Things I’m excited about in Patch 5.3
Posted: May 21, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: gear, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, raiding, stats, survival, SV, talents, Throne of Thunder, World of Warcraft, WoW 3 Comments »I had a somewhat busier work week last week, so my posting took a hit. I wrote about the one thing I really enjoyed doing, which was a diversion from the norm in some ways, but there wasn’t that much else going on, so I didn’t really have much to write about.
This week, Patch 5.3 “Escalation” goes live, so I’ll now have stuff to do on my hunter – that is, non-raiding, non-Halfhill stuff – if only because I’ll have a place to spend Valor Points again. I was thinking about writing a post about that, but I didn’t feel like writing at any time yesterday.
This morning, while maintenance is percolating, I still didn’t quite know what I wanted to write about until I read the following tweet by Big Bear Butt:
Today is patch day. Not to piss on anyone’s enthusiasm, but I feel no desire to start another grind, the patch does nothing to interest me.
And then, I knew what I wanted to talk about.
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Everyone is in his or her different place in this game. Doing his or her own thing. As such, excitement levels may vary.
For me, there are two key things in 5.3 that I am immediately interested in with respect to my hunter:
1. Aspect of the (Iron) Hawk will buff Attack Power by 25% instead of 15%. I’ll take an 8.69% base increase in my total Attack Power any day. Am I excited about that? HECK YEAH I’m excited about it!
2. Item level upgrades are back. 500 VP for 8 ilvls per piece. I am capped and so ready to do this now. Doing anything that rewards Valor Points has that much more meaning for my main toon again.
There are other changes. A couple of changes – Blink Strike(s) / Intimidation, more room in the stable, some pet special attack cooldown changes, etc. – mean virtually nothing to me, because they won’t affect my raiding play or my DPS. Binding Shot being gone is sort of crappy, but once again, I rarely use it. So, as far as class changes, I’m really looking forward to raiding as Survival with Mushan in 5.3.
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There is a new weekly quest area in the Barrens. That’s fine. It will be nice for alts, since it means 489 gear. However, I don’t imagine it will be much of a grind for raiding mains. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s not quite another Isle of Thunder or Molten Front, grind-wise. I could be wrong though.
There’s also a new part of the legendary quest line. I’ve been ‘behind’ on that thing since the beginning, and am still collecting Secrets of the Empire. From my perspective back here in Behind Land, it’s nice to see that there is more stuff to do down the line. I’m not immediately excited about it, because I’m not there yet, but I am salivating over those ilvl 600 cloaks: the stats on those babies are just mind-boggling!
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There are new pets, and pet battle changes. Nice, but don’t really care. New arena and battleground: don’t really care. Mounts, shirts, heirloom changes: don’t care. New/Heroic Scenarios? I’ll probably do them at some point, but I’m not sure, and it doesn’t really affect me either way.
I find the PvP stat changes interesting, but I don’t know how I feel about them. I’ve only done a few dozen BGs this xpac, so it’s not a large part of my game. I do, however, like the Battleground Roles feature. It’s been “time” for that to happen since, well, forever.
One thing I’m feeling… well, not excited about… but I guess “relieved” is a better word for it: the nerf to Pandaria leveling XP requirements. When I finally bring my herbalist pally through the last 30-some bars to 90 and get her her flight license, my journey will be so much easier.
On the other hand, the new Loot Specialization tab for choosing which spec you want loot for in raids and LFR is going to be great to use on my druid and warrior. I’m definitely excited about that for those toons.
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I love the game, but I really live for raid success on my hunter. As such, the Aspect of the Hawk change and the return of Valor upgrades have me excited about raiding with the new-and-improved Mushan. Since this is a non-raid patch, there is understandably not as much for me to be excited about as there was in 5.2 with Throne of Thunder and all of the potential new gear.
Patches like these bring, among other things, quality of life changes, story progression, class changes, more stuff, and so on. As such, they’re less exciting in general than big raid patches like 5.2. Maintenance is still happening as I write this, but I don’t foresee ’new grind’ being a big feature of this patch. Legendary grinds were a given; stories with some grinds are a given. To me, it’s part of the package.
My girlfriend is excited about the new pets she can farm in old raids. She loves pets, pet battles, mounts, killing rares, and so on – they provide a nice ‘other side of the game’ when she’s not kicking major ass with her raid team. So for her, the patch is a bigger deal than it is for me.
What I mainly care about is that the hunter class is getting some love in the form of the Attack Power boost, and that I have a means to improve my toon in the absence of better raid drops. Because of this, I am excited about the patch.
But that’s just me. Your mileage may vary! :)
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MMO-Champion has a nice roundup of Patch 5.3 info – check it out to see all the new features!
Hunters: Tabana has posted a concise summary of the 5.3 hunter changes over at WoW Hunters Hall. Check it out! And thanks, Tabana!
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Thanks for reading these musings by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!
My issues with Auto Shot
Posted: May 8, 2013 Filed under: Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: hunter, Mists of Pandaria, raiding, survival, SV, talents, World of Warcraft, WoW 2 Comments »
Skada: 55,688,203 Damage; 10 mins 7 secs; approximately 91.7K DPS
Last week, The Grumpy Elf wrote that he found he could do 38k DPS simply by letting his hunter Auto Shot in LFR. It’s a great post, and was highlighted on last weekend’s Group Quest podcast.
Then, Tuesday, Big Bear Butt wrote a post about how he listened to that podcast on Monday, and their discussion on Grumpy Elf’s post caught his ear, and, in short, he started thinking about how he wishes that all caster DPS specs had an auto attack. His post on the subject, which is also great, goes on to describe how having no auto attack can be problematic for his non-hunter casters – his moonkin in particular.
I definitely recommend checking out both posts, as well as the podcast.
Meanwhile, I’m writing this post, this reaction to the reaction. This is how it goes sometimes. :)
One great thing about these two posts is that they bring up a topic that has been bothering me for a long, long time, and even more lately.
I have issues with Auto Shot.
Both the concept and end results of Auto Shot bother me, and, unlike Bear, I would like to see Blizzard do away with it, or at least marginalize its impact on our overall damage.
What Auto Shot looks like today, Survival Edition
I spent 10 minutes on the dummy today, and the results looked fairly similar – proportionally – to what I would see on a typical single target boss fight (see screenshot at the top of this post).
This is with no buffs (other than my hyena) or food, and no tier gear at all – because I’m currently not using any tier gear – so there’s no 5% extra damage to Explosive Shot, or extra chance to proc LnL. This is just regular non-tier gear with normal stats.
The nice thing to see is that Explosive Shot looks like it’s doing a nice chunk of my damage. There is usually some percent deviation in all of these results, due to various elements of RNG and the fact that there is no boss fight that I simply stand in one spot for (and I’m far from perfect in raids), but usually ES will be on top. The next top four attacks are usually in the top four on bosses, also. In fact, usually I see SrS and Auto in either of the 2-3 positions (you can see they were in a dead heat here), but sometimes my pet attacks sneak in there, or Arcane Shot will sneak in there, particularly if I forget to switch my talent from TotH to Dire Beast.
Now, this is obviously not a complete sample (and it’s only one, but it’s fairly representative). There are times where Serpent Sting needs to be applied to an add or other boss, via SrS or Serpent Spread. There’s Kill Shot, of course. Sometimes there’s Explosive Trap, Multi Shot, and Improved SrS. It depends on the encounter, of course, and those things can change what a damage breakdown looks like. However, one thing seems to be constant from boss to boss, and that’s the presence of Auto Shot in my top 2-4 damaging abilities.
Now, how do I feel when I look at a table like this? Well, I can tell you right off the bat that I am usually frowning in silent frustration when I look and see that Auto Shot – something I had almost nothing to do with, other than to have something targeted and be using other abilities against it – is about 10% of my total damage, and that it’s one of my top abilities.
Think about that for a minute. It’s one of my top damaging abilities.
Is that fun? And, does that take much skill at all?
No.
In fact, it takes an undefined amount of extra skill to even shoot an Arcane Shot, because it requires pushing a button. Auto Shot is, by definition, automatic. It requires no skill; only that you have a working computer that has internet access, WoW downloaded and patched and subscribed to, a non-broken ranged weapon equipped, and the ability to engage monsters.
Why is Blizzard conceding 10% (or more) of our damage to us just for engaging the target?
Tangent
I used to play a cat, back in Lich King times. As a melee DPS, staying up on the boss’s ass was critical to maximizing damage.
I started moving away from that toon when they changed the Savage Roar damage buff to only apply to white swings in 4.0. With a subsequent nerf to bleed damage, it became clear that Blizzard wanted more cat damage to come from positioning and uptime. For a while, it became arguably better to stack Haste than Mastery or Crit, because Haste + uptime + that sweet buff to white swings equaled Nice. SR has changed since then, but the damage was done; I leveled a hunter, and that part of my life is long gone now.
Nonetheless, I’m not a big fan of the whole concept of white swings for player characters. One of the things I like about my mage is that everything I do is caused by myself or my pet. I’m not also smacking the boss. Everything is a result of pushing a button.
Anyway, back to hunters.
Button bloat
This is actually something of a misnomer, in this case. It’s actually “ability bloat.” As Frostheim has described the problem of button bloat on the Hunting Party Podcast, the WHU, and in comments elsewhere: the more abilities there are, the smaller the piece of the damage pie each ability can take up.
There’s only 100% of the pie. And there is only one pie. Here’s how I look at it (the pie is “your total damage” and the people are “your damage abilities” in this analogy):
If there are six people over for dinner, there can only be six pieces of pie if everyone has one piece and they collectively eat the whole pie.
If there are eight people over for dinner, then there can only be eight pieces of pie if everyone has one piece and they collectively eat the whole pie.
The pieces can be different sizes, of course, but the pie is gone when everyone has left for the night, and it’s likely that, if more people came to dinner than expected, some of them may not have gotten enough dessert.
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What I don’t like about this is that, not only is ten percent of my damage coming from Auto Shot, but it’s also one of my stronger “abilities.” Yes, Black Arrow procs LnL, so there’s a direct damage correlation there. Yes, Dire Beast increases my focus regeneration, so I can shoot more Arcanes and less Cobras. That’s nice and all, but Auto Shot is scoring too highly for my comfort.
And there’s not really anything I can do about this. I can’t minimize the damage Auto Shot does: it’s automatic after all, and it scales with Attack Power and crit chance. Higher Haste means faster attack speed, which means more Auto Shots. One of my Auto Shots on this dummy session hit for 55k! So, while perhaps it’s true that gear levels that are insanely higher than mine could theoretically pull Arcane Shot a marginal distance ahead of Auto Shot due to higher levels of Mastery, the difference wouldn’t be enough to mean that Auto Shot has become much less significant.
Removing or drastically reducing Auto Shot
If Auto Shot takes up roughly 10% of the damage pie, and it were removed** (in, say, Patch 6.0), and classes were re-balanced to be reasonably close in damage output, then it would be like saying, “Well, Bernice doesn’t want any pie, so does anyone want to have a little more?” (Of course someone does – it’s pie, after all.) The pie is eaten, 100% of it is gone.
**or significantly marginalized…
Removing Auto Shot would mean that Blizzard would have the damage that Auto Shot currently does available to redistribute to other abilities. Perhaps a stronger average Black Arrow tick, or increased crit chance on Explosive Shot, or something to that effect. I don’t know where the best place to put it is, but I do know one thing:
It would have the potential to make some or all of the abilities do a higher percentage of the overall damage, because there would be one less ability crowding the others out in that “100% of total damage pie.” It could mean higher burst damage in situations where it’s needed. It could mean that executing the priority system better than someone else would mean more overall damage, as well as a larger gap between those who do so and those who don’t.
It could mean that Grumpy Elf doesn’t finish 10th on the damage meter on a pull in LFR just from auto-attacking and doing 38k DPS, causing him to wonder what the heck people are doing that make them perform even worse than that while he’s tabbed out… (read his post!)
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I am possibly the only person who feels this way, and I could be totally wrong.
But it seems that, if there are a lot of abilities now, and if there is yet another ability added in the next expansion, something should go, and Auto Shot seems to me to be the best candidate.
Additionally, then ranged DPS would be slightly more equal, mechanically. Not perfectly equal, of course, but that one distinction / disparity would be gone (or close to gone).
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Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!
Walking with the Forsaken for a while
Posted: May 7, 2013 Filed under: Leveling, Lore | Tags: hunter, leveling, lore, questing, World of Warcraft, WoW 1 Comment »
As a diversion from end-game burnout, I decided last week to explore an area of the game that has long fascinated me from a distance: the Forsaken starting zone story in Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine Forest, and Hillsbrad Foothills.
I’ve only ever played an Undead character once before. Back in early 2007, when my better half and I were just starting to play WoW, we made several little toons in different areas. We made humans and night elves, and then we branched out and made little Draenei. Eventually we tried out the Undead area – I made a warrior, can’t recall what she made – and played it for a few levels, but we didn’t really enjoy it much, so those toons were soon deleted. We were basically Alliance, and have remained so all this time.
However, with Cataclysm, almost all of the zones were revamped, and the results were sometimes extremely compelling. The Undead zones were particularly so, as they represented an intersection between the Aftermath of the Lich King, conflict with the ‘new race’ Gilneans/Worgen, and their own territorial expansion into Hillsbrad Foothills and so on. And Sylvanas. Etc.
My connection to the Forsaken has been by way of disgust and revulsion, for the most part. During Cataclysm, I spent a not-insignificant amount of time in modern Hillsbrad while engaged in both Archaeology and farming herbs. Beginning in 4.2 with the announcement that transmogrification was coming in 4.3, I also found myself in the Old Hillsbrad Foothills instance via the Caverns of Time, chasing a couple of elusive pieces to complete sets that I would eventually wear. It’s a place I still like to revisit from time to time, because it’s like a Sanctuary from what eventually happened… but it’s also not, really.
One of the things that I liked about Archaeology was that it brought me to places that I didn’t normally visit – or, in this case, a place that I didn’t have reason to visit any more. And while I’m not someone who has been with the game since the original beta, I’ve been around for six years. As such, I spent a fair amount of time in Hillsbrad before the Shattering, and really, REALLY enjoyed that entire zone, as well as Alterac Mountains.
There are places that the Shattering destroyed that are sad, like the destructions of Auberdine or the dam in Loch Modan. But nothing approaches anything close to the emotions that I’ve felt while exploring every nook and cranny of the new, forsaken-controlled Hillsbrad Foothills.
I’ve mentioned these feelings before, in the following post: Of Southshore and Oakvale: the complete and utter destruction of something good.
Well, this time, I’m playing the other side of the story, doing all the quests; reading all the quests. Not because I am shallow and forgetful of my feelings on the genocide at Southshore etc., but because I want to see it for myself. I’ve finished the quests in Tirisfal, and I’ve just started Silverpine at this point. The plan is to play through the culmination of the Gilnean story and into Hillsbrad, get that under my belt, and then possibly abandon the character for the most part.
It has taken me years, obviously, to get to the point where I am interested enough to explore the morbid reality that is present-day Hillsbrad and have time to do so, and now seems to be that time.
It feels weird to be playing something just for the lore, and to explore my fascination with the Undead situation. It’s a unique one, in my opinion, because – and maybe this is just me – this will be a time, and possibly the only time, where I don’t feel any connection at all with my character. This has nothing to do with Alliance or Horde. I love Tauren, for instance… except in PvP, of course. I’m not much of a fan of most Orcs, Trolls, or Goblins, but I’d still put them a few ticks above the Undead on the “I might actually care about you and your cause” list. But, while I’ll acknowledge feeling a smidgen of ‘sorry for (my toon) the guy’s situation,’ that’s all. In this case far more than any other, he’s simply and solely a means to an end; that end being discovery and experience, and that’s it. This isn’t to say that I’m not enjoying my time. But that connection isn’t there, and that’s fine.
The Forsaken experience is different from others I’ve experienced. There’s a grimness to every aspect of it, from the “we just resurrected/birthed these new Undead, but some of them aren’t with us and need to die – make that happen” situation, to the blinders-on focus that they have for building their armies and developing their plague, to the icy coldness that the decrepit old undead lady is feeling when you gather pelts to make a covering for her. It’s definitely a different feel from the zones of other races. I do like that.
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It’s early to definitively say this, but I’m nonetheless certain that playing this set of zones isn’t going to change either my general apathy toward the Undead or make me feel any better about any justifications for their actions in Hillsbrad – the logic for them can be damned, as far as I concerned.
And when it’s all over, I’m still going to mourn the Hillsbrad Foothills of years past. Nothing can rip that from me.
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Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!
Tortos! (a tale of two very different raid nights)
Posted: May 6, 2013 Filed under: Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: hunter, Mists of Pandaria, raiding, Throne of Thunder, World of Warcraft, WoW 3 Comments »Three weeks after downing the Council of Elders encounter in Throne of Thunder, we entered the raid weekend looking to make some progress. And, after a wild and crazy weekend (described below)…
Tortos down; Mushan….. still alive!! May 5, 2013
…we got him!
In fact, we one-shotted him!!
And I lived! For the first time this tier, I lived on the first kill of a boss. Woot!
(It’s important to celebrate the little things… sometimes they make all the difference.)
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To jump back a bit in the story, it was a quiet week in Nos Consensio. People have busy lives away from the game, and other things to do, and the weather is nice, and people like me are burned out. So I watched a lot of The West Wing on Netflix, made a new hunter (a subject for a different post) to play around with in peace, went to work at the appropriate times, etc. I didn’t push any of my toons for the most part, other than running a couple of LFRs here and there and doing some quests. I failed to VP cap on any toon, which is completely fine. Things are slow.
Saturday: Nos Screw-up-sio
On Saturday night, we got together a little late, killed Nalak, killed Warlord Bloodhilt again (two more peeps got that quest taken care of!), and stepped into ToT…
…where we proceeded to wipe about a half-dozen times on Jin’rokh before downing him.
Of course, when we downed him, he was dead in record time. That was cool. There were just mistakes being made, mostly with kiting of, and/or otherwise related to, the Focused Lightning. Mistakes, reflecting some general lack of focus. So anyway, we collected the loot (by the way, Jin’rokh, stop dropping Renataki’s Soul Charm – four weeks in a row is twice as often as we will ever need, you bastard!) and…
…proceeded to wipe several times on the Horridon trash.
Seriously, it took us forever to get to Horridon. It was not pretty.
Then, on our first or second Horridon attempt (I forget which), which was very messy, one of our healers experienced a major internet outage in his city, and he was gone for the night.
After a break, we made several more attempts 9-manning it, including one where we had Jalak under 50%, but wiped when the off-tank got himself caught in a Double Swipe. Several attempts, several wipes, and we finally called it – and I’m sure we all felt like crap when that was over. I know that I did, not that I could do anything about it.
Sunday: Nos One-shot-sio
Sunday was a new day, and when we gathered at 9:30 pm in an attempt to salvage the weekend, it almost couldn’t have gone better – or more differently than the previous night.
After a false start on the Horridon trash, we cleaned that up quickly. Then we one-shot Horridon. Then, after a false start on Council – my fault; when I switched to BM, my UI was set up for PvP, and I’ll take the blame for that – we had a very clean kill on the second attempt. Things were going very well, and we’d had some nice gear drop, so we took a break so that people could equip/adjust their gear, etc.
It felt great to come back on all cylinders after the mess of the previous evening.
Next up was Tortos, which has had me frustrated, as I’ve mentioned before. We wiped twice on the trash, and things were starting to look like they were going back to normal (read: bad). However, prepping for the fight, the tanks discussed tank switches, the healers and the warriors worked out cooldown rotations, and Moebius and I discussed the Whirl Turtle situation. And then we started the encounter.
Our raid makeup has two warriors and a rogue, myself and a mage, three healers, and two tanks. The melee… well, they went to town on Tortos and the bats. Moebius and I were smacking turtles and booting goals like we’d been doing it for years. The tank switches went cleanly, the healing was great, and, as I said at the beginning, Tortos bit the big one.
It was a fight that, from an outside perspective, wasn’t a pretty one as far as hunter damage was concerned. Moebius and I were focusing turtles virtually the whole time, because the fight depended on it and we were the only ones who could really handle them, and so we weren’t crapping out AoE damage like we normally can. Bats weren’t a concern for us, particularly because we’ve got the guys up front handling them just fine.
So the damage meter wasn’t pretty. But man… I couldn’t have cared less, because a) I already know that I can execute SV DPS with my eyes closed, so I didn’t need to prove that in this situation, and b) that was a really fun fight – so much fun to do when we were able to execute a successful kill.
And frankly, I was more proud that he and I successfully interrupted every Furious Stone Breath than just about anything else. Considering the positional/directional kick mechanic and the fact that other turtles were constantly harassing us when we’d attempt a kick, it was gratifying to have that part of the fight come together like that.
Hopefully we can repeat it next time. Megaera, we’re coming for you!
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Thanks for reading this sigh of relief by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!
Focused Grimness
Posted: April 27, 2013 Filed under: Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: WoW, World of Warcraft, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, raiding, survival, SV, BM, Throne of Thunder, Beast Mastery 8 Comments »My desire to play WoW is down even more than usual lately.
I’ve written about being burned out occasionally over the past couple of months, and that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Since almost nothing has happened recently, there hasn’t been anything substantial to write about; nothing, at least, that has inspired me to write.
There’s one thing that I’m not feeling burned out about, and that’s playing Mushan. I still look forward to the weekends, when we raid, and I still feel at home when I’m playing him.
But I don’t feel like doing dailies or otherwise earning Valor*. I don’t feel like stepping into LFR**. While I don’t mind doing heroic dungeons, I’m not particularly motivated to do them. Killing rares has gotten very old, very fast. PvP? not feeling it at all right now. Soloing old stuff? same. Archaeology? Pet battles? RP? Scenarios? Achievements? Aggressive Auction House jockeying? Yeah… no thanks.
*I did pick up my Valor belt after reaching Revered with the SPA this week, so I’m done using Valor Points for anything until 5.3 arrives – I figure that if I’m capped by the end of next week, I’ll be fine to start item-upgrading whenever that becomes available.
**That being said, I have done three wings of ToT LFR this week. Primordius has some very nice gloves that I’d like to get my hands on… er, into. Although he hasn’t been generous about it so far.
And that’s on the hunter – the familiar toon; the well-oiled machine; the toon I love. The other toons? forget it. I have no desire to tank anything right now on the warrior. No desire to play the mage. No desire to get the final 27 bars on my paladin. To play my lil’ project hunter. To level my DK, who’s in Grizzly Hills at the moment.
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Additionally, I feel somewhat disconnected from the community right now, which is sort of weird, because I have more people consistently reading my blog now than I’ve ever had before. I’m generally disappointed with Twitter as well – without getting into specifics – so I’ve been avoiding it for the past couple of weeks, aside from a couple of random posts here and there.
I’m just in a different place right now, I suppose.
On the whole, though, there’s almost nothing going on that I’m really enjoying unless I’m raiding.
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Raiding went well last weekend, considering we were down a healer. We had a friend bring his mage, and we patiently worked our way through the first three bosses of ToT again, with two healers/six DPS instead of three and five.
We spent a long time on Sunday working on Tortos, which is a fight that I’m worried about because I’m one of only two ranged DPS, so downing the Whirl Turtles is proving to be somewhat challenging. Everything I read about hunters on that fight seems to say – and I paraphrase – “Go SV, you’ll do shit-tons of AoE damage on the bats on that fight…” And that totally doesn’t seem appropriate for our raid composition. Because of the makeup of our guild/team, we’re faced with the challenge of getting bosses down with what we have. We don’t have a bench, swap out players based on role, and so on. For the most part, it’s a 10-person, 10-toon team, and we adjust based on the limited versatility of those players’ classes – and that’s it.
While topping the charts is fun – and I can certainly top the charts on Tortos in LFR, which is inherently more forgiving and doesn’t mind if you just pick what you want to do and then do it – I will not be doing so as we make progress on our Tortos attempts. I will not be ‘spreading serpent’ all over those god-forsaken bats like it’s my m—– f—— birthday. I have an assignment, and it’s Whirl Turtles, and it’s a responsibility and challenge that I will rise to with determined grimness.
Of course, there’s no hunter spec that’s great for that role. Other than being able to cast on the move, my ability to consistently burst stuff down is still kind of anemic (see upcoming hunter buffs in 5.3). And with a somewhat melee-heavy 10-man group, there is little room for error or weakness in that situation. I’ve made my gear set – my greatest asset – about as strong as it can be, given the circumstances. So I’ll bring that, along with some grim focus, and we’ll see what happens.
- – -
One bright spot for me, personally, was that I successfully switched to Beast Mastery on Sunday for the Council of Elders encounter. BM is a spec that I have never used in a raid before, and I don’t enjoy it. But I practiced the crap out of it during the week, and ultimately I did enjoy not killing myself when Kazra’jin was empowered. My overall “DPS” went down a tick or two, with the reduced AoE damage. However, I was satisfied with the situationally focused damage I was able to do, particularly as we burned down Sul during the first portion of the fight.
Unless it becomes totally stupid for me not to, I will continue to use SV on single target progression fights (like Jin’rokh, although he’s certainly not progression), because it fits me like a glove; and, because I am not a great player, I have that problem where I play better with the spec I enjoy the most (rather than playing the “best spec for the DPS”). I can move better as SV, because I have many hundreds of hours of doing so under my belt, and that can be very important at times. BM feels like I am slapping the buttons, while SV is smooth, allowing me to have better raid awareness. But in the case of Kazra’jin, BM works for me, giving me the freedom to go all-out on something that would otherwise kill me if I did so as SV.
At any rate, it’s a game, and if I can do some sick damage and play well as SV, and it allows me to enjoy the only part of the game I’m having any fun with right now, then I’m going to do so whenever I can.
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Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!
It’s all about getting the kill
Posted: April 15, 2013 Filed under: Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: WoW, World of Warcraft, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, raiding, progression, Throne of Thunder 6 Comments »With the previous weekend’s shit behind us, our guild has killed two new bosses in the past eight days. As I mentioned last week, Horridon fell on the 7th, and last night, Council of Elders bit the big one after about an hour and a half of progressively better attempts.
It was fun to be a part of, from the perspective that it was akin to experiences I’ve had playing the guitar. When I’m learning a particularly interesting song/riff, I can see it begin to come together with some patience and practice, as muscle memory builds and the passage begins to sound musical. This was what it was like in last night’s raid.
We worked hard to kill Sul before he had a chance to be empowered. We fought through Kazra’jin and his dickish reflective damage. We got a feel for what it took to keep the Loa Spirits from healing bosses. And we made it farther in, and then we finally killed them all. It was very rewarding, and the team is feeling more confident now.
A couple of boss kills will do that!
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The experience was bittersweet for me, though. I spent the last couple of minutes lifeless on the ground on our kill attempt. I made one deadly mistake – I let myself get too close to the priest when she was empowered, and I got gibbed by a Shadowed Loa Spirit before I could even think to move. It was one of those ‘lapse of attention’ things, but since I wasn’t expecting it, I wasn’t thinking of reacting with a quick Disengage. And when I did finally hit the Disengage button… nothing happened, because the game was already telling me that I had died and could release if I wanted to, except that that button didn’t work yet either, blah blah…
Aside from that, things couldn’t have been better. The hunter helm dropped, so I broke my T14 two-piece and shed some excess Hit Rating (finally!). The boss(es) dropped, and we can now presumably work on Tortos. All good things, for certain.
But, I’ll be honest and say for the record that when Squido said, as someone was rezzing me, “that’s a nice hunter hat,” I didn’t want it.
I spent the last two minutes of the fight angry that I had made that mistake. Because the second worst thing* that can happen in that situation is being the one who didn’t do his job. And for the third ‘first kill’ of this tier – out of three total – I was eating dirt while the rest of the team finished the encounter.
*The worst thing would be failing to do one’s job, being the reason the final attempt for the week failed, and hearing the raid leader say, “ok, great job tonight, we’ll try this one again next week.”
So I was angry. I took the helm, of course, because there’s no better use for it than to give it to someone who can use it, but I personally felt that I didn’t deserve it.
I write a lot about gear on this blog. It’s very self-centered writing – not much help to others, no guides – but I like gear. I like acquiring gear, earning gear, crafting gear; figuring out which pieces are better upgrades, even doing math and analysis on occasion in order to come to the raid prepared in that respect, leaving no stone un-turned. Obviously, I’m into gear.
But it’s not about the gear. As much as I enjoy that aspect of the game, it’s about having fun and killing bosses. It’s about making progress, and ten people coming together like ten fingers on two hands, working in concert to make a beautiful piece of music come to life.
And being the person who’s laying dead on the ground on kills like this because I make mistakes really gnaws at me. Because it could just as easily have been the ‘worst case scenario’ that I described above, and I don’t want to be the person who makes that difference (negatively). But the facts are:
1) I was dead when we killed Jin’rokh for the first time (got stunned by the final Thundering Throw while being too near a Lightning Fissure, in my attempt to get the water buff as soon as possible. My bad,)
2) I was dead when we killed Horridon for the first time (misdirected War-god Jalak without actually using my Misdirect ability. Bam. My bad.)
3) I was dead when we killed Council for the first time (see above) (aand my bad).
Appendix: I also died on our first kills of Zor’lok and Blade Lord, for that matter, although I can’t claim fault on those. They were situations where healers were overwhelmed/dead (Blade Lord wind-gauntlet) or mind controlled/dead (Zor’lok), and I died. Those things just tend to happen, so those didn’t irritate me quite like this does.
For as many pulls as we did on each of these bosses before getting each first kill, I made the big mistake on the one where the boss died. Each time. I’m 3-for-3 in that department.
I’m not sure whether to think it’s just coincidence, or… what to think. I’m trying not to think too negatively about my own performance. Council is something of a complex fight until Sul dies, so there’s that… and I felt that I played well on however many attempts we did previous to our successful one, for the most part. I guess I can’t reasonably carry any stigma of ”well, Mushan, you sucked on every attempt/sucked in general.”
I’m just feeling deeply chagrined; feeling some self-loathing about my play. I’m still shaking my head about it today, some 18 hours after the kill. I am very proud of my friends, but for the second week in a row, I had to watch them do the heavy work. It vexes me, and I hope to find a way to stop it from happening at some point soon. I think we’re going to kill more bosses, and I want to be alive so that I can jump up and down in celebration when we get the kills. The scenario I described from last night was just weird.
Self-deprecatingly, I thought of myself: “You died, but you’re a lucky motherf—-r, so here’s a nice hat you can wear while you’re dead on the next fight.” Know what I mean?
I’ve got to let this go. I think this is leading me to another post – a more hunter-ish post; a less want-to-hit-myself-in-the-eye-with-a-hammer-ish post.
After all, dying on a successful guild first is a heck of a lot better than being the last one alive on a wipe. It’s all about the team, and it’s all about killing internet dragons trolls. :)
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A good night in Raid Finder
Posted: April 13, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: gear, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, raiding, World of Warcraft, WoW Leave a comment »LFR can be a complete jerk sometimes.
We’ve all been there – where the one piece you need just will not drop. For some, it’s the weapon – an important piece of gear for pretty much everyone. For others, it’s the boots, or the trinket. For me, in 5.0/5.1, it was ultimately the shoulder token. Lei Shi was very generous with her trinkets (I won four or five of those), but not so much with the shoulder token.
Well, you have your good days and your bad. Some people are “lucky” and others have terrible luck for long stretches. Such is the nature of chance as it’s built into the current version of the game. I did let myself get frustrated as all get-out about the shoulder token, but as March approached, I let it go. It just wasn’t worth it, and there were greener fields to graze on the horizon.
In Throne of Thunder, I haven’t really felt the need to complain too much about my luck. ToT has been fairly kind to me, all things considered. I’ve certainly snickered about it from time to time, though – I’ve won three necklaces since I bought the Valor necklace on March 5th, after all! :) That’s how it goes, I suppose.
Last night was one of those nights where things went in my favor.
I was finally able to snag a weapon upgrade, trading in old Taoren (491) for a shiny new (and ugly as sin) Durumu’s Baleful Gaze on a bonus roll.
Mushan, with Durumu’s Baleful Gaze
Despite the disgusting model(?) (seriously, the ranged weapon models in MoP are just some of the worst, in my humble opinion) of this “crossbow,” it was a not-insignificant upgrade for me. Later in the same raid, Dark Animus was gracious enough to leave behind a Gore-Soaked Gear with my name on it, replacing the Sign of the Bloodied God that I’d picked up ten days ago. This was also a direct upgrade, if only a small one, because of the socket and the Crit/Haste stat budget.
Overall, I’ve been pretty happy with the way my hunter’s gear has progressed this tier. Going into tonight’s raid, the remainders from T14 are few: tier helm and gloves (504), crafted chest (500), and the belt from Gara’jal (489). ToT RF gear: weapon, ring 2 (502). Valor: neck, cloak, bracers, ring 1, trinket 1 (522); crafted boots (522); and, from ToT itself, Thunderforged legs (528 – Jin’rokh), as well as shoulders, and trinket 2 (522 – Jin’rokh).
The gearing process is likely to slow down until we have more bosses on farm. As I mentioned before, the Valor gear that remains unpurchased (at honored with SPA) is less than inspiring, but I should be able to pick up the belt in less than two weeks, which will be a seriously good upgrade.
Tonight, we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to down both Jin’rokh and Horridon without too much trouble, so that we can spend some real time on Council. Since I won’t have my head elsewhere tonight, I’m looking to be a key contributor this time!
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Soloed: Halion (10H)
Posted: April 9, 2013 Filed under: Extreme Soloing | Tags: hunter, hunter extreme soloing, survival, SV, talents, World of Warcraft, WoW 5 Comments »
Heroic Halion (10) down!
This past Sunday afternoon, looking to do something challenging yet fun, I decided to give Heroic Halion a shot.
I had never defeated Halion before. I only ever attempted him once toward the end of Wrath with a raid group, and it was one of those things where we’d get to Phase 3 and then start dropping like flies. And I never tried soloing him during Cataclysm, because I assumed that the whole twilight realm portal thing would reset the boss. Maybe I was right, maybe not… but at any rate, it is soloable now, as was brought to my attention by this video from Cinnamohn (props to Cinnamohn for the idea and the strategy!). Check it out for the details!
I soloed him as SV in my questing spec setup (Spirit Bond, Blink Strike, Glyphs of Mending and Misdirection). It took me five attempts to get my head in gear and not stand in the crossfire forever (facepalm!), not get hit by the Twilight Cutter, not out-threat my pet, and so on, and to get him down. Because he heals himself for a sizable chunk every five seconds in Phase 3 (from 50% health till death), the majority of the fight is spent in that phase, doing more damage to him than he can heal through. Like many soloing fights, the trick is basically to execute the mechanics of the encounter while still doing enough damage and keeping the pet alive – while also keeping threat on your pet so that you don’t have to Feign Death, which will reset the boss – and Halion certainly tests that combination of skills and awareness on Heroic mode for modest soloists like myself.
It was pretty cool to attempt and defeat a boss that I’ve never seen before on Heroic, and had never defeated before. Sometime, I’d like to attempt the 25-player version, but I don’t know if I could handle that. Perhaps on normal mode…
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One big blue candle and a messy “cake-face”
Posted: April 2, 2013 Filed under: Off Topic | Tags: blog, hunter, World of Warcraft, WoW Leave a comment »(with no screenshot, which is par for the course with me – so unprepared!!)
Today – April 2 – Mushan, Etc. is one year old. **Yaaay!!**
This blog, for all of its shortcomings, has been a massive success for me, and I’m so glad that a) I started it, and b) I’ve been so blessed by it. In spite of several droughts, I managed to write 105 posts and draw over 22,200* page views, which is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose!
*And it smokes my previous two blogs’ yearly bests for page views by more than 55%, which is awesome!
It’s been wonderful to be in touch with people in the WoW community, meeting new people here and on Twitter, seeing bloggers in-game, and getting to share some of my humble huntering adventures, opinions, etc. with all of you.
Thanks to everyone who has read my posts, commented on them, encouraged me, and befriended me this year. It’s been very rewarding. Here’s to more fun in Year 2!!
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Pet taunts on the Isle of Thunder
Posted: April 1, 2013 Filed under: Reputation | Tags: hunter, Mists of Pandaria, questing, talents, tanking, warrior, World of Warcraft, WoW 8 Comments »With Patch 5.2, I got rid of my rarely-used PvP off-spec and set up a questing/soloing SV spec, glyphed and talented for pet healing and a little bit more utility. With the Isle of Thunder containing clusters of mobs with higher health levels, quest “bosses,” rares, solo scenarios, and so on, I felt that it would make my life a little bit easier, and it definitely has.
Pet Growl is great in MoP – very effective in situations like this. Because I’m a lazy hunter, I usually just leave Growl on. Lots of other hunters do the same thing, which makes it kind of humorous when you’re fighting a rare with two hunters on it and the pets keep taunting off one another.
However, I’ve been learning (again) that, when hunters do this in certain situations, it’s not as funny on the other side of the ball.
While the knowledge has always been there, this was really brought home to me over the past week with my warrior tank. Stage 4 opened last week, bringing more “boss” quests per day, and more rares to kill. A couple of these bosses, including Itoka, Master of the Forge, and Metal Lord Mono-han, put a lot of bad on the ground in the form of energized metal, roaming electric sparks, electrified water, and so on. These things are obviously good to get out of, and likewise, kiting the boss out of or away from them is imperative.
As a prot warrior – and hence, on the other side of the ball with regard to the relationship with tanking pets in these situations – I’ve repeatedly been frustrated when hunters keep Growl on when it’s pretty obvious that I’m tanking the boss. It’s pretty annoying when, as a tank, you can’t kite the boss out of persistent bad because the pet is taunting him immediately after you do, every time.
With Itoka, the roaming sparks are a constant nuisance, and Metal Lord’s “Toss Energized Metal” is similar, although in his case the danger circles are static. In either case, constant re-positioning is fairly mandatory, and, as someone who enjoys tanking, I like moving the boss around to give everyone the best chance to do damage and to take a minimum of damage themselves. This is virtually impossible when the hunter either ignores this concept or is completely unaware that it’s a problem.
I do take solace from the fact that, on several occasions, hunter pets have died during these fights, and I’ve been able to resume controlling the boss’s position. But here’s the bottom line about hunter pets constantly taunting off the tank and standing stationary in bad stuff, regardless of whether hunters care about their pets dying:
IT TAKES LONGER TO KILL THE BOSS THAT WAY.
Potentially a lot longer.
When the pet has either of these bosses, and the hunter isn’t spending any time re-positioning it like a normal tank should, the original tank and any other melee DPS cannot do their normal damage to the mob. They could, theoretically – but that would involve taking boatloads of damage due to spending way too much time being hit by electrical charges of one form or another, and likely dying if they didn’t get out in time. The AoE damage on these fights is no joke; even as a decently geared tank, it’s virtually impossible to stand in one of these circles for the entire fight and survive. And even if there is no AoE around for the moment, a tank taking no damage is building up zero vengeance, so his/her damage for that time period is going to be pretty anemic.
And pets don’t have a vengeance mechanic, so there’s absolutely no “win” in pet tanking when there’s someone else there that wants to tank the boss for you.
There have been several occasions over the past week where a hunter pet has taken control of the boss, and I’ve been forced to stand outside the circle, telling the hunter to “please turn off Growl” (if the hunter is Alliance) and tossing Heroic Throw because I can’t otherwise reach the boss. I try to make it obvious, without resorting to being unpleasant, that I. can’t. do. anything. And neither can that ret pally or DK or rogue standing next to me. And the boss loses health at a much slower rate, and it’s just a huge pain in the ass, because nobody can do what they would normally be doing in that situation, other than the hunter.
So, a word to wise hunters: please keep the Growl button on your pet bar. Know when to turn it off – and if you don’t know when to turn it off, it’s any time you don’t need to be the tank on a rare or a quest “boss.” And use Glyph of Stampede, so that it turns off Growl on all of your stampeding pets as well. Because if you don’t, you’re needlessly making your own dailies – not to mention others’ – take a bit longer to complete. Which sucks, because dailies take enough time as it is. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Bad pun intended.
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