever the Horde name for that is).  War Mill, sure.  Stables, yes.  Barracks everyone starts with, and I like followers enough to keep it.  I think I'm giving my other engineer a Goblin Workshop to see what the inventions are.  But I don't know what I'd do with the Mage Tower, really.
• Leatherworkers are still getting kind of screwed compared to professions that use ore or herbs, given that the Barn requires tying up a medium plot.  That said, the Barn isn't actually that bad for a medium plot, especially on a toon that doesn't have a tank or healer queue (for the Inn quests) or one that doesn't collect a lot of other raw materials (to do work orders at the Trading Post).
• The Gladiator's Sanctum is... well, I don't PVP.  I kind of want to give it to a toon for account completionism, but I really don't know which one I'd even try it on.  The rogue, maybe?  One of the other hunters?  I don't know.

I really like followers and follower missions.  Once I have all 13 max level toons' garrisons open, I could easily just cycle through them doing their missions every hour or two and actually not mind.  They're going out fetching 630 ilvl gear for me right now!  (They had better be.  There's a 99% success chance for those boots with the group I sent out this afternoon.)

All in all, I think the way my toons' garrisons are going to shake out are:

• Small Plot 1:  Crafting profession building
• Small Plot 2:  Storehouse or crafting profession 2 building
• Small Plot 3:  Salvage Yard or Storehouse, based on Small Plot 2
• Medium Plot 1:  Inn or Trading Post (based on gathering profession and dungeon queue roles)
• Medium Plot 2:  Lumber Mill or Barn (based on whether they need leather)
• Large Plot 1:  Barracks
• Large Plot 2:  War Mill (raiders) or Stables (gatherers); Goblin Workshop on Engineer 2

Have I mentioned that I really like followers?

What I'm Riding

And by I, of course, I mean they, my 12 13 characters that are 90+.  I've got a lot of mounts, so I try not to use the same one on two different characters.  I'll do these in the order I opened their garrisons (or plan to).

Duskhawk: Swift Shorestrider - It was a birthday present, and I still love it.

Priest: I use different mounts for different specs on the priest.  For Disc, I'm using the Imperial Quilen.  For Shadow I'm using the Spectral Wind Rider - because it's practically invisible in shadow form, and I find that amusing.

There's a wind rider there, I promise.

Death Knight: My death knight was the first toon I started using the Sky Golem on, since I was leveling her with herbalism.  I didn't realize just how much I would love its flight animation, or how much I miss it.

Warrior:  I'm still using the Sapphire Panther on my warrior; when I first made all the gem cats, I was like, dammit, they're expensive, I'm using them.  She got the blue one.  (Also I was a huge Voltron fan when I was like, 8.)

Hunter 2:  Expensive cats?  This is the jewelcrafter, so she got the black one.

Shaman:  My shaman had the yellow cat for a long time, but I switched her back to a wolf for Warlords.  I tend to prefer unarmored mounts when I have the option, so I went with the Old Cliff Jumper model, the Dire Wolf.

Warlock:  My warlock is still using the yellow cat.  I might switch her up if I find something else I like her on, but the cat turns more golden when she's got full embers, so...

Hunter 3:  This is what happens when I can't decide what mount to use: a boring old Swift Green Wind Rider.

Rogue:  I've been using the Sandstone Drake on her, because 21 canopic jars, but I'm not sure I want to keep using big giant dragon on the ground. 

Druid:  This is where I sigh about flight form and stuff.  At least the updated Astral form makes the Forest Strider look even cooler.

Mage:  This is another character using a drake mount, this time the Azure Drake from Malygos; it seemed appropriate for a mage.  I may just go back to her Burgundy Wolf due to huge drakeness on the ground.  (It matches her hair.  Ahem.)

Paladin:  My pally used to be my bank toon, so I gave her Tyrael's Charger for running back and forth between the auction house and the mailbox.  It was paladin-y, and it wasn't a huge kodo that I couldn't find the mailbox under.  It's also one of the mounts that goes seamlessly between flight and no-flight, which is a plus as you level.

Mabs:  When I first made a character, part of the reason she ended up like she did was because her hair could be green.  So she's got the green cat (after years of default nightsaber that matched her Kitty).

Argh Profession Gating

I'm a profession junky.  I had all of them maxed at the end of Mists, and four alchemists at 600 (because you can never have enough transmutes).  So garrisons have been both awesome and frustrating in that regard - awesome because it's a new system tied in, but frustrating because you run into gating based on level or resources.

If you don't use ore, your gathering bonus options are limited until later than the mine at 92; you can't unlock the herb garden until 94.  Want more leather?  The barn requires more work for leather than the mine or the herb garden do for their materials.  I haven't started my leatherworker yet, so I'm not sure this is actually going to be a big deal, and now that I know how trapping works, it's not that bad to deal with.  I'm still accidentally killing some things when I try to trap them, and I'm still running into mobs that inexplicably won't set off the trap, but I can go grab seven or eight boars or talbuk or clefthoofs and be good for the day's work orders in fifteen minutes in the right area.  It does seem a bit unfair that you have to tie up a medium building for it, though.

I'm more frustrated by the gating of the intermediary crafting materials than anything else, though.  We've had recipe acquisition gated behind dailies since Wrath, and I hated it for jewelcrafting then, but these are innocuous dailies more along the lines of alchemical and inscription discoveries, so they're not really that bad - you even get to pick which recipe you learn.  But I'm sitting on so much ore on my engineer, and I can't do anything with it.  I've got Blingtron 5k and scopes and pets in my recipe list, but I can't do anything to make them yet.  Delayed gratification sucks, but it also means that there's not going to be any jumping in on the market of selling those pets and scopes any time soon, because I'm saving up to make myself that gun and some goggles.

And that also sucks.  I'm trying to get into Molten Core, but I had bad luck on quest item upgrades at an ilvl that mattered, and so far my dungeon drops have been for slots that I already had 615 pieces in.  My most recent upgrades came from Mr. Pinchy Sr. (who got me into heroics) and 615 shoulders from a garrison mission.  I'll get there, and it won't be horribly slow, but there's no more, "Oh, I'll just drop 5k on mats on the auction house and make myself a piece of gear for that one slot I really need to upgrade."  Having done the silver proving grounds required for heroic dungeons at a 584 ilvl, though, it's a bit frustrating.

But I made my Elekk plushie last night, and my blacksmith has a forge in construction (actually it finished sometime last night), and this weekend I'll probably get all my alts a level 2 garrison so I can have their profession buildings made well before I actually get around to leveling them, so I can stockpile materials for when I do.  Other than herbs, I think I can keep them mostly supplied with raw materials for their cooldowns just from my main.  My death knight might get bumped up in playtime just for herb gathering.  Once I have a follower in the herb garden, that may end up unnecessary, though.

I like the tie-in of hunting down a follower of the affiliated profession and, now that they've got the mission levels fixed, leveling them up to the point they can go to work for you in the profession buildings.  I'm also liking the "cook to learn more cooking," although not so much the five meats/filets to make anything.  The talbuk have been scrawny.

All in all, it's not a bad system; it's just frustrating after several years with only the major pieces requiring delayed gratification for crafting.  Titansteel cooldowns, living steel cooldowns, sure.  Scopes being gated by cooldowns?  Not really sold on that, but it's what we've got.  I've been reluctant to put a scope on my leveling ranged weapons, because who knows when they'll be replaced, and I need those gears for a gun and goggles.


I should have just bought the yak, though.  That 120k I stockpiled before the expansion isn't going to be needed for powerleveling  professions this time around, because there is no more powerleveling professions if you're already at 600.

On the gating flipside, thank God there's a cap on timber stockpiling, because I was starting to somewhat obsessively deforest Nagrand.

6.0 - Initial Thoughts

Patch day has come and gone, and besides Battleground queues being temporarily broken...

I need a 'mog worthy of her now.

First and foremost, my warrior looks amazing. When I first saw her updated model in the beta, I nearly cried. Troll hair has been notoriously... sad, and she just looks awesome now.

My wolf dances again. I started burning party grenades after watching my tauren’s facial expressions while dancing, and I had puppy out from a foray into the new UBRS, and... I may have kind of shouted in excitement to my husband.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I only changed 7 of about 40 faces: three unfortunate human eyebrows; two unexpectedly scowling gnomes; one overly perky night elf; and one troll that has so many awesome options now that I liked better. The rest I’ve been happy enough with, although I might go change some hairstyles now that they’re less blocky.

My rogue won the most-filled-crafting-tab. She’s the one that’s kept one stack of every type of herb.

Yes, that's Blood of Heroes.

I shoved so much stuff into void storage on my main hunter... and then went and did the same on my warlock, because wow, she had a lot of banked gear.

My shaman won the most-gold-from-currency-conversion: ~1400g.

I snagged the Bottomless Bag pattern for <100g. Thanks, combined Auction House!

And soloing... Just, wow. Last time I hopped into Dragon Soul 10N (about 3 weeks ago?) Morchok killed me since my pet wouldn’t tank him. I killed him in 9 seconds last night. Everything up to Spine was a cakewalk; Spine does some weird rolling stuff that’s going to take some work to get down smoothly.

I haven't tried out healing on my priest yet - I have heard mixed reviews.  I'll see how it goes later this week.

Soon...

Well, we know for sure now that 6.0 is coming on Tuesday.  A lot of the expansion's mechanical changes will show up, even though the content won't be available until the release date.  Some of these I will miss, and some I will not.

I will not miss...

• Hit rating, and the affiliated reforging.  So frequently I'd get into the later stages of a tier and either be dripping in excess hit rating, or unable to get enough of it, usually the former.
• Kor'kron guards.  I've been irritated by them since they moved into the Undercity, and I don't even like Sylvanas.
• Faction-separated auction houses.  I've got at least two characters I had to go to the other faction for to get transmog gear.  I will be glad to cut out the middle-men in Booty Bay.
• Having to macro Revive Pet and Mend Pet to save space on my action bar.  They've been like that since Vanilla.  That change is long due.
• Garrosh Hellscream.  Oh, wait...

I will miss...

• Flying.  Hopefully it comes to Draenor at some point - the place is gorgeous, and there are some views you only get from the air.
• A spammable instant shot.  I don't really care about Arcane Shot going from a rotational point of view, but for quickly pulling half a dozen things over for my bear to tank...
• Damage on the level 90 talents as Discipline.  It means I'll need to go Shadow to solo old dungeons via Halo.  It also highlights that Discipline really is a healing tree.  (There's a comment in the patch notes about them being between a full healer and a full damage dealer, which means there's a real chance they'll just suck at both.  I'll see how some dungeons go after Tuesday.)

I guess there's not a lot I'm really going to miss.  I'm a bit nostalgic about Scatter Shot going, since I used it a lot in Vanilla PVP, and Hunter's Mark - rogues get to hide again.

I've already mentioned that I'm looking forward to some of the changes to the inventory UI - I'm really looking forward to them.  I will likely spend most of Tuesday getting all that sorted out, and then running around buying yet more toys.

And maybe beating up Garrosh again for a fancy bow.

Toybox Prep

Now that several waves of toys have been added to the toybox on the beta, and I've done some obsessive putting-away-of-toys, I've started looking at the toys I don't have.  Some I don't have because I never bought them for lack of space; some I didn't finish out the quests or reputation for.  And of course, some of them are new for Warlords.

So now that we know when the expansion is launching, I've got about three months to level alts, wrap up quests, achievements, and reputations... and go toy hunting.  Wowhead's got a good guide for toys overall, and between that, Altoholic (to weed out stuff I have somewhere), and the beta client, I've been looking at what I can do ahead of time.


Some of the items are going to be pricy (Kalytha's Haunted Locket), and some are just going to require farming (all the Timeless Isle drops I haven't gotten yet), but I've definitely got enough to keep me occupied for three months.

Or rather, the guesstimated month or so after the 6.0 patch, because, well, inventory.  I hit up a few of the easy ones - Gokk'lok's Shell, the Gin-Ji Knife Set, and similar items - and realized that if I start collecting before the patch, I'm going to have zero bag spaces free for the next few months.

So for now I'm curating my spreadsheet, accumulating some currency, and waiting for the WoW equivalent of a Black Friday shopping spree.

UI Upgrade Anticipation

The beta servers have had a couple character wipes, so I haven't done much more with it besides log over obsessively afterwards to see what's been added to the toy box.

Ahem.

Anyway, several of the upcoming features are enticing enough that I really miss them when I go back to the live servers.  Despite all the chaos and whatnot that it will bring, the 6.0 patch can't come soon enough in some ways.  These are my top three that I'm impatient for right now:

The Toy Box

So yeah, this is the first thing I've been doing after character wipes: recopying toons to see what I've got that's been added to the toy box.

It's getting there!  I'm a bit of a collector, so having a list like this is neat because it means I don't need to make a spreadsheet.  Or at least, it gives me the list for the first column of the spreadsheet.

I... may have had a zone spreadsheet for pets before it was added into the UI.

Anywho, on to...

Bag Clean Up

I was initially annoyed at how the new "Clean Up Bags" sorted things, but between the dropdowns on the bags themselves and the interface options, you can easily make stuff go where you want it to now.

 Most of my toons have one bag where I keep all their utility items - hearthstone, profession tools, the Darkmoon Faire Adventurer's Guide, and similar items.  I just have to remember to set that bag to "ignore" before sorting the first time, and it's going to be awesome.

I really miss this on my current auction toon when I've mailed myself a lot of stuff and then it intermixes with the auction mail.  It puts all the cloth together, herbs together, etc.

The Reagent Bank

The reagent bank is an amazing space saver; between having basically a whole guild bank tab and most materials stacking to two hundred, I'm actually planning to packrat a lot of legacy materials that I don't bother to right now.

Having four alchemists, I'm still going to run into who-has-what-herbs problems, but with the ability to easily stockpile so many and to craft straight from the bank, it's going to be awesome regardless.

It's a good thing we don't have to wait till November for these parts to go in, since I really want them now.

Beta Notes 10-12 (with bonus notes, Part 8)

Here's parts 10-12 of my beta notes, including some priest notes, initial Forsaken changes, and more.  Spoilers, of course.

Battle Pet: Infinite Whelpling

The Infinite Whelpling is one of my favorite battle pets; he's one of the three I use to beat the Darkmoon Faire tamer.

In its native environs

In the wild, the whelpling is found by the entrance to the Caverns of Time, and the spawns I've seen have all been level 13 and 14.  They're not uncommon, so unless someone is farming for a rare, you can probably pick one up easily.

For his first slot ability, you can pick between Tail Sweep and Sleeping Gas.  I usually have Tail Sweep slotted, since he's not particularly fast, unless I'm using him to farm levels for low-level pets, since he's faster than most of the wild pets I'm usually fighting. Tail Sweep is especially nice against a faster magic pet, since you'll get the type bonus on both hits.  This is what I use to knock out Judgement fast.

His second ability slot can be either Healing Flame or Weakness.  I'm not sure I've ever slotted weakness - Healing Flame is pretty good, especially if the pet you're fighting has a predictable ability pattern.  The harder he's hit the previous attack, the more he'll heal.

The third ability slot lets you pick either Early Advantage ('cause, well, he's part of the infinite flight) or Darkflame.  Early Advantage is especially good versus Jeremy Feasel because he'll follow up Judgement with Honky-Tonk, and the ability is strong against mechanicals.  Since he likely took a good deal of damage from Judgement, he'll get the double damage, and he'll probably have the dragonkin type bonus, too.  Darkflame can be useful in fights against pets with healing that needs to be countered, though.

We haven't seen the last of the infinite dragonflight!

Hearthstone Interlude: Daily Quests

So today's daily quest popped up, and it's "Destroy them all" - you know, the destroy 40 minions quest.  And immediately I thought: mage quest.

I'm not great at Hearthstone - I hover around rank 19 or 20, occasionally flirting with 18, but I don't play enough to get that good at it.  I am starting to favor particular classes for particular quests, though.

Seven of the daily quests don't have a class requirement, so you can complete them with whichever deck you want to play.  Here are the ones I like for each; if the first class seems to be having bad luck that day, I'll switch to one of the ones down the list.

3 Victories!: Win 3 games with any class.

1. Hunter
2. Warrior
3. Mage

Beat Down: Deal 100 damage to enemy heroes.

1. Mage
2. Warrior

Destroy them All: Destroy 40 minions.

1. Mage
2. Warlock
3. Warrior

Only the Mighty: Play 20 minions that cost 5 or more.

1. Priest (customized for high-cost minions)

Spell Master: Cast 40 spells.

1. Druid
2. Mage
3. Warlock

The Meek Shall Inherit: Play 30 minions that cost 2 or less.

1. Rogue (my murloc deck)
2. Paladin
3. Priest (customized for low-cost minions)
4. Hunter

Total Dominance: Win 7 games in any mode.

1. Hunter
2. Warrior
3. Mage 

For the "X or Y class wins" quests, I basically have a priority:

1. Hunter
2. Warrior
3. Warlock
4. Mage
5. Rogue
6. Priest
7. Shaman
8. Paladin
9. Druid

The priority lists aren't necessarily which deck is the strongest, but a mix of how much I enjoy the class and how like the deck's playstyle and how likely I am to win with it.  It's not a perfect mirror of my WoW class preferences - my WoW #2 is priests, and mage is one of the three I don't have at 90 (yet).  Hearthstone Jaina plays like Jaina from the books, though, and I appreciate that quite a bit.

Do you have different deck preferences for the quests?

Beta Notes: Part 9

Another night, another round of beta notes!  Spoilers, of course.  Notes in bold, comments after.

Beta Notes 5-7 (Now With Screenshots!)

Here's parts 5-7 of my beta notes.  Spoilers abound!

Beta Notes, 2-4

Here's my notes parts 2 to 4.  Some of the lag-related bugs have been fixed since I made the notes.

Remember: There are spoilers!!

Beta Notes!

So Friday is the only one this summer I wasn't taking off work this summer, and while glancing through my email at the workshop I was attending, I saw a beta invite email.  I assumed it was spam.  Nope!  Got home and the beta (still labeled alpha) was in my launcher.  Apparently it's a stress test? Regardless, I'm in.

Friday it was quite disconnect-y, and it still was much of today, but today was more playable.  Here's my notes I made as I played (notes in bold, with commentary).

THIS IS PRETTY SPOILERY FOR TANAAN JUNGLE STUFF IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THEM.

On Role-Playing

So I named my death knight yesterday.  Granted, yeah, she's 87, and she technically has a name already, but I popped a less silly one into MRP for her.  She's not on an RP server, but most of my high-level toons aren't.

I'm not particularly good in role-playing in that I'm not good at interacting with other people on that level; at the same time, some of my characters do have backgrounds or whatnot in my head which, to some extent, influences how I play them.

So my death knight is, or rather, was Nalaya Stormhoof, who'd been a field medic prior to her unfortunate demise and new career as a death knight.

My warlock was a blood elf who went through a horrible transporter malfunction and is now a goblin.  (I apparently wrote this background for her when I did the race change years ago and forgot until I reloaded MRP on my main server.)  As a goblin, she's a compulsive salesperson, and she's the only character I'm comfortable doing public channel guild promotion in.  She's also a bit obsessed with fire, and as a goblin destro lock, the ancestor quest with Lorewalker Cho was a bit disturbingly spot-on.  Other than the whole, you know, transporter malfunction thing.

My original paladin is a refugee from Arathor, currently a resident of Stormwind.  (And this is why I no longer create back stories that might require grinding PVP reputation, because that's going to take forever.)

My gnome 'lock thinks her demons are her best friends and her imp (Geltip) is her assistant scribe.

One of my Forsaken hunters (I... I have 13 hunters, okay?) was a watchmaker in Andorhal before joining the war and becoming a marksman.

So it's mostly little things; the character I've got the most concept of background and relationships for is the unnamed human hunter I've used in the fan-fic stories... and I haven't actually a) decided on a name for her or b) made her as a character in-game.  I did name a chicken battle pet Ermintrude, though, so that's already set up for her.  Maybe one day (when I actually decide on a name)...

Tactics #3: Dispels

This tactics post will probably be shorter than the first two, since dispelling isn't something that's particularly difficult; it's more something to be aware is crucial on some fights, and what your character can (if anything) dispel.

Wowpedia has a good table for who can dispel what; if your class and/or specialization can dispel, and you aren't already running a healing addon that tells you about it, a nice non-healer-specific addon for tracking friendly/defensive dispels is Decursive.  An addon isn't necessary for dispelling if you're good at watching buffs/debuffs on health bars, but if you just can't seem to keep track of them, Decursive has its own little tiny health bars that you can plop somewhere you can keep an eye on them.  I switched over to Decursive during Cataclysm after three expansions of healing as a priest without an addon, simply because I got tired of juggling Dispel Magic targets.

So what's the deal with dispelling?  Some fights you'll run into have bosses or other monsters that will put a debuff on some or all of the characters in your group.  These debuffs may do massive damage to their targets, or if they may have a debilitating effect if left on too long.  Some debuffs can just be healed through, but if your group is dying repeatedly to them, focusing more on dispelling than keeping everyone's health topped off may prove to be more effective.

Dispelable debuffs come in four flavors: magic, poison, diseases, and curses.  Different classes can dispel different debuffs, but most healing classes can dispel at least two.  If you're not sure what you can dispel (if anything), check out that Wowpedia table or just browse through your spellbook.  If you're coming back to the game after a relatively long break, dispels underwent a major overhaul in Mists of Pandaria, so they may have changed since you last played.

Some points to remember:

• Healers have the most dispel options, but caster classes in general often can do at least one, even if it's only to dispel offensively (for example, if the boss puts a heal-over-time spell on itself).  If your healers are getting overwhelmed, see what your options for spreading out the load are.
• If you're in a group that has multiple healers, divide up the work.  Most dispel abilities have an 8-second cooldown, and frequently two or three targets will need dispelling at the same time.  All the healers should probably be watching for them.
• Priests have a mass-dispel ability on a longer cooldown; this can be helpful when everyone is grouped up, but it doesn't work on all effects.  It's also mana-intensive when used repeatedly, so it's not really effective as a crutch in a large group if the other healers aren't helping.
• Dispelling is similar to shield effects in that it frequently prevents damage rather than heals damage taken.  A healer with a lot of dispels in a dispel-heavy fight may have a lower healing throughput on a meter than the other healers in the group, but similar to shielding, they may be making up for that with the dispels.
• Some fights may require a diverse healing roster due to the variety of debuffs involved; if you're missing a dispel type, it may be harder for your group to kill that particular boss.

Hearthstone

Once upon a time, I played M:TG.  Back when, you know, I still lived around other people I knew who play.  So getting into Hearthstone hasn't been terribly hard.  I have a hunter deck I like, a rogue/murloc deck that works for the quests (and murloc swarming is always hilarious), a warlock deck that's fun (and not just because getting screwed over by your own demons is awesome), and a priest deck I made for the daily quest to summon something like 30 minions that cost 5 or more... that turned out to be fairly decent for casual play, as well.  And of course the mage deck with Archmage Antonidas and his endless fireballs never fails to disappoint for the "deal 100 damage to enemy characters" daily quest.

So why am I playing Garrosh, damn it?

I set the deck up thus, with a Gorehowl at the bottom that's below the scroll:

I wanted to make a deck that would play off the Knife Juggler, Violet Teacher, and Imp Master, which meant also pulling in the Frothing Berserker, Cult Master, and Flesheating Ghoul to play off the deaths of all those little minions you're hopefully summoning.  Questing Adventurer got thrown in because, well, why not?  It's a fairly light deck mana-wise, and it's easy to bump him up fast.

Warrior decks seem okay for buffing minions if they can survive a little damage.  And a Frothing Berserker hitting for 20 points in round 5 is just... impressive.  A bad draft means you lose pretty fast, but if a couple cards come out in combo and your opponent doesn't or can't knock off the dangerous ones (mainly the Berserker, Ghoul, and Adventurer) in a timely manner, they can quickly become overwhelming.  The Warsong Commander to give them charge when they first come out, the Cruel Taskmaster and Rampage to quickly ramp them up even more...

It's not a perfect deck, but it's making the non-class-specific dailies go pretty fast.

Alt Leveling Plans

So I've got nine toons at 90 right now, one hovering at 88, one at 85, and a slew of lower ones.  Someone linked this (plans for no flying at all in Draenor) today on an alt guild's Facebook page, and my gut reaction to it is that my druid is going to be abandoned.

I love flight form.  Seriously, it was my impetus for rolling a druid at all.  If you've seen the most recent Captain America movie, the scenes with the Falcon pretty much epitomize why I love it for my druid.  (Sitting in the theater, going, "That! That is what I love about my druid!")

But she's 90, and, well, high level alts get leveled.  It just happens.  Some of them will be through questing, some through dungeons, some through... other means.  But not being to to use flight form in post-90 content, basically ever?  Druid's probably getting leveled through dungeons and then probably parked unless I like the new druid healing enough to do raid finder on her.  Sure, all my characters will be grounded, but travel form isn't as fast as ground mounts.  Cat stealth is weak compared to rogues'.  Since soloing content isn't what I like about her, it's not what I'm going to do on her.

This train of thought led to other alt leveling thoughts.  My main had all the pre-Wrath Loremaster pieces done before Wrath (and achievements) hit, and she got Seeker before hitting 80; it's kind of obvious she's going to be questing out all the zones.  But my alts get narrower subsets of content.

(In the order they're on my character screen):

Alliance (Original) Hunter:  Will get leveled through the Alliance quest content, to see what's different

This was taken before I know about alt+z

Rogue:  I may see what I can do with leveling her through archaeology again, probably combined with herbalism.  I used to stealth through Azshara picking herbs for hours on her in vanilla.  There's a reason she's Subtlety.  (I maxed her herbalism at 85 long before I started actually leveling her to 90.)

This is how I leveled 85-90

Warrior:  Mix of questing and probably trying dungeon tanking again.  The warrior is usually the 3rd or 4th I level.  She's a swordsmith.

Questing as Prot

(Main)

It's not like I don't have ground mount options

Priest:  More dungeons (healing), some questing, because I always like seeing how well Disc solos in the questing environment.  Plus disenchanting quest rewards helps for enchanting materials.  The priest is usually the 2nd leveled.  (Although 4th in Mists.)

I swapped her offspec back to Shadow, alas

Baby Hunter 1:  This is my jewelcrafter & scribe, and she tends to get leveled in parallel with the warrior.  Because of how well hunters solo, I frequently quest again on her.

She does have the coolest cat

Shaman:  Probably mostly dungeons as Elemental and some questing to open up phasing/zones.  Since she's a leatherworker, I'll likely open up content I need for skinning, too - I went back and did Vashj'ir on her at 85 because I needed the skinning there.

She has the best orc hair!

Warlock:  I did all of the Lorewalker discoveries on her pre-90 (which means yes, on a ground mount), then found out I couldn't get the quests from the scrolls until 90.  This is the character that got taken on the road trip to Dalaran at 43 (to be parked there to summon people there until I got around to leveling her).  She tends to get leveled around 5th or 6th, in parallel with the shaman, so I'll probably do more map discovery/herbalism/some question/some dungeons with her.  She's my transmuter.

Apparently goblins have problems with Pandaren furniture

Baby Hunter 2: This is my flask alchemist; I'll probably level her alchemy long before she's leveled.  She's 88 right now.  I'll finish getting her to 90 probably in the next couple months.

I took ALL my 85+ through Karazhan for the pets

Paladin (bank):  My bank is 76; I've hardly touched her in terms of leveling since Mists started, partly because she's not in my main guild, and partly because I haven't gotten around to learning the paladin changes.  One day!

Stalled out bank toon? You get the BEST ride

Druid:  Like I said before: probably mostly through dungeons.  She was leveled mostly through mining, herbalism, and pet battles from the 60s on, with some dungeons thrown in.

In the Zangarmarsh

Death Knight (on a connected realm):  My death knight is 85, my second transmuter, and I've leveled her mostly through dungeons, with a smattering of herbalism and pet battles.  I really like tanking on her; I just have to get back into it for Mists content, which is a bit intimidating despite doing it on my warrior.

They took my scourgestone :(

I have a lot of baby alts (Catnome, goblin & troll hunters, orc mage) that I want to level, and have started slowly doing so, but I don't know where they're going to fit into the mix.  I also want to make an orc hunter after the new models come out.  Then I'll have one of all of them Horde-side except Pandaren, because I'm not doing the Pandaren starting zone again.

I really wish all my alts were on connected servers, because I've got about 15 others I want to level, but just am not as likely to get to without my guild.  Maybe one day.

I was promised a pony!

... and I got like 36 gazillion.  My tauren (not the paladin, and obviously not the warlock) now has access to:

• Argent Warhorse
• Black Skeletal Horse
• Blue Skeletal Horse
• Brown Skeletal Horse
• Celestial Steed
• Fiery Warhorse
• Forsaken Warhorse
• Green Skeletal Warhorse
• Headless Horseman's Mount
• Hearthsteed
• Ochre Skeletal Warhorse
• Purple Skeletal Warhorse
• Red Skeletal Horse
• Red Skeletal Warhorse
• Swift Zhevra
• Tyrael's Charger
• White Skeletal Warhorse

Yes, ten of those are technically undead forsaken ponies, but they're still ponies.  That still leaves me seven pony models on a tauren.  Back when WoW first launched, all she could use was kodos and wolves, and for the PVP mounts she could also use the raptor (which I ground for for ages so I could buy it the day it went live).

Not counted:

• Camels
• Hippogryphs ("hippo" being for horse... even if they gave them deer features)
• Talbuks (their horns and skeletal warhorses' horns were confusing me)
• Windsteed (because... um... I'm really not sure what it is, taxonomically)
• All the Alliance pony mounts my night elf has access too

There are still ponies I don't have - Invincible, Rivendare's - but I don't think I'm hurting too badly for pony options.

Timeless Armor

The Timeless Isle was an interesting addition to the Siege of Orgrimmar raid patch - non-raid content (mostly) that included parts of the legendary cloak quest, some world bosses with current tier for both PVE and PVP, and a reputation grind for another Pandarian dragon mount.

It also brought us Timeless armor tokens, account-bound tokens that we could use to gear up alts and fill in gaps until we got something better.  Lots and lots of Timeless armor tokens.

And you know what?  That's okay.  Timeless armor tokens have some uses beyond just vendoring once you've kitted out your alts.

New character on a new server?  No cash?  Send them a couple tokens!  Five gold a pop.

Short on sha crystals?  Send your extra tokens of the appropriate armor type to your enchanter, make a piece of gear, crush.

Now I'm working on the Bigger Bag achievement, so I'm getting tokens more again.  I should be able to restock my sha crystals, and I can gear up my death knight when she finally hits 90.  It's going to take a while - I got Huolon's mount on the wrong character.

6.0 Alpha Patch Notes!!

Rather than just repeat everything that's been said already, I'm just gonna link you the patch notes (in case you somehow haven't seen them), and then link you over to all of WoWhead's stuff (and their talent/perks calculator), because Carpnado. There's a lot of cool stuff popping up in the datamining (Glyph of Play Dead!), but since it's thus far contextless, I'm going to look mostly at the patch notes stuff right now.

Since these are alpha patch notes, all of this is subject to (and likely to in some way) change, but here's what affects Marksmanship out of that (gloriously long) patch notes post:

Removed abilities:

• Aspect of the Hawk
• Distracting Shot
• Hunter’s Mark
• Lynx Rush
• Rapid Fire
• Rapid Recuperation
• Serpent Sting and Improved Serpent Sting
• Widow Venom
• Scatter Shot
• Silencing Shot (but not Counter Shot)

Removed for Marksmanship:

• Arcane Shot

Moved to talents:

• Stampede (replaces Lynx Rush)

Changed abilities/talents:

• Thrill of the Hunt affects Aimed Shot
• Aspect of the Iron Hawk will just reduce damage (not increase attack power)
• Revive Pet and Mend Pet are one button and switch function based on whether you have a live pet (basically replacing my revive/mend macro)
• Traps won't need to arm - they can go off as soon as you drop them
• Traps won't be disarmable (they're taking Disarm Traps away from rogues, anyway)
• Scare Beast PVP duration will be 6 seconds
• The aspect bar is being removed and the remaining aspects will be toggles on the GCD:
• Aspect of the Pack
• Aspect of the Cheetah
• Glyph of Aspect of the Beast
• Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah won't trigger cooldowns on aspects
• Aimed Shot damage is being buffed and will once again not interrupt Autoshot
• Dismiss Pet won't need line-of-site
• Pets will have a 1 second GCD
• Explosive Trap will put a DOT on anything in range when it goes off, rather than be a fire puddle

Pet abilities removed:

• Cower
• Rabid
• Specific pet abilities:
• Basilisk: Petrifying Gaze; Bat: Sonic Blast; Bear: Demoralizing Roar; Bird of Prey: Snatch; Carrion Bird: Demoralizing Screech; Core Hound: Lava Breath; Crab: Pin; Crane: Lullaby; Crocolisk: Ankle Crack; Dog: Lock Jaw; Fox: Tailspin; Goat: Trample; Gorilla: Pummel; Hyena: Cackling Howl; Monkey: Bad Manners; Moth: Serenity Dust; Nether Ray: Nether Shock; Porcupine: Paralyzing Quill; Raptor: Tear Armor; Rhino:  Horn Toss; Scorpid: Clench; Serpent: Serpent's Swiftness; Shale Spider: Web Wrap; Silithid: Venom Web Spray; Spider: Web; Sporebat: Spore Cloud; Tallstrider: Dust  Cloud; Wasp: Sting

Changed pet abilities:

• Sporebat: Energizing Spores now affects both melee and spell haste

Draenor Perks:

• Enhanced Kill Shot: Bigger Kill Shot window
• Enhanced Camouflage: Heal while camouflaged
• Enhanced Chimera Shot: Costs less focus
• Enhanced Aimed Shot: Crits generate focus
• Improved Focus: Larger focus pool
• Improved Aimed Shot: Increased damage
• Improved Steady Shot: Increased damage
• Enhanced Shots: Increased range
• Enhanced Piercing Shots: Multishot crits apply bleeds

Level 100 Talents:

• Flaming Shots: Autoshot BURNINATES
• Focusing Shot: Replace Steady Shot with one longer shot that generates focus, but can't be used on the move
• Lone Wolf: Play without a pet

Okay, so that's the consolidated bits of the infodump that directly affect Marksman specifically (rather than all of us players as a whole, like the stat squishes and whatnot).  What does all of this mean thus far?

Well, I can get rid of my Mend Pet/Revive Pet macro that I've had since... I dunno, 2005?

Toolbar changes (not shown: Hunter's Mark, Widow Venom)

I'm looking at the level 100 talents and thinking, well, I want to play with my pet.  I don't mind pet management, and I like the added flavor and variety.   There may be fights where it's worth it to swap into it, though.  Between Flaming Shots and Focusing Shot, I have a feeling I may change that one frequently for soloing and trash versus boss fights.  Stuff tends to die fast enough on trash and while soloing that a 3-second cast to regenerate focus for Aimed, Chimera, and Multi may be prohibitive.

The Draenor Perks are also a nice addition; they further define the specialization and INCREASED SHOT RANGE I'VE MISSED YOU.  Ahem.  I used to consistently specialize into it when it was in the old talent trees.  Healing while Camouflaged will give us a nice alternative to eating that may not be possible if stuck in combat or if in an area where the odds of getting attacked again are high.

Since the Aspect bar is down to three buttons, and losing one, I'm not going to miss it.  Once upon a time we got as high as what, six buttons?  Aspects are a neat idea, but one that apparently hasn't worked out for the hunter class the way they once thought they would.  This will also move the pet bar back over on top of my active bars and make it faster for me to call my pet off, since it will be less distance for the mouse to travel.

With Murder of Crows and Stampede moving into the same row of talents, they may become situational: Crows for single-target fights since they're a DOT; Stampede for multi-target fights since they can move around.  I'm likely to favor Crows, though, despite the joys of the Army of Sporebats.  I just really enjoy swarming someone with a flock of birds.

I'm expecting haste is still going to be a fairly desirable stat for Marksman, to bring down both the Aimed Shot cast time and that of whichever focus-generator you're using at the time.  Right now Focusing Shot looks like it will generate about double the focus of a pair of Steady Shots, and it might work better for an expensive-shot rotation like Aimed and Chimera.

All in all this just makes me more impatient to be able to get in and play around with all the new stuff!

5 Favorite Engineering Gadgets

I've been an engineer since I made my second hunter - the first is a leatherworker, and by the time I got to the second I knew I wanted to be able to make my own ammunition.  Ammunition is, of course, gone now, but that's still left me with a wealth of interesting gadgets.

I'm carrying a 36-slot engineering bag around me for all the ones I'm still toting around with me; after whittling down the list, these are my top five favorite:

5.  MOLL-E:  I looked high and low for a screenshot of my MOLL-E in action, but it's one of the more mundane gadgets I carry, so none immediately jumped out at me.  I'm sure it's in a boss-kill shot somewhere; I just haven't found it yet.  My favorite engineering gadgets fall into one of two categories:  Insanely practical (MOLL-E barely beat out the Thermal Anvil for #5) or randomly deadly.  MOLL-E hasn't killed me... yet.

4.  Zapthrottle Mote Extractor:  The mote extractor was the source of much random glee and obsessive zapping in the Burning Crusade:  it lets you suck elemental motes out of random balls of gas in various zones.  Water (originally life) in Zangarmarsh, mana in Netherstorm, air in Nagrand, shadow in Shadowmoon Valley.  And it puts them on your map now.

3.  Dimensional Ripper - Everlook: This is my favorite of the many transport items available to engineering, because one of the possible mishaps sets you on fire.  I was unprepared the first time this happened and quickly burnt to death; after that I learned to pay attention and eat immediately - percentage-based food was especially helpful.

I... actually have a lot of screenshots very similar to this one.

2.  Parachute Cloak (and its descendant, the Flexweave Underlay):  I love parachuting into places.  It's great now that I can do damage while doing so now - for Galakras I volunteer for the tower groups, and do one of the guns, because I can parachute down and hit stuff en route.  Way back when, I would use this as a shortcut into the Un'Goro Crater from Tanaris.

1. Loot-A-Rang:  This is the gadget I want on all my other toons.  Loot-A-Rang, Fetch, it's all good.  I have both on several hunters.  An excellent follow-up to the Booterang.


So, when I was making this list, I decided to thin out the explosives, since they're not really gadgets, per se, but they were quickly bloating the list.  So here's a bonus list of my favorite explosives:

5.  Explosive Sheep:  Sheep, that explode.  This should not be difficult to understand, especially if you're familiar with Worms Armageddon.

4.  Goblin Mortar (and the Mortar: Reloaded):  Because:

This isn't the only screenshot I have in this approximate position.

3.  Seaforium:  If you ever went through Dire Maul on a tribute run and couldn't get the key to drop...  Also allowed you to bypass that annoying slime tunnel in the Shattered Halls.  And open locked chests.  Handy when rogues are on the decline.  (Or when they hadn't leveled lockpicking, aeons ago.)

2.  Global Thermal Sapper Charge:  Just insert cackling here.  I used to use these in Wintergrasp.  I still have a couple, but the cooldown on them puts all your explosives on a five minute cooldown.

1.  Goblin Rocket Launcher:  We used to use this for the first pull in the Botanica, for the stun.  One of my favorite PVP deaths was getting sheeped by a gnome mage (I was on my priest), and then she follows it up by immediately pulling out this rocket launcher.  It was just awesome.

Alt-ing

I've had a database for my alts for a while, mostly because I like numbers, pulled off the spreadsheet I was using to assign mounts.  Because with 200+ mount options and a max of 50 characters, there's no way I'm going to be using all of them.  (That's okay; taurens get striders; gnomes get kodos; it's all good.)

Anywho, @wowcynwise was talking today on Twitter about hours played vs. how competent one feels with one's alts, and it made me wonder how levels:hours compared on my alts.  I had put levels into the database, but not hours, because the latter changes much more frequently than the former.

This is how adding hours in turned out:

Class	Count(Class)	Sum(tLevel)	Sum(Hours)
hunter	12	543	11227
priest	6	270	1887
warrior	5	168	757
death knight	2	143	87
warlock	4	130	460
paladin	2	125	366
shaman	3	96	695
druid	2	95	169
rogue	1	90	1524
mage	5	82	59
monk	2	18	6

For the most part total levels and hours played parallel each other, but there are a few noticeable exceptions.  Death knights get a big level bump from the free 55 levels.  My lone rogue is, yes, 90, but the bulk of her hours played are from vanilla WoW.  My shaman's hours played gets a similar bump from doing her initial leveling in vanilla and the Burning Crusade.

This only includes extant characters, since I keep my Altoholic pruned when I delete alts, but I think the highest level character I've deleted was a level 20 druid, excluding death knights that hadn't yet left their starting zone.  (Prior to getting my Minfernal I had been checking out the low-population PVP servers.  Ahem.)

Regarding how comfortable I feel with the classes versus their time played, the main exception to the order above is paladins.  I haven't really played my paladins since Cataclysm, and some of their mechanics changed significantly since then.

I think it's pretty clear why I named the blog what I did, though.  All of those hunters (well, besides the level 6 one) are marksman.