Happy HalloweeEEEK!

Just wanted to wish you all a very happy candy-filled weekend!   Halloween and I have a love/hate relationship.  While it gives me an excuse to overindulge on candy and wear as many sparkles as I want, I hate all the spooky stuff because…

 

I am scared of practically everything.  Little things like bugs or slipping on icy sidewalks.  Big things like change or the death of loved ones but mostly imaginary things like monsters and ghosts. 

 

Bathroom mirrors?  Yeah, no thanks.  I've seen too many movies to know what happens when you shut a medicine cabinet door or look away for. Just. One. Second.  Creepy ghosts always like to pop out behind you in bathroom mirrors.

 

Puppets.  Oh lord, puppets.  Other than Sesame Street and perhaps Casey and Finnegan nothing ever good came from puppets.  Sure you can make them talk and make them charming but what happens when you leave them on the shelf and turn out the lights?

 

Masks.  Ick, yuck, gross.  It took me a long time to be able to look at The Scream mask without feeling all the blood drain from my limbs and being rooted to the spot in fear.  And, I shit you not, I once got spooked in the Halloween aisle at a Michaels craft store. 

 

Clowns also go on the list because of a) the movie "It" and b) a clown was once an asshole to me when I was a kid and I. Will. Never. Forget.

 

October means once again dealing with my ongoing nemesis: scary movies.  No sorry, let me rephrase that:  scary movie trailers.  See I wouldn't have to be scared of the movies if the trailers didn't pop out at me during commercial breaks. There's a certain movie franchise that has terrorized me for at least 7 years now.  One that we're not allowed to even mention in our house and one that just thinking about causes my flee reflexes to heighten.  It once had my darling Westley in it – hooray!  I haven't seen him in a while, I hope that he gets the girl and saves the da-----WHHHHHHHHHHHHHAATT????  Why is he all chained up and who invited that puppet?  It's not the blood, the guts nor the horrific and outrageously implausible way the people die – it's the puppet that scares me the most. 

 

Luckily on November 1^st the Christmas music and decorations start exploding out on the scene (I have seen them spilling out here and there already) so I only have to endure being spooked for another few days.  Most likely the reason that I have such a runaway imagination and heightened suspension of disbelief is that otherwise my life is so uncomplicated and stress free that I have time to over think things like huge hairy spiders walking over my face or the boogeyman in my closet…oh great, now I'm thinking about Mr. Boogedy!  Damn you Disney!!

 

Anyway, my plan on the weekend is to venture outside as little as possible so that I don't have to pretend clown make-up or someone in a gorilla costume does not scare me.   I'm arming myself with Kit-Kats and chips and refusing to do the laundry because it's located in the basement…so really, it's business as usual in the Hello Tauren house.

 

Happy Halloween!

 

Hello Tauren cowers in fear…and eats some candy.  

Hello Tauren: SV&U

It's no secret that I love SV for a number of reasons: the dynamic shot rotation, explosive shot, the Lock and Load proc and generally being all around…explody.  Now that I've got most of my Add-ons updated I feel like I can play my hunter properly.  Patch 4.0 gave the Hunters a bit of an overhaul.  We now have Focus instead of mana; Armour Penetration has gone out the door (woohoo!) as well as ammunition.  So there have been lots of changes to the class, but SV has remained relatively the same.

SV Shot Rotation

Hunters Mark

Serpent Sting

Black Arrow

Explosive shot whenever it is available

Arcane Spam, I mean shot

KILL SHOT

When Lock and Load procs…

Explosive shot

Arcane

Explosive shot

Arcane or Steady shot to build up focus.

Lock and Load resets the Explosive Shot cool down so you want to make sure, especially if you've just used it, that you don't override it. 

Reapply stings and black arrow as necessary and use steady shot when you need to generate focus.  You could even throw a snake or explosive trap in there via Trap Launcher if you wanted a little more flair.  You'll also want to use Kill Command when available as well as Rapid Fire. 

Now that list is for bosses generally.  I find with trash I can't get more than two steady shots in after I put up Serpent Sting and Black Arrow.  I would be temped to just fire off arcane shots instead or multi-shots especially if you've put talents in Serpent Spread. 

Focus!

Focus is cool, but I need to get used to it.  Sometimes I feel like I can't get rid of it and other times I'm bone dry.  It sure beats Aspect of the Viper though!

I've only done one instance since 4.0 went live and that was Heroic Halls of Reflection with a DK that was doing 9000 dps.  Instances these days aren't a great way to measure your damage but I was somewhere in the range of 4800-5200 which is fine by me.  Once we get another shot at Festergut we should be able to see some proper numbers. 

I am also interested to see how they stack up against our Beast Mastery Mistress, Chawakanda.  If anyone can squeeze out the best possible dps for that spec, it's her! 

Mastery

Talk among the dps nerds is that after Agility, Mastery is our priority stat.  Anything that increases the damage of our main shot is going to be a plus.  I think I have around 11.8 in Mastery.  Unfortunately I have no idea what that means until I'm able to hit up a true dps check. 

Thus concludes my little tour of the Survival Hunter.  I think that I've hit the major points but probably left something out.  It might not be the spec du jour these days but I still get a lot of enjoyment out of it.  There's enough variety to keep it interesting but it's not as "whack-a-mole" as Marksman.  There's a bit of fluidity as you weave your Lock and Load rotation into your regular shots and what I can only describe as a Hunter Trance once everything becomes automatic.  It's just an all around fun spec to play!

Hello Tauren is exploding your mind with awesomeness.

Can We At Least Be Friends?

I feel like WoW and I have gone through a weird break-up and now we're just starting to mend things back together.  Before patch 4.0 things were pretty good.  We were raiding regularly and most of the guild was grinding through the pre-Cataclym slump that seems to be going around these days.

Then the patch came and everything changed.  Everything.  My characters that I have spent so long with suddenly new and I have to figure out how to play them again.  So for now I'm just having little coffee dates with WoW before jumping back in with it full time.

Mmmm, delicious coffee - you'll never go and change on me, will you?

The Brides of Ulduar

I thought I would end the week on a high note. Between the patch 4.0 taking over the WoWblogs as well as staring at characters I no longer know how to play I’ve been reluctant to log in for long periods of time. So I’ll share with you something that we did last week – you know, way back when we had the Old WoW.

Our very own rogue, Rallick, is getting married tomorrow! To celebrate the occasion the always lovely and thoughtful Chawakanda suggested that we dress in our finest and surprise him with a raid full of brides!

He even joined in the celebration and called his wonderful fiancé over to see the screenshot.

Congratulations Rallick! From everyone at the Zug Initiative to you and your beloved!

I would also like to take this time to remind you about the Raid from the Heart event tomorrow on Kael-Thas! Please join the great group of people for this very worthy cause and donate to your local or national heart foundation!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

Hello Tauren can’t fight this feeling anymore…

Welcome to Pach(eco) 4.0.1!

First off, while the Druids are lamenting about their loss of Tree Form, we hunters are taking a moment of silence to bid adieu to Volley.  Farewell Volley! I will never forget you!

I have to admit I was not ready for this patch. Despite all the blogs, guides and our very own guild discussion my brain of oatmeal and finger paint just didn’t process much of the information.  Perhaps I was in a little bit of denial that the hunters were getting a little bit of an overhaul. 

By the time the servers were up it was 9 local time and after spending a good hour going whoa! Wow! Wha??? I was a little overwhelmed to log into any other characters.

When you log in and most of your buttons are missing, your talents are gone and even your pet is MIA you can’t help but feel a little bit naked.  I was like a little calf trying to stand on its wobbly legs for the first time.

Things I like:

The dedicated aspect bar.  I don’t think I’ll miss Aspect of the Viper.  No wait, I won’t miss being in AotV needlessly.

Trap launcher.  Now we can launch any type of trap at enemies.  This. Is. Awesome!  I had a lot of fun with this in PvP.

Reforger.  The reforger lets you tweak your equipment to best suit your needs.  You can reduce some stats in favour of others.  For instance I reforged a ring to reduce hit by 23 for 23 points of Mastery.  Mastery increases elemental damage that you do which is great for explosive shot – the moneymaker for all SV hunters.  

Anyhow that’s about all I did for the new patch.  I’ll figure out how to play later. 

 

Question for my hunter brothers and sisters:  did you guys notice your haste rating go through the roof?  I don’t remember it being even at the soft cap and now I’m well past it (I think).  This new WoW makes me feel so speedy!

I Killed Coren Direbrew 48 Times and All I Got Were 96 Lousy Frost Emblems…hic!

Well, Brewfest is now over and I think that I was very nearly the only player in the guild who only received 1 Brewfest mount.  I don't want to complain because I did indeed receive a mount, but not on the character collecting them. RNG gods why have you forsaken me!  Enhancement Shaman got a Kodo (what seems to have been) every time he opened up the keg and I would just shrug it off thinking, I'll get one this time.

Nope.  Not even a Tankard of Terror ca. 2009!  

Ah well.  

I did get really good at running the kegs though.  I think my personal record was 7 or 8 in one run – once I figured out how those apple barrels worked (hooray for reading quest text!).  

In the end I got the Brewmaster title on three more characters and joined Brew of the Month club again on Pacheco (because he was missing one of the drinks for some reason).  So it was not completely a dud event plus Brewfesht ish fun becaushe you get tipshy and shhmashed.

I'm really looking forward to Hallows End though – hands down one of my favourite events.  I think partly because you get loads of candy and mostly because you get TONS of candy!  I wish they would make the broom a perma-mount because I love riding around on one! Tee hee! Hallows End will always remind me of the day the Achievement System went live and the scourge invasion (and lets never forget the day they lost all of our mail).  It sort of felt like the new WoW and refreshed the game in a way.  Will we see something like it in the next few weeks?

I hope so!

Raid From The Heart

Last year hundreds of us gathered in Kael'Thas for the Raid for the Cure organized by Big Bear Butt in honour of one of his guildmate's, Julie, who had been diagnosed with cancer.  In a sea of pink we cheered and honoured all those who have suffered the terrible disease.  It was an uplifting and positive event and many people donated in real life to help find a cure.

This year BBB is putting together Raid From the Heart! An event to honour his wife's father and grandmother as well as all of those who have lost family and friends to heart disease.  It takes place on October 16th on Kael'Thas and is for both factions and I would absolutely encourage you to join. It is one of those nice moments where the Horde and Alliance forget about what side they are on. For details on the event particulars, please visit his blog.



This event hits close to home for me.  In 1994 my father had angioplasty surgery to correct a blockage in his heart and then in 1997 he had a heart attack resulting in a triple bypass.  It was scary to think of him being anything but invincible and through the great doctors he had, our family, friends and church community he was put back together again physically and mentally.  Today he's doing excellent and he's currently embarking on a world trip to Taiwan and Italy - go Dad!

Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the event personally due to prior commitment (guild mates wedding- hooray!), but fortunately there are lots of ways to participate both in game and in real life.  Please check out the Cafe-press store of the great design Tish Tesh Tosh created for the event (above).  I love how the Horde and Alliance symbols come together to make the heart!

Please mark the date on your WoW calendars and go!

DPS Nerd Moments

Blah blah focus blah....

Blah blah pet scaling blah...

At the moment, Survival actually has the highest dps in raid gear.

Thanks - that's all I needed to know!

(Source) 

Also, Lock n Load resetting the Explosive Shot cool down is A-OK in my book (of mashing buttons).

Ask a Tauren: Do U Wanna RP?

No thanks...

I'm not here to judge anyone.  I play a nerdy game with my nerd friends and we have an excellent nerdy time so what people choose do in Azeroth is their own business.  However, it is posts like this one that I have to thank the Earth Mother that RP servers are kept separate from regular servers so I don't have to know what people are really doing out there. 

 

This person and her friend are planning for their goblins to be married.  Okay that seems reasonable within the realm of light RP.  They are going start a business together.  Hmm, well, I don't know how that really works, but I'm sure they will work out the kinks.  (Are there lawyers drafting up partnership agreements for WoW related ventures?)   They are also discussing the pros and cons of having children.  He wants a 'legacy' but she doesn't want kids to bog her down.  Seriously – w.t.f?  Cataclysm hasn't even been released and people are already having very grown up conversations about their characters which have yet to be created? I don't even have these kinds of conversations with my husband.

 

The follow-up answers and suggestions to the original poster merit a double face palm across the sky.  Birth control is actually an addressed topic in the RP world?  There are herbs, potions and voodoo rituals that delay or stop reproduction cycles in WoW?  I'm at a loss.  Honestly, LJ ladies, I applaud your sense of responsibility but you could take on the entire Orgimmar football team and would not have to worry about being in the family way.  As much as you gather outfits, go out on dates with your RP partner(s) or give each other presents you are still playing WoW, not The Sims.  And this raises further questions! Are people out there RPing their characters pregnant? How does that work exactly?  There's a reason you can't pick an 8-month pregnant dwarf model because family planning is not part of the game.

 

But I digress - I'm not against RP because there is obviously some level of role playing going on no matter what server you play on and that is perfectly fine.  My Tauren hunter really doesn't have much of a back story, but I find that through him a bit of my personality shines through.  Sometimes he enjoys killing the Alliance but sometimes he also likes to wave at them and dance with them.  He does enjoy wearing the occasional dress but that's only because there are so few occasions where a gal can really dress up!  However, I don't worry about things like making sure his clothes match or eating a balanced diet or washing his hands (just like I don't do in real life!).  When I'm late for a raid it's because we're scrambling in the door from drinks/dinner or we just woke up from a nap not because Pacheco lost the keys to the Mammoth or ate some Bad Clams.  My point is, this game is fantasy and there is only so much realism you can put into it before it goes overboard to a point of impracticality.   

 

I enjoy flipping through the WoW Ladies LJ community.  It's full of helpful, friendly people, it can be therapeutic to read through some of the rants and there is a wealth of talented artists out there.  But every so often someone drops a crazy bomb in there reminding me how some people take this game very seriously.  Not that there's anything wrong with that…

TL:DR.  Crazy RP'ers are crazy.

 

Hello Tauren falls asleep zzzzzzz (and logs out)