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All I need to say is I’m SO UNBELIEVEABLY STOKED ABOUT THE NEW RACES AS REPORTED BY WOW.COM!

First let me state that I love the Tauren.  They are 100% Awesome and full of win from the moment they appear in Warcraft III.  In beta I made a NE, but at release it was a Tauren hunter that got to 10 first.  Their philosophy and tree-hugger mentality really mesh well with what I like to do.  Way more than the NEs.  I had a great time, until I went to thunterbluff and met my first Forsaken.  I just couldn’t sympathise with her.  I gathered a few more quests from them but they just sat in my quest log.  The completist in me couldn’t drop the quests, but the RPer couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I don’t remember which quest it was that put me over the edge, but it got to the point that if I saw a Forsaken player I’d start to get nauseous.

Although I’m not a hardcore RPer, I do participate to an extent.  I guess more than RP, I put myself in my characters – I RP as myself.  That means if someone were to ask me to go save them from Defias invading their farms, I’d do it without hesitation.  If they want me to test some poisons on an innocent dog… I have issues.  I’d not only have issues associating with the person that wanted to do that, but I’d avoid anyone that would associate with that person as well.  Or further, anyone that would think that’s cool to even pretend to do – IE a player.  And the horde is full of them.  Basically, any Forsaken or Blood Elf is portrayed as a sadist, and it made me uneasy to even group with people that rolled those races.

So, with my obsession with Worgen coming to a head recently (110% win!), I’ve been wanting to do their quests on the horde side.  Knowing my problems with the forsaken, I decided to ease into it by sticking to kalimdor’s 1k Needles, and Stone Talon since alliance is severely lacking in lore there.  We’ll see how it goes, but I still feel like I’m walking through a minefield of quests.  Is this one going to be the one that makes me quit horde again – we’ll see.

PS: Orcs can be just as frustrating to quest for.  In particular, the alliance mounted an assault on Icecrown but it failed so we were sent to investigate.  It turns out the horde attacked trapping the alliance between them and the scourge, and both alliance and horde armors were devastated.  Now, my first reaction was “what stupid thing did the alliance do now to provoke the horde?”  I mean after the Wrath Gate, it would only be understandable.  So, I went to wowhead and it turns out the thing they did was nothing – absolutely nothing.  Yeah,  horde saw the alliance fighting their sworn enemy that grows stronger each time anyone dies – the scourge and decided to attack the alliance.  And what was the response to this imbecilic strategy – from the quest text “<After a brief pause, Korm bursts into laughter.>THAT is what it means to be HORDE!”  These guys are morons.

Come on Cairne… why are you allied with these guys?

Anyway, the reason I’m back today is the recent worgen thing going around.  If it turns out there’s any truth to it, I WILL be renaming Znodis to something else and rerolling a Worgen hunter as my main.  I’ve been in love with them since I first found the Howling Vale just exploring around in open beta.  When I ran my first alt through Ashenvale, I got a screen shot of every panel of text for the quest chain for the Scythe of Elune. As you may have guessed by now, the story I was writing for the Bliz contest (mentioned in the last post) was about the worgen.  But even before that I had been obsessing over them enough that I had enough material for a novel sized story.  I stopped working on that when I heard they’d be reappearing in the Grizzly Hills (yes, before WotLK, that long ago), and didn’t want to waste time if what I had contradicted official lore.

So rather than trying to complete the story I made I thought I’d throw my back story out into the either before it’s completely contradicted (hopefully) with whatever happens in the next expansion.  Who knows? Maybe some lazy bliz employee will read it, say that’s good enough for me, and make it official so he can slack off more. :)  Interesting enough it involves the Malestrom, Emerald Dream, and the Well of Eternity.

What makes the worgen so ripe is the lack of any really official text about them at all.  So let me introduce the questions I was working on and their answers (WARNING: None of this is official, just the background I developed for my stories)

Where do the worgen come from? The nightmare that Archmage Ur mentions in his book is not their native land.  It is the corrupted portion of the Emerald Dream, and just as Druids can transport themselves there, so can the worgen.  However some of the the worgen have discovered away to completely transport themselves, as opposed to druids which use an entranced state, leaving their bodies behind.

Why are they in the nightmare? Their home world is completely overrun by the burning legion.  Or rather their world is where the titans confined the beings which they decided not to destroy for one reason or another.  The worgen were menial slaves of the Legion, but have found a way to escape, and so the Burning Legion is very interested in using that same route.  Hence, they have followed and are now corrupting the Dream into the Nightmare.  There are many worgen still in the service of the Legion, both willingly and unwilling.

How can the emerald dream be connected to 2 different worlds? (I thought it was just part of azeroth?) If you read the lore behind the Dream, it is an idealized azeroth.  Azeroth as it could be – a blueprint for the titan’s vision.  As the titan’s went around the universe shaping worlds they used the Dream as a model for each one, over and over, creating a link with each one as they shaped it towards their ideal.

Why would the titans connect a prison to the dream? It wasn’t supposed to be a prison originally.  It began as a normal shaped world, but as they attempted to cleanse it, the Ancient beings that dwelled there were much more numerous and powerful than any they had encountered.  So much so that they were able to corrupt their champion to their will (hello sargeras).   They thought the world was beyond saving, but they could not leave those beings unchecked so they created a Great Drain, which drew all magical power, all life, into it.  This made it so there was never enough magic power to leave the planet, making it an ideal prison. They named this place Hel.

Where did all that magical energy going into the Drain go? (ok, I know no one would ask this, but it’s important) It once flowed out of the Well of Eternity, but now with the Well destroyed, it also destroyed the Drain.  That is not to say that magic is now flowing the other directions draining azeroth, but rather it’s flowing in both directions.  There are places in the Malestrom that are even more concentrated than the Well was, but there are also places in azeroth that are being drained.  Similarly, Hel now has those same ebbs and flows of magic in reverse.  It is through these holes that Worlocks can temporarily summon demons from Hel to do their bidding.  This supplies a servant for the worlock, and a guaranteed source of magic for the withering demon.

Back to the worgen, why are some temporarily humans? These are the worgen created by Arugal.  He had hoped to permanently summon them as a worlock does, by binding them to a human spirit.  Obviously, it only partially worked for the most part, but there were a few successes.  However, those were due to the assistance of the Burning Legion.  Once they figured out what Arugal was doing, they were able to make the transfer permanent by consuming the human spirit.  This also allowed them to select which worgen would be permanently summoned to azeroth to corrupt Arugal and create a new base-camp there.

What’s the deal with the worgen in Ashenvale? These are the worgen summoned by Linde Starsong using the Scythe of Elune.  The worgen possess a similar scythe given to them by their own moon goddess.  They were able to covertly leave their servitude en masse and escape to the Dream.  They then used hit and run tactics to invade the remaining camps.  But some still remained loyal to the Legion.  They were able to keep open the portals created by the scythe, allowing the Legion to follow them.  The worgens decided that no new portals could be created or they ran the risk of being over run by the Legion, and remained trapped in the Dream, fighting the Legion’s incursions as best they could.  Escape came in the form of a new portal to a new world.  They gladly accepted the new escape provided by Linde.  Once on azeroth, they reveled in destroying their enemies in their disorganized state, causing their new ally to fear their power.

What’s the deal with the worgen in Duskwood? Linde stopped creating portals, but more worgen kept coming.  As it happens, the worgen scythe was eventually brought to azeroth, and was just as effective in reaching the Dream in their new home.  When Linde left, most of the freed worgens had already been summoned, but with the Legion in pursuit, some had been left behind yet again.  A portion of the worgen wanted to continue bringing their kind over (some were still under the Legions control) and did not trust Linde.  Her scythe was a gift from a false god, she was “clearly weaker than the worgen” (in their eyes), and they thought they had exchanged servitude to the Legion for servitude to Linde.  The loyal worgen refused to create more portals and stayed in the howling vale as a barrier against the Legion in Felwood, but the small group of rebels pursued Linde unknownly in an attempt to retrieve her scythe.  They caught up with her in Duskwood and killed her as she was hiding the scythe in what she thought was an abandon mine.  They were unable to recover it.  When Jitters uncovered the scythe once again, he created a new portal to the Nightmare directly in a Legion worgen camp, which they were then able to keep open and invade the countryside.  They now seek the scythe for its power to create as may portals as possible, anywhere they want.

Conclusion

I have much more but all of that veers further from cannon-lore.  Things like worgen culture, origin on Hel, the origin of Elune, etc. but that’s much less interesting.  Hope you enjoyed reading.

He’s only been around for 2 weeks but prior to that he was giving his mom contractions for 3 additional weeks.  Kinda hard to plan anything.

The second thing is that I was writing a story for the Blizzard contests, rather than blogging.  However, constantly wondering if I should take my wife to the hospital proved to be a great distraction.  So great in fact that I thought the contest ended on the 15th instead of the 12th and I didn’t get to submit my entry… Maybe I’ll post it here someday.

Third, I went in for a sleep study last week.  The doc said I should be using a CPAP machine if I had apnea more than 30 times in 2 hours, and I hit 267.  So, I’ve been using it for 4 days, and it’s a nice change.  Have you ever had your ear plugged by infection or ear wax, and you can’t hear because not only is the passage blocked but being plugged is distracting?  It’s kinda like that only with thinking instead of hearing.  So, I got rid of my snoring, just in time to have my sleep disturbed several times a night by a baby.  Such is life.

In summary, I hope to be updating regularly again soon-ish.

As an actual warcraft note, I’m loving Dual Specs.  I cant seem to give up the MM playstyle now that I’ve gotten used to it, and now I can easily swap to BM for soloing elites as well.  Good time to be a hunter.

Until now.

I just got the quest “The Grand Melee” and had a heck of a time trying to complete it. For the first 30 min, I only defeated one jouster.  Then things clicked and the next 2 fell like nothing.  Here’s my priorities -

1. DO NOT TRY TO GET TO RANGED.  The NPCs can turn around much faster than you (like instantly) while your mount takes awhile to turn even if you’re not using keyboard turning.  If your opponent runs away, let him.  We’ll deal with that in a sec.
2. Hit Defend whenever its up.  Or at least try.
3. Thrust if in melee range.  I know the previous quests showed you that you lose a defend when you do it, but in practice that only depends on what your opponent does.  Thrust, Defend, Thrust, Defend should be your cast sequence in close range.
4. When your opponent turns to charge, stay where you are and start spamming Shield-Breaker.  Once that goes off, spam charge.  Some  opponents will let you get both off, some will not, but it will be consistent for that faction (I found SW let me get both while Gnomer only let me get one).  If you find they turn around too fast to get both, priority is to Charge.  If you get it off first at minimal range, they won’t be able to do it.

It sounds simple enough now that I write it, but holy cow, was that a frustrating half-hour.

It still doesn’t feel like home, but I like it. I think the thing I’m enjoying the most is the selection of shots I can hit at any given time.  Just a few months ago, I was a single button presser, and now I’m paying attention again.  Aimed shot is off CD but so is Chimera, oh wait, Serpent Sting fell off.  Most fights I never get around to even trying a Steady shot.  I was a bit worried about mana efficiency since as a BM I found myself in AotV mode way more than I ‘d like, but MM does so much damage that I never have it on for more than 2 fights (unless I forget).

I should also mention that if you want to try MM you shouldn’t just copy my spec from the armory.  I made a few mistakes and haven’t bothered to respec yet.

I’d say that my only criticism is pet agro which is to be expected when I’m putting out 3-4x the DPS of my pet.  I can’t say how bad it really is right now though seeing as I’ve been leveling up pets rather than using a 80 (Frothy is 79 almost 80!).  The interesting thing about it is to compensate, you have to basically reverse what you’d do for max damage while also trying to minimize mana used.  For instance, Chimera with Serpent applied is my highest damaging ability, but if I open with that, I’m sure to pull agro immediately.  So instead, I hold off until agro has already been pulled to release Chimera… maybe.  The mob may already be below 20% in which case Kill shot is not only more mana efficient, but higher damage.  If the mob is at 25%, Chimera will certainly kill it, but maybe its better to just hit Arcane instead and then melee for the last 500hp.

In short, shot choice not only depends on cooldown and mana, but also on the condition of the mob itself while soloing.  It’s a really different mind set.  Next post I’m go into the different shots and when/how to use them.  Prepare for the maths.

I’ve also had 2 major changes since the last post.  First is that I finally brokedown and traded in my 93DPS bow for a N4K despite my hatred of guns.  I somehow added 55 WHITE DPS to my character sheet and the difference really shows in a fight.

The second is that I’ve joined a guild.  They were recruiting back in January before I hit 80, and sounded like a perfect fit.  As the recruiter put it:

We’re  a guild of mature players mostly running 10-mans, who have real lives outside the game.  That means when we actually get around do doing something we expect everyone to bring their A-game.  We run 10-mans and heroics as a guild, but have a guild alliance to run 25s when the stars align.

As an initiate, I’m not a regular raider, but so far its a great fit.  I’ve done 2 25-mans and 3-4 heroics both on Wnodis and Znodis.  No loot to speak of, but been really fun to just see everything.  If I get a 2nd invite to Naxx I think I’ll respec BM just to get a comparison.

Maybe I should back up a bit and delve into why I’m a hunter in the first place.  In the beginning there was EverQuest.  Well, at least my beginning.  I loved it.  I still tell stories about how I dinged level 15 5x because I kept dying, how in my first 5 min I fell out of the wood elf village,  and it took me an hour to get back up, having to actually talk to NPCs to get quests (“How do I get a [Trueshot Bow]?”), and the time I went from one starting area to the other and it took me 5 hours.  Oh, and the /train runs back to the guards; that’s the only thing I really, really miss.  It felt like a world more than a game.  What I’ve noticed is that it’s the flaws that made it like real life, but there were a few that I just couldn’t overlook.

First was soloing.  Once you hit about 20, it was pretty pointless to even fight an enemy 1 on 1.  Just getting a 2nd person was so much easier and you both benefited.  However, I was living in Hawaii at the time and there just wasn’t enough people on when I played and to be honest, I didn’t know the certain places where people gathered.

Second, was healing.  This wasn’t such a big deal in a group, but I seriously remember spending more than half of my playtime sitting to regen health.  Play went like this: find mobs, and kill for 5 min until health is at 20%, stop and find a safe place, read a book for 5 min while health gets back to 100%.

Now on to WoW.  I still liked the ranger class so in the open beta I grabbed a hunter.  I saw how quick I could kill, I could use food/drink to regen rather than just sitting (and it was FAST!), and I didn’t even need to kite because I could take a hit or 2 and raptor strike for the kill.  And when I died, I didn’t lose any exp… I think I may have actually cried.  I was in heaven.

When I hit level 11, I finally got around to doing the pet training quests.  I actually missed the follow-up, and thought that it was normal to have my pet disappear every 30min.  I didn’t care.  No more kiting – ever.  I quickly learned about pulling agro and not to do it, but I would have happily only used auto shot if I never had to worry about dying.  Best of all, he regened health like crazy. No more downtime.

Eventually someone told me about ‘Feed pet’ and talent points.  I could make my new friend more powerful!  Everyone else was singing the praises of MM, and I was BM to the core.  For 4 years I have never seriously considered anything else.

I have reconsidered.  I spent the night as a MM, and I’m loving it.  My pet still holds agro fine which is really all I want, but the playstyle is much nicer.  I like the shoot and forget of Serpent Sting/Chimera, big numbers popping up, and actually using most of the abilities.  I went and set up WWS for before and after (I won’t post my pathetic ZD quest green numbers), and found my DPS going up by 15%.

I wonder what the difference is in a real raiding hunter.

I guess the point is that I’m liking MM at least for now.

Pengu – check

Mysterious Egg – check

Purdy new 2h swords being DW – Double-D delicious!

I also went over to Znodis to disenchant tons of BoEs that dropped for W on her way to 80 and I think I forgot to show you guys this:

Win!