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. >.>

Healing lazers go pewpew

// November 6th, 2009 // 21 Comments » // Non-hunters

Remember less than 2 weeks ago when I was complaining about how I can never seem to find a leveling partner that sticks with me? Well Kazi so kindly offered his warlock to level with my shammy Zulrea and in that small time frame, we’ve gone from level 33 to dinging 51 last night. I have to admit that I never thought Zulrea would get that high, at least that fast. I figured she was going to mull around the 30s for a long time, only coming out to heal the odd lowbie run through Scarlet Monastery and grabbing a level here and there. Anyways, while it is great to be leveling so quickly, the majority of the enjoyment comes from having Kazi there and how well our characters work together.

You see, I’m leveling Zulrea as elemental. From what I’ve gleaned from others, enhancement is the preferred leveling spec and probably for good reason…you can take more hits. I choose elemental because I figured this would be the closest I ever get to playing a caster and I wanted to try something other than melee after having leveled Saraku for so long. And I also knew the elemental would be a good off-healer when the situation needed it. We’ve actually discovered that this is a great combination to have with Kazi’s warlock Basi, who’s specced Affliction.

In general, our fights go something like this: We find a bunch of mobs, the more there are the better. Kazi starts dotting them up while I throw around a couple Earth Shocks and maybe some Lightning Bolts (usually on the target that’s being taunted by Kazi’s voidwalker because I’m pretty squishy despite all my mail gear). Once Kazi has them all gathered up, he uses his voidwalker bubble (the name of the spell eludes me) and starts using Hellfire. I can usually get off a Chain Lightning before his bubble wears off and he starts taking damage. Then I throw him a heal and by the time that’s done, his Hellfire has killed everything. He uses Life Tap to regain his mana and I heal him to full health again. That way he never runs out of health and mana, and the mana regen for an elemental shammy is so good that this all barely makes a dent in my mana pool (I’m fondly referred to as his mana battery ). Then off we run to our next set of victims. I believe our record for the amount of mobs we can take on at once is 12 or 13 16 or possibly more as Kazi pointed out. I can count on one hand the number of times we have died since we partnered up. Who would have thought that a shaman and a warlock would go so well together?

Hellfire + Healer is OP but I'm not gonna complain

It’s also very amusing to hear Kazi cackle manically over vent when he sucks the soul out of a particularly annoying mob. I laugh every time.

Impatience + Money = WIN

// June 27th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Hunters and Pets, Non-hunters

Sons of Hodir dailies for whatever reason were starting to grate on my nerves. Usually I don’t mind doing dailies. These…maybe it was because for the life of me, I couldn’t do the drake spearing daily.

Either way, Niqora had some spare cash lying around. I know over 3000 gold really isn’t that much but what the heck else am I going to spend it on? Her tradeskills are all maxed, her gear is pretty good (just need another Massacre enchant /groan) and I don’t like spending lots of money on alts (especially considering how many I have). I could spend it on mounts…but I already have most of them that can be bought. Plus I really don’t need any more. >.>

So…I make a trip to the AH and buy 700 Relics of Ulduar. That gets Niqo from 5000 into revered to almost exalted. I have to do one daily to get to exalted…and congratulations to me! Niqo also gets the achievement for exalted with 15 factions. 15 somebodies like me! I buy her shoulder enchant and wave goodbye to all the frost giants. So long and thanks for all the…worm meat.

Heading over to Zulrea, I do a couple quests and hooray! She’s level 30! Screw waiting for 3.2, I’m getting her mount now. She picks out a pretty emerald raptor and then I log her out until I feel like leveling her again (or until someone needs a level 30 healer).

Then us altoholics at Bloodriver decide that a RFC run is in order so I get on my newest hunter, Machalor (who is a remake of the original Machalor back on my old server Hydraxis, I’m so original). She gets some greens, loses the roll on the Chanting Blade (but it goes to a deserving guildie so I’m happy) and dings level 16. She goes to turn in all the quests for the instance and gets to level 17 just from those. I try to find Snort to tame (as Machalor is my hyena lady) but no such luck. When I log off for the night, my guildies are heading into SFK. I guess I’ll find out today how they did!

I always forget the totems

// June 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Hunters and Pets, Non-hunters

In an effort to write more, shorter blog posts so that I actually keep this thing updated…

Last night after doing Argent tourney dailies on Niqora, there was talk of doing a guild SM run with some of our alts (we have a lot of altoholics in Bloodriver). The group make started to form as I was turning in my quests…3 pallies and a warlock, with a spot open for me. I almost bring Saraku, but there being 3 other pallies and none of them healers (of course), I decide instead to take my shammy, Zulrea. She’s level 28 but she’s resto specced and has quite a few blues. We head in to the Graveyard, only for me to discover that there’s so much Consecrate going down that I barely have to do any healing. It isn’t long before both the Consecrate jokes (“This must be the holiest place in the game by now”) and me begging for them to take on harder fights start coming over vent. They oblige me by pulling more mobs at a time and I happily heal away. Did I mention that I like playing my shammy healer?

Zulrea dings 29 in GY and it was so easy that we head over to the Library. I’ve also discovered that Mana Spring totem overwrites Blessing of Wisdom. I kept asking for Wisdom and they kept giving it to me, only for it not to take. “Niqo, your totem is overwriting it…” “…Oops.” /dispels totem

We get to just before the last boss in the library without any problems…and somehow a runaway pulls him, causing the first wipe. I was soulstoned but I had used it because I thought I could save us. Oops. We run back as ghosts…only to discover that the entire instance had reset. Crap. We call it a night because it’s getting late and people are getting frustrated.

I switch back to Niqo to do my Hodir dailies (I still fail at drake spearing apparently) and then it’s off to bed with me. It was fun while it lasted…maybe we’ll get to do some more tonight. Zulrea only has 1/4 of the way until level 30

And believe me I am still alive

// April 22nd, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Hunters and Pets, Random Stuff

So it’s been 22 days since my last post…I think it should be expected by now that I will disappear for long periods of time. What can I say, I write when I feel like writing. And unlike some certain energetic people, I am lazy. And part of the reason is I want to change the design of Petoholics. Every time I come here, I keep thinking “I want to change that, and move this, and ooooh that would be shiny” and then I get thinking and I end up not posting at all.

First of all, a quick linkback to Zhire at The Spiked Collar who despite being a fairly new blogger has posted some nice hunter tips.

So for an update of what’s going on:

• The guild leader of Bloodriver and his wife (Mysthowl and Linserai) are taking a hiatus for some personal reasons and he has named Niqora as his temporary replacement. Sure, I joked about it while chatting with guildies and some of our allies (there was much evil laughter and phrases like “Bow down before me, peons!”). But honestly, I can’t wait until they get back. Mostly because me and the other members will miss them terribly but also because I’m not certain that I fit the leadership role. If Ticalos and Tzia weren’t going to be around, I think I would freak out. Really the three of us are going to share the role but Myst could only name one as chieftain and since RPwise, Niqora is Myst’s wife…even in character Niqo would not be suited to be a leader. She has the patience of a goddess but she’s also shy to a fault and avoids conflict whenever she can. Unless someone is going to get hurt, as Tic has found out in a RP session. So, this will be an interesting (and sad) time coming up very soon.
• Anuniaq is level 40! However my goal is 65 so I can train up her inscription…I have a ways to go yet.
• Niqora tamed Loque! And she got the albino drake! Pictures to come in a later post.
• My little shammy Zulrea is level 25, which is the highest I’ve ever gotten a non-hunter. I really enjoy healing. So once she reaches 40, I’m going to buy dual-spec for her and spec both resto and enhancement.

For some quick RL news, I got a job back at the beginning of February as a junior web designer. It was only suppose to be a 3 month term but I just found out that it’s being extended another 3 months at least. After those 3 months, they might hire me on as a regular employee. Which is wonderful! Also, I was chatting with my brother and once I have the money (because he’s a starving student), I’m going to get him his own WoW account so he can play with me. Finally! I will have someone I know IRL who actually plays the game.

Now I will leave you all with the song that inspired this post’s title. Try singing that on Rockband, my friends.