Wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but it was. I was at 4k DPS and still near last. I was a pug in a Food Network raid. Crazy!

Yesterday I finished off the long quest chain to upgrade my Beaststalker Armor to the slightly better, mostly purple Beastmaster Armor

Firstly, collecting the Dungeon Set 1 pieces were a pain in the neck, particularly the chestpiece which took about a million UBRS runs to kill the General. Then, the long quest chain, the highlight of which was farming twilight cultists for their clothes so I could summon Abyssal templars, so I could get Abyssal crests which would allow me to summon a Duke, and I needed to kill one of the four randomly summoned dukes.

/sigh

But now, it’s over. Next stop, Rhok’Delar. SV Hunter LFG MC, PST!

I’m currently trying to figure out why the PTR client won’t work right on my machine, so I figured I’d run down some of the 3.2 changes that piqued my interest… a lot of good, some bad, and some “meh.”

First, on the “levelling alts” front:

There’s heirloom chestpieces available, and they will have a 10 percent XP gain on them as well, which stacks with the bonus from shoulders. Score! This should make levelling my DK and Shaman easier, although I don’t have any damn time to play these days.

We also have news that you will be able to “turn off” XP gain for a nominal charge. Twinks, therefore, can keep on twinking and avoid the new XP gain from battlegrounds. Also, those with XP gain turned off will be in their own battlegrounds, which means that poor lowbies won’t get screwed so much. This also opens up the possibilities for “Classic raiding” guilds. People have asked for their own classic wow realms for a while, and with this change, you could artificially cap your character at level 60.

As for hunter specific changes, we have Aspect of the Cheetah being trained at level 16 now, and traps existing for only 30 seconds, down from 1 minute. Which sucks… bigtime. However, it’s ok, because there’s categories of traps now, with seperate cooldowns. Black arrow is in a category with immolation and explosive, which means no longer will you lose the ability to frost or freezing trap while doing awesome DPS. EXCELLENT change.

But what I’m most excited about, given the fact that I haven’t raided regularly in FOREVER because of my crazy work schedule and my new baby, is the changes to emblems.

Heroics and raids will now drop emblems of conquest, and valor/heroism emblems are going away. This is exciting news, although the hardcores who are only motivated by gear are super pissed. Basically, you can get decked out in ulduar level gear from running heroics and naxx, if you do it long enough. The head and chest from tier 8.5 are available from emblems, and the gloves and legs from Emalon, so theoretically you could get 4/5 t8.5 without setting foot into ulduar.

Now, it’ll take some serious time… but I think it’s a great change. Casuals will be able to gear up, but more importantly, those of us like me who have to take a break for a while due to work or family, can get caught up and rejoin their guild’s progression.

What do you think about the changes so far?

due to the pics being huge, i have resized and posted bunches more to a coppermine gallery.

Linkie: http://www.afkautoshot.net/brooke/thumbnails.php?album=1

Sometimes, you just get lucky! I have searched, on and off, for some kind of spirit beast for a LONG time. On a whim, I decided to do one circuit for Gondria before getting into a Naxx pug… and nearly jumped out of my skin when my target macro popped up a raid warning.

I flew down to start the tame, and a Blood Elf Paladin decided it was time to mess with me. He interrupted my casting, forcing me to FD. He didn’t kill me, just interrupted me every time I tried to cast “Tame Beast.”

Time to call in the cavalry. A quick /guild later and the paladin had his hands full. He rez’ed just in time to attempt to interrupt me again, but by then the tame was complete and my newly-acquired Spirit Beast attacked him.

Score! Thanks AUO!

We engage at about 1:55 in… Didn’t have the time or inclination to clip the vid. Enjoy! It is a fun fight!

A post HERE, and some forum discussions, have stirred up quite a controversy amongst WoW players. Namely, the hardcore raiders are at odds with the more casual among us regarding raid difficulty. The central debate seems to be that “hardcores” are upset at the ease of the new content, and angry that even Ulduar is intended to be “PuGable at some point” according to Blizzard. The casuals are upset that hardcores, in their minds, wish to deny them content and storyline. And most of WoW’s population is somewhere in between in this debate.

I agree, some of the encounters are easy… and Naxx, with a competant group, is a pushover. Sartharion is a loot pinata… but not if you leave drakes up. The way I see it, there’s still “elite” encounters in the game… the only difference between what we’ve seen so far in Wrath and BC/Classic is the “approach,” so to speak.

I’ve tried, and failed, at Sarth with drakes up. I’ve failed at some of the heroic and raid achievements. Guilds that manage to topple said achievements had to work at them for a while, and are rewarded with titles and achievements that I will never get. Pre-Wrath, the hardcores were rewarded with storylines that I would never see… which I think is cheating not only the casual players, but the developers as well.

Imaging creating an engaging, dynamic raid encounter with beautiful artwork and storyline. Then imagine that only 5 percent of the player base would see it! It’s a shame, is what it is, and I think the new system works much better. The hardcores who argue for “exclusive” raids are being unfair, I think… and most of them, for all their hardcoreness, have yet to down Algalon. This, in my opinion, is the “Sunwell” or “Classic Naxx” at this point… This is the encounter that the hardcores get to see exclusively, and I think that’s more than fair.

If they were so much better than us casuals, they would have downed it already.

So, I say to all of you: If ulduar is so easy, link your algalon achievement.

It’s one thing to be casual and therefore not have all the best gear. It’s quite another to blatantly disregard established facts about your class against a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

One of those “Rate the hunter above you” threads popped up in the forums… A guy responded and put a disclaimer for his toon…

He said he wasn’t convinced that a bunch of hit was needed. He had 100 hit. /facepalm

Facts and evidence outweigh your feelings… Elitistjerks does all the testing you need, but if you need more convincing that hit is important, take the following.

Just for poops and giggles, let’s do some math. This is hit capped… note that there’s some pet misses due to me not being gear-capped, but having the hit talent. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just talk about the shots themselves. I am since then gear-capped.

He’s at 100 hit, which is about 3 percent. We need 8 percent to cap, so he’s 5 short. Look at the explosive shots on that chart. Averaging 1900 dmg per, with roughly 600 of them, that would mean he would have missed 30, for total damage of about 57,000 damage.

Autoshots, he would have missed about 40, for about 58,800 damage. Steadies, he would have missed about 18k worth of damage, and kill shots, he would have missed out on one for an average of 5k damage.

That’s over 130k missed damage, and that’s not counting multishots, or the pet misses that would come with it. The pet alone would lose out on roughly 80k of damage.

The point is, don’t use recount to “test” established facts about your class, then post to the forums your “findings.” Recount’s not accurate. Do yourself, and your class, a favor and don’t be an idiot. You don’t have to have BiS in every slot, but you dang well should know what the stat priorities are, and you CERTAINLY shouldn’t ignore established, tested, proven fact.

I’m patiently waiting for the patch to drop, and wondering what my first action will be.

The first order of business will be to respec. I’ve been doing some research on ElitistJerks, and THIS BUILD is what I’ve come up with. Should be interesting to see how all these new shots fit into my rotation.

I’m not gonna dual spec just yet. I am going to work on a PVP build but don’t have the gold to drop right now. My first playing order of business will be to get my but to Icecrown for the tourney.

What will you all be up to?