Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Shattered Sun Offensive Dailies TourGuide Guide

So I've been enamored of Tekkub's TourGuide of late, though most all of his addons are excellent. Although designed for helping you level, I've found it works really well for organizing and optimizing my SSO dailies run. I'm still working on optimizing getting and completing the quests on the island itself, but once that's done I'll release the guide.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Hunter Gatherer

Hi, my name is Kuroshiro, and I'm a Hunter Gatherer.

(chorus) Hi Kuro.

To most people, that would mean that I hunt and I gather. Well, I do, but what I seem to gather most is Hunters.

So far I have 3 of consequence: Kuroshiro, Kuroon, and Kurokan. Yes, I like Hunters. Why 3? (so far) Well, there is a perfectly rational explanation. <GLaDOS>It's true!</GLaDOS>

Kurokan was actually my first Hunter, started on Durotan as Kuroshiro. I got him up to 46 or so, then he because the victim of a guild not coordinating when expanding to a new MMO. When WoW came out, my FFXI Linkshell (The Shirt Ninjas - Yes, those Shirt Ninjas) was contemplating playing it. Shortly after release the more hardcore of us started out on Durotan, and shortly thereafter I started playing there. A couple of months later, I'd made it the mid 40s, but the truly hardcore were already 60 and itching to raid. This kinda left the rest of us in the lurch. Then our fearless FFXI leader, Greg decided to start playing. However he had other friends of his outside of SN who'd started on Elune so he followed them. I rolled another Kuroshiro on Elune, and eventually focused all of my time there in the rebirth of his Ultima Online guild, The United Order of Virtue. Having been something of a leader in SN, I became one in UoV. I took 'shiro to 60 and all was well. I also took a Paladin and a Priest to 60.

After awhile though, I started to get the urge to PvP and experiment with builds. However, I love Beast Mastery, so I didn't want to give that up. So once character transfers opened up, I shipped 'shiro-Durotan over to Elune where he became 'kan, at which point I got him up to 60. I played with a few things, but the main problem was that PvP had become mostly Battleground oriented, and that meant insanely long queues (4hrs + to get into Alterac Valley on the Alliance side, for example) so I gave up on that.

Elune's server balance is always up for debate, but most people agree it's at least 3:1 in favor of the Alliance, if not more. In any case, being a carebear (PvE) server we could roll on either since, and the United Order of Mayhem was born. After futzing around for awhile there, Burning Crusade was announced. About a month before released I decided I was going to get a Horde character to 70. Being most familiar with Huntering and knowing I could support myself to 70 with little investment (no one else was actively playing Hordeside with me) I rolled 'on. 5 months later I got him to 70, went back and levelled 'shiro to 70, and now I'm trying to figure out what I want to do.

Kuroon pretty much covers what I want to do from a PvP standpoint. I can't stand PUGs, so until I can get other guildies to 70s my best bet for epics is Battlegrounds. Fortunately the queues are measured in seconds not hours so with a couple hours work I can get around 3k honor or so. Once 2.3 gets patched in I'll start acquiring Arena Season 1 gear and work from there.

I've started a few other characters, including a Mage, a Warlock and a Rogue, but I keep getting drawn back to Hunters. I just love 'em. Take it for what you will, but pets make the class for me. I've got a big red kitty named Buzzsaw, and a big red wind serpent named Ripsaw. Eventually I'll be picking up a big red boar (He'll be Bandsaw) for Kuroon and maybe more if we ever get more stable slots.

(For the record, I have 3 or 4 other low level hunters on different servers, including Audlee, a level 18 orc that got a free transfer to Trollbane so I could free up some space. Someday, Audlee, I'll get to you! :)