Finally! Patch 2.4 and the Sunwell

Ran to Silvermoon and flew out to the new island of enemies and friends, Isle of Quel'Danas, just north of Blood Elf land. Of course EVERYONE was there, as you can see from this snap taken at the landing site.

Some of the goodies here include
* A new quest hub
* Magisters' Terrace - a 5-player instance
* Sunwell Plateau - a 25-player instance
* New badge rewards

So Alamojack and I flew there to investigate. We even stuck our head inside the new 5-man and heroically downed two Elite 70s at once. Then, of course, we got pwn'd by the rest of the trash mobs. Anyhow, we had fun.

Oh and the bonus, you get to ride back on a dragonwing.

Why We Study WoW, Part Deux

I'm looking for a ranged weap upgrade. I'm reading. I find this. Now I'm not a theorycraft person and have no inclination to begin to move into that sort of level of obsession. However, because the hardcore community is accessible, I can take advantage of their knowledge. And, because noob and pro both engage (post) in the same area, I can even get a decent explanation. If I were to go to a straightup theorycrafting site, such as ElitistJerks, I might not get as elementary an explanation as this.

At ElitistJerks, I get a spreadsheet and a pat on the tush, to go work it out. But, even there, the conversation is accessible, and frankly, the intell. is a bit more accurate, insanely and obsessively accurate, but there you have it, and it's not YOUR OCD behavior so it's cool.

This is from Thottbot:

Even if you have 2 weapons with exactly the same min/max damage, but different speeds, the slower weapon will deal more damage per shot. This is because the AP bonus it gets will be higher, and the bonus from ammo will be higher too.

Formula is (if i'm not mistaken):

Weapon Damage + AP*WeaponSpeed/14 + AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed = Damage

Add scope damage to Weapon Damage. Use maximum weapon damage to calculate your max dmg after AP/Ammo comes into effect.

Don't forget to adjust your result according to talents, such as Ranged Weapon Specialization in the Marksmanship tree.

This doesn't mean ofcourse that the slower weapon will deal higher dps than a fast weapon with the same min/max damage. Infact, the opposite is true. The faster weapon will deal more dps. If you look at the 2nd and 3rd parts of the formula, it basically assures that they will yield the same DPS (for autoshots) regardless of what weapon you use. Since you have 2 weapons with the same min/max damage, the faster one will deal more autoshot DPS.

This is not the case with our abilities such as Multishot, Silencing shot, Scatter Shot, Aimed Shot and Steady Shot. Those abilities have the same cooldown regardless of what weapon speed you use, so a slower weapon (with the same min/max damage) will yield more DMG per hit with them AND also more DPS with those abilities.

2 Notes:

Aimed shot cooldown is actually not the same, it is 6secs + quivered weapon speed, but no one uses aimed shot to DPS, only as an opening shot. And it will do more damage with a slower weapon.

The tooltip for Steady shot suggests that it's damage doesn't depend on weapon speed, but I have it from reliable sources that weapon speed does affect steady shot damage output.

I hope this helps :)

And as for what to do about optimizing for a Beast Mastery hunter, here's someone else checking in with some help:

For a BM hunter the 2.6 weapon speed is perfect, so combine this (with a +Crit Scope and two +8 AGI gems), and the easily obtained http://thottbot.com/i34014 (with the +35 AGI enchant on). This, in my opinion, is the best pre BT/MH weapons combo.

In total these give:

+62 STA
+77 CS
+67 AGI
+92 AP
+15 Hit
-98 ArP

Which works out as:

+159 AP (including AGI)
+5.16% Crit

Or if you prefer AP to Crit, then you can swap Savagery & two +16 AP gems, for the +35 AGI enchant & two +8 AGI gems, to give:

+210 AP
+3.89% Crit

The additional ArP, Hit & Stamina are also very nice.

Mad Skillz

Yeah, that's right, I'm double trapping. I got skillz. I'm no huntard. And btw, that's an EPL boar I'm leveling for our arena team, Fountain of Gnomes. (Sarah made that up.)

The boar has a nice charge that stuns, but there's no boar you can tame in Outlands, hence the need to grab a lvl 60 and tediously level it up. *sigh*

Also picked up a purple plainstrider, aka purple flamingo, for use in arena. Why? cuz I want you to get pwnd by a flamingo. Of course, we're FAR from pwn'ing at this point, so the bird is resting in the stables. lol.

Started a priest on a PVP server, which is kinda like running naked through a frat house, but wtf. Came up with a great guild name: wØØt of all evil. Gotta use that somewhere.

Oh, and I took this picture of the great dragon from the group quest line on Gorefiend, just cause it's so cool. We're the tiny people on the top of the mountain. Be sure to click for the BIG screen view.

Hellz Bellz

Well Hellgrima's been busy lately, and lucky. Did the GRUUL thing with half TrN and half Conviction. We succeeded in downing him. He dropped two T4 pants tokens, but ... alas.. I had rolled and won the earlier T4 shoulder drop. Sigh. I had good shoulders too. ... oh well.

So here I am in my T4 2-piece: gloves and shoulders. Getting there... Stay tuned.

The Mysterious Appearance of Poo and JBB...Coincidence?

John Big Booté

I'm happy to report that JohnBigBoote lives, or rather advances. He'd been dormant for almost a year, stuck or abandonned, at level 38. But, when a new doc student wanted to join the WoW group and rolled an Allie toon, JBB seemed like a good candidate to bring out of mothballs to accompany the new student's toon.

John's a rogue (no, not a rouge) and he's just turned 50. I have to say that I am immensely enjoying in-you-face (or your back) stab-stab-stabby-stab fighting. Very satisfying in a way that ranged attacks (my hunter and lock) are not. Also, jebus, with stealth and assorted other sneaky moves I can accomplish very difficult quests without help, and thus have been able to level quite easily. Here's the latest snap of JBB in all his level 50 glory. The only decent gear he has are a pair of blue shoulders that fell in Sunken Temple, a dungeon I absolutely hate, but decided to help guildies run. Go figure. I guess that was my reward for being benevolent, eh?

Being a wily old vet. I knew I needed to jump on my profs, and since I didn't have a higher level toon on this server, JBB wasn't going to be getting much coin from anywhere but his own wallet. So, I went for herbalism and skinning. Yeah, mining makes more early coin, but I had a plan. I was thinking...down the road, either LW or alch. When John hit 48 I shifted to alchemy. Why? Endgame. Potions, elixirs, transmutes, etc. Atm, I have been pounding out mana pots and handing them out to lil' clothies I run across and assist. They are so greatful, and well, as James would say, "I don't drink bug juice" but I do make it.

ZOMG, It's Poo!!11

It's everywhere. At first it appeared in Outlands as part of a quest in Nagrand. However, for the past several months I've been running into it all over the place, in odd spots in the 'old world.' This picture was taken in Tanaris, out in the middle of nowhere. Now either these ogres have begun to lose bowel control (perhaps finally explaining why they have diapers on and not much more), or something is afoot.

I have seen it several other spots and will begin snapping shots of it for a poo collection. Why? Because it's there.

Keep an eye on the poo. There's gotta be something happening here... or is it a Blizzard joke, some art dept geek's version of tagging.