September 2006. Nihilum kills Kel'Thuzad world first, while Tobias "Ahoq" W.-H. is in Azshara, farming Stonescale Eels. June 2008. Nihilum kills Kil'jaeden a second time, and Ahoq becomes the second person in the world to wield the legendary bow, Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury. – It felt amazing, the 22-year-old reveals.

By KIDARCTICA

While it took rogue class leader Cloze a full year to get his first legendary Warglaive off the very stingy Illidan, Ahoq only had to kill Sunwell Plateau's last boss twice to be able to loot his Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury.

– When I heard there would be a legendary bow, I was excited. It is still just a drop, compared to the old vanilla legendaries that you had to farm some insane amounts of reagents to create, but this is the first real hunter legendary – I don't count Thunderfury, Ahoq says.

With his orange bow, Nihilum's hunter class leader attracts quite a bit of attention from fans, and he regularly gets requests from people to link them the weapon. Though one of the things he likes best is that he could finally throw out his quiver.

– I really like the bow, mostly because I gained one more bag space. No more arrows! The bow is, of course, the best weapon in-game, but it is not the insane upgrade that most people think. For example, the paper doll dps is just a 15 dps upgrade compared to Black Bow of the Betrayer. The biggest upgrade is that Steady Shot, our major dps shot, is based on weapon damage, and as Thori'dal does not use ammo, its raw damage is of course huge compared to old bows, he explains.

Ahoq vs. Ahoq's pet
Wielding his legendary bow, the orc hunter can dish out some serious damage. But it wasn't always like that. The running joke that Ahoq's pet does more dps than Ahoq himself has been in the guild for ages.

– That joke started during my early beast mastery days. I was a bit new to the spec and didn't deliver as much as I was capable of. My pet never outdps'd me, but it had to do with some of the dps meters not adding pets to their owner's dps. I didn't take it too seriously. As long as I knew the truth, that was good enough for me, then others could make as much fun of me as they wanted, Ahoq grins.

Fact is, Ahoq had kept to his survival spec throughout the entire Mount Hyjal and Black Temple race. As the only hunter in raids, he chose that spec to buff the melee players in the raid.

– I had been survival for so long and was comfortable with it; I believed in the spec and believed that it was the best one for our raids. We never really used hunter groups for those progress raids, as we lacked hunters to build a decent group around. I still think it was the correct choice for our kind of raid setups. We usually rely on brute force, and for maximising the dps for the raid, survival was the best of the three talent trees, Ahoq says.

After doing some research on other hunter specs, Ahoq read up on the BM spec. He got some of his "minions" to test it out, and after seeing them improve their dps, Ahoq eventually went for that spec himself.

– Buffing the raid does not show up on the dps meters, and I had heard "your pet deals more damage than you!" a lot. Eventually it got to me, and I wanted to prove to the guild and myself that I was able to do good dps. Also, with BM I got less stressful shot rotations, and it just made raiding a bit easier for me, he admits.

Name from IRC
Rolling back time, Tobias, who hails from Stockholm, Sweden, started gaming when he was young. His first gaming experience came with the Nintendo Entertainment System which he got as a birthday present. After that, he got hooked on electronic games, and played both console games and PC games.

– The first RPG I played was a Swedish text based online RPG called SvMud, which unfortunately has been shut down now. Then I did some hardcore Diablo 2 where I loved to play the assassin. You could play her in two different ways, trap assassin or melee, and I chose the latter and loved it due to the incredible damage you could deal in a short amount of time, Ahoq recalls.

When his Diablo 2 stint was over, he touched onto Starcraft and Warcraft 3 and even Counter-Strike, but only for a short period of time as he found the games to be boring in the long run. Enter World of Warcraft.

– Me and a couple of friends heard about the release of this new MMO and were all excited to play it. It was the big new Blizzard game, and from earlier experience, Blizzard games had always been successful, so our expectations were high, Ahoq remembers.

The day after the release, when the major lag had settled a bit, it was time for them to take their first steps into the new world.

– First we had to choose a realm, not an easy choice, but we took the one that sounded "coolest" and that had to be Shadowmoon at the time. So we all started creating our characters. No one else picked a hunter, so I figured we might need one, and made one, Ahoq says.

In other words, Ahoq was the first character Tobias ever created. The nickname had followed him from when he played a text based RPG called Arenan, where the players used their own private IRC server. On the server, people could get various modes, and one day when he entered a private channel, the server gave him +ahoq.

– I liked the ring to that and started using it as a name. Eventually when we started playing WoW, I used that name there as well. About the race – come on, orc is the coolest, he smiles.

Warrior Kittens
Along with his friends, Ahoq founded the guild "Flames of Agares". Some of them were in the top ten in reaching level 60 on Shadowmoon, Ahoq himself was the first hunter and third overall in the levelling race. The guild did LBRS raids and the like, but when it was time for 40 man raids, the guild wasn't big nor strong enough and Ahoq left it for a guild called "Solution".

– We did okay, started off and reached Baron Geddon, which we took down server first. Then the guild was split up and eventually we broke up. That was when I joined Blomsterjohn's guild, "Warrior Kittens of Elune", Ahoq says.

The Warrior Kittens did quite well; they cleared Molten Core, kept on playing through Blackwing Lair and went to the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. At some point they also transferred off Shadowmoon and headed to Magtheridon.

– A free transfer came up. The realm was quite unstable and laggy, we had major queues during prime time and it was just a crap realm all in all. Besides, Shadowmoon was full of Polish people. They were quite annoying; they refused to speak English since it was a Polish majority realm. So WKoE decided to transfer, and the transfer target was Magtheridon.

Still, the guild ran into problems when they encountered the angry wasp Princess Huhuran in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. After butting their heads against her for a long while, the guild went downhill. Blomsterjohn decided to join the up and coming guild Nihilum, though Ahoq, who had worked his way up to officer, desperately tried to keep WKoE together.

– With no progress in AQ40 people were dropping off left and right. Even the new Guild Master just went afk. I don't know if he ever came back, I think he has been afk for two years now. So we decided to start a new guild called "Touch my Totem", we cleared Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, nothing fancy, Ahoq explains.

Farm raid officer
After the break up of Warrior Kittens of Elune, Ahoq felt lost, even in his new "Touch my Totem" guild. He started reading up on the guild Blomsterjohn had joined, Nihilum.

– They were doing great progress and when you saw any of them, they had epic items no one had seen before. I became interested and wrote an application, and eventually I got accepted as a trial after they had downed C'thun world first, Ahoq says.

His first raid was a success. Ahoq kept up with the other hunters in the raid and got full tier 2.5 in one run. He liked the guild atmosphere, and while Kungen went missing for a few months after the C'thun kill, Nihilum kept on raiding AQ40 until Naxxramas.

– Naxxramas was a new challenge and a chance to defend our world first. We started raiding, but Naxxramas was released during the football World Cup in 2006, which kept our raid kind of crippled during the early days, Ahoq chuckles.

Nonetheless, the race had started, and Nihilum came back and fought hard to get back on track for the final boss, Kel'Thuzad. It was during this period of time Ahoq earned himself the "farm raid officer" title.

– Hunters and warlocks kept doing the worst dps ever. On most encounters, even in a 40 man raid, there simply wasn't room for more than two or three hunters, so I was not present for most of the kills we got. I was in on some, and the ones I remember the most, are Heigan the Unclean, Thaddius, Loatheb and Sapphiron. Even though we weren't the first in the world to kill them, we were first on the realm, and it really felt amazing.

Ahoq missed the world first Kel'Thuzad kill, though. He was there during progress and for two heartbreaking 1% wipes. But when Nihilum finally got him down, Ahoq was fishing Stonescale Eels in Azshara for Flasks of the Titans.

– Back in the Naxxramas days the dkp tracking was a bit different from now. We had no real way to track that players on the bench were online and not afk, so everyone that was not in the main raid got invited to a second raid, the "farm raid". I was quite frequently the leader of those raids thanks to my no-life farming during Naxxramas. The Kel'Thuzad kill felt great, since I contributed to the raid by getting consumables needed to make it happen. Though it would have felt better if I was actually there, he admits.

He who gores
Ahoq had to wait for Lord Kazzak for his first personal world first kill, and with The Burning Crusade he got a lot more world firsts as the guild took down new, fresh bosses throughout Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. Then, Sunwell Plateau became the first instance where he raided progress raids with the beast mastery spec.

– Progressing with BM spec is a bit different, but it worked out well in the end. Sunwell is a really dps heavy instance, you need dps to beat those enrage timers. But there isn't really any need for hunters, there is nothing a hunter brings that another class couldn't bring as well. Even on Kil'jaeden, where our current strategy is to have a hunter group take out all the orbs, I am quite sure mages would be equally good at that duty. But you really want hunters there for the loot, Ahoq smiles.

Personally, he would like to see more frenzy encounters where hunters are more useful and actually needed in order to take the boss down.

– Unfortunately, Blizzard seem to have scrapped this idea. There is not a single boss in the 25 man raids in Burning Crusade that has frenzy, and other dps classes bring more utility to the raid with healthstones, buffs, food tables and so on. Hunters have the potential to top meters, and we do most of the time, we just don't bring any real raid utility. Look at warlocks, they bring equal dps or even more if they don't have threat issues, but they also bring soulstones and healthstones for the entire raid, he explains.

Ahoq has a level 70 alt priest sporting season 1 gear and Karazhan items, and he also has some level 30-40 alts. However, he has no plans on ever abandoning his hunter and his two pets Goran, his ravager, and Washte Pawne, his wind serpent.

– What can I say, I've just fallen in love with the class. I have played a hunter from the start and I will never grow tired of it. I like being able to kill my foes from a distance and having a loyal companion by my side to help me in times of need. I named my ravager Goran because he is doing a lot of Gore, and "swedified" that to Goran, basically "he who gores". My wind serpent is named after a rare mob in the Barrens.

"Huntards"
It is not a secret that the hunter class is considered a "newbie" class by a lot of people. Who hasn't heard the term "huntard"?

– Well – most hunters in 5-man instances and even Karazhan and 25-man raids have a tendency to use Multi-shot on CC'd targets, and that can result in wipes all over the place, Ahoq says, and admits that he has done that as well, fortunately a long time ago.

Like everyone else, Ahoq has made his share of mistakes though, including one while working on the Eredar Twins.

– On a Twins try where everything was going smoothly, someone buzzed me on MSN and I got that fat messenger window all over the screen as I had forgotten to set my status to Busy. Right at that moment I got targeted for Conflagration and wiped the raid because I did not manage to move away from the raid fast enough, he reveals.

For new hunters, his advice is that they should read and post in forums to get information needed to improve. In addition, asking more experienced hunters for help can be a good thing. As a hunter in a high profile guild, Ahoq gets his share of attention from fans.

– The Nihilum tag gives you a lot of attention when you are in Orgrimmar, lots of fans wanting to get gold, wanting me to boost them, wanting me to crit them outside of Orgrimmar and so on. I am one of those who actually try to answer most of the whispers I get, most of them are friendly and people just have a few questions or they want to have a little chat and show their admiration for me and the guild. Though some people just want to tell you that you have no life and then they instantly log off.

The fans have given him many memorable moments though, so many that he can't remember them all. One of the last ones happened when Nihilum was working on progress in Sunwell Plateau. Ahoq was on the bench, afk-ing in Shattrath.

– When I came back I had twelve level 1 characters surrounding me. We had a little fun, I made them jump down the elevators and then we sat around a campfire outside the Aldor bank singing "Kum Ba Yah".

Gamer at heart
While several old-timers have left Nihilum, the majority retiring from the game, Ahoq has stuck around as hunter class leader and hopes to keep on doing so.

– Nihilum is a great guild when it comes to raiding, lots of discipline and dedication. Most of it is thanks to Kungen's leadership. That is one of the great strengths of the guild, Kungen. Without him we wouldn't be where we are today. I don't see any major weaknesses, might be that after progress most of the members like to slack a bit too much.

A gamer at heart, when Ahoq is not playing WoW, he spends time playing DotA, Guitar Hero on Wii or watching tv series. Apart from that, he studies electrical engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

– My studies may get more intense soon and then WoW will have to be sacrificed a bit, hopefully not, though. I will stick around as long as I still think the game is fun and worth playing. It will be fun to see what changes Blizzard brings to WoW with Wrath of the Lich King. Hopefully they will give hunters some more raid utility. I will still play a hunter in Wrath of the Lich King, and hopefully still play in Nihilum!



Ahoq on:

– gear stats:

A good goal is to first off cap your hit, 142 hit rating if BM spec. Then bring up your AP and crit equally, a good way to do that is to stack agility since it gives both of the stats. Getting around 2k+ AotH buffed AP with around 25% crit is a good start, and keep on building up after that with the gear you can get.

– pets:

Be sure to pick the best pet for your current spec and gear. Ravager, cat and raptor are great pets for early BM, but when your gear advances and you reach around 30% crit unbuffed, you should start trying a Wind Serpent. The Serpent's Focus Dump deals more damage than Gore/Claw, but requires a lot more crits from you.

– macro:

The basic line in the macro is /castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, !Auto Shot. This will make sure you always fire an Auto Shot in between your Steady Shot, so you don't accidentally miss any Auto Shots during your Steady Shot spam. Then you can build on this macro to cast Kill Command, Lightning Breath if you have a Wind Serpent, removing error frames and so on, all to make sure it fits your playstyle.

– professions:

At the moment in high end raiding, leatherworking is a must for drums. Wrath of the Lich King might change this with some "tinnitus" debuff, we will see in the future! Other than that I would recommend enchanting or engineering, two great professions. Enchanting gives you 8 extra stats applied to your rings, while engineering gives you Jumper Cables to make some wipe recoveries go a bit faster if you manage to feign death.

– user interface:

I have never been that fascinated with tweaking my UI, so I just use addons and the standard Blizzard UI. I use Sorren's Timers, Cooldown Timers 2, SimpleMD, Scrolling Combat Text along with Grid, Ora2 and BigWigs for raids.

Ahoq's user interface