Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Who would have thought!

I began the evening just under 4 bubbles of XP into level 43. I only played for 45 minutes last night and completed 7 quests in southern STV near Booty Bay and that was enough for me to hit level 44. To say I was a little stunned might be an understatement, but I was also thrilled. I really had not planned on making a level last night. I'm off to the Badlands where I will begin to finish off the quests here before heading over to Tanaris. I am realizing that I definitely need to go and tame a beast that has the claw ability for my cat. This would go a long way in helping my cat do way more damage, not that she doesn't do enough already. I'm debating about adding Bite to that as well and I will research that more fully. I know that I will need to go back and respec her soon but I may also hold off as I will be entering Searing Gorge soon and having fire resistance is a definite bonus.

Right now, outside of quests and such, my goal is to be entering the Outlands by the middle of the month of October. I am really feeling confident that this is possible. Hopefully I can get to high enough level that Zulu can move straight into Northrend when LK releases. :D

I really had no idea that traps and pets would be the center of my learning and research for this character at this time in her developement. For some reason, I had this idea in my head that it would be more about where to go and what quests to finish out that would be pre-occupying my time. Having a seriously good pet and knowing the best way to trap and when to trap is really becoming a fundamental part of my survivability. I am regularly taking on 2 to 4 mobs at a time now and usually I never have issues any more. When I do, I Freeze trap whomever runs after me, finish off the rest and then kill my trapped mob. Once in a blue moon though this doesn't happen and I get into real trouble or get killed. In these cases though, I just chalk it up to a learning experience and go on from there.

Regarding pets, I know my cat needs more abilities. Claw definitely and probably Bite too. I also need to go and tame a gorilla when I enter Un'Goro. I really want to have these two pets and possibly a third pet for when I enter Outlands and beyond. What I have no idea about is what pet would make a good utility pet. I really cannot think of any situations that I have been in or will be in where I would need that kind of flexibility right now. I'll definitely look into this matter more fully, but I am going to have to retire my boar permanently so free up a slot for my pets as I tame some for their abilities, and I want to have the space for my gorilla as well.

Ah, sweet hunting bliss.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Stranglethorn Vale and Beyond

What is it about Stranglethorn Vale that keeps players coming back for more and more? I realize that this is one of the most intensive qeusting areas in the game and that for both sides there is a ton of quests. From what I can gather, if a player spent a good amount of time grinding as well as questing, I believe it's entirely possible to go from level 30 to 45 without ever leaving this zone. Now I wouldn't advise this, but I'm sure it's been done. While I have yet to get tired of being in this place right now, I can't say how much longer this will last. On my alliance toons I quickly became real tired of having to come back to STV over and over again. This hasn't happened with Zulu though. Part of this is because this is my first Horde character going through STV and that fact that it has only taken me 14 days to get to level 43 and the last handful of quests in STV. Compare that to the other times I've been here and spent a couple of months in STV each time.

There is one thing of note that is entirely different than my other times here. I have found so many new places in STV that I have never seen before. I don't know of this was intentional, but Zulu has seen more of STV than any character that I've ever brought into this place and she has blown through quests left and right. So did Blizz purposefully make this zone to be so different for each side? Or have they just made it this way so that classes like hunters can really fly through it. I have never played a hunter of either side in STV until now so my reference point is different. I like how new and fresh this zone is to me now, and I am really excited to see how things finish out here. I only have 2 quests from Grom'Gol to finish and I am currently about halfway through all the quests from Booty Bay. From the looks of it I will make another level there before I finish up with the quests.

I have not decided which direction to go from here. I can either head into Feralas or to Tanaris or I can also head into the Hinterlads. I am leaning more toward Tanaris, then Feralas and then on into the Hinterlands. From there I can also move into the Blasted Lands and Searing Gorge as well. Either way I go I can pretty much gaurantee that I will make 2 or more levels per zone. The best route to go from here is up in the air as I'm not sure which way is really best. Tanaris seems to be the most logical next point to go to, but I could also be way wrong on this. What I do know is that I will be well poised to really move quickly from here. At this rate I should definitely be in my 60's very soon and I can't wait. I've already gotten my money for my epic mount so from there it should all be a cake walk. I guess though my concern now is how long is it going to take me to get through my 60's. I have another couple of weeks to figure this out, but I am wondering if it's even possible to go through the outlands and hit 70 in just a week or two?

For right now it looks like I'll be in my mid 60's when Lich King comes out. And unless I get some more time to play I cannot forsee me making 70 before then. Ahh well, I'm still going to try.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

On the subject of Pets.

Now that Jujukitty is fully trained I have noticed something quite interesting. My cat has better survivability than my boar. Now I am wondering 'why is that?' Not that I mind all that much, it's just perplexing. Boars are suppose to be really good as leveling pets and decent tanking pets. Now that my cat is up to speed I'm finding that Jujukitty excels and is an overall better pet than my boar Tusken. I'm guessing this is confirming what I've been reading and hearing with regards to pets for while now. As Blizz has nerfed most pets and/or pet abilities they have inadvertently forced players to go back to cats. As for the specifics of why, I have no clue, but I am hoping with the changes regarding pets coming in LK that they allow for more diversity and don't force hunters to only use one or two pets. Now I'm am debating on whether I will keep my old baby 'Tusken' seeing that Jujukitty is performing so awesomely. I'll give it some more time before I decide.

On another pet related note, I am now understanding more why it is often necessary to respec you pets over and over again. I was knocking out a lot of my quests in Dustwallow Marsh and I was over by Onyxia's lair doing the quests killing the dragonkin and whelps. I began to realize my pet did really well in the one to one fights, but when there were more than one dragonkin, Jujukitty would start to take a ton of fire damage. So I used his remaining training pts and buffed him up on 'fire resist'. This helped tremendously and allowed me to deal with the dragonkin in 2's and 3's. While I've seen it mentioned from time to time about speccing resistance on your pets, I've never really paid all that much attention to it till now. Now I need to learn more about maintaining pets and when and where to respec pet talents to help you move along more smoothly. If anyone has any good sources regarding this kind of pet maintenance I'd love to hear from you?

I dinged 41 this morning and I am off to Mudsprocket to start hammering out those quests. Desolace is now all completed (at least as far as the quests that I want to do) as is The Thousand Needles. I have enough quests to get through another couple of levels in Dustwallow Marsh and STV, so I am going to hold off on jumping into Feralas and Tanaris. If I can hold off till I'm closer to my mid 40's before entering these two areas it should really help me to fly through the remainder of my 40's. Level 50 here I come!

Friday, September 26, 2008

So Close!! And Horde Economics!

Well, I finished handing in a handful of quests in STV this morning and missed my Level 40 mark by 3 bubbles. :(

Ah well, I'll get it tonight and then I can upgrade to Mail Armor. :D

Speaking of......

The Economy of Gilneas, Horde side. Sucks!!

I know I've already made this comment already but the AH prices for green gear on Gilneas's Horde AH are really bad. To fully upgrade my leather gear to mail would cost me over 200g if I regear with items marked "of the Monkey, of the Falcon, or of Agility." This is beyond ridicoulous. Outland "of the Bandit" gear is cheaper than that. So what does this tell me? Well, two things really; One is that Horde players are assuming everyone playing lower levels is an alt to a level 70 Horde toon, and/or the Gold Farmers have driven the prices of things so high that they have the AH economy fully under control. Either way this spells bad times for anyone who does not have a level 70 horde toon on Gilneas in trying to acquire decent gear out of the AH. And unfortunately it shows that the players on the Horde side have little care for their bretheren there. This used to not be the case. These developements on Gilneas are rather recent. I've had horde toons on Gilneas almost since I started playing the game, but since I play the game with my friends and most of them play Alliance, I am usually on that side of things when I play, so I haven't devoted the time to fully level a horde toon until now. So seeing what's happened to the AH is a disappointment to say the least. Too bad we can't report people for "Price Gouging."

A clear example of this is show here, I recently acquired the River Pride Choker on a random drop. Now I happen to know that this is an item often sought after by twinks so I figured I would test the waters in the AH and see how much people would pay for this. Usually I see this selling for 50 or so gold on the Alliance AH. I posted it for 140g originally. It took me 4 postings in the AH for it to sell and it sold for 113g this morning. When I looked at other 'Blue' necklaces in the Ah over the last few days, none of them had prices that high on them, even the level 70 necklaces. Unfortunately people on Gilneas will pay these prices in the Horde AH because there simply are not enough items being posted up in the AH to drive the prices down. The players that are setting these insanely high prices know that they will have little or any competition for the item they post.

What I do know that happens a fair amount on Gilneas is that players often times will purchase stuff on the Alliance AH and then move the items through the 'neutral AH' to their horde alts and save a ton of money doing that. Sadly this further hurts the economy of the horde AH as it eliminates even more competition from the field. I've been seriously tempted to buy up a lot of green items cheap on the Alliance side and resell them on the Horde side for 2 to 3 times the price that I could pay for them. The logistics of doing such transactoins currently keep me from doing just that even though I could make a killing doing it. At this moment I'm really not going to worry about it that much, since I am leveling as fast as I can staying exceptionally well geared is not high on my priority list. Keeping my bow and arrows current is, but beyond that I'll stick with the cheap items I can find in the AH when I do find them and what I get from quest rewards and drops. But as long as people are willing to spend extreme amounts of gold on items on Gilneas I will take advantage of it with my bank toon who in just over a week has already earned me close to 300g just on level 30 to 40 items and the skins that I get from doing the quests.

I'm hoping that upon the release of Lich King that more people will go back to playing horde on Gilneas and that this will bring the prices down to a reasonable level again. I'm kind of curious to to hear about other people experiences on this matter as well.

Have fun, and Happy Hunting.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Thoughts on the Future and MM Hunters

As I've been reading around on the blogs that I've come across, I am really surprised at the number of blogs pertaining to MM Hunters. Now, I have to admit, this is and isn't surprising. I happen to know someone very well that plays MM and they are currenlty in SSC/TK content and she gushes about what she can do. (This is where I really wish I was older than my current level.) Huge 6K+ Crits and solid DPS numbers.

**shrugs**

Hmm.... Now I have seen this over and over, and lets not talk about how often I've read it, but huge hits like that generate a lot of aggro. On my level 70 shammy, I was in Kara and watched our groups Ret Pally hit like that on Atumen's Horse. Know what happened to him? That's right, he died on the bosses very next hit. In fact I see this pally dead a lot in raids. Now, talking to other players that have played MM Hunters, there is a general trend of talk, they do pull aggro more than they would like. So if you don't have a uber awesome tank, your gonna see that boss run over and lay down some awesome "smackdown" and that will be the end of your DPS run for that boss.

My perspective on this subject is skewed from a hunters perspective because I haven't been behind the controls in situations like this yet. I have seen BM hunters in raids absolutely dominate number wise, even when they are having to do a lot of CC. So what makes MM so interesting then? I know a lot of players like it in PVP, but if your shooting someone who has a lot of resilience that isn't going to help all that much. And as strange as this will sound, the only hunters that my shammy has ever had problems with in the BG's are Survival hunters. From a standpoint of leveling BM, I can say for sure, BM does allow you to handle a lot of things that other classes have difficulty with (expect maybe, Warlocks). Given the number of times now that I have survived fights where I was greatly outnumbered by higher level mobs than me, I can say having a pet that can stay alive and kill a mob on it's own has serious merit.

With the proposed changes coming in Lich King for hunters and their pets I am totally chomping at the bit to get into it and play there. I can already see me having my boar, just because he's been with me since the start, my cat and a gorilla. And since they are adding a new stable slot I can tinker around until I find a good utility pet. What this is going to mean for me, as a BM is more options and strategies for leveling and playing. What I have to wonder though is how the changes will affect MM hunters? Of note, I see that a lot of the blogging MM hunters are also in guilds that are in Hyjal/Bt or Sunwell this does make some sense as the hunter gear at T6 level does lend itself more to MM hunters than BM hunters. Hmmm....

Our world is changing again. And we'll change with it, all I can say for now is that I await Lich King with a lot of anxiousness to see the impact it will have on the game. WOW is evolving slowly, but as with a lot of people, is the evolution for the best? So far, it all looks good, especially for hunters.


Happy Hunting. :D

Another Day, Another Kill

Another day, another level. This is becoming quite easy and my friendly banker is really starting to pay off for me. I hit 40 in the next day or so and I have the money to upgrade my armor but I think I'm going to wait and see what rewards I get as well as wait for better prices. One thing about Gilneas's Horde economy is that it is atrocious. Green items marked as "Of the Monkey", "Of Agility", "Of the Tiger" and such sell for as much as the blue items for the same level. I find this extremely ridiculous and will not pay such high prices for things I will eventually come across in drops. Given the large number of drops I get, I will keep posting my stuff at a much lower price so that I can help drive the prices down some. I am really hoping that with the release of LK that prices will plummet on their own and the economy will stabilize. I really detest people who drive prices up high like that because it creates an atmosphere where new people to the game come to rapidly hate it because at the lower levels they cannot afford any kind of remotely decent gear.

For those of you who might want to know, my new cat's name is "Jujukitty." I thought it was definitely appropriate for a black panther. Hopefully today I'll finish off my quests in Desolace and move to start finishing my quests in Dustwallow and STV. I still need to go back to the Swamp of Sorrows and start finishing out those quests before they go grey on me.

Anyways,
Happy Hunting all!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Coming Along

So I headed off into Dustwallow Marsh and started my slaughter there as well. I finished off a number of quests in fast succession and made another level. My new kitty is fairing well, though I cannot wait to be able to fully train her up. I'm still looking for a name, though I haven't come up with anything spectacular yet. One name that has come to mind is "Jujukitty". Let me know what you guys think.

I returned back to STV this morning and cleared up some older quests and situated myself to run some more first chance I get. I got a new bow last night as well from one of my quests in Dustwallow and I am really estatic about this as it has good stats and damage. This means I don't have to look for a new bow for a while! Yipee!

Happy Hunting all!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

How Fast Can You Kill?

I've been reading up more and more on hunters, especially BM hunters and the primary focus of what I am reading deals with Haste. Why? Well Haste allows BM hunters to shoot faster, it allows our pets to hit more often, which increases our chances to crit which allows us to go even faster. Or so it seems. I haven't quite figured all of this out as of yet, but I can say that it is important and does make sense. If you look at the talents in the BM tree the important ones deal with base damage and speeding up your attacks. The overall affect is that you do more damage more often. This will be especially true when LK releases although I really have no idea how I will spec out my talents.

One of the reasons why I've come to like my troll hunter is that her racials match up so nicely with the BM tree. The synergy between the hunter, their pet, troll racials is very nice which makes me wonder why there are so few of us around. I was looking at game statistics and learned that Trolls are of the least played race in the game. I guess I have to attribute this to their looks. The males just look gawd aweful, that is true, the female toons aren't bad though. I just find it hard to imagine why horde players don't play more of them given the strength of their racials. Either way, for a hunter, it all works really well, and I cannot wait to get to level 70 and above to see how this synergy really starts to play out. Right now the issue is negligable.

I definitely need more info here.

A New Pet

Tusken is mad at me. I stabled him for a while and he does not like it. I can't really say I blame him on this since he's been with me from the beginning. Ah, well. He'll get over it I'm sure. So why did I stable my old and trusty pet? I needed a new one. Well, maybe needed is a little bit of a strong way to put it, but it is time to add some more pet abilities to my training list and I've been wanting to get a cat for a long time now. I decided as soon as I saw one, that I wanted a Shadowmaw Panther! They are tough cats and they can prowl! Anyways I stabled Tusken and went off in search of one of these Shadowmaw panthers. It didn't take me long to find them, and thanks to a helpful hit, taming went very smoothly. (What was the hint? Simple, place your Freezing trap between the beast and you then back up to maximum weapon range. Pull the pet with Concussive Shot and begin taming. By the time the trap breaks you will almost be done taming the beast and thus you take very little damage.) Now that I have my new cat all I need to do is work with it for a while. I will eventually train another beast, probably a raptor, to gather more new skills, and I definitely need to find a new rank of Gore for Tusken.

My biggest debate now is; what to name my new kitty? I really haven't the foggiest idea what I want to name her yet so any suggestions would be welcome. I really hope this new pet works out, because I feel it is time to have a more DPS oriented pet.

Monday, September 22, 2008

The Race

So I've achieved level 37. I've been wondering about what places I would visit and I've travelled the length of both continents now. Tusken seems to enjoy these journeys as he really likes fighting new enemies and beasts. A part of me wished that I didn't have to travel such long distances at times as it would make things a lot quicker and easier. That being said though, this hasn't been a slow process to begin with. I have finished my series of quests in Hillsbrad and the Thousand Needles so I am now working my way through STV, Alterac Valley, and Desolace. Before making my way into Tanaris, Feralas, and The Badlands I plan on visiting the Swamp of Sorrows and Dustwallow marsh soon to get some experience in those areas as well. Life is swell and I couldn't be happier with how quickly I am moving.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Early Musings

While I am not an expert hunter yet, I can say, I love my life as a hunter. Running around Azeroth killing enemies, beasts, elementals, demons, and what not is right up my ally. Up until recently this life pretty much revolved around sending in my boar and blasting my targets away. Now though, as I gain more skills and confidence, I can really appreciate what tools we have. Between traps and Feign Death, there is really very little that I cannot handle as long as my pet is alive. Mobs 3 or 4 levels higher than me are not a problem. Handling 3 to 5 mobs my level or lower than me equals no problems. Completing quests is not an issue either, in fact I fly through them. And if I get into a sticky situation, I can always find a way to get out of it.

Beast Master is the spec that I've come to prefer. I love the fact that my pet rarely dies and can hold aggro on multiple mobs with ease. My boar, named Tusken, just charges in and takes the beating unitl I can shoot down the mobs. Rarely does he ever lose aggro so I rarely have to worry about trapping or feigning when I'm working on my quests. My hunting range right now is taking me through the Thousand Needles, Hillsbrad Foothills, and the northern portions of Stranglethorn Vale. One of my short term goals is to tame one of the panthers that has prowl. As much as I love my Boar, it is time for a new pet and I believe a cat is my best bet on that. Now to think of a name.

Another matter I'm going to have to seriously consider is whether I should drop mining and pickup Leatherworking. The crafted armor from this profession really works well for hunters and the other items that can craft would definitely be profitable on the AH, problem is having the money to afford this. I know that if I spend the time farming the leather to level it up, I won't be doing much real leveling and that would be bad for me at the moment. Ahh... well, I'll figure it out as I go along like I always do.

Happy huning all,
Zuluki

Welcome to my Home

So, until a couple of days ago I was just played this toon infrequently. I've always wanted a high level Horde toon, but given the demands of my Alliance toons I never got around to spending a whole lot of time on Zulu. What has changed? The announcement about the release of Wrath of the Lich King. This has made me realize how far away from having a high level toon I really was. When I logged back onto Zulu she was 26th level and in the last few weeks I've gotten her to 32, and the last 2 levels have been in the last 3 days.

I really want to see Zulu reach outlands before the expansion hits so that she can quest straight through and not spend too much time in any one area before she hits 80. Until the expansion hits Zulu will the the toon I am going to play primarily. After the expansion will be a good question as I know I'll work on leveling my main to 80, and continue leveling my other toons. But I also really want to play more on the Horde side to, so hopefully everyone will see me around more on Zulu than before.

Happy hunting everyone and remember, life only sucks when there is no Juju around.

Zuluki