On The Road To Being a Marksman - Part 10

Damage done. That's the first topic I wanted to talk about after I switched to Marksman. Well. The weekend after I switched my pimped-out desktop blew the Windows segment of the hard drive. It's a RAID0 config and was pretty grisly to get all my iTunes copied off it with an external drive without Windows. But I managed.

That said, I've been raiding Marksman on my laptop. I had to turn down graphics like hell just to get my frames-per-second to be playable in 25man instances. So, it's a little hard to compare if; 1) my being Marksman sucks, or 2) my gear sucks, or 3) my rotation sucks, or 4) my computer sucks, or all four.

Now firstly, there are some fights where I happen to do pretty well. I might be in the top 3. But often I find that I'm not. I am usually over 10k, but I could do that as Survival too.

Addressing the first point: on some fights, I just don't keep my buffed stings maintained. There might be adds that take a smidge too long to get down. I could be smart and Chimera the boss before the sting wears off. I feel like that requires a focus macro, which I really would make it as a target-of-my-focus macro. I also suck in that I will still accidentally refresh a serpent sting with a lesser serpent sting. Lose! So I do suck at Marksman.

Addressing point two: my gear isn't bad, but it fails at any decent armor penetration. Okay, it's not completely terribad. I'm at around 400. I am making improvements. But I'm not even sporting T-9.5x2.

Addressing point three: my rotation appears to be wrong. On a stand and shoot boss, I will use Arcane Shots. I probably should give up that habit. I need to do testing with and without Mangle (Cat or Bear versions) present. 30% isn't anything to sneeze at.

Addressing point four: I have some research to do to get my spiffy desktop back and better than ever.

Not This Website

I redesigned my guild's website.

If you hate Javascript for some reason, you might hate this. I did write it from scratch so it is clean and light-weight.

I'm not overly-proud of it. The graphics aren't the best. The use of graphics instead of text adds some heft. PNGs aren't universally accepted as awesome.

But hey, the DKP CGI was quick and looks pretty decent. And it's a helluva lot better than what was there before.

http://www.atonementguild.com/

Not a Hunter Post

I don't usually mention my alt except in her support role to my hunter. But last night after our 25man raid, I broke off and did a heroic daily with my hunter and then my alt. My alt is a shaman healer.

So it was me and a top DK DPS from my guild in the LFG. We got a modestly geared tank and some other measly DPS. From the moment of zoning in. I was barely able to keep in range of him to let the heals fly. We were out of combat maybe four times the entire run.

We finished Heroic Halls of Lightning in about 9 minutes. Maybe 8. I wish I was keeping track. There were a couple times two or more people were under 20% health. The worst of it was up front when the tank took two packs on the first lightning boss when the mobs were empowered and when I had the lightning DoT/debuff that nukes you if you move. I was of course far out of range of the tank and my DK.

I'm proud to say, nobody died and I didn't even need to pop a manatide totem. I think we might have been able to shave off a minute or so if we had two more top DPS. I've just never seen pulls like that before.

On The Road To Being a Marksman - Part 9

I've been starting to side-grade for Marksman gear. I suppose that's not entirely accurate... some of the iLevel side-grades are actually upgrades for both Survival and Marksman talent focuses. But to be more accurate, they are good swaps for Marksman and minimal swaps for Survival.

Last week I picked up the Leggings of Northern Lights. Unfortunately I already have my Sanctified Ahn'Kahar Blood Hunter's Legguards and I only have it as a two-piece. All the sheets show it as a DPS loss to swap. A large DPS loss. But I figure I might slot them in when I get a third Sanctified before I have my fourth.

On Monday, I purchased (for a measly 50 frost emblems) Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape. It was a small "30 DPS" upgrade over my Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak.

Also on Monday, I purchased (for 5,600g) the Rock-Steady Treads. They are a big up from my Treads of the Wasteland because I currently don't need the +hit. Emphasis on currently. I'm not throwing them away.

I'd also jump at taking the Logsplitters, but my second T10.5 piece are the Sanctified Ahn'Kahar Blood Hunter's Handguards. So again, the set bonus makes it a DPS loss to break it.

I'm also eyeing the Longstrider's Vest, but I don't want to detour my route to the Sanctified Ahn'Kahar Blood Hunter's Tunic, and my Carapace of Forgotten Kings doesn't suck.

In summary, I need some damn class badges to drop. Every week it seems like we get shafted. Other class clusters are barely bidding on the badges. Ours go for max DKP every time they manage to drop. Maybe I just need to run some heroic ten mans. Bah! to the RNG.

If I ever do go for the ArmPen gemming, all these side-grades are nice to keep for an agility SV set.

Personal Epic Fail

So my 9 year old son was talking about something over the weekend. He used the words, "Epic Fail". Together as you might intend. He's also previously exclaimed, "Oh Em Gee". Literally those letters instead of "Oh my God". He doesn't play online games, other than say Webkinz. He doesn't have a phone. He doesn't IM or even email. It's all second or third-hand electronic internet infestation.

IMHO, if he says, "WTF" I'll either ROTFL or PWN his 1337 allowance.