Lethal Shots

I love Hallow’s End. It is easily the second best holiday in WoW. The only reason Brewfest beats it out is the alcohol. (What can I say, everything is better when you’re drunk.) And the new achievement system only makes it better.

I spent a good chunk of my weekend doing holiday events. I have Trick-or-Treated every Alliance friendly inn in Azeroth, jammed pumpkins on people’s heads, beat up the Headless Horseman for his lunch money, and ate candy until I puked.

One of the first things I noted was how ridiculously easy it is to make money off this holiday. Simply flying around to all the inns you get 3.75 gold each. And even if you are not at 70 yet, it is lucrative to do for the insanely easy XP.

While you’re at it, go ahead and Trick-or-Treat the inn keepers whenever the de-buff wears off. At very least you get some free food, but what you really want are the wands. With the new achievement system in place, people are paying good money just to have you transform them into various outfits for The Masquerade achievement.

Also while Trick-or-Treating inn keepers you might receive mask or pumpkins. The masks can be collected for the A Mask for all Occasions achievement, and the pumpkins are thrown at other players for yet another achievement, Check Your Head.

You also need to visit one of the starting area villages to participate in a few more holiday festivities. The big one you want is the quest The Headless Horseman. Once you have that, scoot yourself on up to Scarlet Monestary with 4 of your friends and take on the Headless Horseman. Like Coren Direbrew, each person in the group can sumon him once per day, but don’t worry, he is considerably easier to down than Coren. The Horseman drops some nice caster rings, but the main items you are going for is ???pet and ???mount, both of which are needed to complete achievements for Hallow’s End.

With loot to be had, and achievements to earn, holidays are a huge part of WoW. So get out there and make the most you can of Hallow’s End, because with Wrath right around the corner it might be a while before you have the time to completely lose yourself in another holiday.

Holy DPS indeed. In the past few days since patch 3.0.2 went live, I have achieved record highs for personal DPS. Now I am no theorycrafter, I fall more in the “try it and see if it works” camp. All I know is what I am trying is working.

I have been using Recount to track my DPS while solo grinding in Netherstorm. And I have been uttely amazed at the results. Pre-patch, my personal record for DPS pre-patch was a little over 1000, fully raid buffed during a boss fight. Now I consistently pull that much simply grinding in Netherstorm with only AotH.

While grinding for consortium rep I was putting out 1500 DPS on average, with a max of 2000. I never dreamed to see these kind of numbers. Granted this was AOE grinding with my Gorilladin, but it sure is efficient. Lets just hope Blizzard doesn’t nerf us now.

What do I think about the 3.0.2? I love it. Before, I took the awesome sauce 1 shot at a time. Now I guzzle it by the fifth. My DPS is through the roof, pet DPS is through the roof, and aggro issues are all but gone. Here is my take on some of the larger changes.

• Talents - Once I was finally able to log in Tuesday, I allotted my talent points, speccing deep Beast Master. I went with a 53/8/0 build. I chose talents to maximize pet damage and survivability over personal damage so that I can see how well my pet can tank in instances. Later I plan to re-spec and drop some pet survivability in favor of maximizing damage, mostly for optimal raid performance.
• Stable Slots – 2 extra stable slots is full of win. Now Blizzard just needs to give us more.
• Pets - I tried out 4 pets Tuesday. I was happy with all of them, but only impressed by a few.
  • Gorilla - I love this guy. He holds aggro on multiple mobs like a champ, and puts out decent DPS to top it off.
  • Wind Serpent – In a word: meh. While I like these guys, they are still the same bag of tricks. Beautiful pets, just nothing new to get excited about.
  • Chimera - I wasn’t sure how these guys were going to turn out, but after trying one I am sold. They look nice, are flappy (always a plus in my book), and put out decent damage.
  • Moth - This is the first and only Ferocity pet I have tried, and I’m not too impressed with it. He put out decent DPS, but nothing too spectacular. I’m pretty sure I am going to be shopping around a little to find a replacement for this one.
• Pet Tanking – I’m not sure if Blizzard intended it, but I tried my hand at pet tanking a 5-man. I chose non-heroic Blood Furnace to start with. Nothing too hard the first time out, but still hard enough that I wasn’t OP. I grabbed Gorilladin and headed over there, with a 63 Shaman guildie tagging along. He played pseudo healer for me, which worked out well since he got some easy XP and there were a few times where Mend Pet couldn’t quite keep up. Overall it was a successful, and I look forward to moving on to some harder 5-mans.
• Mana - The new Aspect of the Viper is going to take some getting used to. Pre-patch, I used AotV whenever I was grinding. No need to worry about mana, it was just there. Now I can’t do that. With the nerf to damage while in AotV, I have to actively between AotH and AotV to maintain optimal damage and mana regen.
• Autoshot Unlinking – This one is kind of bittersweet. Before, shot rotations were kind of a defining characteristic of Hunters. With Autoshot unlinked, we now play like many other classes, simply mashing the next ability in our lineup with no regard to our swing timer. Hunter DPS will increase because of this, but it feels somehow wrong.
• Vanity Pets and Mounts – Very little to say here. The extra bag space is always welcome.

Overall i am happy with the patch. There are several changes that are going to take some getting used to, but nothing that is too bad.

My name is Santyn, and I am a Night Elf Mohawk.

Well, at least I have a mohawk. Matticus asked that we all post our before and after pics once we have gotten our first haircut. So here are mine. Above is the after and below is the before.

If you play a Hunter and haven’t listened to the all new podcast Lock and Load, you better head over to The Hunter’s Mark check it out. Hell, even if you don’t play a Hunter go ahead and check it out.

Lassirra of The Hunter’s Mark and Drotara of Less QQ, More PewPew have put together a great podcast dedicated completely to Hunters. For their first offering, they chose to cover all of the new talent, spell, and pet options being introduced in the patch today and also in Wrath.

They released Episode 1 today, and having listened to it I can’t wait to see what they offer up for a second one.