What's a Boy to do?

Sometime ago I mentioned that I was selected to join the high end raiding team for my guild. I was honored, humbled and would have been elated except raiding nights were set for Friday and Saturday. The nights I set aside to spend time with my wife and family (as I am already raiding Kara on Tuesdays & Sundays).

So I have not been going on Fridays and going on Saturday when I can. I'm just not sure that is working out. First off, Friday is the day they get Gruul down and get all the loot. Saturday is when we try new stuff. Last night we spent 3 hours on Void Rever and the only thing I had to show for it was a 24 gold repair bill.

My raid leader asked if I was going to be able to make Fridays at all and I told him that was very unlikely and I understand that the team needs consistency (which to date it has not gotten). He certainly understood my situation, but we both knew that if the team can get a more consistent attendance going I will need to take a step back.

And I first thought that it would be terrible to not be a part of this team, but since Zul'Aman will be starting in a few weeks (I hope) and I may start getting the next level of loot from there I'm not sure I will miss getting to those instances (at least not at this stage of my game play.) I will miss playing with all of them... but there are always other times to do fun stuff with my friends!

On a completely unrelated topic:

I hear tell that you will only need to be honored in order to do heroics after 2.3. Now I have all my keys except Honor Hold, and I still think this is a really good idea. I don't think the keys should start at honored, but now that people have played and gotten them there is not so much of a push to do the non-heroic versions of the instances and that leaves players who are not revered out of luck, especially when you can only reach revered by doing non-heroic instances.

This will help n00bs and Alts alike as well as casual players so while it makes it easier to get into a heroic dungeon it does not make it any easier to complete a heroic dungeon... that is still an accomplishment to be proud of.

Woo Hoo!

Hunter deadzone will soon be DoA

BREAKING NEWS

Does this seem as cool as I think?

An undocumented (and unconfirmed) new spell on the PTR for us Hunters is:
Disarming Shot

Disarming Shot 6% of base Mana 35 yd range Instant cast 1 min cooldown Requires Ranged WeaponA long-range shot that disarms the target for 10 sec.

Does this seem as cool as it looks?

6% of Mana is pretty steep but this really, really helps Hunters not just in the Arena, but in many circumstances.

It just seems really cool. I hope it becomes permanent.

Alas Kulkinski, we hardly knew ye

Well, I knew it had to be coming, this news from Mania's Arcania confirms that "The Scorpid Trick" is soon to be dead:

Bulldazhor was kind enough to let us know that this latest update to the PTR has also included some changes to the scorpid skill Scorpid Poison:

1. Scorpid Poison Rank 5 now does 55 damage over 10 seconds (instead of 44 damage over 8 seconds). This will make it easier to keep Scorpid Poison stacked when using Rank 5.
2. However, fewer hunters will be interested in keeping Scorpid Poison stacked since its damage no longer seems to scale with hunter RAP to the same extent that it did before.

In other words, it looks like the days of using the Scorpid Poison stacking trick to inflict massive amounts of damage in a long fight are over … or will be when Patch 2.2 goes live, anyway.

So, my Pet Scorpid, Kulkinski (named after a notorious mafia hitman who used poison to kill his victims) will probably be abandoned in favor of a Ravager. The first time I pulled out Kulkinski, after I had trained him, was for a Kara run in which I was a replacement on our guilds Kara 1 team. It was their first attempt at Illhoof and they one-shotted him and Kulkinski did over 100,000 damage. I was hooked on that pet from then on... of course, he's ugly as sin and I only pull him out for instances, but he does a lot of damage.

Since I was the only Hunter in my Guild to train one of these bad boys, I suppose I will be losing something that I felt was uniquely me, even if it is butt ugly.