Tuesday is for Phat Lewts!

An upgrade for a hunter's ranged weapon slot is usually reason for great celebration. With a dwarf hunter, however, it is somewhat shameful when it comes time to trade in his gun for a "better dps" bow. This is what happened last night when HiredGun picked up Final Voyage during his trek through Naxx. Having only 1 skill point in Crossbows was something he was actually proud of. Let the fruity night elves use the bows, damnit! A dwarf needs the smell of gunpowder and a loud BANG BANG sound to make him feel as if he's doing his job. (The racial +1% crit when using guns doesn't hurt either) Unfortunately, in terms of dps, the only guns available as an upgrade were from KT (normal and heroic). So a quiver was made and arrows purchased. HiredGun flew down to Crystalsong Forest to shoot some wolves, trees, and dryads. In less than an hour his crowssbow skill had reached 400. *sigh*

But some more mad hunter loot dropped last night, some monster upgrades actually. Shoulderpads of Secret Arts and Torn Web Wrapping replaced blues on HiredGun. That was pretty awesome. At least now I don't have to contemplate spending 4000g on the belt! =) Hunter loot continued to fall... Arrowsong dropped, a Warrior won it with an uncontested greed roll. Grim Toll fell and was nabbed by some other dps, as was the more common Aged Winter Cloak.

Tonight should be lots of Vault and OS running. I didn't even know that there was a rare mount from the Vault. BigBearButt got one from 10-man, so run that thing.. even if the T7 stuff is kinda junky lookin after a while.

Monday is for the desperate.

It seems to be a theme every Monday night. The desperate people are trying to get their Naxx, Vault, and OS in before the Tuesday reset. The guildless, the undergeared, the lazy, the procrastinators... basically the opposite of what you'd find on Tuesday afternoon's groups for doing raids. You don't want to wait until the last minute to get these done whatever the reason.

This being said, Failsauce had not done either naxx 10 or 25. What gives? Well the 10-man naxx for her guild Chaotic was scheduled for Friday night but was then rescheduled for Monday. No big deal, I was told by the GM that Failsauce would "probably" be able to go, but would only get loot if any of the "mains" that were going didn't need it. Sounded just fine to me, at this point anyone who was a main was unlikely to need much from 10-man naxx.

I show up 15 minutes prior to invites and start hovering outside of the giant necropolis, patiently waiting. I mention on vent that I was hoping that Failsauce was going to get a spot when an officer spoke up "I don't really want to be running other people's alts through, gearing them up." ??? Wanker. I reminded the GM with a tell that I was there and waiting. Start time +10 minutes go past, no word, nothing. I ask again about it and get "We need ranged DPS." Which I guess meant I didn't have a spot. No biggie, but being as this was Monday it wasn't looking too promising for getting in another group. Oh yeah, the GM was running the raid with his fresh 80 paladin alt. Funny, I didn't hear the officer complain about it.

I remain on vent to hear how things are going. The other (holy) paladin is having extreme connection problems. Disconnected nearly 10 times in the first wing. Eventually he didn't return. After they were unsuccessful filling his spot, I spoke up.. "Failsauce still isn't saved.. I could join you for some more DPS". I got no response. Nothing. Then someone spoke up "I guess we'll just do this with 9 then." !!!11!!!ONE!1! WHAT?? They would rather go shorthanded then have my alt go? WTF!?!

So now I'm steamed. I look around for a spot in another raid with no luck. I speak up in vent once in a while between battles but nobody seems to acknowledge anything I say. Is this some sort of prank? I leave the vent server and rejoin just in case something is bugged. Still nobody seems to respond to anything I say. Oh well.. assholes!!

I run some instances, and by the time I'm done with those the guild raid is nearly finished. A couple wipes on KT but they finally get it done. Post-raid chatter fills vent. One guy is asking where to get the cooking recipe for Northern Stew. I mention, "You get it from a quest. Go to the cooking trainer in either BT or HF". Someone else says "You just get it from the cooking trainer." Hmm if this was a prank they certainly are being very disciplined about pretending not to be able to hear me. I continue to respond to conversation, hoping someone will slip up and respond to something, anything I say. No luck. What the heck? Something must be wrong. I completely shut down vent, rejoin the server, and I still apparently can't be heard.

Then I noticed the red light on my headset. It had been muted.

/facepalm

Weekend Update - Jane, you ignorant slut.

I played WoW all weekend but feel like not much was accomplished. I'm talking about in-game accomplishments... anything outside of game went to hell, nothing new there.

With three characters now at 80, I need some kind of schedule or to-do list for each of them to plan out activities for each day. HiredGun needs to work on is Frenzyheart Tribe dailies. Both he and Failsauce must keep up the grind with Sons of Hodir as well as the Kalu'ak. Make sure everyone does their cooking quest. Try and remember to use the Titansteel cooldowns. Who's saved to what raid? Which raids am I not joining with what toon because I'm going to do them with guildies later? Do I want to try the fishing contest this week? How many days left on the Lunar Festival? Is it too late to make some of those trinkets at the Darkmoon Faire? Argh.

Breathe. Relax.

I joined several PUG raids and heroics over the weekend with less-than-stelar results. "Heroic HoL?" Hell Yeah! HiredGun still had the Sons of Hodir quests for this instance. I zone in, get saved, wait just inside the instance. "Oh, btw we're on the 3rd boss." Awesome. Way to wait til I'm saved before serving up that little nugget. Two of the party members yammered on and on about some "stupid druid" who had just left the group. I did my best to /ignore it, but had to wonder if the said druid was actually the smart one.

We immediately have 2 near wipes on just trash. My well-timed feign death combined with Jumper Cables (er, knife) saved the priest a long run back. Ionar is not a difficult boss but you wouldn't know it by watching this group in action. Twice in a row the priest died very quickly, causing wipes. Both times she was unable to get away from the nasty spark-things on the ground. The group broke up shortly after that. Momma told me there would be pugs like this.

Then a guy named "TheJuice" was putting together a 25-man OS. Everyone loves OS! Great loot, short fight, even a nice 22-slot bag at the end. Chock-full of win! It wasn't until everyone zoned in that we noticed: "Hey, where's the dragon?" Mother f... TheJuice you are now on "The List." Blizzard, please...please...please just put up some kind of warning the first time you try and enter a saved instance/raid with a group? "Entering this portal will save you to RAID: 6951233.. do you wish to continue?" Would that be too hard?

2AM Sunday night, about to wrap it up.. "LF2M DPS for 25-naxx, 1/2 of Military left plus Construct, Saph, KT". Sleep could wait for this! HiredGun had much room for gear improvement so I joined their vent and caught a summon right away. Gothik the Harvester peered down at me from his balcony. I could see the fear in his eyes, as HiredGun had arrived. Apparently not everyone was on vent, or something, because the fight started with only 5 or so other people with me on the dead side. GG. After everyone got back we tried again, this time with a proper number of folk on each side. We got it done this time and were on to the Four Horseman. Despite good dps, the raid wiped several times as healers/tanks/whoever didn't know their duties. After the 4th try we downed the quartet. I was actually a bit surprised to get past this fight; most unorganized groups don't have a chance.

We then met up with Patchwerk. I'll save you a lot of time here and just say it was horrible. People were dying within seconds of the fight starting, and this happened over and over. From the confusion on vent it was clear that the proper tanking/healing strategy was eluding them. As ranged DPS, I haven't really learned a lot about how these roles function for this fight. I just know there's nasty attacks and healers have to be spamming heals. Besides steady DPS, I could only contribute ScrapBots to help move things along. Around 4am people were dropping and the raid was called. "No More Play", indeed.

Is the game too easy or are players just better now? Both, however I think it's more of the latter. The game still feels very difficult when you're grouping with clowns. My role as DPS is usually one that doesn't take much thought (pew pew!). Is it unfair for me to judge when tanks/healers/raid leaders fail at their jobs? Probably, but clearly people can do much better.

DPS need to do better also. At least put an enchant on that 2-hander you got at level 75. Yes, other hunter in the raid.. I'm talking to you!

Dragon Wars!

Hornlove is in there somewhere

Hornlove got her chance vs Malygos last night. Fortunately the other members of the 10-man raid had done this fight at least once before. It was a nice experience, doing combat from the back of dragons! (and not in an Occulus nobody-wants-to-be-there kind of way). The first attempt started with a couple early deaths and we got wiped by his enrage in phase 3. The 2nd attempt went great except I stood still inside a cloud while using my "5" shield key and died. No matter, the rest of the party finished the Dragon off and we had our victory!

Hornlove's raiding prowess authenticated by a title!

It's an interesting fight, I can't wait to do it again. (especially since Black Ice didn't drop)

Earlier in the night we did some vaults and 25OS+1 drake. Survival seems to be doing well.

25-Man Vault

10-Man Vault

I'm happy to report that my connection nightmare from tuesday night was history. HiredGun also joined a 25-man OS (pug) and did OK. The goofballs wanted to try it with 1-drake. Of course it took a few wipes to make everyone realize it wasn't going to happen. You know the raid is going to have problems when you get a ready check accompanied by "Press No for 1 drake, press Yes for No".. wait, what?

You have been disconnected from the server.

It was HiredGun's turn to do some raids. The only thing I felt was sub-par about his gear for being 80 for less than a day was his pet. However as a survival hunter, the pet does such a small amount of damage. Bringing a level 76 cat wasn't going to bother me too much, and it wasn't going to be the difference between success and failure.

First up, it was time for 10-man Naxx. This should be fun! Also it was the first raid I'd be doing as survival. The first couple trash pulls. "Anyone else seeing spikey lag?" Nope, I was the only one. Shortly after that I was disconnected. Hmm.. Ok, log back in. Disconnected again after the next trash pull. Wow. This is going to make it hard to see where I stand in the damage meters. We got to the first boss in the Spider wing, I made it thru the fight this time. Hiregun getting his "First Heroic badge" achievement was a bit embarassing, but oh well =) My DPS was 200+ higher than the other hunter which had been joining this raid for several weeks now. Not bad for being a day-old 80 I thought!

It went steeply downhill from there. Disconnected over and over and over. What the hell was going on? Did they move the "bad router" to my corner of Blizzard's server room during the morning's rolling restarts? Since I moved to this city 7 months ago I've never had any problems with my ISP. The disconnecting problems continued. We got thru the Spider Wing. A *explitive deleted* pally took my Wraith Spear to boot. This trip had not gone at all like I had hoped.

We then did the Military quarter. Struggled a bit but did down all the bosses until the Four Hourseman. These guys pwned us over and over. The raid DPS was seriously lacking (me disconnecting twice on average on Thane alone didn't help). I offered to be replaced because I wasn't doing the raid much good. After a couple guys had had enuf, the raid was called. I doubt if anyone felt satisfied with how it turned out.

After that I joined a 25-Man pug vault run. How bad could this be? It's one friggin fight. The group had a massive amount of DPS and healing, as is typical on Tuesday raid pugs. (The ones on Monday people seem to come in greens and 70's gear) More of the same, I disconnected twice on trash. At this point I just wanted to finish this raid and go to sleep. Start of the vault boss fight (which has to be done in less than 5 minutes). I disconnect no less than 4 times during the fight, getting reconnected the last time just as the boss fell. I sheepishly looted my badge of valor. What a nightmare. The uber-pug was going on to 25-man OS which would have been awesome to join if I wasn't in DC hell. I let the group know that I was useless and that they needed to replace me.

I always hear others complain about days like this. It's easier for me to relate now. I can only hope this was a one-night thing and when tonight things will be back to normal. It's easy to take a stable connection for granted.

Edit: Drotara from LessQQMorePewPew also had some problems with connection last night. He also is a comcast customer. Apparently comcast was doing some maintenance last night so hopfully thats the reason why my service was crap.

2/18/51. No, I'm not gonna say fo'shizzle!

I didn't get much sleep last night. First a 5+ hour naxx raid, then a long session on respeccing, trying out this survival thing. 2/18/51 is the new flavor of the month. I know a lot of hunters don't like the idea of respeccing away from Beast Mastery, but for me.. BM isn't getting it done since the nerf. I don't have best in slot items but my equipment is very good overall. If I can't at least get my DPS up above the off-tanks, my spot in the raid may be in jeopardy.

This may have been done before but I'm going to go over the talents and briefly explain why I think they're good for a raid SV hunter.


SURVIVAL TREE
Improved Tracking (5/5) - 5% ranged damage on Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead as long as I'm tracking any one of them. This seems like a no-brainer to me. Moar Damage!!

Hawk Eye (3/3) - 6 more yards of distance on my shots. Normally I wouldn't think this is a worthwhile talent for PvE. Most of the time I'd just need to get between 5-30 yards and pew pew. With the SV talent Sniper Training, however, I'll need the extra distance as you will see later.

Survival Instincts (2/2) - 4% better chance to crit on Steady Shot and Explosive shot. (SV won't be using Arcane shot since it share's it's cooldown with Explosive)

Survivalist (5/5) - 10% more stamina. You need 5 points here to be able to get Hunter vs Wild.

Hunter vs Wild (3/3) - Increases you and your pet's AP by 30% of your stamina. This is going to help with the Attack Power quite a bit. Plus those leathery rogue type items don't look as bad with all that extra stamina.

T.N.T. (3/3) - Ignoring the pvp/stun part of this, Explosive shot gains another 9% chance to crit. Hmm this crit is really starting to stack up.

Lock 'n Load (3/3) - I'll just copy the tool-tip text: "You have a 100% chance when you trap a target and a 10% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Serpent Sting to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. 30 second cooldown." I haven't done the trap-dancing thing yet, but even Serpent Sting seems to make this proc often. This is just an awesome talent and vital to any SV build.

Killer Instinct (3/3) - Increases crit chance of all attacks by 3%. As Lienna pointed out, this bonus applies to any damage you do that can crit. (Ranged, Melee, Immo trap) Again, more crit is where it's at!

Lightning Reflexes (5/5) - Agility increased by 15%. As we know, AGI = AP and CRIT% (and other junk like Dodge, armor rating etc). Must-have talent as we'll soon see.

Expose Weakness (2/3) - 66% chance on ranged crits to increase AGI by 25% for 7 seconds. Because of the 7 second duration, 2 points in this talent are plenty to keep this going.

Thrill of the Hunt (3/3) - 100% of your ranged crits will return 40% mana. Again, another skill tying into boosting crit really high. This will really help keep me out of viper.

Wyvern Shot (1/1) - This will be not used at all for boss fights, but it does open up the next skill, which is great.

Noxious Stings (3/3) - "...increases all damage done by you on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 3%". Serpent Sting will be up on my targets all the time, so pew pew some more!

Master Tactician (4/5) - With 4/5 points here, it increases my crit chance by 8% for 10 seconds 10% of the time (for 8 seconds). I guess I could put 5/5 points in here to increase the crit bonus to 10% but I'm going to use that talent point elsewhere.

Sniper Training (3/3) - Increases damage by Steady, Aimed, and explosive shots by 6% when standing beyond 30 yards from the target. Also increases Kill Shot crit by 15%. If the boss isn't going to stand still for trap dancing, I'll be working at getting in the 30-36 yard range. WTB: good range-finder mod!

Hunting Party (2/5) - This gives a 40% chance per Steady/Explosive crit to buff up to 10 party members with mana-regen equal to 0.25% of their max. mana per second for 15 seconds. What? only 2 points here? Yep, it's a great skill but it last 15 seconds and I'm going to be critting like a madman. 40% chance to proc will be plenty to keep this going.

Explosive Shot (1/1) - Here's a 51-point talent that's going to be the most used shot for a SV hunter. It recently got a buff and it's damage is quite good now. You can follow the link for more details but it basically does damage 3 times, 1 second apart. Each of these damages can crit, and they all count towards refilling your mana when Aspect of the Viper is on. Bind this key wisely! =)


MARKSMANSHIP TREE
Lethal Shots (5/5) - Gives 5% better chance to crit on ranged attacks. If you have read this far then you know how important it is to get your crit as high as possible.

Mortal Shots (5/5) - Gives 30% more damage to the crit portion of ranged attacks (including Explosive shot). Big. Huge. Crits.

Careful Aim (3/3) - Increases ranged attack power by 100% of my intellect. This is an AP boost of nearly 400 with my current gear.

Go for the Throat (1/2) - Ranged crits give my pet 25 instant focus. I'll be critting a lot. 1 point is fine.

Aimed Shot (1/1) - This is the skill that had me standing in front of the trainer for far too long. There are several choices to make at this point. Aimed shot is good for shooting on the run (insta-cast), besides that I'm still trying to figure out why I'm taking this over a point in Rapid Killing. In any case, I want the next skill.. so I had to choose one of them to advance down the tree.

Improved Stings (3/3) - It does other stuff but mainly I'm interested in the 30% extra damage to Serpent Sting. Since this sting will be up all the time, I want to make it work a bit harder. In the near future I may have to experiment to see if these points could be better spent elsewhere.


BEAST MASTERY TREE
Improved Aspect of the Hawk (2/5) - Normal ranged attacks will proc this, increasing my ranged attack speed by 6% for 12 seconds. I'd put more than 2 points here but.. there are no more talent points to spend.


And that's the build. I'm anxious to see what my DPS looks like in the next raid. The numbers on the paper-doll look amazing. (Nearly 4700 AP/35% crit unbuffed)

The one that got away

It's been a week since the 25-Naxx SUPERPUG and I was hoping to have a repeat performance. I caught an invite, my guildie did not (they had too many DKs). And here we go again on another 6 hour tour.

Everyone know what to do?

Nothing needed to be explained this time. Everyone in the group had a good understanding of all the fights. We systematically tore down Naxx, wing by wing. The only thing that gave us any trouble at all was the horrendus lag we encountered for the first hour or so of the raid. Several people including myself took turns at disconnecting, typically in the middle of a boss fight.

Delicious and nutricious!

The fish feast was a great hit! Everyone seemed to love it. I used all that I had cooked during the raid, so I have to set aside some time for fishing in the future. If my DPS doesn't get me invited back, my cooking might.

Things to do in KT's crib when you're dead.

After the lag died down it was smooth sailing. A few wipes overall but nothing that slowed us down much. By Midnight server time we were battling KT again (I feel close enough to call him that now). I was watching half of this battle from above my corpse since an Ice Tomb did me in. KT fell.. and this time I took a screenshot. (Told you it was not impressive)

That's how *I* roll!

I did end up getting a few upgrades. Shoulderpads of Secret Arts, Torn Web Wrapping, and Boots of the great Construct. I only won 1 contested roll. T7.5 eludes me yet. It was fun, I'll hopefully get another chance next week!

25-Naxx SUPERPUG!

Full clear of 25-man Naxx sounded really good. I actually did not believe we'd do it. What are the odds you can get 25 mostly-random people to pound the thing out for 5+ hours, especially on a Thursday Night?

Loot Rolling Strategy?
The loot rules were interesting. 1 "Need" roll for the whole thing. As many "greed" rolls as you want, however the "greed" rolls were for main-spec only. Because of this setup, it was curious to see people not using their "need" roll on items, even on moderate upgrades. Of course items like the Grim Toll would not get past this need stage. There was a bit of strategy involved for me, with only *1* other hunter in the raid. I was anxious for an upgrade of some kind, but what to shoot for?

The first boss dropped Crippled Treads, a decent upgrade to Hornlove's Dragon Slayer's Sabatons. The raid warning popped up, it was decision time. The other hunter rolled need, and I passed, thinking with this only being the first boss, there would be many more chances for drops and I'd still have my Need roll. I didn't have to wait long. The second boss dropped a Aged Winter Cloak, which by my calculations was the 2nd best cloak in the game for Horn. I rolled a 63 to beat two others and the cloak was mine! *claps hands together, rubbing them greedily* Much loot was to be had for everyone in this run. I missed winning T7.5 Shoulders, Legs, and Chest that dropped, but was able to out-roll the other hunter on the Cult's Chestguard and Pauldrons of the Abandoned! It was a great night for loot.

The Final Wing
A few replacements were needed after the 3rd wing went down, one being a guidie druid who respec'd to help us heal. The abomination wing was the last one left. I had never succeeded in getting past Patchwerk in a 25-man, much less clear the whole wing. We had 6 healers and very good DPS and it showed. The abomination fell easily. More people ended up dying to frogger! The remaining bosses were all new to me. We ended up wiping a few times before clearing the wing. Everyone was a bit tired at this point as the raid had been going on for over 5 hours.

1-shotting Sapphiron?
Many in the group had not got this far and the fight was explained well over vent. Everything seemed to be going good until some crankiness erupted over vent. "So-in-so is standing in the blizzard! Get out of it!" ... "I have the resist gear to be standing in the blizzard!! Worry about yourself!" It was not that polite, but you get the idea. Then later (still during the fight) the healers were arguing loudly, telling each other how to play their class. The raid leader did a good job of trying to "CLEAR VENT!!". Oh, the boss? One-shot. It was very close, just as the dragon had tore thru the main tank and started doing the same to the rest of the raid, it fell. Not the most difficult boss in the game but I thought 1-shotting this guy with a PUG was very impressive.

We Meet Again, KT!
Was this group capable of downing the head honcho? After the last week's battle with him I knew what we were in for at least. About 8 people in the raid did not know the fight so it was explained in detail. We wiped after a couple good efforts (one of which we had him down to 4%). The raid was waning a bit. "Last try for me guys..." "Me too I need to get to sleep." Argh! We've come all this way, and sleep is an issue? It's only 2AM server time. Suck it up! At this point I didn't really think we were going to finish the job, despite the good raid makeup, leadership, and abundance of DPS. After 6 hours people were losing focus. I even msg'd my guildie "Oh well at least it was a good learning expierience and we both got some nice loot" And then we did it...just like that Kel Thu'Zad was down!! YES!!! His crumpled corpse was so weak looking I didn't bother to take a screenshot, although I should have anyways.

In summary...
This was a really fun time. It took me back to the days of raiding MC in that a complete clear of a high-level instance can be a nice achievement, especially doing it in one sitting. Despite the raid consisting of 1/2 PUG, the guild "Chaotic" was running the thing and did a fantastic job. The MT and Raid Leader "Ambitions" kept cool throughout and steered us successfully to the end. I hope to be lucky enough to join them when they run this again next week.

For the Naru! For the Light!

I'm not into PVP, I think it's a very boring aspect of WoW. Without a real sense of loss or gain from the battles, it remains pointless. I much more enjoy advancing in the game somehow instead of repeatedly running back to my corpse/making someone else do the same thing.

Today, however, Hornlove found her way into a 25-man which had just finished OS and was wanting to do vault. One problem, the horde owned Wintergrasp and the battle was about to begin. I tried it out, and could see why a lot of non-pvpers could get into it. The battle of Wintergrasp involves more strategy, the use of siege weapons, and other things besides just numbers/gear.

But in the end, it was still just numbers. The avalanche of Alliance came down on the Keep with a commanding thud. The battle couldn't have lasted much more than 10 minutes. A few achievements earned, good enuf for me.

And of course I got nothing from either raid except the Emblems of Valor. I did end up with enough saved emblems to get this:

I'm Invincible Now!!!

Where's the beef?

I posted an introduction to myself and this blog on Blog Azeroth, a site that tracks WoW-related blogs. Since this is really the only place so far I've linked the blog, if you are reading this chances are you came from there. Oh and I was excited to see what I thought was my first comment but it ended up being just another one from the bot "Gooooooooood girl" or whatever it is advertising FullTiltPoker. /pout

In an attempt to help me gain focus here, it was suggested to me that I write about Failsauce and her quest to become a useful tank. I thought that was a good idea and will certainly do that. I've much to learn about how to play a tank correctly, and I beleive the Death Knight may be one of the more challenging classes to do it with.

Hornlove did not find herself going to any 25-man raids last night (booo!). But my guild did have scheduled a 10-man Obsidian Sanctim and 10-man Vault. Both of these raids went off without a hitch! Nothing fell for Horn but I was glad to see everything go so smoothly. It's always a bit tricky when you schedule a guild raid for the Vault, as it's not certain your faction will have control of Wintergrasp.

Failsauce then joined some guildies for Heroics as DK-DPS. Since her gear is fairly weak at this point, many chances for upgrades are to be had. We started with Gundrak. I had on my DK-tanking-gear laundry-list (I'll get to this list in a future post) an item I wanted from here: The Ground Tremor Helm. This did not fall for me but I did win a roll on the Offering of Sacrifice! It was some tanking gear, even though it wasn't on my list. After that we headed to Halls of Lightning where I nabbed The General's Steel Girdle for the DPS-set. Before heading to bed I nabbed a Cloak of Bloodied Waters from the AH and had a Spiked Titansteel Helm made. DPS is looking up! Still a long road to travel for proper tanking gear. More on that later...

And now for something completely different.

25-Man Naxx lf DPS it said... Sounded great to me! It wasn't until after I had joined the group with Hornlove that I realized it was for the last two bosses only. "Fine by me!" I thought.. I honestly didn't think I'd see the last couple bosses in this instance for several weeks at least. The opportunity to kill them and get some loot could not be passed up. If nothing else it would be a fine learning experience. The first boss, Sapphiron was explained well over vent. (I also viewed Tankspot's Guide to learn more) After a wipe or two, we got him (her?) down. No good loot dropped for me, and we moved on to the top dog, Kel'Thuzad... the final boss of Naxx!

The encounter was again explained in detail via vent. It spans several stages, which were easy to learn after a try or two. We came very close (2% once) but could not finish the job. Kel'Thuzad is a bad-ass! In the end we wiped 9 or 10 times, and the group had enough. I'd love to try again tho. Some special stuff can drop from this creep!

Yeah, you're a bad-ass!

Also in before the nerf...

Hunters do great DPS. We get to buy an epic weapon as soon as we ding 80. It's relatively easy to configure a hunter's gear to maximize their DPS. It's my beleif that when other classes get geared up, hunters are not overpowered. During a 25-man Vault earlier today, Hornlove went all-out for the top spot. AP-boosting food, AGI/Crit booting elixir, the best ammo, even quaffed a potion of speed to see what I could do on this burst-damage-fight. I was able to stand still thru entire fight, all cooldowns blown as soon they came up, kept the pet alive the whole fight. The results:

As other classes catch up in gear/maximizing gear, it becomes clear that the Hunters are not far-and-away doing too much damage. Yet we are still slated to get a horrific nerf next patch. At least it wasn't today.. another 7 days of "OP" to enjoy.

On another note:

Would you hit that?

Finally, I was able to get the Emblems of Herosim together for the off-hand weapon I wanted. The idea was to throw the Accuracy enchant on it and have a nice set of fist weapons for running Naxx. The amount of hit% bonus hunters need for Naxx is either 8% or 9%, depending on who you believe. I'm trying to get over 8%, and will check the damage meters for misses the next time I get into a 25-man Naxx. Hornlove's racial passive Heroic Presence is great for helping to reach this, btw! Now to the weapons I've chosen for their Hit Rating:

Crimson Steel can be had from 10-man Obsidian Sanctum, and Pride is purchased from a vendor in Dalaran for 50 Emblems of Heroism. Accuracy gives +25 Hit Rating and +25 Crit Rating which is ideal, since I'm only going to be equipping these when I need to get naxx-hit-capped. There are other weapons I'd rather have if I didn't need so much Hit Rating.