WTB: Spellchecker

Alternate Title: I am a unique and beautiful snowflake, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!

Alternate Alternate Title: This is my character. There are many like him, but this one is mine.

So, my first character to hit 80 (and 50, 60, & 70, for that matter…) was a Holy Pally.  My second was a BM Hunter, thanks in part to the influence of a particular someone.  I suspect I was far from being alone there.

Third was a Priest that I had respecced to Disc, which then gave me a Disc Priest, BM Hunter with a T-Rex, and a Pally that I didn’t play as holy any more.  Oh yeah, and I’m also a Guild Master that isn’t afraid to post screenshots of guild chat.  Sound familiar?

I am unabashedly a fan of the BM Hunter spec, after having tried the others and found them wanting.  I think Kara was and still is the best raid zone ever.  I am also a geek and do enjoy the wonders of Linux.  I am not alone here.

Engineering is, for me, the best profession – and not just because my day job immerses me in a high-tech environment.  I’ll admit it has some shortcomings, but I’ll take the DPS loss in exchange for goggles, vehicles, an exclusive pet or two, and of course some high explosives.  My latest baby hunter is also a male Draenei.  Once again, this is far from being a new and original situation.

I have started over from scratch more than once, and am not afraid to host a podcast or two on my server.  (Granted they were education themed and not WoW themed…)  I know another hunter that’s done that as well.

The more I read the blogs of others, the more it seems I don’t have an original bone in my body.  Everything I do seems to have been done by someone else first, and in most cases done better.  Heck, even the name “Splat” is taken on most servers, forcing me to pick variations.

So I’m not really that unique in regards to characters, specs, and professions I choose.  I imagine this is quite common, as WoW and its culture encourage us to fit into certain niches.

Want to be a “good” Hunter?  Well if you’re a new 80 you’ll want to spec Survival and get yourself a wolf pet.

Want to be a “good” Mage?  Sorry, Frost isn’t as good as Arcane for DPS – better make the switch.

Want to play a female troll?  Have fun looking just like everyone else, as there’s only one acceptable face for you to choose.

Gearing your character up?  Well, you’ll really want to do that before you queue up for random heroics.  Anything less than a 5k gear score will just hold the rest of us back.

These are not necessarily my points of view, but they are commonly held ideas.

I could go on, but do I need to?  I imagine most people reading this have already thought of several other ways that the variety of choices given to us by Blizzard have been sorted out into one or two “right” ways with all the other choices being “wrong.”  Some are backed up by hard facts (All things being equal an SV Hunter with a wolf will do more DPS than a BM Hunter with a devilsaur), and others are merely opinion, but you get the idea.

This isn’t as depressing as it sounds at first.  All of my Hunters (I have lots of alts, sue me) are BM, and while my time at the training dummies tells me the other specs do more DPS I’m quite often at the top of the meters when I queue up.  The only exception to that is because of a gear issue – namely I haven’t been farming heroics to get him badges.

BM is not the “best” spec, but it’s fun for me and I’m not holding anyone back if I’m pewpewing more than they are.

I have a Disc Priest, but I’m not Amber and I doubt I play the same way she does.

I’m a BM hunter, but I’m not BRK, Pike, Brigwyn, or (again) Amber.

I have a male Draenei Hunter that’s an Engineer, but anyone who knows both of us KNOWS I’m not Rilgon.

I am LIKE many other people, but I am not exactly copying them just because we enjoy similar things.

I am my own person.

… just like everyone else.

Complaining about failgroups, failPUGs, failraids, and failplayers seems to be quite popular these days.  I’ll admit I’ve even done it a bit myself, both here and on Twitter.

It came to a head for me with this post, where an individual thanks a wide variety of people for doing things the hard way and giving the OP a chuckle in the process.  I figure if someone can make a sarcastic post that long that points out everything that’s done wrong in the game, I at least could thank the people who are doing it right.

So …

Thank you, hunter who used Feign Death.  While some DPS waited for the tank to peel the aggro off of them while the healer freaked out, you took matters into your own hands – running back to the tank and saying “Here, catch!”

Thank you, healer who kept an eye on my pet.  You and I both knew it was my responsibility to keep my pet alive, but the occasional heal when everyone else was already topped off was appreciated nonetheless.

Thank you, tank who waited for the healer.  You understood that lower gear levels, overzealous DPS ninja-pullers, and simple bad luck could all contribute to a healer’s bottomless mana pool being less than bottomless.  Instead of quickly rushing to the next room, you waited a few seconds to make sure we wouldn’t spend a lot longer running in from the nearest graveyard.

Thank you, patient DPS.  Your gear was awesome, your rotations (or spell/shot priorities in some cases) were uncanny, and you understood that you were not the tank.  You waited for the tank to pull, or at least for him to be ready before you misdirected to him.

Thank you, over-experiened PUG leader.  You understood that while you were gearing up your third (or fourth?) alt, some people were in those instances for the first time.  You explained strategies, made sure people were ready, and corrected errors so that we could get things done right.  That instance took a while to complete, but the new 80s were better players by the end of it because you taught them.

Thank you, you stubborn fools.  No matter what random instance you were thrown into, no matter who left early because they’d rather a 15 minute debuff then do Gnomeregan again, and no matter who stayed because they didn’t know any better, you stuck it out until the last boss went down or you were the last one standing.  I am one of you, if only because I was paired up with enough of you for me to learn those instances “everyone” hates.

Thank you, warlocks who only used Life Tap in moderation.  While this ability was incredibly useful for you throughout the instance run, you understood that even if the healer didn’t panic from watching your health bar plummet, low health very often meant a quick death.  You used it, but didn’t bring yourself down to 5% health.

Thank you, people who didn’t check gear score.  You understood early on that someone in iLevel 200 gear that’s been properly gemmed & enchanted could outperform someone in badge gear who never figured out how to socket one of those shiny things.  While in many cases your gear scores were fairly high, you didn’t hold it against the party members who were new 80s but seemed to know what they were doing.

Thank you, people who looked things up.  You understood that there were great resources like Wowwiki, Eletist Jerks, and more out there, if only you worded your Google search correctly.  Yes, you could have asked General Chat, but if you’d done so you’d still be looking for Mankirk’s wife to this very day.

And last but not least:  Thank you, everyone who moved out of the fire / void zone / toxic sludge / every other AOE effect that could kill you.  You made things much easier on the healer, which in turn helped keep the tank alive.  You are truly awesome.

Hm, did I leave anyone out?

<Public Service Announcement>

First let be be a little off topic and mention that anyone trying out and/or leveling a hunter should read this post by Pike and commit it to memory.  If you have a bad memory print it out and tape it to the side of your monitor.  The number of hunters I’ve seen that ran out of ammo so they used melee weapons for the rest of the instance (or never bothered to use ranged attacks in the first place while rolling “Need” on cloth for the Stamina it had) is staggering.

I provide this link not because I think there’s anyone reading this blog who isn’t already reading Aspect of the Hare, but because it will give that post a little more Google Juice and maybe, just maybe, a new hunter will find it just a little bit faster.

</Public Service Announcement>

A while back I did a race change and turned Elume into a male human named Splatter.  My reasons for doing so are worthy of a separate post, so I’ll give them one … eventually.

Splatter has come a long way, having been my main not once but on two separate occasions.  He managed to be holy, disc, and shadow before this crazy thing called Dual Speccing existed.

And yesterday, as I bought/enchanted/gemmed some nifty new shoulders for him (Yes I know those are the DPS shoulders I chose them because they have better crit), that there really isn’t any more gear I can get for Triumph badges.

Oh sure, I still have an iLevel 200 item here or there that I might replace in a new Icecrown heroic, and there’s still Frost gear, but at 2/day that’s an incredibly long grind for a casual non-raider such as myself.

And I’m happy with his gear the way it is now, to be honest.  I can heal my way through any heroic with varying levels of difficulty, but the bosses still die and wipes are quite uncommon even when grouped with “undergeared” or underskilled players.  (It’s obviously harder in those cases, but hard does not equal impossible.)  I can count the times I’ve gone OOM with NO way to get more mana back on one hand, and that’s with the usual go-go-go-chain-pull-everything attitude that’s often seen in PUGs these days.

I’ve reached this level before, most memorably on Splat – my namesake and amusingly enough another healer.  I was raiding Kara at the time, and was more or less doing tank AND raid heals while our official raid healer (and raid leader, and tree tank extraordinaire) was bored and DPSing in her resto spec and gear.

Then Wrath hit, and a lot of things changed.

Splat is currently out to pasture.  I’ll log onto her to do enchanting, but that’s more or less it for her.  Heck, I moved Disenchant to the number 1 spot of her action bar just to speed things up!

I’m not sure if the same thing will happen with Splatter.  He’s not retired, especially since I have several friends (and a wife) on Trollbane who can use a dependable healer now and then but will usually put up with me instead.

But I’m comfortable with where he is now.

And I have some alts that I enjoy leveling.

And frankly, the road to 80 looks a lot more fun than the gear grind that endgame has thrown me into.

Albyll over at Alterior Motive wrote an interesting post on his newly level-capped priest’s first steps into heroics.  You should go read that first.  What follows is a modified version of the comment I left on his blog.

The part that convinced me I should speak up?

And then this comes over party chat: “guillaume, leave. ur gear sux hard!”

Wow. Just … wow. I dropped group immediately. I figured there was no point continuing with that hanging in the air.

A mistake was made, and it was the fault of the young man who couldn’t even spell or capitalize.

So what if your arbitrary score wasn’t 5K – you were new to being an 80 and still managed to gem and enchant what you had.  Gearscore doesn’t take that into account and the number of 80s I’ve seen with next to no enchants is staggering.

I have healed and DPSed on “undergeared” characters and performed well enough (bosses died, we didn’t) in spite of what the Gear Score experts would have had me believe.  In some cases my Beastmaster Hunter (with Engineering, to boot!) in crafted and Heroics gear did more DPS than a Survival Hunter (with Jewelcrafting) in Ulduar gear.  Why?  In his own words, “I never took myself out of Aspect of the Viper.”

(Since ToC came out he left my hunter in the dust DPS-wise, but I’d like to think that’s skill-related – not just better gear.)

I won’t care about Gear Score until it can quantify THAT into a number, and neither should you.

Next time someone tells you to leave, force them to kick you.  They may, they may not, but kicking someone from a heroic because they’re not raid-ready (an insane requirement, IMHO) comes at the price of not being able to kick a real looser with a 5k gearscore who can’t step out of the fire when he’s supposed to.

Another option is to get an addon called Gearscorebreaker which pretty much forces the naysayers to actually look at your gear (and, hopefully, your skill) rather than a number.

Yeah, you heard me right.  Nerf hunters.  But this isn’t something I want the devs or Ghostcrawler to do – oh no – I want us to do it to ourselves, and only when the situation calls for it.

If you play a hunter and you’ve been using the Dungeon Finder, then you’ve no doubt encountered the Failtank.  The failtank is an odd species that can be found in a variety of subsets.  It is no specific class, spec, or level of gear, but the tell tale signs remain the same.

The Failtank cannot hold aggro.  Every pull, you end up having something large and pointy trying to eat your face off.  These are the tanks that make you turn Growl back on, just because you KNOW your pet can produce more threat (and in some cases has more hit points).

There are many different reasons for this, some of which are solved by better gear (or gemming/enchanting the existing stuff), a respec, buffing correctly, or maybe working on what buttons to press when.  They can (and often will) improve with time, but they haven’t mastered things yet.

I’m not that experienced a tank, I can’t help them too much on their road to awesomeness.  But I DO want to finish whatever instance we’re in, so I need to help them out by not tanking myself.  So here’s what I do:

1. Swallow your DPS pride.  Topping the meters does not mean you will get the loot.  Killing the boss does.  Most of the things on this list involve lowering your DPS to help the tank out.  Your DPS when dead is 0.  If you HAVE to salvage some of your self-esteem you can tell the rest of the party what you’re doing, but try to word it in a way that says “I’m doing this to try to help us out” rather than “You suck I have to do all this just to stay alive.”
2. Misdirect is awesome.  If you CAN use it, use it.  This is a no-brainer, but I know if I don’t mention it here then someone will point and laugh telling me I forgot it.
3. Feign Death, like Misdirect, is included for all the same reasons.  Remember however that if you’re standing next to the healer and FD while the mob is eating your entrails, the healer will most likely be next on the buffet.  Use FD early and often before things come to that.  (And maybe don’t stand next to those people wearing dresses.)
4. Wait.  You don’t have to shoot the same time the tank runs forward.  Let Consecration, Death & Decay, or whatever tick once or twice before you bring on the PWNage.
5. Slow down.  Yes, I know [Insert spec-specific massively powerful shot or skill of choice] is off its cool-down and ready to go.  Look at Omen.  (You DO have Omen, right?)  Are you anywhere near the tank?  Then don’t press that shiny button!  This goes double for Volley, since there’s no guarantee the Failtank has been building enough threat on ALL those mobs to withstand so much damage from you.
6. Forget Hunter’s Mark.   You can live without it.  Depending on the tank, you (and other ranged DPS) will ONLY live without it.
7. Nerf your pet.  Turn off one or two of your pet’s attacks.  If you have the opportunity, switch it out for a pet that you know does less DPS.
8. Click off or replace buffs.  Blessing of Might is nice, but Blessing of Not Running In From The Graveyard is nicer.
9. Stay in Viper.  I save this one as a last resort, but I HAVE had to use it.
10. Unequip the stat stick(s).  Never had to do this, but less gear means less DPS.  I would suggest ONLY unequipping the melee weapons though, as you can put those back on while in combat if the situation calls for it.

I don’t suggest doing all of these at the same time – some of these may be more viable than others in specific situations – but many of these things have helped me take a bad situation and turn it into a moderately annoying one.

And next time, maybe you’ll have one of the many awesome tanks that are out there so you can ignore most of the stuff in this post!  (I say “most” because you should still use Misdirect and still shouldn’t FD next to the healer.)

If you have tips of your own (for hunters or other classes as well), why not share them in the comments?

My time spent in WoW has been all over the place of late, with my time divided between three to four different servers.  As much as I’ve been getting back into pally healing, the other day I logged in and just couldn’t bring myself to queue up for a random group.

So, since I don’t believe in doing things in my limited leisure time that aren’t enjoyable, I took a look at my other characters.

I have a lot of them, apparently.

I haven’t hit the maximum, but that’s only due to semi-regular deletions.

So now I have a level 20 something hunter on Ulduar (pictured above with the most awesome pet name I could imagine at the time) and an under 10 hunter over on Winterhoof made specifically to play nice with a paladin my wife made a while back.

Both are on PvE non-RP servers.  Yeah, I’m back to that again.  PvP can be fun and I can actually say my pally on Burning Blade has NEVER been ganked (I have some theories as to why, mostly pertaining to people preferring to level through the Dungeon Finder rather than visiting the Badlands), but the idea of having to constantly look over my shoulder … bothers me.  Especially since I have a wife whose medical issues may require me to go AFK at odd times.

Both are leveling with the help of bank toons but WITHOUT the help of heirlooms, guilds, high level friends, or Death Knight alts.  I made some Auction House starter funds by mining a bit, and hopefully I’ll be able to glyph up properly soon. (WTB: Glyph of Mend Pet for LESS than 30g!)

And as I do all this I still know that I have a guild of my own back on Trollbane.  I do log on now and then to help kill giant green chickens or whatnot, but for me the endgame content has lost a bit of its excitement so I’m back to doing what I know and love – leveling.

(Submitted so that others might laugh and /facepalm. I know I sure did a little of both.)

That’s right, Mr. Flayeado of <Tierras Olvidadas> on the Quel’Thalas Realm! You know the best way to live through an instance is to never pull aggro from the tank, so you purposely lowered your DPS to help us out!  Sure that meant our fights lasted longer and I went OOM after fewer pulls, but you held back to keep your repair bill low!

Well, at least that’s one conclusion.

Another is that you think equipping gear with Intellect will make your character smarter. Well, that and the cloth belt with spellpower you just happened to roll need on.

Now me, I rolled to DE the thing.  The chance of getting some auctionable goods worth a lot more than 61s15c was worth the risk, but you went and rolled Need because that 61 silver? That there was a sure thing!  Like my Dad says every time my Mom doesn’t win the lottery, “I still have my dollar.”

So I salute you, Flayeado! You really are the most intelligent rogue I’ve ever met.  Your Armory tells me as much.  I’d say that I hope to see you again, but you already made my /ignore list before you could roll need on something I WOULD want.  And besides, I have a feeling you’ll run out of tanks and healers to carry you through instances sooner or later.

So today I got the baby pally up to 39.  He’s got some nifty new gear, usually heals very well (or at least well enough), and … um … is wearing a purple dress.

And a silk headband, because higher level headgear I’ve found is a crit loss every time.

It’s my hope that after 40 I’ll start to see more plate with Intellect on it, but none of this is my reason for blogging this evening.

The friend whom I followed to Burning Blade is currently not in a guild accepting lowbies, so since my return to BB I have joined several guilds on my own.  In fact, I even set up a system for whether or not I would join.

1. If you flash a guild invite or charter in my face at any time without so much as a by-your-leave, I will decline.
2. If you repeat the process, you will be /ignored.  (I’m looking at you and all your alts, Yova!)
3. If I am currently guildless and you ask me politely, I’ll probably sign/join.
4. Interestingly enough, paying me to sign your charter makes me less likely to want to stay.
5. If, after I join, I suspect you are acquiring new members using process #1, I’m gone.
6. If I don’t feel I’m getting the same level of support I’m giving to others (Or at least a “Grats” now and then when I do something special), I’m gone.
7. If I just don’t feel like I belong, I’m gone.

This is not to say that I’m all that and a bag of chips – far from it, in fact!  Not including my Death Knight bank alt my highest level toon on BB is currently 39.  I’m not exactly useful for high end (or even low end) raiding until I put a lot more effort into this.

However, when I see a guildie get an achievement, I at least offer a “Grats.”  When someone asks for advice that I can give or have the time to look up, I do so.  I am more likely to donate to a Guild Bank than withdraw from it.  (In fact, I’ve yet to withdraw anything from any guild bank on BB even though I know I could have asked.)   What I’m saying here is I try to be as self sufficient as possible and carry my own weight.

I don’t think any guild I’ve left is sorry that I’m gone or hurting due to my absence, but rather I’m looking for some place where I won’t cringe when I look at guild chat.  Thanks to the Dungeon Finder I really don’t need a guild to get groups, so I’m more willing to shop around for one that fits vs. one that’s convenient.

So recently I joined a brand new guild.  They’re still kind of small, and don’t even have a tabard yet, but the Guild Master seems to specifically want to attract good people rather than as-many-as-I-can-find-even-if-half-of-them-are-jerks.

We’ll see how this goes.

I suppose eventually I will run out of PUG inspired topics.  Today is not that day.

So last night the baby paladin had an interesting run through Blackfathom Deeps.

Our original tank (#1 on the meter there) was specced retribution.  He left before the first boss.  Our original warrior (#7) left shortly before I was able to rez the mage (#6), who definitely did not have English as a first language and marginally had it as a 2nd.  The shaman that replaced the warrior (#3) bragged about her(?)DPS but enjoyed attacking targets the replacement tank (#2) (fury spec, though he did have 2 or 3 points in prot and was noticeably better than the guy he replaced) wasn’t aggroing.  Well, that or her DPS was awesome but she couldn’t tone it down enough for the tank to keep aggro, but since her DPS was below that of either tank somehow I doubt it was the latter.

Our stalwart hunter (#4) had a bear pet very capable of holding aggro and with more hit points than either tank.  I would normally welcome such a boon in a situation like this except that she(?) spent little time controlling the bear (named “Bear”) at all.  Many was the time that I saw her meleeing a mob that was hitting her back while the bear went after an entirely different target halfway down the hallway past several other mobs that we wouldn’t have aggroed yet otherwise.

Silly old bear.

So, who’s left?  Oh yeah – The shaman that knew what he was doing (#5) and myself.

I’m pretty sure only the shamans and myself had been in BFD before.  Even more so because when the mage died and released he had no idea how to get into the instance.

I healed my brains out in there, more so than I have in a few level 80 heroics I could name.

It was glorious.

Now let’s never speak of it again.

Yes, I’m a paladin in a dress. But you have to admit, it looks good on me.

So, Burning Blade is fun.  More fun than I thought a PvP server could be, but then I’m not getting ganked nearly as much as I was last time I was here.

Part of the fun, I’m sure, is the fact that I’m leveling again.  That’s always been more enjoyable to me than endgame, with the exception of when I get to hang out with friends.

The Dungeon Finder, as has been mentioned many times before by bloggers more prolific than myself, is also one of the best leveling features in the game.  Even if you’re DPS the wait time isn’t nearly as bad as it was before 3.3 came out, and you don’t have to spam a channel to get a 5-man PUG together.

Granted, there are problems.  Mainly, when I looked through my /ignore list it was 75% tanks and healers.  It was almost as if they decided their filling of a crucial role gave them permission to act more like jerks.  After all, every time you /ignore a healer you have theoretically lengthened your wait time for your next PUG, right?

So, rather than put up with that I mothballed the baby hunter even though he was just starting to run Scarlet Monastery which is one of the best series of 5-man instances of all time.  OF ALL TIME!

*ahem*

• I needed a healer or a tank.  I picked healer, since I have more experience with that and I wanted to make my life easier, not harder.
• I already had a priest on the server specifically for questing with my wife’s baby paladin.  There was no way I was going to bring down the fiery wrath of wife aggro that would occur if I started leveling that one without her.
• I ruled out druids because I’m not playing Horde or female characters at the moment (that’s another post’s worth of content there) which would have left me with a pelvic thrusting Night Elf male.  I really don’t want to see that.
• So out of process of elimination … I’m playing a holy paladin again.

I had retired Splat – my first healadin – shortly after I got a level 80 hunter.  With the repeated changes to how paladins worked including a few nerfs because players I never grouped with were OP in a setting I never played in I just got tired of it all.

Guildies & other friends repeatedly asked me to get Splat back into action, and only relented when it became obvious that I would soon have an 80 priest to fulfill their healing needs.  Through it all, I had no intention of returning to the healadin way of life.

But here I am, leveling a holy pally again.

It’s a good experience, as I’m now able to review the changes to the class and spec one or two at a time as I gain levels rather than going back to my 80 and saying “Omigosh I can do THAT now?!” amid a flury of /facepalms.

Well, except for the dress.  Mail with Intellect is still pretty gosh darned rare under level 40, so I’m forced to equip him with leather and cloth when he’s not out questing.  Even the so called bag of “Helpful” Goods has been less than kind to me, insisting on giving me ret or prot items.  A level 19 holy paladin should not have to heal with a 2 handed sword he bought off the AH at level 11, dagnabit!

Oh well, I shall bide my time.  The level 20 quest mace will soon be mine.

I’ll leave you with this paraphrased conversation that I wish I had screencapped:

PUG DPS: Splat, are you using the Holy Light Glyph?
Me: Yes.
PUG DPS: Ah, OK.  I was wondering why you kept healing me for 26 hp.
Me: It’s because you’re special.
PUG DPS: Yaaaaaay!