Petoholics Anonymous

Lame update title because I can’t think of anything funny

// February 2nd, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Hunters and Pets, Non-hunters, Random Stuff

My updates have been a little…lacking, so here’s a summary of all the things that have been happening.

On Saturday, we had our memorial for Vinny. Over 25 people showed up at the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior in the Barrens and we spent a couple hours recounting stories about him and giving a “KungalooooOOOOooooOOOooosh” salute. It was very nice.

My shammy Zulrea is level 78 as we speak, as well as Kazi’s warlock Basia. A destruction warlock and an elemental shaman are a scary combination. We keep lamenting about how we can only get 2 spells off each before a mob dies. >.> On that note, having Lava Burst always crit is awesome. Also, she dropped skinning and took up inscription…partially because I wanted a scribe and partially because Basia is a tailor/enchanter. So Kazi gets all my weapon/armor vellums.

Saraku is finally exalted with Netherwing (with much help provided by Kazi searching for eggs). So now he can transform back to his original drake form in character. Still working on Crusader dailies with him but not with much enthusiasm. He also has his complete T9 tanking set. I started getting his T9 healing set together but then I found out that I like healing on Zulrea better anyways.

Niqo has 4 pieces of T9, the Orca-Hunter’s Harpoon, the Felglacier Bolter, the Pauldrons of the Devourer,  the Crusader’s Dragonscale Bracers (a Christmas gift from Kazi), and the Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape. In short…she looks like just about every other hunter who’s done a ton of randoms. I’m quite satisfied about my 3.7-4k dps with a BM spec in heroics, with it spiking on the bosses when I pop my cooldowns and trinkets. Also, the redesigned Misdirect + Volley is sooooo nice. It really helped tanks in H-HoR before they nerfed the damage. Oh, and she got her “the Patient” title which is quite suitable for her RP-wise.

I rolled a fury warrior called Tuyok who now is level 25 and has 4 pieces of heirloom gear equipped. In character, he is Mysthowl’s and Niqora’s adoptive teenage son and his full first name is Issorartuyok. Try saying that five times fast. It’s the Inuit word for “leader dog”. He’s pretty much the character that I play solo when I’m not doing something with the people of BR.

Kazi and I have been talking about what characters we’re going to roll when Cataclysm comes out. I’m going to roll a worgen druid to be paired with his worgen hunter (with a wolf pet of course!) and a goblin hunter with his goblin priest/mage. We decided to reserve our names and because my 10 character slots on Wyrmrest Accord where already taken…I needed to clear up two spots. The first one to go was Fawnel, my tauren druid who wasn’t getting played anyway. My hope is that the worgen will have some sort of wolf-like cat form which will help me enjoy playing a druid more. Choosing the second character to delete was tough but I finally settled on Brighit, my draenei hunter. I play her even less than Fawnel and once I do start playing a little bit on Alliance side with the expansion, my focus is going to be solely on my druid. So it was hard to let her go but at least I’ll be making a goblin hunter, right? Right? >.> I’m currently debating between a raptor or a bear for her. I do love raptors and they have similar personalities to goblins. On the other hand, a giant bear with tons of explosives strapped to it does make a rather intimidating and funny image. Have I mentioned that the goblin is going to be half out of her mind?

Bloodriver as a guild is working on making our way through Ulduar and we’ve dipped our toes in TotC and Onyxia. We’ve come up to Freya on our last Ulduar run and we haven’t tried to get Ony down again since 3.3.0 came out. So I think that next time we go in there, we’ll be able to take her down. We also have a sister guild on Alliance side called Obsidian Phoenix that is slowly filling up with people who have Ally characters. That’s where our worgens will find their home.

And last but not least…I got a Logitech G11 keyboard. The blue LED lights are so very pretty and shiny. Plus the macro keys have given me a noticeable improvement in Niqo’s dps. I’d be completely pleased with it if the keys didn’t seem to randomly stop working when I switch characters (I blame the program, not the keyboard itself).

Patch 3.3.2 is all loaded up and I’m eager to get home for work and see what new things await for me. I heard there’s been a buff for elemental shamans.

Now hopefully my next update will come before Cataclysm is released. >.>

Still a petoholic at heart

// June 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gripe, Hunters and Pets, Non-hunters

This blog has been somewhat neglected, not due to the fact that I’m abandoning it (obviously because I’m writing a post up right now…) but because I haven’t have the inclination to make a post about anything. I think it’s partially because I feel the need to make these HUGE posts instead of just short little ones with just one update at a time. I really have to get out of that mentality.

Surprisingly, other than Niqora I haven’t really been playing my hunters. Instead I’ve been leveling my little dragonling pally Saraku. He’s level 36 now, running around and completing quests in Desolace on top of his handsome charger. I gotta say, it feels sooooo much better to have a mount (although I’d still kill for a flying mount, I’m spoiled that way). He’s coming along quite nicely as a tank. I’m still learning the class (but we never really stop learning, do we?) so something I’ll forget things like turning OFF Righteous Fury when I’m not the tank. They still keep bugging me about that one.

Niqora has now got all the Horde faction titles from the Argent Tournament. Only “Crusader” remains for her to get so I’m still doing the Champion dailies. She already has her Staff of Feral Furies and I’m undecided what to spend the rest of the Champion’s Seals on. Knowing me, probably some mounts. >.> I finally started doing Hodir dailies so I can get the mining bag LW pattern and my shoulder enchant. So far I’m only honoured though. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but I seem to be incapable of completing Thrusting Hodir’s Spear (although the inneundo still makes me chuckle ). I’ve been able to get into a couple Naxx runs…and I’ve discovered that I don’t have much patience with them. There aren’t enough people from Bloodriver for us to form our own raid so we’ve formed a raid alliance with a couple other guilds. Being the shy person I am, I’m not able to really get into the conversation with these people I don’t know too well. Couple that with THE longest boss fight explanations in the world…I have patience for a lot of things, these raids aren’t one of them. Not 4-5 hours worth anyways.

I did have a blast last night when we got a group together to run some regular Northrend dungeons to help level some guildies. We did 2 Violet Holds and a Gundrak with a 77 DK tank (who wasn’t def-capped) and a 74 priest healer. No wipes to speak of and the one time the tank did die in VH, myself and another 80 hunter were able to pick up the trash mobs and pet-tank them until the priest could rez. In that kind of group, where we can joke around and really feel like we’re working together, that is what I love. When we got a VH boss that none of us knew the strategy to, we just winged it. And what do you know, he was down in about 3 minutes. Now that is some good fun.

I briefly mentioned my troll DK Githinji previously. He’s gone. Kaput, nixed, deleted, etc. Honestly I was not playing him at all and he was such a depressing character that I was getting depressed just playing him. So I stripped him down, gave away/sold all his stuff, and then he said a few last words over guild chat before impaling himself on his own sword (Like I said, very emo). He has already been replaced by…another hunter. >.> Actually a remake of Machalor, since I’ve been itching for some time now to have a hunter with hyena pets. I’ve decided that RP-wise, she will be very harsh and battle-oriented character, which is very different from my other characters. But with a name derived from Macha and Balor, it’s to be expected really. War is in her blood.

And for my last character update, I created a little druid to level with my brother through the Refer-A-Friend program. For some reason, the idea of playing a druid appeals to me but when I actually do play her, I feel…meh. I don’t know why, flexibility always appealed to me before. Only time will tell if I end up keeping her around.

I heart my guild

// December 16th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Hunters and Pets

Back in October, I had mentioned that I had joined the Freeriver Tribe which was an all-tauren RP guild. Somewhere in November, a sister guild called Bloodriver was created. The RP story behind Bloodriver was it was to recruit fighters from every race and class to help take revenge on the Lich King for killing our chieftain and his mate. The non-RP reason was to create a place to put our non-tauren characters. As with every guild, there were this core group of players that got along really well, myself included, and we became fast friends.

But nothing lasts forever. I won’t get into the details but there was some guild drama, mostly taking place IRL, that threatened to tear Freeriver apart. A choice was made and most of Freeriver’s members moved over to Bloodriver. I have to admit that it was sad to leave Freeriver but what’s more important is that we stuck together and I think we’re all better because of it. Niqora has become one of the War Council, which is the Bloodriver rank for an officer. I’ve sat in on officer meetings to help decide how the guild will operate and it feels great to see our members grow and to make new friendships. I came to this group of people looking for some interesting RP and I still enjoy that. But now I’m finding myself hanging around with them just because I enjoy their company and just generally playing with them.

Which brings me to this series of screenshots:

Yes, that is Niqora in Karazhan with my guildies. The day has come, dear readers…I have been in a raid.

Now, I know that this was not the greatest raid in history. We wiped quite a few times, sometimes due to not being familar with the place and more times than I would like from a few over-eager individuals jumping the gun and getting us all killed. Having said that, we killed the first 3 bosses on the first time. It’s not any sort of record but it’s a great first for a guild where most of us have never even seen the inside of Kara, myself included. I think I only made one stupid mistake where I accidently aggroed a couple of elites onto myself. I had been using Volley to help quickly kill some groups of non-elite mobs and I hadn’t realized that this particular time, some elites had decided to join in the fun. I was also happy to see that I came out on top for DPS. Mind you, Niqora is level 77 and the closest DPS in level was a 74 mage (but he was bragging before how he could out-DPS me so it was a sweet victory *grins* ).

As we speak, the rest of my guild is finishing off the instance while I’m at work, taking an extra shift for one of my co-workers. I had logged on before to do the cooking daily and they had offered me a spot even though they had already started…because they love me that much. What I’ve taken from this one raid is that raiding can be stressful but what makes it fun for me is being able to do something with the friends I’ve made in the guild. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have gone in the first place. Congratulations Bloodriver, we did it!