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!

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.

I'm too tired to post

Really, its just been an exhausting week. Between work and not being caught up on my sleep this week my head is full of cobwebs. But I felt I should post something before the weekend and I have only had two posts this week.

So here is a post... and some quick comments:

Only got to do the Headless Horseman once yesterday but I got [Ring of Ghoulish Delight], not quite an upgrade, almost a lateral move, but I saved it from the DE pile and its the only thing he has (barely) for Hunters. (The brooms are pretty cool.)

We were entertaining guests Tuesday night (entertaining guest late into the night, part of the reason I am so tired) so I was unable to attend Karazhan, but on Sunday I jumped down to get some more tomes and was going to use my cloak to float off but I screwed that up and wound up with a 30 minute cool down way up in the air. Finally, giving up all hope and not wanting to delay the raid any further, I plunged to my death... but didn't die (came close to it thou) so there is a lucky death I avoided having to confess to on this blog!

Finally, I had a dream last night where I was giving a PowerPoint lecture to 500 students about WoW and how it differs from Second Life. I knew it would be a really cool presentation with embedded movies and lots of cool images. I was really looking forward to it, unfortunately, my alarm went off just as I was walking up to the podium to start the lecture.

Have a great weekend and may all your drops be Epics!

How I Roll -- Macro Edition

I know I like to hear about other people's play styles, especially other Hunters, but really anyone. I like to know what macros they use, what keys are bound, what add-ons, etc. So I am starting a continuing series called "How I Roll" -- and today is the macro addition.

First a caveat: As a n00b it took me a long time to discover the usefulness of macros in-game (I used to use them all the time in Lotus 1-2-3 -- am I dating myself?) but my play and DPS really improved when I started using them, so if you don't use a shot rotation macro (for hunters) or any class appropriate macros, you may not playing up to your full ability.

Okay, I'm gonna talk about my macros and if you get some ideas - great, if not, you've only wasted two minutes!

Shot Rotation Macro:

This is my Shot Rotation Macro.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
My Macro is my best friend. It is my life.
I must fire my bow true.
I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me

Sorry got a little side tracked there -- much apologies to the USMC, semper fi boys!

/castsequence reset=2 Auto shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command


You'll notice there is no multi-shot in this rotation -- that is on purpose so that I do not break CC. I have Multi-shot keybound to no.2 and throw it in when needed, and it usually doesn't mess up my rotation too bad. (To tailor your own Macro to your weapon speed, I found this guide very useful.)

Now -- here is my little secret that I use with my macro. In addition to binding it to the "1" key, I have bound the macro to my scroll wheel on my mouse. I just spin that sucker all day long and that macro keeps going.

I am afraid that one day I will want to zoom in on something that I have targeted and start a pull and wipe my raid/party... but everyone knows I'm a n00b, so when that happens, they'll all make fun of me -- virtually tussle my hair and forgive me.

For misdirection I set my focus as our Main Tank and can knock this one off when ever I feel the need to add a little bit more aggro to the mix (and if no focus exists, my pet gets the aggro):
#show Misdirection
#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [button:2] Distracting Shot; [target=focus, help] Misdirection; [help] Misdirection; [target=pet, exists] Misdirection;

I usually use MD in conjunction with this macro below to max out threat -- just have to watch out for global cool down on the timing, but it leaves me only one button to press.
/castsequence reset=5 Distracting Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Auto-Shot, Steady Shot

I have other macros, but I don't use them as often and I find I change them around a bit as I need them. I'm trying to learn more about macro writing and wowwiki has a nice guide. Even Blizz is getting into the act with more Macro info -- and macro flexibility should be increased with the release of 2.3. Even if you don't want to make them, copy and paste them, there are many sites that warehouse macros (that's where I got the misdirection macro from.)

Hope this helps your game!

We got a Letter!?!??!!!!

Yay! -- I got a letter -- and even though Justin posted his comment as well as sent me an email, it still counts. (And I know others of you have sent me email and I appreciate it, but this one actually asked me a question that I can try to answer.)

So, this email was about my favorite Post to date: What Kind of Buff would you get from Sex?

So Justin writes:

:) Hilarious... and might be implemented lol.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how gay / lesbian sex would work considering they know how to please the same sex easier as they have experience with their own body.

Regards!

So BRK gets letter asking him about mechanics of the game, what shots to use, what trap where, I get asked about sex... I win.

Course, now I have to opine on the Same-Sex Sex Buff (SSSB), which as a heterosexual male, I'm not sure I'm fully qualified to do so, but I am going to try and if any GLBTI MMO friends/readers would like to tell me I am crazy or have a correction, please feel free -- you know I like comments!

Here goes:
First off I am going to take Ratmaggot's suggestion in the comments and say that males need attunement to have sex (females may need a much easier attunement). However, should the attunement be easier if you want to have same-sex sex or more difficult? I'm gonna say from my experience that a man trying to understand women is a little harder than understanding someone of the same sex, so I'm going with an easier attunement to be able to have homosexual sex and, as Justin notes, since they are more comfortable with similar parts, a very high Proc rate for the buff, say around 90% -- as to what that buff would be, we have to look at more factors.

Well first off, we have to make it so that there would be a chance that any partner in any same sex liason could get either the Male Sex Buff (MSB) or the Female Sex Buff (FSB) but there should also be a very small proc rate for the SSSB. And would the buff from gay sex be different from the lesbian sex buff, I suppose there is no one that can testify to that, so for simplicity sake, the SSSB needs to be for any non-hetero sex.

Other issues include a cool down timer -- There would also have to be a cool down time before you could have sex again, whether the buff procs or not. I'm thinking 12 hours for men and 4 hours for women.

We also have to decide if you can be bi-sexual in the game or do you have to stick with the lifestyle you have chosen for your character? If you go with the same sex attunement, can you do the hetero attunement and then go both ways or should you be limited to your first choice? Personally, if I were playing I would want my character to be bisexual and get whatever buff I could get (and good lord, can you imagine the orgies before raids)! However as a programmer, I'm making you pick one or the other -- you're either straight or gay, once you've been attuned to your sexual orientation you'll need to pay lots of gold to re-attune to a different sexual assignment. No one is on the down low here!

Now here is the rub in all of this... the Daedalus Project (PDF) has done a great demographic study of who is playing Warcraft. In their study men outnumber women by 5.25 to 1 and those men are 7 to 8 times more likely to play a character of the opposite sex:

"In other words:
about 1 out of every 2 female characters is played by a man
about 1 out of every 100 male characters is played by a woman"

And I would guess that 80% the straight males who play a female character in Age of Conan are gonna want to play a lesbian character... which means that there will be about 1 woman for every 5 men and that is even if as many women play Age of Conan as those that play WoW (which I doubt). So unless a lot of straight men are willing to have their characters be of a different sexual orientation than themselves they are going to have to go without those great buffs or else start "self procing".

Okay, so with all that in mind, what would the SSSB be and how would it work within the mechanics of the game?

Here's what I would do: If the sex buff procs from gay sex here is what may happen: you have a 63% chance to get the MSB a 33% chance to get the FSB and a 4% chance to get the SSSB and just reverse it for lesbian sex.
Now because of the small proc rate and to encourage competitive straight men to play gay characters I think the SSSB should be pretty special, say something like this:

"Teh Gay" Buff: A 4 hour buff that improves all stats by 20% and haste rating by 10%. Additionally, when this buff is active the character may have sex with 4 more players (1 an hour) of any sex with a sex buff guaranteed.

Whadaya think?





Wow Item Creator!

Woo Hoo!

Hunter deadzone will soon be DoA

Awwwww....

You guys are the Greatest!

See you ask for a little love -- you get a little love.

Thanks I appreciate the comments and I appreciate all you lurkers that don't comment too. Sometimes its just nice to have feedback, ya know!


Okay on to some odds and ends for the morning.

2.3 & the PTR
Obviously, from the breaking news post below... I've been looking into the changes that are coming up in 2.3 and I am looking forward to them.

I think I may be going to the PTR this time around. I've never done it before but I think my Kara team will try and get an early look at the new 10-man instance Zul'Aman and I want to get a look at the new leather working recipes so I can stock pile ingredients for those quivers and ammo pouches.

Make sure you take a look at the ingredients for all the new recipes and start stock piling a few, you may be able to make a tidy profit when the patch goes live!

I didn't see it in the Patch notes, but I heard that we will get Badges of Justice from Kara & Zul'Aman bosses, which would be nice -- now if we could just get Primal Nethers from those bosses too that would be great!

As for the Hunter changes, I have yet to do arena and I don't do a whole lot of PVP, so while some of those changes seem nice, I'm not overly excited by them. The disarm is nice and the buffs to traps are good too, but my favorite trap, the snake trap, got no buff and will probably be used a lot less.

I may get on with an Arena team after the patch and see how useful I can be, but the changes do not seem to address dead zone and line-of-sight issues, so we shall see.

Brewfest

So Brewfest is ending on Tuesday and I have only around 300 tickets. I heard on WoWInsider that we can keep our tickets until next year, so I may bank them and do that. I did get the goggles, but for the one time joke, they are not worth the tickets. Maybe I will enjoy them more when we take Mags down and I take a raid screenshot with all of us (except me) as male gnomes!

PVP

So I only logged on for about 20 minutes yesterday. Thursday is a big TV night and Mrs. EN and I watch our shows together (Survivor, Ugly Betty, CSI, 30 Rock).

Anyway... I logged in, was in Ogri'la, and I started flying to Shattrath to take the portal to Ironforge to get some more brewfest tickets, when my Kara RL informed me that he was being corpse-camped by a hordie in Shadowmoon.

Hmmmm... go to Brewfest for tickets for a ram that I have no chance of getting or help out a friend?

So, I turned the NetherDragon mount towards Shadowmoon and announced my intention to kill this hordie. On the flight, I checked him out in the armory, decked out in his PVP gear he looked formidable, but I knew a Rogue, Druid & Hunter could take down one Shaman easily. When I showed up he took off on his flying mount and treid to avoid me. Because of that he missed the arrival of our Rogue.

Eventually, he lands and attacks. I hit the pet attack key and the Beast Within and intimidation and all he can see is a bid red alien and the poor shaman is dead before he knows what hit him, and I'm pretty sure he still hadn't seen our rogue.
I say this because while I didn't corpse camp, I did stay in the area and helped farm and after a while I told my friends that I was hearthing and the sneaky SOB attacked me while I was casting. So our rogue stunned him , the ravager attacked and went big and red, and even though I was down to about 30%, the poor shaman didn't get another hit off on me and he went down in seconds!
Then I had to hearth, because it was time to watch some TV, and even though I don't do PVP a lot, that sure was fun!