Am I Uberz?

So last week, while I was in Kara, there was a discussion amongst guild officers and class leaders about how to read the WoW Web stats that we were putting up on our guild's forum. I could not attend, as I was in Kara... doing this:

Now, what I want you to note in the above that pets are not combined. I am at the numero uno position at 17.4% and my Ravager Kodos is at number 7 at 7.2%. Combined it looks something like this:

DAMN -- this is a boatload of damage. Blkwidow at the five spot would probably be higher but she, like a good class leader, was in the meeting, as they dissected the WoW Stats, so could not give Kara her full attention.

However, when she returned from her Vent meeting, she told me that they asked "How does Mervyn do so much damage?"

"I really don't know" she told them, "He's doing it right now in Kara and his gear is not as good as ours... must be some beast master thing."

As you can see from below on one of our failed Gruul attempts, I am number 1 baby! As a matter of fact 1,2 & 3 are all hunters! (7 & 11 too, but someone shattered them early in the fight.)

So, I think it's pretty cool that people are wondering how a n00b like me gets to be such a DPS machine /flex!

And I tell them, I play my character and my spec well. I know what I am doing and I study up on things I need to know.

So now that I have presented my bona fides, I think I will spend some more time this week on "How I roll..." posts, so look for them.

In the meantime, since on one else will invite me, if you know of an arena team that wants an uber hunter....

The loot falls... so why am I not excited?

So last night in Karazhan I was a loot whore again!

We had a great night, took down Aran and the Prince and along the way got three epic trash drops.

[Belt of the Tracker] dropped off of trash and I got to get rid of one of my remaining blues, and yet when I equip it, my DPS goes down? Not by much and it's still a big upgrade and the 15MP5 is awesome. So, I suppose I'll keep it on.

Later Aran so conveniently drops [Drape of the Dark Rever] and my friend and fellow hunter Sky says "Merv can have it" because she is still guilty over the fact that back when she subbed for me [Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix] dropped. So I happily took the cape and told her we were now even. Of course, I put it on and once again my ranged attack power goes down, crit goes up, so thats a fair trade too.

Then, of course, the prince dropped [Helm of the Fallen Hero] and Sky will not roll against me for it. I told her the cape is the bow paid in full and she better roll, so she rolled a 23 and I could taste that helm... and I rolled a two! As consolation I did get [Malchazeen] but then I spent 345 gold buying the Primal Air and Large Prismatic Shards I needed for the enchants to my two nice daggers (+40 agility) and cape (+12 agility).

So after four weeks of no upgrades I get two and a back-up weapon, why am I not ecstatic? I guess I'm just a lousy, no good, ungrateful jerk.

I will say that the daggers will come in really nice in PVP after the dead zone is gone and mages try to close in to get out of ranged attack ranged and I can cut them up good with my daggers!

A Good Read

Yes, we all know I'm a n00b. That is the reason for the blog. Sometimes I just wish I wasn't so much of a n00b.

On the steps going up to the Moroes fight, once again, I mis-tabbed and somehow selected the group behind the group we were taking down, sent the pet, watch him disappear over the rim of the steps and all of the sudden there were two groups of angry, knife throwing, undead bad-dancing MoBs, instead of one. (I think this is the third time I have done that.)

I apologized for pulling the extra group and my RL, replied saying, "No, that's okay. This way I get a good read."

And I thought to myself, how prescient of our raid leader, he wants to see how the group reacts to the new threat, see how well we work together and where areas of weakness occur. Because, we all know that when fights go as planned, you don't learn anything about anyone -- when they go wrong, and its not a total and absolute complete mess and wipe, you can look for who picked up on what, who improvised and who panicked and ran into a corner and sucked their thumb.

In that moment, in that statement, I understood the RL's role a lot more. I don't have that ability to watch what everyone is doing, I watch the fight and I improvise where needed, but I don't really pay attention to how the other raid members react to new situations. I had a new found respect for all raid leaders who can process all this information amongst such chaos.

And then, not one second later my RL clarified: "If you haven't read Merv's blog yet, you should. This pull should make for a good read."

For want of a Warlock

So our Warlock left our Kara group and was replaced by a Shadow Priest. Since then we have not gotten down Illhoof or through Shade of Aran. So it was suggested that on Sunday we skip them and attempt the Prince. I had informed my RL that I would be between 30 to 45 minutes late for the raid and they could replace me or I could catch up with them.

When I signed on 45 minutes late, they had replaced me, but told me to come back in two hours as someone was leaving and they would need me. Sure no problem I said.

Two hours later I signed on Vent and I asked how it was going. "Terrible" our RL tells me, "Netherspite is kicking our butts."

At that same moment I get a whisper from my fellow Hunter Guildie/confidant saying "Your team took down the Prince and the bow dropped."

"You took down Prince!" I say. Ten people slowly mumbled their assent, at least they all felt bad enough to try and hide it from me, but it felt like a ton of bricks hitting me. Sure I put on the happy patter and said, oh don't worry it will drop again.

Now I will be counting the weeks before I see that bow.

The n00b is a Loot Whore

Last night was a great night for my Kara team. In 3 hours we polished off all the bosses up to the Curator and everyone was really happy with how things turned out. Except... me, I was ecstatic! Because I was a terrible, terrible loot whore. So much so, that unless no one else wants anything for the two weeks or so, I'm not rolling on anything!

So it started out okay -- Purples were dropping and many were dupes, so people were taking them as backups. I did so myself, after the Moroes fight I grabbed:

[Emerald Ripper]

A nice Dagger, I don't normally use daggers, but as a back up for when I need two weapons for some kind of double Mana Oil application or something like that, it could be useful.

The we get to The Curator... we get to him at 9:20PM with the raid scheulded to be over by 9:30PM, Curator down my 9:26PM.

What does he drop?

These:

[Gloves of the Fallen Hero]

[Garona's Signet Ring]

Now, as a n00b, I don't feel like I deserve either, but no one wants the ring so I get it by default... and its a really nice upgrade for me, but then I roll for my very first item of Tier 4 Gear and my 71 holds up against four other rolls... and now I feel very guilty, with my [Demon Stalker Gauntlets] I think I should post in Guild chat that I will not be accepting any more purples until I can pass on at least one tier 4 gear or two epics... or should I just shut up and take what comes to me?

Respeccing? Respecking? Re-Spec-ing?

My Raid Leader for Karazhan asked me to respec, and while I told him that I would, I went onto to explain how my current spec, Beast Mastery, was best for what we were doing. I then proceeded to send him a long email with two recommended specs, (A 0/41/20 Marksmen and an 0/12/49 Survival), with more reasons why my 41/20/0 was the best for raiding in Karazhan.

I advocated my positions well, I explained that I had done a lot of research on these issues and I convinced my RL (for the moment), so where was I the n00b? Well, I must heave spelled Respeccing at least three different ways. How do you spell it?

In non-n00bish-ness news, we downed the Curator in one-shot again and as the Flare guy (N00b moment-- what is the guy who marks and grabs the flares' attention called?) on both of our one shots -- that's a title I'm pretty proud to where, whatever that title may be.

Actually, the curator fight is fun because I love watching my Warp-Stalker warp to each and every flare I select -- it's so lovely -- and my two macros work really well:

/Target Astral Flare
/Cast Hunter's Mark
/Cast Send Pet

/Cast Sequence Distracting Shot, Arcane Shat, Multi-Shot

And boom the Curator went down -- then i wiped the entire party on the next trash mob pull!

Yeah for N00bs!

Bulking it up

I feel bad... well, I mean I feel okay, I just feel guilty because I haven't written anything in here for awhile and I need to fill out this blog before I invite anyone else to come see it.

I did not put a counter on this page, but I have a feeling that no one has come by, which is fine right now as there is very little to see. So, if I bulk up the page a bit, get three or four more entries into it maybe I'll invite some people to take a look at it.

But, back to the subject of this site... which is: Feeling like you don't know what you are doing. And while I have applied it to WoW, I may expand that and apply it to things in life as well.

For example, this weekend I was driving in Manhattan. There is a certain mind set and attitude that you need to have to drive there and with Maryland plates, no one takes you seriously -- so you have to drive like a total jerk, which I did, but I felt like I was faking it, because for the 3 and 1/2 hours it took me to get there, I did not drive that way, it was only when I emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel that there was any noticeable change in my driving temperament.

So, that is one example of "faking it" in real life. In fake life, (meaning World of Warcraft) things have not been quite so n00bish. My teams have down High King Maulgar in Gruul's Lair, Curator and Illhoof. I got some phat loot in the last weeks too, including:

[Maulgar's War Helm]
[Stalker's War Bands]
[Romulo's Poison Vial]

And now my profile in the Armory is beginning to look not too much like a n00b.

I'm still not ready to post on the forums in the posts where it asks you to rate the Hunter above you -- I don't think I'll ever want to do that, I mean if I want that kind of advice I would rather hear it from my friends and class leaders in the guild rather than some random person on the forums... probably Hoard too!