One Thing

One Thing.

If I could have one thing, one wish for Cataclysm. One all powerful choice to affect the game, what would I ask for?

I want to see my Frostsaber Kaylee running beside me while I'm riding a ground mount again.

I really miss that.

What Happened @ My Place Last Night

Watch more SPIKE videos on AOL VideoThe cats were tearing up the house last night around 4 a.m.

My cats were tearing up the house last night around 4 a.m.

Then this happened....poor Egypt.

Hero of the Realm

The Back Story
For the past year I have been living by myself in the house I have owned since the year 2000.

I had a few pets in that time, but after the Great Escape of my two conures I just hadn't gotten around to getting any new pets.

Two days prior to my arm surgery I received a phone call from my friend T. G. She had found out about four abandoned Siamese cats.

T.G. knows that I grew up with Siamese and have been halfway thinking about finding one or two rescue cats to bring into my home.

The story she told me was that some unknown person had lost his mortgage, and just before vacating the house the bozo booted these four cats out to fend for themselves.

The kittens then lived under a car for about three weeks with no food or water source and finally the man's friendly neighbor found them, brought them home and began caring for them.

They called the shelter where T.G. volunteers, and that is how I got the word.

Meeting the Kids
So I headed across town to meet the family knowing full well that I would probably be bringing home two of them.

Sure enough there were two boy kittens, both absolutely beautiful Siamese Seal Points, and two Himalayans, one short haired one long. All of them with bright and healthy blue eyes, very talkative, friendly, and looking pretty good given their ordeal.

The Seal Points are both young enough to have recovered fairly quickly, but the ladies are a little older and they were still showing not much more than skin and bones.

After meeting them, and hearing about their story I picked out two. The short haired Himalayan was very sweet, and came right too me. She actually could be the twin of my very first cat Boswell from when I was in the 6th grade.

The sweet lady that had taken them in was calling her Egypt 'cause she has that distinct Siamese shape to her head and has HUGE blue eyes and looks like the cats you see in the ancient history books.

Looking at the Seal Points I saw that the younger of the two was a little more laid back, and had everyone convinced that he was the shy one of the bunch....(phhht!! you can't kid a kidder. I know that act by heart, I gave him big points for it thouh.). He has the prettiest ice blue eyes and absolutely gorgeous coloring.

I named him Hamlet right off the bat, and both cats acted like they understood what might be happening.

I explained that I couldn't pick them up until Saturday (it was Tuesday) after I got my arm fixed, and the lady was ok with holding them for me until then.

Bringing them Home
Wednesday came and went, and the surgery went so well that Willow, my ride too and from, took me out Kittie shopping. On the way I called T.G. to let her know I would be able to get the kids home on the following day, Thursday.

W. and I had a blast getting toys, a scratching post, collars, tags, litter box, food and other cat essentials. I set everything up in the master bath room of the house figuring that they could call that home base for a week, or until they were comfy with bioooooooooooooooooooo (<----- Hamlet says hello btw).

So Thursday evening we loaded up my one animal carrier and a large cardboard box to transport them home.

After a long and tearful good-bye from their rescuers, we loaded them up and made the long journey home. I am here to tell you keeping a kitten in a cardboard box with one arm is a sling ain't no easy task!

After the trek we attempted to move the cats into the bathroom, but they decided under my bed was a much safer place to hang. So once they settled down in relative safety, I shooed T.G. (a classic mother hen) out so they could be alone for a little while to get over their latest trauma of being separated from their other two family members.

Checking in every ten minutes or so to give comforting words, and check breathing and heart rates I let them have the room for the evening. They responded immediately to food, water, and the cat box.

The Past Few Days.
Since arriving, I have watched them explore the bedroom and master bath, try out the toys and furniture, and they are coming to accept me as their third family member.

I knew we would be OK when the flying tackles started in my bathroom Friday night around 4 a.m. :)

They have been making small reconnaissance missions into the living room and kitchen for the past two days.

Last night they had a grand adventure when I left the bedroom door open, and a kitchen light on for them to explore the house with.

It was flying tackles all night in the living room.

And Today....
They have been exploring the house with no reservations this morning. As I have been writing this Hamlet has been saving me from the attacking small-mouse-like-toy-things. Thus earning the esteemed title of Hero Of The Realm.

Later today we head into the vet for full check ups, shots, and whatever else we need. First I need to go get a second pet carrier, and (crossing fingers) hopefully my iMac will be ready for pick up so I can get back online and earn my flying mount before Wrath releases.


And that folks has been my weekend.

If you live in Las Vegas and are wanting a cat or two, I know of two wonderful, friendly, and beautiful Simese kittens that are in need of a home. Feel free to email me here viktelmd@gmail.com & I will get you in touch with the right people.

Peace.

Back at Home

I made it through the arm surgery with flying colors!

There is little to no pain, so my focus is now all about bringing down any swelling.

A little difficult with my arm in a sling and locked out at 90 degrees, fortunately my prior experience recovering from a skydiving accident left me with a trick up my sleeve.

Here is the plan. I have a large cooler that I will fill with ice water. Next I will triple bag my arm with garbage bags, and then keep the elbow on the rocks for 20 minutes or so.

Basically I'll keep it in there through two commercial breaks while watching Deep Space Nine. Mom gifted me the series for my birthday and I am now in season 5. The war with the Dominion is just starting.

Afterwards a quick towel off, remove the bags an Viola, one dry cold arm.

I want to go after the swelling as much as I can. Once it comes down the body can get started with the healing process.

For that I can rely on 12 years of healing breaks, bruises, and the bumps that came with my Martial Art training. I am armed with a plethora of both homemade and commercial herbal medicines that should help reduce the recovery time.

And adjusting my training will give me an awesome PT program. One that got me back to full use of my ankle (the result of my skydiving bounce), and two other broken feets.

Weirdly enough I really get a kick out of this kind of thing.

Later this morning I will be checking on my iMac. The new logic card I had installed went bad so Zaphod (I named my iMac Zaphod 'cause he runs two screen. ...two screens = two heads...get it?) went in for his own surgery.

Thank goodness for insurance and extended warranties!

And even more exciting, I will be bringing home my two rescued Siamese kittens this evening. With a liitle help from Naioka, a local guildie, I got to the pet store and picked up most of what I need for my new roomies: Egypt and Hamlet.

I'm way excited!!!

Double Trappin'

Or: Would you like one lump or two?

I got nice screen-shot of my first ever, non-premeditated double trap.

In the past I've double trapped just fine, only it was part of the plan of attack or I was practicing. This is the first time it happened instinctively.
/woot!

The setup for double trapping is pretty easy. Set up your Freeze Trap down and wait for the traps cool down timer to expire. The trap will remain primed for another 30 sec, so pull the first mob into the trap, and when the trap activates immediately drop another trap at the feet of the second mob.

*Bing*

Two trapped mobs.

In this case I had three mobs, one caster and two melee. I dropped my first trap and waited for the cool down to expire, sent the pet after the caster and fired a Multi-Shot. The Multi Shot brought the two melee mobs to me while my pet then tanked the caster.

The first melee mob hit the trap and froze, I backed up a hair and dropped the second trap. All the while Auto-Shooting the caster.

You can see that my pet Shepard has Bestial Wrath activated which means he is doing an additional 50% damage to his target.

Pretty nifty.

Patch 2.4 Hunter Mana Issues

Or OOM and Drinkin' Like a Fish.
Lowbie Hunters OOM.
Patch 2.4 introduced an unannounced, or unintended change to the Hunter Class' ability to regenerate Mana. In a nutshell they reduced it's efficiency so maintaining adequate Mana while grinding became more difficult.

On Viktel, my level 70 hunter, I simply switched over to Aspect of the Viper and didn't give it a second thought.

However as time passed and I listened to podcasts and read my favorite blogs I discovered more and more people complaining about being out of mana. I finally had the chance to break out my Orc hunter Lassiter and check the situation out for myself.

The Old Attack Pattern
There are two big challenges of being a Beast Master Hunter in solo play. First is not to pull aggro away from your pet while it is tanking for you. Second is to avoid running out of Mana. All of a hunter's special shots use Mana, and so does our all important Mend Pet spell.

This lead to a commonly used attack pattern that would slowly build your threat, and save mana.

Here is that pattern, it is assumed that you have Growl turned on and it is spamming.

1. Cast Hunter's Mark and send in your pet via the pet attack macro*
2. Let 2 Growls go by. This allows your pet to get a good head start on building aggro.
3. In the event that you are attacking a Mob that is elite, or several levels above you cast Mend Pet which is a heal-over-time spell. This will help mitigate the damage your pet is taking. You can skip this step against Mobs that are easy for your pet to handle.
   
4. Your opening shot should be Serpent Sting, and this will trigger your Auto Shot
   
5. At about 5 - 7 seconds after you use Serpent Sting let off a single Arcane Shot.
6. Repeat from step three if the fight is a long one and your sting wears off.
   

Being level 42 Lassiter is grinding experience, and I left him resting in Stonard. I mounted up, and found a few Crockolisks just north of the Orc encampment.

Sure enough I was sittin' on my @ss in the Swamp of Sorrows after killing a mere three Crockolisks thinking to myself; "Self, this stinks. There has got to be a solution."

*The Send Pet Hunter's Mark Macro:
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack

How I Got Around It.
Reflecting on my endgame hunter, it stands to reason we might just need to tack on a little Mana regeneration. For our endgame hunters it is pretty simple, just pop into Aspect of the Viper and forget about it.

So what we need is something that acts like the afore mentioned aspect. A quick check at the Auction House for some Lesser Mana Oil met with some success. One application of this on my 2 handed axe did the trick nicely. I played for two hours without having much difficulty at all.

The old attack pattern still works fine.
The Mana Oil lasts for a full hour and since it is applied to our weapon it will last through death. Each bottle of oil has 5 applications each.

So for now Lesser Mana Oil solves the problem. Later on when Lass reaches Outlands I will probably upgrade to Superior Mana Oil until I get Aspect of the Viper at level 64. Its a bit of a bummer that I will be spending gold to maintain a grind, but in the long run its not that big of a deal.

Have a great day.

Edit: I did notice some OOM issues while working on leveling up my second pet, Patches. I found that I had to slow way down on both the stings and the arcane shots. I am attributing this to the fact that his DPS is much lower than my Lion who is always within one level of myself.

The little guy holds aggro fine, he just can't kill the Mobs as fast as his bigger brother.

2.4 & OOM

Along with all the Sunwell goodness, the 2.4 patch also brought us some mana regeneration issues. Not such a big deal inside instances where I tend to top off my mana anytime I hear another character munching or drinking, but out on the grind I found this to be a little bit annoying.

I haven't tried any PvP since the patch hit, but I imagine that is where it will hit us hunters hardest since burst damage is king in that venue.

In order to adapt we will need to pay a little more attention to our mana usage in the field. Here are a few suggestions for conserving your mana while grinding PvE.

Kick on your Aspect of the Viper; get your mana regeneration going. While grinding we want to build our DPS on a slow curve to avoid pulling aggro off our pets anyway, so switching over from Aspect of the Hawk will be benificial for more than one reason.

Your first shot should be a sting. Personally while grinding I like Serpent Sting. Since I'm sending in my pet Kaylee with a Mend Pet cooking I don't worry about reducing the damage she is taking. The faster the mobs die, the faster I'm grinding. If she comes back low on health I just top her off with another Mend Pet.

Use your Sting's DoT countdown as a timer to apply one Arcane Shot every 14 secs. That's all you really need to do. Your AutoShot will take care of the rest. If you are like me and don't simply spam a macro, feel free to hit Kill Command when that procs, we need to keep those reflexes sharp.

Each PvE fight looks like this for me:
1. Send in the pet via my Pet Attack/Hunter's Mark macro:
/petattack
/cast Hunter's Mark

2. Let 2 or 3 Growls go by.

3. Open with Serpent Sting and follow with a quick Mend Pet if needed. Here is a spiffy macro for that:
/castsequence reset=5 Serpent Sting, Mend Pet

4. When the the DoT counter shows 5 seconds remaining I pop off an Arcane Shot.

5. I hit my Kill Command hot key when that ability procs. I am currently using the add on Critical Alert which allows you to assign a specific sound to your Crits. When I here "bwoop", I mash button #5 on my Speedpad.

Usually I don't have to re-apply the sting before the fight ends.

When I get a little bored of the routine I will practice various skills. I will lead a mob around with freeze traps. I like to practice my Misdirection pulls, double trapping, jumpshots and kiting too. But the whole time I am really working on my managing my Mana pool.

My goal is to be aware of my mana usage to the point that in a boss fight I will have jut a smidge left as the boss dies. Mana not used is damage not done.

Its kind of a balancing act.

Anyhoo, with the new changes in Patch 2.4 hunters will need to spend a little time relearning some Mana control, but not to worry before long it will all be as rote as it was before the changes.

Kaylee's Current Raid Spec

I've been playing a bit with different specs for both myself and Kaylee. My hope was to have 3 pets up and running for different raid types but that hasn't materialized yet.

Since I tamed Mal I have been working on leveling him up. He is now at 62, too small for instances yet; and I have been filling the holes in my pet taming spell book so I've had to keep an open slot in the stable for trash pets.

I am starting to try the heroics daily quests as well; I need the Badges of Justice for some armor upgrades. Since Kaylee may be tanking when not running Kara I might be adjusting things a little to keep her survivability up. I'll sacrifice a bit of DPS until I have all the Badges I need, but that wasn't unexpected.

This is the Pet Spec that I am currently taking into Karazahn:
Growl rank 8
Cower rank 7
Claw rank 7
Dash rank 3
Natural Armor rank 8
Avoidance rank 2
Cobra Reflexes rank 1
Arcane Resistance rank 3
Fire Resistance rank 3
Shadow Resistance rank 3
Greater Stamina rank 1

Until I can get Mal up and into instances I just might back off on the Dash and Stamina so I can get some nature resistance and max out Natural Armor.

My issue is currently less about money given that it only costs 10 silver to respec a pet, and more about time. With no pet trainers in the Outlands I just don't want to get caught with shadow resists when an invite comes in for Steam Vaults. Updates as they happen.

Tandani's Owl

I have once again started rotating between my alts. My hope is that this will keep their individual play styles fresh in my mind, as I have totally spaced what I was doing with my mage and my paladin.

Today was Tandani's day to play. He is currently leveling up to 20 in the Ghostlands using this guide:
Snowflake's Guide to the Ghostlands
So far the graphics are better, the loot is definitely better than the Barrens, and the overall zone is smaller with the quests grouped together so you can complete several in one run.

Anyhoo, I logged in today and just didn't wanna quest. I did want to play and when you are on a hunter that means its time to do something interesting with your pets.

I am one of those hunters that loves rare or unique pets. I have characters that have camped in trees for a week, used invisibility potions to get into Razor Fen Krawl, and braved mass snow drifts just for the opportunity to tame a specific pet. Its my own self imposed quest I suppose.

So the question is, what would be fairly unique for a level 13 Troll hunter to have as his best friend. A quick trip over to Petopia tells us that the only Owls in the game prior to being in Felwood are found in Teladrassil, the Night Elf starting zone. The owls can learn Claw, Dive, and Screech. I have claw, Dive is a level 30 skill, but Screech can be learned off a Carrion Bird in Westfall.

Not one, but two trips into enemy territory on a RPPVP server. Hmmmmn, now that sound interesting. The end result should be a fun and somewhat unique pet that has a good group debuff for the level 19 battlegrounds.

I'm in.

So I pack up my bow, stable my scorpid Nerf and head off for the home of the Night Elves. About halfway through Ashenvale I get mobbed by spiders and go down pretty fast. I know a little trick for rezzing in a different zone so I make the rest of the run as a ghost.

The run takes me through Maestra's Post, up through Darkshore, onto the boat to Teladrassil, through Darnassus, and finishes at graveyard just outside Dolanaar. I rez and as quick as I can get down the hill and into a hiding spot.

It was a quiet day in Dolanaar, I only encountered one Elf. She was running South past me and tossed me a friendly wave as she went by. I guess a level 13 troll with rez sickness and no pet isn't much of a concern. I didn't make much of an invasion force.

Once my rez sickness passed, it only lasts 3 min on the PvP servers apparently, it was time to find an owl and clear the area pronto. Fortunately for me there was an owl right on the other side of the tree I was hiding in.

I popped around the corner, there was the owl. No Elves were in site to interrupt my taming spell, so I grabbed me a new bird. I fed the bird and hearthed back to the Ghostlands.

"There ya go Tandani," I thought to myself. "I bet a Troll in the Ghostlands with an Owl will raise an eyebrow or two."

Just then a Tauren hunter ran by with his Level 16 Owl and tossed me a friendly wave.

/d'oh
/cast hand+forehead

I freakin' got him!

Rak'Shiri has been the cat I have wanted for I don't know how long! His skin is a wonderful light teal-ish green and I fell in love with this guy the first time I saw him on Petopia. There are only two cats in the game that look like this, Rak'Shiri himself, and another cat that spawns for a Horde only quest named Shy-Rotam.

Rak'Shiri patrols Frostsaber Rock in the North of Winterspring, reportedly has a 35-40 hour spawn, and has been eluding my efforts to so much as find him for several months now.

I had actually given up on being able to find and tame the actual Rak'Shiri NPC, and had heard that as of the 2.3 patch the Shy-Rotam quest was now available to Alliance players now too.

Disappointed at the idea of "cheating" to get this great looking cat I headed to Everlook to see if the rumor was true. I say cheating because I am enough of a purist to want to tame the actual NPC and not just another cat with his same graphic.

Its a hunter thing, weird I know.

My Orc hunter Lassiter sat in a tree for a week for the opportunity to have Humar the Pridelord running by his side, but man is he beautiful. I can't wait to see Humar (now named Shepard) all big and red tearing the face off of some Burning Legions boss in Outlands.

Anyhow, I found Storm Shadowhoof in Everlook, and yes indeedy, the questline for Shy-Rotam was now available to me. I first had to find and take out Ursius of the Shardtooth, and then Brumeran of the Chillwind, before receiving the quest to summon and kill Shy-Rotam herself.

This took about an hour of hunting the animals down, Ursius was fairly easy being just north of Everlook. Brumeran was another story though, he has a large patrol area in Southern Winterspring and took a while to find. Back I went to Everlook to get the final step of the quest, then another 20 min. of grinding out the Sacred Frostsaber Meat needed to summon Shy.

I proceeded back up to Frostsaber Rock, took a look around for any Mobs that might cause me a problem while casting my tame spell and dropped my freeze trap. My count down timers on traps had just about expired when who should saunter past me? Why non other than Rak'Shiri himself.

HOLY CRAP!!!

I immediately pulled him into the trap for fear of another hunter snagging him. I had to temporarily let River go (she understood), and then let the taming love fly.

Now I have the coolest cat in the game, re-named Malcolm, running next to me. He is level 57 so we have some work to do getting him ready for raiding but I can just tell Mal will be my favorite. He already dinged 58 while grinding out some dps snacks to help him along with those higher level Mobs. Next we'll go get us some Warp Burgers! Yum, Yum!

River, by the way, is back in the stable. I stopped by the Blackwind Saber cave in Skettis, and she was walking her old beat. And Kaylee is getting a re-spec tonight, she'll be off tanking a lot in the near future so we will be getting her set for that.