Invited to the beta...

I just got invited to participate in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta... downloading the client now. I have very little play time during the summer but I am sure to at least try the death knight and experiment a wee bit with the hunter's new talents.

No Wrath here - move along

There is no end to the blogs publishing stuff about WotLK. Talent calculators, engineering thingys and what not. I am not writing anything about it, nor while I until it hits retail. I am one of those who actually love discovering something new and fresh when it is finished and not in beta state.

My fellow guildies keep yapping about "Have you seen the talent X for hunters".. or "How are you going to spec".. give it a rest. Lets enjoy it when it arrives. I will.

No more WotLK... actually I am going to play Diablo 2 tonight just to skip WOW. Maby just a quick AB or even a WSG but nothing more.

Finally a weapon upgrade!

I went with the Merciless Gladiator's Crossbow of the Phoenix... now I am back to almost zero honor and looking for a new goal. I am most likely going for the Merciless Gladiator's Decapitator.

Find a marksman hunter and go melee on him... he won't like it one bit. I got 3 hunters today in melee. I am no huntard... just denying the other hunters to go ranged on me. I still prefer ranged for all other targets. Oh but I do think it is stylish to finish of a warrior in melee. Very embarassing if killed though =)

What is next in the PVP gear department?

I've almost collected another 28000 honor... My fingers are burning to spend it. Albeit I cannot decide what will give me the most benefit. Resilience or DPS? Check out my hunter Stormspike at the armory and help me decide...

I am leaning toward getting the Gladiator's Crossbow and get a small DPS boost instead of the bigger resilience boost I can get for the same amount of honor. One more thing... I don't do Arenas - yet. I'll wait till I have a full set before venturing into that slaughterhouse.

Hunter's got back

I tried, oh I tried.

I really tried to save up the honor to get the PVP crossbow. As soon as I crossed 10k honor I somehow ended up in the Hall of Champions ogling at the various gear I could buy. I've been checking out the Sergeant's Heavy Cloak for a long time and BAM! Without knowing it I had bought it. Back to zero honor and square one when it comes to weapons... 28'000 honor required.

The cloak is nice though... and with it I am almost at the magical 200 resilience rating. The magic? It is minimum resilience rating that most premade AV teams requires.

Oh my little mage sits untouched at 19... and if I am not completely mistaken as a ghost after numerous attempts to kill the silver rare bio-mage in one of the ziggurats. Damn weaklings ^^

My little mage

So I cracked... and created a new alt. I think it was all the AV grinding during AV weekend that broke me.

Anyway... playing a mage is great fun, although I do miss my hunter so I don't expect this to be a long-term relation.

Things I've noticed in the early levels of a mage:

• Their DPS over short time is insane.
• They need to drink and eat - a lot.
• Their insane DPS is clearly balanced with their sitting down time.
• At the end of the day I feel as a hunter kills faster since I never had to sit down for water.
• Mages are extremely fragile. A bad pull is harder to fix compared to a hunter or rogue. A hunter can manage a 3 mob bad pull, while things get hairy with just one extra mob as a mage.
• Mages are extremely cooldown reliant. Mob add and Frost Nova on cooldown - big trouble. I find myself working around the CD of Frost Nova and Fire Blast.
• They have a much tougher time compared to rogues / hunters to down elites.
• Bloodthistle withdrawal is cool
• Did I mention they drink alot of water?
• The Elemental Aquanton is frost resistant - use fire spells or you'll die over and over again.

After 10 hours /played my mage sits at level 17 in the Ghostlands. I've gone completely frost at this point. So far it has only netted me faster frost bolts and additional crit damage - nothing spectacular or snazzy.

Hunter Battleground build 0.1

I've leveled my hunter almost completely in the cookie-cutter Beast Master build 41/20/0. I've had great success with it but it was time to try something different. With my focus on PVP I wanted to give another more survival oriented build a spin. The result:

21/0/40

The goal of the build is to make it easier to survive battlegrounds and hence be more effective. It is NOT an arena build. It is not a raid build and probably not a farming build. When I enter battlegrounds - warriors & rogues are my biggest nemesis - or at least I get most hammered by them. A BM build is probably much stronger against casters (BW ftw)

So a few highlights from the "Battlegound Build" are:

Savage Strikes - Gives your raptor strike additional 20% to crit. When you get a rogue/hunter in melee it is going to hurt them.

Improved Wing Clip - 20% of imobilizing them. This is almost instant win when applied to an enemy melee. At least in theory ^^

Deterrence - Increases dodge AND parry with 25% for 10 seconds. It will allow you to charge into a warrior and avoid that hamstring and instead clip him... or survive that rogue's barrage of attacks.

Wyvern Sting - put an opponent to sleep for 12 sec... CC or why not just as a cast interrupt.

Intimidation - your trusty pet stun. I would rather have Scatter shot for this build but I've chosen the Pet route.

Improved Aspect of the Monkey - again 6% dodge against melee can be the deciding factor when trying to avoid their stuns/hamstrings.

I've just begun learning the build and it feels very different from a beast master. First you don't have to be afraid in melee - actually it is a good thing to go seeking melee at certain times with other hunters and even rogues (at least non-gladiator geared). I still need to change/add a few macros for all the new talents to make the build work correctly.

I took my pet to Skettis to try out its PVE use. While I could handle all encounters (thinking of the escort quests) I had less mana after a fight than I would as a beast master. BUT damn! It was much easier to handle multiple mobs. Wyvern sting and Entrapment are good PVE talents in the survival tree.

The play schedule of a casual WOW addict.

So what does a casual wow addict's play schedule look like? Let me show you:

Monday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & some AH/mail
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground (approx. 1000 honor)
Evening - NIL

Tuesday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & some AH/mail
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground or Blade's Edge quests
Evening - 3hrs - Battleground (approx 3K honor) or the odd instance

Wednesday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - NIL
Evening - 1 hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & AH/mail

Thursday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & questing
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground (approx 1000 honor)
Evening - 1 hr - Battleground (approx 1000 honor)

Friday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & AH/mail
Lunch - NIL
Evening - NIL

Saturday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - 2 hrs - Battleground (approx 2000 honor)
Evening - NIL

Sunday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - 2 hrs - Battleground (approx 2000 honor)
Evening - 1 hr - Dailies & Battleground (approx 500 honor)

If you add it up its about 16 hours / week. 11 hours of those are in BG's and remaining 5 hours are spent on dailies and in front of the AH.

In a week I'll net about 11'000 honor and 300 gold (more depending on Ore & loot sales. This week however I missed my Tuesday evening play session in favor of a social happening... WOW always get shafted .. it is lowest on the priority scale.

So there you have it. Actually it is way more than I thought I played. I would also estimate that I spend at least 30-60 minutes / day browsing WOW related web pages. Pumping those 16 hours up to at least 20 hours / week. Comparing this with the rest of my life:

Sleep - 56 hrs / week (32 %)

Work - 41 hrs/ week (23 %)
Family - 36 hrs / week (21%)
WOW - 20 hrs / week (11 %)
Other - 22 hrs / week (13%)

I need to cut down on sleep...

What does your schedule look like when you really add it up?

New hunter gear

Yesterday was a great day in the battlegrounds. My fear of Eye of The Storm has finally dwindled away. I've collected the 40 badges I needed to purchase the Vindicator's Chain Sabbatons. I shy away from the Guardian version because my hunter does not carry an arena rating. Somehow I cannot bare myself to beg for a partner for throw-away games. Once I have assembled a full PVP gear from the BGs I'll go into arenas but not before.

I am also considering to enchant my fugly Crystalforged War Axe with Savagery. To be honest - it will take me quite some time before I replace it with the PVP axe. 27.000 honor can be spent on much more resilience in form of armor... and then I probably should get the Crossbow before the axe anyway...

I gather about 1k honor each day from a few BGs. Certain days I'll get more (~5k) others nothing at all. That said, getting the Axe requires almost a months of BGs...

So far I've collected:

Guardian's Chain Girdle, the Vindicator's Chain Sabbatons and the Medallion of the Horde.

Right now I am saving up for the Vindicator's Chain Bracers and I am 1500 of 9800 honor there. After the bracers I'll probably look for the Sergeant's Heavy Cloak or even the Merciless Gladiator's Chain Armor...

Choices choices...

oh and my hunter broke 5000 hks yesterday... yay! It is nothing compared to the fighters you fight with in the BGs. Most of  them with any gear to speak of have at least 34k....