Your target is Dead

Currently I am on a WoW hiatus, but I still keep an eye on wow-insider and the official wow site. Soon I’ll pick up playing a bit more again, still got a few alt to level, and the Litch King content will be somewhat fresh again, if you haven’t done it in a while. And patch 3.2 is coming soon, it has already been downloaded by the background downloader. Over 400Mb big !

Anyway, there is an interesting Hunter Q&A on the official site, well worth a read if you have a hunter:

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/hunter-qa.html.

Yesterday Morphea my hunter picked these up from ah: Rusted-Linked Spiked Gauntlets.

They are a BOE item from Naxxramus. It’s very nice to give non-raiding people at least an opportunity to pick up some epic items, and give the raiding folk an opportunity to make a bit of cash. They sure are an upgrade from the only green quest item she was still wearing . Bought a +hit / + ap gem for it for only 20g.

Prices of gems have dropped quite a bit lately, so if you haven’t visited the ah lately (at least on EU-Aggramar), you might want to check out whether there are any cheap upgrades available.

Reading the latest info about WOTLK on wowinsider, it looks hunters and their pets will see quite a few changes. The talent trees will be different, as in that the Beastmaster now really will be a ‘beastmaster‘ who’s pet will have extra abilities etc.

And different pets will have different abilities based on their ‘pet familiy‘. Not sure how I feel about that, my hunter has two nice lvl 70 pets, and I certainly don’t feel much like leveling another one up. I hope Northend will have a few new nice pets, and that we will get an extra slot for one of the new pets, so I don’t have to abandon one !

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/21/hunter-pets-to-have-family-skills/

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/24/clarification-on-pet-talents/

WOTLK Pets on Petopia

Yesterday two guildmembers level 68 wanted to do this quest. As it turned out, it’s more of an event. Never done it before, weird enough, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Our group makeup with shaman, pally, mage, rogue and mage was a bit odd, but we made it work with some help from a few folks who were also doing this event.

Basically you have to defeat five bosses in a row, especially the last one hits hard and once you think you’re done, he revives himself . And the rewards are great. As a non-70 you get a lot of xp and pots and bandages, plus a nice weapon at the end. As I did this with my 70 hunter, I got over 22g per quest, so the epic flyer got just a little bit closer.

More info can be found on the wowwiki and wowhead:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Ring_of_blood

Chain starts with Brokentoe.

Mainly did dailies dailies and more dailies this week. Think I went a bit overboard as I didn’t feel like doing them at all the past few days. So today we just did the Auch. Crypts instance. The bosses gave me two more spirit shards. I had 15 in my bag, so I finally figured out where to exchange them. You can use those spirit shards at Gartok in Terrokar Forest. You only need 8 to obtain Swift Windfire Diamond, a Metagem to be used in your headgear socket. I am currently using it in Earthwarden’s coif and it’s a nice gear upgrade.

And with pain in my heart I had to let Jerry the wolf, my trustworthy companion from around lvl 28 – 60 go. I don’t see myself leveling a pet from 60 – 70, and I needed to open up a slot to learn the highest ranks of Bite and Gore. Got a very nice new dinosaur named Sparkles though. He holds aggro very well, and he was already tamed at lvl 69. I took him with me on all the dailies and he’s just turned 70 during the last instance run. I found him in the top north sphere in Netherstorm. If you have a pet spot open, I’d like to suggest you try one of them out. They look fun (wiggly tail and all) and do nice dmg as well.

And that makes my pet collection complete, got a cat, a ravager and the above mentioned dino now. I sure hope that once WOTLK arrived we get 2 more spots so we can train the new animals in Northrend. Otherwise I am going to have to let go of one of them and that won’t be fun.

There is a very nice article on wow-insider on Hunter DPS.

A lot of people will tell you that a Hunter is an overly easy class: sic your pet, turn on Auto Shot, and you’re done. While having a built-in tank that you can even heal a bit gives you a pretty strong advantage when going it alone, I’d have to say they oversimplify things a bit.

http://www.wowinsider.com/

I have to agree with this. Especially instance runs were a challenge at 1st with managing your pet, keep threat low and setting traps. I’ve gotten a bit better at it now, but it takes some practise .

Ok it’s been a bit longer than a week, but the title sounded cool . Morphea has finally left Terrokar Forrest behind her. We did the group quests with the guild, which was a lot of fun, but the environment was getting on my nerves by now, so I left a few quests undone and finally moved to Nagrand. I’m so glad I got an epic mount, because it’s rather big and there is quite a bit of running around between the various quest hubs and mobs.

The first quest chains I did were ofcourse the hunting quests for the Nesingwary Epidition. Kill 60 goats, owls and clefthoofs. And then the elites. A friendly guild druid helped out with those. The big elephant like creature at the end of the chains ‘Tusker’ was pretty tough, but we made it and I got me a new gun to replace the epic pvp bow. I also collected the beads killing ogres and some quests for the Consortium.

Also ran various instances with the guild the past week, with the help of one or two non-guildies here and there. Slave Penns was easy, we were a bit higher lvl than the instance is rated, and cleaned it out without problems. Sethekk Halls was more troublesome. I think we bit off a bit more than we could chew, and wiped quite a few times, especially at the End Boss, some of us even had to go back to the caravan camp and repair. But it was so cool when we finally did it. The quest reward for the instance is a very nice polearm with lots of agility and stamina on it that actually looks great.

Mana Tombs seemed to be better suited. Only had a little mishap, we even beat the Prince without any troubles. But out of all these, the most fun was Old Hillsbrad in the Caverns of Time. It was pretty tough, but we made it, only wiping twice. The mobs have fear, and some of the groups are pretty close together so you can figure out what happened those two times . Also cruised around old Southshore and Hillsbrad for a little while after we were done. It’s very nicely done. So nice to see Hillsbrad in it’s original state ! All in all Morphea is now lvl 68 1/2 or so, and still plenty to do in Nagrand.

Almost exclusively played Morphea, with Morpheus doing the daily pvp almost every day, and one Arena Night. We did well this week going 7-3, now with a priest / mage / boomkin combo, instead of hunter / mage / boomkin. Ruryk has dusted off his retired priest and at least the fights do last a lot longer now .

Patch 2.4 is around the corner, I think it’s already been downloaded in the background, looking forward to the new dailies !

Yesterday Morphea and 4 guildies cleared the Underbog. No help from lvl 70s this time ! We had 2 mages, lvl 64 and 62, a druid tank and a holy paladin as healer (both 64). And we did very well. The only wipe occurred right before the first boss where we somehow pulled 2 Bog Lords (and the boss ? wasn’t quite clear to me what happened exactly). We got 1 down, but then people started dieing and with just me and the pally left, we got the other bog lord to 20% or so and I couldn’t shake him off anymore, (my pet was a goner by this time) to shoot him and we died as well.

The third boss was a fun fight. His pet is a captured druid in bear fun. When he get to about 20% health, he becomes friendly. When you speak to him afterwards, he thanks you for freeing him, and that it was an embarrasing experience, being a hunter’s pet .

Then in the passage before the last boss, I accidentally sent my pet to the next group. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him rushing off. I was too late pulling him back, and he brought three extra mobs to the already tough group we were fighting. But miraculously, we managed to kill em all . With barely any health and mana left !

Everything went smoothly until we got to the last Boss. He is pretty tough. Luckily when we screwed up, he somehow reset and got back to his place, leaving only some of us dead on the ground. On the first try the clothies died, and somehow the Stalker evaded. On the second try the pally got killed  (he got allevated and plummeted to the ground) and we ran out of the room. The third try though was very smooth, and the boss went down pretty fast.

As you can see, not the whole group grasps the concept of the victory end screenshot . There is another one over here.

No interesting Hunter drops, just some cloth and +spell dmg stuff. From what I saw on wow-loot.com, the Slave Pens has some more interesting possible hunter drops. Hope to do that instance soon as well.

Completed four quests in the Underbog and thanks to rested XP I went from 350k xp needed to 180k or so. Gained between 1000 – 1200+ xp per mob kill, which was very nice. The 65 – 66 grind seems to take a bit long. The Terrokar Forest quests are a bit grindy (wolfpelts anyone ?), and are starting to bore me. I am actually thinking of skipping a bunch and heading straight to Nagrant, which is a much nicer environment. Sure it has it’s grind quests as well but all in all a more enjoyable experience than TF, atl east from what I can remember when I did all that with morpheus.

Morphea got to level 64 tonight while questing in Zangarmarsh . It’s such a nice area, I really like the weird atmosphere there. And it’s somewhat more relaxed than Hellfire Peninsula, as there aren’t mobs (with adds) everywhere you go. And there are plenty of Ogres that drop cloth and nice green items + silver, and who doesn’t like to kill Ogres ?

Only had an unfortunate incident (dieing twice) while getting Spore Sacs in the western part of the zone. I got mobbed by 2 Bog Lords. Usually not something I can’t handle, but they got a weird DOT (strangle something) and then out of nowhere 2 more popped up . Unfortunetaly I didn’t die in a comfortable place and got killed again (feign death didnt do much this time) when I get back (quite a walk too).

Ah well that’s all in a day’s questing . I am still not finished here in the area and already am 64 now, at this rate I’ll have netherstorm and silvermoon left when I get to 70, which should get me some nice income. I almost have enough for the epic riding skill and banked 50 AV tokens to get the AV mount. Ofcourse I could send over the rest of the gold I need from Morpheus, but this feels more like an accomplishment when I get Morphea to handle her own finances .

Morphea got to lvl 61 today while doing quests and the occasional pvp daily. My new bow certainly helps a lot, teamed with my new white tiger from winterspring, we kill stuff very quickly . Also did one Ramparts guild run, assisted by a 2 lvl 70s, druid bear tanking and that was a lot of fun. This also got a quest done with a nice reward (blue gloves) and at the end boss from the chest, the Hellreaver dropped. Not a real hunter’s weapon, though it helps ofcourse, but +30 strength makes it more a pally or warrior weapon. But it looks so very cool . The critial strike rating is nice and so is the stamina, so that’s what I am using at the moment.

Now that I am at 61, leveling pets comes into play. I really love my wolf Jerry. He has been with me since lvl 27 or so, and can tank very well, while also dishing some nice damage. The cat is more suitable for pvp (and looks very nice) and I am also planning on getting a Quillfang Ravager in a few levels, because of the bite and gore abilities. I sometimes have one on me in PVP when I play with Morpheus and they’re very annoying ! So the plan is to use Jerry for pve and the others for pvp, hope I can keep their levels up .