Comfort Zones

I feel very comfortable in my World of Warcraft life so to speak. I am in two very successful guilds that I am very much happy with in short words I am not looking at guild posts in Trade chat wondering if they are better than the one I am in.

I joined <Dead Cell> of US-Garona on February 17th and have been to every raid so far with the guild since my time there, which has been about three full weeks now. I have a ton of fun with the guild. I have made a whole ton of friends who I talk on vent with during and after raid times. They are all helpful if you ask for it and just generally laid back. They get things done and are currently 10/12 and are starting to work on Al'Akir. I am super happy to be apart of their guild and have gotten a lot better on my hunter in the last three weeks.

Shøttzz

I also joined a casual guild on my Restoration Druid. My Druids old guild <SRS> has apparently broken up while I have been on my little healing Hiatus. I joined a very casual guild called <Highelves> on US-Illidan. They seemed to have a healing problem where their healers were terrible and they were recruiting for an automatic raid spot for a resto druid and their raid times were not conflicting with my hunters guild. We one shotted everything on my very first raid night (except Maloriak and Ascendant Council and they were bother killed on attempt 2). They are also 9/12 and we are deep into Cho'Gall progression.

Ilaena

I am just so super happy with the people I am raiding with right now and it's just really cool to have a set place in the game. I am getting some good gear and doing really well and I'm just really really happy and I can't say that enough. Please guys, play the game the way that you want to play. Life is to short to be unhappy in a video game.

In other news Im actually working on an alt and it's actually leveling! Sheîldra, a Disc/Shadow Priest is now level 55 and is with my druids guild on US-Illidan. I plan on leveling her and gear her up and just running PuGs on US-Illidan. People PuG Nefarion there already and it would be fun to hop on her and just run some raids whenever I have some time and am super bored.

And she's freaking sexy!

Sheîldra

Go With Honor and Lok'tar Ogar.

Anticipation: First Thoughts on Class Choices

    Today as I await the open beta for Rift on Tuesday I am doing some beginning research for class choices. I already know that there are two different  kinds of classes that I know I want to do once I get in game.

     For my first DPS class I wanted a hunter class. I have two main classes on WoW and one is a hunter. So, I am going to be Defiant main faction and go for Kelari as my race for the Dextarity bonus and the awesome be a fox racial. Rogue as m calling I hink I will be going with Ranger, Saboteur and Bard. Ranger is very much like Beast Mastery, it's you doing ridiculous ranged damage while your oet tanks. Saboteur is heavy in using traps and explosive charges. And Bard which is like a buffing tree and you put talents into things like increased Party Health and small continuous healing.

     And for my first Healer class I wanted something Elemental based and preferabley HoT based since I am used to Druid healing. So, I will go Eth for the Intellect increase and go for Cleric. Wardens are the water Healing Over Time classes. The Druid seems really interesting because it involves using a pet for healing buffs. And then Purifier which is the buffer and says it "uses fire to cleanse diseases and cauterize the most serious of wounds". So I'm getting Water, Earth and Fire elements of healing mixed into one.

     I really like the thought of these multiple class trees. When I play my hunter I always wanted a mix of all three specs. I wanted the bonus DoT damage, the casted Steady DPS attacks and buffing my Pet so he could actually tank high dps damage. But with the the healer I feel like I only really need Warden. The other two just seem for fun Soulds but not needed to succeed.

    I have watched The Sanctum (amazing Rift show on a generally amazing gaming network) and have seen footage of the dungeons and PvP and I am SO excited. It feels really fresh and new and makes me so excited for this new game. They talked about how the Devs were considering going INTO the Rifts to the otherside for a future expansion and I got SO excited.

     As far as professions are conserned I think I'm going to go with Foraging, Apothacary and Weaponsmithing. Foraging is your picking of plants and woods. Apothacary is your potion/flask making professions. And Weaponsmithing is... well... smithing weapons. You can have 3 professions and generally get a gathering professions and 2 crafting professions. Maximum is Master and level 300.

     Max character level is 50, which I really like, I HATE leveling to 85 everytime I want to make a new toon in WoW.

     And as far as Shard (Realm) I'm definitely going World PvP. The thought of standing on a hill and sniping down Guardians who are attacking a Rift excites me. I will probably roll on US Spitescar.

Welcome To Riftdrawl!

Hello fellow Rift Fighters, my name is Ilaena and this is my little corner of the internet where I will be talking about Rift!

I have been playing World of Warcraft for a little over a year now and have been a pretty hardcore gamer within that community. I love Ganebreaker.TV and watched their World of Warcraft show Legendary. During Legendary they were starting to talk about Rift and how good a game it was and how they really couldn't wait to play it. I have been wanting to quit World of Warcraft for a really long time. People are just really really rude to newer players and there feels like it's separated between those who were around since Vanilla and those who were newer and casual gamers. So I started watching the The Sanctum, the Rift show and they could do nothing but talk about the awesome things they are experiencing in Rift. So I decided, since I got an invite to the 5 day Beta on Tuesday, to cancel my World of Warcraft subscription and Pre-Ordered the Collector's Edition of Rift.

I am pretty excited for a lot of the different things inside of Pre-Ordering the game that I have personally never seen before.

Automatic Beta Access - If you Pre-Order the game then your account is automatically flagged to get into all future Beta events for Rift. I have never seen a game say that it will let you into all future Beta events no matter what when you pre-order the game. I have never gotten into a World of Warcraft Beta and I always wanted to and it excites me to know that I will get into every Beta Rift has until it's servers shut down.

Head Start Access - If you Pre-Order the game you get into the game a week earlier than everyone else. I've never seen this before and it is super cool to know that I get rewarded for saying "Hey, your game is cool enough that I wanna buy it AHEAD of time" by getting access to the awesome before everyone else.

And of course with the Collector's Edition you get a free mount, two companion pets, a weapon enchant, and increased initial bag space.

I'm really looking forward to just start over fresh with a new game that no one is an expert at yet. Everyone is starting off at the same platform. I am looking forward to seeing how the Ranger and Warden play out. I played a Hunter and a Druid in World of Warcraft. The Ranger is pretty much a Hunter, amazing ranged DPS with close ranged pets. And Warden's are water based healing over time healers.

Needless to say I am super excited about this new MMO and can't wait to start this journey!

346 iLevel and Raid Ready!!!

12:30 am on February 13th, 2011, a little under 5 days after Shottzz hit level 85 she now has a 346 item level rating and is technically raid ready. Some of my gear doesn't have all their gems or enchants yet but I'm workin' on them and I still need to get the Hyjal Exalted Boots. But it took me 5 days to get raid ready! /flex

I am amazing with Paint breh. Just sayin'.

Dungeon Etiquette: Disrespectful Players

Etiquette in dungeons is something that I try to uphold as much as possible. I am by far not 100% nice 100% of the time but I try my best. I join in in conversations when I have something important to say. I help struggling healers and tanks by explaining fights a little bit better. And I help other DPS if I know their class and suggest gearing stats or rotation help if they ask for it.

Tonight, I encountered something that I have never encountered before.

Backstory: I finally reach my item level 329 and was able to Queque for my very first Heroic on my hunter. I waited around beside Amberpine Lodge awaiting the dismal spawn rate of Arcturias the Spirit Bear to reset for about twenty minutes for my DPS que to pop. And it did. I was excited and was transported off into the Stonecore. I groaned at the possibility of my first CC Dungeon to be hellish Stonecore and was pleasentaly surprised to find that all of the trash up to Corborus was already killed and a few of the players were doing a corpse run. So I put two and two together and assumed they had wiped on Corborus and a dps was either removed or dropped group.

So we killed Coborus in one shot and the tank and healer dropped the group. A few seconds later a DPS spontaneously DCed. So we kicked him and the Paladin and I decided to Que. We both left the dungeon so I could continue to stalk the spirit beast and he was apparently questing out in Winterspring somewhere. After about 3 minutes we received 3 new group members. I attempted to return the dungeon and it gave me an error message. You are already Locked to Stonecore (5 Man (Heroic)). Very confused I attempted to figure what was wrong.

The entire time I was attempting to figure things out I had a really obnoxious asking me "Where the fuck I was? Why was I making them wait?" and complaining that I was being selfish by holding the group up. I attempted to explain that I was not able to enter the dungeon. The Paladin that was with me earlier was having the same problem as I was. Eventually the tank and myself got into an arugement and I said "You know what, you just got here, we have been trying to do this dungeon for about 20 minutes with people who bailed after the first boss." And he retorted along the lines of "You haven't been in our group. You're making us all wait here and we're one boss from finishing."

I blinked. Myself and the Paladin had gotten grouped with a different dungeon group, in the same dungeon as us, but on different boss progression so we were on separate locks. As I was attempting to explain the situation the mage retorted to spewing profanities and I was removed from the group.

So I guess, I'm trying to say that you when you decide to PuG and not run strictly with a set group of people you need to be at least midly respectful to them. We were in a situation where we were unable to enter the dungeon and were trying our hardest to get back and having someone calling us "Selfish Jew Pigs" and "Faggots" was not especially helpful. There ARE people at the end of every avatar that you see and MOST of them have feelings and are not out there trying to make your game play as extremely difficult as they possibly can.

In conclusion, I opened a ticket for the situation. I kept the players attitude out of the ticket and just let Blizzard know that something went wrong with their Dungeon Finder Tool. I have been using it for over a year and have never heard of anything like what I experienced and with the issues Patch 4.0.6 brought to Race Changed Worgens and Goblins I wanted to let them know about this minor bug. The GM was very nice and assured me that the issue would be forewarded and had a good laugh when I jokingly asked her to reset the Spirit Beasts spawn timer so I could go do something else when they asked me "If there was anything else they could do for me today".

Reactions to 4.0.6: It's Not As Bad As It Seems

Taken post Patch 4.0.6. Survival Hunter, February 10th, 2011. Kill shot of Erudax in Grim Batol. He dropped a ring that brought me to item level 329 and Heroics! But look at the dps and my competition. Yep!

As a Survival Hunter the Patch 4.0.6 Notes kind of hit close to the heart. The initial patch notes were fine, the only thing going away were the 5% decrease in our passive Into the Wilderness. But then the updates came in and we got nerfed intially by 25% to all of our signature shots (Black Arrow and Explosive Shot) and our Serpent Spread was now only hitting 4 targets. And I'll be honest with you all, since we're all friends here, I cried. But then they changed their minds and changed it to 15% and removed the Serpent Spread nerf. And a lot of Survival Hunters were crying that we were going to be at the bottom of the meters again and QQ, QQ, QQ, QQ, Q...

And then February 8th came around and the servers were up early and I anxieously logged in. And I found that my DPS had not gone down all that much. I am still topping meters in my normal modes for most of the time. Unless it is a switch to adds boss where I dip really really low sometimes I am pretty much doing as well as I was. My DPS is a little lower, less than 500 less most of the time, so personally I am not fairing any worse then before the Patch. So I guess it comes down to skill. Retribution paladins were getting buffed and I see a lot of them still only pulling 3k  single target damage on bosses. I have not yet had the ability to put myself up against other Hunters but I am still doing really good.

So really, don't worry about Nerfs so much. If you know how to gear your class and understand your rotation and get your shots off correctly you will be fine no matter how much nerfing they do to you resonably. It's about loving and playing your class well. I hate to say it, but if you're doing bad after being nerfed as a Survival Hunter than it comes down to looking at your gear or rotation and well...

L2P? :(

Introduction to Right Click AFK

Photo taken on February 8th, 2011, trash pull inside of the Vortex Pinnacle when I dinged level 85.

Hello everyone! And welcome to my awesome Hunter blog of awesomeness. I figured I would use this first post to just talk about some random things about my character.

A little information about myself. My old main character is a Restoration Druid on US-Illidan and I just got super burned out just constantly feeling worthless and having Wrath mentality still blaming healers for absolutely everything when it isn't their fault and Restoration Druids just aren't in a good place right now as far as healers are concerned anyway. So I decided to dust my bow off and level my old Hunter to become my second 85 character of the expansion. Hunter was my very first character in the game nearly two years ago and it's nice to bring it back as my main character again.

As of February 9th, 2011 my characters item level is around 232 right now and I am attempting to get her geared enough to start Heroics. She is currently Survival Main Specced and has a Beast Mastery Off-Spec for questing and soloing content, I don't personally like Marksmenship I don't feel like I have enough buttons to press and I just love Survival.

I am a well-rounded Hunter. I do both raiding and PvP. Hunter is the only class that I actually enjoy PvPing with especially in WSG. Roof + Trap Launcher + Ice Trap + Pet Placement + Survival DoTs = Dead Everything. And I raid competatively as well. I haven't raided on my Hunter yet but my Druid is currently 9/12 in current content and I hope to push past that with my Hunter and I have enjoyed doing dungeons so far. I love CCing and Misdirecting stuff to the tank. I feel like such a Trash Hero when I get to Launch a Freezing Trap and a Wyvern Sting and two mobs aren't killing the tank. And oh my gosh another mob is pulled and is running at the healer! Disengage + Misdirect the tank + Multi-Shot. Bamb! Healer saved and you are a hero! I love epic Disengages, it makes me happy.

Current Rotation: Black Arrow => Serpent Sting => Explosive Shot => Cobra Shot x3 => Explosive Shot

Current Pet: My current DPS pet is a black fox from Redridge Mountains. They aren't the best DPS pets but I like the new model and I am waiting to find a new Cataclysm Wolf/Cat to replace it with. For my BM set I have a boar. My boar is an Rotting Agamar from Razorfen Downs and he's black with silver and blue plated armor and looks amazing. If I am ever able to tame Altarius the Spirit Bear he will be my permanent tanking buddy but he is currently very elusive.

Professions: My professions are Engineering and Alchemy. Engineering for my PvP needs and the awesome tinkers and Alchemy for the PvE benefits. Neither are maxxed as of yet because I've been trying to get myself to max level and getting some gold by doing all of the quests in all of the new zones. I haven't done any quests on Alliance since my toon was Horde until around 77 so all of the Alliance quests across the world are open to me to do.

I am currently working on quite a few things with my hunter. I am working on getting her a 346+ item level so I can begin raiding as soon as possible. I am working on getting my two professions maxxed in time for raiding. I am working on getting a full PvP set so I can find an Arena partner and get some titles. I am working on Loremaster because I am kind of a Lore Nerd and I RP from time to time on my hunter and want to actually do the quests all over the world. I have only finished Mount Hyjal in the last few days and about 15 quests away from getting the Vashj'ir achievement. And I am working on going back and collecting Tiers 1-11. I want to go solo the old dungeons and collect the older Tier Hunter gear. Oh, and I want to kill Sinestra. Just sayin'.