User:Dagmar d'Surreal

Yep. It's me.

Mainly I play with my 70 Alliance Dwarf Hunter (Eshk), specced out 41/20/0 like BRK's suggestion. I've done mages in almost every other game, and initially did a mage in this one, so you'll pardon me if I've no idea what some of these mobs look like close up. For a long while I was just using 60/0/1 left over from soloing because I couldn't be bothered to come out of the wilderness to talk to the retrainer (hah). Note to anyone planning on doing this (so basically everyone who hasn't hit 70 yet)... The change from rock-steady DPS to frequently scoring piles of criticals will take some getting used to and make your groups rather unhappy in the meantime. Expect to pull aggro when you shouldn't rather frequently until you get the hang of the new damage ratios. Big Red Kitty's damage numbers are not a joke--they are merely delicious. For the long road up to 70, going full Beastmaster spec makes a lot of sense, but once you start raiding places you should be able to let go of the extra survivability in favor of added lethality--it's not like you have to level anymore.

...until the next expansion, anyway.

On the subject of voice chat
I'm on Skywall, have a headset, and can be counted on to follow instructions properly if you need an extra DPS. I am not "uber geared" but I'm no slouch either. (That which is not blue/gemmed is item level 120 stuff, i.e., Netherstorm of the Bandit.) While WoW's in-game voicechat isn't as nice as Ventrilo, it does at least work so expect me to kvetch a bit if you call me in on something and you're using neither of them. There is simply no effective way for players to cooperate quickly or at maximum effectiveness by trying to type full sentences and operate their toon at the same time. I type 120 wpm on most days which is three times faster than most of you people and I know better than to even try. Voicechat collaboration wins. If you're worried that someone will find out that you're a nine years old girl and have a high and squeaky voice, get over it--most players don't care and the ones that are going to get bent out of shape about it probably need a reality check. I'm generally just happy if people are clear-headed enough to be able to tell what's going on, so if you do happen to be nine years old and have a sharp mind you're probably a better pick than a lot of folks playing.

To put it another way, not using voicechat is what makes most PUGs fail. Put your ego away and spend $20 on a headset. Even Logitech's cheapest model will let you collaborate quickly with unfamiliar people. Expecting everyone else to do the things you expect them to do when the "something goes awry" happens is a huge recipe for failure.

On the subject of "huntards"
Let's be clear about this... Yes, the Hunter class is basically "easy mode" for leveling to 70 because you've got just a cr*pton of aggro management tools. You get a selection of pets (although you are expected to feed them), you get feign death, slowing traps, poisoning traps (snakes! w00t!), 'sploit-view (tracking), and a fear spell for the outdoors. This isn't out of some goal of Blizzard's to make the class easy--it's simply a matter of the Hunter's tools give you lots of options for getting out of being beaten to death. For everything short of dying Hunters have the same grind to deal with as everyone else. However, since Hunters generally don't die everyone seems to think that the rest is also easy. This attracts a lot of dimwits to the class, so I have to concede there are a lot of dimwits playing hunters, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all Hunters are dimwits, or that the class causes mental retardation.

The problem is this... Stupid people view level progression as requiring that one merely not die. This is far from a logical assessment because without an XP penalty for death, one can die frequently and still level just fine (and one can certain level faster with increased risk). Consider the use of the phrase "huntard" as possibly indicating that the person using the word has an oversimplified view of level progression, and is possibly one of those people who thinks that there's such a thing as a "perfect group" which has a specific set of five player classes and nothing else. Note that World of Warcraft has somewhat more than five classes.

Of course, if you have full purples you can take the idea that there is a "perfect group" and force it to work, but you don't get the purples by operating that way--you fail frequently or you're a big fan of the "drown them in our blood" raiding technique. Working with a bunch of people who already have purples to get your purples just means the bogons spread--it doesn't make them right.

On general principle, you would do better to avoid those people than you would to avoid working with Hunters because they're not in the "perfect group". Rote players in an "uber guild" tend to fail miserably when they have to PUG it out because they can't adapt to a rapidly changing battle and gear alone cannot save them. Skilled players adapt to the situation and the team members at hand, they don't just peremptorially click a bunch of buttons by rote.