Moving House

I've ported all the content from this site over to a Wordpress site. I have no idea if I'll stick there or not, but for now, please redirect yourself to:

Fleas on Rats

Can We Talk Hunters for a Minute?

Milo is acting out my hunter frustrations

Out of all my toons, the patch changes to hunters are my least favorite. Go figure. The very first thing I did, even before transmog, was switch Maruka over to beast master from marksman. As a hunter, I feel that being able to have pets out is one of the most, if not the most, important aspect of my class. What's a hunter without a pet?

I've raided with her as bm twice and I've run all the lfrs with her for the last two weeks. My numbers are fine. I'm first in our raid and usually #1 or #2 in LFR. Whatever. Who cares? What bugs me is the rotation. Take out the legendary ring, my trinket proc, and a couple cds, and I have three buttons to push. Kill command, dire beast, and cobra shot. It's BORING! And what's more!! It's ANNOYING!! All the whistling with dire beast is freaking annoying. Amiright?? On top of only having three main abilities to use, it seems like they're always on cool down or I'm waiting for my focus to regen. Granted, my gear is specced more towards marksman than bm and as such, I'm light on haste, but still.

Everyone keeps telling me to be patient and wait until I get my artifact weapon. And I am. I still consider Maruka to be my main and as of right now, I plan on raiding with her in Legion. I have to wonder though, is it more sentimentality that has to do with keeping her as my main or because I actually believe she'll be more fun with her artifact weapon? Time will tell I guess.

Download Update Message in WoW

I tried launching the game today and received the following message:

An updated version of World of Warcraft is available. Please launch the Battle.net app to download the update.

At first, it seemed like everything was normal because as soon as I okay'd that message, a download started. It finished up, said the game was ready, and I tried launching again. Same message. I completely closed down the app and tried launching again. No go. Then I turned to Google and found the following suggestions:

1. From a Reddit post:  Im assuming you are on US server, go into your WTF folder (C: > Program Files(86) > World of Warcraft > WTF) Then open Config.wtf with notepad. Look for "SET portal "EU"" should be at the top. Change EU to US, save it and make sure to restart battle.net or it will just change it back.

I am on a U.S. server, but when I tried this fix, I was already set to US. This didn't work for me. 

2. This suggestion was from a forum post and I wish I had saved the link, but I didn't. Go into your World of Warcraft folder and delete the WTF and Cache folders. 

I tried that and it didn't work either. 

3. This is another suggestion from the WoW forums:  Run a scan and repair. In case you don't know how to do this:

• Open the Battle.net app
• Select the icon you want to fix. This was the World of Warcraft icon for me.
• Click on the "options" icon. This is a little blue cog located underneath the World of Warcraft:  Legion logo to the right of all the game icons. It took me a minute to find this because I kept trying the Bnet drop down menu icon at the very top of the screen.
• In the "Options" drop down menu, select "Scan and Repair" and let it do its thing. It's not a fast process either.

After about 20 minutes of scanning, I got a message from my computer asking permission to allow the app to make changes to my computer. Then another download ensued. Then I got the message that the game was playable. This solution finally worked for me. Not sure what it found and fixed, but the game launched as if new, with the startup movie and everything. 

Maybe either of the first two options might work for anyone else having this problem since they seemed to work for quite a few others but only the third worked for me. Try all three before resorting to anything extreme like uninstalling and reinstalling. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have, but I'm not tech support and only know what I know from Googling it myself. ;) 

Frost Mage Transmog

As I said in my last post, I decided to switch my frost mage to a fire mage for Legion. Frost is underperforming since the patch so it made more sense. Also, much to my delight, fire mage is FUN.

I tried both fire and arcane a few months back and just could not seem to get the hang of the rotation. My timing was always off and practice didn't seem to make it any better. I switched to the supposedly lesser Frost spec and my numbers went up. Just like they're supposed to do. Also, quick sidenote, whatever happened to playing specs you have fun with versus the top performing and/or must haves? Whatever.

Back to my main topic...

For my frost mage spec, I put together the following transmog (click the pics to embiggen):

Full on screenshot

Selfie. And she's lamenting the fact that this pic cost her 489 gold to take.

There you have it. I was really feeling this transmog. I wish I had remembered to take out her weapons, but I was unwilling to pay another 489 gold to switch out my transmog to take another pic. Uh uh. 

Whaddya think? Fire, vs. frost vs. arcane? Thoughts?

Fire Mage Transmog

I started out thinking I would keep my mage as frost, post-patch but holy bones! Her deeps just weren't up to snuff. I had tried both fire and arcane a few months back and didn't like either one. However, knowing what I know about how hunters changed, I figured now would be the time to learn a new mage spec. And I was right. I like the rotation and it doesn't feel boggy or slow at all. Feeling the change, I also needed to come up with an appropriate transmog. This is what I have so far:



(click to embiggen)

I definitely like the shoulders and my offhand. I'd like to get a flame-ier belt though. That's the best match I could get to my robes. As for the robes, they're okay but I can do better. I also wouldn't mind getting a flame-y helm too, which is weird for me because I usually opt to go helm-less. Howver, I think her goblin hair detracts.

What do you think?

World of Warcraft: Post Pre-Patch Ponderings

The post title? I couldn't resist.

 So, new patch! I don't know about you all, but I felt like this patch was a doozy. I logged in and had absolutely no idea wtf to do with my hunter. All her talents and abilities were different. It was like starting over from scratch. Logging in with my mage, monk, and warlock all caused similar feelings.

Then I started in on the new transmog system. First of all, LOVING my new closet. I should've kept track of how many hundreds of gold I've spent on changing my various toons' outfits. I also discovered that I have a mismash of items. Lots of chest pieces that don't have matching pants, etc. etc.

My raid team decided to go ahead and attempt raiding the same night the patch came out (our regular night). We ran HFC on normal Tuesday night and then on heroic Wednesday night. It was ok. Everybody's numbers were lower than normal and we were a bit sloppy but we still got some bosses down. That was with virtually no practice with our new(ish) toons. I think this week will be better.

I'm loving healing on my monk though. So. Much. Fun!! I even had fun with my lock on destro.

On a side note, I created a page for my guild. We're looking to boost our numbers with some active, fun, friendly, people. If you're looking to raid with nice people in a slow progression environment, then we might have a spot for you. When Legion finally drops, we'll most likely be looking to fill raid team spots then too. Either way, until we chat, I make no promises as far as raiding is concerned. However, if you're looking for a friendly place to hang, a guild to grow with and help grow, and a place where you'd actually have some input, gimme a buzz. Check out The Guild Page for more info. Any feedback, either here or on the page, would be most welcome.

Cutting the Cord - How My Family Cancelled Cable

About six months ago, I decided it was time for my family to cut the cable TV cord. There were several factors that went into this decision.

One, my cable bill went up to over $200 a month. I called to ask wtf and was told that I was on some kind of graduated billing where my bill increased over three years to it's final $200+ that it was. This is for both cable and Internet. Considering how much TV we actual watch, this number was unacceptable.

Secondly, we'd had a little experiment with no cable for about three weeks when our house was struck by lightning and our cable wasn't working. This was my fault because I didn't feel like calling a tech out to the house. In that time, we streamed Netflix like it was cool. We had, at the time, 1 TB of data to use per month and almost hit that limit. And we didn't really miss the cable.

Thirdly, there are so many options out there that allow for you to customize what you want and what you watch. With Google Chromecast, Roku, Hulu, and Netflix (to name a few), there are so many subscriptions and packages to choose from that you can ensure that you're paying for what you want and not for what cable companies force on you.

So, we bought a Roku, cancelled the cable, and upped our Internet to 2 TB a month with a faster speed (not sure what that is). This is the biggest Internet package my cable company offers and it's $99.99 a month. Add in $11.99 for Netflix (that we were already paying so doesn't really count), $7.99 for Hulu, $22.46 for Sling, and $4.99 for FUBO and we're saving money. We're saving about $65.00 a month. What's more, is that the things we are choosing to pay for are things we actually watch. With cable, we were paying $200 for channels we were never watching.

I miss my subscriptions to STARZ, Showtime, and HBO but I can add those if I wish to. I don't at the moment.

Additionally, in anticipation of the 2016 Olympics, we bought a digital antenna and now we get all of our local broadcast channels like NBC, CBS, and ABC. We don't get FOX because we live too far and that's a bummer, but it's nice having those channels again and being able to watch the local news.

What I really like about our television watching subscriptions is that we can cancel them and resubscribe or add new stuff (Sling has add on packages plus HBO, etc.) any freaking time we want to. If you've been thinking about cutting the cord, DO IT!! I have absolutely no regrets.