Lo-Quality WoW

Most of the day was spent doing SuperBowl related thing. In other words, I watched a lot of tv. But I did get some WoW time in and was semi-productive for some of it. Any night I end up with some new gear and achievements is nice. I could have really done without the irritating warlock in Auberdine though.

The night had a fast start, I logged in at Darnassus which was under attack. As I’ve said, with the Lunar Festival going on, usually I’ll let such things pass. Except from the sounds of it, the horde wasn’t doing a quick in and out, but was slaughtering things on the way there. Well, we couldn’t have that. So I run over to the Cenarion Enclave and cut lose. I’m not even sure what level they were but they must have been high enough that I credit for three honor kills. They couldn’t have been 80s since there’s no way I would have survived taking on three 80s, even with help from the guards. Then again, I can put out quite a bit of damage in the first few seconds if you’re not expecting it.

After the skirmish, I wing over to Auberdine to find a naked lvl 2 Night Elf dancing on the corpse of the flight master. And doubts I had was put to rest when shortly after landing he started yelling to the zone about how he killed the flight master. Yup, some jackass guy thinks he’s big taking out vendors, quest givers and flight masters on a relatively low-level area. I put his Alliance alt on ignore but keep an eye on LocalDefense before I wander off. Sure enough, I get a little distance out of town when I see that Auberdine is being attacked. I come back and the guy’s lvl 69 warlock eats an explosive shot in the face which kills him. I immediately shadowmeld and my cat goes into prowl. Sure enough, he comes back shortly and again it’s an explosive shot to the face and dead.

While waiting, I start talking to a lvl 80 NE rogue. Apparently the warlock thinks he’s cool attacking the relatively low level members of the Auberdine and does it on a regular basis. Again, he comes back and again an explosive shot takes him down fast. He then switches to his Alliance toon again. The rogue has a long insult-fest with him, which I miss half of it since I’m ignoring the toon and then I wander off. But that sets the pattern for the next hour or two. I’d wander off, finding quests here and there and then come back to off his warlock. The rogue and a dark knight also join in the fun. Still takes the idiot some time to realize that whatever “fun” he’s having is going to be spoiled by us.

Why did I bother? Because I hate guys who think it’s cool to mess up the fun of others. Auberdine is the first area NE players hit after getting off of Teldrassil. Usually you’re still relatively low, still getting the hang of your character and the game you’ve just entered. But if you get there and you can’t do anything because everything is dead and you really can’t go to other areas (maybe Azuremyst Isle but the boat to wetlands doesn’t do you much), well, that reduces the enjoyment of the game. There is a some leeway, if a horde raid comes sweeping by on the way to Azuremyst or Darnassus, they do tend to leave a lot of bodies. But this guy was just killing vendors and quest givers to be a jerk and sticking around to kill them when they respawn. He was purposely trying to frustrate and piss off people, I bet he just laughed and taunted low-level players who tried to stand up to him. I know the type. So, spending the time to slap him hard was worth it.

Sorry, it’s a pet peeve of mine. I’ll get into it more in another post. But as I wander around, I got an invite to a Heroic Violet Hold, which was the daily. So I say “sure” and join in. It was three paladins and a warrior and man that gives you some nice buffs. I was peaking out at around 2800 dps, which is a lot for me. One of the paladins gave me a run for my money on dps and damage though. Not that I was surprised, I’ve run with that paladin before when he was protection specced and he would put out around 1800 dps as a tank! He had respec for this run, put on some ret gear he had lying around and was boosting close to 2400 dps! As you can guess the run went very well, very fast, and it wasn’t long before I was wandering around Kalimdor again.

While running around aimlessly through Desolace, I see a LFM request for a 10-man Obsidian Sanctum. I was hoping for a 25-man but I figure I might as well see how my new build does in a raid situation. Apparently it was a guild who was doing a run and needed to PUG the other 5 people for the run. Very smooth run, no wipes and I believe no deaths throughout the run. Everyone did their job very well. I was third on damage and dps, just behind the other hunter by a couple thousand total damage and less than a hundred dps. Then we loot and somehow I managed to roll a 100 for the tier gloves token. Which in turn, becomes the new Heroes’ Cryptstalker Handguards for me. Not bad for a random run. Plus, now I can use the emblems of heroism I was saving up for that token for something else. Oh yeah, and I also got the Besting the Black Dragonflight achievement. Kinda funny that I’ve done OS on heroic a couple times but this was the first time in normal mode.

Of course, it also causes some concern when I equip my new gear. I had gotten the chestpiece of the set previously. Switching out the gear costs me some ap, over a full % of crit, and some hit rating but gains me some haste, armor penetration and 5% more damage from pets. Not the way I like my numbers to go. But I eventually come to a compromise but socketing some new gems. In the OS run, I had missed a total of 3 shots out of the 700+ I shot, so less than .5% of my shots were missing. Still annoys me, but that why I still keep my pointy stick around. Switching to that should guarantee I don’t miss any shots in a raid. I’m still sitting at a little over 4k ap with dragonhawk up and just a tad over 30% crit. My hit is at a comfortable 7% with my knobby stick and over 8% with my pointy stick. I do kind of wonder who at Blizzard thought it was funny to put so many blue sockets in hunter gear. Okay, I understand that it’s because it’s supposed to supplement our stats and so that we put stuff in there other than agility, crit or hit gems, but it’s still annoying.