How Is Surv Working Out?

The spec: 5/14/52 Survival

The (Major) Glyphs: Viper, Steady, Serpent

The Pet Spec: Pure DPS, baby.

The Gear: Mostly purple.

Thoughts: Alvar counts as ~400 dps. Must not let kitty die, even as Surv! With Alvar still up I'm constantly seeing above 2k dps, otherwise I drop to about 1700. Lag is still killing my DPS - I'm sure if I wasn't seeing 2k ms and tiny random lag spikes during a boss battle, I'd managed 2k DPS on my own, with Alvar being pure gravy. Ah well, not much I can do on that front.

I have cleared Naxx to the Four Horsemen, and seen Sarth die on both 25 and 10-man, no drakes. Next goal: Malygos! His fight looks awesome, with the mages on flying circles you can hijack, and the platform exploding just so you can be picked up by red drakes to shoot fireballs into Maly's face... Aah, I so want to try it, even if I fail miserably. Oh yeah, and I want the rest of my Naxx achievements!

I have GOT to finish upgrading my gear to the dungeon purples I can get... My rings and trinkets are fine, but that helm and those boots have GOT to go! (Not to mention the helm is fugly as hell.)

A Bitter-Sweet Goodbye

Today we watch as another blog of huge importance (for me and many Hunters, anyway) shuts down for at least three months. For once, though, I understand and completely agree with the reason - usually the blogs I read just cite "real life" and leave it at that, but our good Daniel Howell of BRKWWA has explained why. I won't go into that, just head over and read the post. I'll wait.

I'm not going to turn this into a eulogy - the guy isn't dead, he's just not blogging/playing right now. But I do feel the need to thank him better than I could in the comments, thus this post.

Thank you, BRK, for teaching me how to trap and kite, the mechanics of aggro and why it's so important to Feign Death early.

Thank you, BRK, for showing me it's ok to love a spec even if it's not the "best" one.

Thank you, BRK, for keeping the love of the Hunter class alive for me through all the nerfs, buffs, lag from my ISP and disapointment from not being progression-worthy DPS.

Thank you most of all, BRK, for the laughs. For not being afraid to admit that you Disengaged off of a boss platform right after the pull. For sharing the conversations between you and your Brain (and incidentally calling attention to the fact that I have some inner dialogue like that, too).

And thank you Daniel for sharing your stories of the Air Force, showing it's not all drills and spittle and running around pointlessly, and inspiring me to take a step out of my comfort zone and talk to a recruiter myself. I always saw a lot of potential, but it always scared the shit out of me too. But hey, you seem to have had good times as well as bad.

We will miss you while you are gone, and if that ends up being forever, well... Thanks for all the fish.

-Eric (Xanthelei, Alliance - Suramar)

Bring It On Home

Well, it's been a while. I simply wasn't having fun playing on Xanth, as Suramar is a plain PvE server, I can't seriously raid in anything progression, and I remember days of Huntering around Azeroth with no lag.

So what changed? Well, Tuesday night my best RL friend called me up.

"Hey E, you up to doing a 10 man Naxx with the guild? We got a lot of people interested with alts, but we need more DPS."

"I don't know, M..."

"Come on, we haven't raided together in too long. And I'll be on my priest! I'll heal Alvar for ya."

".... Fine, I'll go sign up on the forums."

So I do so, and the raid gets underway. Full guild alt/second string raid, nothing much to be proud of, but hey, it's been a while and maybe I'll get some achievements I haven't managed to snag yet. We start clearing the Spider wing, and lo and behold, Maexxna drops her Wraith Spear - and I'm the only one who wants it. /cheer! Nice upgrade, even if I'm losing some hit with it.

Move along a bit, and we're killing Gluth. I dislike Gluth because, even as a Hunter, all I can really contribute to chew toy kiting is my trap. Seriously, my lag is bad enough I can't kite shit around a frost trap and keep aggro off the pocket healer! Sad times... So we had the holy pally kite them around, I unleashed all the Survival DPS I could, and we got the kill. What drops? The token for my tier chest! Did I mention we had no Shamans, and the Warrior had it already?

"I think the GMs are trying to tell me to come play Xanth again, M."

"You should."

Last night we finished everything up to the Four Horsemen (had a few troubles with our Spriest tanks in the back eating it, thus making the raid explode - is it bad I found the latter part hilarious?) and I picked up the tokens for both the legs and the shoulders.

I am now 3/3 in tier from Naxx 10. Plus an awesome polearm. In a matter of two nights.

Wakey wakey Xanth, we have baddies to shoot in the face!