Moving Day

Yo! Scope This has moved to the following address:

http://yoscopethis.wordpress.com/

Honor Hold Faction: 101

In my previous post (entry? update?) I said I didn't understand why my Honor Hold faction stopped at 5999/6000. I should elaborate.

I was working my way through Friendly when the meter seemed to come to a halt at the 5999 mark. One point shy from Honored, I sat perplexed. We had just got done running Ramparts and I didn't know why mobs that were giving me reputation with each kill had simply stopped.

A little research goes a long way. What I discovered was the mobs in there no longer give faction once you hit Honored. The mobs were giving +5 rep per kill, so they stopped giving me anything because 1 more +5 rep bump would put me into Honored which is a Ramparts no-no.

If I want to continue getting Honor Hold reputation, I will need to do:

- The Shattered Halls (This has a level requirement of 68, so that will have to wait);
- The "Daily" from there (This only gives reputation until halfway through Honored
- Some various remaining quests (Most likely for me, especially since the Alliance holds the zone's towers 90% of the time I am there, making the Daily not a feasible path).

"But Aaranay, why work your Honor Hold faction", you ask? Several reasons.

Flamewrought Key - Available at Honored, used to unlock Heroic instances of Hellfire Citadel

Veteran's Musket - Available at Exalted. Yea, that will take work, but if this piece of purple sweetness doesn't light a fire under your ass you should consider retiring your Hunter. It's OK, the Wii will be back in stock soon....maybe you can go bowling instead.

So how does one stomach this reputation grinding? Well fortunately you get to do it in instances, which in my opinion beats the pants off of finding a camp and repeatedly pulling mobs to the same spot. Ugh, EQ nightmares are coming back...but I digress. For the cost of 5 Marks of Honor Hold you can get an Honor Hold Favor. It only has a 30 minute duration, but a 25% increase to reputation gained AND a 5% increase to experience gained is sweet! All you need is to do the Daily from there 2x (which itself will yield reputation, depending on your rep level) -or- kill some players of the opposite faction near the Daily's objectives and the Favor is yours.

Get Your Drop, Dummy

Last night a couple of my friends helped me out with my Ramparts quest. The premise was go in there, kill 3 boss mobs and get a drop from each one to complete the quest. Now, I've been playing WoW for roughly 6 months with a change of RL address somewhere in the middle there. Every now and then, I find my old EQ way of thinking creeping back in, and who can blame me? I played that and only that for about 7 years prior to picking up WoW.

In EQ I am used to killing a boss mob and distributing the loot, then moving on. And last night while on the second of the three boss mobs I needed, it hit me: I never looted the quest piece from the first mob! Loot was handled, and as far as I was concerned that was that, time to move onward. My bad. Fortunately we were able to go back in afterwards and get that piece.

With that said, I have to say I was pretty proud of myself. This was really my first group in an instance. Did I top the DPS charts? Nope, and that's OK. I really wanted to make sure my pet and I were not drawing aggro. On the few rare times I did draw aggro, I FD'd. Sometimes not as quickly as I would've liked, but I did. I made sure Growl on my pet was turned off and monitored how he was doing on the Omen Threat Meter. I didn't have Cower turned on so Firecracker could dump all of his focus into Claw and Bite, but if it looked like he was getting too high on Omen's list I would've definitely turned on Cower.

About mid-way through I was feeling pretty good, the rhythm was flowing through me. Let the tank position the mobs, send in my pet/mark the mob (I have this hotkeyed to a key on my G15) and start plucking with my specials mixed into the rotation. One thing I definitely could have improved on was my Steady Shot timing. I think I was clipping some Auto Shots, it was kind of hard to hear the faint release of the bow and catch the animation with everything going on. A gun would really be my preferred weapon for this reason alone.

All in all it was a lot of fun. Now I just need to figure out why my Honor Hold rep stopped at 5999/6000.

Choo-Choo Coming Through!

One of the things that I have found really separates WoW from EQ1 is the code that doesn't let people train mob's. In EQ, somebody could run by with mob's and the next thing you know that train that was chasing them all decided to stop and start giving you and your party some love instead. Why? Because you happened to be along their travel path.

If you want to train somebody in WoW intentionally, you really have to work at it a bit. I'm not going to get into detailing how to do it, but I will say this much. Apparently the way mob's ignore players when they run past them in WoW doesn't hold true for when a train of mob's runs past another mob of a different faction.

To fill you in on where I'm going with this, I was doing some quests last night and as I rolled up on my yellow ? guy I saw there were some mob's in tow. No problem, I'll just run past him and it shouldn't be long before I drop their aggro. Well my quest turn in had now become a Save the ? Guy, as he was getting quite the beat down. So Firecracker and I run over and proceed to lend a hand in killing off the mob's I had dumped onto him. But alas, there were too many and before long he was dead.

So I hang around and eventually he respawns. Just as I finish up that quest I see somebody asking in the General channel if anybody needs to kill the giant spider in Netherweb Ridge. Hell yea, I sure needed that so off I go to meet up with him. Now, the PUG consists of me (64 Hunter) + another 64 Hunter and a 66 Warrior. The mob was a 65 Elite. I was actually feeling pretty good about the fight until the Warrior says:

I wonder what this guy hits for.

OK, now I'm worried. I ask my buddy who's a 70 Pally if he would come heal for us and it wasn't long before we put that spider face down, ass up. I would have been much more willing to just go ahead and give the kill a try without a healer if it wasn't the last quest I needed to hit level 65.

For whatever reason the Armory is still showing me as 64 with some gear that I dumped yesterday in favor of a couple of drops and quest rewards. Not sure what's up with that. Level 66, I'm coming for *You!* next! (doing my best Apollo Creed impersonation there)

Me + Pet = Sweetness

Do the math here:

408.2
+215.2
_____
623.4

That's right, at level 64 with my level 63 kitty we dished out a whopping 623.4 DPS. See what happens when I stop chatting and decide to drop the hammer? Sometimes it smacks me on the thumb, but other times it's a whole bunch of sweetness.

Yea, my average was only around 300 DPS and when I focus I am normally only about 350 DPS. Still- I am damn proud to have been able to pull off that kind of burst at my level :)

Go Go BM spec!

AMAZING FEATS OF NOOBNESS!

Sit back, pop a cold one and get ready to hear about 2 of the stupidest things I've done in a while. Or at least 2 of the stupidest things I've done this week.

Let's start in the Lower City in Shat. It was late and I was running around trying to wrap up a couple of quests when I notice a yellow ! that I had missed. OK, let's see what this is about. Oh, a collection quest for some items that I just sent off to my trader toon. We're talking some easy XP here, folks. Log to my trader, send the junk back, switch back to Aaranay and get that quest completion.

Apparently the quest I had found was the repeatable turn-in quest that let's you switch your faction from Aldor (which I chose) to Scyers (which I did not choose). Oh well, it was an easy 11k XP hehe.

Alrighty now let's move our story from the bowels of Shat up to high reaches of Aldor. I'll keep this part short and to the point.

Don't jump off of the top of that platform. Don't even try "catching" the elevator down if you just missed it. The elevator drops at a faster rate of speed than you do and you will not catch it. If you're wondering why, just look for the piles of bones at the bottom elevator pad.

OK, I'm Oficially Jonesin'

Tomorrow is my daughter's 3rd Birthday party. She's going to be Eight, but kids don't really need parties those first five years.

Of course, I jest. My wife and I are pretty excited. My wife because that's the kind of thing that excites her, and me, well I guess it excites me too. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't almost as excited to get garage space back after her toy kiychen set gets removed from there tonight. I mean really now, does she need to have a miniature gourmet kitchen? Well, if it encourages her to learn to cook and maybe take over kitchen duty a few nights a week for me down the road....then abso-freaking-lutely.

So anyway, the past couple of days have been spent getting stuff ready, food and cake ordered, the house cleaned up before snooping guests arrive. The pile of laundry piling up from a broken washer isn't helping, but hey what can ya do.

Meantime, I have the itch. No, Falcorr, not that kind of an itch. I am making good progress through the 60's and am finding the quests to be a lot of fun. I really want to spend as much timme as I can grinding out some experience, but for now I will have to settle for knowing that in my absence, my toon gets more rested XP.

And this brings me to my small rant for this session. Why do folks feel the "need" to have rested XP? If I remember reading correctly, it was designed so if you take time away from the game and your friends don't, you will have a means to catch up to them. In other words, having rested XP from time spent outside of WoW is about the same as if you had been in game picking on your guildie from Texas all that time.

Don't get me wrong, I love rested XP. I'm just not gonna go out of my way to get it. Given my druthers, I'd druther be in game letting some arrows fly.

Old Habits Die Hard

For whatever reason, I don’t see many upgrades through random drops. For a while most of my gear was from the Auction House, with a few pieces coming from quests here and there.

These days most of my gear is coming from quests with an occasional upgrade from a random drop. Some of my friends will send me a piece of gear once in a while to see if it’s an upgrade once I hit the required level. It usually is, and I will check it out every time I go to the bank.

Ooohhhhh….Just x more levels until I get to wear that!

One such item was a ring, a Moldavite Ring of Eluding which has a tasty +17 Agility & +17 Dodge with a required level of 63. I’ve been looking at this ring since I was at least level 55, maybe longer. I’m not entirely sure, but I think part of sending me a higher level piece of gear wasn’t just to give me an upgrade but to also motivate me to level.

So there I am, plugging away at some quests when what drops? A Moldavite Ring of Eluding! Imagine my surprise to actually see something drop that was an upgrade. But hold on…I already have one, GRR! WoWHead lists 35 different types of this ring and I had to get the exact same one? Wait….Is there such a thing as Lore items in WoW like in EQ? I read and re-read the item description and see nothing about being able to wear only one of this item at a time. Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure.

I busted my butt and stayed up until nearly 3AM to hit level 63 so I could wear the rings. Low and behold, I was able to wear both at once! So now I have a nifty pair of matching rings.

This is just one of a long list of old habits from EQ carrying over for me. It took me a while to remember that right-clicking on a mob would not “con” them in WoW, and that I didn’t have to worry about my pet pushing a mob off of a ledge.

Now, on to 64!

Look at All of the Colors, Man!

Last night I got my first piece of socketed (is that even a word?) gear- Expedition Forager Leggings. After a brief run down on Gems for Dummies, I was off to the Auction House.

Let's see here Red Gems....+8 Agility, awesome.

Yellow Gems....+8 Critical Strike, I like what I'm seeing.

Blue Gems....Hmm, well these are kind of disappointing. I'm sure I'd be much happier with the Blue Gem selection if I were a caster, but since I'm not the pickin's seem slim.

Now at this point I hadn't bought anything yet. I really wanted to make sure that I was making the best choices, even though this will probably be upgraded within the next 2 weeks. Back to the Yellow gems to look through what was in there again. Wow, here is one with +Hit Rating on it, that's pretty sweet too. OK Time to start buying!

/Buyout +Hit Rating
/Buyout +Agility
/Buyout +Critical Strike Rating

I get them from the mailbox and I can't help but feel like Ralphie from A Christmas Story when he get's his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring in the mail. OK, how does this work. Right click the gem? Nope. Drag and drop the gem? 'You cannot equip that item'. Hmm, AHA! Right there under the stats of the pants:

Shift + Click to add gems.

Well damn, I guess reading would've helped. But here we go! Dropping the gems in and, um....what the heck is giong on here? This last one won't go in. Why does my Blue Gem look Yellow? Oh no.

I bought TWO Yellow Gems! :(

I sat quietly for a moment. I'm not sure what I was more disappointed about, wasting the Gold or knowing now I had to get rid of the +Hit Rating. After coming to terms with my faux pas I shipped the extra Yellow Gem off to my trader toon and picked up a +9 Stamina Blue Gem.

All in all, they are a pretty nice set of pants, even if they don't have +Hit Rating on them :)

Is That A Typo?

I couldn't have just done that, could I? I redid my math... let's see, 175.3 + 285, carry the one. Damn, it IS right!

Ladies and Gents, I broke 460 DPS at level 61.

Now granted it was just 1 fight, and I can only hope (so far) to see those numbers with Bestial Wrath going. And there is the minor issue of the 5% zone-wide damage modifier I had, but damned if I didn't do it.

I can only wonder what I will hit once I get Steady Shot. Level 62 is right around the bend...

Voter Fraud

With today being the day Iowa has their Primaries, I thought it would be interesting to talk about voter fraud.

Now, I don't mean fraud at the polling place. What I mean is fraud on website polls. You see, a friend of mine (one of maybe 3 people who reads my blog) recently made a confession.

Hey, sorry about all of those votes.

I wasn't sure what he meant at first...

The poll you put on your blog- all of those votes are me. Whenever I go there, if it thinks I didn't vote, I vote again.

I realize not everybody who reads blogs will also vote on them, so here I was thinking I was actually getting an increase in readers. Oh well, if my writing makes a few people smile, then cool. Ultimately, as long as I make me laugh, I am happy :)

Hey, I'm Over Here Now

After ringing in the new year I found myself with enough time to get some quests done. So after some guildies got keyed for Shadow Labyrinth (Grats again, guys!), my friend asks me if I need a hand with anything.

Being as most times I am soloing, I usually take whatever help I can get as long as I know I'm not keeping somebody from doing something else. So over to Honor Hold he comes, and off we go. We are chewing through some stuff and green gear seems to be dropping left and right (none of it upgrades, bah). I do my quest completions when I'm asked:

So, what's next?

Sweet, now I can take full advantage of his generosity without the guilt. We head to the next area and one of the mobs I need is down. OK no problem, I run over to grab a ground spawn and he goes off to do who knows what. Ground spawn acquired, back to check on the mob I need.

"Pop", I let him know in /p. Now, from the start of all of this he has been getting more and more quiet. He started off talking in group voice chat, then he went to text and before I knew it he was just running off chasing down Fel Reavers like a dog running after a passing car. So it should have came as no surprise when I send in my pet and THEN realize Hmmmm, he's not here. Where the hell is he? Mini-map is showing him off futzing around.

After a bit, my friend shows up. Literally, the mob falls dead as he approaches. He says something to the effect of "I was so scarey that it died", or "It was so afraid of me it died".

Riiiight.

Yea, not a very good story but it is a fantastic way to use a title that gives me a reason to link to some classic Diceman (since I couldn't find his performance at MSG where he actually uses that line). THIS IS NOT REMOTELY SAFE FOR WORK: