Determined

It usually is the case that doing LFRs get easier as time goes on, since more and more people learn the fight every week.

Case in point: first week of ToT release, this many stacks of Determination:

Hours of wipe time, people leaving and being replaced with yet another lot of people who hadn't seen the fight before... and getting stuck behind the trash because the first raid group had made everyone run past to click on the column instead of clearing. Nightmare.

This week, after having an unusually awful time with Ion Qon in this week's LFR, I hadn't been looking forward to doing Lei Shen with the same group... but I was pleasantly surprised when this happened:

Full buff list... no stacks of Determination. Go the casual PuGs! :)

Rona the Lone-a

In another one of those "amazing what you find if you explore" moments, I roamed Darkmoon Isle looking for Darkmoon Glowflies (yes, late to the Pokémon party) and discovered an out of the way vendor:

Not sure I'd want to eat a few of those vendor items... o.O

Crossbow of Rainbow Brite v2

I'd never thought that Blizzard could ever manage to top the eyesore of a crossbow I'd christened the Crossbow of Rainbow Brite, but this one has to come close:

Durumu's Baleful Gaze is actually a pretty appropriate name (unlike Relentless Strikes vs Rainbow Brite), although I have entertained the idea of nicknaming it Durumu's Awful Craze.

All I can say is: hooray that I already have Shattered Tortoiseshell Longbow, and even more of a hooray for Transmog :P

Found Your Fifty?

I've just spent the past few hours drawing up my list of 50 pets for next patch.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually have room for a few "luxury" pets, rather than having to limit myself to one of each pet family and a few rares. It's always a bonus to have room in your stables for new beasts!

I also don't think I'll have too much trouble chasing down the rares I'm after - I'm not one of those hunters that tames rares just because they're rare. I do wish I had tamed and kept the hydra "crocolisk" way back when, but apart from that I'm quite happy with how my stables turned out.

I suppose the final list is probably what you'd expect of an average hunter, although I do have more than my share of panther skins... you just can't beat the classics!

Now to name them all... :S

Lei Shenned

Tonight, not only did I get promoted to a full member of my new guild Infamy, we also downed Lei Shen.

I haven't ever cleared normal raiding content so quickly before... or at least, not to the point where there was plenty of time to work on heroic modes, so it's a bit of a novelty for me.

Definitely looking forward to seeing how I go on those! :)

Dungeon Premonition Journal

Having run the new Throne of Thunder LFRs without having read, seen or heard about any of the boss fights, I've come to realise that the Dungeon Journal isn't really a journal.

Although it's a good idea - people having a quick skim of boss abilities before entering a fight so that they know approximately what to do - it's neither here nor there. Hardcore raiders would point to sites like Icy Veins for more detailed killing strats; casuals would find reading the descriptions tedious.

In my opinion, to make the Dungeon Journal a proper journal, boss abilities in the Dungeon Journal should update automatically only AFTER you have seen the boss abilities.

ie. If you make it to phase 2 in Onyxia, Onyxia's abilities up until phase 2 are visible.

This way, it won't change anything for people who want to know the fight before going in, because most would look at raiding websites anyway... but it makes the most sense in terms of lore. Plus, it gives a sense of achievement - we made it this far and figured out that the boss does this - it'd be just like keeping an actual journal.

Guilds in previous expansions that went into raids fresh and spent hours through the combat log after a wipe for which spells hit when and for how much etc had the right idea; it's just that for most people doing all of that takes too much time. Why not tie the Journal in with the Lorewalkers and act as a combat logging analyser rather than just a dictionary?

Loot lists are a different story, of course - you could spend an entire year and not see items drop, so having the loot lists available beforehand makes sense.

I know it wouldn't be easy to change the Dungeon Journal system, but still... it's all in the detail!

The Safety Dance Reloaded

Those of you who played in Vanilla may remember a point at which Heigan the Unclean cleaned the floor with 35 people, leaving 5 coordinated people to dance for the next half hour.

Blizzard clearly thinks it's time to bring back that hilarity, as I found out in my LFR this week:

Lucky it was LFR Durumu and not normal, since the 7 of us left alive in the above screenshot had to finish the fight ourselves from ~24% :P

Aniwha?

A new week, a new LFR.

I had no idea what was going on in the Dark Animus fight, since LFR very conveniently recruited me right on the boss as the group was about to pull.

I feel sorry for whichever DPS decided to leave, because not only did we one-shot it (note: extremely pet-unfriendly fight :P), I also won this:

Don't Squish My Pet, Bro!

I get that it's cool to have your pet turn into something different each time you change into a Saurok in the Isle of Thunder daily hub, but seriously? A cockroach?

Why a cockroach when people are running around trying to complete this quest?! I don't want people to step on my poor water strider! :(

Home Run

After last week's "I'm a n00b" effort, the end of the raiding week has gone extremely well.

Firstly, I didn't die on the guild's first kill of Tortos until the very last second, meaning my raid awareness has finally decided to emerge from the cave it had been hiding in since Cata. Hooray for progression!

Secondly, not only did I get the guild's first Thunderforged item, I also got a shiny new bow with my bonus roll. It upped my DPS quite significantly, meaning I'm not quite so behind my fellow guildies in gearing level any more.

Thirdly, I was actually reasonably competitive on DPS on the next boss, Megaera. Yes, it's probably the absolute easiest fight for a hunter because there's a lot of movement and it's only single-target, but hey - at least there's one fight in this dungeon where I know they're not just bringing me for pet buffs! :P

Can't wait to see my improvement on last week now that I know all the fights and I have new gear to boot! :D