Lowbie Huntering
Mar 9th
Especially now with the influx of lowbie alting SAN members, I thought a little guide to levelling a hunter might be a help. 
One to Ten
The first thing you will encounter as a lowbie hunter is the pain of having no pet for 10 levels. You can spend 10 levels meleeing everything to death and perhaps mix in a few corpse runs, but if you watch where you’re going you can effectively kite and still be a ranged hunter. In my opinion, the second option is the most effective though of course it’s not exactly important at that level. Either way, shoot the mob, when it gets close to you run a bit, jump around shoot a little more, keep running, shoot a bit more and so on. You may like to check out Pike’s jump shot video.
Taming Pets
Okay, so usually I will rush through to level 10 so there is no danger of me abandoning the character, I won’t lie, 1 to 10 hunter isn’t the most fun in the world. Once you reach level 10 you won’t immediately be able to tame a pet, first you will have to do a quest. Whichever race you choose, this will be: tame a particular beast, bring it back to me, 3 times, 3 different beasts. At level 10, sadly, you don’t have Freezing Trap, which makes taming a pet 10 times easier. You do get this ability at level 20 though, so remember to use it when taming any pets after that level. At level 10, perhaps pop a health potion if you need to.
When you’ve completed the quest you can choose a pet. My favourite for levelling is a bear. They are excellent tank pets, with not too terrible AoE threat and plenty of armour. Crocolisks are also not too bad for the same reasons. A lot of people go for crabs, which are tanking pets too, though they have a nice ability for PvP. Another decent pet for PvP is the spider, and if you’re looking to abuse the dungeon finder tool a fair bit you might even consider getting yourself a wolf. Though of course, if you want to tame something else, go for it. It won’t be as efficient but at the end of the day, this hunter is your character and you can play it how you want to. For a full list of tameable beasts, their skins, and where to find them, check out Petopia.
Talent Points
Another thing you will be getting at level 10 is talent points. I cannot stress enough that the best spec for levelling is by far Beast Mastery. Survival and Marksman are both fun, decent specs, and honestly you won’t beat them for PvP or instancing, but if you plan to quest, you can’t beat Beast Mastery. It is the fastest levelling spec. This is the spec I would go with for levelling, though of course there are many variations to this. If you would prefer to make some changes to it, or choose another spec entirely, feel free.
Glyphs
At level 15, your first glyph slots open up, giving space for 1 major and 1 minor glyph. Hunter glyphs in my opinion are not brilliant for levelling, a lot are based upon increasing the amount of time something lasts, which is great for mobs which last a long time but that’s not what you want to do. If you have trouble pet your pet a live and find yourself using Mend Pet a lot, I recommend the Glyph of Mending, which is also great for soloing. There is Glyph of the Hawk if you switched the 5 points in Endurance Training for Improved Aspect of the Hawk BUT if you didn’t, it’s useless. Glyph of Bestial Wrath might be worthwhile later on when you get the talent though only if you have a reason to reduce its cooldown. The only other option really is Glyph of Steady Shot, but this relies upon Serpent Sting being up on the target and you won’t get Steady Shout until your 50s. Can you see why my last hunter ended up using Glyph of Aspect of the Viper?
For your minors, I’d suggest taking Glyph of Mend Pet at 15, and Glyph of Feign Death at 50. The last one at 70 is entirely optional.
Spells & Shots
Ideally, you will be avoiding the need to melee. You will get Serpent Sting at level 4, you will need to determine whether or not it is worth the mana. Often it isn’t, but you might like the extra bit of damage. At level 6 you will get Arcane Shot which you will be using whenever it’s off cooldown. You will also get Hunter’s Mark at level 6, this increases your ranged attack power so it might be nice to type /m and create a new macro for your first spell slot:
#showtooltip;
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack
This saves having to click on your pet bar, in fact, for your second spell slot, make another macro:
/petfollow
1. Pet in. 2. Pet out. Concussive Shot at level 8, I feel I need to say this as I have heard of a few people thinking this is necessary, does not need to be used in conjunction with Steady Shot. Yes the tooltip might say the damage is increased if the target is dazed, but shooting a Concussive Shot will lose you more damage than you gain, it is unnecessary mana used. However, it is nice to slow targets who happen to be moving towards you, especially in PvP. Aspect of the Hawk is going to be your primary used aspect (next to Viper which should only be used for manaing up as it reduces your damage dealt by 50%) until you get Aspect of the Dragonhawk in your 70s. Multi Shot is also useful though be careful around large groups of mobs you are trying not to pull and crowd controlled mobs.
It’s A Trap!
Traps are another aspect of the hunter class which seem to scare and confuse people. There are 3 classes of trap: fire, frost, and poison. You can have 1 of each up at the same time, and Explosive Trap can be used for AoE pulls if you wish before you get Volley, which is similar to Blizzard or Rain of Fire. If you decide to spec Survival, it is important to remember that Black Arrow shares a cooldown with Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap.
Basically, Frost Trap and Freezing Trap are both very nice for controlling situations. Slowing people down in PvP, calming down “Oh shit!” moments, and crowd controlling. Immolate Trap and Explosive Trap deal a little extra damage. Snake Trap, well, obviously unleashing an army of snakes unto your foes. They have a chance to proc various poisons such as Mind Numbing, Crippling, which both slow the target (physically or their spellcasting).
Finally
A few notes based on the low level PuGs I have been in. First of all, you want a lot of agility on your gear. Stamina is also an okay stat, and a little intellect I guess won’t hurt.. (though that’s a little better once you get Careful Aim) but please, please, remember that strength, spirit, and spell power are terrible stats for a hunter. If you’re rolling on melee weapons, remember that they are stat sticks, so any ‘on proc’ abilities are going to be useless. Stockpile agility, let the tank do the pulling (and the tanking), and when you get Feign Death it is your friend. Make sure you have at least 4,000 ammo in your bags at all times, this way you shouldn’t run the risk of running out and having to go melee.
As a wise (well, I guess) man once said: “Go forth and pew..”
How Not To RP
Mar 7th
You may have realised by now that Argent Dawn is in fact an RP server. The first time I entered Silvermoon City, there were people slowly walking around like NPCs, talking to each other in Thalassian, it really does feel like another world entirely coming from a PvP server.
The other night, I believe it was Friday, we ventured into Silvermoon to check out the RP surroundings. It was funny! Of course, we stood around messing about, giggling away, and a rogue pops up and joins in. I felt a little sorry for him, he seemed to be making a genuine attempt to RP with us and was met with Sith’s remarks. If I’m honest, I think he was laughing at us.
There are the right ways to RP, and the wrong ways to RP, and I believe I’ve picked up a few tips:
- (( )) = Out of character.
- Don’t use smileys, and remember that if you bump into somebody your character hasn’t come across before, they wouldn’t know their name.
- FlagRSP (RP mod) shouldn’t be used for back story, just things you can visibly see looking at a character, the aesthetics.
- And stay away from de voodoo ‘mon’.
The things people do at crazy hours of the morning, eh? 
Sunday Link Love
I can’t possibly link love all of the awesome bloggers I’ve come across this week, but a very dear friend of mine has come over to the dark side. Not only has he enrolled in Single Abstract Noun but he’s caved in and started his own blog. Go over and say hello to Zalduun at Blessing of Fish!
Beginners Guide to Professions
Mar 5th
This article is a part of Khi’s idea for a blogging event centred around the Lunar Festival, to learn from your Elders. Feel free to pop over to Blog Azeroth to check out the topic and join in too!
One of the first questions I remember asking when I first started playing WoW is, “Wtf is a Herbalism?” Yes, on my first character, I stumbled upon profession trainers in utter confusion, clicked learn and stumbled off, later changing to something else, and even later changing back again.. eventually settling on Mining and Jewelcrafting, purely because I wanted a character with those professions (Jewelcrafting was new and shiny at this point). These days, you may (or may not) know me to have way too many alts, but each one has different professions which compliment each other and enable me to make a decent earning from them, which is the great thing about professions. However, that is beside the point of this post. The questions I really want to answer are: What are professions? How do I choose which ones are best for me? Where do I start? Should I bother with First Aid/Cooking/Fishing?
Professions are basically a way to craft and gather. There are 3 gathering professions: Mining, Herbalism, Skinning. These are probably the easiest to level because all they take is a bit of time and commitment. However, they are best suited when paired with one of the crafting professions: Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, Engineering, Alchemy, Inscription, Leatherworking. There are 2 crafting professions which are the exception to the rule and don’t benefit from being paired with a gathering profession: Enchanting, Tailoring. These do suit each other quite well, though Tailoring is definitely best fitted for caster classes.
There are also secondary professions, which you can pick up alongside 2 of the professions listed above. These secondary professions are: First Aid, Cooking, Fishing. You should pick up and level First Aid as you level, you’ll pick up the cloth needed from mobs and instances. Bandages are awesome, especially for classes without healing abilities, or those moments when you’re at low health with zero mana. The higher level your bandages are, the more they heal you, so it is important to keep levelling your First Aid as you level. Cooking and Fishing are great professions to level together, they’re very useful, but not a necessity. Cooking allows you to cook food at a high level which gives you a certain buff, whether it’s extra spell power, attack power, a feast for the entire raid, it is very useful for raiding. This food is BoE so you can buy it from the Auction House if you don’t want to level Cooking. Fishing allows you to fish the reagents needed to make the food. If you’re interesting in achievements, you will want to level both of these as they help you to get a range of achievements, which can give you a title (Salty for Fishing, Chef for Cooking).
The best way to choose which professions to take is to firstly decide how much gold you mind spending. I’ve recently levelled Enchanting and Blacksmithing on my Death Knight and that was quite expensive. If I’d levelled Blacksmithing and Mining, the ores I mined would have made levelling Blacksmithing a little bit cheaper. Secondly, to consider that at end game, each profession gives a certain buff, so you may want to think about taking a profession with a good buff to your class. For example, Jewelcrafting is good for all classes as it gives 3 Jewelcrafting only gems with that stats you choose specific to your class, significantly higher than they would be on a normal gem. On the other hand, Enchanting gives you the ability to enchant your rings, which you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.
If you’re looking for the easiest and cheapest way to level your professions, using a guide, I suggest you check out WoW Professions. They have some excellent profession guides.
Single Abstract Noun
Mar 4th
A fun, social guild. Single Abstract Noun is a guild made on Argent Dawn EU Horde-side for the blogging community. I would like to add, that the blogging community isn’t purely made up of bloggers, but also readers. This guild was created purely for fun and bringing people together, and I can vouch for both of these things. You can see Tam’s post today about how the first day went, and what you need to do to join (basically, make a character on Argent Dawn EU, log in, /who Single Abstract Noun, and whisper somebody in the guild for an invite), and his post yesterday for guild rules and such, there is no rule 6.
It is an RP server, though nobody is forcing you to RP, you can just pretend you’re really on a PvE server and stick your fingers in your ears and say, “LALALA! I’m not listening!” If you really don’t like the idea of an RP server. It is also a full server, in my opinion the biggest problem with population is finding a name that isn’t taken. I think I must have taken about half an hour before I settled on Jaediele for my cow shaman (thank you Heather) because some mooch stole Jaedia! I did make a hunter with the intention of keeping her BM, but I thought I’d try a different, “Just here to say hello!” alt, I always choose hunters and death knights. My cow shaman was very nearly a cow death knight, Jaedied has a certain ring to it, no? I started off with a blood elf priest called Jaedi, by level 4 decided I should level something I don’t already have at 80. So the cow shaman was born and this is probably the first time I’ve enjoyed a shaman at all, I’ll blame it on good company.
Of course, this is only one chapter of the guild. I believe Miss Medicina is setting up the US version of the same thing, so if you’re on the US servers and you’re sat there thinking, “Well, shit, I wanted to join, damn Europeans!” Don’t worry, you can join in too
One warning though, if you want to get yourself a guild tabard, well.. Tam wanted something to match his hair so, you’ll have to make do with orange. Also, as the icon is based upon a certain pink pigtailed gnome, if you’re a female character, to quote Miss Medicina, “be prepared for “Nice jugs!” comments!” Look forward to seeing you ingame!
Positive PuG
Mar 3rd
Shared Topic courtesy of Kin at Altoholics Anonymous. You can find other responses in this post at Blog Azeroth.
I’ve been playing my mage, Twylite, a fair bit lately. It’s fun when you’re feeling a bit blah about the game to pop on an alt you haven’t really explored yet, get her spec, glyphs, gear just right, and attempt to top the meters in every random you do as Frost. Maybe that’s just me, I like damage meters, they make DPS classes fun for me.
Well, when I was about level 35 and Scarlet Monastery was all the rage, I queued, got in a group and lo and behold the warrior tank could hold aggro! I Blizzarded my little Blood Elf heart out, and we started chatting, the tank, me and the druid healer. We decided to stick with that group and re-queue for a few. The druid healer was a really nice guy, he gave both me and the tank some friendly advice, not the kind of advice you expect to find in a pug these days. He told me to try single targeting the mob with the most HP in a pack of 4 or less, I think it was along those lines, I’ve since adapted it anyway, and it has helped me in dungeons with my mana issues.
It was a lovely group and unusual to find that and have everybody want to stick around, well, everybody who counts. The silent hunter left at the end of the first one. The warrior was on my server, I added him to my friends list and chatted a little after we had finished. Shame he hasn’t really been online at the same time as me since because it would have been quite cool to queue up again together. Keep trying guys, there are good pugs out there!
Wish Upon A Gnome 2
Feb 26th
Scavenger Hunt
Feb 26th
I decided to finally level professions on my Death Knight, Soupdragon. I think she was my 4th 80 (out of 6) started on the day of the Ulduar patch, so I guess that gives you an indication of how much I slacked in the profession department. I chose Blacksmithing and Enchanting in the end, after making a pretty penny on her server I could afford it, and I have a miner on that server if I did get desperate. I spent a lot of time in the day levelling her professions, stuck to Ironforge because everything I needed was so close together.
Now, she’s been going on about it for a while so really I knew it was coming, but I stuck around levelling my professions anyway. Elsen asked me if I was taking part in her guild’s 5 year anniversary scavenger hunt celebration thingy. As I’d said no before, I kept to my answer because heck I was tired and I wanted to chill, maybe watch some TV. However, I said, “If somebody was on their own though I considered helping.” To which she responded, “Madmac is on his own, he’s lovely ” So, off I went.
The basic idea of the scavenger hunt was a list of 21 questions. We had to go around in teams of 2-4 collecting items like the Stratholme Lily (read the comments by the way, I giggled a little), taking screenshots of certain things around the world, /spit/love/kiss’ing a random guild member if we could find him. Basically all in the name of fun. At one point, I took to flying around Icecrown with a /tar macro keybound to ‘G’ looking for this member to emote at, and I said in guild at the time, I swear it was giving me RSI! Anyway, despite being tired and eventually gaining a headache, it was all in the name of fun and I have a few screenies for your viewing enjoyment (click to see enlarged versions).
I would also like to add that Madmac chose the team name ‘Mad Moon Monsters’ in honour of my DK’s name, Soupdragon, and our mascot was Mr. Wiggles who appears in a few of the screenshots!
Guest Post; A Rant About Tanks Part 1
Feb 24th
Jaedia’s note: Ryyu, or Dan, is my other half. I may have mentioned him once or twice. Hope you enjoy the change of scenery
Hello, I think you start Blag posts with hello. My name is Ryyus, well, ok it’s not my name is Dan but due to some arse on my server taking that name it’s Ryyus for now. If it’s never been mentioned before, I’m an angry, annoying tool and my hobbies include shouting, swearing, quoting Stephen Fry, shouting again and trying my hardest to have sex with the writing staff at Bioware. So I’m basically Gordon Ramsey without my forehead looking like that of a burns victims vagina.
Tanking is something I’ve always done since I first doned my two hander and charged gleefully into the mobs in Uldaman in ‘zerker stance shouting at the mage that “noobs use Def stance” right up to when I gemmed all my gear with strength gems, enchanted full DPS enchants and 490 defence to tank totc faster (8k DPS ON TWINS BITCHES). I’ve tanked my way through the game for the past 4 and a half horrible years of this World of Warcraft, usually as the underdog tank (Druid in classic says hello) and a few times as the unstoppable God of death (Druid in 2.0 says hello). In this time I’ve noticed a lot of things about tanks, tanking, people who tank, how people treat tanks or how tanks gem and enchant, and a lot of it makes me want to jump off a bridge, below me being all the people I’ve mentioned and in my arms being an anti-stupid nail bomb. I’ll ignore TBC and Classic tanking for now due to the fact that with all bar the Illidan fight, tanking was basically “mash your shit till the alive thing is dead”.
Wrath has changed a lot of things 4 viable tank classes for a start, more options in your spec, the fact that the damage a tank is doing is now important and mostly the fact that while all basic, the rotation tanks are doing can easily show the difference between a good and a terrible tank. Gear has stopped becoming an issue like it once was mainly due to the fact I’m sure you get 2 frost badges from successfully logging on without spelling your user name wrong, but has also become a double edged sword as standards are now so retardedly high, with most asking for at least full epic to even be allowed to try and fight the deep run critters (my dream is to one day meet the person who dreamt up gear score and staple him to a bear). Wotlk unlike TBC, which changed literally nothing about the core problems with most (see; Non warrior) tanks (mana back for paladins, druids get an instant and a dot, and gear sets). Tanking these days is a different kettle of fish to what it once was, a different game almost. Sadly, this change means a lot of the idiots that we happily let play pure DPS classes can now be a tank. Anyone with a PC, a chair, £9, and the assumption that being in defensive stance means that they are a higher form of life to everyone else in the group can happily charge into packs believing their 71 points in prot and full green quality parry gems mean that when they die it was THE RETARDED HEALERS fault, and not their’s for pulling the boss when he had 20 mana after having to spam their nuke heal on the useless cretin.
This is where I come in. My hope is to not only teach bad tanks how not to be bad, but also point out the players who are good, the ones who are misguided but also good, the ones who are so far up their own arse that they are technically their own face crab while still managing to be useless at everything, and also tell people how to handle these people. Also, take some time out to call everyone who talks down to tanks that have 23k hp as “useless scrub noobs” then add something like “oh my friend has 45k hp unbuffed and I know you can get 40k up just from the items in VH heroic and that you need this much to be able to tank any heroic lol” a bunch of annoying, uninformed, inbred, useless sheeps of human beings who would do the rest of us a lot better just by fucking off.
As I said, angry as hell.
Gryphon & Windrider Pets
Feb 23rd
So, I’d heard they were releasing the Gryphon and Windrider pets in the pet store and I was a little miffed, hoping maybe they’d be achievement rewards or something, but oh well, £10 per pet is okay I guess. I’d also heard they were releasing plushie versions with the vanity pets. I thought well that’s cool for people who want the plushies. I do like plushies, don’t get me wrong, I have a few dotted around the place, but I don’t particularly like these ones. They don’t look very soft, big, I don’t really care too much about them. Not to worry I don’t need to buy them right?
When I went to log in last night to check my auctions, on the news page I saw they were now available from the EU Blizzard store. I clicked the link and had a look and.. OH WTF. The plushies are there… the pets aren’t. Looks like if you want to buy the ingame vanity pets, you have to buy the plushies. I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t particularly care about the plushies but would love the vanity pets, or can’t afford them for that matter! In doing this, I’m pretty sure Blizzard have lost a few sales /golfclap. Not impressed, Blizzard.
Link Love: Because I Suck At Titles
Feb 21st
I haven’t spent an incredible amount of time in WoW this week, partly because I was ill for a couple of days (just ate something dodgy, nothing major I just preferred the comfort of pillows) and partly because honestly, the game is feeling a little stale at the moment. I’ve tried playing alts, doing a little Loremaster, getting my seasonal achievements done, but the only thing that really interested me was doing my auctions which I have going on 2 servers now. I’ll be taking a small break from the game when I send my graphics card back to hopefully be finally fixed or replaced, though I might try another game for a bit, go back to Aion or LotRO for a month just to play around and take a break. I’m not finished with WoW just yet.
The blog has taken a lot of my attention this week too actually. I’ve been playing around with graphics and pages again, which by the way if you have any suggestions for my header please feel free to leave a comment. I’m not entirely sure where to go with it but it’s not complete. Of course, Dristanel made me the lovely RSS button you can see to the top of my sidebar as well for being the first to guess who my Secret Admirer was. I’ve been spending a little more time over at Blog Azeroth as well, seeing how I can help. Browsing the introduction forums has helped me find a few new blogs actually, my reader is going to be very difficult to keep up with soon.
Blogs to Watch
Another awesome week for new blogs, at least for my unobservant self anyway! First of all, check out this monster of a blogroll.
I’ve come across two hunter blogs this week.
A few others to check out.
Posts
Yay, go me, I kept up on my feed reader for once!
Big Bear Butt talked about how WoW’s community makes it the strongest MMO out there. Basically, if you took away the community, the bloogers, Wowhead, news sites, and so on, WoW killers would be much more likely. Equally, if you gave another decently designed MMO the same things, perhaps it could pique a little more activity. He’s right, I’ve tried other MMOs, the information is a lot harder to find than it is in WoW.
Euripedes discussed how WoW as a form of escapism is a lot more healthy than a lot of people would have you think, that escaping into any other hobby is just the same. Personally, I’d go so far as to say escaping into a book can be more unhealthy than WoW, as then you’re left alone with your thoughts, it’s much easier to wallow when you don’t have people around you, whether they’re online friends or not.
Lassirra has made an attempt to relieve the differences between casual players and hardcore players by explaining what a hardcore raid leader has to go through, and how they have to act. That being said, there are still the elitist jerks out there who can’t understand the mindset of a casual player, and feel they have to talk down to them while they collect their daily frost emblems from LFD or however else they come across each other.
Angelya has provided us with a wonderful Balance Cheat Sheet which I might have to use when I finally get my cow to 80! She also has a Resto Cheat Sheet. I love these kind of guides.
Anea would like to remind you that she is not your heal bitch. I would like to add, if we wipe, you run. I’m not going to be ressing you. I agree wholeheartedly with everything she has said in this post, and what it boils down to is the reason why I don’t tend to heal much these days: people take their healers for granted.
I don’t usually link to shared topics in my link love posts but, do prepare yourselves for the Windsoar boss.
