Give A Noob A Fish...

...and he eats for a day.

A couple days ago I got a tell from a Hunter asking me if I could help him with one of the elite demons he needed to kill in order to get the Hunter epic bow. Now the point of this quest is that the Hunter kill these four demons by himself. However, due to "creative uses of game mechanics," it's possible that another Hunter that is either on the same quest or has completed it can kill the demon while the scrub Hunter loots the head.

I managed to complete the quest myself - even after another Hunter in the guild offered to kill one of the demons that had been frustrating me for a week. So I figured I'd go ahead and do it. It would just validate my awesomeness.

He was asking for help on Artorius the Doombringer, which was both the most stressful and the most fun demon of the four for me to kill. Oh yeah, when I was on my quest the demons were on a three hour respawn timer. Which meant that if I fucked up an encounter, I had to wait another three hours before I could attempt it again. Not to mention there would be other Hunters competing for the same demon as well. About two patches ago Blizzard reduced the respawn timer on the demons to 15 minutes. Kids have it so easy these days. Jeez.

So I go out there and we wait for Artorius to spawn. Eventually this Orc Hunter with tier 2 Dragonstalker Spaulders rides up with a friend. I was like, "WTF is this guy doing here? He's got T2 shoulders...no way he doesn't have his epic bow yet." Since Tier 2 Hunter shoulders drop off of Chromaggus, deep within Blackwing Lair, which is a solar system of progression away from Majordomo Executus in Molten Core, the quest giver for the epic bow. But, yeah, this Hunter was in a guild that managed to kill Chromaggus, yet he didn't have an MC-level ranged weapon. GG.

So Artorius finally spawns and the other team gives us a first shot since we were there first. Having been a while since I did the encounter, I allowed the demon to get too close to me so he polymorphed me into a demon myself and I died. So when I get back to my body and rez I notice the Orc is attempting the encounter. He fucks it up as well and is himself transformed into a demon and dies.

On my second attempt I successfully make it up the hill to the road and it's ezsauce to bring Artorius down from there. Even though I had nothing at stake, it was still thrilling to kill this guy. Scrub Hunter loots the head and gives me a Thorium Lockbox in return for my services. Some Hunters charge up to 100 gold per head to kill a demon, but I didn't really do it for the money.

Huhuran's Stinger

Finally, after months of lusting after this pimp-ass bow, Huhuran's Stinger is finally mine! It dropped off of Princess Huhuran last night during Trinity's AQ40 raid.

I didn't get much of a chance to play around with damage comparisons against my old Rhok'delar, so I'll be messing around with that today. In theory it should grant me greater sustained DPS than Rhok, and possibly be able to hang with an Ashjre'thul in raid situations. We'll see.

I Gots A New Move, Bitches!

I couldn't get to sleep last night so around 3 AM I logged in to WoW and found myself flying to Thorium Point to see if I could find some late-night PvP action. Nothing along the ride to BRM, nor through it, and I only started getting pings on my Humanoid tracking in the northwest area of Burning Steppes.

I had been following this level 60 Troll warrior around for a few minutes and decided to have some fun with him when he aggroed a couple of level 56 elite Dragonkin. Dismounted and delivered a concussive shot and serpent sting to slow him down so the mobs could catch up to start doing damage to him.

He survived with about 70% health and continued riding on upwards towards Blackrock Mountain. I mounted up again and gave chase. Then I noticed another set of red letters in the distance: a 55 Undead Priest was loitering around the BRM entrance. This was when the warrior decided he would stop hauling ass and try to come after me with his new Priest buddy helping him. Does this story sound familiar? It should.

I see the warrior enter his berserker state so I dismount immediately and drop a freezing trap at my feet. Predictably the noob charges and stuns me, but winds up frozen in my trap. GG.

I get to work on the 55 Priest who gets owned in short order. Out pops the warrior for the predicable intercept-stun-hamstring combination. Seeing as how anytime I'm not raiding I have my PvP gear equipped, which includes a handy dandy little Insignia of the Alliance (removes all slowing and stunning effects upon use), I pop the IotA and am free to range this guy to death.

Once his doom is imminent, he tries to run back into the mountain. But, as they say: If you run from a Hunter you'll only die tired. As such he did.

Unfortunately some 60 mage ran out of BRM soon after and proceeded to kick my ass. Ah, well. You win some, you lose some.

So I've decided that now that I've used the same tactic (freeze the warrior, own teh priest) twice - the first time against that moron Iddyott - it now has a special name: The Iddyott Special. Imaginative, no?

Whatever.

Tao of Healing

I think I have finally grokked being a priest today. In BRD, running some low-to-mid 50's buddies through, I warned them: "Guys, quit crowding the trap. If he gets a bad pull, you're too close to let him shake it off."

"We can handle it, we're doing great." Well, guess what? Five whole minutes, bad pull.

Tank: "Got it."
Pally: "Adds!"
(Flash heal, flash heal, greater heal, renew, prayer of healing, fade. End result: tank is alive but at 20% or so health, and there is a good chance I'll have aggro on something when my fade runs out in 10... 9... 8...)
Rogue: "I need a heal!"
Yours Truly: "You're not getting it!"

And I didn't even hesitate. Muwahahahaha!!!

Iddyott

So there's this noob warrior on my server on Horde side. He's a Tauren Warrior named Iddyott. He's from Australia and owns an internet cafe. Iddyott had a reputation for getting other people to grind out his Battlegrounds rep to High Warlord. Which means he's an unskilled nubcake with really powerful armor and weapons.

Iddyott is a terrible warrior. He sucks. He sucks ass. I've fought him before on my own grind to Commander rank. What a noob.

But since he's so bad, he's famous.

So last night I was chilling in Silithus when I happen to catch the very familiar and promient Warlord shoulders. "ZOMG, it's Iddyott, rofl," I thought to myself. He had some 55 Priest with him, probably his own personal healer or something.

I never miss an opportunity to kick Iddyott's ass, so that is precisely what I went to do.

I approached pretty close and I saw him notice me since he went into berserker rage. I quickly planted a freezing trap at my feet and sent my level 58 Winterspring Owl at the Priest. Moron charges right into my trap and becomes a noobcicle. He can do nothing more than watch as I fucking dominate the Priest.

When he pops out of my trap his healer is dead so I proceed to fuck him up. He warstomps, he pops a healing potion (lol) but it doesn't matter because I own him.

So he's sitting there, a steaming pile of Tauren carcass and he isn't releasing. Probably infuriated that some Hunter took him out in his full High Warlord armor and sword. Not only that, but played him like a goddamn fool by killing his Priest while he sat in a freezing trap.

So yeah. I own.

Chromaggus Down

Trinity is officially now on Nefarian, the last boss of Blackwing Lair.

(I can't believe Chromaggus dropped double Nemesis. WTF?? Bitch can't drop at least one set of Dragonstalker shoulders? *mutter*)

The Bliss Of Noobility

Or something. Sometimes I think back to when I first started playing my character. It was truly as if I had been just born into that virtual world. Everything was so fantastically fantastic, in the truest form of the word. At level 1 I was the noobiest of noobs, waking up at the spawn point of every new Night Elven character. Surrounded by shades of purple, pink, and dark blues. And the music. Calming, relaxing music punctuated by chimes that only added to the magical fantasy of the whole thing.

Yeah, okay, so I can remember venturing outside of the protective shelter of the Night Elf starting point and following the path west to Darnassus. All of a sudden I see a gigantic tree-thing stomping its way towards me. "Oh, shit!" I thought as I started running away. So eventually I found out that it was a guardian that was a friendly. God, what a fuckin' noob, right?

Then there's my first flight off the island into Darkshore; more specifically, Auberdine. Level 10. And my introduction to the murlocs. Those goddamn murlocs. Fish-people capable of pissing off even the most calm of players with those gargly sounds coming from them. Being overrun by a pack and cursing the hell out of those little shits as they killed you and then flip-flapped back with a smug self-satisfaction that only made you want to reach into your monitor and strangle those abusive little fucks. (Sometimes, when I come back to Darkshore, I will go to a murloc village and slaughter every last one of those things. "Remember me, motherfuckers? Not so fucking smug anymore are you? Die! Fucking die, all of you!")

Once I got to a high enough level I decided I wanted to train in swords. Because swords are awesome. Unfortunately I did not know where to go to do this. Another friendly player offered to guide me to some place called Stormwind where I was told was somebody who could teach me how to pwn with swords. So I followed him onto a boat and across the ocean to a wholely new continent, landing in The Wetlands. I had heard many a story about lowbies trying to get to Stormwind on foot, about how many times you could expect to die to the vicious mobs that littered the area. But we were off, the two of us in our mid-teens with shitty gear but of intrepid spirit, running along the long, long road to our first destination of Ironforge.

We ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. And then we ran some more. The road wound itself disorientingly and we took fork after fork and I thought that I would never find my way back. The land rose and we snuck through Dwarven-built tunnels through the mountains and snow started appearing as we ascended until we reached the snowy land of Dun Morogh and, eventually, the great city of Ironforge. Carved into a mountain with two great stone doors at its entrance, it was quite a sight to behold for somebody who just fell off the turnip truck.

Up until this point I had not met many other players, but upon entering Ironforge, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of other players milling about, some with mounts, and a lot of them with awesome looking gear and weapons glowing red, white, purple, and blue. No time for that as my guide led me through this vast underground metropolis to the underground tram. We both boarded and rode it to Stormwind, where the other player guided me to the weapons trainer. He even gave me the 10 silver that I needed to buy the training.

So long ago. I have been there and done that. I have killed thousands upon thousands of enemy Horde players. I have seen some monsters that require forty players to bring down. I've become the grizzled old war veteran who has become cynical and somewhat jaded with the world. My rules of engagement were to attack only for defense back then. Now I take bored pleasure in sending my pet after a level 40 and grinning with mild amusement as he gets taken down by my cat. Either that or I may fire a concussive shot at a lowbie Horde who is desperately trying to run away from a mob that's about to kill him. Or I may just level my unarmed weapon skill by punching lowbies to death.

I once went back to where my life as a hunter began. It reminded me of how things used to be, but it just wasn't the same.

It's kind of weird. My character has evolved, but so has my way of thinking about my experiences in-game. Character development not only in stats or levels or gear, but also in attitude.