Gear Score Is A Crutch

 

WARNING RANT AHEAD THAT IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK…

Gear Score. Every tool on WoW seems to think that, that is all that matters now. I am sick and tired of seeing this in trade…
“ICC 10 LFM Must have a GS of 5300 or higher”.

Really? A GS of 5300 for ICC 10 now? Are you smoking crack? Seriously, we have the ICC buff now. This week, the buff was increased to a 20% bonus to damage, health, and healing. You don’t need to be decked out in full ICC 25 gear to start running 10 mans any more.
I mean seriously, I’ve hear people use the excuse that they don’t want to carry you. That’s bullcrap, plain and simple. What you want asshat, is easy times. You don’t want to have to work for the gear or the badges, you want them handed to you. Piss off ya elitist jacktard… If someone is in full T9, but still doesn’t have that one or two pieces of gear to push them over your epeen standards, take them damn it. They will never be able break through your artificial barrier.

I’ve seen plenty of situations where a person with a lower GS, has not only done more damage, but has done more damage over all. It depends on the player, not the gear. You can pick up a Mark of Supremacy, and get a huge boost to your GS. However, the MoS is a piece of crap. It blows if you are at hit cap. However, if you are at cap or near the cap, you are wasting badges and a trinket slot. Drop that PoS and get a much better trinket. Go spend the gold on a Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Go grab a Mirror of Truth. Yes they are a lower item level and won’t raise your GS, but they will make you a better hunter.

This rant has been building up for a while now. As I’ve said before Daughter wants me start leading an ICC 10 soon. Wife wants to come along also, so we’ve been running randoms me, Wife, and Daughter to get them geared up for it. Both of them are now in full T9 gear, and now all we have to do is finish getting enough people together to start running. So any ways, Wife is starting to get discouraged about raiding because of GS. She was sitting in the AH and made the mistake of glancing up, and kept seeing ICC 10s being advertised. The catch was, you had to have a GS of 5300 or higher and they wanted you link your achievements. Needless to say she was completely discouraged by the whole thing. I told her that, that was bullshit.

Hmmm let’s see, when ICC first came out no one had a GS of 5300. We were in T9 gear, and maybe, MAYBE a piece or two of badge gear. We ran ICC 25s with that gear, and without the ICC buff ya pussies. Suck it up. Plain and simple you are not elite. You are not hard core. You are just some whiny little bitch who wants to prance in, and get easy badges and gear. You don’t want to work for it. You want everything handed to you. Deal with it, and check your epeen at the log in screen. Have you downed the Lich King yet? Are you doing ICC hard mode yet? If not, get the fuck off of your high horse and come back down to earth Major Tom. L2P plzkkthx. You think that you’re so leet, so uber, so powa… Guess what, you’re not. Now quit stroking your epeen, show me that you’re hard core. Go in to ICC without the buff. Take the person who doesn’t have the crazy GS that you require.

Just to give you some more examples, VOA, and the weekly raids. Easy stuff, things that my way under geared alts could belly dance through. Naxx? Gotta have a 5k GS. XT? Gotta have a 5k GS. I swear, grow up and get a life. VOA and the weeklies were made to help people gear up.
Huff huff huff. God I feel better now. Nothing like a little rant to help you blow off some steam. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

The Queen Is Dead Finally

That’s right kids the title says it all. After smashing our faces against her, we finally defeated her. It was close though, I think we had less than a second till she hit the enrage timer lol. Of course just to spite us one last time, she didn’t drop a hunter token, but the priest one doh!

So after that we moved on to the good professor. We took a couple of shot at him, and made it to his 3rd phase on our first night working on him. So after last night, only 2 bosses stand between us and the Lich King.

I started the switch to an ArP build this week also. After swapping out just a few gems, I’ve already noticed an increase in my DPS. I picked up a few more after the raid, and I’m slowly but surely getting them all changed over. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been

 

My god I can’t believe it. I had a crazy idea last year on my 35th birthday, to start a WoW hunter blog. I was never a writer before, but I wanted to try something that I’ve never done before. So after sitting and thinking and discussing it with Wife, I put fingers to keyboard, and started Out Of Ammo.

Now, I couldn’t have done this with out the help of several people. First off BRK, I want to you. You were an inspiration as a hunter and as a blogger. Wife, thank you for being there for me and believing in me. Belghast, thanks for the fun times, raids, and the advise when I was getting ready to start writing. Brigwyn, thank you for linking me, it gave me a huge boost both hit wise and to my confidence. And finally, to all of you wonderful people who have been kind enough to stop by my little corner of the world. So until next time, thank you for everything. Oh, and don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Is It Time For A Change?

When should you switch from agility to Armor pen. It’s one of the biggest questions, and decisions a hunter will have to make. There’s a lot of debate out there about it. Frostheim at The Hunter’s Union did an excellent post about it recently. According to him, as a BM you should look at switching when you’re around 400-500 passive ArPen. I broke the 500 Arpen earlier this week, so now I need to decide if I want to swap out all of my agility gems for Arpen gems. I’m going to be absolutly broke if I do. The Arpen gems run from 150-200 gold on Argent Dawn. If I switch, and it turns out to be a bad idea, then I’m screwed. The agility gem run about 180-220. I have at least 12 gems that would have to be swapped out if I switch to Arpen.
However, there is some good news. The test servers are up and running now. So it looks like I’m off to the PTR to see if it’s worth it or not. Keep an eye out for the results in a future post.

In other news I got a year older on Wednesday the 12th, and had a great time. Wife not only got me an iPhone, she got me a PONY! =)
So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Don’t Feed The Trolls

Trolls, people with less life than me. Forum trolls are the lowest form of all trolls. What’s even worse, is most of the time these low lifes are too cowardly to post under their normal handles.
Everywhere you look, you’ll find a troll. GU comics did a hilarious comic about forum trolls. It really sums up everything that makes a troll… well a troll.
If you ever want to see true troll mastery, visit the WoW forums. Oh, and don’t forget to bring steel wool to scour your eyes afterwards.
Recently, Belghast’s blog Tales Of The Aggronaut was hit by a particularly nasty troll named Shagrat. Here’s what he said:

 

Ratshag, on April 27th, 2010 at 12:08 PM Said:

I read this post, and I see nuthin’ positives about yer 25-man raid. Is a lotta work, it destroys sanity, is stressful, is less fun, folks prefer the 10-mans, is hard fer ta coordinate different level raiders. And this is all under the current regime. So why in the name of Varian Wrynn’s dinky little ‘nads are you upset what it might die? If it’s really that craptastic, yer better off without it. And so is everyone else.

 

Wow someone has some issues, I think. Really, do you have nothing better to do than that? I wish I had that much free time…
I guess the good thing about my blog not being one of the bigger blogs, is that I’m not as much of a target lol. I mean seriously is your life really that empty and void of even the smallest shred of anything resembling fun? Seriously get a life kids, go outside and see the world for a while.
So until next time remember to grab your asbestos underwear, and don’t forget to reload so you don’t run out of ammo.

When You Don’t Get To Go

When you’re raiding one of the more disheartening things that can happen is getting benched. It happens, and it can suck. Be it on a farm night or a progression night, it can any time. Now when that happens you can handle it gracefully, or you can raise a stink about it.

The High Road

To put it simply, suck it up and deal with it. Yes we raid to get the gear, and to see the end game. However, some times we need to make sacrifices.

You are part of a group. Whether you realize it or not, all of the decisions are made to better the group. The mature thing to do is accept it, wish everyone luck, and find something else to do.

Yeah it sucks, you’ve were probably looking forward to going, but hey that’s life. Accepting that you didn’t get the invite with dignity will get you more invites than not.

The Low Road

Complaining, whining, and threatening will not get you invited. If anything, acting that way will make them LESS likely to invite you back. It happens to everyone, so suck it up and deal with it pork chop. If you think that being a pain in the ass to those that do the invites will endear you to them, guess again.

Speaking Up

Now if you don’t get an invite, and you want to find out why, it’s simple. Do it in a tell first. Calling someone out on the guild or chat channel will make you look bad. Be polite, no one likes to be badgered or interrogated. When it’s all done wish them good luck with the raid.

That concludes today’s lesson on raid manners and etiquette. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

What It Takes To Lead A Raid

Well my daughter recently restarted her old guild again. She asked me a rather strange question today. She asked me to start leading her 10 man ICCs when they start running them. She’s never been in ICC before, sand she only has 1 other person so far that’s in T10 gear also. Oh, and did I mention Wife is also going to be coming along? Now the big question is will Wife’s computer be able to handle ICC 10 man? If not will she be willing to use the desktop we have setup in the back room? Time will tell. The next question on the agenda is beer or xanax while I’m herding the cats? 😉

Duranub has 7 of the bosses on farm right now, and we’re working on Blood Queen. So I know the first 7 fights pretty well on 25 man, however I’ve never been to the 10 man version. So it’s time for me to do some research about all the trash, traps, mobs, and bosses we’ll find. Luckily, I have access to the interwebz, and all the great people in both House Stalwart and Duranub. So it’s time to start studying up on the difference between 10 and 25 man ICC.  So wish me luck, and pass the beer and Excedrin.

So now we’re working on gearing Wife’s hunter and the Kid’s druid. The 3 of us have started running randoms together, and hitting the weekly raid when we can. I’ll probably keep running them on Gwen until I can get enough badges to finish getting all the heirloom gear I want for my furry warrior, and the mammoth mount. After that, well it depends, I’m about to hit 80 on my shammy, and my DK still needs more badge gear also. So I guess it will depend on what I feel like at the time. It should be a lot of fun… and a little stressful.

So I finally had a little bit of loot luck the other week. Zod’s finally dropped for me and I hit exalted with the Ashen Verdict. So now all I need is the damn trinket to drop…

So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

A Primer For The New BM Raider Part 2

The other week I did a post about things to do to prepare for your first raid. This time we’re going to talk about some of the basics of raiding.

Makin A List and Checkin It Twice

First off are you prepared? Did you remember everything we talked about in the first part? If the answer is yes, proceed to getting das lootz… If the answer is no, go back and reread the firs article…again…

R.S.V.P.

You are not the only one who wants to go to this raid. There are at least 24 other people who want to go. If your guild/group has a sign up post, go there and sign up for it. If they require you to be in a certain channel BEFORE the invites go out, be there. Be there early. The raid leaders will have enough to sort through for the invites, and the easier you make it on them, the better you end up looking. If you get the invite congratulations, now get to the instance ASAP and be ready to start the raid. However, if you don’t get an invite, please don’t make a scene. Don’t whine, beg, cry, threaten or throw a hissy fit. Doing so will definitely decrease the chances of you getting another invite. (Don’t worry I have a whole post waiting in the wings on this one alone. 🙂 )

Knowledge is Power

The more you know about the fights, the better. You have so many different venues of knowledge available to you to find out everything you can about the fights. Just remember, if you can’t find it online, just ask some one in your group. I’m sure they would rather take a few moments and hammer out the details with you rather than wiping to simple errors. Remember this golden rule…
It’s better to ask a question than, than keep your mouth shut and screw up because you thought it was a stupid question.

It Tastes Like Burning

Don’t stand in the fire. 99.9999999% of the stuff the bosses put on the ground is there to kill you dead like. If suddenly you find yourself covered in "stuff" or standing in "stuff" get out. And for God’s sake, if you have stuff on you that’s going to leave a fiery trail of death don’t run it through the middle of the group. Maintain your spacing, and know if you need to be spread out or nuts to butts packed in. Remember /range is your friend, and if you are told to collapse, do it.

Stay On Target

Know what your kill target is and your kill order. You have to be able to switch targets on the fly. If adds pop up, and they need to die, kill them ASAP. You have to know when to say screw DPS on the boss, and switch to the adds to keep the raid going. Now as a BM hunter it is usually OK to leave Fluffy nomming on the boss, as long as it will not cause any extra damage to the tank or the raid. At the same time you must be able to pick up any adds that need to be kited.

Bad Touch

Nothing good can ever come from talking to an NPC in an instance. Period. Encounters will start. Buffs will be lost. Hard modes will be started. Roseanne Barr will do a Playboy shoot… Also, anything that can cause  a player to loose control, or not be able to use any abilities are a big no no…

Aggro!! Aggro!!

By getting aggro, I don’t mean from the mob either. If you want to really torque off the healers, tell them how and who to heal. Calling for heals in vent and in channel, will guarantee that you will die. Yelling for them to start healing your pet will get you killed pretty fast also. Now the tanks, they just LOVE when you attack before them. Always give them a few moments to get aggro. The only time you should start attacking right away is if you are misdirecting to the tank.

So these are just a few little things to keep in mind. Now if you follow these basic ideas, rules, principles, whatever you want to call them, I think that as long as you keep them in mind, you’ll do just fine. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.