I said it would never happen... But.

It's a (semi) well-know fact that I've always been more than slightly against the Survival Spec as a PvE build.

True, in the past, it's been the top raid spec. And also true is the fact that it's become more and more viable as patches have tweaked the hunter role.

After the 3.1 patch, I respecced to MM for a while, in the hope that I could squeeze out a little more pure DPS, but that was a false-hope. All I did was nerf my own pet, and while my own DPS did increase, it wasn't enough to compensate.

Maybe if Trueshot aura was higher in the MM tree it would be more worthwhile investing more points into it. But, for now at least, it's only the top of that tree that I'd consider worthwhile.

But survival now looks like a very promising spec. The "Black Arrow" and "Explosive Shot" look very good, and the potential for DPS from those 2 alone looks like it could be a winner.
It'd mean giving up most of my Macros until I got into the swing of how it all works, but I'm sure I could redesign them later.

I don't have any of the exotic pets anyway, so I'm not going to miss any of those. But it'll feel weird not seeing a giant red Cat ripping the face off anything in front of it.
it wasn't so long ago that I did a little test, just for fun.
I asked Bolle a (full T7.5) Holy Paladin to just stand there and heal himself why my cat attacked him. (I didn't attack). In it's regular attacks he could easily heal himself up forever, but as soon as I popped that big-red-beast button he got his ass handed to him within seconds. He actually spanked my Cat to death rather than just trying to heal out of its DPS. but it proved a point.

So, do I want to lose that feeling of god-like power? Even if it means that I can nuke the crap (even more) out of anything in my path?

Yes.

I'll miss it, but if I really get that sad about it I'll act stupid and pay 1000g for dual specs so I can do it again.

Munqui Lore - The Next Generation

Munqui Lore - The Next Generation

Chapter 1 - Naxx to the Future

Continuing the traditions of the Tribe, the Munquis decided it was time to put Arthas back in his place. It was fine when he was some random bogey-man that parents told their kids stories about. And whose very name could inspire dread in every non-Munqui in the room. But it just wasn’t on when the bugger started whispering people personally, and turning up in cutscenes.
The guy had obviously developed a “Wizard of Oz” complex. He was all smoke and mirrors, and they must have been fun-house mirrors, because he was never the same size in any of them.
So the Munquis decided to gear-up and get on with it. Arthas was going down, and Frostmourne would be making a great conversation piece, hanging above the fireplace in the guildhall.

To start with, Vedd was put in charge of finding him. There were a few murmurs of “Oh Shit” when Lewt made this decision, but the Munquis were nothing if not loyal. So until Brast returned from babysitting, Lewt was in charge, and his word was law.
(The Munquis were not totally stupid though, and were known to bend laws so much that a even a very big bendy thing, perhaps a willow tree, would normally snap).

After endless moments of searching Vedd found the perfect hiding place for Arthas. Naxxramas. Somehow it had moved from its usual location, and had appeared in Northrend, hovering above a field of undead.
This seemed a little too convenient for some of the Munquis, but action was action, so they dusted the demon guts off their equipment, and set out slaughtering armies of the undead instead.

After just a couple of weeks, they’d reached Wintergarde Keep, and had Naxxramas in their sights. There was just one problem. It was floating 100 feet up in the air.

“Bugger” Said Vedd.
“$£*%!!!” Said Funk.

The Munquis sat in the local inn to ponder the problem, and of-course sample the local ales. This, obviously, then led to more pondering, such as “Why do you need to pee so much” and “Why is there always carrots in it” followed by the desperate desire for thinly sliced generic meat wrapped in stale bread and smothered in a very hot sauce.
Later still, followed by the desire for unprotected sex. And even later still followed by the horrible feeling that the person lying next to them the next morning might either come knocking on their door in about 9 months time or possibly develop a sudden itching sensation in a particularly uncomfortable area for the next few weeks.

After several days of this, the application of numerous jars of ointments, and no less than two shotgun weddings, the Munquis had decided what to do.

“Right,” said Lewt “What we need is plan!”
Bronze, after face-palming himself so hard that he almost fell over, replied “Yeah, we figured that.. How about we fly up there?”
“Excellent idea! Jolly Good Show!” replied Lewt “Promote that man!”
Why Lewt had suddenly turned into a world war 2 army captain, including the big curly moustache and the baton under his arm, no one knew. But they didn’t plan on asking either, the last person to mention it was Shirt, and he was still cleaning those toilets with a toothbrush a week later.

After realising that their flying mounts didn’t work in Northrend, because of something to do with the cold weather, the team set-off to raise enough money to pay for the training.
Along the way, they stumbled across an argument between some dragons around a ‘Wrath’ Gate, A few of the officers tried to point out that the little guy in the full suit of armour was Arthas, and that they should have given him a kicking before he ran back into the giant, evil, impregnable, citadel. But Lewt wouldn’t hear of it.
Several more weeks later, the group had finally acquired enough money to pay for the new training their mounts, supposedly, needed. And were finally ready to enter Naxx.

As a group, they flew on up to the entrance portal, and were confronted by a horrific sight. The place was packed. Obviously other guilds were trying to get a head-strart on Arthas’ ass-kicking and had used devious and under-handed ways to earn their money more quickly. (As opposed to the Munquis way of just killing everything that moved and slaughtering ancient civilisations).

After wading through the mass leather-clad and sweaty bodies, the team dived straight through the first portal they saw. Except for Knicks and Tins, who decided that they needed to do at least 3 more laps of the entrance-hall before finally joining the others.
When they finally did appear, they looked more than a little sweaty themselves, although seemed quite pleased about it. And Tins was briefly seen slipping a phone number into a more secure place.

“Vedd, you’re up!” Commanded Lewt. “Lets get on with this. The general wants an update STAT. And the HQ wants to clear this SNAFU up PDQ, and get us back to base before the locals even know we’ve been here!”
For some reason, Lewt had now shaved off his moustache, along with all the hair on his head, covered his face in grease paint, and was wearing what looked like a necklace made from ears around his neck.
“Hey! Its-a-me Veddy!” Chirpped Vedd.
“Ohhhhhh” groaned the Munquis in unison.
“Vedd, drop the Mario act and get on with it please” begged Vind, with the backing of the entire group.
“OK OK!” Said Vedd. “Enough of the jib-jab you lot, let’s move out. I’m sure Arthas is just around this corner.”
After several minutes of walking around the corner, Vedd finally had to concede that they were going in circles when Biafra started dropping bread-crumbs, and they came across them at least 3 times. It became even more obvious when Funk sat down and started to eat the breadcrumbs, and began waving at the others each time they passed.

“Shall we just turn down one of these side passages?” Suggested Grenth. “It looks to me like they might lead somewhere”.
“Errrrrr, Yeah, sure, I was just about to suggest that anyway.” Said Vedd.

The group turned down the first passage they came to. The giant spider effigy above the arch should have given them a clue what to expect , but I think they were all just so glad for the change of scenery that none of them noticed it.
After disposing of the trashy little spiders that got in their way, the Munquis faced their next big dilemma. More choices. Left… or............ (pause for dramatic effect)......... Right.

“Hold on Lads!” announced Smyth “I’ve got an idea”.

Somewhere, very far from Naxx, someone else spoke those very same words, and a coach full of gold slipped over the edge of a mountain, taking all the passengers with it, and killing them in a horrible and painful way. But the Munquis didn’t know about that, so they just waited to see what Smyth had to say.

Movers and Shakers

Just a quick update:
The Munquis now have 2 new junior-officers Flowersz and Biafra.

So a big "Welcome" to them both.

This is one part of the political rumblings I mentioned in an earlier post. More will probably follow soon.

The New Munqui Movie Blog

Instead of making a complete mess of this blog by screwing with the formatting and layouts, I've decided to set up a second blog to do just that with.

So, I'm proud(ish) to present... *drumroll please*... the Smyth Munqui Movie blog.

http://munquimovies.blogspot.com

Read it at your peril.

A style of my own

I've never really been happy with the style of my blog, so I've decided to do a bit of spring cleaning and change a few things.

Apologies if this means that it looks ugly as sin, if you happen to log on mid-change, but those are the things we all have to put up with.
If it's so bad that it's unreadable, check back in 5 minutes, and hopefully it'll be fixed again.

Saints and Sinners

It's been the easter holidays, kids off school, family events, and a chance to unwind from my usually hectic lifestyle.
So, needless to say, WOW had to take a bit of a back seat for the last week and a bit. I've been busying myself with other fun activities such as spending time with the family, drinking large amounts of lager, going to funfairs (whilst drinking lager), swimiing in the Leeds / Liverpool canal (after drinking lager), playing football (in between drinking lager), playing cricket instead (after realising how out of shape we all were), watching football (while drinking more lager), and playing poker (which unusually did NOT involve any lager whatsoever, since I had to drive and get up for work today).

In between all that I've mainly been killing my time playing Xbox games. It's much easier to spend an occasional hour or two in Microsoft-Land, than it is in Northrend. And a 'pause' button is a sadly-lacked feature of most mmorpg's. So Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Saints Row 2 have been filling my spare time.
Both of which are excellent games. And any GTA fans should definitely pick up SR2.

I've still called in to visit WoW occasionally, and play with some of the new patch 3.1 toys, but haven't really done anything (or found anything) too interesting. Tonight will be my first full night of play again, so maybe I'll discover something.

Dual-Spec doesn't really give many options to someone whose main is a Hunter. I can DPS a bit, or I can DPS a bit more, or I could DPS a hell of alot, it's a no brainer really. That said, if I find myself in the position where I have 1k gold with nothing to spend it on, I might do a BM / MM combo, for the rare occasion where that would suit the group more.

On another note: There's political movings within the guild too, with a potential step-down by a well-known member, I'm not sure if the non-officers know anything about it all yet, so I won't say too much. but watch out for changes sometime this week.

EDIT: Apologies for all the previous spam at the bottom of this post. That's what I get for sending my blogs in from work.

Fear of the Unknown?

I've posted a poll, over on the Munqui Tribe forums, for our members to have a say on where our official guild raiding goes from here.
The officers often discuss these issues, behind the scenes, but at the end of the day it's not just 'our' guild, although we try not to let too much riff-raff in.

The current raid teams are either already, or soon about to, get bored of running Naxx 10.
We've cleared it, a few times now, and the challenge just doesn't seem to be there anymore. This isn't a bad thing, it's just natural progression.

So where do we go from here?

In my view, it's time we started at least trying to do 25 man raids. And so we have a poll to ask all the non-officers (and officers too I suppose) what they want to do.
The general opinion seems to be split almost 50/50.

Everyone loves the fun of 25 mans, and they're obviously much more social events than the 10 man runs. But people seem to be very wary of them. And I can't help feeling that they just don't understand what it's all about.

When WoW first came out, back in the days where level 60 was the cap, Raiding was only for the elite few. The small percentage of hardcore players who had the time, and patience to reach the pinnacle of the game. I can't remember what the actual percentage of the population of the game ever saw this content, but lets just say, it wasn't very many.

When TBC arrived, Blizz opeend up the idea of entry-level raiding. Why should all the effort they put into the raid dungeons only be accesible to a tiny percentage of the players. For one thing, it excludes people, and for another it's not very cost-effective. And Blizz are in this for the money at the end of the day.
So they introduced 'Heroics' which were designed to be a stepping-stone into raiding, and Karazahn, which was manageable once you were geared with all the drops from heroics. The progression paths were clear.
You hit 80, then you got good gear from regular dungeons / crafting. You then did heroics. Once your gear was good enough, you could do Kara. After that things fell down a little, as Kara was 10-man and the next raids in the progression were 25 man, so it was hard for non-hardcore players to go any further. Blizz realised this.

So with WotLK Blizz have gone the step further, there is now a 10-man and 25 man version of every new raid. So smaller guilds and non-hardcore players can finally reach the parts of the game that they couldn't previously.
But they also changed the progression structure. No longer do you need to grind through Regulars -> Heroics -> Raids.
These days a fresh-faced level 80 can enter Naxx with the gear they buy from the AH, or from emblem drops that are easy to come by, or from rep vendors (with rep that is now also much simpler to achieve).

In a way, this is a curse and a blessing. Raiding just got easy. On the plus side, it means that it's no longer for the elite few, and many more people can enjoy it. But on the negative side, it means that it's no longer for the elite few, and many more people can enjoy it.... Yeah, i know I typed that sentence twice, it was intentional.

So, no longer, is raiding only for the elite. And not only are the 10 man raids possible for non-epic'd players, but the 25 mans are too. Blizz didn't just take the nerf-bat to the raids, they took a bloody great nerf-sledgehammer to them.

That's right, the 25 mans are now an alternative to the 10 mans. You don't "progress" to them anymore. Almost as soon as you're capable of handling the 10 mans, you can also start playing in the 25 mans.

Don't get me wrong, the better the gear you have the easier you'll find it, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. And considering you can buy fantastic epics and t7 items with tokens dropped from heroics it's easy to give yourself a head start.
We that have been raiding 10-man Naxx collect those exact same tokens. Not special 'raid' tokens that give us an advantage.

So if you were a guild new to raiding, and had the membership numbers, the ideal thing to do would be heorics to get enough basic gear, and then go straight to 25 man runs.

In our case, we have about 19 members who are raid-hardened, almost fully epic'd, and very well co-ordinated (most of the time). Those 19 players could easily take on many of the 25 man bosses alone. They wouldn't even need an extra 6 players... But if there's spaces going spare, why not fill them.

The rewards from 25-man raiding are much greater than 10-mans. 10-mans these days are essentially just heroics with more players, and bigger dungeons (or dungeon, since there's only 1 so far).
When Ulduar arrives you'll need to be pretty well geeared and experienced in Naxx before you can cut it there, but it's not going to be the great leap into the unknown that some of our non-raiders think it is.

I feel that even some of our current raiders are scared of the "big-bad" (to coin a phrase from an ex-cheerleader), and that was defeated at the end of the last series.

Despite everything I wrote above, there's always a downside, and here it is. We need more players. It's not the end of the world if we don't get the full 25, but we would need more commitment from our guildies.

Worth the Upgrade?

I've been keeping an eye on my gear recently, picking up the odd upgrade whenever possible.
But I'm starting to question how effective the upgrades are for me.

My possible upgrades according to gear-wishlist.appspot.com aren't very much. I'm not even full epic yet, I still have blue rings and trinkets, but my only worthwhile upgrades come from 25 man raids.
There are one or two minor upgrades I could get, but nothing that's going to be worth the hassle until Ulduar comes along.
I think part of the problem is that blues are so damn good these days. Naxx is clearable in nothing but blues, if you have a good team.

I've even picked up one or two raid items recently, but when I've come to equip them, my stats have dropped so much that I've switched back.

I'll be picking up as much "Valorous" gear as I can, to replace my "Heroes" set. As the set bonuses are great, and the stats are big improvements. I'm also workign on my Kirin Tor rep for an epic ring.
But I'm struggling to see the point in paying 900g for a Titanium Impact Band when it's not erally a major upgrde.
Once I get my Kirin Tor Ring, and 12 more emblems of valor, I'll have 2 epic rings, for a fraction of that cost.

The epics dropped by Heroic bosses, and easily available from rep vendors, these days is also Uber. The items are almost identical to 10-man raid drops, meaning you never even have to set foot in a 10 man raid to start doing 25 mans.

Also, in my experience, and from browsing the interweb, many others. 25 man raids are easier than 10 mans. There's alot more room for error. And the rewards are much much greater.

The Munquis easily 19 manned Sarth last week. That means we could happily boost 6 or more brand new level 80's at a time. Achievements all-round, emblems-a-plenty, and gear-upgrades directly from green to purple.

I'm not complaining, I like the level of difficulty. For a social guild, like ours, it's great. And I'll probably return to Naxx even when Uludar is with us. Because there'll be a new troop of level 80's dying to see what it's like.
But instead of taking months to clear the place, it'll probably be only a matter of weeks.

There's nothing like the feeling of GodLike-Power when a bunch of green-geared newbies see you nuking a boss to death single-handedly. And make "ooooooohh" and "ahhhhh" noises.

Random Carnage

Does anyone else, like me, think that WoW could do with a little more randomness?

I'm talking about events that happen, that not neccesarily affect the whole server, but add a bit of variety in to the game.
Remeber when the Portal was opening for TBC, and a demon attacked IF, or pre- WotLK when zombies started appearing everywhere, and necropolis's (necropoli?) appeared in the zones. And that sort of thing.

Having tried hosting my own server, despite the intial problem of getting it up and running, once it was it was simple to make a dragon appear outside SW. Or to make Hogger 200 feet tall, and give him 10 million HP. It was Point -> Click -> Type -> Done.

I think totally random events liek this would keep things much more interesting. Blizz could just let one of the devs loose for a day or two each week, and give them the freedom to do whatever they wanted.

They're a Hordie Scum-Lover? Fine, send something to attack one of the Alliance Capital cities. The allies wont mind, it keeps things interesting. And if they put it near Westfall the hordies would probably attack it too.

What about an army of 100's of... any sort of mob really, just appearing out of thin air to terrorize a neighbourhood.

There wouldn't even have to be any reward for joining in on things like this. The randomness is what makes it fun. And what happens one day, may never happen again, so people will want to be involved just so they can say "I was there when...." or "Did you see that 500 foot tall Murloc that ran through STV?? It took 50 players to bring him down."

The lowbies can always get out of the way, if the challenge is too much for them. There's plenty of starting zones, and each event might only last 5-10 minutes, or maybe for an hour.

How about if a GM decided it would be fun to drop Prince Malchezzar into the middle of a WSG match. And suddenly both sides had to work together to get rid of him, or lose the match, what would they do?

My head is full of ideas along this line. The possibilities are endless, and the application is simple. 10 minutes later, it's as if nothing had ever happened. But it did. And people will remember it.

Pet Healing

I'm sure i'm not the only one who remembers the problems Hunters used to have with pets pre-TBC and even pre-WotLK, with pet healing.

When I'm solo'ing mobs or quests, my pet rarely ever dies, because my own pet healing skills are enough to keep him up against anything but multiple elites.

However, stick my pet, especially my cat, in a party / raid with bosses doing AOE, and my focus on the bosses HP bar, and my cooldowns, and my pet can rapidly find itself runnign out of HP.
I cast a heal whenever I notice my pets HP dropping, or even recall it from combat to give me a bit of time to regen it, but there's no way I could keep it alive all on my own.

In previous raids and party groups the policy has always been "The Hunters pet, is the Hunters problem" but this doesn't ring true since WotLK. My pet obviously shouldn't take healing priority over a real player... but it does count for alot of DPS. Usually around 700. This is about the same as some non-raid-geared level 80's.
It also saves squishies when I send it in to get the aggro off them, rather than pulling it myself. And in some encounters, like Gluth, it's great to send it in to attack the boss, while I concentrate on kiting an army of undead. So the boss still gets the 700 DPS, over a 5 minute fight, that adds up to an extra 210k dmg. Not earth shattering, but helpful non the less.
My pets crits also buff the entire raid with extra dmg, so overall, it's effect is very useful. And keeping them up is reccomended.

I'm not trying to sing the praises of my pets here, although they are extremely useful.
I'm just trying to say "Thanks" to the healers who keep them alive in Raids. As an ex-healer myself, your helpfulness has been noticed.

Oh, but to the tanks, when tanking Heigan, pull him a little bit more across the line of the waves, because my pet always attacks from the back, so usually I have to keep him at my side for that fight, or he just dies straight away which lowers my DPS.
The raiders last night pulled him just a little bit further in on each wave, which meant I could send my pet in, for all-out DPS, and Heigan went down after only 2 dances.

Bring on the Dwarves!

The Munquis entered Naxx again last night. We enter every Monday and Thursday, so it shouldn't be too big a suprise.

I wasn't supposed to be in the team, but a missing DPS meant a spot became available, and I was offered it. And damn did we do well.

Despite a late start while people were waited for, Flying mounts were purchased, and people generally pissed about, once we finally got in there we stormed on ahead. 6-8 manning trash to try and make up a little time.

The Spider wing was cleared without a single hiccup. Had we not stopped mid-way to summon some of the missing members we probably would have earned the 20 minute achievement.

Plague quarter went just as well, with everyone earning the "safety dance" achievement on heigan. (So Flowersz, you're forgiven for last time).

In the Military quarter we had 1 wipe on trash, where we all got a bit carried away. We'd had a 5 minute break, and our healing machine was still not back. So the request to pull bigger groups "when he returned" was half listened to.
Oh well. We lost a single man, to trash, on the Gothik encounter. But we can't blame him, it wasn't really his fault. So that cost us the potential "undying" achievement (but it turns out we wouldn't have made it anyway).

Construct quarter also went smoothly, with no delays, no one falling of pipes, no one dying on frogger. We did wipe, once, on Thaddius when a couple of people missed the jump to the boss platform, and a few got hit by the wrong charge.

Overall, it was about as excellent a night as anyone could have expected. We cleared all 4 wings in one night, and had only 1 boss wipe. So all but Thaddius were single-shotted. The loatheb corridor tactic is now perfected, and it took us no more than 60 seconds to get through there.
We took a vote at the end, to see if we should carry on and try to clear Saph and KT, and get the whole place cleared in one night. A few said 'no', so it's saved until Monday. But with that team I'm sure it would have been very easy.
It's a shame we didn't start on time, as it would have given us at least 1 shot on both of them. 3 ranged DPS would have helped on KT too.

The experience of the raiders really showed last night. Time wasn't wasted explaining all the details of encounters, everyone knew what was expected of them, and if Vedd assigned extra duties like Kiting, Add control, or Horsemen roles it was pretty much just a "Yessir" and the job got done. We actually functioned like a full team of people who knew what they were doing. Despite that same team probably never having raided together. And we had fun.

A "BIG GRATZ" to all those involved in last nights run.
A Simpsons style "Ha Ha!" to Funk for not managing to catch me up.
A "Thankyou" to Vedd, for leading the way.
and A "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!" to the Dwarves in Ulduar.

Hall of Fame:

Tanks: Karudan (Vind), Argas
Healers: Biafra, Flowersz, Komatai
Melee: Vedd, Hetebliksem (Babe)
Ranged: Funkadelic, Thundress (Manda), Smythy

Edit: You can tell a raid has gone well when, by the end of it, you've actually earned 100g. Although I did shoot 150g worth of Arrows.
I did 16 Million points of damage with them though. So at less than 10g per Million dmg I think many would consider that a bargain.