Some times sorry isn't enough...

This is an apology to the poor folks who had the misfortune to invite me to a Culling of Strathome run last night, where I performed like the worst kind of Huntard, because I forgot that the aim was for the group to succeed, rather than for me to do well. So what happened?

Well, after hanging around in Ironforge for an hour or so, levelling first aid whilst trying unsuccesfully to pug a UK heroic run, I was asked if I would help out on a normal run through CoS with some lower level players. It was getting late, I was bored, I had nothing better to do and hey - I like helping out. So I said yes.

The group took some time to get organised. The mage didn't portal to CoT to help summon, even though he said he would, which meant a twenty minute wait for him to get there by more traditional means. When he did get there he and the leader summoned everyone except me, so two of them had to run back out of the instance to summon me.

So finally we are assembled, me as a lvl 80 BM hunter, a level 79 Mage, a level 79 Pally, a level 78 priest to heal and a level 77 warrior as tank. Now in all fairness to the tank, he did question his suitability but we reassured him that it would be fine and off we went.

In we went and fairly easily made our way through the first waves of trash mobs and so to Meathook and wipe. What the hell? yep wipe. The tank immediately complained that he couldn't maintain aggro which was why Meathook got past him and into the healer, mage, me and pally. Ok no big deal. We rezzed and ran back in. Healed, buffed and tried again. Same result in no time flat. Again the tank bemoaned his inability to hold aggro and suggested we replace him but, because we were a team, we said no.

Third time round we decided to try a different tactic and went after Salramm the Fleshcrafter instead. Guess what? yep we wiped again.

At this point the tank apologised and left the group, the mage immediately did the same (without saying goodbye) and the rest of us decided to call it a night.

I'm guessing we all went away moaning about how bad each or all of the others were.

Driving home from work today it finally dawned on my thick huntard like brain what had gone wrong and I have to say that I think it was all my fault, and heres why.

I am level 80 with a good selection of pre-Naxx epics, a good trinket, with ap food and Saronite Razorheads. I'm using my heroic shot rotation and popping Bestial Wrath and Rapid Fire, add to that Blessings of Might and god knows what other buffs and me and my wolf are pumping out 1800 dps /pat on back.

But whilst I was patting myself on the back, was I remembering that the tank was only level 77? No. Had I remembered to 'downgrade' myself from my heroic set up? No. Was I watching my threat meter to make sure I didn't 'steal' aggro? No. And there we have it. Big, bad, Banturr burning up the meters but generating so much threat that the tank didn't stand a chance and wiping my group in the process. Not once but three times in the space of 15 minutes.

To my un-named colleagues who's only mistake was to invite me to help out I apologise unreservedly. You had a right to expect better and it was definitely /fail on my part.

The only plus side to this episode is that I will NEVER make that mistake again.

Newton, gravity and beer

Many years ago I spent some time serving in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy where I was employed as an engineer on nuclear submarines. All ex-servicemen have tales to tell about their experiences, some of them funny, some of them serious, some of them down right scandalous, and I am no different. So for your entertainment I hereby present one of my many Salty Sea Stories.


Towards the end of my apprenticeship I was sent to the submarine school at HMS Dolphin in Hampshire to learn all that I needed to know about submarine life, in particular how to avoid doing anything that might sink the bugger (and how to get out if I did).

As a trainee of only 19 summers I had other duties to fulfil, including taking my turn at 'guarding' an old diesel submarine that was used as part museum and part training facility. It was my unfortunate lot that I was assigned to this particular duty over the New Year period of 1978/79 and, along with a few equally pissed off colleagues, was sent into the bowels of this near antique submarine to baby sit it for a few days.

Needless to say we were not happy at being excluded from the New Year festivities and as a result found it necessary to make our own entertainment. Now I know what you thinking, all matelots together and all that, but you would be wrong. Instead we decided to experiment with the capabilities of our temporary home to see what might still be functional after nearly 40 years of hard naval usage.

Obviously a fairly steady supply of beer and spirits helped enormously in bringing out the more inquisitive and playful sides of our characters and it wasn't long before some one suggested seeing how high into the air we could fire a variety of innocent items using a thing called the after SSE.

What’s that? I here you ask. Well, the after SSE was so called first because it is at the after (arse) end of the boat and secondly because SSE stands for Submerged Signal Ejector which is nothing more than a gun barrel turned end on and welded into the submarine with a water tight door at either end. In fact there were two of these devices on the boat but the one up front only worked when submerged because it was powered by water. By contrast the one at the after end of the boat was powered by compressed air at 400 pounds to the square inch. In proper use these devices are used to launch a variety of signal rockets, grenades and smoke canisters but with a barrel diameter of over 4 inches you can get all sorts of things inside.

We started off with some fairly innocuous items, a can of Brasso to about a hundred feet (OK but small) a sleeping colleagues shoes to about 40 feet high (pretty rubbish but really, really funny when you are drunk). Probably the most impressive was the full Christmas pudding which when it exited the submarine at around 150mph exploded into a thousand sticky pieces most of which blew downwind and landed on the shiny warship on the other side of the jetty (watching their crew cleaning it off the following day was also very funny because they couldn’t work out what it was or where it had come from).

All of this was, to our drunken minds, enormously entertaining and as those of us on the upper deck, around 20 or so bodies by now, grew more raucous and demanding of fun, the guys down below where struggling to find ever more assorted ammunition to launch heavenwards.

To this day, and certainly not at the time, no one who was there has ever admitted to having the idea that led to what happened next; or indeed has ever admitted to being either the loader or the trigger man.

The upper water tight door on the SSE slowly opened in readiness for the next sky shot. A quiet fell upon the assembled souls as we waited for the count down to start and in the sudden silence, the quiet before the storm, a sound could be heard. A piteous, high pitched, mournful wail such as might be heard as a soul is stolen down into the eternal pit of hell.

As realisation struck, one of the guys shouted NOOOOO as he ran towards the hatch to try and stop the launch. But too late.

With the by now familiar deep, breathy, PHUT!!, the SSE fired, and from the barrel an object emerged that emitted an unearthly and blood curdling scream as it accelerated high into the night.

As it reached the top of its arc it changed shape. Legs and tail deployed and it became recognisable as ……a cat.

The poor moggy’s vain attempt to make like a parachute availed it nothing other than to ensure its legs were roughly beneath it as it started its plunge to earth. We watched, mouths agape, as gravity exerted its inevitable hold and the feline started earthwards.

A strong light suddenly dazzled us. The noise had attracted the attention of the Ministry of Defence Harbour Police in their speed boat and with searchlight on, they had come to investigate. It was as they nosed slowly towards us that several things happened in very quick succession.

First - the cat approached the last few feet of its return to earth, or in this case, the roof of the cabin on the police boat, at something close to terminal velocity and with a dull, heavy thud hit the roof of the boat very, very, hard.

Then – the helmsman perhaps thought he was under attack and dived onto the floor of the boat, which immediately veered left and crashed hard into the side of the submarine where the force of the impact made one, of the two, policemen in the boat fall over the side and into the water.

The cat - sprang up and launched itself, all teeth and claws, at the throat of the one remaining policeman who grasped it around its neck, ripped it from his bleeding face and hurled it over board.

Those of us on deck fell about laughing like you wouldn’t believe.

Over the following few minutes’ things started to calm down. The wet police man climbed back on board his boat, the savaged policeman was dabbing at the scratches on his face with a hanky, the helmsman got the boat back under control and brought it to a stop. And the cat?

Well the cat was last seen dementedly paddling for the far side of the harbour and as gods my witness it was going so fast it left a wake.


Footnote:

As Newton explained ‘To every action there is an equal and opposite re-action’. In our case the Navy used its own version of this principle, so for our one evening of entertainment we received 14 days of punishment. We all spent the next 2 weeks running here, there and everywhere around the base doing all of the shitiest jobs imaginable.

Was it worth it?..........................you bet it was.

That was different

I ran UK heroic tonight - again. The Drake-Mounted Crossbow didn't drop - again.

The pug looked good at the beginning. Arms Warrior, Holy Priest, Blood DK, Lock and me. We ran in, buffed up and made a start. First mobs down no problem. Into the dragon pens and wipe. Rez. Wipe. Rez. Finally get through.

More mobs OK, then wipe. Sod me three wipes before the first boss. I couldn't believe it. The Death Nigget suggested we let him tank at which point I think our Arms Warrior must have got embarrassed cuz he left the group - I ain't never seen that before.

We all had to go repair before the first boss - I ain't never seen that before.

Fortunately we found a spare Ret Pally and with the DK tanking thereafter, cleared it easy.

hey oh! apart from an 8g repair bill nothing was injured but our pride.

That Damned Elusive.....

Well it was my 15th run through Utgarde Keep on heroic last night and guess what?

The Drake-Mounted Crossbow failed to drop yet again. We had a real good pug, I was the only hunter in the group, I achieved my personal best dps to date of 1783, I passed on just about every thing else (rolled greed on a helm). So the question is what the hell do I need to do?

It seems the Warcraft gods just don't want me to have that bow. Well I'll be damned if I admit defeat and go for the Nesingwary 4000, I am a Night Elf not a Dwarf. I shall just stock up on more Saronite Razorheads and have another go.

Stiff upper lip and all that.

Spreadsheet heaven - Armory hell

I have been playing WoW for 15 months now and in recent times, during my perambulations around the many excellent WoW blogs out there, I keep bumping into references to this Hunter Spreadsheet thing.

Well this week I have tracked the little rascal down and started to play around with it. Let me tell you this is a very impressive piece of work. I know a bit about spreadsheets, heaven knows I work for a company where 'death by spreadsheet' is recognised as an occupational health issue, and this one is cracker.

The only serious problem I have had using it, is actually to do with the WoW Europe Armory. For some reason it takes a dogs age for ingame changes to my character or pet to feed through into the armory. Since the last time the armory page was updated I have acquired my first, second and third epic items, re-specced, tamed a new pet and got some more achievements, none of which show up. This is a bitch because the lovely import function in the spreadsheet drags across my 'old' gear which I then have to manually edit.

Apart from that small irritation though, it all works brilliantly. How brilliantly? I hear you all ask - well after using it for a week I have raised my performance in 5 mans from borderline possible in heroics to more than ready to start Naxx 10 mans. My DPS has gone up from around 950 to 1500 plus. And in fact last night in UK heroic I finished second on the meters to a better specced SV hunter and was only 200 dps behind him.

All credit to the fine folks responsible for this excellent piece of work, first Cheeky now Shandara, and all the other contributors who have made it what it is. Check it out here: Shandara's Spreadsheet and enjoy.