Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe

Several weeks ago, I popped by the Blizzard Store to check up on the Authenticator status. It’s frequently out of stock, so when I found it available to order I quickly logged in and bought two of them. $6.50 for the extra peace of mind about my account’s security is well worth it, I reasoned, and the shipping was surprisingly free. Then, I waited.

After about a week and a half of anxious walks home from work, they finally arrived in a small padded envelope: two authenticators, each in its own little box with an accompanying card explaining how to activate them. I clicked over to Blizzard’s site and found it incredibly easy to get through the steps and attach the authenticator to my account.

Then came the true test: how annoying will this be?

Opened up WoW as normal. Account name was saved, entered my password. Hit the button.

The screen dimmed and a small pop-up box appeared with the text, “Blizzard Authenticator Code – Enter the generated digital code.” A small text field followed.

I looked at the authenticator in front of me – the screen was blank. With resolve, I pressed the thumb-sized button on the left side of the device, and a six-digit number appeared. Using my uber numpad skills honed from years working at a computer-automated radio station, I rapidly entered the displayed code and hit the Enter key.

The standard login boxes flickered by and I found Tchann grinning at me from the character select screen. Success!

Ever since then, I’ve worked myself into a routine. Whenever I open WoW, I pull down the authenticator from on top of my monitor, where it stays for safekeeping. I enter my password, hit the button, enter the code, log in. One extra step in the process that gives me the peace of mind knowing that my account won’t be hacked.

In my opinion? Definitely worth the money, and the hassle, if the thought of finding your characters broke and naked has ever haunted you. Also, by keeping the authenticator at home, it keeps me from logging in to my account from anywhere other than my desktop computer, adding an unintended extra level of security to my account.

I gave the second authenticator to my husband, who hasn’t used it. The thought has crossed my mind to reposess it and give it away to someone who wants it. Perhaps, a contest of some sort?

We’ll see. 🙂

My Apologies

There is so much to talk about.

Unfortunately, I don’t much feel like talking about it.

My grandfather passed away Tuesday night. For the time being I’m using WoW solely for its intended purpose: entertainment. I don’t really have it in me to document my adventures, nor wax whimsical on the intricacies of huntering.

There are many things I still wish to say, and I fully intend on saying them. Just…not now.

All out of bubble gum

With my newly-acquired gear equipped, gemmed, and enchanted, I loaded up my quiver and headed out to clean up Naxx25 last night.

I hadn’t gotten around to respeccing yet, as I was away all weekend and my availability Sunday night was up in the air until shortly before raid time. Still, I ran around like a feared squirrel to get myself raid-ready with losing the +hit that I was. We jumped in to demolish the Military quarter first.

Raz went down pretty easily, although the SV hunter bit the dust almost immediately by attacking without waiting for anyone to have aggro on the boss. I bit my lip and praised push-to-talk as he announced over Vent, “Can I get a combat rez?” Yeah, he didn’t get it.

Gothik was a mite touchy and took a wipe to get through. He did, however, drop my pants. I waited for the RL to call for a roll and then typed out the /roll in record time. Then I squeed in delirious joy as the roll resulted in a 100 and a pair of pants in my backpack. It occurred to me briefly that perhaps I should’ve saved my roll for other hunter loot…and then I stopped caring because I wanted those pants, dammit.

The Four Horsemen went down on the first try, but I bit it after the switch to the back two bosses. The switch was underway and then I fell over dead. While I lay dead in a bubbling black void zone, it appears from the WWS that I was actually killed by a single source doing 108,030 holy damage in one blow. Ow.

At least they dropped hunter loot…that no one rolled on! It went to open roll and I came away with a new hat (more on this later). I also started to feel a bit like a loot hog again. ;_;

Then it was time for good ol’ Sapphiron. I suited up in my three-piece frost resist set and snacked on some Worg Tartare for the additional 40 hit. I was a little worried, since even with the food buff my hit was 17 under cap. Seeing the results, though, perhaps I shouldn’t have been concerned at all:

Third! The other three hunters weren’t even in the top five.

/dance

We went on to take out Kel’Thuzad after three tries. The first two tries I did fine – the third, I was the first hit with an ice block and received zero heals, dooming me to lay on the floor and watch the rest of the fight. The DK was kind enough to ghoul me so I could thrash at the lich ineffectively before exploding, though!

With Naxx25 thoroughly cleared, we decided to waltz on down to Obsidian Sanctum and see about getting the Less is More achievement on Heroic. Sure enough, things went down pretty smoothly and we happily tucked another accomplishment under our belts last night.

Now, before I move on to talk about other things, here’s the WWS listing for Trash mobs from the two raids:

Eeehehehe. Hehehe. Heeeeee. 😀

Okay, where was I? Oh yes, where things stand now.

With the gear I got last night, that pretty much brings me up to par with the rest of my guild. While I’d been proud of my perfomance in relation to my gear, it’s time that I have to actually step up and excel above the others while rocking similar gear.

Now, with the pants and hat I got last night, I’m at a bit of a crossroads. I’ve gemmed and enchanted both of them, and all that’s left is to make a decision: if I equip the hat, it’ll put me at exactly one point under +hit cap. Buh! I could replace a single gem to give me +hit over the cap,  yes. OR I could respec, throw three points into Focused Aim so that I can ditch a bunch of +hit gems for AP or Intellect gems. OR I could just live at one point under +hit cap, with the bare minimum misses possible.

The downside to respeccing for Focused Aim is that it takes away a point I could be keeping in Efficiency. While at the moment we have  a SV hunter in the raid, which is nice for slowing down my mana drainage, he’s a spec-of-the-day type of guy and is likely to jump specs depending on what puts out the most dps. Depending on him for mana regen would probably not play out well in the long run if all the hunter specs really do get balanced.

Still, lowering my +hit cap would also give me the freedom to throw a pretty AP enchant on my two-handed weapon, instead of the weapon chain that’s currently there. I think I may go out on a limb and do the respec and pray my mana holds out in the big fights – if not, I’ll need to figure something else out.

But until then…check it out! We may not be the best of the best, but among average raiders, this BM hunter is beating out the SV one, hands-down. And we’ve got a buff coming tomorrow, too!

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
• Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

– MMO Champion

Should be a good week! 😀

The continuing adventures of a Beast Master

For the record: A lot of people play WoW for the epeen. We all know this. If I played for the epeen, then I would’ve specced SV at the first application of the BM nerf and wouldn’t even have looked back. But I play for my own enjoyment of the game, and I enjoy playing BM spec more than anything else. That’s why I refuse to give up on Beast Mastery – I love playing it, and I will do whatever I can to make it viable, instead of jumping ship to the beloved dps-spec-of-the-moment. I’m blessed to be on a server with raiding guilds that embrace this playstyle, and I plan to make the most of it!

Now, with that out of the way, on to business. ^.^

Got to run the Military wing of Naxx10 last night in my guild’s regular pickup run. It was my first time seeing the Four Horsemen go down, and my first time running a 10-man with my new guild. The pickup group ended up consisting of one warrior (tank), one priest (healer), two pallies (tank and healer), two warlocks and four(!!!) hunters. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly optimistic about loot.

And speaking of gear…here are the four hunters in be.imba, at the start of the run:

I’ve gotten better at blurring the names out, at least! Anyway, we had one wipe on Raz (MC tank went down), Gothik went well, and Four Horsemen took about four tries to get down. On Gothik I noticed that my pet was attacking available mobs, despite being defensive and the mobs not having attacked her first (nor had I even targeted them yet). I also ran into this issue earlier in the evening, in Heroic Azjol-Nerub. I’m scared there might be a bug with the defensive AI for pets – I’ll have to look into this more and see what I can find.

On Four Horsemen, Mijikai died during the third switchover, almost every time. I threw her a Mend Pet whenever she was below full health, and made sure she was properly positioned, but she just couldn’t stay up. She always went down next to Rivendare, too – Kor’Thazz’s meteor wasn’t taking her down, it was something about Rivendare (according to WWS, massive shadow damage was what killed her). I need to figure this one out as well.

Remarkably, none of the hunters needed any of the loot that dropped! I managed to walk away with a new belt and a new cape, and the newfound need to regem for +hit. I’m also toying around with respeccing to something along these lines, to try to boost damage, but I’ll need to start stacking more Intellect than I already have been to pull it off. =\

Oh, and finally, the overall WWS stats afterwards:

The hunter on top is SV spec, the rest of us are all Beast Mastery. I honestly feel pretty good based on how far behind my gear is, my pet is inexplicably missing from one of the fights, and the fact that I was running a fever of 101 degrees throughout the raid, with chills so violent I almost fell off my chair. ^.^;

I might get lucky and be in the pickup raid tonight, but if I’m not, I might not be able to raid until after the next reset. At any rate, here’s to hoping the new gear makes a big difference!