Gearing up

I had someone on the forum yesterday suggest that as a Hunter at 80 with less than 1,000 base Agility, I suck. Since, truthfully, I was actually inclined to agree with that opinion, I decided today to do something about it.

I don't customarily read BRK with fanatical regularity, but I did happen to notice this post of his, and found it of great value as a gear guide.

My first move was to snag an Ice Striker's Cloak from the Auction House, and in the process kissed goodbye any even remote chance I might have had of getting epic flying in the foreseeable future. Still, I have basic Cold Weather flying, and now that I'm not questing so much anywayz, having to trundle back and forth across Icecrown (or other, similarly giant zones) in slow motion is no longer so much of an issue. (Although it was a pain for the Signet of Bridenbrad quest chain) I also, truthfully, consider gear a lot more important.

Although the Ice Striker's Cloak's base Agility is only as high as my old Cloak of the Craft had before I got the Agility enchant, another 80 AP is a major upgrade, and the Stamina gives me another 22 AP as well, thanks to the wonderful Hunter VS Wild.

Then taking BRK's advice, although I ended up needing to do a boatload of pre-requisite quests, I eventually got hold of the Signet of Bridenbrad, a ring with the unusual characteristic of having a socket. I filled that socket with a Delicate Scarlet Ruby.

A rummage through my bank reminded me of my Necklace of the Deep, which I brought up to date with two more Delicate Scarlet Rubies.

I made the mistake of prematurely selling my Belt of Deep Shadow in favour of my current green belt. With two Delicate Scarlet Rubies, it would only have four points more Agility than the green belt, and the green's 42 Intellect is a help to me, as well.

Still, purple text on an Armory profile is wonderful forum troll deterrent, although I find they all gravitate immediately to my Fuselighter. "Ooo-OOOH! Spellpower on a Hunter! Scrub! SCRUUU-UUUB! This trinket means that you are WORTHLESS, do you understand? You are NOTHING; you have NO WORTH as a human being in general terms because of it, both in WoW, and outside it. You fail at life, and your only acceptable option is immediate suicide, after first having mailed me all your stuff." ;-)

Lest I get trolled even here on the blog, my rationale for getting it was that at the time, due to crit scaling on the way to 80, my crit rate had fallen below 22%. Natives of the other two trees might be able to tolerate that, but as Survival, anything south of 25% crit has been known to send me into random panic attacks at times.

Thus, even an extra 10 crit rating was seen as a worthwhile upgrade, and I figured that at that point in the game I didn't need another AP proc trinket, especially considering that as an Orc, I have Blood Fury, which at times has a chance to randomly proc on both sides of the keyboard. ;-)

I also, a couple of days earlier while doing the Wolvar Pup daily in Moa'ki Harbour, had the presence of mind to grab a Cuttlefish Scale Breastplate. I remember that for the first few days after I initially discovered the Tuskarr, I was struggling to get the Prodigy's song, "Voodoo People," out of my head, wherein the word, "voodoo," had been substituted with, "walrus."

The other upside to following BRK's guide was also getting an almost complete Swiftarrow set, which means I now have an entry level Resilience set for PvP as well; so I can get back to working towards my Conqueror title, which is still my primary long term goal where WoW is concerned.

So although the Armory hasn't updated yet, I'm at 1030 base Agility with Terokk's Quill, and a bit over 3100 RAP with Dragonhawk. I was using the S3 Axe, but found that with the addition of RAP that I get from Stamina now, the difference is very small in that regard.