Ooo... I'm a Hybrid

I'll always be a Marksman hunter at heart, but I did tell myself that once I received the gear, I'd take Survival for a spin. And I gotta say, I'm enjoying it.

I read through Alu's Survival Basics and decided to go with 0/25/36 - Imp Hunters Mark, Imp Arcane, and Barrage. I am, in essence, a Raid Bitch. I pull, I mark, I Misdirect, and I raid buff. While I know I sacrifice my personal DPS for the better of the physical DPS, I decided to go with the Imp Arcane and Barrage so I could still weave like a MM. It makes me happy, let's just leave it at that (though, on our alt Gruul's run tonight, I was first on damage, beating the ingroup rogue). I went with Thrill of the Hunt, just for some mana independence. Hopefully, every raid I'll have some sort of shaman ingroup, and I'll just bask in the glory of Mana Spring and that happy agility totem.

Anyway, with a feral druid in group, I hit the unthinkable: Th glorious 50% crit. As a little nubblet hunter, I never thought I'd hit that glorious mark, but there it is. /sniff... Brings a tear to my eye.
Yes, I know I'm over the hit cap. It's not as easy as one might think to drop it once you work so hard to hit the cap... This was with usual raid buffs - only group buff was a feral druid. Dog, imagine with a shaman too... /drool.

Happy Hunter Again!

Archimonde finally drops his bow. Hell. Yeah.

Random thoughts of a busy undergrad

• The adoption process should be made easier. A conversation about declining populations in the countries that need the work force brought to mind how convenient and overly-simplistic it would be to pick up hundreds of thousands of people from third-world countries and plop them down in Europe to feed the job market. That could never happen, but one idea that could work is to stimulate more adoption programs so that children from those over-populated areas could be given a loving home and help boost the next generation population of these population declining countries. I know some European countries are already giving families incentives to have more children - wouldn't it be better to adopt instead? Just a thought, and not very well researched, but a ponderin'.

• We failed to get Bloodboil down Thursday, despite a nearly flawless first attempt at which we wiped at 1%. I was BM at the time, and made me realize that the arguments of "Oh, if you were BM instead of MM, think of all the times those 1% wipes would be successes instead" are more strawmen than anything. I'm back MM, happily so. No more constant casting! Weee!

• I have a concert today. Ugh. My first chair tuba called in saying he forgot it was his son's high school graduation, leaving little ol' me to fend for myself... and cover his solo pieces. It's not too big of a deal, but it's definitely not something I anticipated dealing with today.
  

Oh, how I wish!

This is how I should pad my resume:

Four year experience as a raiding Hunter class in World of Warcraft.
Two years as a class officer, directing other members of my class and providing advice.
One year as a Loot Council member, distributing gear items to rewarding raiders under the ideals of the best upgrade for the raid.
Multitasking proficiencies in watching threat, mana/health levels, pet management, shot rotation, and events within the boss encounter.
Skilled in pulling, kiting, and farming.


Hey, it could happen.

Guess who's a happy hunter!

Naj'entus was kind to me tonight.

My idol falls...

Mother Sharhaz really is the easiest boss in the game.

The fact that I maintained over 1000 DPS with five pieces of shadow resist is really disgusting and proof that BM is so overpowered -_-.

Anyway, it was a fun fight. The biggest issue was not running in the same direction as another person when getting the proximity debuff. We debated over the best way to do it, recognizing that it relies on split decisions and quick reaction times to survive, so we had every one call out which way they were running. It's not a perfect solution, and sure enough, I got the debuff, and at the exact same second that I say "Running to fountain" another person says "Running to fountain." So, me being the strafe-kiting queen, I strafe around south and away from the other person, and all three of us survived. Rock on.

So many jokes in the Den of Mortal Delights. I was happy ;).

And, yes, stripping is the solution to everything!

/rant on

We tackled Reliquary of Souls last night for the first time in a while. Considering we had a lot of new faces, we did extremely well. However, because it was our first time on the boss in a while, some people forgot how the boss works, namely, the annoying harassing officer.

Our first attempt we were instructing the rogues how to move in and out in order to tank the enrage for the phase one. This phase is aggro-free - you CANNOT pull aggro. Aggro for this phase is based on location - the closest player to him has aggro. So, when a rogue that was tanking vanished, the boss didn't register a player near him, so just like when a tanking player dies and there is no other player in melee range, the boss goes to the the person with the highest threat, namely, me. The Annoyance burst out in Vent in anger - "A hunter with fucking Feign Death pulls aggro."

Now, I had already mentioned in Vent that Omen Threat Meter wasn't showing (evidently for zero aggro fights, Omen 2 doesn't even bother), and that was the first thought to come to mind. Then it registered again, since I was rehearsing the fight in my mind as we cleared the trash that phase one was aggro free, that the only way I could have pulled aggro was that there was nobody in melee range, so the tanking rogue must have died - but his claim, and was backed up by other officers and raid leader, was that the rogue died after I "pulled aggro." I'm terrible in an arguement, so these were my first two points. The officers that manage to remain unbiased argued in my favor, the point that it is impossible to pull aggro, and mentioned that the rogue must have vanished, which was confirmed by the officer in charge of melee.

It didn't come to me until later to point out that even if I had Feigned, it would have just gone on to the next highest person with threat - most likely the Annoyance. Well, this remark didn't come to mind until the argument had died, so I enacted my revenege in a more subtle manner - I made sure to Feign at least once during the phase, so that when a rogue did mess up, instead of the boss coming to me, it would go to the Annoyance instead. And it did. Multiple times. I laughed. But I'm a bigger person and didn't remind him of it.

I'm moderately annoyed that I didn't get an apology, especially from the other officer that sided with the Annoyance and the raid leader. It was complete bullshit that I got called out for doing my job, especially over an issue that we have seen over and over again on previous attempts with the boss, but like I said, it's been a while since we've touched him, so people forget what happens when nobody is in melee range. While I admit that I have had a few issues with aggro in the past (I pulled aggro early in a Bloodboil attempt - total raid wipe; a Hydross pull from a long long time ago), I have as much control over my aggro as well as any player that knows what she is doing. This is especially hypocritical coming from a glass cannon of a mage. He pulls aggro more frequently than I do (I laughed so hard when he gave me hell for the Bloodboil wipe, then proceeded to pull aggro on him during the next week's attempts) and yet feels obligated to give the rest of us hell.

/rant off

Anyway, we downed the boss, and it felt good, especially since we didn't use the special resist potions for the third phase that we were saving for "serious attempts." Kudos for the healers for getting us through that. While the rogue that vanished ended up getting me yelled at, he did help a lot by talking in Vent for the kick rotation, and that was a great thing. We're not used to having a rogue talking in Vent. We went on to down Bloodboil, giving us tonight to make our first attempts at Mother, a boss who I'm rather fond of :) The Annoyance was civil to me as we were making the shadow resist gear, which prompted one of the officers to tell me that it meant he was apologetic. Hmph, I'll believe it when I see it... The new rogue mentioned that the Annoyance only yells at people when they are not doing their job. I felt like replying that we could take him seriously if the Annoyance wasn't such a fucking hypocrite.

Anyway, a good night, despite the anger :).