Lethal Shots

As my ventures in Naxx have continued, I haven’t seen much in the way of gear upgrades. This week that has changed though. Wednesday night Noth was nice enough to drop the Trespasser’s Boots, allowing me to finally get rid of my old blue boots, leaving my with a ring and trinket away from being fully “Epic-ed” out.

Last night was the big score though.  The token dropped for T7 pants and I managed to win the roll. With that in hand I was finally able to snag my 4th piece of T7. All together I have the shoulders, chest, legs, and gloves, with the gloves being the only piece that is Valorous.

Now this leave me with some testing to do. Sure, tier pieces are nice and all, but do they offer the best stat choices for me. To equip them I will lose a considerable amount of +hit and crit, both of which are crucial to my current build. The +hit I can make up by swapping out a few other pieces, but the crit is going to hurt. I will have to do some testing at the target dummy to see if the extra AP and set bonuses provide more DPS than what I am currently wearing.

As a side note, this is why I rarely get rid of any piece of gear. Stat stacking is all about balance. Upgrading one piece may mean that you need to swap out other pieces to maintain the balance. Once you have an item and have gemmed and enchanted it, make sure to hang on to it because you just might need it later.

I went with a guild group into Naxx 10 last week and cleared the place out. We started Wednesday night and hammered out three quarters. Came back Thursday and cleared the last quarter and the frost wyrm. We attempted Kel’Thezud several times, but just could not get it down. But we’re persistent and came back Friday night and mopped the floor with him.  It seemed to go pretty smoothly, so I am blaming our failure the previous night to it being late and people being tired.

My reward for all of this was somewhat bittersweet. I bid farewell to my Nesingway 4000 and replaced it with the wonderful Nerubian Conquerer. It’s a pretty solid upgrade for me, and being the only Hunter in the raid it was defaulted to me. The Nesingway wins hands down on cool factor, but hey, stats is stats.

I’m looking forward to going back. I still need some upgrades from there, plus it’s a hell of a lot of fun. But for now I am spending my time in between working on alts and grinding rep for my shoulder enchant.

Now if the guild can just get past Patchwerk on heoric, we would be set. I don’t think it is a question of gear or DPS. What is giving us problems is the Hateful Strikes. A little more coordination between the healers, tanks, and melee DPS and I think we’ll have it. As they say, Practice Makes Perfect.

This weekend saw my first serious foray into Naxxramas. And it was a blast. Bosses were downed, loot was had, and meters were topped.

Friday night the guild went into 25-man Naxx. This was my first trip into Naxx on Heroic, so needless to say, I was a little nervous. My biggest concern was that I would end up being carried through by my guild. But that turned out not to be the case. It came as a huge surprise to me when I ended up topping the meters on the first boss of the Arachnid Quarter. The rest of the night was much of the same. We cleared the Arachnid and Plague Quarters, one shotting most bosses. The one fight I was looking forward to was Heigan the Unclean. I have read a lot about the fight on other blogs I follow, but this was the first time I ever experienced it myself. I am proud to say that I danced the dance and stayed alive the whole fight.

Saturday, we put together a few groups for 10-man Naxx. The group I was in ended up clearing the Arachnid, Plague, and Construct Quarters in a little over 4 hours. This was only my second trip into 10-man Naxx, so I had some of the same worries as before, but I was comforted by my experience in Naxx the previous night. The run was outstanding in my eyes. We one shot most bosses. And much to my pleasure, my damage meter showed me to be be in the top 3 DPS on almost every boss fight.

Then on Sunday we cleared out both 10 and 25-man versions of VoA and OS. I have already both of those several times, so nothing special there.

I can’t wait for the weekend to roll around so that I can step back into Naxx. Though this time I plan to save my combat log so I can upload it to WWS (or WMO, heard good things about it) since it is more accurate than an in-game addon.

Sorry for the complete lack of updates for the last week or so. I have been pretty busy both in WoW and real life, and as a consequence the blog got neglected. Never fear though, I am back now, and to start things off I’ll give a quick update on what I’ve been up to.

First off, a real life diversion. Last weekend I went to an air show being held at a nearby Air Force base and watched the Thunderbirds perform. Combine their show with some incredible aerial acrobatics done by other performers, and it was a great way to spend a Saturday.

Anyway, back to WoW. I spent the better part of my playtime last week grinding Netherwing rep and leveling Santen. It paid off and Friday night I hit exalted with the Netherwing and got myself a shiny new Nether Drake. (Don’t let me forget to post some pictures later.) Real life kept me pretty busy over the weekend, meaning I spent very little time playing. But Sunday night, I managed to get some time to log on and was promptly invited to a Karazhan run by a former guildie. His guild was wanting to down the later bosses in Kara, but were 1 DPS short, and I just happened to log in at just the right time.

It was a great run, and I got to see some content I had never seen before. We 1 shot Ilhoof, completed the Chess Event, 2 shot Prince, and 1 shot Netherspite. No hunter loot dropped, but I did manage to snag 9 badges. Altogether it was a fun run, and I do believe I scored myself a possible invite back at a later date, if I’m not tied to a run with my own guild that is.

Well, that about sums up the last week in the life of Santyn. I am getting over my latest bout of writer’s block, so check back soon.

Made another trip to Karazhan Thursday night with my guild’s fledgling second raid group. We were only able to get one tank for the evening, so we only went in to down the Huntsman. All went well and we one-shotted him. Cheers were cheered and loot was had. That night, he decided to drop Stalker’s War Bands and Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation.

The War Bands were a definite upgrade for me, so I called out that I needed them. No else needed them, so I was awarded them by default. (Indecently, my poor DKP is so far negative now that it isn’t even funny.) Now we were left with deciding what to do with the gloves. No one needed them, so it was down to letting someone have them for a side-grade or Dis-Enchanting them. And it so happened that they were a side-grade for me. The gloves gave me a Attack Power boost at the cost of some health and Crit Rating. And being the wonderfully nice people that my guild mates are, they gave them to me at no DKP cost. That right there is why I love my guild and have no intention of leaving them.

Buy anyway. So here i am with only 45 minutes spent in Kara and walk out with 2 pieces of loot. Does it get any better? To make the most of these 2 pieces, I had a guild mate put a Savagery enchant on the both of them, which puts me at just over 1500 AP with Aspect of the Hawk on.

Raiding is good.