A Hunter's Story

Happy Labor Day!

Might tell you ’bout the fun we had w/ the nephew if I get a chance, because he was fun, but regardless, I hope you had a great day today!

Ok, Maybe it’s me, but all the jerk DK Tanks have become jerk healers. And idiot ones. I mean, seems the remaining DK Tanks are a lot nicer than they used to be. And the healers all seem to be on xyz alt, well geared, and have no clue how to heal. Like the Tree that complained they didn’t have enough time to get any heals off on the tank. Seems strange when you have an ICC geared healer and a Defense Capped tank w/ 32k health. But when you realize the healer was using Healing Touch only, and never even tried any instant casts like Rejuv… Yeah, no wonder the tank was dieing before the healer could heal them!

Another one that was annoying, was the one that got into the group and 5 seconds later said “Tank’s not geared enough. Bye”. So being defense capped and geared well enough for Ulduar isn’t good enough for a heroic anymore, eh? Oh well, we moved on at a pretty quick clip anyway with the new healer, so I’m glad the stupid healer wasted their dungeon timer CD. I’d be willing to bet we would have gone slower with them healing anyway!

But in short, these things keep happening. I guess it’s just the natural rotation of what we need most and what people gravitate to without learning the necessary skills. I mean, I play a healer, tank & 2 dps. But I spent the time learning how to play them so I do it decently or better. Or more importantly, I’m nice. I say hello. I say thank you. And if someone says “mana”, I wait for them, not run off like mad. And if I’m a healer and feel like the group could go faster because I’m barely dipping below 98% mana… I help DPS. I don’t sit there and yell “go faster, go faster, go faster” every fight. Even when the pally tank and all dps are out of mana… Yeah. Quite simply – “Xanther says Play Nice!” And I can’t wait for Cata so our friends all come back & play w/ us, lol.

Ok, so on the right is an image of the Blood of Heroes. Now that you know what it looks like, what is it for and how do you find them? Well, as it is not surprising, it’s one of the many things needed for my favorite achievement. Or, well, the one we’ve been working on for ages…

Anyway, how to find it? Run in circles in EPL. How to find it in a decent amount of time?

1. Get an addon such as Cartographer which allows you to use waypoints.
2. Create 5 macros and insert the text below. I recommend labeling them One, Two, Three, Four and Five.
3. Fly to EPL, specifically Light’s Hope Chapel.
4. Mount up and punch all 5 of the macros, in order from 1 through 5.
5. Follow the arrows. When you come upon a blood, open it, kill the 1-2 leets that spawn
6. Continue following the arrows. Clean, rinse, repeat.

Expect to pick up roughly 4 in a run, and expect a full run to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-45 minutes. The macros below I have put the waypoints in what I’ve found to be as efficient as possible, and it hits all the spawn points. It’s pretty darn accurate too, so if you get to the waypoint and nothing is there, then just go to the next one. You don’t have to look in a 30′ circle or anything – it’d be right there. Oh, and as an fyi, when you get to the western edge (and the arrow says you have something like 2500′ to go to the next waypoint), just continue up that path, and go through the tunnel. The waypoint is pointing to the next spot, but it’s through the mountains. So go through the tunnel, and then follow the arrow. When you’ve hit all the waypoints, you’ll end up right back at Light’s Hope Chapel. If you have time, punch the macros & do it again. And if you try it, and appreciate the work I’ve done in writing out the waypoints, in order, and grouping them in the right length for macros… Then post a comment that says thank you. It will let me know there’s actually a reason to do posts like this, lol. So anyway, here they are:

ONE
/way 72.8 51.7
/way 70.2 49.6
/way 70.6 45.1
/way 68.3 45.5
/way 60.9 47.5
/way 48.8 45.2
/way 45.8 40.1
/way 43.1 35.6
/way 44.6 30.4
/way 40.6 28.2
/way 34.7 22.2
/way 34.5 26.5
/way 34.9 31.0
/way 32.7 32.8
/way 29.8 27.8
/way 30.6 21.5
/way 4.3 45.2

TWO
/way 11.1 58.7
/way 16.7 55.0
/way 17.1 60.6
/way 23.7 58.0
/way 27.1 59.5
/way 23.1 63.3
/way 22.8 63.9
/way 18.1 67.5
/way 23.3 69.0
/way 23.6 68.9
/way 25.5 72.1
/way 18.7 78.1
/way 20.8 81.2
/way 25.1 78.9
/way 30.2 73.6
/way 37.3 73.0
/way 43.6 73.2

THREE
/way 42.1 68.3
/way 41.9 64.2
/way 38.1 69.1
/way 37.3 73.0
/way 30.2 73.6
/way 30.7 70.2
/way 31.6 66.8
/way 32.8 64.5
/way 30.4 61.6
/way 33.1 59.6
/way 37.2 59.7
/way 41.9 57.9
/way 44.4 61.0
/way 50.7 52.9
/way 51.5 57.6
/way 53.6 58.9
/way 54.5 56.2

FOUR
/way 58.6 61.3
/way 55.1 61.4
/way 56.6 63.8
/way 52.7 65.6
/way 54.6 69.5
/way 52.9 69.5
/way 51.8 69.8
/way 52.3 75.0
/way 53.6 72.7
/way 54.5 74.0
/way 59.7 74.3
/way 63.3 71.7
/way 63.5 73.9
/way 63.7 76.7
/way 65.2 74.2
/way 68.0 75.5
/way 68.5 76.8

FIVE
/way 70.6 71.7
/way 68.2 70.2
/way 66.9 71.7
/way 65.8 68.8
/way 63.0 67.9
/way 63.0 64.1
/way 62.5 60.8
/way 65.3 63.1
/way 67.8 63.7
/way 71.1 66.0
/way 73.0 61.2
/way 73.3 57.5
/way 74.7 53.8

Yep, that’s right, we’re moving. Lots of craziness at my current job. Lots of changes in the last year (9 people resigned – 5 in the last 5 weeks). And I’ve been looking to move up for a while but… yeah, craziness there…

So anyway, going to be here still through the end of October, but I have a lot to wrap up and hand off. Our “Super-Bowl” is in early OCT and I can’t really leave a number of the people before then. At least, not without making lots of extra work for my friends and coworkers. Plus it gives us time to pack and get ready to move since we’re also going halfway across the country. But considering I’m going from “Assistant Director” with about 45 direct reports that aren’t considered direct reports when it comes to title or pay, and going to be a Regional Manager for a group of companies in various states where I can actually be a manager? And be paid an appropriate salary? And be able to use my MBA? Yeah, pretty much a no-brainer. Plus we’ll be close to Lady X’s fam which will be nice. Of course, there are a few mixed feelings there… Closer to the in-laws could be… interesting. Except we actually get along with them, so I think it’ll be good. But anyway, here’s the cool part:

Yeup. Like 15 within 15 minutes of where we’ll be moving. And the nearest movie theater will be 45 minutes closer than it is here. Same with most things like Lowe’s and more! Granted, we’ll miss lots of things like foliage season, but it’ll be nice for a spell. Right now I’m just looking forward to getting away from the craziness going on in my office, moving somewhere fresh, moving up in the world, and opening doors for our future. And a decent ISP. Man it’ll be nice to have faster & more reliable internet…

So in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little afk. The above hopefully explains why. As well as why I’ll be a bit afk for the next few months as we prepare to move, move, get settled, and about that time Cataclysm should be out!

Here’s to great things happening, and to a bright looking future!

Yay! Been meaning to post this for a while, but yay, Lady X can tank!

Been working on some alts, now up to 78, so she’s been on her DK and me on my mage. Originally, her lvl 80 warrior was going to tank, but frankly she just had a lot more fun just running in and hitting things on a cute little warrior gnome. But since we’ve been leveling up another set of alts, she’s been tanking whenever we had a bunch of dungeon quests. And she’s been doing well!

Until the last month or two, I hadn’t really used the LFG for regular dungeons, let alone the ones at the right level while leveling. I’ve noticed you mostly run into two types of people. The impatient or the ignorant. Essentially, you see the person who is used to lvl 80 heroic runs and wants to push the group faster and faster and faster. Nevermind that it’s physically impossible to go any faster because their DPS isn’t quite what they think it is. Or, you run into the person who is on their main. Congrats to them for figuring out how the LFG works! But I usually end up offering helpful tips, like which way to go…

So the one person is trying to make everyone go faster, the other is making the group slow, and I’m in the middle, going “chill” to both, lol. The poor healer is trying just to keep everyone alive, forget keeping them topped off. Especially when you have 3 DPS and they are: 1 is trying to tank, 2 is doing their job, and 3 is hitting random mobs. And the poor tank is frantically trying to keep the mobs on themselves when it’s all just a Charlie Foxtrot.

So anyway, Lady X used to help Raid Lead by organizing the raid. She preferred helping by scheduling and getting the group together rather than running the show on day-of; didn’t want to deal with which direction to go first, which pull, who is assigned to what, etc. So I think it’s cool she stepped over that barrier! But I also don’t blame her for being wary of trying to tank. If there’s a wipe, everyone blames someone, and the tank is an easy target. Whether or not it’s their fault. I guess it’s a tough balancing act on Bliz’ part of trying to make tanking easy enough to deal with idiots, but still hard enough to make it a challenge and be fun.

But anyway, I figure I should help her practice when we’re just questing… I pull lots of extra mobs, AoE, and make her save me! Hehehe… Ok, well, I guess I’m not that bad. I do pull an extra mob sometimes, or just go in and AoE blast stuff. But I have Ice Block if I screw up. And I only pull as much as I think she can handle. And it’s a good thing I’m on a mage instead of my hunter, because then I could play some real nasty games! Hehehehe… Ok, thinking about getting some flowers or something on the way home from work today because our couch is comfy, but not that comfy…… Lol. ‘Sides, I’m not too woried. The next pair we’re leveling is my DK and her mage. So I have no doubt she’ll do the same, if not worse, to me soon.

So anyway, I post this for 3 reasons. First, because lately we haven’t been playing WoW too much, and when we do play its mostly leveling which means nothing really new, so I have little content. And since I have content, it gets posted. Second, to compliment my wife because I know she’ll read this (/hug!). Third, and the real reason, lol, is to brag.

Yay us! They finally came in – aren’t they so cute! Yes, we did finally get authenticators. Been meaning to for a while. Combine that with a separate email address we use solely for WoW (since Bliz is stupid and makes you use your email address…) and we’re now about as secure as we can be. Can the accounts still be hacked? Probably. But at least we’re doing everything we can to help prevent it. Ironic, considering we play less now than before, lol. But still worth it imho. The real trick though? Putting them on 2 separate key chains so we know which is mine and which is Lady X’s, lol.