New WoW.com article is up, this time a Grandpappy Frostheim article.

All I hear from kids these days is whining about death knights. Whining about how bad they are at tanking in their PUGs or how they can’t even do 2k DPS. You hunters these days should be grateful for death knights. You don’t know how good you got it, ’cause you have no sense of history!…Read More

Grandpappy Frostheim on Death Knights

And don’t forget to leave a comment of some kind to help us win the Hunter Bet.

Wyrmfoe headed into ICC for the second time last weekend. Well, first we went to Patchwerk to measure everyone’s single target dps, which we’ll be doing again next week. Understanding people’s maximum output is necessary in understanding their performace on other boss fights, and it’s useful for estimating if we can beat various dps check bosses. We’ll be doing patchwerk again next week with the rest of the applicants. It’s legitimately hard to keep that fight long enough to be a valid test (we have several dps just sitting on their thumbs, and it’s still crazy short).

Oh, and Hrist was hateful strike taking on Patchwerk. He took 11k damage the whole fight. I wonder if we went all out on dps if we could do that without a healer….

So anyhow we did patch and we did the new VoA boss — who is pleasantly easy by the way, and gave me some pvp pants. Then we hopped into ICC and one-shot our way through all of Lower Spire, including a one-shot on our very first Saurfang 25 attempt, which was really nice to see!

Alas we were short on time and so only had time to clear the plagueworks trash before calling it. Not sure if we’ll we’ll be hitting Festergut this weekend or not, but I’m really looking forward to it!

It’s just continually nice to see a team of raiders who can follow directions and work together. Even though many have never done the fights (and a huge number who had never done Saurfang) and many are still undergeared, by just doing what the fight requires we still get the bosses down.

Go Wyrmfoe!

ICC overall.

Saurfang meter. I was a kiter and was #2 for blood beast damage done... damn arcane mages. I hate them.

Click to Embiggen.

I have to say I’m positively delighted every time I see the first and final draft of these comics. Shadowstreak is always adding in this hilarious touches that make me laugh — like Gnolldeath’s antics or the hilarious recount (all the script said was that there should be a meter with me on top and Arust just behind — and Gnolldeath wasn’t in the description at all).

New WoW.com article on skill vs gear, where we take a look at exactly how much dps you get from gear, how much from raid buffs, and now skill impacts your dps.

But here’s the thing: every time someone is out-DPSed by the same class the response seems always to be, “Yeah, but he has better gear.” I’ve never seen anyone say, “Yeah, he must be a better player than me.” I mean, not once, not ever…Read More.

WoW.com Skill vs. Gear.

(Remember to make some kind of comment to help us win the hunter vs druid bet!)

Several days ago I was hanging out in the WoW.com chatroom when the high editor mistress of pain and paychecks posted the traffic numbers for the top articles and columns for January. Sadly, my friends, the hunter column was not in the top ten. We were number 11.

More disturbingly we were not the top class column. We are getting smoked – positively slaughtered – by the mage column.

Now there is no question that mages have an excellent and entertaining column, but there’s also no question but that hunters have the strongest community on the net, and in the interest of that community I could not in good conscience let us be beaten by a bunch of mages whining about how squishy they are. I immediately declared my intention to beat the mage column in February… at which point the druid columnist told me I was too late and she was already going to do that.

This sparked the bet. Which of us can beat the mages the most for overall traffic on our columns in February — hunters vs. druids. The prize for victory is, of course, a friendship bracelet. After winning one from Euripides, I’ve decided I need to build up a collection of these trophies.

How You Can Help

I don’t want anyone spamming the refresh button on the Scattered Shots column or anything — that’s cheating, and I think we hunters are more than capable of winning honestly. What you can do however, is leave a comment on any given column — just say something about the article. What you found interesting, what you disagree with, what your experience has been.

I believe what generates spike traffic on columns is lots of comments. You never know what comment someone else will find interesting (or think is wrong) and will respond to. Once a discussion starts in the comments, we suddenly have lot of people going back to the article again and again (increasing traffic) to continue the discussion.

Also, you can post links to any column you thought was particularly good to your guild forums to spread the word.

Winning Isn’t Everything

Seriously, who the hell believes that? We want to down the boss, we want to top the meters, we want to win. We’re hunters, darnit, and we will not be defeated! Not by cats, not by trees, and not by bald little footstools in dresses.

I’m kicking things off today with what I think is a really strong and interesting post on skill vs gear. Lots of hard numbers and definitions and bait for the trolls who worship gearscore. As always I’ll post the link here after it goes up.

So here’s the deal: we win the bet, and I start the WHU dwarven hunter guild and schedule the next in-game event for the WHU. For those who missed the last one, it was the WHU Level 1 Hunter Raid on Hogger and the world dragon Ysondre. Here’s the video recap of awesomeness:

We hunters didn’t care that we were level 1 or 2. We weren’t going to let a world dragon beat us.

And we also won’t let a bunch of druids beat us either!

Went through the spec guides today and updated those that needed it to reflect talent choice changes with the new levels of gear available. No huge changes, but I do think each basic spec had at least one talent point shifted around.

Also I updated the pet spec guide images so that it’s showing Culling instead of Avoidance in the picture now.

So the wow armory now has the Lich King loot in it. Basically all he’s dropping is weapons and the Mark of Sanctification.

And he does drop a ranged weapon… a crossbow. Fal’inrush, Defender of Quel’thalas.

Words cannot express my sorrow. My best ranged weapon until cataclysm will be a 10-man gun. It’s just… life is just so bleak. I was going to tell you about the wow.com bet today, but I don’t have the heart to be excited about anything. I’ll talk about that tomorrow. Today is a day for mourning.