Thanks! Horde losing, Light Leather, and don't roll Hunter/Rogue!

I wanna start off by saying thanks so far to everyone who's said they like my blog. I've been getting quite a few people whispering me on a daily basis saying they can't wait to read more or are loving my blog. Good to know there are people out there enjoying it, hope I don't disappoint. So here's a toast to the viewers! Keep on PvP'ing.

I get a few of these a day. Thanks guys!

While I'm addressing the viewers out there, if there's on thing I wanna say is PLEASE don't roll Alliance. Horde is getting absolutely demolished in almost every WSG match I go into. It's ridiculous how little healers we have, and how much people float over to the Alliance because of gear imbalances. Which doesn't really make sense because Horde has the best cloth gear. I guess people just don't like healers as much as they do Hunters, eh?

I'm currently at less than a 33% win ratio.

I've ran into several twinks saying they don't bother doing Leatherworking to 100 because it's not worth the 24 extra armor. I picked it up myself to begin farming and realized that for some people it really might be a huge pain. At 1 you can already make the Light Armor Kit, and you need 100 for the Medium Armor Kit. It's taken me about 2 hours to get to Leatherworking 50 and I think I'm in for at least another 3 hours of farming to get enough Light Leather to hit 100. I recommend picking up Skinning and Leatherworking while you're leveling and skinning everything, you will be able to skip this entire ordeal and will probably be able to drop them right after you hit 20 and pick up Enchanting. Then you can Disenchant the greens you made for Leatherworking and you should be well on your way to your enchants. If you're already 20 and need places to farm leather, I HIGHLY recommend the Maclure Vineyards in southern Elwynn. Instant respawn rate on the boars and they're very close together.

Respawn rate is literally instant here, check it out if you need to level LW.

And finally, I urge everyone to please roll something other than Hunter or Rogue on either side. It's getting rather ridiculous, I'm going to start working on my Warrior tomorrow to get away from this mess. Don't understand what I mean? Let the screenshot speak for itself.

If I wasn't capping they would have farmed the whole timer.

This is not how I want to win WSG.

Other than that I actually had a few decent WSG games, and decided on what to roll next. Hope everyone has a great night/day, I'm off to bed, and see you in the Gulch!

May your blades never dull,

~ Thirk

Hunter Pets: Monkeys, Bats, Moths, Oh my! Kill Command is a Hunter's Exorcism

After realizing that Charge no longer stuns, I realized why my pet was not being much of a help to me as far as Paladin's and healers go. I set out to look for the best pets I could find. First up I came upon Crocolisks, which had a 60% uptime on Ankle Crack. Which is great for slowing multiple targets. But after a day of PvP I realized it was essentially useless, because despite the fact that it IS great, hunters had too much CC slow already (at 100%+ uptime) and having my enemies get out of range was NOT a problem at all.



So, needing an interrupt on top of my Scatter Shot I set out to WoWHead, looking up every pet I could get at this level. I found Monkeys, which have Bad Manner. This could be extremely useful in certain situations, it's essentially another Scatter Shot in every way but has twice the cooldown. Unfortunately, while it's a nice blind, it's not a stun in itself and only gives me one free global against my enemy.



Next I looked to the Bat, which has it's 2 second stun. Sweet in most situations, especially when you're chasing the enemy flag carrier, but against healers it's not quite enough. It's still just over one global, two if you're a Rogue. I went back to WoWHead and scoured for something I could use. I eventually came across the Moth, which has the godlike Serenity Dust.

Next came my hour and a half long fatigue and Ally guard killed filled travel to Exodar. After having my gear decimated to 0% durability, I made it to Azuremyst Isle and picked myself up a moth. Finally my Hunter had a proper interrupt against heals, and not only does it help against healers, but it completely SHUTS DOWN Paladins for 4 seconds. That's enough for quite the DPS as a hunter as it's over 2 globals. I'd be hard pressed to lose to a Paladin 1v1 now, having not only SS for his Exorcism but also a full lockout for the clutch heal he thought would save him. Paladin's are simply no longer a problem for my hunter thanks to this little beast of a pet. Here's the macro I use for Serenity Dust in case anyone is interested:

#showtooltip                                         

/cast [@mouseover] [@target] [pet:Moth] Serenity Dust

PEW PEW SHUTDOWN!

During this time I also tested out Kill Command, something that I overlooked before almost completely. It's like a mini-Exorcism for Hunters. Easily crits for over 400 damage, and I've seen it go as high as the 500s. Hunters might wanna start using this often, it's extremely useful for burst. Definitely improved on my Hunter "skill" (more like lack of, lolol huntard amirite?) today. Learning new things every day.

Not far off from Exorcism damage. And this is ungeared.

Peace, Friend,

~ Thirk

Respec limits, Hard Mode Stocks, Professions, Imbalance

I'm likely going to end up respecing my Hunter soon. After checking I realized that for some reason my first respec will cost me 42s. What gives? Turns out that the respec costs scale with level, and at level 20 your respec cost won't go above 84s. Yay!

If I respec I will definitely miss Explosive Shot and the extra Stamina.

I ran stocks today with a nice group of players I found in random dungeon finder. I suggested clearing adds and doing all 3 bosses at once. Would provide a nice challenge. While it is probably completely doable with all 20 F2P twinks, my group was not geared up well enough and we resulted in getting 2/3 bosses to 66% and the third to 33%. After that we did Moloch and Overheat together and took out Hogger by himself. Going to be doing the "hard mode" with a group today, assembled on Aerie Peak. Will post results.

Hard mode is actually rather difficult.

Blame Hogger's DPS.

My Enchanting is maxed out. Just gathering up the final materials to make a few scrolls before I drop it and pick up Leatherworking and Skinning. Hopefully that shouldn't take long at all, but from what I've been reading it might actually be one of the difficult professions to level as an F2P twink. Should finish this by tomorrow and move on to Engineering. Now, THAT, will be a major pain. Slowly leveling my First Aid. Also, I somehow managed to dupe 1 Lesser Astral Essence into 10 TWICE, granting me basically 6 Greater Astral Essences. Not completely sure how I did it, but it involved the bank. If I figure out definitely how I did it, I'll be sure to post about it more. They're useless for F2P twinks, but if this is doable with other Essences there might be some use to it and I'll make sure to report it so it's hotfixed.

I always manage to find bugs by completely random accident...

Somehow duped 1 Lesser Astral Essence into 10...

Lastly, class imbalance. It's not even funny how overpowered Hunters and Rogues are at 20. It's worse still that there are people choosing to roll 24 Worgen or Goblin Hunter twinks in this bracket to purposely destroy the (lack of) balance we have at this point. Rogues can pretty much kill anyone with their openers, and Hunters can potentially global you if you're under 1,000 HP. Gear up and hope the hunter you fight isn't skilled. If it's a Rogue, well then, don't get opened on is all I can suggest.

I'm pretty much geared, as far as the easy stuff goes. Need my Fishing Hat, AGMs, and BoA gear. Have my substitutes, minus the lack of hat.

Strength and Honor,

~ Thirk

You REALLY need to work for your stuff

This "bracket" and play-type is, by concept, possibly my favorite type of twinking. Having to do every ounce of work for yourself with little to no help, and then showing off what YOU personally achieved on the battlefield. Well, it simply doesn't get any better than that. Even as someone who is used to having TONS of help at the snap of my fingers, I'm thoroughly enjoying working for my gear. With the amount of F2P twinks already participating it's shaping up to be an amazing community, even though there's a P2P 20 or 24 twink once in a while.

Another step closer to being geared.

I've created a chardev for a 20 Troll Hunter fully twinked here. It's balanced and pretty much best in slot. The Precision Ring is quite a pipe dream for a Free 2 Play twink, but I put it in there nonetheless. Everything else is obtainable given enough time to grind honor, fish in the tournament, do dungeons, and quest.

If you're a perfectionist like me you're going to be pretty annoyed at the amount of extra work F2P twinks require. In addition to gear, you're going to want to level Enchanting and Leatherworking. With 100 Enchanting I'll be able to enchant +15 HP to chest, +1 Stamina/Agility to bracer, +1 Resistance or +10 Armor to cloak, and +1 Weapon Damage on both my weapons. 100 Leatherworking nets me an extra 48 armor. Obviously not a major gain at all, especially compared to P2P twink enchants, but it's going to make a difference at the skill cap and will show dedication.

Before dropping Engineering I'm filling my bank with these.

I was lucky enough to have the recipe drop (TWICE).

I decided I'm going to level Engineering as well. At 60 Engineering I can enchant my ranged weapon with +1 Damage, and if I decide to level it more I can pick up a Mechanical Squirrel at 80, and since I already have schematics, I'm probably going to go all the way to 100 and craft a bunch of EZ-Thro Dynamite before dropping both Engineering and Enchanting and picking up Herbalism and Skinning. Those Horde side twinks who don't intend to fish can get another +4 Stamina with goggles at 100, but I plan on fishing for my hat.

Zug Zug,

~ Thirk

Free to Play - Level 20, Gold Capped, WSG

So I got back into WoW. For Free.

Level capped and building up my toon.

I attached a Starter Edition account to my currently existing Battle.net, and set out on creating a Level 20 twink. Since Alliance seems to grossly outnumber the horde purely based on gear alone (Level 20 quest gear is superior for Alliance, and it makes a great difference at this point), I chose Horde.

Now, being my first time back since Cataclysm launched, I know I need to choose something that I'd be able to enjoy and learn from. Hunter was my first toon when I first started playing, and I dropped it soon after. I created "Thirk", a Troll hunter on Aerie Peak US, which is where all the F2P action was happening.

I was quickly surprised when I came into the game. Hunters use focus? Arcane shot has no CD? Autoshot while moving? It was hard to wrap my head around the changes to begin with, but by level 10 it was relatively easy to get used to using Focus instead of mana. Far more burst, but generally more downtime. I suppose that makes up for the change that allows autoshot while moving.

Started doing quests for the gear I needed, and I finally gold capped my character!

Coincidentally, I also completed 100 quests at the same time!

So, I'm level 20 now and slowly getting gear. The few WSG games I played was mostly Alliance steamrolling Horde. A 24 twink here and there. Hopefully I can keep up better when I'm geared and closer to the Hunter skill cap.

Blood and Thunder,

~ Thirk