Coming late to the button-bashing party

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Quelys

The last month or so has seen a massive increase in hunters beginning to take notice at the amount of abilities we have, mainly after reading Ghostcrawlers opinion on the matter. After playing my hunter for so long, I find it weird that some people are all of a sudden bringing up that we have too many buttons.

To a point I can concede that we have a fair few abilities, however what makes it to the point that it is ‘too many’. I feel with the proper practice within the game, as well as a good understanding of keybinds and macros, the daunting task of finding a home for all of your abilities shrinks drastically.

Assign keybinds via the in-game menu

I use shift as a button modifier, and cannot recommend it highly enough. I use control as well, but not as frequently. Having things like multishot (which quite frankly, even though being our main aoe, is a situational ability that depends on the amount of adds present*) bound to a shift-modified button can drastically lower the rent space of your keyboard. I have mine bound to Shift+2, and find that it is perfect for maintaining a tight switch between aoe and single target. I find R, T, F, and G to be great locations for some of your instant cast abilities – although it is all about being comfortable with your own play and keybinds. No matter what anyone says, at the end of the day there is no ‘right’ way to bind your keys (however spreading them far in hard to quickly reach spots is obviously a no-no..), everyone is different.

*obviously you would use multishot a lot in heroic dungeons, yet in a raiding environment you don’t need to multishot on every fight)

Macros can be your friend. Some abilities can be placed on the same bind (such as Bestial Wrath with a number of other abilities, depending on what you prefer. I macro mine with A Murder of Crows to compliment the damage increase). A widely accepted notion is to macro all of your ‘large CDs’ together – and that is fine for anyone starting off. Some macros in particular will work better than others, and I suggest looking into the various guides found around the interwebs (try searching through the WoW forums as a starting point).

Open up the macro menu by typing “/macro”

The last point I have towards the influx of abilities refers to your hardware- I don’t think you should go out and spend copious amounts of cash to play this class to the maximum, yet I could see how having these can present a quality of life improvement. I personally use a basic keyboard, and a cheap mouse that has 2 extra buttons – one on either side. These are far from top of the line (gaming wise), yet I seem to be able to maintain a decent level of play. The mouse alone is something that I find a godsend – the extra two buttons allows for 2 extra macro/keybind homes, taking the total number of abilities I facilitate with my mouse to about 9 (if memory serves me right). It is possible to have more or less, but I find having certain abilities literally at my fingertips as a bonus. One example of a bind to my mouse is Disengage. Considering most progressed players steer their character with their mouse, having disengage bound to the mouse in particular helps me to use it more accurately as a movement ability.

As they look into some abilities, hopefully they will tweak as necessary, but don’t go overboard culling our tools just because some people are carrying on about the massive amount of buttons (predominantly after one developers comment).

Stay classy (mainly hunter-classed)

Mogu’shan Vaults Heroic Compendium

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Quelys

With heroic Mogu’shan Vaults under my belt for the last few weeks, I feel it is time to throw up some encounter specific tips and tricks for this plethora of bosses

This was thrown together a tad quick, and I will add anything I forgot when I browse over my handywork tomorrow. I will also update/tidy this as I see fit I will add in a talent choice/glyph choice soon <3

Feng’s hangout, pretty rad dude

Stone dogs

spec of choice: Survival
Heroic mode notes:

Posthaste can provide a needed speedboost while running tiles; however, I suggest taking crouching tiger, hidden chimera if Cobalt is up.
Masters call removes the petrification debuff, so can be useful if you are running the tiles later into the fight and are becoming slowed.
Deterrence completely negates the Cobalt bomb explossion and consequential root. Try to clear as much as possible for the raid.
Make sure you keep rolling a multi shot onto the two dogs you are targeting
Try to maximise Readiness by using aMoC on a dog right before, as well as a BA – have both rolling as the tile stacks increase.

Fengizzle ma Nizzle

spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

Deterrence works on a myriad of abilities here, including arcane velocity and epicentre. It is pretty minimalistic in movement, so I suggest picking up crouching tiger hidden chimera to be able to take the pressure off your healers where applicable.
When the adds come out in his shield phase, make sure you have a frost trap up where the raid is stacked.
The adds can also be affected by binding shot, and if your raid aoe is low, it would be advisable to pick this talent up.
If your raid aoe is REALLY low, I suggest running survival for this fight.
Survival overall is a fine option, but the majority of the fight is single target, and thus BM is the best choice.
Disengage for movement where applicable – including after arcane velocity, to drop wildfire, to move away from the shield before adds.
You can also use deterrence to soak lightning fists if you do not have an alternate option.

Garajal

Spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

You want as much time in the ‘real world’ as possible to maximise your boss damage.
Try to utilize your explosive trap if you go to the spirit realm, as well as micromanaging your pet onto the severer of souls.
Line up your glaive tosses in the spirit world to maximise damage, and try to serpent sting a few before heading back to the real world.
You can use spirit mend in the spirit world for extra stacks of the damage buff if you are lucky enough to be using a spirit pet.
Deterrence can help the healers if damage gets a bit too high when you are voodoo’d.

Reset Kings (so glad they hotfixed that..)

Spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

You are able to go all out at the start, so feel free.
Deterrence can block the flanking orders if you get in a tight spot.
Micromanage your pet to easily swap between bosses (if two are up and one is putting up a “NO DO NOT ATTACK” shield/buff)
You can use Bestial Wrath to get out of pinning arrows ASAP, allowing you to run around with an arrow stuck to you which people will still kill regardless that it does no harm…
You can tranq off Meng’s delerious buff, as well as Zian’s shield of darkness, however I would refrain from doing this just in case you set the shield off.
You shouldnt have too much trouble with cowardice stacks, but just be wary not to go insane on Meng.

Elegoner

Spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

Stand on the edge of the circle so you can simply jump and reset your buffs.
During the spark phase, get in a similar position relative to your assigned spot and throw an explosive trap near the spark spawn point.
Make sure you are full focus and then switch your pet asap and get a KC off. Do not waste a focus on a sting, just use as many instants as you can before needing to cobra.
The later ones are the ones to use your CDs on (BW etc) as they are much slower early on.
As pillars come up switch asap, helping as needed (try to be between two pillars) after they drop you can focus a single add (try not to aoe unless your tank has a comfortable lead with threat).
As soon as the fight reenters phase one, disengage back to position and resume pwning face. Rinse and repeat, but save big CDs for the final “stack and burn” phase (Stampede/crows etc).
In my group we had trouble with me deterrence soaking the big add explosions (it was unreliable, unsure if this is rectified now), so try to avoid it if you can and focus on maximising DPS

Willies of the Emperor

Spec of choice: Survival

Heroic mode notes:

we are actually a major utility on this fight, don’t expect to be destroying the meters (if you are, your guild is nice and isnt making you kite and soak).
Survival with entrapment makes this very easy, with chain Frost – snakes allowing easy control.
Pick up binding shot but try not to use it early when everyones stuns (and your traps) are going off.
Keep your pet on passive and throw it on one of the main bosses to maximise uptime.
If you have to, disengage over and throw a concussive shot on the courage.
With crouching tiger hidden chimera you can soak every second set of rage sparks, with readiness being used primarily as a defensive CD for an extra soak, rather than to max dps.
If you DO have to use readiness for a soak, throw up Crows on a boss, readiness then get it up on the other. Same with Black Arrow.
Try to keep stings up on the boss, but your main focus is controlling the adds – your raid team will thank you for it.
Yeah, that’s right.

Quelys has a new home!

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Quelys

With the imminent launch of Mists of Pandaria lurking on the horizon, I have left my former ‘WoW Home’ at Conclave. Conclavians; I will never forget the fun we had, and I hope to still run into all of you on Dath’remar.

The guild I have moved to is Nocturnus Vexillari – the Rank 1 guild on server. With my move here I hope to be pushing myself as far as possible within the 10m raiding scene. They raid similar times/days to Conclave, so the transition should be pretty smooth.

NV- my new home

Looking towards MoP, I am excited to be raiding with this team. They dominated through the majority of Cataclysm, picking up a few realm firsts (including the only Pre-DS kill of H Ragnaros).

They are no strangers to raiding

I have gotten to know a few of them over the last couple of weeks, they are a crazy bunch of ‘nuggets’, and I can see that MoP is going to be a fun, hilarious raiding experience.

Visit NV at their homepage, I believe they may be looking for a few more positions for the core team – check recruitment needs here.

Release dates, bucket lists, and bows

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Quelys

Now that we all know the release date for MoP, my feelings are on a one way track – awesome that it is closer than some people would have you think, and that time is slipping away to get some shiz done!

SOON!

I have seen fellow bloggists have their bucket lists, and although I have some things that I would indeed like to finish off, I have never constructed a list exactly… this will most likely be my ‘get done in the few weeks to go’ list, I will have to work on a more definitive list for my WoW career.

~ My Pre-MoP Bucket List ~

This is where I keep my list

Raid Metas

I really want to get all of this out of the way - I have just never gotten around to it! Not really concerned about the rewards, it is more the completionist in me that wants to open the dungeons and raids tab in MoP and only see MoP achievements to get. Maybe it will create a new sort of focus…
I managed to finish of Ulduar 10/25, so I just have a couple more to get rid of in ICC 10/25, Malygos in 25m and a couple of 25 naxx achs.

Level my other two hunters to 85

I currently have one of these bad mofo’s sitting at level 80 waiting for a Herald of the Titans run that should be going down in two weeks. The other I play every now and again for an hour or so, I think it is around 47 at the time of this article. There is a chance of one of these being left at a certain level (either 80, or in the case of my low level toon; 70) for some twink fun, but that is yet to be decided. The level 80 toon needs a name/race/gender change – When I created it, it was just as a joke to put in a guild that has some mates that I like to keep in touch with. It is a female blood elf named Syleuq (Quelys backwards)… I would like to make it a troll like my main, and call it ‘Quelington’ – Hunt like a sir. The lower level hunter is undead and called Quel, which is totally badass. [I now have one of them at 85, Quel. The other (Syleuq) shall stay at lvl 80 as a twink]

Max all professions

I have everything except Blacksmithing and Inscription maxed across my various alts. Having maxed proffessions is just so much better than not – oh you want some pots? no problem! glyphs? don’t mention it! etc.

Legendary awesomeness

I am waiting on one binding to drop for thunderfury, as well as getting the mats together for sulfuras – yes I am aware we cannot equip it, but that mofo shall shit proudly in a bank spot (or in void storage) to remind me that all weapons are indeed hunter weapons. Need to start running Sunwell… dang bow drop rates…

Farm some mount drops

Things like Kara, Vortex Pin, and Stonecore all drop some awesome mounts – all three can be soloed as a Hunter I believe, so time to dust off the ol’ solo boots. They weren’t only made for walking – they were made for pwnigng.

Kill more alliance

I would like to end up reaching 250k honourable kills, however I have realised it has taken me around a year to get 50k… so I doubt I pvp enough to reach that mark. I am closing in on the 100k at least, and I guess that is something.

Get organized for MoP!

This involves spending more time on the beta sorting some finer details out, getting a few mates from within my guild to be ready to smash out dungeons on release day, farm/buy a crap-tonne of mats for pots, food, flasks etc. Get money ready for that mount with the reforger, make sure I have time set aside in RL etc. There are a few things to finish off, like picking who shall stay and who shall go in my stable and also clearing out banks and void storage. Minus the legendaries I mentioned, I will most likely sell/delete all melee weapons I have. I also have to get rid of my excess gem stock…

I am sure there are many more things that I will be doing/having fun with. More beta time is needed, yet I am flat out IRL for the next three weeks… this should allow me just enough time to have a good session or two in the beta

At this point I am just having fun – We have been farming H Madness for a while, and I am lucky enough to only be chasing 2 pieces of BiS loot… add writing up my BiS lists to my bucket list… (H Madness bow is sexy)

Mentoring some, berating others – just another day in WoW

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Quelys

As hunters, we wield a great amount of power – we are the sexiest in wow, and thus make others feel better. We destroy people with our saucy moves and leet skills, and we nuke the crapola out of raid bosses, jumping to the top of the charts where we can*. As Uncle Ben would say ‘with great power comes great responsibility” and that is very true when it comes to us hunters.

I feel that this clip could be symbolic of a discussion between a wise, awesome hunter and a young inexperienced hunter..

Huntard-

A derogatory term for any player in the MMORPG “World of Warcraft” who plays a hunter as their main character and so has developed bad habits and inferior skills for working in groups. Huntards often fail to watch their threat and use their “feign death” ability at the wrong moment, causing party wipes.

‘Everything was going well until the stupid huntard pulled aggro off of one of the elites, brought it back towards the casters, feigned death, then failed to get his mob off the priest. Last time I ever group with that d-bag again!’

If you ARE going to do it, do it right (wear your pvp gear)

The term Huntard is not the best thing – when used in a derogatory sense. it is a way to shut down us as a class, and is a quick insult to be used in a generalization. At the end of the day, you need to cop these ‘insults’ on the chin, don’t take it too seriously.
Now let’s face it, as a mmo, wow is an extremely social game, and we have all come across.. let’s say.. the less ‘impressionable’ kind of people in this game. the anonymity of the internet allows some sense of justification to these internet heroes who would chose to make uninformed observations directed at general groups (not just talking about hunter-bashing here). Sometimes that ‘huntard’ (or player of another class) is trying to learn, we didn’t all start off amazing at this game (except for me), no matter how much we like to think we did (daaayyaaammm, caught myself out there!).

So why the heck am I doing a semi-serious post?! Well – Blizz recently announced (on select servers) their mentoring programme. This mentor programme is an opportunity on select realms for guilds to open up and accept many new players seeking a home – for the duration of the mentoring-period, your guild takes on a different name and you are pretty much there to lend a hand to the fresh meat – teach them how to not be a huntard!

This opportunity got me thinking, and I put the information forward to my guild – not to exactly say we should do it, yet more to bring up some good discussion. The next day I was cruising around on my main, and noticed a hunter in trade chat asking about trinkets (he was asking in regards to which valor trinket to take). I ended up whispering him and talking to him for a while about his gear. As time passed I referenced him to my builds I have posted on this site, as well as helping him understand his ability priority – I realized that this person (who had very limited knowledge of the class) was just a nice guy trying to do his best – not saying that I am a total jerk who immediately thought he was a spaz… My point is that even though my particular guild may not take on the Mentor programme, there is nothing stopping any of us fantastic hunters from mentoring within our own realms. I have always helped out guildies and friends with hunter gear advice, rotation questions, build knowledge, as well as going over parses for raid leaders to help find out why some members may not be performing to their full potential. The knowledge we build while playing this great class should be passed on to others – there is no harm in helping alleviate the ‘huntard’ term all together! So don’t be quick to judge, have a chat! Make a name for yourself as that awesome guy or girl that is friendly and a great person to chat to about huntering.

So my new hunter buddy asked if I wanted to come to an LFR, hopefully to score him some loot (sorry other people who may have been in that run). It had been a looooong time since I had ventured into an LFR on my main, and I was looking forward to seeing what it was like since my last visit. If you haven’t run LFR in a while, and there is a hunter pal to help out – do it. You feel like a God; heroic gear skews everything in your favour

I was actually unable to roll on anything for my hunter companion, yet I had a bit of fun and melted some boss-face…

Yet oh the humanity..

I am no stranger to a-holes wiping an LFR (pulling extra trash, engaging the boss etc), after all I have some alts I play. Yet the most annoying thing I come across in this previously mentioned and infinitely acknowledged socially immersive game is the generalizing tool in some runs (this goes double for random battlegrounds). Something happens, maybe one person wiped – maybe a couple of people did the wrong thing.. There is always that one tool who is quick to point out that EVERYONE is terrible – If you are this person, go have a chair thrown at you – it is not helpful or constructive to call the whole team/raid bad especially if you yourself are barely contributing to a better outcome. I managed to not only shut down one nay-sayer in this LFR, he was also kicked – I believe several people used that great little report function that can specify the rule breach.

So, morale of this post; go out there! Help out your fellow hunters! Just don’t be a wanker

* note, these scenarios may not always be true – except the sexy part – that is easily true.

A day in the Beta.. and farewell my old friend…

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Quelys

Twas a dark and stormy night… The beta had finished downloading – I put my knitting aside, finished my tea and decided ‘tonight would be the night’.

As dramatic as I would like to start this post out (and let us face it, you were hooked the minute I said knitting – “WHAT ARE YOU MAKING QUEL?!” [you screamed at your screen] “IT’S A HAT, ISN’T IT?!” – I am sorry to deceive you fellow hunters, twas not a hat.

The beta began with the obligatory UI setup – I had to at least make sure the necessities were keybound… /dance, /silly, /mana (Oom message from hunters, still hilarious). Once all the kinks were sorted (yet aspect switching macro decided it wouldn’t play nice) I began my journey in Pandaria.

One thing I have noticed in the Beta is patience (with most players). It was the most amazing thing (yet obviously logical) I have seen in the game in a long time – people queuing in an orderly line to complete a quest – The quest would bug out if more than one person did it at a time.

waiting....

So far the quests are interesting, the surroundings look good; new but not unfamiliar. It does feel like an Outland 2.0 to me so far (definitely not a bad thing), and it is refreshing to not fly between every single quest item/mob/npc.

and waiting.. oh god..

The premade Hunters are quite quaint, beginning in the starting area of the Jade forest, complete with a Firelands-esque set of armour, JC and Enchanting mats as well as a PvP set – everything one would need to quest through this new area (although, I failed to see any resemblance of ‘mist’ anywhere..).
I can honestly say I played around for about an hour, casually finishing the tedious quests and suffering through a server crash when it started to occur to me that I really missed concussive shot.
Anyone that has done extensive kiting (whether in PvE or PvP) can understand how much Concussive Shot is a staple of our arsenal. As an MM fan boy, I did have Concussive Barrage, yet it wasn’t really the same. Kiting seemed a tad more difficult.. How to keep these darstardly fiends at bay without my trusty shot?
Looking through the glyph slots is great, there are not many obvious choices; more utility options – which personally I feel is the way to go with being able to have a customizable and unique character amongst the millions around you (in the community.. not on your server… I am not that silly… today). There was one ‘gem’ that seems to be the substitute for my dear friend Concussive: Glyph of Arcane Shot.

I do not feel that this is a good substitute – Concussive (with no focus cost) and nearly 100% uptime, vs arcane shot (costs focus).. add concussive barrage to the mix and you might have something sexy going on, yet I feel that things won’t be as smooth as they once were, and I shall mourn my good friend Concussive Shot.
As I contemplated this while taking on multiple mobs with a more-than-usual squishy pet, a mob started punching me in the face.. I was able to shoot him in the face…

Could the removal of the free slow shot be a negative result of losing our minimum range mechanic? If so there could be a negative repercussions.

We have lost a fair bit of control through the majority of the class – only Survival gets entrapment and wing clip is gone entirely. Now that our shots will be able to be dodged, this doesn’t bode well for PvP (arcane shot miss, no slow, face eaten… you see the pattern). At this stage it is not fair to yell and carry on about things being broken – yet I hope they tweak some things (they most certainly will) before the beta comes to a close.

After all, if they don’t there will be less images like this:

How.. how did we lose?!

And more like this:

hey dead bodies... nice one npc.. wait..

That's not an npc!

Happy Hunting – I shall have to come back with more hunter-musings from pandaland.

<3 Quelys

So.. what is up?

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Quelys

I have been planning a revamp of the site, hopefully creating a more fluid page that looks pretty-like to the eye parts of your face! In the next couple of weeks you should see things change, as well as (hopefully) better organization for my Hunter segments.

Quick update for me WoW-wise:

My raid team is currently 4/8 heroic, with Your-massage, More-crack, Zon-funny-pun-name-ozz and Ultraxion on farm. This week we will hopefully take out Hagara (awesome fight by the way, probably my favourite of Dragon Soul).

I have also started a Human Hunter, aptly named Jellyquelly. This hunter resides in my old guild so that I may keep in contact with some buddies while also creating a twink of death. The plans for Jellyquelly involve reaching each bracket and pwning face. First goal is level 19 – at the moment I have no heirlooms, if they turn out to indeed be BiS for the twink level then I shall get them quick smart. I don’t know how long I plan to stay at each bracket, yet I plan to document my journey; commenting on gear, fears, hopes, dreams, qq issues etc.

This year is already turning out to be flat out, so much going on. This blog will hopefully be a way to relax along with WoW and spew out some anecdotal stories about smashing rogues and feral kitty’s.

First Heroic week

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Quelys

So the second week of dragon soul is over, this week being the first in which guilds could tackle the fights on Heroic mode. Due to the controversy of the LFR scandal, we don’t exactly see the same teams that are usually filling the top spots (there are still the usual suspects there abouts, just shuffled in order). The 8 day ban these players recieved will be over, and it will be interesting to see the push into Heroic spine/madness.

: Guild standings as of week 2

My own experience in Dragon Soul this second week has been an interesting and fun one. With the kill of Heroic Morchok under our belts, the team pushed onwards focusing our sights upon Yor’sahj. Now You’sahj on heroic mode is not exactly the pushover that Morchok was, and the focus on our Sunday run became about practically learning which combinations we could best deal with. We made significant progress, and I feel that next week I will be posting a screenshot with the kill

Towards the end of our Sunday raid (the second of the week for us), we decided to stop on the ooze-lord and clear out the rest of DS on normal. This would allow us to make sure we were gearing out our raid team in preperation for next weeks heroic attempts. We finished up with Madness tonight, clearing it and bagging some rankings through the dungeon.

Not a terrible second week, as this was the first in which we ran logs, I look forward to seeing how I improve in the coming weeks (oh, and get my flippin 2pc!!) lol.

- Quelys

Quel's Hunting Corner

it's where they put me when we aren't raiding!

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