Thursday (24 Feb) - Hunter Fortress Represents!

Thursday (24 Feb) - Hunter Fortress Represents!

New blue lumberjack shirts and a redesigned guild tabard await guildies the next time they check the bank and pick up a guild tabard (if they don't already have one). Many thanks to the DER Clan for suggesting we make some changes and even designing the new tabard. I must say that the tabard emblem, an eight point star with the long arms signifying the four hunters and the shorter arms of the star signifying the four combat pets, is awesome - although it certainly gets stretched in interesting ways among our short (Shevils), tall (Beano) and medium build (See and Speak) pvp partyers.

On Thursday afternoon while getting guild toons their shirts and tabard, Wild came upon a massive assault in progress in the main area of Orgrimmar. Shandris Feathermoon, a super elite Alliance npc who commands the Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas, was badgered by horde players to the point she chased them all the way from Feralas and into Org. It was a titanic battle - more than 50 horde players engaged in trying to kill her. Shandris fought her way to the new Warchief's (Garrosh) building, lighting up half the city with her Starfall attack and laying waste to dozens of horde attackers in the process. Wild died twice defending the entrance to Garrosh's chamber, only to see Garrosh flee the battle without engaging Shandris. After many long minutes of battle Shandris was finally forced out of the city and she returned to Feralas. There were many shouts for Thrall, the popular Warchief before Garrosh, but Garrosh has Thrall far away from the politics of home. I miss Thrall.

On a more personal home front, in addition to battling the demons of my tax return, I have a cold as well. I've been denying it for two days, but there's no question I've got the bug.

There was no raid on Tuesday. No raids on Wednesday or Thursday, either. The guild is reassessing raiding and have asked everyone who wants to raid to make a concrete commitment to the Guild Leader. That was a week ago and there has been no further word. Wild's raid leader for G2 was expected back on Monday, but so far he hasn't been in game. PUGs now have more experience in raiding cata content than our guild does. The guild calendar is empty of events with the exception of the Friday night old school raid (where old content is slaughtered), which is the one raid that always seems to fill.

The DER Clan's top Alliance cousin, Daeth, has been seeing a lot of game time and at level 70 has become a very dangerous opponent in the battlegrounds. Daeth recounted his most recent triumph:

Yeah, he is a gnome. I am so excited to get to 70 with him. He pwns right now with just greens; when he has 1400 spell power, 12k health, 14k mana and 35%ish crit at 70, he is really going to be a nightmare. He had a game in WSG last night (his favorite) where it was a bunch of level 65 and 66 alliance vs. a team of mostly 69 horde with a few 69 twinks. He ended the game with 18 kbs, 4 deaths and a flag return. We won 1-0.

The horde pushed for a flag cap at the end with them having our flag at their base and us having their flag at our base. They returned our flag and their pally went to cap it but I killed him and returned the flag then grabbed theirs. There was only two minutes left or so and I was alone. I went ramp side with their flag and checked everything out from the hill before exiting the ramp. They had a warrior/disc twink combo team running our flag across mid, so I just wanted to try to hang onto the flag until time expired. I ran on the back side of the fence going over toward the roof above the tunnel exit when the warrior charged me from below (they can charge up hills, etc. that you can’t run up :( ). I blinked, ran to the other side of the tunnel then dropped down, but his priest friend was waiting for me. I just kept running and at some point someone landed a killing blow on me, but I have the talent cauterize that brings me to 40% health after someone deals damage to me that would normally kill me. I then take 12% of my maximum health as damage every 1.5 seconds over 6 seconds (48% of my health – will kill you if you don’t have mana shield or some other absorb up). I popped mage ward to save me from cauterize along with my mana shield (which I always try to have up) and I popped a health pot. By this point my mage ward was consumed by cauterize which triggers blazing speed (60% speed increase for 4 seconds). That along with a blink took me out of range of the priest. A hunter got on me during my blazing speed proc and used concussive shot on me, so I used by gnome racial (removes movement impairing effects) and frost nova’d the hunters pet so that I was just left with the hunters arrows vs. my remaining health and mana shield. By this point I was about halfway across mid and help started to arrive.

Long story less long, I held onto the flag until the end of the game and we won. A couple people said over BG chat that they thought I was going to die. I probably should have, but I had just enough tricks to survive long enough to make it to help. It was a great win against a team that we were completely out leveled and geared by. On paper they should have won 3-0, but we pulled out a 1-0 win, and that is why pvp is great! You can’t win that match-up in pve…

Lao also reports that she dipped into the Auction House for some insurance in surviving the quite challenging dungeons of Cataclysm. At gear level i326, she should be ready to take on any and all normal dungeons!