Spithoof's hunt

Where is the jsutice?

2008-07-23T11:59:00.004+03:00

Playing with some equipment tools i found out that this is so unfairly easy to build a insane HP and armor capped druid tank without even trying to visit the 25ppl raid instances. All you need is to farm 3-4 heroics daily... farm your 500+ Badges of Justice and you're done. There are only 5 other items that you might want to get from other sources, and here's the list:
- Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm for some arena points.
- Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders extremely easy to farm 11.250 honor points and no rating requirement.
- Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch which drops off the 2nd boss in karazhan and should be very easy to get.
- Commendation of Kael'thas which drops from Kael from heroic MgT, and this instance is not that hard for the tank, it requires much more of the team play than decent tanking gear.
- Violet Signet of the Great Protector a reputation reward from the Karazhan, which is more like Badge of Justice farming source after you do it for a couple of times, so you're reaching 2 goals at the same time.

How much time you need to get this goal accomplished? 1.5 moths and you're done! Comparing to months of 25ppl farming for almost the same gear... ouch!

WoW Vacation

2008-07-20T11:47:00.002+03:00

Now i finally got the time to take a rest... and from this very exciting game as well. You just have to go and change your way of life sometimes. But i still will post about the gear updates. Not about the hunter though, as i don't think giving away your reputation is way too much. I don't believe that anyone can handle that beast better than me. I mean i'm the only one who know precisely what i need, what i have to do and where to put my ass at.

Druid is just another story. I've been sharing this toon for long enough now. My friend has played from level 45 with it, and helped me to level it. Now he's helping to gear it up running Karazhan while i'm out. Also he's running heroics... and i never did that amount of heroics per day myself, so he's a real fanatic in this. Running UB until he finally got the Idol of Ursoc. That's sick... but that's how we can make it geared up for ZA fast enough, as i really want to see it tanking stuff there.

Sleeping hunter

2008-07-14T17:07:00.003+03:00

Last Saturday i did the most funniest thing ever. I spill the raid. Which is 8pm local time for me. And even more. Raid was lacking DPS and couldn't kill Al'ar before the enrage. That was amazing gold saving tiredness!!! And after that i finally got my little bear into the walls of Karazhan. And that was amazing how fast i got my first T4 piece. Very nice gloves! Especially when you have only the PvP honor stuff... Now i'm a bit harder to kill!

Then was the day two of the Karazhan which brought me only healing gear updates but badges made their work! After we left the Karazhan i was lacking only 4 of them to buy the Band of the Swift Paw so we went to the Underbog which has the right number of them. And i finally got my Barkchip Boots as well. What a nice day... even without the T4 helmet.

Tank again

2008-07-12T11:16:00.003+03:00

Yes our guild has finally managed to bring the Teron down, and it was a big surprise to us because we did it from the first pull. Raid DPS was insane for our usual numbers. More than 7 people reached over 1.5K DPS in that fight. Amazing? Yes! Something useful? NO!

That's why i entertain myself with post-raid tanking with my alt druid. And yesterday i got rid of my last green piece of equipment. And that was the shoulders. And what i have now is Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders Which are actually very nice for my current progress.

And finally, after being killed several times by whatever... I was able to tank full Underbog! Nothing really good dropped but still i was able to tank it. I was able to survive those two bog lords. What's next? I think Karazhan... at least i hope so :)

WoW Tanking

2008-07-09T12:17:00.003+03:00

Finally i managed to level my druid to 70! Last 2 levels were in 2 days mainly because i have found the spot for it. I am beaarr. First of all i found myself reading about how to do this with the bear, because i have a little experience with the little 45 level proto-war. I did manage to make myself crit immune very very fast. Actually when i was level 69 i got 8 items in my inventory that were ready to serve. Now i have almost full set for low level tanking.

What was the first thing i wanted to do is ti get the Karazhan key because i don't want to stay in front of the door begging others to open it for me. And that was the time to get some tanking practice. I didn't tank the SL. But i did tank the SV only to the frag. I did tank the Arcatraz including the first boss. And i did tank the BM... full run!!! SV was hard... i could hardly find any abilities... Arca was a bit better and i managed to keep the aggro on boss. But then near the fragment container i was feared into voidwalkers and i did bring one more... and it killed the priest... lucky me, she got SS!

Black Morass. That's the tank's heavens... Only one mob to tank... just stay there and use 3 of your buttons... Absolutely no problems with that. Now i love it! This is my favorite dungeon now! Not with my hunter though...

Conclusion: i hate myself when i pull aggro of the tank now. This is such a pain in the butt to bring some of them back to you... Sorry tankz.

Raid consumables: max DPS

2008-07-06T13:29:00.004+03:00

I'm not going to reveal any top secret tactics to maximize your DPS, I only going to tell the tactics that I use providing the real numbers.

#1: Battle elixir - Elixir of Major Agility. No comments on that. The only real consumable available for SV hunter. No Flask of Relentless Assault doesn't work at all!

#2: Guardian Elixir - Elixir of Major Mageblood. That's the one that you will need to keep your mana regeneration high enough to keep you from using any mana potions and leave this cooldown for Haste Potion.

#3: Potions - Haste Potion. That's our second Bloodlust! We are using slow weapons, that's why haste potions give us more DPS per pot than BM hunters. If there's no free shammy for your party, which i consider to be a bad raid setup, thi potions will bring your DPS much higher that you are used to. If there's no chance to pop your haste potions because you have to use your mana potins - Fel Mana Potion is what will help you to keep AotH on you, and that's lots of DPS.

Now the haste pot tactics. When you pull the boss, give tank a moment to get a solid aggro because you'r going to get the insane TPS from the 20th second of the fight. 20-30 seconds past the pull - pop your Rapid Fire and switch to 1:1. That will move you to the top of aggro list very soon so be careful and don't overaggro. Then you should simple FD and pop the haste potion, it will bring you to almost the same speed as Rapid Fire and you will again switch to 1:1. Now you have 2 minutes cooldown on pots and 2 minutes and 30 seconds on Rapid Fire. That's usually the time when the Bloodlust come, because tank have a solid aggro and your group can deliver it's max DPS again, that's your moment of glory again, so get ready to FD again to drop aggro. 4th minute of the fight - you have your haste pot cooldown ready and you're going to use it again, and after it you'll have you Rapid Fire.

Teron Gorefiend is one of the DPS race fights. This tactics brought me to more than 1600 Personal DPS and 280 pet DPS. Do i have the best gear available? NO! But that's when your hands do the most of the work. You are going to be hasted to about 1.7 speed for 2*15(Rapid fire) + 2*15(Haste potion) + 40(Bloodlust) = 1 minute 40 seconds. That's quite a lot... at least for Teron who's fight is about 4 minutes long. If you don't have a melee pally then you might be screwed up, because that will eat all of your mana very very fast and you'll have to use fel mana potions... that' means that you are not hasted for 30 seconds. What you have to do is to ask your raid leader to give you a shammy and to get the melee pally to put the mana regeneration seal all the time.

Sunfury bow curse

2008-07-03T12:45:00.003+03:00

It seems that my old Sunfury Bow will remain in my hands forever. So many Supremus kills and Legionkiller didn't show up. Archimonde drops whatever he likes but the Bristleblitz Striker. Which one do i want more? 21 agility vs. 28 crit... I think that 28 crit will certainly win the contest, because it also has a 3.00 speed which is better for my hasted and unhasted rotations comparing to 2.90 speed that i currently have. And yes it has better ItemLevel :)

Today we're trying to bring down the Teron. If we succeed in our task, i hope that the Insidious Bands will drop... i really want to get rid of that blue ring.

Now i gonna kill da troolls mon!

2008-06-29T11:39:00.003+03:00

Yesterday I finally got Trollbane in my hands. This is one of easy to get high agility potential 2H weapon in the game. It gives a total of 94 agility. Good old Legacy gives only 75. Although this is a very good 2H weapon i still want to get the Hex lord's daggers, or at least one of them for the insane DPS. Today i hope we'll have enough people to run 25-man and get the new ranged weapon for me :)

Day off...

2008-06-27T10:52:00.003+03:00

Yesterday our guild decided to have a day off because of two reasons. First one is that about 10 members had to do some other stuff in their RL and we can't raid without 5 healers. Second reason was the Russia-Spain football match which team Russia has totally blown up. So that was the day to make some business by myself.

Firstly there was a Karazhan group which i've joined. I still need some pieces of equipment from there. I have do get rid of this last blue piece of my gear - Ravenclaw Band. Even though it's a very nice ring... I still want to swap it for at least Ring of the Recalcitrant which is already in my possession, but i have to find some hit rating to substitute it. So Drape of the Dark Reavers would be the one. Didn't drop though...

So what's next? No raid, Karazhan is done, ZA is unreachable. Heroics? Boooooring. Except the one that I didn't step in yet... MgT, i still want to grab a Breeching Comet as it is one of the highest agility potential one handed weapons that i can reach right now. And it dropped! And i won it! Now as soon as i'll get my Dagger of Bad Mojo i'm going to switch to 2W. This will give me a nice 14 agility boost comparing to good old Legacy.

Today we will try to repeat our success and kill Archimonde again. This time i won't miss my place in raid!

Farming: Chaotic Skyfire Diamond

2008-06-26T13:40:00.002+03:00

437 Coilscar Sirens down, and we finally got that damn recipe! If you are beginner jewel crafter, don't even think of farming it! Better spend this time for epic flying mount farm.

Is it heroic???

2008-06-26T13:35:00.002+03:00

That's what one of our raid members asked after killing Rage Winterchill. Indeed, what has happened?? First bosses of MH are so damn easy now that we can sometimes relax and look how other raid members do their job... That was a very successful raid i should say... 4/5 and now we can clearly state that we can clear MH every week! BT progress is coming, beware Illidian.

Archimonde done!

2008-06-25T07:52:00.002+03:00

Well that's certainly the biggest guild achievement this year, we have cleared the MH, probably the most beautiful instance in the WoW. Unfortunately i've missed it because of RL issues, but i'm 100% in next time there... Even though we've lost our main-off-pally-tank, we're so going to do it again!!!

And i still gonna get my helm today... Arena 3 though.

Agi vs RAP

2008-06-19T23:17:00.003+03:00

What is the idea of any hunter in raid? Right... high DPS numbers! What is the main idea of a survival hunter? High DPS numbers! What is the way to get bigger numbers then? RAP is what makes our damage bigger. But for a survival hunter Agility is what counts, RAP is secondary! And now I'll prove it with maths.

Let's take 10 agility into account. 10 agility is actually 11,5 agility with lightning reflexes, which is 11,5 RAP as well. But that's only the pure RAP, we also take into account 11,5*0.95/4 (0,95 is a 95% debuff uptime) from Expose Weakness, which is additionally 2,7 RAP. Agility is also a crit chance, with 2,23 crit damage multiplier we have about 11,1 more RAP (actually it depends on your real stats, this i've counted based on my own). What we have now is 24,9 RAP. What if we have Blessing of Kings then? We get 1,2 more agility... Which gives about the same as 110% from agility based RAP, so we have 27,4 RAP.

This is very rough calculations, but they show that 1 agility point is more than 2 RAP! If you happen to see 2 items one have 30 RAP more other have 10 more agility, don't even think, take the one with agility, it will burst you over that 30 while buffed in raid.

Archi difficult

2008-06-18T12:01:00.002+03:00

Now we've certainly passed 50 wipes barrier on Archimonde and we managed to down him to 36%, which is 10% more than last time we tried him. Unfortunately this is still not enough to kill him. Looking forward to more tries... He will burn soon! And now I have to go back to real life issues and take a one week brake. So more math and theory coming...

Now that's better!

2008-06-16T13:04:00.003+03:00

Previous post about Zul'Aman was basically about the luck that goes somewhere else when we enter that place. Yesterday finally it was the biggest exception! First time our guild run was successful enough to get 3rd time chest reward! And even more, Signet of Primal Wrath that we wanted so much! But then that's the time to become unlucky again... i rolled 5 while other two hunters rolled more then 70! Whatever... And then we quickly did other bosses and Berserker's Call dropped! Now i was lucky to get 80... but other hunter managed to roll 82...

Anyways, i got my Angelista's Revenge for 60 badges and that's the end of badge loot that i'm interested in. Also guild managed to ged Shade of Akama down while i was spending some time with family. Good job from the guild!

Zul'Anlucky...

2008-06-15T09:30:00.004+03:00

First of all I'd like to mention that our guild has cleared the Zul'Aman several times, and got 2 time chests not once... But every time i get into it something really stupid and unpleasant happens...

Yesterday we went ZA with a nice party. We came to Akil'zon very fast and put our hands on him... 2% left and our tank suddenly DOWN! What the hell??? Everyone was alive! After that we didn't have enough time to get the time chest anymore. Upset? Yes! But we killed him and moved on. Narolakk. Trash is easy and went down fast. Boss was down to 50%, our tank dies again... WHY??? 2 debuffs at the same time... what the hell again??? 2nd try - boss easily done. Next one... Jan'alai. Trash was down, even if not that fast... 50% of boss, ANOTHER TANK DIES!!! What the hell in this world will make your tank die? Why is it alway happening when i go there? Again boss down on 2nd attempt. And then, to make my day even worse - 5 wipes on Halazzi, and 3 of them just because his saber lash didn't split on tanks... they were standing one in another but it still didn't split.

Will we ever go to Zul'Aman again? May be after the expansion at level 80...

Boredom

2008-06-14T09:01:00.003+03:00

This is absolutely and totally fine with me to stay in healer's group just because other classes can buff melee group only when they are in group. Not in my case though. I will still buff them anywhere i am. Thanks for s-priest anyways. Lowest mana - 94% with the heavy all-included rotation (multi and arcane shots were used as soon as they were ready). Crappy DPS... lot's of physical damagers in the top of the meter... but i still beat the hunter competition having 2 more DPS than the next one! Something in this world have to be changed. And ye.. i don't like Naj'entus, i hate him! 4x of stupid gloves , 0x of very nice and extremely useful polearm, /frown. Bored...

Here we are again....

2008-06-12T09:20:00.002+03:00

All the raids were reset after weekly maintenance but that didn't really stop us... MH cleared up to Archimonde in 2.5 hours. And we are about to start torturing him once again. It was quite a violet raid. Lots of useful stuff... 1 man got 3 items... pallys...
But then Azgalor! He did drop the pants! And we passed the to shammy... by "we" i mean all the hunters! Everyone got the reason for that. I'm lacking the hit rating and swapping pants with 15 HR on these right now will be mindless. Looking forward to Naj'entus. Will he finally drop that damn polearm? Don't think so.. We got three of his damn haste gloves... thrown away.

Archimonde

2008-06-10T16:19:00.003+03:00

We have successfully spent 4 days wiping on the Archimonde. Unfortunately only made him down to 45%, but overall raid survivability has increased and I'm expecting him to die next week... That's the fight that shows you how bad it will be if you'll loose your concentration for just a couple of seconds. And even more... now we can survive at least 2 of the soul charges!

Looking forward to see him lying on da ground next week!

Wipe, wipe, wipe...

2008-06-09T10:09:00.005+03:00

That's the only word that can explain how to get Archimonde down... and we managed to make him down to 65% the first day, and 50% the second day. Unfortunately i was only on the first day, but i did enjoy that pure wiping! He has so many stuff to kill you that you can not resist...

Looking so much forward to that crit bow, even though it is slower than mine, i still wanna play with it... even more than Legionkiller.

Upcoming upgrades

2008-06-08T13:38:00.006+03:00

There are lots of ways to increase your performance in the beginning of your raid-life. But when it comes to certain level there's high demand in geared players. I'm not the one who stays near the summoning stone during the raid. Most of the time - I'm in! So I have to satisfy the gear requirements. And that's why i spent almost every single DKP on my new T6 gloves replacing T5 ones... First hunter with that nice gloves in the guild. Unfortunately that breaks the 2xT5 set bonus so we have to keep the old ones for some pet unfriendly encounters.

If you take a look at my current equip most probably you will say that I'd rather go back and get some T5 stuff... i think that too. Kael and Vashj are the only two bosses i need the loot from, and some other stuff from Zul'Aman. But that's not in my guild's plans right now. Unfortunately.

That's shy we're doing 3x3 arena's to get our Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Helm, it has 6 less agility, but it has significant 26 crit rating which is something that I'm really looking for now, 12 hit rating to get rid of that Viole Eye ring and get some agility ring, and some armor penetration which is proven to be very useful.

That's why I am collecting badges for the new ring called Angelista's Revenge, which is slightly better than the one from 3d time chest in ZA.

That's why I'm visiting good old Karazhan to get some other stuff and again badges from there. Aran - I'm coming!

What's more? Ah... I'm trying to persuade guild leaders to spend some time on T5 end bosses to get the Scale of Sands reputation ring - Band of the Eternal Champion. And that seems to be the end of a short upgrade list...

Surviving...

2008-06-08T10:06:00.010+03:00

This blog from on now will be absolutely and totally devoted to survival hunter named Spithoof. We have too many hunters and physical attackers in raid to waste the opportunity and respec one hunter to SV and after some discussion of gear availability and /roll... it's our time to visit the hunter trainer then...

Deciding what build to select first i thought about the role in raid. Now we're mostly concentrated on MH/BT and there won't be much use of a kiting even in MH. But i still prefer to have some nice trap arsenal. Next point was the "readiness"... and it is almost totally useles because of many hunters in raid than can use MD after me. No "readiness"! Finally i came up with this build.

With the 96 hit cap and decent agility gear i was really surprised when i got about the same DPS as in BM spec in about the same gear (i have too many epics in my bank for some reason).