And have a happy Winter’s Veil!

Actually, they aren’t that much harder, it’s simply that we all got kind of used to being grossly over geared and smashing Wrath heroics like we were soloing Wailing Caverns.

In honor of the fact that we must actually prepare for these new heroics almost like we are preparing for a 5 man raid, todays guest post is devoted to a sorely neglected topic.

Consumables.

No, I am not talking about making sure the guild cook brings along a stack or two of feasts, or that if you need a certain rating they don’t provide bringing your own chow.

I am not going to go into what assorted potions, flasks, and elixirs you should carry with you. Nor am I going to get into what scrolls, dusts of disappearance, or other reagents you need to bring.

I am not even talking about repairing your gear and making sure you have food for your pet.

All of that varies by class, gear, and role. Since my gear is weak, my role is whatever the LFD throws at me, and I have been told repeatedly that I have no class, I will not get into that.

I am talking about real consumables. Things you must have on hand well before the loading screen even pops up. Hearthing out to go hit up a vendor in the middle of a run is one thing, but you won’t be able to restock on these without logging.

I am of course talking about consumables for your real life avatar.

You know, that person that pokes buttons and makes internet dragons die?

One that needs at least as much attention as the avatar in the game.

Now I have found that every different class and spec will have their own recommended consumables, and even then there is much room for debate from player to player.

For instance if I am healing with my Druid I know I need at least 2 Diet Mountain Dew on standby. If I have not been to the vendor recently I may have to settle for Diet Pepsi.

Also note that if this will be a pug I will be needing to have a red bull on standby and will also be grabbing some rum to mix with the soda.

Mmmm, Pug. It tastes like… frustration.

Speaking of mixing, it occurs to me that beer is like a flask in that nothing really mixes well with it. Hard stuff is more like an elixir in that you can have it and a soda going at the same time, and you can mix and match.

Not really an important point, but one that occurred to me while writing.

Now if I plan to be out dungeoneering for a while I may just want a little something to snack on in between pulls. (Your tank is letting you pause and drink right?) I’m not exactly planning to pull a Cartman and call for more Hotpockets while I am playing, I just want to have something on hand in case I get the munchies.

Nachos are pretty much out of the question because I don’t want cheese on the mouse, the same goes even more for Cheetos and to a lesser extent Doritos’s. Anything of the chip family really, with the possible exceptions of pretzels or Chex Mix is a bad idea.

Lately however I have just been keeping a bowl of celery sticks there with me.

Yeah, call me a health nut, I don’t care. I still put peanut butter on my celery to help counteract some of the “good for me”.

If I am on my Hunter instead of the Druid and I plan on doing lots of trapping (huzzah, I missed trapping). I find that I lean more towards Diet Pepsi and 5 hour energy shots for the evening, not so much on the rum.

I wonder what that says about my thoughts on healing…

On a side note, Red bull and five hour energy shots don’t appear to be on a shared cooldown, but once again I digress.

Anyhow, next time you are planning your raid night, or even an evening of heroics, remember to pick up consumables for you RL avatar before you sit down, things will go much smoother.

Speaking of which, I need to stop on the way home for some red bull and chex mix……

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In Wrath of the Lich King we had the gorillas in Sholazar Basin and the rhinos and worms in Storm Peaks.  In Burning Crusade we had the wealth of beasts that was Nagrand.  In Vanilla we had… well who the heck can remember that far back?!

When I think of Cataclysm mob types, I think of all variety of elementals, Twilight’s Hammer cultists, and dragons.  Elementals and humanoids cannot be skinned. Dragonkin can indeed be skinned, but in my attempts to find the perfect farming grounds I’ve discovered they give me a Blackened Dragonscale almost half the time, and I don’t want those.  I want leather.

There was one great place – the packs of Stone Bats in Deepholm.  2 Multi-shots could bring down all 8 or 9 mobs who would always yield 1 Savage Leather each.  Unfortunately, they hotfixed this yesterday and those mobs can’t be skinned anymore!

The second best place, which I’m sure they will hotfix eventually, is Lost City of Tol’vir.  Right when you enter the instance, you’ll find two packs of tigers on either side of the door, hanging out with one elite mob.  Burn down the elite and you’re guaranteed to get at least 2 leather for each of the 5 tigers, yielding 20+ savage leather per run, and 100+ leather before you run into the “Too many instances” error.

Maybe you’ve found a better location, but it seems wrong to me that the best place to gather pure leather is inside an instance!

Come on Blizzard, where’s the skinner love?

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Even though we are a pretty small, solid, 10-man raid guild, I still thought it would be good to publish a checklist of requirements we would like a raiders to reach before we start our first week of raiding (first week of January).  It’s mostly to help some people prioritize their goals and so, frankly, we have something to point to if someone doesn’t know why they weren’t invited.

I wanted to share it here in case you are looking for some help in setting your own or your guild’s goals.

It’s a rather easy set of goals to achieve, but every point has a justification.  It also isn’t class specific – after all, knowing what enchants and stats are important to your class is ALWAYS a requirement!

• Average Item Level 340+: I know gear isn’t everything.  But it isn’t nothing, either.  This can easily be achieved by having mostly heroics gear and maybe a rep/crafted item or two.
• All gear enchanted: Even I have had to force myself to get over my old, stubborn, Wrath mentality of “I won’t enchant Blues!”
• All slots gemmed: This includes one of those crazy expensive Meta gems, with its requirements met.
• Best possible head enchant: That means Revered with the reputation appropriate for your class/spec.
• Best possible shoulder enchant: That means Exalted with Therazane.
• Both Primary Professions at 500+: This might seem like an odd requirement… professions don’t have that much to do with raiding performance, but they have a lot to do with your ability and willingness to contribute to the guild.  That’s a team attribute that we value highly. Each profession also provides unique bonuses to a character, which everyone should be looking to utilize.
• First Aid at 475+: Healing isn’t just for healers!  First aid is extremely easy to level and can allow the healer to focus on more important things than repairing you after you accidentally stood in the stupid.  This is most important for DPS, but healers themselves and tanks should still take advantage of it to relieve healer mana issues.

Not everyone will agree on these requirements, or you may have additional requirements of your own (please share them in the comments!)

And of course, the list of what makes you ready for each individual raid night is a different list completely! (repaired, flasks, buff food, strategies, etc.)

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But of course, there are things I certainly miss!  Marked for Death was great for a lazy hunter like me.  Readiness is something I used incredibly often – and not just so I can Rapid Fire twice in a fight.  Trap didn’t take or broke early?  Readiness, re-trap!  Interrupt heavy fight?  Readiness makes sure I’ll have Silencing Shot when I need it!  And, most importantly… a second feign death has saved me many a repair bill!

But Wyvern Sting is extremely useful – being able to shoot a trap and sleep a mob at the start of a fight really takes a lot of strain off the group.  And since almost everything can be trapped or slept, there’s no need to worry about what to do if they aren’t humanoid/undead/elemental/demons.  Protip: Wyvern Sting also works as an interrupt on mobs that are sleepable!

I’ve found that the rotation of MM and SV are almost the same – MM you should always use 2 back-to-back Steadies, and in SV I find I almost always use 2 back-to-back Cobras.  But the significantly shorter cooldown on Explosive Shot (6 sec) compared to Chimera Shot (10, 9 with glyph) is what makes the difference to me.  10 seconds is a really long time, especially if some add just popped up that needs to be burned… you may not even be able to use your “big” shot before it goes down.

So for now, I will be keeping MM as my back up mainly for when we’re short on interrupts, and I’ll be sticking with Survival for my main spec.  As always, I recommend giving all the specs a shot once in a while rather than declaring yourself a “Marksman only!” or whatever.  Things change, and you never know which you really prefer until you’ve tried!

Related posts:

1. Giving Survival Another Shot
2. Getting a Feel for MM Shots and Specs
3. A Shot at Survival

It’s not that I’m not enjoying MM anymore, but overall I think I’m still trying to get used to the whole focus-management aspect of things.  My timing is often off by a bit, or I get distracted and forget to use Chimera, and it’s having a pretty adverse affect on my dps and my sanity.

So tonight I’m going to give Survival a try.  I tried it once way back, and I did not enjoy it nearly as much as MM… but I feel like there’s no better time to try it than when I’m having issues with my rotation as it is!

Related posts:

1. A Shot at Survival
2. Huntering as Survival: Impressions
3. Getting a Feel for MM Shots and Specs

Discovery experience FTW.

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At first I thought Vashj’r would be horrible. No one likes the water levels! But it was actually quite fun. You get used to the swimming pretty quickly, and even appreciate it (it’s like being able to fly without flying, ya know?) Since Blizzard hasn’t explored a water world before, there were plenty of new creative opportunies. Lots of new creatures, mechanics, and scenery to enjoy.

And, I got my horsey.

And a new demon fish hat.

And I even had a small heart attack when I swam into a dark cave and THIS APPEARED! (You have to click the link for the picture, otherwise there’s no suspense!)

If I were to give any criticism to my first experiences in this expansion, it would be this: Blizzard has gone a bit overboard with the pop culture references. Usually it’s a once-in-a-while, tongue-in-cheek, cute reference. But sometimes it gets on my nerves… particulary the quest name “What? What? In My Gut?” (If you don’t get the reference, consider yourself lucky.)

Okay, I actually thought this was cute.

The other big problem happened this morning: I did the epic final storyline in Vashj’r (Defending the Rift), turned the quest in, got the achievement, followed the guy into the Abyssal Maw, and…. Nothing! That was it. My quest log is empty, I’ve got 142/150 quests finished in the zone, and there is no one telling me to head to the next zone. I don’t even know where the next zone is!  I’m aware I could just go to Orgrimmar and pick up the breadcrumb leading me to Deepholm… but it just doesn’t feel right.

And with the expansion only being a day old, there’s not a lot of help out there. A lot of people got stuck finishing the last quest – I didn’t. I finished it. I’m stuck AFTER the quest.

If you’ve finished Vashj’r and you know where I’m supposed to go to get the breadcrumb leading me out of Vashj’r… HALP ME!

Assuming I find a way out of this zone, tonight I hope to hit Deepholm and make my way to at least half way through 83.  If I’m still stuck in the middle of the ocean, I’ll let ya know.

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I took most of the summer off from World of Warcraft to get a chance to play some of those other games that I’ve bought and never had time to play.  But since the release of 4.0.1, I’ve found my excitement about the game growing each day.  I’ve tamed a slew of new pets (I’ll surely introduce them in an upcoming post), I’ve started a new alt to explore the new Azeroth content, and I’ve even started doing dailies again – saving up more gold than I’ve had since I bought Epic Flying in Burning Crusade.

Luckily most of my guild has returned to the game as well, and it’s great to be playing with my friends.  Without them, I’d certainly not be nearly as excited as I am!

I’m not one of those lucky (or unemployed) people to have the day off, but I did manage to get a couple of hours of playing in this morning before I had to leave for work.  I ran around upgrading my professions and riding skill and then took the boat out to Vashj’r.  My observations after a couple of short hours:

• Logging in was anti-climactic.  No installing, no cinematic, I couldn’t even really tell if my account had actually upgraded at first!
• It will take me a while to get used to flying in Orgrimmar.  I still find myself flying through gates, like the one to the Valley of Honor.
• Vashj’r was a good choice.  Not very much competition, and swimming really isn’t that bad!  Also, SEAHORSE!

Stay tuned for pretty screenshots, funny stories and maybe even a guide or two!

Related posts:

1. Falling in love with Huntering, all over again
2. Bow Lovin’ Dwarf Chick

I thought I would share my recommended process as it might be something you find useful to prepare yourself for the coming chaos.

Step 1: Take screenshots of your current UI.

Multiple characters, in combat, out of combat, under whatever conditions you think are important.  This will be helpful later when you’re trying to set up addons to look a certain way and so you don’t forget about anything!

Step 2: Move/rename your addon related folders.

You want to start from scratch, eliminating any settings or saved variables that might be left around. The folders you are looking for are your Interface/Addon folder and your WTF/{AccountName} folder.

Step 3: Play WoW.  Naked. (The game, not you… that part is up to you!)

Play around with the in-game Interface settings.  The idea here is to step back and decide what the Blizzard UI is really lacking for you.  I wouldn’t recommend jumping into a raid, but maybe a dungeon or some farming and dailies.  Make a list of what you find annoying or unusable without addons.

Step 4: Set up your action bars so they are usable from the Blizzard UI. (Optional, but highly recommended)

If you’ve been using a bar mod for a long time, your action buttons probably aren’t logically set up to be used with Blizzard’s UI.  I recommend changing that, in case you happen to play at someone else’s place or in case your addon breaks for some reason.  (This is called “degrading gracefully”) Later, when you reinstall your new bar mod, set up your bars around your action buttons, not the other way around!

Step 5: Research your addons.

Maybe you’ve got an addon you’ve been using for a while, but it’s no longer being maintained.  That’s a disaster waiting to happen!  Try to find out if there is a supported addon with equivalent functionality.

Step 6: Install the addons you find necessary.

Enable them ONE AT A TIME and configure it to your liking.  This way you don’t end up with random UI components that you can’t find the source of.  Repeat until all your addons are set up.  If you simply can’t get something to work or look how it did before, you may want to explore your previously saved screenshots and saved settings files.

Related posts:

1. User Interface Elitism
2. Achievement Guide: [World Explorer]
3. Check out No Stock UI!

If you knew where to find her, you may have read some of her musings since GLDC was officially shut down, but now she’s returned from her many various adventures and is back at Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick ready to shoot stuff and write about it.  So make sure you stay up to date!

Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick!

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