The Hunter's Guide to Solo Tanking

It's been a long time hasn't it? The problem with playing WoW is that it doesn't leave time for much else. This blog has fallen on the bottom of my priority list and apologize for that. Will this make it up to you? Anyway, let's get to business.

This is the tanking spec I use: 57/14/0

Most of it is self explanatory, I roll with 3/5 frenzy and have 3/3 Cobra Strikes to keep my pet hasted. With my gear, I crit enough that only 1/2 Go For The Throat is necessary. Depending on the encounter, Aimed Shot might be better than 1/2 Improved Mend Pet.

Basically the same deal with my glyphs, though Glyph of Hunter's Mark might be a bit controversial. Right now I'm using it because it increases my healing throughput on Attumen when I use 2-piece Rift Stalker. Otherwise, Glyph of Bestial Wrath is the winner here.

Let's talk about the Rift Stalker set for a second. It's the tier 5 set for hunters.

Three out of five tokens drop from bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern:

• The token for the headpiece of each set drops from Lady Vashj,
• the token for the gloves of each set drops from Leotheras the Blind and
• the token for the pants of each set drops from Fathom-Lord Karathress.

Two out of five tokens frop from bosses in The Eye:

• The token for the chest piece of each set drops from Kael'thas Sunstrider and
• the token for the shoulders of each set drops from Void Reaver.

If you equip two of any of the five pieces, your pet will be healed for 15% of your damage. Again, depending on the encounter you may not need it. However, it is invaluable when you are trying to learn fights.

Finally, you'll need a tenacity pet. Any pet will do, though I prefer a crocolisk for AoE tanking and worms for single targets. You'll defintely want a gorilla if you're tanking anything with a spell that needs to be interrupted.

For your pet you'll want tanking spec like this. You definitely need everything in the first two tiers, Thunderstomp for threat and AoE tanking, and 2/2 Grace of the Mantis for your pet to be uncrittable. On a side note, you'll also want to be hit capped so that your pet will be unparryable. Other than that, you're free to switch around points where you need them. I've found Roar of Sacrifice to be tremendously helpful however in Zul'Gurub and any other fight where I was taking predictable damage.

Now you're ready to go out there and solo tank!

The Hunt Continues

No, I haven't finally gotten 100 mounts and am flying on the back of the beautiful Red Dragonhawk mount. No, that's the dream, but I am slowly getting closer to it with each passing day. I recently got my 61st mount wednesday via emblems of heroism which I used to purchase a wooly mammoth. Obviously I still have a long way to go, but things like my guild master getting the raven lord mount gives me hope.

I have a little extra space here so I'd like to talk a little bit about the state of the blog. The plan (at least in my head) was for each of us to do one post after the other but it's not really working out as you can see. I think I will just post with more regularity and let Ian post every now and then. Hopefully I can convince him to continue "The Stack" and even contribute to it myself. I've been played enough of Valkyria Chronicles that I feel good talking about it. Fail @ Life is not dead!

Rezzarek Revival Resurrection

Apparently I have characters other than an epic'd out level 80 hunter. The other night I took Rezzarek for a night out on the town, upgrading some of my old scrubby gear and even tanking normal Old Kingdom. I'll be honest, I had the backup of overgeared healer so I felt compelled to pull more than I could take and all-around jackassery. I guess sometimes you can spend so much time on your main that you kinda forget these charecters are more than just profession monkies and item repositories.

Mizuro, a blood elf male mage, was my first alt. At the time, some guys in my guild had made alts and I wanted to play with them and thus Mizuro was born. We went through all the old content and dungeons again and it was really fun. After that, it wasn't as fun to play Mizuro by myself. I can do amazing things soloing as a hunter but my abilities as a mage are rough and unrefined. That's probably the biggest reason why I stopped playing him.

Rezzarek, a blood elf male paladin, was my second alt. My guild master's first alt was a paladin, and seeing all the cool stuff he could do made me want to follow in his footsteps. I even Ian be my healer and we leveled each other up through azeroth all over again. Here I would have another roadblock in my development, as Ian basically quit playing his priest and thus I lost my healer. However I pressed on, and even managed to start raiding as retribution in our guild's weekly karazhan run.

However all was not well, as I discovered I really did not like retribution enough not to mention the fact that the leftover gear that I felt somewhat entitled to was being taken from me by a johnny-come-lately that joined the guild. Not only that, apparently while I had the respect and decency to come to the raid with a DPS spec, he chose to come as tank. So while I was a little miffed that he rolled on and won gear that I wanted, I never said anything. Eventually he did leave the guild with that gear and I ended up dropping my paladin completely.

So, after that little spiel, you might ask me: "So what made you decide to play Rezzarek again?" and I'll whisper: "No."

April fools.

Wait, what?

The Most Exclusive Club In WoW

The Mountain o' Mounts achievement is the most exclusive club in World of Warcraft today. Given that today is patch day and the servers are down, I decided to do a little research on what exactly I would need to do to get this achievement. The results are, quite frankly, staggering. In fact, it's actually more prudent to show you which mounts I'm excluding from the list:

Difficult Achievements	Available with some difficulty.
Black Drake	Drops one from Sartharion(10) when killed with three drakes up. Relevant to The Twilight Zone.
Black Proto Drake	Received after completing Heroic: Glory of the Raider. Complete all Heroic raid achievements.
Twilight Drake	Drops one from Sartharion(25) when killed with three drakes up. Relevant to Heroic: The Twilight Zone.

Seasonal Mounts

Hallow's End Available during Hallow's End. Headless Horseman's Mount Drops very rarely (~0.3%) from the Headless Horseman. Brewfest Available during Brewfest. Great Brewfest Kodo Drops rarely (5%) from Coren Direbrew. Swift Brewfest Ram Drops rarely (5%) from Coren Direbrew.

Rare Drop Mounts

Ashes of Al'ar Drops from Kael'thas Sunstrider in Tempest Keep: The Eye. 1 week reset. 1.5% chance. Raven Lord Drops from Anzu in Heroic: Sethekk Halls. Requires a Druid with Essence-Infused Moonstone. 1 day reset. 1% chance.

Other Mounts

Collectible Card Game	Redeemed at Landro Longshot in Booty Bay.
Big Battle Bear	$100 minimum on eBay. Tracked at WoWTCGLoot.com.
Riding Turtle	$75-$100 minimum on eBay. Tracked at WoWTCGLoot.com.
Spectral Tiger	Can be bought with same code from Swift Spectral Tiger.
Swift Spectral Tiger	$750 minimum on eBay. Tracked at WoWTCGLoot.com.
X-51 Nether-Rocket	Can be bought with same code from X-51 Nether-Rocket X-TREME.
X-51 Nether-Rocket X-TREME	$200 minimum on eBay. Tracked at WoWTCGLoot.com.

These are, in my opinion, the most difficult mounts to get in the game right now. Now, the hardest ones I am including?

Rare Drop Mounts

Azure Drake Drop from Malygos in Heroic: Eye of Eternity. 1 week reset. 1% chance. Blue Drake Drops from Malygos in Eye of Eternity. 1 week reset. 1% chance. Blue Proto-Drake Drops from Skadi the Ruthless in Heroic: Utgarde Pinnacle. 1 day reset. 1% chance. Fiery Warhorse Drops from Attumen the Huntsman in Karazhan. 1 week reset. 1% chance. Grand Black War Mammoth Drops from Archavon the Stone Watcher on Normal and Heroic difficulties. Dual 1 week resets. Unknown chance. Green Proto-Drake Hatches from Cracked Egg (via Mysterious Egg). Requires Revered reputation with The Oracles. 1 week reset. 4% chance. Rivendare's Deathcharger Drops from Baron Rivendare in Stratholme. Unlimited resets. 1% chance. Swift Razzashi Raptor Drops from Bloodlord Mandokir in Zul'Gurub. 3 day reset. 1% chance. Swift White Hawkstrider Drops from Kael'thas Sunstrider in Heroic: Magister's Terrace. 1 day reset. 2% chance. Swift Zulian Tiger Drops from High Priest Thekal in Zul'Gurub. 3 day reset. 1% chance. Time-Lost Proto-Drake Drops from Time-Lost Proto Drake in Storm Peaks. Rumored to share a six hour spawn timer with two other less important dragons. 100% drop rate. Check link for details. White Polar Bear Mount Looted from Hyldnir Spoils, which is rewarded from doing dailies for Gretta the Arbiter.

Other Mounts

Recruit-a-Friend Program
Swift Zhevra	Requires you to recruit a friend who then pays for at least two months of game time.

Are you beginning to understand why the Mountain o' Mounts achievement is as exclusive as it is? You'd have to be the most blessed player in the game to have this achievement right now.

Auction House Blues

Let me describe the auction house blues to you; you're bursting at the seams with imaginary internet items, half of the things you're trying to sell come back unsold, and there comes a point where everything must go. You'd like to believe you have the patience to wait until you can sell your wares for max profit but the frustration of limited bag space wears on you. Couple that with the fact that you have hundreds of items in the mail, you begin to run out of options.

My auction house mule is in such a state. Every mail I open containing a returned auction item is another failure on my part. It's gotten to the point where I'll just undercut the cheapest auction available for whatever item I have to be auctioning. Things are finally selling, but not at the price point I was hoping for. All I can think about is the money I lost on my deposit just for putting the items up.

Yeah, this is defintely the auction house blues.

Hakkar? Who's that?

I am a fan of World of Warcraft, but I'm also a bit behind the times. Everyone else has plunged into the new expansion Wrath of the Lich King while I'm only waist deep. In fact, just the other day I was running old content. Well, not just running it because we sat it down on our laps and spanked it. And by "we" I mean Chili and I.

I mentioned Zul'Gurub in my previous post, it's a raid designed for twenty level 60 players. Being a newly minted level 80, I tried to solo this dungeon, but I ran into difficulties with basically any mob with a gimmick. I managed to deal with some trash and even kill the snake boss, but the tiger boss and particularly the panther boss seem impossible to do alone. Chili offered his help to which I gladly accepted. With his help, we cleared all the primal aspects and Hakkar, just the two of us level 80s against a dungeon tuned for twenty people!

No special mount drops though.

TURTLE! TURTLE! TURTLE! TURTLE!

So I finally got it. So what if it took the better part of a year? So what if I had to spend 500 gold on it? Worth every freaking copper. *grumble* Although I did run Zul'Gurub for it like ten times and it never dropped. Thank god for the bid price was set so low. It's usually sold in the neighborhood of 5000 gold, not 500!

Never Saw It Comin'

As you can probably guess from the picture, I have a Black War Bear. A guild member and I joined a city raid group last night. We stood up until the wee hours of the morning. It was a fantastic night, the alliance where woefully unprepared for our assault and we creamed them: King Magni Bronzebeard, Prophet Velen, King Varian Wyrnn, and Tyrande Whisperwind.

We really couldn't have done it without the fantastic leadership of Dreykala. She kept most of us in line and had the brains to fool the entire alliance about our plans. Every attack on the faction leaders was executed perfectly and it's all thanks to her.

















She requested that we line up in front of the silver enclave in dalaran and I was all too happy to comply. After that we made a black war bear conga line. Did I mention it was a fantastic night?

Feels Good Man

So last night I hit the wrath level cap. By all accounts, I was leveling like a beast, even if it didn't really seem that way. I was just doing my thing, and it didn't feel any faster or slower to me. I guess you could just say that I was having a good time. I ran a few dungeons, did some questing, and managed to grind it out in a day. Sure, it may not have had all the excitement and tension of racing against the server shutdown in outland, but what matters is I still had fun right?

Put simply, it was a triumph and I'm making a note here: huge success!

And All I Got Was This Crappy Fishing Hat

So yesterday I failed to, once again, win the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza! or recover the rare catch codenamed "The Dezian Queenfish".

This week I had the rather unfortunate circumstance I fishing in a highly populated area. I've been participating in this contest almost every week for a couple of months now. Up until now, there hadn't been so many people fishing on the plot of beach I called my domain. Not surprisingly, I lost that week and found out that the winner started on the northwestern side of the peninsula without any competition. Meanwhile, I started completely opposite him, on the southeastern side. The object of this contest is catch forty tastyfish before the fisherman next to you gets their forty. Obviously this is made easier when you have NO ONE TO COMPETE WITH!

If it's any consolation, (and it's not) I managed to fish up two Keefer's Angelfish that day. You can turn in one of those babies for a Lucky Fishing Hat. The problem (there's always a but) is that there is a far superior hat that comes from the outland fishing daily. Since +5 fishing doesn't affect the way I fish, this hat is little more than a novelty.

Am I ungrateful? Absolutely.