Do you know how it feels when...

I guess I'm officially a star now. Earlier this week, I got a whisper out of nowhere saying, quite simply:

'hey, you're the fellow with the blog! :D'

I guess you've reached some personal medium when you're actually recognized for what you scribble down on a regular basis. Sure cheered up my day!

Onwards...

I'd like to ask an easy question this week; With the nerftruck headed straight for our class, what spec are you going to use for raiding after 3.0.8 hits? Stay with 51/20? Try out MM? Maybe Survival?

I can personally vouch for MM - Seeing regular 6k crits from Chimera Shot gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Masticating trash meters in heroics w/ 6.5k AoE damage/second is quite cool too.
Anyways - Get out the questions people, this week you're bringing the entertainment instead of me!

(PS: new poll up too.)

Ello folks - Would like to notify that there likely won't be any updates this week as I am suffering from IRl problems as well as low connection. (This was written on mobile). Will try to be back on Sunday.

Naxxlol.

A hunter walks into Naxxramas. Ouch.

Not quite what happened last night. As I told you, my guild was going to Naxx to clear a few wings. We did get all of Plague and 2/3 of Military down without too much effort; Was a few DPS folks that were on their first run. All of 'em were pretty good though.

As it happens, I did in fact get some loot: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39297. I'd like to take the opportunity to compare this cloak to other attainable cloaks in the 10man/heroic range.

The easiest one to obtain may involve a lot of cash, depending on your server prices - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43566, an epic BoE cloak crafted by leatherworkers. Depending on how much you're willing to farm/pay, the mats could prove a time or goldsink - 2 Arctic Furs, 6 Eternal Fires, 4 Eternal Shadows and a Frozen Orb, the Wrath equivalent of TBC's Primal Nethers. While it's a lot of mats for some, they're actually easy to farm - All the primals can be picked up in one afternoon of farming the Lake Wintergrasp elementals, the Furs is a regular (if low) droprate from skinning anything in Northrend, and the Orb is either purchaseable for 10x Emblem of Heroism (10man/heroic Badges), or a 100% drop from the end bosses of all L80 heroics.

Then there're the PvP cloaks - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42060 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42061. The only difference is that '-Of Triumph' has 34 Hit rating, and '-Of Victory' has 34 Crit rating. While it's a lot of item budget spent on resilience, it's a great alternative if you've got the time/will to farm 38,000 honor points.

Then there's the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39404. While arguably harder to pick up (it drops from Sapphiron in the 10-man version of Naxxramas), it's also one of the better iLevel 200 cloaks out there. It focuses on raw stats (Agility and stamina) instead of 'ratings', unlike the Cloak of Darkening, which is a definitely plus for Survival Hunters.

Then finally, there are the Level 2 PvP cloaks, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42067 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42068. Bought for 47,400 honor points, they've the same stats at the 'level 1' cloaks, only they've more of them. However, these cloaks have the downside of requiring Personal Arena Rating - Thus, you may need to push up that team of yours, or do with one of the other ones. 

Now, let's take a look at the differences. I've used WoWhead's Item Comparison Tool to add these items together. I'm going to compare them all to the Cloak of Darkening (bcuz iz mein), and then list the differences.

See for yourself.

WoWhead rates the Cloak of Darkening the second best choice for all specs, closely following the Cloak of mastery. After the CoDark, the Deadly Gladiator's Cloak of Victory (And after that the hateful one) is listed as the best choice for BM hunters, followed by the Ice Striker's Cloak. For all three specs, the cloaks of Triumph are left in the dust as inferior to the other 5 choices.

A number comparison (All compared to the CoDark:)(I've left the Triumph ones out of this; Considering the hassle to get them and the choice to pick up the Victory version instead, they simply aren't worth it)

Ice Striker's

+21 stamina

-24 Armor Pen

-5 Agility

Hateful Gladiator's 

+19 Stamina

+33 Resi

+34 Hit

-38 Haste

-24 Armor Pen

-29 Agi

Deadly Gladiator's

+30 Stamina

+4 Armor

+37 Resi

+12 AP

+38 Hit

-29 Agi

-24 Armor Pen

-38 Haste

Mastery

+21 Agi

+21 Hit

+23 Crit

-6 Stamina

-24 Armor Pen

-38 Haste

And finally, the order of pickup for the different specs;

BM

Mastery

Darkening

Deadly Glad's

Hateful Glad's

Ice Striker's

Survival

Mastery

Darkening

Ice Striker's

Deadly Glad's

Hateful Glad's

MM

Mastery

Darkening

Deadly Glad's

Ice Striker's

Hateful Glad's

________________________

On a whole other note, I'd like to welcome the WoWhead links to my blog. A big thank you to WoWhead for providing this service!

~Thrak

I've got a blog!

So yes, I don't know how this soon-to-be wall of text ended up on my PC. But hey, now it's here - Better make the most of it. A bit about myself (In case you give a ¤#%!111 :3);

I'm a huntard on the server Sporeggar-EU. Yes, Huntard. I'm not skilled, I'm a total faggot. Seriously. :3 Anyways, I enjoy RP as a fillout activity between raids and fishing, my two main things-to-do inside World of Warcraft. Though it's not always that I have the time to raid, I try to get in da naxx as often as possible. I did manage to clear both 10-man and 25-man Archavon this week, both in PuGs, which is pretty impressive considering my gametime.

IRL, I'm often described as a mildly insane teenager. Though I won't give out any describing info here (That's for the eyes of my cyb0r partners/guild mates only =3), I can say that I'm a 95er living in Aalborg, Denmark.

That's all for tonight folks; Probably another post coming in at high speed tomorrow when I'm ready to rant about my sudden lack of loot inside that necropolis. I swear, Naxxramas has bad kharma big time.

~Thrak