Ka-Ching Ding.....

High Fives for all, I hit 75!!!

So, last night, right before I logged off and went to bed I hit level 75. I finished turning in my quests in Venomspite and the hearthed to Dalaran. Unloaded my bags, mailed AH items to my bank alt and then ported to Orgrimmar for training. After that I equiped a my Dark Frostscale pants, added the Jormunger Leg Reinforcement and took a quick look in the AH. There I found Helm of the Broken Ram, bought that. So what does this all mean?

Well, my AP went down a little, but about 20 pts, but I increased my hit by almost 40 points and increased my crit rating by about 2.5 percentage points. So the marginal loss in top end damage is covered by hitting more often for a little more base damage and an increase in the number of crits I will have. 1/6 chance to Crit is a lot better than the 1/7 or 1/8 chance that I did have. Morale of all of this is. As I get access to more and more blue and better gear I am learning how to balance my stats appropriately to hit as hard as I can and to allow my pets to shred their opponents.

This morning.... I'm looking at my bank and realize that to continue to craft my LW items for skill ups, that I am in desperate need of Elemental Air. So off to Borean Tundra, which is the only place that I am aware of so far to farm Crystalized Air. I hour of banging away, I am about 40g richer and have enough Crystalized air for 2 eternals. (Man there has to be a better place than this to get this stuff.) That done I craft 5 Swiftarrow Bracers and now all my LW recipes are yellow again. :( Man this sucks, I am now at 426 LW and out of mats so back to farming for a little while. This will be good for getting both of my pets leveled again so I'm not that upset but I really need to find a sweet spot to get enough leather for the Heavy Borean Leather I need for my recipes.

Ah well. I sent to of the bracers off to Genzdawn and Dawnzgen for their future use and will continue to send them stuff as I craft the items for the Swiftarrow set. Now I just have to figure out how I will get from 426 to 440 as quickly as possible. The amount of Heavy Borean Leather I need is almost staggering to think about when you consider the stuff sells for about 150g on my server. This means I won't be buying it if I have any thoughts of acquiring my flying mount any where near level 77.

I have noticed when reading around that a lot of the hunters on the blogs are starting to talk about pets. The conversatoins run the gamut of topics and most are very informative. But I'm still a bit perplexed by one pet ability. Cower. I have never understood this ability and from reading the tooltip, I can only see a use for it in instances. So maybe some one could enlighten me on this or maybe I'll go over to Larissa's Hunter Forum and ask there... that will depend upon how busy I am today.

Zulu

Oh So Close!

So I hit 66 and I am now faced with a small dilemma. I have a quest log full of quests that require help from other people or the quests are multifaceted in that they require either a lot of travel or steps to complete. Generally speaking these kinds of quests slow me down tremendously. So, here are my options. Spend an evening or two cleaning up on these quests, which may or may not advance a lot of XP, or head off to Nagrand where I know I can clear another level just on Nesingwary and another level of the rest of the quests. Also there is the rep grind that can be done pretty quickly should I so chose to do that for the Mag'har rep. There are two ogre camps that can be ground for hours that will land me at exalted pretty fast. Doing this should also pretty much gaurantee that I will be 68 or 69, if not 70 when Lich King releases. I also can run into Blades Edge and Netherstorm if needed as well, not to mention Shadowmoon Valley. The point being made here, is that I am at the point where finishing the run to 70 will be relatively easy.

Another interesting sideline, I had almost forgotten about Jumanji, my gorilla. I checked on him in the stables yesterday and nearly fell over. He's still level 60! Well, my kitty is 65, so I put my cat into the stables and pulled out the Gorilla. He's now up to 63, but I am definitely going to have to remember to keep him leveled up since he is my main and only Tank pet right now. I had really thought about taming a wasp, but after observing them in Zanger I decided against it. I really want something interesting for my 3rd pet so I will go off in search of other possibilities here. I guess I'm off to go and do more research at petopia to see if I can find something more fitting for me.

Zuluki

The Plague

So, I've been barely keeping up with the beginnings of the battle between the Argent Dawn and the coming Scourge of the Lich King. I guess now that you kinda have to keep up. I ran into Orgrimmar this weekend, before the arrival of the Necropolis's and became infected, and I could not find someone to cleanse me before I turned into a Zombie. So I kept running towards the Flight Master and headed off to Silithus. I didn't make it. Somewhere near the edge of the Thousand Needles I died and rezed at the bottom of the great lifts. Arrggghh.... !!

So I've decided that I will now avoid the cities, and where possible Shatt as well. I really think the idea of what Blizz is doing here is great. It's a captivating introduction to the new expansion but it very annoying. My bank toon has been hijacked by this crap several times now as I've been trying to post up my excess drops in the AH and manage my trade items there. And it's seems too, at least on our server, that the 'Scourge' has effectively shut down the AH. I've only sold 1/10th of what I usually sell in a weekend because everyone is either off killing zombies or avoiding the cities all toghether. Were I 70, this may be a littel different, espescially since the reward gear is actually really nice, even if it designed for the slaughter of the undead.

I am nearing level 62 and I think I have only about 20 or so quests left to do in Hellfire. I have already picked up the travel quest for Zangermarsh and I am fixing to head off to there and set up my FP for there. I also made the run to Shatt to get the FP there as well as to decide upon what sub-faction I will work with. I went Scryer. I have chosen this faction since I already have 2 toons on the Alliance side thart are Aldor. Plus Scryer seems to match up a little better for my spec and what I want to do with Zulu. Depending upon what level I am when Lich King arrives, will have an impact on how far I will take this relationship. Honestly, I feel I will be in Northrend long before my Outlands factions offers me much in the way of gear and such.

I am now searching for a good cunning pet and an exotic pet. I haven't decided up either. I know that I want to eventually have a wasp as a pet but other than that I haven't decided upon what to get. Most of the horde hunters I've seen so far have their hounds from Shadowmoon Valley or they have their Devilsaur's. I'm not particularly fond of either. Although I have thought about invading Azuremyst Isle and getting the Kurken. I am still researching all of this as I want to make sure that I get the exotic pet that I want or close to it from the beginning.

Anyways, happy hunting all
Zuluki

Level 60 - Hooray

I completed 4 quests last night in Hellfire and turned them in and 'Ding!', I hit 60!

I was a little surprised. I only played for about 40 minutes and had no intentions of making another level. But, hey, it is another level closer to where I want to be on November 13th. So this morning I hearthed back to Orgrimmar and trained and everything else that I needed to do and found that I am about 100g short of my epic mount. No biggy there, I just sent my bank alt a bunch more stuff and cranked up my AH items for the weekend. Then I ran off to Wintergrasp to finish a few old quests there and to grind for 'Rugged Leather,' so that I can bring my leather working up to the 300 mark. I am only 15 pts away from that so I'll be heading back to do some more grinding there until I have enough leather to hit 300 or better. I don't mind the short break to grind over here for while because it is allowing me to level my gorilla up again and to improve my AoE farming skills. I love being able to round up 2 to 4 mobs and dropping volley twice and seeing all of the dead. :D

I find I am missing out a little in the AoE experience given that I do not have Misdirect yet. With the addition of this shot I feel I'll definitely be able to handle even more mobs. This makes me a little more anxious about hitting 70. One thing though, thanks to the article below from the "Aspect of the Hare" blog, using Aspect of the Beast while dealing with multiple mobs has pretty much insured that I do not have any mobs running after me very often. I'm a little surprised that the boost in damage this Aspect gives generates enough threat to ensure that most mobs will stay on my gorilla for the duration of the fight. I am eager now to finish levelling my Gorilla and get back to Outlands to keep going now and to see how he does there.

Slogging Away & Questions on Threat and Aggro.

As I have been racing about Hellfire Peninsula one thing I have noticed here more than I noticed in Azeroth is aggro issues. I am currently using my Ferocity pet (a cat) Jujukitty, for the purpose of killing the mobs faster. Given that I am often times fighting mobs my level or a level or two higher, I find that I am pulling aggro off my pet much more often that I have in the past. Part of this I know has to do with the level of the mobs I dealing with. The other part, I believe, has to do with the Outlands in general. I feel that the mobs in the Outlands respond differently than mobs in Azeroth, and have a much more sensitive setting for aggro. I am also looking more closely at the pet talents and the differences in how the Tenacity and Ferocity talents work.

Threat is a definite tangible aspect now when I'm dealing with mobs, and more so when I am dealing with multiple mobs. I'm seriously considering swiitching to my gorilla for a while to see if this makes a difference. If the gorilla can hold aggro better it will be worth slowing down a little because that will mean that I can apply more damage personally on the targets instead of having to kite, maneauver and trap so much. Interestingly enough, as I've been working this over in my head and trying different things with my cat in game, I found this on another blog this morning;

Aspect of the Beast, An Unlikely Love Story

I have noticed the tooltip change recently but I also didn't pay close attention to it. More pet damage!!! This may make using my gorilla even more useful and quicker when I have Aspect of the Beast up. I'll do some testing tonight to see how this works and play around some with my pets as well. Hopefully by the end of the night tonight I'll hit level 60 and can then finish getting my epic mount.

Unless I can get an escort, I'm going to wait till I have my epic mount to make a run for Shattrath city. Somehow I can't stomach paying a mage to port me there so I'll just have to make a run there soon. With the epic mount it shouldn't be that hard to keep enough speed to stay away from any higher level mobs I might aggro.

Till then,
Happy Hunting
Zuluki

Pumpkin Heads, all of them!!!

Okay, so after the patch release and the fact that I missed close to 3 days of playing, I was pretty bummed because I would have been in Outlands by now. This may have turned out to be a good thing though. I have never played a toon that went to Silithus and Zuluki made the excursion. While I have bugs, all I can say is, 'WOW.' This place is great for leveling when your fairly high into the 50's. At the rate I am going, I will probably skip the Plaguelands all together along with Burning Steps. I will finish out my quests in Winterspring and hopefully Silithus and then head off to Outlands. I am really wanting to get my Cenarian Rep up as high as I can before I hit Zangermarsh so I can hopefully either hit Revered or Exalted while I am in that swamp. That will mean staying in Azeroth a little longer than originally planned but I'm okay with that as long as the reward is worth it. I have just under 20 days to cover a minimum of 10 levels, and I have no doubts that I will be ready for Northrend when it releases.

To my amusement and frustration, Hallow's End has arrived. I'm frustrated because a person can be 'pumpkin headed' only so many times before they become annoyed. Or at least that is the way it is with me. I cannot tell you how many times this happened to me this weekend, but everytime I even got near one of the major cities it happened. The fun part of this was I spent some time Sunday running from city to city collecting candy for the xp. I was amazed that after covering all the cities that I could reach I actually made a level from the XP. So what could have been a complete waste of time ended up giving me a level for free.... or almost for free (it took almost 2 hours to go to every city or town I had access to). Ah well, the buffs from the candy were pretty interesting but that was about it, at least from what I've participated in so far.

With the new changes with pets and the talents, I am really liking how my pet and I are working out. I am really excited about reaching level 60 and getting my Exotic Pet talent! those 4 extra pts are going to go a long way in making my pets super killing machines (not that they already aren't)! Either way, I am happy with the changes that have been made so far and I am really excited about the new expansion now.

Happy Hunting,
Zuluki

Catching Back Up

Well, I polished off 3 levels and then some since my last post. While this keeps me up with my schedule I probably have lost some time. Several things have also taken place during this time. I keep having quests for STV pop up so I'm not totally done there, and I finally headed off to the Hinterlands. I'm sooo... happy I did. There are a ton of quests there and they are mostly all high 40's to low 50's. This is perfect for me. I am heading to Feralas soon, probably today, as well. I also haven't touched Searing Gorge which should be ready for me now as well. I'm just cruising along nicely here and Hoping that I am going to be in my mid to high 50's by this time next week.

Given the horrible climate of the economy on Gilneas, I finally had to buy a gun. It was the only ranged weapon that had good stats for my level and I had already completely outstripped my bow and hadn't seen a good one in a long time. Unless, of course, you are talking about bows for levels 58 and above. The same is happening with my gear. I buy what I can, use quest rewards where possible also, but people pricing greens for more the 30 gold is ridiculous. I am to the point now where I am thinking of buying everything I need off of the Alliance AH and moving it to my Zulu though the neutral AH's. It is seriously that bad and no one on the horde side really seems to care. Ah well.

My pet is coming along grandly, and with the addition of claw to her abilities I have even been more happier. I find that while I still only attempt to take on 1 to 2 mobs at a time, I am fully able to deal with 4 to 5 with ease. Traps, Concussive Shot, Wing Clip, and Disengage have become staple abilities I use when dealing with multiple mobs. This has been especially true in dealing with all the trolls in my quests lately. Seems Blizz likes to pack these guys pretty tightly and sometimes I've ended up having a big fight on my hand either due to rovers or runners in the fights. The only times I have died lately has been where my fights have ended up involving more than 6 or more mobs throughout the fight. I'm really loving how I have so many ways now to work through fights and with the addition of mail armor I can afford to let someone hit on me for a short bit if necessary to measure out my trap time usage and sequence I move through in eliminating my mobs. Through this all, Jujukitty is pounding away and taking down his share of mobs as well, just a little guidance and occasional mend and he's right nasty in these fights. :)

Happy Hunting all.

A Slight Slow Down

So......

The badlands were not so "Badlands" after all. I was there only for a short stint to knock out a small handful of quests and...... I'm done? I thought this was wrong but I was right. There are some quests that or not showing yellow yet, but other than that. there are no other quests. So I headed off to Tanaris. I've already blew through 5 or 6 quests from Gadgetzan and almost all of the quest in Steamweedle Port. And for all this hard work, I have only gained 1 level. :P
My leveling has been slowed down this week as well by RL matters. No biggy though as I feel confident that I can catch up and still be well into my 60's by the time LK comes out.

One a more positive note though, my cat now has the claw ability and oooooo..... his DPS has jumped significantly. One of the last Damage Meter results I looked at, he was doing 55% of the overall damage, and mine was around 45%. I hadn't expected this but is extremely nice. Now and can tag a mob and let my kitty kill it and the mob will die in the same amount of time that I could kill it. And that leaves me more time to trap and deal with other mobs if my cat doesn't happen to pick them up for me. This helped me a lot in mowing down the Bloodsail pirates this morning.

Now off for some more hunting.

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.

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!

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.