Hey folks, sometime recently, our FTP server stopped working. It was bound to happen eventually, but I suspect our hosting provider simply turned us off. We were doing 50GB a day of FTP traffic on a virtual private server, and I think that’s the definition of a “bad neighbor”.

We toyed briefly with an account at uploadingit.com, who advertises 100GB per day of transfer (probably enough most days), and to their credit, they even privately offered us an increase for the days we publish the show so long as our average stayed under 100GB. Unfortunately, they’ve been fraught with downtime lately, and as we were uploading the show to them, they went down. Right after I posted that the Kruf episode (116) was working again.

We considered cloud storage from a few different vendors (Amazon, and the likes) but with our monthly 1.5TB of FTP traffic, it’d have been way too expensive. We also considered Libsyn and Podbean and other types of unlimited bandwidth podcasting hosts, however they charge by the amount of shows you have available at one time, and we wanted to keep the whole show downloadable. Also, their pricing structure seems to reflect that they do most of the legwork involved in setting up a new podcast, but we don’t need any of that. We only needed someone to serve our files.

Anyways, I remembered that the space upgrade at wordpress.com was in fact considerably cheaper than a lot of the other hosting options out there, and while they had had flakey downtime and latency issues two years ago when we used them, I’d heard good things about them since. Long story short, we’re going to be using the wordpress.com hosting service from now on. If you ever have issues playing the podcast, please get in touch with Euri by email.

Here’s the recap of the Hunter buffs.

• Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
• Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
• Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
• Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.

Decent buffs overall. We get a little increase in survivability via Deterrence. We’re encouraged to used Black Arrow over Explosive Trap in single target situations, as it will now proc the same number of Lock and Loads. And we’re free to use Arcane Shot during Lock and Load.

Then there’s the boost to attack power via Aspect of the Hawk, which in turn buffs the One With Nature talent.

Overall Hunters should see some improvement in the Dragon Soul raid. Will it be enough for the truly high-end progression guilds to bring Hunters over some other classes? We’ll have to wait and see. I will say this though, if you’re not in one of those “world first” minded progression guilds break out your hunter, pew pew, and just have some fun.

I’m on my second week of raiding since coming back from vacation and things are moving along nicely. I’m in that awkward 12.5 stage. I’ve acquired a few good pieces of T13 gear, but haven’t quite shed all of the T12 yet.

Between the raid finder and our normal runs I’ve acquired six upgrades including weapons and the 2-piece set bonus; can’t wait to see that in action. It looks like I’ll acquire two more items from badges this week. I just need to decide which two.

Getting all of this gear is great, but with everyone running LFR with their alts, gemming and enchanting this stuff is a nightmare. There isn’t much on the AH, what is there is exorbitantly expensive. All told I need nine red gems, a yellow gem, 2H weapon enchant, chest enchant, leg enchant, shoulder enchant, glove enchant, eng. tinker for gloves. On top of that I’ll have reforge everything.

In many ways it’s no different from any other tier. It’s just that in the past I don’t recall the upgrades coming so fast and furiously. Good problems to have, unless you need to have it all ready to go in about 30 minutes.

Good Hunting!

After we ran LFR, we had enough time to give normal modes a look. We one-shot the first boss and came back the next night and got a second boss down. We should have progressed further, but we had a little trouble getting the orb mechanic down. I guess you whipper-snappers are just too young to remember Pong. He should be a one-shot from here on out.

The next evening we put a 10-man together and knocked out the first four bosses. I’ll be surprised if we don’t close out this week 5/8. Dragon Soul normal is definitely easier so far than Firelands. It’s a lot more fun too.

We’ll have to wait and see what the hard modes are like, and if normal modes will even get a nerf this time around. All-in-all this may be a very quick tier, with more guilds attempting hard modes than ever before. It really feels like Blizzard wants to close out this expansion quick and get us over to Pandaria.

Here’s the site where we host our shows live.

You can now stream our show onto any mobile device through Stitcher.com, for those of us who prefer something like Android to the iPhone. As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com. Also, we love iTunes reviews. So please drop by iTunes and mention what you thought of the show.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

Tonight the march to defeat Deathwing begins. I plan to stick with Survival for my raiding spec. I have my Surestrike Goggles and Blunderbuss of Khaz Modan ready for transmogrification, and I’m ready to give the Raid Finder a try.

Honestly this is the one feature that interests me the most. I haven’t heard too much chatter about it, but if it works it will change the way we raid forever. I’m really rooting for it.

As you sit and wait for the servers to come back online, I leave you with a look at the official Hour of Twilight Trailer.

Here’s the site where we host our shows live.

You can now stream our show onto any mobile device through Stitcher.com, for those of us who prefer something like Android to the iPhone. As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com. Also, we love iTunes reviews. So please drop by iTunes and mention what you thought of the show.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

If there’s one thing I love as much as Hunters, it’s Star Wars. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you’re probably aware that next month, BioWare will release it’s new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. And I plan to be there for it.

Not only am I planning to play TOR, I’m already writing about it. That’s right I’ve joined the gang over at Force Junkies to help them deliver the the best Old Republic coverage this side of the Outer Rim. My first article – Choosing Your Class in Beta: Try Before You Buy is available for your reading pleasure.

Additionally I have my own personal TOR blog called The Cantina (seemed appropriate given the Brew Hall). If you planning to play TOR, then I encourage you to head over to Force Junkies.

So what does this mean for me, Wow, the Brew Hall and the podcast? Absolutely nothing. I’m not quitting Wow, in fact I’ve signed-up for the 12-month subscription plan and look forward to beta testing the new expansion.

I’ll be there each week for the podcast, and have already started gathering information for episode 107. I’ll continue to raid and help run my guild, and when the mood strikes I’ll post here.

So thank for you reading my blog, listening to the podcast, and remember to drink your Darkbrew Lager.

Here’s the site where we host our shows live.

You can now stream our show onto any mobile device through Stitcher.com, for those of us who prefer something like Android to the iPhone. As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com. Also, we love iTunes reviews. So please drop by iTunes and mention what you thought of the show.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.