The Trees

There is unrest in the forest,

there is trouble with the trees,

for the maples want more sunlight,

and the oaks ignore their pleas.

Ah Hunters.  We are the emo class.  We want DPS!  We want utility!  We just want them both at the same time!  Right now we do have more utility than most other classes and as a result our single target DPS suffers.  It makes us behave like children that perceive our ice cream cone is smaller.  It just does okay.  Its not rational its just, it just is.

The trouble with the maples,

(and their quite convinced their right)

They say the oaks are just too lofty

And they grab up all the light.   

Recount how you taunt us so.  People can say its not about the numbers but it is fun to see yourself a-top the meter.  Do other people in the raid look at the meter.  Yeah, people use it to compare assorted things and to see if they're pushing themselves as far as they should.  Others look at it as an opportunity to be a tool.  Am I mature and secure enough in myself to ignore the tools that have smarmy comments about the meter, not always.  Sometimes it pisses me off when DPS #44342 bragged that he did more DPS than I did because I spent the boss fight running around shooting down orbs that I can't flipping tab target.  

But the oaks can't help their feelings,

if they like the way their made.

And they wonder why the maples

can't be happy in their shade

Yes I know all these utility jobs are important and honestly I love doing most of them.  Its half what I hoped the class would be.  You don't have to keep reminding me of this fact.  I'm the one that goes out and practices so I can do these special roles.  

But DPS still matters in these fights and if the boss doesn't die because we didn't have enough DPS we know people are looking at the green bars and saying "Hmm".  Look you haven't been us.  Until recently no one wanted us.  We were the class everyone snickered at.   We were the last kids picked to play on the (insert pre WOTLK raid here) kickball team. We have performance issues and baggage that you don't.

I think every melee DPS class that says "oh it isn't about the recount numbers" should take a turn down on Anub in ToC taking down those frost orbs that you can't tab target.  Or kite a zombie, can you jump shot with your thrown weapon yet?  How's the bosses health and the enrage timer?  The dude kiting the ooze needs a misdirect on an ooze can you do that NOW.  Juggle this here ball on the blood princess.  BTW my Mage friends, I just learned a better way to have my pet juggle so you're off the hook!

There is trouble in the forest

and the creatures all have fled

as the maples scream "Oppression!"

and the oaks just shake their heads

Listen silly as it sounds you aren't playing the class they call Huntard.  We see it in trade chat, in party chat and yes in guild chat.  It isn't directed at us specifically but its still annoying.  We're put in these roles where we can slip up and wipe a whole raid and risk being called that word.  Its sort of silly but no other class has this stigma.  Okay that's a bit dramatic but by now you've learned most of us have a flair for the dramatic. 

So the maples formed a union
and demanded equal rights
they say the oaks are just too greedy
we will make them give us rights.

Yeah you think that whole everything is Hunter loot was an accident?  That's right we're just that childish.  (joking!)

Non-Hunter people please Appreciate how hard we work.  It really is a complicated class now.  Its no longer /autoshot /afk. 

Some newish hunters, and many hunter alts, just don't take this utility bit seriously.  All they want is the glory.  Listen people there's honestly no glory in being a hunter.  Legolas doesn't live here.  You want glory, roll a rogue, be a tank.  Be Argathne.  


Hunters, do your special job and quit your bitching.  Yes, they lower our DPS, but they are also one of the reasons we're invited to the raids, why this class is so very cool.  Shoot down orbs, bounce orbs, kite blood beasts and zombies, aspect twist on Sindragosa.  All those jobs big and small, noticed and unnoticed make any fight a success.  We're not built to be the same as all the other DPS classes and, no matter how some hunters may wish it so, we should never be.

Now there's no more oak oppression

for they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
by hatchet, axe and saw

The Trees
Lyrics and Music
Neil Peart, Gedddy Lee, Alex Leifson



 

Uphill, backwards and without shoes

All the other cool blogs have Cata preview entries.  They have talents up so they can theory craft and cheer or cry.  Hunters are still in the dark, left to wonder (and whine) as to what Cataclysm will bring us.  This expansion is bringing us a pretty big change, focus instead of mana.  But with all the whining on the boards you'd think Blizzard said we'd be forced to throw arrows instead of using a bow.

Most Hunters playing today are newish to the class, they haven't played since the game went gold.  While Cataclysm is bringing us the biggest change to the class since release it isn't the first big change to the class ever.

Mr Peabody doesn't exist in Warcraft but if he did we could use his WABAC Machine to take us back to Vanilla WoW.

Back in my day, my day of being level capped at 60 we had only a few stats.    We had intellect, agility, hit and crit, and well that was it. And our hit and crit were straight percentages not ratings. There was attack power, but no hunter took AP gear our agility gave us two attack power plus some crit so there was no need to waste the stat space.

Getting gear was a painfully slow process.  To get 40 people geared up to run Molten Core you needed to run 15 man UBRS a billion and a half times.  I cannot express to you in words how unpleasant a place UBRS is.  There are only sounds, moans really.  Like a dog in agony. Oh and Strath runs.  God that place still makes me itch.  Stupid Maleki and his stupid axes that never stupid drop.  And do you know how we had to find a group if you weren't in a dedicated progression guild?  We had to sit in IF and spam in IF over an over "hunter lf group for Strat or UBRS pst".  We had no LFG finder. Do you have any idea how often a hunter got a group?

Changing the topic before I become a danger to myself.  Way back in the day traps sucked.  Really sucked.  Not all that long ago they shared a cool down timer BUT back in the olden days you couldn't use them in combat.  Horrifying I know!  I spent a good week, week and a half in Un'Goro Crater practicing getting out of combat and re-trapping on the elite Devilsaurs.  The ability to chain trap a mob was a true skill that separated the raid level hunters from the rest.  You don't see Hunters today needing to practice any skills to be functional in a raid.

Then there is the hunters best friend, our pet.  Oh how we hunters love our pets. I've always had a cat, Humar specifically.  But to train a new level of claw for him I had to put him in a stable, go find a beast with the appropriate level of claw, tame that beast.  Play with that beast till I learned claw from him, abandon him then teach it to Maethor.  I also had to do that for each level of dash, bite and prowl.  All this for a cat that added very little dps in a group or raid situation. Now he just auto learns claw when he hits the right level. 

When we did get talents we had to use them for fire resistances so the pets could survive Molten Core or Blackwing Lair.  The pet had no avoidance and just died anyway.  We'd wind up just stopping everything to rez then and send them back in to die again anyway.

We had no rotations.  Aimed shot had a 3 second cast time.  We couldn't use serpent sting because there was a limit to the number of debuffs you could use on a mob and the warlocks QQ'd if the hunters knocked off their stuff.  Couldn't really blame them, their sucking dots were better then our sucky dot anyway.  So we just aim'd shot and auto shot and rezed our pet.

Over the past 6 years Blizzard has changed and tweaked the class.  They've made it a better class.  Its a more fun, easier, more accessible class.  They do make mistakes but for the most part they make an effort to correct them.  There's really no reason to think that with this new expansion they'd suddenly destroy an entire class.

Ding. Tank in crisis

I am going to start this off by saying that I have pulled mobs off of a tank.   Every single time that happened was 100% my fault not the fault of the tank.



My paladin hit 80 on Sunday night.  I would say that about 95% of my leveling was done in random dungeons.  It's nutty fast leveling and it gave me the chance to tank in front of mostly people just learning how to play their new classes.  It meant I had to watch to taunt, move things for people standing in gunk and in general figuring out how all the pretty buttons worked.

I hit 80 and  I ran a ton of regular ToC and FoS for gear upgrades and it all seemed to go decently.  No one complained, people actually stayed for more attempts with me tanking.  I was obviously not terribly fail and neither were they.  I like it when the dps pushes the threat meter and makes me work a little harder.  Lets me work on my taunt skill (I have it hotkeyed but I'll be the first to admit I'm still a slow reactor) and forces me to tweak my rotation to be more efficient. 

Now here's where it goes horribly wrong.  I enter some heroics and I'm in with DPS geared in ICC level gear.  One would assume these people not only know how to manage their threat but how to give an undergeared tank a break.  Well, you know what they say about assuming.  I could not maintain enough threat to keep mobs on me.  It happens I get that.  But hey you in the back, ice block, feign death, do something to dump your threat.  I shouldn't have to ask you to do this Mr T10 4 Piece bonus.

Here's a nifty plan, let me get aggro when I pull.  Sometimes my avengers shield misses a mob.  Sometimes life happens.  Whatever the reason please let me generate some hate on all the mobs.  Since we're on this topic, can you attempt to assist me?  Why must you always pull aggro from the mob I am not hitting.  I try to get threat on everything as fast as I can but help a girl out.  If it really is beneath you to assist me could you at least assist ranged goofball #2 so you both don't pull aggro on different mobs.  I tank to the best of my ability.  I stay ahead of most of the dps on most of the mobs.  If I'm not staying ahead of your mob its your fault, not mine.   Assist me, I know that the mob I am targeting isn't going anywhere till I die.

Oh here's news for you all.  Some bosses have aggro dumps.  Shocking I know.  That means if you hit the boss before I do, or it hit harder, its going to charge you.  

Here's a tiny lesson on how threat and aggro work, I'm stealing it from WHU because Frosthem explains it all brilliantly.  I'm changing it from the hunter perspective to all DPS.  Mostly ranged DPS since that's about 99% of my problem.  Yeah I'm lookin right at you.

Basic Threat

Doing damage is our base unit of Threat. 

1 damage = 1 Threat

So if you DPS the boss for 3,500 damage, you just did 3,500 threat. Now, your tank isn’t going to be doing as much damage as you, but that’s okay because they have abilities that generate extra threat in addition to the damage they deal.  So a tank may have done only 1,000 damage, but they might have 4,000 threat.

Pulling Aggro

Having more threat than the tank does not mean you’ll pull aggro. You need 10% more threat than the tank to pull aggro. So the tank can have 1,000 threat and you can have 1,050 threat and the mob is still on the tank.

Even better: if you’re out of melee range you need 30% more threat than the current target to pull aggro. This also means that the tank can have 1,000 threat and you have 1,200 threat but you don’t pull aggro. However, if you then stop shooting, but move closer to the mob and you can suddenly pull aggro, even if you have a DoT tick for just 1 point of damage.

“But Tanks Can Taunt” and Other Sundry Excuses

Yes, tanks can taunt to try to clean up your mess when you fail at your job. Basically at this point you’re relying on the tank to be better at his role than you are at yours. But even if he’s on the ball you may still have wiped the group because:

• Taunt can be resisted! So the tank can taunt and fail to regain aggro.
• Taunt has a cooldown. It could be on cooldown when you mess up – and some bosses dump threat and the tanks need to plan their taunt cooldowns for those moments.
• If your tank is a hate-filled asshole like mine, he’ll make sure you die before he taunts.

I’ve heard a lot of other excuses for pulling aggro, and none of them are good. “I got a bunch of crits in a row!” “My FD was resisted!” “I didn’t do anything, I swear!” Sure, it happens to us all – but if the tank is standing and you pull aggro from him, it’s all your fault.

Back to My Own Voice

Last night's randoms issue left me with a bit of a crisis of faith in my tanking abilities.  But with the new day came some new research and some new perspective.  I will keep tanking and I will improve.  The big question is will you improve too my ranged DPS brethren.

The Jump Shot

Can I do it well?  Nope that is my shame and I need to work on that.  Don't let it be your shame.

What's in a name?

I started to work on this highly interesting post on hunter pets (quit yawning) and I started venting to myself about pet names, and character names in general.  So I've decided to share because I'm just a sharing kind of gal.

I'll be very up front, I'm not all that imaginative.  My name came from the random generator in DAOC.  I saw it and I liked it.  Cheres is short, easy to type for group invites and would most likely not be shortened to something I did not intend.  My pets have big "I'm a giant geek"names.  My cat Maethor's name is Sindarin for warrior.  My wolf Draugluin is named after a warewolf in The Simarillion.  Yes I am a geek. I'm okay with that.

The first major long term decision any gamer has to make when they create a new character its name.   Do I expect people to take days coming up with a character name and a backstory?  Oh hell no.  But picking your name can be very tricky.  Names make impressions. That's why you should spend just a little time thinking about them.

l33t d00ds

(Insert Porn Actress Name Here)   You probably download said actress' film catalog from questionable sites and have contracted a horrible Trojan.  Your account will most likely be hacked and your guild's bank drained.  Good job sport.

Yo adolescent male who thinks being named DeadlyAssassin, xxKillerxx, SilentKiller, Backstab, Stabbymcstab or Ipwnyou makes you cool.   Yeah you.  Just by looking at your name I can tell you are more than likely, rude, inconsiderate, selfish, a bit spoiled and a lot ignorant.  Trust me I'm not alone in my thinking. 

Hey you with that ASCII in your name.   Was that name so important you resorted to Säþ because Sap was already taken?  No really, was it?  You were obviously last in the queue when imagination was being passed out.  The good news is, you are now part of a large and ever-expanding family of similarly named players who discovered the actual name was already taken and couldn't be bothered to think of anything original.  Grats.

The Uninspired

Gandalf, Drizzt, Voldemort, Legolas, Arthas, Illidan, Slyvannis and all variations on this theme.  Just no.  

Drag Queens

CuteGrrl, Swordvixen, BustyAmazon.  Its okay we know you're a male with the mental age of about 12.

Umm?

 

Dear Adjbdrsddaa,

The other players in World of Warcraft think you are a gold farmer.  Have a nice day.

Love,

Cheres  

The Clever

I never ever look down on fun names, even if they miss the mark.

Back in DAOC when you died to a MOB or a player it spammed it across the zone (yeah thanks Mythic).  Best names came out of that fact:

Darwin was killed by a cliff beatle. 

Cheres was killed by Somebody

Jethrotroll makes me giggle.  I'm always amused by Mankrikswife.  My all time favorite was a hunter named Kabob and his pet Shish.

Let me leave you with this.  Please always remember and never forget....Palarina!  Ha! I kill me!

No one cares about your gear score

This topic has been discussed to death in trade chat but it quickly turns into "I know you are but what am I".   But this one little mod has turned the tables on raiding.  The game elitists are no longer progression guilds but these pug raid leaders.  Their reliance on gear score fails miserably and any decent guild knows this.

Gear Score Means Wut?

Most people's knowledge of gear score comes down to the little tooltip number that pops up when you mouse over a player.  They have no clue what it really means.

There's a hugely complex formula for calculating gear score.  I had no idea what it was myself so I traveled over to WoWWiki .  It was math and it gave me a headache.  I am including it here in case my guild leader stops by, math makes him very happy.

 

G is the calculated Gear Score
j is the slot index
i is the attribute index
V is the associated attribute weight

Now we've all heard trade & barrens chat.  Do you really think they have a firm grasp on the math?  Stop laughing.

ZOMG Spell Power for Explosive Shot!

The average player doesn't really take the time to research their own class, let alone any other.  With heirloom gear and random dungeons any trained monkey can get a new character to 80 without having to actually learn how everything works.    I will use my own class as an example because, wait for it, I've researched it.  Most people know that a hunter in spell power gear is a bad bad thing.  But what if I'm sporting 20% hit or say 1000 haste.  You would not know these stats without looking at someone's armory.  You would also probably not have clue that these are bad stat values unless you know the hit and haste cap for a physical ranged class.

There are some sites that will let you not only see the player's gear score but their armory as well.  Even the gear score mod itself has an online gear check option.  Sadly most trade chat raid leaders are lazy gits and don't bother alt-tabbing to a browser.



Why a Serious Raid Guild Doesn't Care

1) Your gear doesn't play for you.  The ilevel of your gear does not tell anyone if you can get out of the Coldflame in the Marrowgar encounter.  It doesn't tell anyone if you can do more DPS than this here wet noodle.  Gear doesn’t automatically grant you situational awareness, spec understanding, reaction time or when its time to follow a kill order and lay off the AoE crutch. If you lack these skills all the gear in the world won’t make you a good raider.

2) Gear is silly easy to get in the game.  Anyone can run heroics till they puke and get a gear score over 5k.    Now just because you are in full triumph badge gear does not make you a mindless gnat.  Again using hunters as an example, a smart player in lower gear will know to take Focused Aim to compensate for low hit levels or run as a Survival Spec until their gear was enough to support a more gear dependent Marks Spec. That player is going to be taken more seriously than than the random player in full ICC gear that equipped whatever he could get his hands on without understanding why. A player that understands what gear he or she should be getting, how to spec, glyph and gem based on content, gear and raid make up is invaluable.

3) Your ilevel doesn't mean its the right gear.  What stats will you be losing or gaining if you equip a new piece of gear? Do you lose good set bonuses? Are you wearing gear with the stats you need?   I spent valuable EPGP to replace Band of the Night Raven with Nerub'ar Stalker's Cord.  Why would I sidegrade?  Because I was over the hit cap and my ArP is still lagging behind where it really should be.  It was a smart sidegrade and I know enough about my class to realize it.

 4) Gear score is a not indicative of  performance.  Gear score does not mean you’re a good player with a high number, or a bad player with a low number.  It tells nothing more than you claiming you do 12k DPS in a raid.  (btw I'm pretty sure at this point in the game my dog could volley on ICC trash and pull 12k dps)

You know what does shows how well you will perform in a raid?  Logs.  Oh how I love World Of Logs, and that it shows me where I failed and where I succeeded.   Logs show the spells, rotations, targets and damage taken.   By the way, everyone who wants to can see that tank died because the healers were saving your fat Draenei-not-moving-out-of-Coldflame butt.

The Gear Score requirement has spiraled out of control. It keeps lesser geared, good players (and their alts) out of runs, and has led to stupid pug requirements (5500 for Naxx? Really?). It's making the average player more concerned about boosting an artificial number than using the proper gear, and has led to a the thinking that if your gear is good enough, you don’t have to understand what you’re doing.

Back in vanilla I was in a hard core progression guild  We were accused of being elitist – that we didn’t want the casual players having raiding gear. Real raiders don't pay any attention to gear score but Bob Stand In Fire is using this to look down his nose at everyone else. Meep meep I'm an irony jeep.

I'm a Hunter

And easily amused

I'm just a WoW G.I.R.L (Girl In Real Life)

For those of you whose heads haven’t exploded this is not news. Yet it shocks me how often young males online are completely dedicated to the concept that women playing online games is a myth, and if it isn’t a myth, that the women playing online games stick only to PvE, they suck, they always roll a healing class, and they are always glued to their boyfriend in game.

OMG Girlz Don't Exist on teh Intarwebz!!1ONE1!!

I don’t mean to be all hard core feminist, but there’s something innately irritating about an entire class of individuals sternly denying your very existence. So for the record, I love to PvP, I am as hardcore a gamer as they come, I tweak my talent builds for performance,  I push the top of the DPS meter, I speak up in raids, I like to DPS as much as I like to heal, and I am a female member of the human race.  I can play games with the best of you. If you step into a battleground against me I promise that you, my friend, will get owned by a girl.  Yes I am a female on the internet. There really are quite a few of us. 

I won’t deny that there are MANY women in Warcraft who fit that obnoxious online gamer girl stereotype – kind of sucks at the game, manipulates guys into buying her stuff in game, acts like an attention whore, creates drama wherever she goes and generally just takes advantage of all the hormonally addled twenty-something males through the simple fact that she’s verifiably female.  I’ve known girls like this. They irritate me and they irritate most other gaming women. Don’t let their delicate little Pretty Pretty Princess complex get to you. There are obnoxious classes of women just like there are obnoxious classes of men online.

The point of this is to open some eyes to the fact that the World of Warcraft is not solely comprised of white males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. It is a far more diverse online world than many white males between the ages of fourteen and thirty realize. Open your heart and mind to the possibilities, and for the love of all that is good and decent, stop defaulting to masculine pronouns for everyone’s character regardless of avatar gender. It’s annoying.

For the record I consider myself both lucky and blessed to have found a guild with some of the most amazing women I've run across in my many years of gaming.   Girls Night Out with the ladies of The Dragons is, hands down, the most fun you can have in gaming.

11/12

The rest of my guild seems to have blogged on this by now, so I suppose its my turn to chime in on the matter.  Sunday night our 10 "man" team beat Sindragosa.  That's me on the left.

I was on a guild that had the server first kill of Nefarian and when that dragon fell I remember thinking how much fun that fight had been.  I didn't get that feeling with this fight, but I may as time goes on.  Now that she's dead I can work more on improving my performance and my focus.

Here's the fight from the perspective of 40 yards away.

Phase 1 - Ground Phase.  Mostly tank and spank.  I try to play chicken with my stacks of Permeating Chill and got up to about 5 before I got nervous and stopped to let it fall off.    Icy grip turns out to be a big nothing now, I disengage and throw up aspect of the daze and run away.

Phase 2 - Air Phase.  Also known as #@%^@# I forgot to refresh serpent sting and she's in the air.  Oh look at all that wasted dps.  Lack of focus on my part 100%.  Tip for other hunters, when she flies pull back your pet.  Nothing bad happens it just despawns.  Meh annoying. 

Once you get the hang of Ice Tombs you can shoot at the far tomb while behind yours.  I wouldn't risk a raid by being too aggressive on this, its just something to think of in case the other side needs a bit more dps.  If you get marked for a Tomb, toss up Viper you can regen mana while doing your impression of a huntersicle.

Phase 3 - Basically Phase 1 and 2 combined and on Meth.  As a hunter I am used to standing behind everyone, even the other ranged classes.  Its just habit based on wacky boss hit box sizes and dead zones.   The problem is that it left me with no time to react if I was marked for a Tomb.  I risked freezing the raid running to the designated Tomb spot.   Going forward I will have to figure out better way of handling that. 


So the ever important question?  What did she drop?  Did she drop phat hunter lewts.  Well sort of.  Wyrmwing Treds did drop but I just picked up the crafted 264 boots the week before.  So she dropped Enh Shammy gear instead :)

My name is Cheres and I play a...

hunter? Really? How very strange for me.

I've had a character named Cheres in almost every MMO I've played for the past oh so many years. The first Cheres was born in Dark Age of Camelot a celtic druid chick. I loved that druid, I loved PvP'g with her. Its my blog I can toot my own horn, I was a pretty amazing PvP healer. I had alts but my main and my love was that druid. Admit it, she's sexy.



When I started up in Warcraft I thought that I'd stretch my wings some and try other classes. But when the game went live I rolled an undead priest. I loved her, she was so boney and creepy and cool. Eventually I rolled a night elf priest to play with some friends on the alliance side. Nelf Cheres was nowhere as cool looking as undead Cheres, but she could flip!

I had some side trips into different games. In EQ2 Cheres was a Wood Elf Fury. In Warhammer she was a High Elf Archmage. In Age of Conan she was a Stygian Tempest of Set. Also highly sexy no?



So when I came back to Warcraft for WOTLK it was obvious what class I would be playing. I decided it was time to really push myself out of my usual comfort zone. I transferred over to Sen'Jin and logged in Cheres for the first time as a hunter.

I never left my healer self very far behind. My alt is a Nelf priest and I love to PvP with her just as I did way back in the days of Camelot.

A Hunter's place in the Warcraft world

So you saw the pretty bows and the fierce pets and the DPS meter and you said to yourself "Self, I'm rollin' me a hunter!"

That's great! I love the class myself. But many new hunters develop bad habits and honestly you give the rest of us a bad name. You know what that name is, it starts with an H and ends with a D. Knowing your role will prevent people from using the word and kicking you out of the group or raid.

First and Foremost

If you are dead you cannot DPS. Realize right now that it is your job to stay alive not the healer's job to keep you alive.

• If the color of the floor under your feet changes then move. Move now.
  
• If the boss puts a strange debuff on you then move away from others.
  
• Try to be 10 yards away from everyone as a general rule.
  
• Do not yell at the healers if your health is low. They know and they are busy.

Heal pots, bring them. Lock rocks, suck up for them. Get Deadly Boss Mods.

I Don't Read, I Point And Shoot

You do now. Your pet may be holding your dps back. You might have a point in a wasted talent. Your gems may be totally wrong. You might be wearing gear with spell power on it. I've got a list of some of the better hunter resources in the links section.

Managing Threat

There's a really great article on threat and aggro that you should take the time to read.

Bad hunters think Feign Death gives them a license to shoot up the joint. Its not, its a tool to help you manage your threat in a fight. Use it BEFORE you pull aggro to dump your threat. Using it after you pull aggro means that the next guy on the list gets the boss. That may not be the tank, it could be that nice tree next to you.

If you do pull aggro, check Omen. If the person just below you on the list is the tank, go nuts and feign death. If its not then run like the wind to the tank and let him pick it back up from you. If you die well honestly its your own damn fault.

Fun With Misdirection

This does not give you license to pull. Ever. Ever. Yeah some tanks are slow or not so bright. Suck it up Sunshine. You pull when asked. Otherwise use MD to manage your threat and to get revenge on rogues.

I Heart My Pet

Turn off growl. Discussion over.

Put your pet on passive. There is no good reason for it to be on anything else. Key bind pet attack and pet follow and controlling your pet becomes so very simple.

Never, ever, no never let your pet chase a humanoid running in fear. You will be shocked at the size of Fluffy's aggro range.

ZOMG Hunter Gear!

Yeah I know everything can be hunter gear.  Don't be a jerk when rolling on gear.

Damage Meters and Your E-Peen

I use a damage meter. I use it to compare me to.....me. Okay sometimes I use it to compare me to my friend's rogue. I'll get into detail how useful a tool the meter can be another day. But if you post it in raid/group/guild chat then I will have no choice but to assume you have really tiny man parts. You are obviously posting it to compensate for this fact. I am not impressed by you, I feel sorry for you. Everyone else feels the same way.

Ishnu-alah

I've been sitting here staring at this space for a while now and I figure its time to just jump right in with both feet.

I've been playing World of Warcraft since February 2004. How did I manage that? Massive amounts of luck and good fortune at being invited into phase one of closed beta. I have a ton of screenshots across many computers from those days. Nothing it turns out that's very interesting ;) But here is a glimpse of the first incarnation of talents. Pre working mods!

At one time or another I've played every race and tried every class. I like night elves, I like the undead. If I could get away with playing everything within those two races I'd be a happy gamer grrl.

I'm not huge on explaining the math of how things work, I leave that to better and smarter souls. But I have a silly amount of information about much of the game. I'm also a pretty decent player both PvE and PvP. I'll just share what my thoughts are and what my experiences have been. Maybe it will be slightly amusing for us all.