Transmogrifabricantankerousion!

...That's not a real word.  Transmogrification is though! And is exciting news!  I can cover up ugly pieces of gear that don't match with good looking pieces of gear that don't match!  I get to bust out the good old Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes and Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle!  But crap! I'm gonna have to gather the stuff to make the shoulders again, 'cause I sold them for EVER ago. I'm in the middle of compiling a good looking set to wear on a regular basis.  And no matter what happens, that gun will be in it.  Best.  Gun.  Ever.

Aside: You know how long ago that I posted the "One down" thing?  Yeah, I've seen that same binding drop for Tox at least 4 times now.  And the other one has dropped for Franny.  And they both dropped on the same night for the wrong toons....I was peeved to say the least.  It's now become a race between the two to acquire the second binding.  I have a gut-wrenching feeling that Franny'll get 'em first, and that irks me to no end.  Oh, and Q's gotten both of them when running solo.  And she can't use them.  So.  Annoying.  And we have yet to have anyone in the guild see an eye drop from Raggy.

Okay, other stuff.  So, fun fact, Fann (who was a good friend of mine back in the BC days) is back!  3 year hiatus?  Sure.  Was she still on my friends list?  Yes.  Yes she was. And is.  And is now in my guild and prospering. I think.  Lemme double check, I haven't actually been on in a while, something about my bank and visa screwing something up yadda yadda and my subscription expired during that time, so yeah, fun times.  Anyways, Fann's back! Yay!  And I gave her bunches of stuff!  And she thinks she owes me something or some crap like that, but she totally doesn't 'cause it's just what I do for friends!  Yay!

So yeah, winning, friends back, MC still hates us, we've been downing stuff in Firelands, I was actually in on our two first kills (which is shocking, 'cause I never get first kills), I'm an occifer again, other good stuff.  Still the Designated Driver, and I think I should probably say hello in vent or something...I'm gonna go do that to make sure that they know I'm not dead.

Anyways, that's pretty much all I have to say,

Cheers,
~Tox

One down...

...and one more to go. Left Binding, Check. Enchanted Elementium x10, check. Essence of the Firelord, guaranteed drop, so essentially check. Right binding? No, not yet.

Well, the first one only took 8 months-ish, not including any hiatuses, hopefully the next one will show up faster. We may have discovered a secret to getting things you want to drop (highly unlikely though), we went in with like 14 guildies (we normally go either duo or solo) and we got like 3 patterns to drop (one which we've been for as long as we have legendary drops), one of my bindings, and a sulfuron ingot for which to make another sulfuron hammer for whoever else may want to try for The Hand of Ragnaros. Plus it took all of half an hour to finish, we got a bunch of old school guild achievements that night.

I should really record our drunken raid nights one of these days...And no matter what it is that we're doing I always end up leading the charge. If I haven't referred to it before, I'm what we call the "Blue Square." Basically, any time I get the blue square I'm suddenly the one that everyone's following around the raid, doesn't even matter what it is or if I've got any idea where I am (which is next to impossible currently, aside from current content that I haven't gone into yet). Either way, that's one of the main reasons why I run the Drunken Raid Nights. I know where I'm going and I know most of the fights.

Different note: We're FINALLY on the brink of actually finishing Ulduar, and killing Algalon, so that's awesome. I've wanted to kill Algalon ever since I heard about him, and this song just amplifies that want more. Plus, dwarves are my friend, being one myself and all. Plus we may go in and get the meta-achievement for the rusted proto-drake too! That'd be awesome, I'm currently 1 mount away from my Blue Dragonhawk. There's a few things I'm sorta half aiming for to finish it off, but the Rusted Protodrake would be up there for sure.

Aaaany way, not to brag or anything, but even without being able to raid I already out-gear heroics, am hit capped (~962 rating, for those who care), and being that SV is still currently OP, I'm pulling top numbers on nearly every fight. Yeah, alright, go me, I'm awesome...yeah, not hard to "be awesome" when your class is currently overtuned, it's getting tweaked in the PTR currently, nerf to SV, buff to the other two, I'll probably stay SV for raiding, but I may use BM more for solo stuff. Doing some other tweaking things, like autoshot on the run, so chances are it won't go down that much, and I can constantly be on the move if need be.

Anyways, best of luck to me and Q on our Legendary hunts, only 2 more drops needed and our guild'll have 2 legendaries.

We are Legendary!

So You Want to be Heroic SV, eh?

Well then it's time for a little rundown of how to spec properly to perform admirably and kill things efficiently. But not only that, we currently need CC in pretty much every heroic and we just happen to have a CC that's pretty much universal. I'll go over that post spec development.

Here's what I have yet to actually gotten around to changing my talents to but I'm pretty sure would prove the most beneficial to you: 0/9/32 aka:

You'll notice that there are some fun little things like Trap Mastery and Survival Tactics and some may be wondering "WTF, where's teh pure deeps?" Well that's wrong of you to think. Bad. Bad person. No cookie for you. Plus if you look at it the only other really viable options there are Hunter vs. Wild and Point of No Escape. But for very valid reasons, which I'll discuss after the rest of the spec breakdown, Trap Mastery and Survival Tactics are your best bets.

Tier by Tier Breakdown

Tier 1: 3/3 Pathing, 2/2 Improved Serpent Sting

SV is now the perma-fast spec. Crazy, I know, BM got booted out of that spot when it lost Serpent's Swiftness. Pathing helps with that, and haste is your best friend now that most of our abilities trigger only a 1 second GCD. Well maybe not BEST friend, but definitely a great companion. Improved serpent sting is pretty much raw damage increase hidden in neat little side effects. No strict % increase damage, but it does initial damage and has a higher crit chance, both of which prove very useful.

Tier 2: 2/2 Survival Tactics, 3/3 Trap Mastery

I may have mentioned something about CC earlier. These are big ones to make sure you can actually do it. Trap mastery jacks up your freezing time to 1 minute and 18 seconds, (1.3 minutes), and Survival Tactics reduces the chance it's resisted. That along with being appropriately hit capped should ensure that your trap (if placed properly) works every time. The other side effects are nice, and trap mastery does improve overall damage done, but I like it for the CC enhancing personally.

Tier 3: 3/3 Thrill of the Hunt, 2/2 Lock and Load

Focus regen for our 2 major shots? Yes please! And LnL is an absolute must as SV, plus if you're freezing stuff you get it to proc immediately, killing mobs faster, meaning less worry for the tank and healer.

Tier 4: 3/3 Resourcefulness, 2/2 T.N.T.

Faster traps and Black Arrow is always a good thing, especially if you miss seeing and invisible wall behind you and you launch your trap onto it so then it's just floating there. Stupid invisible walls. And T.N.T. makes your lock and load proc from doing damage a couple different ways (both having proved their usefulness to me in heroics fairly recently).

Tier 5: 2/2 Toxicology, Wyvern Sting, 2/2 Noxious Stings, Hunting Party

So looks like we took everything this tier had to offer. That's 'cause they're all sweet. Toxicology doubles crit damage from Serpent Sting and Black Arrow. Wyvern Sting...well that's actually more mandatory than awesome, but It's definitely proven useful when tanks don't realize that mages can't sheep dragonkin. Noxious Stings is damage improvement while Serpent Sting is up (you may notice a theme here...) and Hunting Party is physical haste to you and your party, and like I said before Haste is a great companion.

Tier 6: 3/3 Sniper Training, 2/2 Serpent Spread

Hunters do their optimal DPS while standing still, Sniper Training utilizes that to enhance your damage potential. Serpent Spread, while it may look somewhat bothersome and not worth it, is probably one of my favorite talents. You know those times when there's just a craptonne of little mobs and everyone's AoE does like zero damage?*cough*whelps*cough* Well the mechanic behind serpent spread negates that problem (to a degree, your multishot will still do very little damage). It applies serpent sting at half its normal duration but otherwise the same as your regular one to everything that multishot hits. It's not treated like an AoE, it's treated like I individually targeted each of them and applied the DoT. That mixed in with Improved Serpent Sting means you can do the most AoE damage on massive groups out of any class/spec. And even on small groups it's still very useful, and coupled with Trap Launcher + Explosive Trap, you've got yourself entirely viable AoE now that we don't have Volley.

Tier 7: The Final Tier, Black Arrow

It's pretty much the same as it's always been. 15 second uptime, does damage, increases damage done, chance to proc Lock and Load. Still useful and something you shouldn't be without.

Now that we've got SV fleshed out nicely, where do we go from here?

I'll tell you where, the MM tree. The first two tiers of BM just don't have anything very worthwhile as an SV hunter.

MM tier 1: 2/2 Go For the Throat, 3/3 Efficiency

It's always nice to have your pet do more damage, focus regen for your pet is gonna be more useful to you than Rapid Killing is. Efficiency is kind of a no-brainer. Lower costing Explosive and Arcane shots? Yeah, definitely a good thing.

MM tier 2: 2/2 Sic 'em!, 3/3 Careful Aim

More pet damaging skeels! And Careful Aim is a pretty potent skill for what is the starting equivalent of the Killshot health range. Actually, I'm kinda torn between 2/2 Sic 'Em! and 2/3 One with Nature, though the focus regen of AotF is only when you take melee damage, so it's not really that great for PvE.

SPEC OVER, DISCUSSION BEGIN!

Alright, so spec's been hashed out. Shot Priority time, goes like this:

Kill Shot > Black Arrow > Explosive Shot > Arcane Shot > Serpent Sting > Cobra Shot

That's the general priority, but Focus conservation comes into play quite majorly when attempting to optimize damage output. Basically what that comes down to is this: You're Explosive Shot has only got 1/4 of its CD left, and you've got enough time for either an Arcane Shot or a Cobra Shot, but not enough focus to use both Arcane Shot then Explosive Shot. What do you do?

Answer: Cobra Shot. Focus regen, and Explosive Shot is undoubtedly a higher priority than Arcane Shot. Basically, you only ever want to use Arcane shot when you've got an excess of Focus, which does happen every now and again, but more often than not you're going to rely more on Cobra Shot for those times when your major 2 shots are on CD. Plus Cobra Shot increases the duration of Serpent sting, so you rarely ever have to re-apply it on boss fights, unless there's big adds that need killing. Which happens.

Mkay, shot priority's done...what's next...CCing I guess.

Trap Launcher + Freezing Trap. If the tank likes you, he'll let you pull with it. If he doesn't, well then your attempts to freeze stuff have to be placed in a spot where the mob will run over/near. And if no one else has viable CC, you do technically have 2 CCing skills. Just make sure that the Sleeping one is higher on the kill order than the frozen mob.

Pet options, there are so many of them! It comes down to what buff they'll provide and group composition a lot of the time, so if you've got a dedicated group of people you run with, you can cater to it and support the team. But if you don't want to have to worry about that and are just using the dungeon finder a lot, go with something like a Wolf, Cat or Raptor. I like using a wolf, increased crit chance is always nice, especially for SV hunters (though it doesn't stack with Leader of the Pack).

And with that I think I've covered just about everything I need to for Cataclysm Heroic SV huntering basics (spec and priority, I'm still not entirely certain about secondary stat importance). Most of it will apply to raiding too, so this should carry over into it nicely.

Cheers,

~Tox

Tox & Q Adventures: Molten Core

Ragnaros at 80+ 101:

Hit 'em hard, Hit 'em fast. Have either a tank or a healer with you.

That being said, I think I could actually solo Ragnaros currently, just not a bunch of the bosses before him. Trust me, I've tried. At 85 I'll probably be able to pull it off though.

Cheers

~Tox

Thoughts on things and stuff

Focus, totally OP in short fights where I can just blast Bestial Wrath right off the bat. I think I pulled 11k soloing old dungeons, no buffs, arcane shot spamming (with a side of kill command) on those short fights. Yeah, just BOOM, you be dead sucka. Though I would love to get my Boomstick back.

Ferocity Pets, they just WRECK mobs. Especially as BM. I've been running around with a tenacity pet for so long that I forgot how much damage they actually dish out. 12k kill command crit by Rage (Loq, spirit beast), without the proc or Bestial Wrath going. The only time I've gotten that with Bjarn (bear pet) was when he had ALL his procs/buffs going. Man, BM is awesome again and I'm loving it. Plus the new skeels we have to work with (Focused Fire, the new form of Kill Command, and Fervor), it's a lot less "spam steady shot" than it was in days long past, and much more interesting. Good times, I'm loving the BM right now

On that note, I'm an achievement ho. And keeping in mind that I can't really raid currently and missed out on a lot in the early era of 80s (Naxx and Ulduar) along with the "I don't really PvP, like ever." thing, I think I'm doing rather well. I'm at, what, 7160 points? That's pretty decent, I remember when I was just shy of 3k. That was a long time ago...

I'm at 90 mounts, hoping for 5 more from old dungeons/raids I'm soloing (keyword: hoping), maybe some from the Argent Crusade thing as there's 7 more I can get from there, so we'll see, I'd like to get the 100 pre-cata, but that's kinda unlikely. Got my Wintersaber rep done. Only 2 outlands reps I'm not exalted with (excluding the scryers, I'm not THAT crazy...Q is though) and they're both endgame 25man raid reps. Same deal with Vanilla reps, all I've got left are the Brood and the Waterlords as far as 'cheevos goes. But dangit, waterlords is slow once you get revered. I should still get the Goblin Towns to exalted, that'll put me over the 40mark with some give and take to switch my Oracles rep to Frenzyheart and get those achievements.

Still working on Thunderfury, guild Legendary Achievement would be nice to have... (Which also means I want Thoridal...and the Warglaives on my Rogue....and heck, Sulfuras on my DK, but those ones probably won't happen, whereas I'm actively grinding for Thunderfury)

Gaaah, 1 tabard away from my Tabard of the Achiever! And I'd have it already if I had the honor for it! *sigh* well, guess I'll just grind something out sometimes soon...(which I'm actually doing quite actively. Yay grinds? Sure, we'll go with that.)

And I know I've said this before, but Vanq is back, again! He's got a shiny new computer to boot! I'm glad he's not cooped up in the middle of nowhere again, it's always good to have him around. Everybody loves Vanquishor.

Anyways, enough chit-chat, time to find me some mounts...hopefully.

Cheers,

~Tox

Schoooool. It deters my WoW.

Scholastic pursuits, they're good, I likes them. And so far so good, Calculus is slowly coming back to me, Chem and Physics seem easy enough for the time being, Spanish and Psyche seem to be rather cake-walkish.

As such, I have a lot of homework. And a lot of "Oh crap, I forgot how to do " Which is kinda annoying, and like as soon as I re-learn the material it's easy enough.

Anyways, as for playing me some World of Warcraft, well, that doesn't like to happen. I've gotten on a couple times and shown my face to the people that apparently miss me. But as far as getting anything done, that much eludes me (in game anyway). No MC runs, which means no Thunderfury (yet, I'll get you dagnabit.), no nothing, not even brewfest which is, as a dwarf, the most festive time in WoW for me. Granted, I got all that done last year with Tox, so I don`t really care but I wouldn't complain about getting a shiny mount.

But yeah, no raids, no Shadow's Edge, no Epeening, no manipulating the AH in my favor, none of that. ./sad.

At least I'm showing commitment to my school. That's definitely a good thing.



Random note: I've dabbled on the PTR a bit, and Focus instead of mana really throws me off my game currently. Plus they got rid of like all the CDs that used to determine my shot "rotation" (again, I prefer priority...currently) in at least my Beast Master spec. Haven't really checked out the SV stuff. But ALL OF THAT PALES IN COMPARISON!

Twenty. Five. Stable. Slots.

The possibilities, Imagine them. Keep imagining....keep going......aaaaaaand.....Stop! Did you see it? Did you see all the potential?! SO MUCH! Seriously. I'm gonna have sooooo many pets. No longer will I be limited to just 5, none of which are replaceable. (Devilsaur, Spirit Beast, Wolf, Hydra (unobtainable), and a Rare Bird (parrot)). With 20 additional slots, I can actually get a bear! Though I think they got rid of swipe, which saddens me. They gave it a demo shout though, which may work, but I think I'd prefer the swipe for my soloing efforts. And I'll get Strife back! You know, the rarely seen but gorgeous black wind serpent that I got out of ZG at 70? Yeah, that one, He's gonna make a comeback.

Oh, and they got rid of Volley, but we get Trap Launcher + Explosive Trap to make up for it? Yeah, sure, I'll go with that. Sounds like fun.

I'm gonna miss being the only really physical DPS that needs Intellect (Melee shammys rely heavily on elemental attacks more than their physical damage, I don't consider them truly "physical"), making Hunters the smartest of the physical damage dealers. If I were an RPer I may have qualm with that. But I'm not, so it just kinda saddens me.

But yeah, overall I think Focus is an improvement, if only to my ability to solo stuff. No more annoying mana-burning bosses to kill me that way. I'm lookin' at YOU Baron Geddon. I will solo you yet. *shakes fist*

Alright, rambling done, I may test some more stuff on the PTR, but school will probably pop up before then.

Cheers Folks,
~Tox

Know what sucks?

How apparently my guild goes through a major split approximately once a year. And it happened yesterday. Uuuuugh. I'm the only one left technically classified as an officer. GM and sub GM are still there though. But frankly, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm keeping a promise I made ages ago I'd probably be in the new guild that was formed from the split. And I know for a fact that everyone in it would have me in a heartbeat.

On the upside, it may very well be a good way to keep me from poorly prioritizing once school starts up, and possibly do other things like socialize. We'll see, but chances are high that I'll be playing less.

Also: Ugh, drama, ugh. *sigh* I hope that Lisa's (GM) not being manipulated by the people who re-joined the guild after the split last night....though there's definitely a possibility of that. Either way, I'll do my best to help her out and all that jazz.

Cheers,

~Tox

edit: redundancy fixed.