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 You've been replaced by a better year (fingers crossed).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.