The Farstrider Scout

So… BRK and a host of other blogs have been blocked here at work…  And I’m sure my site will be on the chopping block soon as well, so this will probably be the last one I do here, since my email is tied in with it as well…

Anyhow, this week’s Arena review…  3 wins, 8 losses.  We learned a lot though.  Saturday, we didn’t do any matches, but I took Sheru outside Orgrimmar and we duelled for an hour or so.  I started out melee only, no traps, then upgraded to traps, then bow, then full out using everything I had at my disposal.  I did my best  to teach her as much as I could about taking down hunters, and to a lesser extent, other classes.  She’s very new to PvP, with only 2k honor kills on her main, whereas, I’ve got 13k+, ranked 9th Horde-side on my server… And I’ve still got a lot to learn.  She doesn’t have her PvP trinket either, so we’re going to work on getting that for her as well.  Sunday we did 6 matches together, going 3 and 3 before calling it quits.

Athanaric joined me for the last 5 matches, and we were beaten every time.  The last match was entertaining though, facing off against two players from Alliance side that we were very familiar with, and had fought outside of Arena before.  In the end, it was down to hunter against hunter, and she won out thanks to me being OOM.  Good fight, Kalili.

The big disadvantage to having to cycle schedules from nights to days and back again in the same weekend is that it leaves you rather drained.  Right now, I’m about to faceplant on my keyboard, but I need to stay up for just a little bit longer.

The bear has a name!  Bejek is now 61, slowly on his way to becoming the tanking pet that I want him to be.  Spent a good chunk of time in Nagrand earlier today just slaughtering talbuk and clefthoof left and right while a guild mate skinned everything we dropped.  It would have been a shame to let all that go to waste.

Sheru and I also knocked 6 arena matches out, coming away with 3 wins and 3 losses….  Would have been 3 and 2, but I had to push our luck and we went up against a warrior/rogue combo and made mistakes that we shouldn’t have.

Hit revered with Cenarion Expedition today as well, and now the head enchant (will link tomorrow) is mine!  All mine!  I’m now sitting at 85 hit, which if I recall is very close to the cap.  Still need to work on the agility though.

In any case, I’m out of steam…  At least I’ll sleep well.

Final arena results for this week were 3 wins, 7 losses, which is a big improvement over last week’s 1 win, 9 losses.  Sheru helped win one of them, after we changed our strategy up, and Ath helped me knock out the last six matches last night, with two wins added. 

Part of that I think I can attribute to the new spec.  Having the added CC of Wyvern Sting really helped shut people down.  I still need to boost my agility up, but I don’t think I’ll see that until I start going to BG’s again regularly.  Another benefit is the increased health – with all my pvp gear worn, I had just under 10k health…  The day prior, coming out of Kara raid buffed, I had 11.2k health when I put all the PvP gear on.

Overall, the paperdoll DPS loss seems negligable, as I crit a lot more, which has been pulling aggro from my pet, and in one run through Crypts, I managed to push out 536 DPS, which is high for me.   Sooo, I think I’ll be sticking with this spec for a while.

After going 0-4 for our first matches in 2v2, that’s about all I can say.  We got steamrolled.  Several issues contribute to this:  gear, experience, team makeup, and communication.

Of the teams we faced off against, only 1 did not have a rogue on their side.  This became an issue, since, as a hunter, I can see what we’re up against as soon as I get out the gates.  If there’s only 1 pip on the minimap, there’s a stealther about.  Unfortunately, we’re not using voice chat, so by the time I could even get “Rogue” off, Ath had charged into the middle of the arena and gotten sapped…  Seconds after which usually followed by me being blinded or gouged…. and our swift deaths.  Well, we’ll have to work on it.  After all, we are still learning.

And just like that, CrackHorde is born!  Sure, it’s not an entirely original name, but it works for its intended purpose.  Hopefully we’ll run our first match tonight, but we’ll see.  I still have to finish off Sunken Temple for my wife’s shadow priest and continue her training on how to work with raid markers.

We didn’t go there last night, which frustrated her, but I have things that I want to do as well, such as get the Dire Maul Crescent Key, and finally get Revered with Thrallmar, allowing me to purchase the [Blackened Spear].  The bad news about this upgrade is it drops my health down below 7k again, so I’ll probably continue using that ugly axe in PvP for the time being.

Now comes the big debate: +35 Agi, or +70 AP enchant?  I’m tempted to go with the agility, since it would balance things out a bit, giving me a bit more crit, but double the attack power with Savagery is tempting too…

First off, let it be said that some of the best gear you can get, short of being in a raiding guild, can be obtained from doing Arena matches.  I know a lot of hunters are after the S3 axe (uuuuggggllllyyyy!), but I’ve got my eye on the bow, even as slow as it is (After playing on both extremes of the speed spectrum, I want something around 2.0 base speed, I think…  But that’s another post.).

All you need is a team…  So I’m working on just that.  I’ve got a rogue (Sheru, who has been a dependable partner in instances), and a warrior (Athanaric, from the guild), that I know are both interested.  My plan is to start out small, with a 2v2, and we can all swap out with each other as we see fit.  I rather see myself as being a main player though, as both of the others have more of a life than I do.  I don’t really have a problem with this especially since neither of them know the other all that well.

So far, there are several areas in which we’re lacking.  First one is experience - I’d say about 40% of the time that I’m in BG’s, it’s either me versus a huge group of enemies, the other 40% it’s me and a bunch of allies versus a small number of enemies, and the remaining 20% it’s a one on one fight.  Very, very rarely do I walk into a 2 on 2 fight.  I really haven’t done any BGs with Ath, so I have no idea how he handles himself there, but in world pvp, we do fairly well.  Sheru, on the other hand, I’ve been in BGs and world pvp, and I tend to treat her like a tank – burn down whatever she’s beating on, while doing my best to control any other nearby targets through a combination of traps, scattershot, and my rocket launcher.

Second, is gear.  I doubt that any of us have the lvl 70 pvp trinket, and I have no idea whether they have the lower level one.  I do, and that 5 minute cooldown is a killer.  We each have a few pieces of S1 Gladiator gear, but even supplemented by the Halaa PvP gear, my resilience is only sitting around 130.  Sometimes I feel like I’d rather just keep my Beast Lord gear on for the 26 second trap cooldown.

Third, we don’t have a name yet, so no charter either.  Sheru and I have been talking about this project for about a week, but Ath only mentioned it in passing about a week or so ago, before he hit 70.  It definitely bodes for some discussion, especially seeing as how Sheru is gone for the next few days due to RealLife(tm) intervening.

I’m hoping I can catch Ath tonight sometime and discuss it with him, maybe even get the team formed.

Here are a few names I’ve thought of:

• Primal Fury
• Bow and Blades
• Kek! Mortal Striek! (Ath’s unofficial battlecry)
• Blood Pack
• Indeterminite Odds
• Indomitable Odds