iPod bloggin'

Soooooo.... Have I been posting, like, ever? Nope, didn't think so. I so it's either time to retire the blog or just start fresh. I'm leaning more towards the retirement end, but I know that I had at least a couple people who read and coresponded with me through this. So I'm gonna try posting every now and again. I assure nothing to no one, and chances are that I've been removed from most of the blogrolls I may have ever been on... Oh well.

I'm currently in a coffee shop, blogging from my iPod, drinking a strawberry tea latte, and basically just killing time. So here are some thoughts on raiding hunters while I wait.

Tox is currently one of the few remaining raiding BM hunters I know of. The other hunters in Verve love the BM spec, but they're either MM or SV. I,ve got decent gear, but a couple have better. And we all know that the BM hunters were heavily nerfed post naxx, and understandably so. They were out performing the other specs by a little too much. Currently, I'm not entirely sure what of the specs is most popular for raiding, but I can tell you that it's definitely not the beastmasters.

Here's the catch though, I regularly out perform the other hunters in the groups I'm in. I'm not sure why, it could be that I don't experience as much lag, I could have a more efficient shot rotation, or maybe I've just itemized my gear to match My spec more efficiently. Granted, my pet does more than 30% of my total damage (generally around 35-38%) and when we're both fully raid buffed we benefit much more greatly than individual hunters and their weak pets do. In groups that don't have many buffs to offer my performance can be significantly lower than what I expect of myself. That helps to solidify the pet-buff theory.

Also: with 3.3 looming around the corner, I am one heckuva happy BM hunter. new, epic, craftable ammo ( rogue engineer, he's still super handy... And does a surprisingly large amount of damage considering how much time I've put into him), new emblem trinket that will actually be good for a hit capped hunter, a 232 belt (and another trinket to upgrade that's 232 as well.), the edging quel'dalar, and AMAZING T10 bonuses. I'm totally stoked or this coming patch. You'll see me running the 10 man and downing arthas soon enough, but probably not the 25 due to time restraints at the same time that verve normally goes into the 25 man raids. I'll attempt to, chances are slim.

I think that's all for me tonight.

Good hunting,
~Tox

Ah, good old patch days...

First and foremost: I most certainly was not online when I was promoted, I didn't find out until an hour later that Q had only *thought* I logged out when I hadn't even been logged in, when it was really someone else entirely that has a similar name to my Dramthar.

I foresee a lot of druid playing in my future, and all my alts getting mounts, which could very well convince me to play them as well. But Adeata will be mature enough for the 100% mount and I really want to get her inscriptions up, added bonus of the new kitteh an bear forms to boot. Thamlack will be getting what I like to call "cheap flying" and has already made a rug for himself to fly on, he's moderately excited. Oh, he also looks significantly less like a tool, 'cause he hit northrend...pretty much strictly for the professions.

Tox'll be working on the dailies at the Tourney for a while, he's gonna try and get a new and improved hippogryph, the Silver Covenant one. It's pretty posh, brilliant colors, and just all around great looking. Not to mention a bunch of other stuff that'll be niffty and handy.

Now I'm mostly just killing time, as we all know, the servers are down for a good long time, and Bladefist was down for longer than a lot of the other ones due to hardware maintenance (started ~3 hours earlier). But once things start rollin', Verve'll be taking a swing at the new 10 man and I'll be a part of it. Fun times ahead, I've heard rumor of a jousting fight, and I'm a brilliant jouster apparently, from what I've heard about the struggles other people have with the jousting dailies.

There will be many a heroic run in my future, I wants me some nice gear, so gash dernit, Ima get me nice gear. Plus everyone else will want to run 'em too, so I'll bring along some friends, hopefully Vanq (who hasn't been mentioned in quite a while, but a good friend who is now in Verve and enjoying it), 'cause I promised him that I'd take him in with me if I were to run an instance and he was online.

I think that's about it, I'll go do something for about half an hour and check back to see if the servers are up.

Good Hunting,

~Tox

Many, many congrats to ya, Mr Tox!

Well, I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Mr Tox on his promotion. I, as well as all the other officers think its been long overdue. Sad that he decided to log out just as the GM was hitting the promotion button while Dram was on! I wanted to do it while he was on but alas, the GM is not the patient type. Sooo, hopefully, his congrats will come from the memebers when he logs in since it is written on the MotD.

Welcome to the club, Tox!

We sure dun Killed Jaeden....I hate my puns...

We went out of our way back to the Sunwell to take down some old timers, and they got rather rocked. Verve of Bladefist, we win.

Enter the Flame.

Warden that is, I've been getting that title on a few different characters. No PvP, no hassle for me! ('cause, if you didn't know, I don't like PvP.)

Rumor has it that Vantox and any alts he has in Verve are going to become officers at some point. The fact that I made this rumor up is trivial, the guild master herself has essentially promised me that the next time they decide to promote someone to a ranking officer it'll be me. Obvious hints include "You're on the top of my list, and if they don't agree with them then they'll get the /gkick!" (her exact words, almost, pretty close to it anyway), along with a request of mine to one guild master for help with a couple of toons taking down Ahune for the Flame Warden title and having 3 officers come along for the ride (two on alts that also wanted it). I'm not entirely sure, but I *think* it may have been some form of initiation. Three officers and the GM helping me on something that is very minor like Ahune? They must really like me or something.

Also: I totally killed stuff in heroic Ulduar, and netted the current best bow I could possibly hope for (no way in hades that Verve will be downing 25 man Ulduar bosses on hard mode). Siren's Cry to be precise, HUGE upgrade from my Angry Gun which I loved dearly. Autoshot DPS upgrade of ~50 due to haste. That alone is big, not to mention the added benefits to my special shots, my DPS has increased significantly. One problem with it though: It's a bow. I already miss mah Boom Stick. I loved him like a son...well, not really, but I thoroughly enjoyed him and his bonus crit due to dwarf skeelz.

Aestara, whom I have taken under my wing, is doing very well and has managed to make her way to Northrend, the Howling Fjord to be precise, and is now out to CONQUER THE WORLD!!!

...

Not really. But she *is* coming along very nicely and surprisingly good at face-melting. Well, I guess that's not so surprising considering that she's a shadow priest, that's like what they're made to do. She's another Alchemist, so I'll try and convince her to specialize in something that Dramthar hasn't, I'm thinking elixirs.

Also: Dramthar, with his Transmute Specialization, will be a highly requested alchemist come patch 3.2, what with his chance to proc multiple epic gems with no cooldown. 5 proc on a Cardinal Ruby? Yeah, stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it. Engineering's fine and kinda meh, but it's getting some small buffs and removing the need of wearing goggles (which, for him, are still the best thing he can use), so I don't plan on dropping it and picking up something else anytime soon.

Thamlack is still a tool. Tailoring is very close to 400 though, so he'll be able to make some niffty spellthreads soon, I may finally have a use for all that northrend silk I've got kicking around everywhere! That's exciting news. OOooh, and when he can he'll have a flying carpet! Sweet. That'll be fun.

Adeata is an exceptionally skilled Scribe for her level, she's more skilled than she should be. She has a skill level of 300 at level 44, so she needs to get to level 50 soon, she's very excited to be able to make darkmoon faire cards to both sell and help out my toons with. Man, Noble's decks on any of my toons? That'd be freakin' amazing. Yeah, yeah, I know it takes a lot of luck and materials, but if I can supply them myself I don't really have to care about the cost.

All my little alts and altlets have been profiting rather majorly due to the Fire Festival, they've all gained at least one level just from throwing and juggling torches. Well, all the ones on Bladefist anyway. Sorry friends on other servers, but I'm just so invested in Bladefist, I can't really go anywhere else and expect to keep myself there.

I think that's just about everything. Ooooh, except the Silver Covenant Hippogryph that I'm gonna get come 3.2, Tox is all about the hippogryphs now apparently. So pretty...I needs it....*schemy fingers*

Anyways, I'm off to go do whatever and hoo-haw, probably something involving washing dishes.

Good Hunting,

~Tox

I figured I better post at least once a month.

Yeah...well, it's better than never I guess. Still not like exceedingly good, but whatever.

Sooooo....It looks like I'm going for the Seeker and Loremaster achievements now. I've become a Chef, I'm a Champion!, I've got the Argent Hippogryph, I've wrangled me a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth (Yeah, that's right, I can carry people around and have my own vendors), and the eldest Toxnation Brethren has converted to being a Dwarf Hunter. I think things are working out rather nicely for me.

Verve still uses me as a filler in Ulduar, apparently I'm one of the hunters they like to have around. There are only one or two people in Verve who I regularly run with that can significantly out DPS me. One's a feral kitteh, the other's another hunter with better gear.

I've also apparently got a friend who, if I ever decide to leave Verve (which I probably won't, I'm pretty committed to the current GM who some of you may or may not recall seeing a post of on here), is willing to attempt to get me into , which is apparently a decently high ranking guild that regularly goes into 25 man Ulduar and has most of the bosses and is recruiting hunters. Like I said, it'll probably not happen, but I've got a friend who would like having me there.

EDIT: Crikey, she either started or was a charter member of Adrenaline. Man, I didn't know that... they're doing really well for themselves considering that they became a guild in May.

I've taken a shine to Soloing level 60 raids and/or bosses. Onyxia is significantly trickier than Azuregos due to her second phase where she'll all flying and whelps are coming out after me... the fireballs are less than pleasant. Plus soloing Azuregos can net me a helluva lot more cash, he drops like 160 gold just himself, not to mention anything else that could have massive selling potential *cough*Sinew*cough*. Zul'Gurub's pretty fun to solo, aside from those bosses that I can't... stupid bat priestess and her massive heal combined with my lack of interrupts...

Even better though is running around with my Bro on my Mammoth and watching him go freakin' crazy and TRY to aggro like 20 mobs knowing that I've got his back. It's loads of fun. Plus I just like helping people, brethren especially.

Well, I'm gonna go work on stuff and junk, potentially a picture that I promised a friend, but I'm not really sure.

Good Hunting,

~Tox

I HAD a topic...I just forgot it.

It happens to everyone.  You come up with a great idea, plan a big long essay-ish post about it, but you forget to do anything with it.

It happens to me All.  The.  Time.  Just when I think I've got a fantastic, hilarious post ready too.  And only rarely do I actually remember them in the future.  It's hella annoying.

You're so excited about the topic, you have big plans, it's gonna be the breakthrough post, with this you'll make the big leagues!  Everything is going so smoothly, it just all seems to easy.   That's because it is.  You forget what you were going to talk about in the next hour and can't recall anything about it for the next few days.  Eventually you have a similar idea, but nothing really striking or thought provoking occurs to you like it did the first time.  You figure the idea is bunk, so you toss it in to the imaginary trash can of your mind, never to be looked at again.

Thus is the conundrum.  Great ideas that fall by the wayside, never to be heard from again.  Where do they go?  Are they just lost for an eternity, never to be spoken of again?  Or do they slip into a different stream of consciousness and get passed on to different people without either of the participants knowing that it happened?

Now I've got a question for you: Where the hell did that all come from?  I mean, I THOUGHT I was going to do a post about WoW or something, which, if you hadn't noticed, is the primary topic of this blog.  Guess I was wrong.

TOPIC CHANGE.

Dramthar, he's doing well.  He's averaging about 1900 DPS in 5 man heroic instances, out performing rogues of higher gear and entirely different spec.  I've stuck with my Combat Swords, I think I'm running a 15/51/5.  Most rogues now adays seem to be running a Mutilate spec of sorts.  That's fine and dandy, but it focuses on a whole lot of small damage followed by a really big crit.  That doesn't seem dependable to me.  Combat Swords doesn't have the really high crits, but what it lacks in that it more than makes up for by having a higher mid-ranged damage and the double-swing procs from both weapons.  Plus it's got Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush.  Both of those are basically just win (though using them together is just a waste, I suggest using KS first, preferably when you've got 2-3 combo points as it lets you build up your energy to max them out and either Slice and Dice or Rupture).

Have you noticed how easily people tend to forget that a newly forged level 80 toon who has engineering has engineering?  There's most definitely been claims of "Dram could have used that helm...." With my immediate response of "Nu-uh, he's a geer," which is often followed by a moment of hesitation until they realize that "geer" is short for "engineer."

Ooooh, that reminds me, I need to make Tox more bullets.  Some of the best gosh-darned bullets out there, too.  Just need some more 'splody stuff to put in my saronite....I should go farm it or sommat.

Anyways, I think I'll go head out and work on a different something or whoosit, I dunno.

Good Hunting,

~Tox