Stickmon - experienced 70 NE Hunter

[Stickmon]

I work with Eric and Kyle (AKA Hobben and Jackyl) and their constant talking about WoW and HOTC finally convinced me to re-activate my account after not playing for nearly a year. I re-activated a couple weeks ago, and should hit 70 tonight.

Experience:
I have 70 days play time on my hunter (Stickmon) as well as 52 days play time on my warrior (Sauced). Both toons are on my old server, Burning Legion, I will be transferring Stickmon over later tonight. I was in a major regular raiding guild raiding 3-5 times per week for a year and a half (Undercon which later became Consequence if you happen to be familair with Burning Legion Guilds, both are now gone so there isn't much left for me on BL). I spent the majority of the time with Stickmon as my main, but still had a good 8 months or so with the warrior as my main while raiding.

Progress we made: (Keep in mind this is progress we made by late July 2006 when i quit, pre BC by a good margin)
MC - Farm status -> boring -> OMG never go again
BWL - Farm status -> boring -> maybe go for Nefarian if at all
ZG - I'm exalted, need I say more?
AQ20 - cleared many times but nobody liked it, I thought it was kinda fun
AQ40 - Killed C'Thun 6-12 times or so, I don't think we ever did bother with Oreuo or the Slime Boss.
Naxx - Cleared the Spider wing, and made some progress on the Abomination wing and a few other bosses too before I left.

I should add that I was raiding when the guild learned each of these instances, not merely showed up for the ride. If you would like some references from some Burning Legion people, I can see who I can find, but most quit playing now or I would probably have stayed on that server. I'm not looking for anything super serious as far as raiding goes, I don't have the time during the school year to dedicate 3-5 nights per week to WoW. But Hobben has spoken fondly of you guys, and your raiding schedule seems like a perfect fit for me... not too intense, but enough to see the endgame content.

Be seeing you soon...

Nathan
aka Stick, or Slim

[Stickmon]

Oh, I should mention that I am willing to respec, in fact I plan on it. I'm speced BM for grinding / leveling right now. I'll spec to either marks or survival for raiding, havn't decided yet.

[Allia]

hail yet another friend of the hob/jak et al crew :)

are you one of the ones who keeps making hobben call himself a tool? ;)

Welcome to the hotc forums, G'luck on your app and please contact talut (our hunter officer) and keep chatting and bugging people in hotchat for groupage :)

[Stickmon]

are you one of the ones who keeps making hobben call himself a tool? ;)

No, but I was there when Hobben left the window open and Jakalina posted that :-P

[Talut]

Thank you for applying Stickmon, be sure to join /hotchat as well.

[Huor]

just ran a Shadow Lab with stick and seems like a quality player. cool calm and collected seems like a great guy. course we all already knew that cus hes hob and jakel's friend heh . not to sure on the openness of a raiding slot, but thats talut's dept. now i do believe

[Talut]

Having looked over your armory Stickmon, I would suggest running the 5 mans pretty religiously. There is a great deal of gear you can upgrade to in Coilfang, Hellfire and Lower City instances.

When you ding 70 you can hit the Tempest Keep instances for further upgrades in ranged weapons and other gear. You will also want to hit revered with many reputations to have access to heroic mode for these dungeons.

If you have not already begun your Kara attunement that is also something you should work on.

[Allia]

he's gotta hit 70 for the last fragment for the flying mount :)

[Stickmon]

Level 70 - Check
Flying Mount - Check
First Key Frag - Check
Second Key Frag - Check
Third Key Frag - Waiting on an instance run
Stalker's Helmet of Second Sight (socketed) - Check
Lohn'Goron, Bow of the Torn-heart - In Progress

I'm going to also get my LW up another 10-20 levels or so so I can make the blue mail gear from HH.

Thats the update for today, I'll keep you posted.

[Stickmon]

Update for Today:
Karazhan Key - Done
Lohn'Goron, Bow of the Torn-heart - Done (need crit enchant) - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31072

Other gear acquired today:
Sun-Gilded Shouldercaps - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27995
Cloak of Impulsiveness (with +12 Agil) - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27423
Ar'tor's Mainstay (with +26 AP enchant) - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30951
Girdle of Gale Force - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31293
Hourglass of the Unraveller - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28034

Right now I'm planning on shifting my focus to farming my ass off for the mats for the Felstalker set. Let me know if there is something else I should be working on, I think I've done all that has been asked of me thus far so if there is something else I should be going after bring it on :-)

[Talut]

The only thing I do not like about felstalker is it has very little stamina. It is fine for pure dps, but from a raid perspective, it can make you a glass cannon. You may want to hold off on that and be sure to exhaust all your options in the 5 mans, heroics, and Kara first. (it is very possible you can get a subin spot sometime soon)

I would also wait on using an expensive scope, and use a +10 in the meantime, there are several ranged weapon upgrades availalbe to you now.

I cannot look at your armory atm, but keep up the good work on your attunements and gear upgrades. Also work on your reputations for heroic access to every instance you can.

[MVB]

I'd like to reiterate Talut's comments on stamina. You'll routinely take 8k+ damage spikes in current raid content, and I'm not talking about SSC and beyond yet at all.

[Talut]

If you need a reference, my "dps" gear gives me a little over 8k unbuffed hp's.

My "sta" gear, for arenas and certain raid situations, gives me almost 11k unbuffed hp's.

It is very handy to have xtra sta based items that do not gimp your damage too much when needed, much of the pre-BC content allowed us to avoid damage, but now there are too many fights were you absolutely WILL take damage no matter what.

[Stickmon]

Yeah, I should have mentioned, I carry gear with me that has about the same AP, 2.5% less crit, but 1400ish more HP when I equip it. So if I end up in a situation where I'm dying I can swith out gear for more stam on the fly, but so far I havn't needed it so I just wear the "DPS" stuff all the time.

I'm at work now, I can load up that gear and let you know what my HP and stats are with stam gear when I get home.

As for the felstriker, I probably would have better gear before I got it made anyway, but i'm grinding the leathers and the Primal Airs anyway because i'll need them to level up and for enchants and leg armor kits. So I'll be grinding that when I can't find a 5 man to do.

[Talut]

I'm curious, why did you stop playing intially?

[Kiltryn]

Stick knows that this is just an inbetween set, and he needs to level his LW anyway so this only makes sense. He will gain stamina by correct socketing and also improving upon his t2 gear that he is still wearing. Heck I wore full felstalker and had over 7.2k of health unbuffed and that was with some other items that had no stam on it.

Stick, check out your armory profile now, blizz put an upgrade option on items so that'll make itemization go pretty quick. Again that gear will depend on what spec you finalize on.

The only comment I will say is get some +hit. I believe the number you should be targeting is between 110 and 120, this will help increase your dps. Blizz for some unknown reason broke the rating and so +hit talents dont factor into the rating on the character screen. And yeah dont waste the money/time putting a +crit scope on any blue bow because you will be replacing it pretty quickly when and if you get into kara/heroic steamvaults.

[Stickmon]

Talut: I quit playing at the end of last summer because I was getting burned out with the game. It was during the time when we were killing a new boss or two on Naxx every week, but I just wasn't feeling it anymore. I went to quakecon, like I do every year, and when I got back I just wasn't feeling WoW anymore and never made an effort to get back into it because school was starting up the next week. I'm already about 3 years behind where I should be in college, largely because of computer games. Now, I don't see any of the above happening with HotC for a few reasons, and if I did I wouldn't be wasting everyone's time with a serious application for the guild. 1st, I've had nearly a year off and the game is fun again. 2nd, My prior guild had a MUCH more rigorous. 3rd I'm on my last year of school, and will have a relatively light credit load. 4th I will be playing with people I see everyday at work, and we spend a lot of time talking about WoW so every night after work I'll be looking forward to getting online and seeing you all. I came to this server because of these conversations at work, and most everyone I used to know and play with does not play anymore (our guild broke up a couple weeks after I left) and the ones that do still play are scattered all over.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Here is my current gearsets (not counting resist gear that needless to say is outdated for me at 70 I immagine)

DPS (normal use gear) and Stamina Set (for use in RAIDS when I'm getting wtfpwned)
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~nburress/images/wow/StatsEdit.JPG


Additionally Hobben and I worked out the following gear list as things I should try to obtain that should be doable from quests or 5man's (non heroic) to upgrade my set as much as possible outside of RAID instances.


Neck:
Necklace of the Deep - Crafted
Finger:
Kaylaan's Signet - Deathblow to the Legion quest - Netherstorm
Waist:
Shattrath's Champion Belt - How to Break into Arcatraz quest - Mecanar/Botanicia
Weapon:
Sonic Spear - Murmur - Shadow Labs ( DONE!!! +35Agil enchant will be on it as soon as I find an enchanter)
Chest:
Beast Lords Cuirass - Warp Splinter - Botanica
Hands:
Beast Lords Handguards - Warchief Kargath Bladefist - Shattered Halls
Legs:
Scaled Greaver of Patience - Captain Skarloc - Old Hilsbrad
Shoulder:
Beast Lord Mantle - Warlord Kalithresh - Steamvaults
Feet:
The Master's Treads - BOE
Ranged:
Emberhawk Crossbow - Wrath-Scryer Soccothrates - Arcatraz

The rest of the gear I am tentatively planning on not upgrading because it is still the best. Any comments on the list?


Sorry for the long post :-)

[Stickmon]

Oh, and Kiltryn, you are defiantly right on the +hit. When I took off my HuHu bow that had +30 hit on it, I noticed I was missing in the 5 mans where before I never did. Makes a big difference :-) Hitrating over 100 seems a bit overkill to me, but if thats what they say then OK, who am I to argue! I don't know how high of level the end bosses get to cause misses :-(

[Kiltryn]

Usually, bosses in kara and whatnot are 3 levels above your level if i remember correctly. Remember when you were at lv 60 it was always good to have a 8% hit rate in MC and what not to be garunteed that your misses would be like 1 in 1000. However as you know and probably noticed with your crit rate as you leveled past 60, it started to go down. Here is a post I found on the hit% breakdown that kinda explains things.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miss rate against 70 mob is 5%
Miss rate against 71 mob is 6.2%
Miss rate against 72 mob is 7.4%
Miss rate against 73 mob is 8.6%

Mobs with Boss level act as 73 mobs, hence you need 8.6% hit to never miss.

Survival tree gives you 3% hit bonus, so with enough points in survival, all you need is 5.6% hit.

So..
89 hit rating - 5.6% hit if you have surefooted
135 hit rating - 8.6% hit if you don't have surefooted
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

So no what it is saying is that these are the optimal hit rates to ensure your misses are very infrequent...however these are optimal because even if you add more than that, you will not miss less as there is always a % that we will miss. After these ratings, you begin to see diminishing returns as it were.

Atleast you see the value of the hit %. I remember helping a friend and played his char in MC once and all the hunters in his guild kept telling me that +hit was not important and it was a waste. Well he was way lesser geared, 1 or 2 pc of t1 and a ancient bone bow for him the rest were t2/rhok/t1 geared, and I managed to out dps all of em, only because I was never missing and he listened to me say how important it was to get that hit% up there.

Also...id also suggest if you want, taking a look at a Valanos bow. Its damage might be a little less in range but it adds int which I know you BM hunters run outta mana quickly, and it actually has a bit more AP to it too. I think it can be purchased for 35g or so, so not too much of an investment. just a suggestion as its a cheap quick upgrade, and if the emberhawk drops and you want it...well just roll on it. Nothing that itll hurt.

Keep pluggin away at everything, seems like you starting off really well.

[amir]

Remember, just to say in raids you have like 20 million buffs, so his hp in dps gear could easily get 9-10k which is enough for karazhan - ssc & tk.

[Stickmon]

In this screenshot I learn firsthand Talut's wisdom that AP can be easy to come by for hunters...

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~nburress/images/wow/WoWScrnShot_060807_224127.jpg

Now... if only I had a pot, kings, might, MOTW, Trueshot, and my other trinket popped...


Anyway... Anyone up for helping out on some quests tomorrow afternoon? I need "Deathblow to the Legion" in Netherstorm, and also both sides of Tempest Keep. Completing both of these quests will result in blue items that I want :-) I should be back in town around 3pm, feel free to hit me up on vent or in a PM if I'm not online and you are feeling charitable :-)

[Vince]

STICK!_! ill help joo

[Stickmon]

Thanks for the help!

[Mikhael]

Fantastic job in Kara last night. With limited explanations on each fight, Stick did quite well in keeping traps up, and misdirects appropriate ( with one exception ). Good communication as well.

I'd like to see more.

[Talut]

Keep up the good work Stick, and grats on your upgrades last night.

[Vince]

Fantastic job in Kara last night. With limited explanations on each fight, Stick did quite well in keeping traps up, and misdirects appropriate ( with one exception ). Good communication as well.

I'd like to see more.

QFT, After you got your new bow, I reset the meters to see your dps increase. Guess what? It went up.

[Talut]

The bracers, bow and cloak you won last night are worthy of enchants, the rest will be probably be upgraded soon.

We do not have a 375 eng with the crit scope schematic yet, but Ralex has it and is leveling eng up. Also, Vlaxman, a former HotC member, can craft that scope.

You will want to get your Cenarion Expedition to revered for 37 dps arrows also.

[Stickmon]

Thanks for your support everyone. Got all my new gear enchanted today, except for the scope... waiting for someone to make it to log on, I have mats.

Looking forward to running something again, I had fun seeing the place.

[Stickmon]

Had fun again tonight. Wasn't expecting to Raid so I went out with some friends to do stuff, thank you Hobben for giving me a ring, and the rest of you for working on making a spot for me when I finally did get back. Glad to finally get a chance to put my skills to the test in a real raid setting again and clear up some of the rust :-) Feel free to write me in on any rosters you want :-) Even if I can't see them, Hobben can let me know.

Until next time...


Stick

[Hobben]

I think you did a pretty good job last night stick, and from reading everyones else's comments it seems you've made some very good first impressions.

In case your wondering I PMed you the raid stats from the night so you can see how your stacking up in terms of dps and what not. For those in guild that want to know the raid stats are posted in the privates.

Keep up the strong app stick, and make sure to be around for the next couple weeks, as i think Chu is going to be out of the country for a few weeks, which will open some raid slots :)

hob

[Talut]

One other thing regarding specs Stick:

For the first time, that I've ever seen, all three talent trees are viable for raiding. If you feel inclined to try different specs to see what works for you, feel free.

I highly recommend giving each one a try and see which one is the best fit. All three bring utility to the table, especially when all three are present.

[Jakal]

Stick and I just installed a scanner. He preformed very well.

Keep up the good work and we'll let you have a station or two to install.

[Stickmon]

Actually... I installed the scanner, you walked around for 5 mins looking for a power strip we didn't need but ended up using just because you were too stubborn to take it back.

PS, it's hot.

[Theroc]

Welcome to HotC, Stickmon.

Application closed, thread locked.