The Year That Was

Well here it is, the party's over for another year and 2008 is being led out the door before he hurls on my shoes. But before you go, 2008, have one last drink while I reflect on my WoW experience for the past year.

- Alliance hunter levelled up to 58.
- Alliance hunter abandoned while Rukgut is transferred over to Earthen Ring.
- The Ruk, a mere 35, begins his climb to the top of the levelling ladder.
- Thanks to his Leatherworking skills, he is not naked while makind said climb.
- The Ruk joins AIE at the end of October.
- Ding 59, The Ruk is The Main Man.
- December: ran Instances for the first time.
- December 31: Ding 67.

Looking at it like that, 2008 wasn't exactly a banner year.

Short-term, my goals are:
- Level up Fishing (shudder)
- Work on Cooking (farm ravagers, talkbuk, and warp stalkers)
- Hit 70
- Honored faction with Lower City & Shi'tar(sp?) to get armor upgrades.
- MAYBE look at flying mounts. Maybe. It just doesn't seem worth it. Ding 70, go to Northrend, and no flying mount until 77 anyway.

Okay Year-That-Was, drop the glass and get out. You've been replaced by a better year (fingers crossed).

Happy New Year!

Blind

The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

Impressive. Very impressive.

Tried to log on last night after a bit of of male bonding at the local sports watering hole.

Queue. A 500+ queue.

Logged off.

Level 67 will elude The Ruk for another day.

Merry Such and Such

Y'know what's pretty nerdy? People who do audio commentary on machinima they create. Seriously, I don't think it's that tough to figure out why something was done in a movie created by video game footage. That's just me being picky, I guess.

The Ruk is still 66. Fishing has become a bit of a bore, so for now we're done with it. Next thing I wanted to try was taming a Cunning pet. Off we went to Blade's Edge Mountains to tame a Ravager. On the way, we picked up a Chimera just for fun. Oh, the Wasp is no more. Someone had to go, and she was the lowest level. But after playing with a Chimera and a Ravager, I'm back to Gorilla, Devilsaur, and Wolf. I just didn't see anything in the Cunning Pet that made me want to run with it. Other than a DPS spike once the mob gets down to 35%, there isn't much to write home about.

A Blood Elf DK came up to me last night and wanted help with a quest. I had a few minutes so I agreed. Next thing I know, he's dumping a mess of quests on me. We were the same level, and he was an almighty DK for crying out loud. He couldn't do these on his own? I told him I didn't have time and could help him with one. Kill one mob, loot it, done. I led him to where the mob spawned, but on the way I picked up a few adds. So while The Ruk killed them off, the DK found the quest mob and killed it solo.

Just need a little confidence, people. Have faith in your class.

Or check Wowhead for coordiates.

Presently, The Ruk is planning to work on some reputations to unlock nice blue gear at 70. The Grind begins anew. We're already sitting pretty with Thrallmar and Centurion Expedition. Now we need Lower City and the Shi'tar(?) and we'll have everything but the chest piece. Since that rep can only be ground in instances, we'll be skipping that one.

Oh, and "we" means The Ruk and I. I jump between tenses like that. But since I'm the only one reading this, it doesn't really matter. Proper diction comes with viewers.

For now, I kan haz loot kthx.

Wonderous Weekend

Fishing sucks. Really. Still sitting at 66, Kaylee is bored out of her mind. She can't even eat the fish that are being caught. She just hovers there and buzzes, The Ruk keeps casting. About 4 - 5 points every ten minutes. At this rate, 90 minutes of fishing should be enough to hit the 300 cap and let us get back to business.

- Level cooking to 300 (no problem, it is almost there anyhow)
- Level Kaylee to 65 with the other pets so the DPS can be tested. This may or may not happen while we grind for leather rather than feeding bullets into a training dummy.
- Potentially look at picking up a Cunning pet to test out (once it is determined that someone has to be cut from the stable).

Pet Problem

Yeah, I know. Two posts in one day? Wow.

I've been having a problem with pets. When The Ruk rolls out into the Outlands, he brings the best he can get. Tanking isn't an issue, Marv's got that job until he retires. Or dies. Or dies and I refuse to rez him.

I've accumulated THREE Ferocity pets. I've got a Devilsaur -

- a Wolf,

-and a Wasp.
I'm sure the folks at Elitist Jerks have all sorts of charts, and from what I've heard the Devilsaur is the top DPS pet. Still, utility is nice. If I'm in an instance, it's all about the group, not about me topping the charts. A Wolf gives a nice AP buff when there's no Warrior tanking for the group (and apparently there are no more Warrior's in the Outlands). The Wasp does a nice Armor Reduction. The Devilsaur bites things. Hard.

I took the trio to the testing dummies. Wolf was 65, Devilsaur was 64, Wasp was 62. Granted, I realized the levels would make a difference, but the Wolf ended up topping the charts by a good 50 DPS.

Now that I've levelled up the Devilsaur to 65, I'll have to do the same with the Wasp. With all three at the same level, and The Ruk bringing the rain of pain, we'll see what kind of numbers come up. As great as they all look, I don't like the overlap.

Cunning pets? Anyone really running with these anymore? With their specs, it's hard to test them out anywhere but in the World. With abilities that increase damage when the mob is at low health, and abilities that increase damage when the pet is at low level, you can't really get an accurate bead on DPS. I'm considering taming a Ravager and testing him out, but before I do that I either have to shell out 150 gold for another stable slot... or trim the dead weight.

So... Bored...

Somewhere in that trip-fest called Mushroom Land, we had some time to kill while the hearthstone cooldown finished ticking away. Since we happened to be sitting in the middle of a lake, out came the fishing pole. No joy. Apparently our fishing was too low. Hmmm. When we looked at our stats, we noticed that we hadn't done the quest to level up fishing past 225. In fact, we weren't even AT 225!

Such is the life of a blitzing level-machine. Something always gets left behind. This time, it happened to be fishing (cooking is somewhat respectible at 270 though.)

Down to the marsh, down to Nat, and down to fishing business. Nope, can't get the quest until we're at 225. Sitting at 191, we put line to lake and start casting.

Casting...

And casting...

And casting...

zzzzz...

Got 225 this morning, and accepted the quest. Catch four fish, get the Artisan Fishing, then 300. This break might be a nice little reprieve. Can't wait to fish in Outlands, and work on Cooking at the same time. Might be able to make some bank selling stat food. Those DK's gotta eat, don't they?

Represent!

Halfway through 66 now, and we're finally getting the hang of this whole "reputation grind" business.

Most of the gear that The Ruk wears is either quest rewards or gear that we make ourselves through Leatherworking. Rarely, an upgrade comes along through Instances (and by rarely we mean the amount of instances we run). The only gear that comes from the Auction House is range weapons and scopes.

Naturally that means The Ruk isn't rocking the top of the gear charts. We get by in our mostly greens.

Luckily, the beauty of the Outlands brings class-specific vendor blues at 70. However, to unlock these goodies means getting the right reputation with each faction. It's not a huge task, Honored only, so at least we know there's some decent gear waiting for us at 70. There's five pieces of Savage gear, and we've unlocked two pieces so far. Before we get the other three, we'll finish up a few of the outstanding quests we've got on the books right now & level up some pets in the process.

We picked up another pet: Kaylee the Wasp. She's a cutie, as well as a Ferocity pet with an Armor Reduction special. We'll play around until she's at the same level as the others, then everybody's going to go to work on the Targeting Dummies. Three Ferocity Pets can be a bit much.

Marv, however, is secure in his position as MT for Team Ruk.

Progress So Far

- Level 63, and I'm trying to keep Marv, Belle, & Dakota all close to my level. Marv would be the easiest since he's my tank, but Belle does some decent dps of her own. Dakota might be the trickiest to keep up with me since he's the raid/instance pup (his AP buff is handy when there's no warrior in the group). I try to get one close to my level and then switch, but that's been fine as long as there's just three. I'm starting to think that maybe a worm for his armor reduction might help with the damage numbers.

- Leatherworking is doing fine. I'm not really getting much in the way of drops now that I've moved to Zangramarsh. Lots of bugs there that I can't skin.

- If I keep going at my current pace, I'll have to stop around 65 or so and give all my gear a good once-over for upgrades.

Look What I Found

It took some doing, but I managed to get a new pet. New pants, a new gun, and a new pet. Not too shabby.

Hellfire Peninsula is keeping me busy. I came at 58 or so, am currently 62, and still have almost a full 25 quest count in my log. One of them involves killing an elite, which means I'd better go and tame a turtle. At this rate, I'm going to run out of stable slots!

Edit: Thanks to Evylc, Soulbiter, Rommstein, and Jastashan for the Ramparts run. You rawk!

Ding

The Ruk is now my highest level character ever. He is level 60.

Not all that thrilled with Hellfire Peninsula though. Bloody Death Knights.

Okay, time to backtrack a little. Hitting 60 was big for a few reasons:

1) It gave me my Beast Mastery ability to tame Elites.
2) It gave me my Epic Mount.

Number 1 was good in that I went out and tamed Belle, my Devilsaur. She's going to be my dps beast. I'm levelling her up to 60, and once she's caught up with Marv and Ruk she'll have to be switched out to maintain her levelling. I'll be anxious to try her out on the testing dummy once she hits 60. Marv is a gorilla and does some decent dps on his own. She'd better crush him on Recount, or she's out of a job.

I'm what you call an equal-opportunity hunter. Do your job or get bounced, regardless of sex, race, or species.

Number 2 was a big chunk of change. Handy though. I never appreciated the speed until I got it. Nice.

My plan is to continue on with quests, keeping my pets up to speed with me, and getting some of that nice Leatherworking gear. Somewhere in there I should probably try an instance or two.

Random Thoughts

- I'm not thrilled with the blog's layout. If I had the time, or inclination, I might consider looking at something a little darker. Perhaps a banner that didn't break the table.

- Speaking of darker, still not getting into the Death Knights. In fact, these kids are starting to annoy me. It's not the best time to be lv 55-60, because these guys are all over the place trying to power through quests. Usually at my expense. I had to kill a spawn in a crypt. One DK had cleared out everything up top, which was fine I suppose. There wasn't anything there that Marv and I couldn't handle. But the DK who ran down while I was waiting for the dude to respawn, ganked him, then took off before I could even get his name, can go drown in a lake of troll piss. Remember my last post when I talked about grouping with another hunter so we could both finish the same quest? Be more like me, and less like Dick Knights.

- Somehow managed to get 58 before I left for work this morning. Two quest hand-ins, a smattering of grinding, and all was good. I sent myself some upgrades, hence the urgency to hit 58 asap. Only a few more levels before I get my Beast Mastery, and I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm happy with Marv, but I guess I should look at picking up a single target tank. I'm thinking a worm. Maybe, just for kicks, I'll grab that core hound puppy in the Dranei area. I'd have to look up their specials before considering it though. For most of what I do, Marv or Dakota have been taking care of business just fine.

Wrath Thoughts

Okay, as of this writing Ruk is 56.

Thank you, thank you.

Still, that means that the expansion doesn't offer much to me. Most of the things that would have been interesting, were offered up in patch 3.0.2 with Hunter talents and skills. So I got all the goodies I knew I could use, pre-expansion. Yes there's new zones, new quests, but those are at least ten levels away before I can even think about them.

So what did WotLK provide?

Queues. Wrath has changed the way many of us play, and by that I mean waiting 15-45 minutes before we can access our Character Select Screen. Get home from work, log in, go have dinner, clean up, come back, and see how much waiting time is left.

What's even more frustrating is that I'm waiting to get into the "Vanilla WoW" zones.

The other thing Wrath offers, and it is now something I can make use of, is the Death Knight. I tried one. I did a few of the introduction quests. Then I logged off, and Ruk went out and killed Yeti. Because that's how I roll. I'll probably try DK's again, but I can't see myself giving up the toon I've spent months and months leveling with, training professions with, questing with, just because the flavour of the month has some neat bells and whistles.

If I want a tank, Marv the albino gorilla will take care of it.

In Other News

I grouped with another Hunter yesterday. We were working on the same quest, which resulted in the spawning of a level 60 kitty that had to be killed. I figured I'd be a nice guy - he was hunting for the piece of meat needed to spawn the cat, and I'd just gotten mine - and we grouped up so he'd get credit for the kill. When he ran over to me, I noticed he had a cat. The cat was in prowl mode, crawling up behind him. I know there's a bug with cat prowl, so I made a joke about it. He told me that's what cats did.

Good grief. Stereotypes exist for a reason, kids.

Feel the Wrath

Last night I briefly contemplated picking up my copy of WotLK from EB Games. It was almost midnight, and I was driving in the cold and freezing rain hoping to buy some kind of patching goop from Wal-Mart. Seems one of the windows in the sun room decided to spring a leek at 11 at night, letting a steady stream of ice cold water piddle on the carpet.

There I am, driving around, and I see people lining up at Best Buy. I see them at Wal-Mart. I think to myself, "I'm out anyway. Why not swing by my EB and grab the game?"

That's when my inner orc spoke up. "Do you NEED it tonight?"

"Need?"

"Yes, need. Can you start a Death Knight on the server you want?"

"Well, no."

"Are you a high enough level to use the content in the expansion?"

"I guess not."

"Then buy that tube of goop, get your @ss home, and let the game wait until tomorrow. Oh, and you probably won't be in any big hurry to install it tomorrow, will you?"

"..."

Fixed the leak. Picking up the game today. Installing it when I can use the content.

That's the kicker. I'm waiting for the point where, other than being level 66 or so, I'll need Wrath content. Patch 3.0 pretty much gave me most of what I'd want (aside from zones and levels) - new talents, new professions, new pet skills.

For now, Wrath will sit on my desk as a reminder to keep grinding. Keep my eye on the ball.

Crash and Burn

Yesterday, the servers were down for most of the day due to the mailboxes being emptied. Today, the servers were down because of an issue with PVP vendors.

Talk about frustrating.

Even better, I briefly reflected on the fact that I play a Hunter, and my alt that I play with my brother is a Fury Warrior.

a.k.a. Two Classes - No Love.

Not Bad...

Level 50. My second-highest character, and not by that much either. Will The Ruk step through the Dark Portal? Pfft, of course. Just a matter of time.

We picked up a fistful of quests at Un'Goro Crater. Smart money says that the quests in the south are the better ones to start with. Just bang those out, go back to the Tauren questgiver, pick up a second round of quests, and just migrate & complete. I'm contemplating starting these ones with Dakota (wolf) rather than Marv (gorilla). Marv might be the better tank, but since the mobs are all going to be my level or higher, maybe the Attack Power buff from Furious Howl would help take things down.

Only been down there once so far, and killed by a Devilsaur.

I'll be back, D. I'll be back.

Zombie Nation

Well I survived.

Last weekend marked the arrival of the Zombie Invasion, a little bit of the Warcraft 3 backstory which leads to the arrival of the Lich King. Now I haven't played Warcaft 3, so I'm going by what I've been told. No one knew this Invasion was coming, and people didn't know how to deal with it. Some embraced being turned into Zombies and spreading the infection. Some wanted to cancel their subscription out of frustration in not being able to play the way they wanted to.

I say, suck it up Princess.

Sure this affected me. The Ruk landed at a few out of the way outposts, only to have his fall broken by zombies. What did I do? I died, rezzed, and finished my quests. One of the perks of not being in the 70 crowd is that I still have plenty to do, and most of it happens in the middle of nowhere.

I can't believe so many people on my server got bent out of shape over this. I mean, it's a ROLEPLAY server! You want to boo hoo because the mean old Zombies won't let you hang out in Orgrimmar? Go play on a PVE Non-RP server kthx. I did like the way that many bands of players started grouping together to wipe out the Zombies. It was like Social Darwinism - some accepted the situation and dealt with it, and others sucked their thumbs, stomped their feet, and pouted until things were fixed!

In the end, the plague was "cured" and things went back to the way they were. Since the expansion isn't here yet, it isn't out of the question that we might have to ride out another one of these World Events.

Some will complain.

Some will deal with it.

The Ruk will simply continue onward. Nothing out there a high-powered slug to the face won't fix.

Random Thoughts

Unbelieveable.

- I'm really going to be glad when the new expansion comes out. At least Hunters won't be the most numerous class in the game anymore. Nope, pretty much everyone is going to roll a Death Knight, crushing many a server under their numbers.

- When I see Hunters around my pre-60 level, wearing gear that has strength rather than agility on it, I die a little inside and understand why so many other classes look at us like the red-headed stepchild.

- Cower is bugged. Prowl is bugged. Holding aggro as a BM Hunter, with a pet that doesn't have Guard Dog yet, makes me twitch.

- The Blues are looking to drop the hammer on Gorilla's Thunderstomp. Might not be too painful. Possibly.

Test

This is a test. I'll delete it later.