How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Hunter

It's been almost embarrassing to admit it, with all the great hunter blogs out there extolling the class as well as the fine examples in my guild, but after getting my own hunter to 70, I just really wasn't feeling it. It just all felt so complicated, so much micromanaging to play a dps class.

And then there's the pulling. See, I don't actually like pulling, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it stems from being a mage, but there's something intrinsically suicidal about having one's job be to run ahead and shoot things in the face.

I did regular Shattered Halls run followed by heroic Ramparts a few weeks back, and although it was a good guild group and things went smoothly enough, I'd never felt more off my game. (Also, my gun broke in the middle of Ramparts. This didn't help any.) It's like the 5 man hunter playstyle just wasn't meshing with my own finely attuned PvE ranged dps skills. Sure, I appreciated hunters more than ever, but did I really want to play one?

And so my hunter went back to sitting dormant in Skettis, earning me a few gold here and there with daily quests, until The Boy and I decided to form a 2v2 team with our alts. I named us the Dark Iron Scraps, and up until this week, the name was the best thing we had going for us. Quite frankly, we started with no gear and 11k health between the two of us. His mage was sporting PvE tailoring epics, and I was in... well, quest greens, some of which were leather. To be frank, we're still pretty atrociously geared, we've lost at least 80% of our games, and our rating is abysmal.

But back to huntering, because here's the thing: I respecced for arena this week, and suddenly I'm having fun with my hunter! Ramekin's now 0/42/19, and for being such a noob, he's the most godawful arena pest you've ever laid eyes on. My other arena partner, A Moonkin in San Francisco, says he could've told me that months ago:

Me: Wow, my hunter is annoying now that I've respecced for arena.
aMiSF: Well, duh.
Me: Heh.
aMiSF: Oh, you have buffs on you? Lemme get rid of those. What's that, you want to heal? Well we can't have that do any good, let's just cut that in half. Oh, you want to cast spells too? Now now, none of that.
Me: Just think of these as gifts. Like this lovely scattershot.
aMiSF: Oh, and here is an animal for your face. You can't CC him, so just deal with it.

AllPlayed: Revisiting /Played Time

A while back I wrote about adding up all the time I'd played on all my WoW characters. This past week, I was informed of a mod that will actually do this for you. AllPlayed is an add-on that does exactly what I did without all the pesky screenshotting and adding up the numbers. If you're an Ace fan, you'll be pleased, and if you use FuBar, doubly so, because AllPlayed is an Ace2 mod that displays on FuBar itself, like this:



In addition to displaying /played time for each of your characters, AllPlayed lets you monitor how much gold you have on each character, as well as the amount of rested XP they've accumulated. Good stuff.

If you have WoWAceUpdater, you can pick it up during your next add-on update. If you don't use the Updater, you can download it here from Curse.

Screenshot Sunday: Death By Spine

Today's Screenshot Sunday comes from the Naj'entus fight.

With SSC and TK on farm, my raid's attention has turned to new encounters in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. On my mage, I don't really get too excited about Hyjal (yay, another wave of trash!) , but I really like the feel of BT. High Warlord Naj'entus is the first boss in the Temple, and is reached by entering through a crack in the wall and fighting your way through the sewers.

The fight itself is noteworthy primarily for requiring everyone in the raid to have at least 9k health. For mages, this means throwing on all kinds of PvP gear, or old mage tanking gear from the Maulgar fight.

The reason you need at least 9k health is that every 45 seconds or so, Naj'entus puts up a tidal shield, a giant bubble effect that makes him impervious to all damage. In what I consider one of the coolest fight mechanics in the game, there's only one way to break this shield. Periodically during the fight, Naj'entus will throw a needle spine at a random player. (You can see Firkin dead to one above.) Another person in the raid must pull the spine out of the targeted player's body and then throw it to burst the shield bubble. When the tidal shield breaks, everyone in the raid takes 8500 frost damage.

Naj'entus went down for us last week along with Supremus. The first few fights in BT and Hyjal are definitely easier than Vashj or Kael, which is a nice break. As The Boy put it last week: "You've beaten Kael'thas. Here, have a cookie."

Nerf By Numbers

I've been thinking a lot about arena strategies and gear over the past week, now that I'm doing shadow priest/moonkin and hunter/mage 2v2s regularly. Admittedly, the hunter/mage combo has a definite 'losing for the epics' feel to it, as The Boy and I only have about 12k health combined on our alts.

Reading 2v2 arena strats requires a certain amount of tolerance for the old rock/paper/scissors class-based QQing. Just for fun, I thought I'd do a little Google survey to see who the teeming millions think really needs a nerf. Apparently paladins aren't overpowered at all!

Screenshot Sunday Aggro, Oh Noes!

Where was Screenshot Sunday? It's indefensible and kind of sad, really. Like inviting everyone to a party and then not being at home. Plus, it makes the moonkin angry. And you won't like him when he's angry. Could it possibly still be Sunday for some GMW readers? I hope so. I really do.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, all you lucky folks getting tomorrow (today?) off. And for everyone else... well, hopefully you're all asleep by now and reading this on Monday.

If Only.

Me: It's snowing!
Moonkin in San Francisco: Huh?
Me: Snowing! ...Okay, more like heavy flurries, but I'm in Georgia. Work with me here.
Moonkin in SF: You should go to the store and buy up all the milk and bread.
Me: Yeah, seriously. If only the grocery store worked like the Auction House.

Vashj Phase 2 Tips (From a DPS Perspective)

Last night my raid went back to Serpentshrine Cavern to get Vashj's vial for a few more raiders. It took us one wipe to get back into the swing of things, which got me thinking about all the complexity involved in learning the Vashj fight. I thought I'd share a few tips and one handy map that helped convert SSC to farm status for my raid.

Vashj's second phase is really the worst, because you've got to have people handling enchanted elementals and tainted elemental spawns, tanks picking up elite naga, dpsers kiting coilfang striders, and healers healing everyone through all that chaos plus Vashj's forked lightning.

You can cut down on the initial chaos by making sure everyone in your raid doesn't just know strats (you have read the strategies on Bosskillers and MMO-Champion already, right?), but has also taken a look at a map or video of the fight and knows where they should be standing in phase 2.

Work out your positioning ahead of time, especially for the elemental dpsers. There are a lot of labeled maps for phase 2 out there, but most of them are pretty vague and just divide the elemental sides into four areas.

Our favorite map is the one below, by Starslayer of the guild Stack and Die. It not only labels the north, south, east and west sides of Vashj's platform, but it also shows every spawn point for the elementals. This lets you assign your elemental dps to specific spawn points (ie, South side, spawns B & C) instead of just a vague area. Be sure to assign less mana-dependent dpsers (hunters are great for this) to cover areas that have an additional elemental spawn.


Once you have your positioning worked out, it's also worthwhile to remind everyone that healing becomes even more complex than usual in the Vashj fight since the healers will also be the go-to people for tossing tainted cores to eliminate Vashj's four shield generators. This is one of those fights where it's critical that everyone make not dying their number one priority - it's a dps race, and it's unlikely you're going to have the druid mana for more than one or two rebirths.

Everyone needs to do their utmost not to die here: squishy folk should use pots, healthstones, and above all stay out of the way of striders and naga. Be aware that naga cleave and sometimes take a few seconds to get picked up, and avoid standing at the very edge of the outer ring where a newly-spawned naga could one-shot you into oblivion.

Once you've looted the fourth tainted core (and tossed it to the final receiver using your tainted core macro*), hold off on dropping the fourth generator for a second and assess your situation.

How are you looking on striders? One or more coilfang striders up at the start of phase three can really undermine your transition. If you can, finish off any remaining striders below half-health, switch your dps to any existing nagas, and use your timers to deactivate the final generator right before any more adds spawn. This way, you'll be spending most of your time in phase three killing Vashj, and not dealing leftover adds.

Of course, if you've got that kind of coordination going on at the very end of phase two, you're well on your way to beating Vashj anyway. Good luck!
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*You do have a macro for tossing tainted cores, don't you? The usual one is:
/use tainted core /y <-------TAINTED CORE TO %T /ra <------ TAINTED CORE TO %T /script SendChatMessage("YOU HAVE THE CORE!!!", "WHISPER", "common", UnitName("target"));