Nearly There...!

I PvP-ed my ass off this weekend. Warsong Gulch double-honor weekend and I managed to get myself into the Alliance PvP A-Team. Over five hundred honor kills on Saturday, over 400 HKs on Sunday, and I have one more night to own more noobs. Thus far I have amounted 196,000 honor and my goal is to get at least 200k for this week.

There is a mage in the group who is probably going to make Grand Marshal this week. When I inspected his honor rankings Saturday, he had accumulated over 400k honor. Dizamn!

Hopefully just one more week of this and I'll hit Commander rank and buy my EPIC BATTLE TIGER! Yes, even more powerful than the one He-Man used!

Cheesing The Hunter Epic Quest

I am only one of two Hunters in my guild who has completed the Hunter epic quest on his own. Currently we have four Hunters with the epic bow and staff with a fifth on his way to completing the quest.

Of the three who have, or are in the process of getting, the bow and staff, they have all used one guy to effectively kill the demons for them. What they do is party with Hunter X, spawn the demon, feign death, and let Hunter X do the work. Once the fight is over, they get up and loot the head off the corpse. This could be considered an exploit of in-game mechanics, a statement I will agree to despite my apathetic attitude I show when they tell me what they're doing. Either that or they will give Hunter X their login information and have him log into their account and kill the demon that way.

Either way, it's uber-cheese since the quest line is meant to be done solo. It's meant to test your skill at playing the Hunter class. It's an epic quest for epic weapons. But some people decide to cruise through them on the shoulders of someone else. I realize it's just a game, and a lot of these guys say, "Yeah, I might feel bad about doing it that way, but just for like the first five seconds and then I won't give a shit because I've got this hot bow," but come on. Having someone else put in time and effort for you is no better than buying gold off eBay. Gold farmers are effectively doing the work for you so you can take the easy way out.

Okay, fine, if that's how they want to play, that's how they will play. But it's telling that the Hunter they're getting to do the work for them is pretty much the best Hunter in the guild. So while they may get the bow at the end, whatever honing of skills, or improvement in class usage they could have made is not ever done. They remain a mediocre Hunter with a nice weapon.

Hunter X offered to kill two demons I was having a particularly hard time with. He whispered me, "I can 'help' you out, if you know what I mean." And I did. But I respectfully declined and I told him I would get this shit done myself. I got it done. I pwn so fucking hard I soloed the one demon everybody says you need a team to help you out with. Even Hunter X was amazed when I told him I soloed that bitch. The other Hunters have no fucking idea how I did it by myself, finally concluding that I'm an elite fucking god.

That's pretty much the difference then. They know how they got their bows, and they know how I got mine. In the end you have to admit that you took the easy way out of it. In the end I know that I took care of business myself.

Patience

Lieutenant Commander

One of the funny things about achieving this rank and recently acquiring the Hunter epic bow and staff is that I am immensely popular among the Hordelings. That is to say, I am finding myself more frequently at the bottom of a pile of Horde intent on destroying me as quickly and as viciously as possible.

It is no secret that the higher the player's rank, the more honor one gets from their death. And my glowing beacon sitting over my shoulder is an invitation to come kill this hotshot Hunter with the epic bow.

Back when I was just a nubcake entering battlegrounds, I could comfortably hang out behind the front lines and pick off priests and mages. They might send a shadow priest or a warrior at me, or some rogue would bust out of the shadows and go at it with me, but that was about the extent of it.

Now it's different. I find myself assaulted by several people at once. Quite ravenously. Having two or three rogues crawling all over you is no picnic; neither is being beat on by three warriors. The increased attention, though, has some advantage: I am capable of pulling three or four enemy players away from the flag nodes while my allies capture it. That's right, fools, come after me, leave your flag unguarded, and take your juicy kill.

If all goes well, I won't be doing this honor farming bullshit for much longer. I can purcahse an epic mount at the rank of Commander, which is one rank away. One more rank and I'm through with goddamn battlegrounds.

Packing Some Serious Heat

So Saturday night I completed the Hunter epic quest and received Rhok'delar, Longbow of the motherfucking Ancient Keepers. The switch from Striker's Mark to Rhok is akin to upgrading to a bazooka after using a nine millimeter handgun: Rhok hits like a fuckin' tank.

Last night in Arathi Basin it was making mulch out of cloth-wearers. One unlucky Warlock took a 2000 damage Aimed Shot critical right in his face; he dropped like a fuckin' fly, he did.

Because of this added zomgwtfpwnage I was averaging 10+ more honor kills per AB match than I usually do, and about 5 more killing blows.

Hopefully today I will rank up to rank 10. Unfortunately at this stage the tier 1 PvP armor set blows ass compared to my Molten Core gear, but I'll buy it anyway just for shits. If I do rank up, that leaves only one more rank bar of PvP until I can get an epic mount. And then it's bye-bye battlegrounds.

An Unjust World

This is Phelps. That makes this a group blog! Azeroth is an unjust world. You know why? Because in a just world, I would be allowed to attack people in my own faction and indeed my own guild, such as:

• Ninja looters. There are a remarkable number of ninja paladins. I really don't get it. Aren't paladins supposed to be good? How about you at least help me fight the damned mobs if you plan to steal the tin vein I'm obviously heading for?
  
  
• The Leeroy Jenkinses of the world. Jeez. And you find them in your own guild. They tend to be paladins. And they have remarkable timing. This weekend, Leeroy decided to strike while the tank was lagged out trying to loot. Time to go draw five elementals onto the group! Gotta hurry before the tank recovers! We were hoping that Leeroy would die out there -- that would be the best result. You know better than that, though. Leeroy has mad group-wiping skillz.
  
  
• Paladins in general. I mean, what. the. hell. I'm misreading something. There is something in the descriptions on the WoW site that appeals to the stupidest among us in its description of paladins. Paladins aren't even that good. Blizzard broke the "I Win" button. Now you are a shitty healer and a shitty warrior. Stop trying to do either. Stop wasting my mana by trying to heal. You suck at it. You're the buff boy. You picked the class. Deal with it.

I'm sure there are others. Who else should just up and die?

Latency FTL

Zomg, so last night my latency shot up to over 8000 ms on Dragonmaw! WTF, Bliz! I was about to give Solenor the Destroyer another shot. I had a Dwarven Priest ready to fear ward me and then I get this bullshit lag spike.

This morning, same deal. Log into Dragonmaw for 10k ms latencies. My Horde character on Shattered Hand runs fine at 76 ms. What the fuck, come on now, I've got a fucking Molten Core raid to go to tonight.

Argh! So fucking close to my Rhok'delar and I have to contend with this bullshit. Solenor is going down. I know I can kill him. Goddamnit.

God, if this is a message from you telling me I should lay off the WoW, ok, fine, I was going to do it anyway, but why couldn't you have waited until after I killed the last demon for my quest? Come on, man, it's Rhok'delar! You know - Longbow of the Ancient Keepers? I'm sure Jesus used it to pwn some noobs back in his day, so I know you know what I'm talking about.

Don't do this to me now.

By the way, Phelps, I need your email address so I can add you to the contributors of this blog. So, like, email it to me. Mexigogue has my email address if you need it.

Artorius: Improvements

This post is meant only so I can jot my thoughts down about my failed encounters with Artorius the Doombringer in Winterspring. Read only if you're terribly bored.

First and foremost: Relax. Have fun. This is supposed to be a fun quest line. I'll get it down. It's just a matter of time.

The problem I find with Artorius is that during the kite up the long slope to the road, my standard jump-shots do not continue a fluid forward motion. Instead, when I jump and turn backwards for the shot, at the same time the rising terrain is decreasing the height I have to turn back around to zero. So I effectively wind up jumping, shooting, and instead of facing forward to continue the run, I find myself facing the demon and having to turn around to keep running. This causes a stop in forward motion and allows Artorius to enter range where he can transform me into a demon and kill me.

My standard jump shots up sloping terrain ARE NOT WORKING.

So what I need is a solution that 1) allows me to keep my forward motion as continuous as possible, and 2) shoot Artorius with arcane and serpent stings.

The answer is the 90 degree straffe in the opposite direction from the demon. One can straffe sideways at the same velocity as one's forward run. Facing sideways also allows one to fire instant shots backwards.

What I need to do is once I start going up the incline to the road, change my forward run into a side-straffe up the entire length of the hill. (*It may be wise to put the camera follow orientation to "Smart" so that if I have to make course corrections, I can release the position I was pointing the camera so that it will bind to my current orientation and then make the corrections.)

I also need to bind keys 3 and 4 on my secondary toolbar to arcane and serpent sting. My straffing key will be Q which leaves two fingers free for the shots that I will need. (**Note: Switch to the secondary toolbar for the uphill kite since the downhill/flat kites you can do normally and will use the regular 9 and 0 key bindings for the shots on the primary toolbar. Once you're on the road, switch back to primary toolbar bindings and finish him off. Use the 3 and 4 secondary toolbar bindings at all times. When I go out of range I wind up waiting for him and having to drag my mouse to the toolbar to shoot arcane and/or serpent. This takes far too long. Having the keys perpetually bound to 3 and 4 will allow me to reduce the time that I fire and continue running. PRACTICE YOUR STANDARD JUMP-SHOT USING THE MODIFIED 3 AND 4 KEY BINDINGS ON THE SECONDARY TOOLBAR.)

Added: Bind concussive shot to key 5 just in case you need it.

Go back to the top and read this again.

Update: Artorius down! Owned him up during my lunch break. Three down. One to go. My fingers itch for you, Rhok'delar!

Two Down, Two To Go

A lot of people who have gone through the Hunter epic bow quest have described it as a ton of fun. I guess they can be fun, but for the two demons I have thus far killed, the fights have been nerve wracking.

The problem isn't the fights or the tactics; those come with practice. The problem, at least for me, is the intense pressure you're under because once the demons are spawned, you have 20 minutes to kill them or they will despawn for 3 to 4 hours. So when you spawn them, you've gotta be ready to go. No joke.

Not only that, but you have no help whatsoever so you have to stock up on appropriate potions and supplies for each encounter. I've studied them and watched the videos of other Hunters who have done the quest, and they all sound pretty straightforward...until you attempt to apply them.

Then the fun starts.

The first demon I attempted was Klinfran the Crazed in the Burning Steppes. My first attempt I got three tries in before he despawned. This is a kite-melee-kite-melee alternating fight where you kite the demon up until a certain point where you render him extremely weak and you go in and melee him. (For those who don't know, a Hunter's primary strength is ranged attacks; they are very weak melee fighters.) During my first set of attempts the Scorpid Sting I applied to weaken him ran out before I could wing clip him and run out of range of his fully powered attacks. So I got owned like a nub.

The second attempt, 3 hours later, I pwnz0rized his face after I equipped the Arathi Basin PvP boots with their added run-speed modifiers. It was a long fight, and I had to use my "Oh Shit!" shot a couple of times when I still mis-timed the duration of Scorpid Sting, but I eventually got him down.

The second demon I killed was Simone the Seductress in Un'Goro crater. A much more difficult fight because she has a demon pet to contend with at the same time. The funny thing about this encounter is that I and an Orc Hunter arrived at the same time to try Simone. He emoted "/cheer" at me and yielded so that I could give a go at it.

I got spanked three times for one reason or another - one of which was stupid random mobs deciding they wanted to join in the fun. Fucking monsters. Fortunately there was a friendly Paladin there who resurrected me and saved me the long walk (and precious time lost) from the graveyard back to my body. (When I died I also lost the effect of a nature protection potion, which is crucial to this fight.)

So my last attempt at Simone I went in pretty much as ill-prepared as you can go. I kited her pet to death first and then went toe-to-toe with the bitch. Her nature attacks were killing me and I was forced to down several different types of healing potions. I had to pop all of my best survival skills (Deterrence, Aspect of the Monkey) when things really got bad. I scatter-shotted her twice so that I could apply crude bandages on myself. But in the end of that frenzied fight I eventually killed her.

That was the craziest fight ever. I was literally shaking after the encounter - it was so fucking intense. Yeah, I know it's just a computer game, but, goddamn. There was a point in that fight where my major healing potion timer was 2 seconds away from being available and her lightning attack dropped my health to nearly zero. My health bar was literally empty and all I did was mash my mouse button over my healing potion icon hoping to God I'd quaff it before her next attack.

Two more demons to go.