A Day Full of Win!

Wow!  What a day!  It started out great at 12:01 AM, where I saw The Dark Knight.  It was truly excellent.  I highly recommend it to anyone, not just comic book fans.  Easily the best movie I’ve seen all year.  Possibly the best I’ve seen in the last decade.  I’m still trying to absorb it all in.

And then it proceeded to get better when it was announced that Wrath of the Lich King beta was beginning.  I haven’t received an invite yet, but I’m still crossing my fingers.  Along with this announcement, came the news that the NDA was being lifted.  And that’s when the day got even better!

Reports started coming in about the new Hunter talents and the new Pet talent trees.  All I can say is Wow!  Some of those sound incredible.  Drotara, over at Less QQ, More PewPew, has already given a pretty good write up about the new talents.  All I can add is that, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the results of testing these things out, to see if they are as effective as they sound.  The jury is still out on a few of the talents involving stings.

All in all, I’m really excited about the new talents.  I’m hoping to stay Survival, but some of those talents in the MM tree are highly tempting.  The only way that this day could get any better would be if I found a beta invitation in my email!

My New Trinket

Temporus finally gave up my Hourglass of the Unraveller Tuesday night!

/Happy Hunter Dance!

I’ve been waiting forever for that thing to drop.  I can’t wait to try it out in a raid setting.  Right now, I’m planning on pairing it with my Bladefist’s Breadth, until I can get enough Badges to get a Bloodlust Brooch.  I’m still roughly 30 Badges away, because I spent 100 Badges the other day on my new pants.  So for now, I’m stuck with the Bladefist trinket.

I’m hoping to experiment with the Hourglass a little this weekend on our Kara run.  I’m not sure if I’m going to wait for the proc before I pop Rapid Fire and my BB trinket, or if I’m just gonna keep popping RF and BB whenever they are up, and letting the Hourglass procs fall where they may.  Anyone have any experience with this type of rotation or setup?  Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

~Cal

Catching up

Wow!  It’s been awhile.  Hope everyone has been doing well while I’ve been away.  A lot of things have changed since the last time I posted.  As I mentioned before in this post, I have joined an outstanding group of individuals called Citadel.  I have also recently been promoted to Officer and have even been given the responsibility of being the Hunter Class Leader.  I’ll try not to screw it up, I promise!

We have been doing a few Kara runs, to get people geared up.  And recently, with the help of some new friends in Eve of Destruction, we have even ventured into Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair.  And I’m happy to say that we succeeded in both!  And last nite, we ventured in Zul’Aman for the first time, and successfully took down 3 of the 4 Avatar bosses.  The only one we didn’t get was Jan’Alai (The Dragonhawk).  All in all, I think Citadel is doing rather well at making a name for ourselves on The Scryers!

And I even briefly switched Talent specs.  I switched to BM.  I’m so ashamed!  Actually, at the time, we had very little physical DPS, and the Ferocious Inspiration buff was more beneficial for the mages and locks in our 10-man raids than Expose Weakness would have been.  And while I have to admit that the damage output was very nice, I really did miss being Survival.  So I switched back to Survival when we started doing some 25-man content.  And I’ve started doing some more PvP recently, so I enjoy SV a lot more there, too.  But I did change the spec up a little.  This time, I went with a 0/24/37 build.  This lets me get all the goodies from SV (EW, LR, and TotH) while still picking up Scatter Shot and Barrage.  So far, I’m really liking this spec.  The damage potential is not as good as BM, but it’s not bad, either.  And the burst damage is a lot of fun in PvP.  I need to mess around with Cheeky’s Spreadsheet some, and try and figure out what upgrades I need to concentrate on.  But for now, I’m having a lot of fun with this spec.

And We’re Back

Sorry about the absence.  Been pretty busy with non-Wow stuff lately.  Not only that, but I also had to spend another month in New Orleans for work, and they stuck me in a hotel room with the slowest internet connection possible.  Arrrggggg! 

So, I made it back home a couple of weeks ago, and then the family and I went on a much needed vacation.  The wife and I took the kids to DisneyWorld.  We left on Friday the 13th (Yea, yea, I know) and got back on the 21st.  We spent 5 days at the Disney parks, including 2 days at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for Star Wars Weekend, and spent another couple of days at the beach in Destin on our way back home.  Now I need another vacation to recover from my vacation!  Hah!

Anyway, I’ll try to make a couple of posts soon to let you all know what’s been going on in WoW.  And I’ll even post a couple of fun pics from my trip.  Talk to ya soon!

~Cal

Kara Revisited

Citadel did their first Karazhan run this weekend, and they graciously let me tag along.  And I’m still amazed at what we were able to accomplish.  5 of the people in the raid had never set foot in Kara before.  Others, like me, had seen some of the earlier bosses, but none of the end bosses.  I believe only 3 of us had seen them all.

Well, to the amazement of all, we had a full Kara clear!  It took us a few nights, but it was well worth the effort.  We proceeded to one shot all of the bosses up to Shade, on our first night.  Shade took us 2 or 3 tries, but he went down, too.  Then on the 2nd night, we did the Chess event, and after a few failed attempts on Prince (damn Infernals, and their random placement), we went and took down Illhoof and Netherspite.  Sunday night, we took down the Prince, and we got Nightbane down to 1% before wiping on our first attempt.  We returned last night to finish Nightbane off.

And I was extremely fortunate to be rewarded with some great drops.  From Curator, I got Garona’s Signet Ring.  From Shade, I received the Drape of the Dark Reavers.  And for downing Prince Malchezaar, I was rewarded with the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix!  Wow, not a bad weekend at all! 

I am extremely proud of Citadel and what we were able to accomplish through good communication and team work.  I don’t think any of us expected to do a full Kara clear on our first run.  Truly awesome job, guys!

I will not be returning to Kara this week, as there are two other hunters in the guild that we are trying to get geared up.  But I am eagerly anticipating a return trip to Kara soon.  There is little else I need from there, gear-wise.  But I could really use the Badges, and I’d like to see everyone else get geared up, as well.

As for my performance in Kara, I’d have to say that it was ok.  There were a few hiccups, that I chalk up to me being rusty, such as Misdirecting the MT instead of the Off Tank on Curator (thank god for Readiness!).  Or my being a little too slow in getting that Distracting shot off on Nightbane, and having him charge the group instead of the Misdirected MT.  Ouch, that one hurt.  But I’m confident that these small mishaps will be gone once I get back into practice.  And I’m pretty happy with my DPS performance, as well.  Most of the time, I was competing for the 3rd damage slot with a very well geared feral (kitty) druid, with her edging me out overall, putting me at number 4.  And on the Nightbane kill last night, I got the number 2 spot, behind a Mage.  I chalk that one up to Readiness, and very liberal use of Rapid Fire.  Not bad for a Survival hunter in a 10-man.