Archive for the ‘WotLK’ Category

Well day one is over for me, in the new world of 3.1. I have been up since 6am patching both my computers and updating add-ons. This process was made a bit harder by the fact that both my desktop and laptop are both running the new windows 7 beta. I ended up just patching the game on my file server and then copying the game back to both computers. It seemed easy at the time ok!

The servers didn’t come up till 12am so I had plenty of time to do it. But once I did get on I was very surprised. The servers were, how would you say this, stable. Stable is not a word that I would use normally on patch day, but I didn’t have any problems.

Even my add-ons worked, which has never happened. Sure I had the odd one that didn’t like 3.1. Like chatter, but that was quickly updated. Twice in fact and was back working in no time. Now all I have to wait for is x-perl to update. The author wants to wait till testing on the live server before he releases an update. Unfortunately he plays in the UK so is a day behind. No matter I’m sure by tomorrow this will all be sorted. But if you cannot wait till then there is a quick fix for the right click problem over at wowace.

There is really only one big bug that I have seen so far and that is a little extra talent point, notice the 72 talent points there? We did see this problem very early on in the PTR, and I guess they didn’t fix it.

I went and had a look at the new boss in VOA. Emalon the Storm Watcher. This is a fun little fight and is a bit harder than what we are use to in VOA. The dps have to be awake. As I found out today one mistake and the everyone dies. Although the fight, in its self is pretty straight forward, it can be a bit tricky to learn. As you can see in the screen shot, this was our first attempt. The dps was not fast enough in killing the add that was getting the stacking debuff, and boom went the raid. If you cant tell which add has the debuff, get the off tank to mark it. Or just look at which one is getting bigger and bigger. If you look to the top left of the screen shot you can see that one add is huge.

At the moment as you can see my tanking UI is a bit of a mess. but give me a break I only just got back into tanking a few day ago. I totally could not see all the debuffs on Emalon. I really need to fix this. But that is a job for tomorrow. For now I need some sleep.

So like, it occurred to me today that I had a blog site. It also occurred to me that I have not written here in a few months.

So what have I been up to in WOW; well I now have two level 80 toons. My Druid was 60 when Wrath launched and has made the long journey to 80. He started off healing 5 man runs for 8 levels. That’s right I was able to level right though Outland without doing any quests. All those new DKs needed someone to heal them. There were a lot of runs going in the first month and I still see a lot of people levelling toons in Outland now.

I was feral and had no healing gear, but with a short trip to the AH I found myself in some sort of healing gear. Sure I still had some tanking gear on, but that’s all part of the fun. Eight levels later I was in Northrend. I managed to pick up a full set of Blue bear gear, all those DKs didn’t want any part of that leather gear.

It took me about 2 months to get to 68, but once there I pushed to 80 in 2 weeks. The main reason was to give Quantum Butterflies a bit more flexibility with healers and tanks. As it turns out, bears are insanely easy to gear for. Not having to reach the defence cap is just plain awesome. Healing is a little hard to gear for. But running enough Heroics, with geared people you pick up an offset pretty quick.

My hunter over the last few weeks has not had a lot of play time. Seems I have only logged on him for 25 man Naxx. But in saying that, Toresh now has 2 pieces of T7.5 and I brought the T7 chest peace. He has also picked up gloves and boots from 25man Naxx. So, by no means has he not had some love. There are not a lot of gear upgrades to go for him.

In Kryptik we are 12/15 in Herioc Naxx. For QB we are one quarter clear after 2 weeks and should get the second one clear this week.

I’m hoping to start writing again but I’m not promising anything.

Why can I not help feeling like a Rogue?

Thats becasue Hunters now have Expertise. “You didn’t just say that did you?”

“Yes I did, you got it?” 

Animal Handler now increases your pet’s expertise by 5/10. It no longer increases your pet’s chance to hit.

“Blizzard I’m not a Rogue, Ok?”

“What does a hunter need expertise for?”

“Hang on what is expertise?”

Well here goes.
With enough of the stuff it is possible to prevent your target from dodging your attacks (you can not gain enough expertises to prevent parries).

For the math below we will assume you are behind your target like all good Rogues do it.

“For the last time I’m not a Rogue!” 

How much do you need? Well every 3.92 expertise rating you have you gain 1 expertise at level 70. This in turn reduces the chance of being dodged by 0.25%. 

Still with us? Good.

So a raid boss has around 6.5% chance to dodge (no one knows for certain but the Rogues seem to like this number). This would mean you would need 26 expertise (101.92 expertise raiting) to reduce that 6.5% to 0%. 

What does that mean for us hunters? Well with Animal Handler our pet has now got 10 Expertise. This mean our pets attacks have a 2.5% less chance of being dodged. So on a Raid Boss fight that would mean the chance for the boss to dodge our pets attacks would be 4% instead of 6.5%.

But do we need this over hit? As it turns out yes. In testing our Devilsuar only missed 1.3% of attacks but 6.0% of his attacks were dodged. So yes the change was needed. 

This leads us to our next question do we take it?

Well at the moment I’m unsure. I’m not raiding in Wrath yet so I can’t say if the higher dps you would get from this would be better than say Spirit Bound for its awesome extra 10% healing.

So the jury is still out on this one. It was a good change and it is far better in its current form, but we will have to wait and see if it makes it into our lvl 80 raiding build.

Well most people might have had a chance to get on. My server has been up for most of the day, so I have gotten a lot done. The server just went down though, so thats why I’m writing. 

I got a (green) Core Hound and lvled him to 70, but I don’t know if I’m going to get an orange Core Hound or not – just seems like so much effort to lvl it from 65. It was fun running around today. I think I was the first on the server to get a Core Hound. The only problem with that, was fighting off the /w from everyone I walked past; “where / how did you get that.” But man, does it look cool. I feel sorry for Rusty, as I don’t think he’s going to get out of the stable much any more.

Even managed to get my hands on some Glyphs. Not that many around though, as people lvling inscription don’t seem to be making hunter ones (or if they do, are only make ones good for PVP). I also have not seen any of the minor ones yet. There are a lot of people already at 375, which is a great effort. 

You may also have noticed that a lot of your addons are broken. I know mine are. Luckily most of them have been updated already. There have been some issues with some though, like xperl. It worked in the PTR and Beta, but not in the patch that went live. I did some digging and the developer is on the EU servers – these only just went down to get patched, so he said he will hopefully have it working in about 15 hours or so. 

One other thing to note with addons, is that curse is moving really slowly at the moment, with their Client not working at all. Their web site has been down a couple of times today. Just hang in there, I’m sure they will sort it out soon.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Patch day – I know I am – and remember don’t expect everything to work straight away. These were crazy big changes.

Right, servers are coming back online. All but mine it seems. A lot of US ones are back up and I’m sure Aman’Thul will be there soon *huff*
In the mean time I’m sitting in IRC with that cow from udder-madness, talking about running MC for a orange core hound to be different.

Oh yeah – the patch notes have seemed to have changed. That’s right, not all class changes are going to be in. From what I can see, most of the Hunter ones are still in. Have to wait till I log in to see what’s going on with the talents.

I’ll update you soon