12/7/10

Current Hunter Macros

So, 4.0 broke a bunch of my macros. It wasn't so much a change in the macro syntax as that abilities changed in function, so I've had to adapt or do without.

The biggest loss was my left click/right click trap macros - Trap Launcher uses a version of the spells with a different spell ID, so if I hit Trap Launcher, my traps grey out on the bar if I'm using a macro to stack them onto one button.

This is what I'm left with:

The Shot Rotation /castsequence
#showtooltip
/castsequence Chimera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
What changed: It's still not optimal, but this will keep your Improved Steady Shot buff up and get you back to your Chimera Shot cooldown with enough focus to use it, while not completely ignoring Arcane Shot. If you've got Rapid Fire up, you can probably squeeze in an additional Arcane or Steady depending on your haste and focus. Aimed Shot is now mostly used when Master Marksman procs (a depressing development, since it is our level 10 specialization shot, but our signature shot is Chimera).

With the changes to Kill Command and Silencing Shot, you no longer want to bind them to things. Kill Command you use but rarely, if ever, as Marksman, and Silencing no longer does damage, so you want to save the cooldown for when you actually need to silence. (Woohoo, Lessrabi!)

In other news, I still can't do the priority manually and not stand in fire at the same time. /shame

Misdirect
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, target=focus] Misdirection; [button:2] Misdirection; [button:3, target=pet] Misdirection
What changed: Nothing. Still works great. Add in the glyph of Misdirection, and you are good to go for soloing - or for picking up mobs in a hurry if the tank dies. (Oh, that Pit of Saron PUG... Luckily, I was leveling my turtle, and he was 79.)

Taunt the Deformed Fanatic for Kiting
#showtooltip Distracting Shot
/tar Deformed
/cast Distracting Shot
What changed: The mob will be different, but if you need this at some point, it still works.

Fire Traps/Frost Traps

They were:
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Explosive Trap; [button:2] Immolation Trap
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Freezing Trap; [button:2] Frost Trap; [button:3] Freezing Arrow
But Trap Launcher has broken them. (Freezing Arrow is also gone, and Freezing Trap was renamed.) I'm going to try playing with them again and see if I can work in a fix - I really miss them.

Feed Pet (put the food in the appropriate slot)
#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use 3 1
What changed: Nothing! You're still good to go.

Mend/Revive
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Mend Pet; [button:2] Revive Pet
What changed: Nothing! You're still good to go.

Mount Macro: My mount macro is currently broken (pre-Azerothian flying) for all my characters except my baby hunter (ahem... Duskmoon; I have a new baby hunter) - I don't know why. Once flying goes it, it probably won't matter, since I can just drop my Nether Ray straight on my bar, but I'll hit up WoWwiki at some point and see if I can find a new one.

Random Pet (from WoWwiki)
/run DismissCompanion("CRITTER"); CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")));
What changed: Still works!

With the changes to spells, the addition of the aspect bar, and the removal of such things and Scorpid Sting and Freezing Arrow, we have more room on our bars now, and less need for space-saving macros. I think my priest (and her focus healing, left/right click macros) is now the only one really short on macro space.

One day I will learn, and put my hunter macros in my general macros page, so that I can stop having to copy them over between each other.

Drafts

I write a lot of stuff that I never finish, or that I never come back to before it becomes outdated or irrelevant. So here's a sample of stuff I've thought about putting here, or started, and didn't actually ever get to press:
  • An abbreviations guide: All those dungeons and such that you see fly by in Trade chat and don't know what they mean for three or four months - LBRS, Strat, ICC, and so forth. With "how do I get there?" and "when can I run that?"
  • "Casualcore Raiding": About a casual guild doing progression raiding. I may come back to this when our raiding starts up again.
  • How do I get back to Pit of Saron from the graveyard?: With screen shots.
  • How do I find x, y, and/or z in Cataclysm?: Derailed by buying a house.
There's other stuff - a Cataclysm hunter leveling guide, stuff like that. Once we get moved and all that, I'll see what questions I see recurring in Trade and General chats and maybe put some of that together. (Face it: I'm a librarian. I compulsively answer questions.)

(Holy crap I don't have a miscellaneous tag?! I do now!)

12/3/10

New Familiar Friends

If you're not familiar with the Plaguelands, this is probably spoilery. Beware.

Tuesday night I headed into the Eastern Plaguelands because I had a headache and didn't want to run any more PUGs for Goblin reputation. I figured I would get my Mr. Grubbs, and it would be relatively mindless during the officer meeting. While I was there, I ended up getting one of the gorgeous new plaguehound dogs (green), and named him (her?) Zuul. (There is no Dana...) I'll probably finish off the zone this weekend.

Getting Mr. Grubbs requires starting Fiona's caravan quests. The caravan is a fantastic device for plot movement for the zone, both because it physically moves you from tower to tower around the zone, and because the interplay between the two paladins riding with the caravan gets you invested in the zone.

I had Loremaster for the "old world" finished before Wrath launched (~2400 quests complete when 3.0 went in), but quests have all changed, and existing story lines which I had completed popped up again. This was awesome, because the Plaguelands have always had my favorite quest chain - the Battle of Darrowshire. (My favorite zone overall is Duskwood, because Stitches is awesome, but the Plaguelands, Eastern and Western, are a close second.)

With the changes in Anderhol, Chromie is now found at one of the Argent Crusade's towers, and the quest line has been shrunk down a little - no more chasing down Joseph Redpath's wedding band or venturing into the Anderhol town hall for the Annals of Darrowshire. It's about the right size for the 40-somethings who will be inhabiting the Plaguelands as they level. You're still getting the lore, gathering relics of the heroes and villains, and later in the zone, still freeing the souls of the Darrowshire residents from their ghoulish forms. Pamela still makes you tea.

Joseph still comes home to Pamela, and it still makes me cry.

There's an added bonus to doing the chain if you're doing Fiona's caravan quests, as well. Recruiting people into her caravan allows you to carry a buff zone-wide, and if you fill the caravan, you have eight buff options. Fiona's lucky charm lets you find Mr. Grubbs, but once you're done with that, fighting the Battle for Darrowshire means Pamela Redpath can be your constant companion throughout the zone. (A little creepy when you go to fight Baroness Anastari and she's just standing there, watching... But overall pretty awesome.)

One notable absence in the zone is Nathanos Blightcaller - because he's now a hunter trainer in the Undercity. I miss him in the Plaguelands, but having an undead hunter, that's so awesome. She can be trained by the Forsaken hunter! I was also encouraged by the presence of Argent Apothecary Judkins, because the whole New Plague thing Sylvanas has going just creeps me out. The idea that you can play a Forsaken (or rather, former Forsaken, now independent undead allied with the forces of Light) not bent on killing off the entire rest of the world and that it's basically canon that Forsaken like that exist is comforting for me.

Biggest downside of the zone? Those towers blind me every time I go up to the top to get whatever quest is up one.

11/26/10

Baby hunter, again

I didn't realize just how much I missed having a toon to level. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when this one's maxed, because I'm really out of toons to delete on Bronzebeard.

So the new baby hunter is 25, with her cooking sitting at 380 (thank you, Pilgrim's Bounty!) and her engineering and alchemy capped at 225. I will be sad when some quest item comes along and displaces my pilgrim hat.

The new Silverpine is, like most of Cataclysm's quest changes, rather liner, but the zone finale is awesome. Hillsbrad is awesomely done, as well.

11/17/10

Yogg +1



It was epic: we all died. We did manage to hold off long enough for it to count, though. Our resto shaman's Flame Shock tick got him.

Yogg was the last raid boss I had never killed.

10/24/10

Worgen hunter

So I figured since I'm unlikely to play a Worgen in live WoW, I should do it in the beta.

As a hunter, of course.

I named my dog Max, even though he looks nothing like the dog Max I named him after.

Female worgen still play as males. /sigh All that time picking hair for nought.

Oh, my God, the NPC hats, they are awesome! I wants one.

Cake vs. Pie. /snork

Hahaha... bucket of live *wiggling* worms.

I don't particularly like the way the male worgen runs. Hopefully the female will be better.

This is definitely a place you don't skip your quests - you keep losing towns!

Engineering!!

I'm sure this is prettier over on MMO-Champion somewhere, but I transcribed this straight out of the beta today. I missed the first couple skill level requirements.

Note: Tinkers can be discovered while making other things.

  • Authentic Jr. Engineer Goggles (Equip: Makes you appear more gifted and attractive.)
  • R19 Threatfinder (Use: Attaches a permanent scope to a bow or gun that increases its ranged hit rating by 88.)
  • Volatile Energy Converter (Part)
  • Handful of Obsidium Bolts (Part)
  • (455) Quickflip Deflection Plates (Tinker: Permanently attaches quickflip deflection plates onto gloves, allowing you to increase your armor by 1500 for 12 sec. Gloves can only be activated once every minute. Attaching teh armor webbing causes the gloves to become soulbound. An Engineering skill of 500 is required to keep the webbing active.)
  • (455) Volatile Seaforium Blastpack (Use: Blasts open locked doors and chests that require lockpicking skill of 525 and below.)
  • (460) Safety Catch Removal Kit (Use: Removes the safety mechanism from a bow or gun, increasing its ranged haste rating by 88. Using this kit causes the bow or gun to become soulbound.)
  • (465) High-Powered Bolt Gun (Tool/Use: Fires several charged bolts at an enemy for 6800 to 10200 damage and briefly interrupts casting. Consumes a Handful of Obsidium Bolts each time it's fired. (2 Min Cooldown))
  • (475) De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion (Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.)
  • (475) Personal world Destroyer (Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.)
  • (525) Cardboard Assassin (Permanently attaches a tiny device on your belt, allowing you to create a Cardboard Assassin that enemies will attack. Lasts 15 sec. Can be used once every 5 min. Can only be used on your own belt,a nd doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
  • (525) Deadly Bio-Optic Killshades (BoP, Mail, Head, 1977 Armor, 301 Agility, 512 Stamina, Meta Socket, Cogwheel Socket (2), Socket Bonus 20 Agility, Requires Level 81, Item Level 359, Requires Engineering (525))
  • (525) Elementium Dragonling (BoE, Unique-Equipped, Trinket, Blue Socket, Requires level 80, Item Level 333, Requires Engineering (475), Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 212. Use: Activates your Elementium Dragonlin to fight for you for 1 min. (5 Min Cooldown))
  • (525) Elementium Toolbox (36 slot engineering bag)
  • (525) Finely-Tuned Throat Needler (BoP, Crossbow, 1265-2350 Damage, Speed 2.90, (623.3 dps), 107 Agility, 161 Stamina, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves haste rating by 77. Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63.)
  • (525) Gnomish X-Ray Scope (Use: Attaches a permanent scope to a bow or gun that increases its ranged critical strike rating by 88. Attaching this scope to a ranged weapon causes it to become soulbound.)
  • (525) Goblin Barbecue (Use: Set out the barbecue to feed your entire raid or party! Restores 64903 health and 45000 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 60 Stamina and 60 in another useful stat for 1 hour.)
  • (525) Grounded Plasma Shield (Tinker: Permanently attaches grounded plasma generators to your belt, allowing you to activate a powerful shield that absorbs 16200 to 19800 damage. Can only be used on your own belt, and doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
  • (525) Heat-Treated Spinning Lure (Requires Fishing (250), Use: When applied to your fishing pole, increases Fishing by 150 for 5 minutes.)
  • (525) Invisibility Field (Tinker: Permanently attaches thousands of tiny mirrors to your belt, allowing you to turn invisible while out of combat. Can be activated once every 5 min. Can only be used on your own belt, and doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
  • (525) Kickback 5000 (BoP, Gun, 1221-2269 Damage, Speed 2.80, 623.3 dps, 87 Agility, 161 Stamina, Red socket, Socket bonus 10 Agility, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 73, Equip: Improves haste rating by 49.)
  • (525) Loot-a-Rang (BoU, Requires Engineering (125), Use: Retrieves the loot from a nearby corpse. (10-Sec Cooldown))
  • (525) Lure Master Tackle Box (BoE, 36 Slot Tackle Box)
  • (525) Overpowered Chicken Splitter (BoP, Bow, 1121-2269 Damage, Speed 2.80, 623.3 dps, 107 Agility, 161 Stamina, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 77, Equip: Improves haste rating by 63.)
  • (525) Spinal Healing Injector (Tinker: Permanently attaches a specialized injector kit to your gloves, allowing you to inject a Mythical Healing Potion directly into your bloodstream for increased effect. Only a skilled engineer can activate the modified gloves. Can only be attached to your own gloves, and doing so causes the gloves to become soulbound.)
  • (525) Synapse Springs (Tinker: Permanently attaches synapse springs to a pair of gloves, allowing a skilled engineer to increase their Intellect by 480 for 12 sec. The gloves can only be activated every minute.)
  • (525) Tazik Shocker (Tinker: Permanently attaches a tazik shocker to your gloves, allowing a skilled engineer to deal 1049 to 1282 Nature damage to an enemy at long range. The shocker can only be used once every 2 min. Can only be used on the engineer's gloves,a dn doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)
  • (525) Volatile Thunderstick (BoP, Gun, 705-1309 Damage, Speed 2.8, 359.7 dps, 62 Agility, 93 Stamina, Requires level 83, Item Level 300, Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 41, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 41.)
  • (525) Z50 Mana Gulper (Tinker: Permanently attaches a specialized grip to your gloves, allowing you to power-drink a Mythical Mana Potion for increased effect. Only a skilled engineer can activate the modified gloves. Can only be used on the engineer's gloves, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)

10/3/10

More Coherent Beta Stuff

Ok, so far I've just been posting the notes I make as I jot them down. I'm thinking perhaps I should do something more cohesive. More... paragraphy. Lots of spoilers! Don't read if you don't want to know!

So, to start:

Hunter stuff

The new hunter talents actually aren't too bad. I miss certain things (specifically faster pet reviving), but for the most part the Marksman stuff seems to be working out all right. I have no idea what kind of damage I'm doing, but I've found that, firstly, having automatic hunter's marking is awesome, and secondly, I can macro a rotation still, so I'm not entirely screwed.

Yes, I really said that, you can use a shot rotation macro with focus. The same way it was with mana - it's not ideal, and you have to reset it if you move or use another cooldown (by manually cycling shots until it resyncs), but if you're someone who can't watch a bunch of places on your screen without doing one or more of dying/dropping DoTs/missing cooldowns, the rotation macro still helps. (I can't keep Serpent Sting up and not die in fires without one.)

I love focus! I occasionally run into problems soloing where I try to front load too much and have something in my face while I really need to be hitting Steady, but it's really not bad at all. I've run one whole instance (Throne of Tides, excluding the bugged last boss), and I really didn't have resource problems. The macro worked great there, as well.

I had been thinking, as I'm soloing old instances on the live realms, that I'm going to miss Volley, until that Throne of Tides run where I discovered that, OMFG, the new Multi-Shot is spectacularly awesome. It's like shooting fistfuls of arrows at large groups. If the group is large enough, you will crit often enough that you can just spam it a lot until more of the group is dead, and you have to pop a Steady or two to keep going.

Trap launcher seems great, but I think it's somehow broken my left-click/right-click trap macros, which means I'm going to need five buttons for my traps instead of three. I'll have to work with the macros once things go live and see if I can remake them.

Aimed Shot I'm a little disappointed with, mostly that it's your signature shot as Marksman, but you can't really do much with it until you can get the talent points to make it proc as a free shot - which is really only good in groups. Yeah, yeah, it'll probably go back to hitting like a truck soon, which will make it more useful for soloing again. Right now it's not hitting hard enough to make it worth opening with on random mobs out in the world.

My bear seems squishier than he used to, but that may just be scaling needs adjusting. He seems to hold aggro a little better than he used to, at least.

I've yet to have a chance to really look at the glyphs, although from what I've seen, there's still some decent ones. I need to get my hands on glyph of Kill Shot for boss fights at least - if your Kill Shot doesn't kill the target, its cooldown resets (once every six seconds). Awesome. At least in theory.

Zones

I've mostly looked around Vashj'ir and Deepholm. I flew into Hyjal, but then went elsewhere. I've flown around the Twilight Highlands and Uldum, as well, but didn't do much beyond touring.

Vashj'ir is very pretty, lots of sea life, plants, nice details. The 480% speed Seahorse is amazing, and I really wish that were the faster flying we were buying. That would be worth another 4k or 5k gold. There are a few quirks in the questing that will hopefully get worked out before they go live. One is a quest with a terribly low spawn rate on the mobs, and the other major problem I've run into is that the floor in Nespirah (a giant... turtle? shell fish?) is horribly buggy, and 80% of the mobs fall through.

The Throne of Tides in Vashj'ir is also neat; its entry is, like Coilfang, down. It took some poking around to find it. The bosses took some coordination, but were all in all not terrible to PUG. The jellyfish elevator was quite cool.

Deepholm is underground, and most of the zone is absolutely gorgeous - but then, I'm the person who took two geology classes as electives. And, well, diamonds are a girl's best friend, and all that. Most of the quests there are not buggy, but they are fairly linear, so if you're competing for a quest mob, you can't do much else until you've gotten it.

Except mine. Oh, my God, the ore in Deepholm. I'm sure live servers it will be much more competitively farmed, but I've sold 11 stacks on the beta auction house for sick, sick amounts of money. I've already determined I'm spending the first day or week or whatever mining as much as I can.

Hyjal I mostly flew in and left, but if you've been to the battle of Mount Hyjal in the Caverns of Time, you're familiar with the basic geography. Much is wrecked, and your fly-in cinematic will give you great views of both Deathwing and Ragnaros. (I got goosebumps about Ragnaros. Oh. My. God. I need him as my ring tone.) And you run into Ysera and Malfurion Stormrage right off the bat. It's a lore nerd's dream.

The Twilight Highlands I haven't done much more than fly around, wave at Alexstrazsa on my way past, and mine all the elementium I could find. I saw one Pyrium (Pyrite?) node, but it was before I could hit it. Lots of ogres there.

Professions

Engineering is still NYI more than Wrath schematics, so I haven't been leveling it. I have, however, maxed mining. I've found, so far, Obsidium, Elementium, and the Pyrium (that I couldn't mine yet), and five types of volatile elementals - earth, fire, water, air, and shadow, all from mining. I've gotten five colors of gem (red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple), two in rare quality (I don't remember all the names at the moment). I've gotten first aid up into the 490s.

I haven't found anything that drops meat to cook! That must all be in Hyjal or something. I haven't tried fishing yet, partly because my inventory has been so full of ore I haven't done much else.

Quivers and ammo pouches become hunter-only bags - the Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina becomes an awesomely huge bag that definitely makes it feel worthwhile again. And I'm definitely making myself the largest-size ammo pouches or quivers (depending what I have patterns for) for all my hunters to see how many I can equip once the patch rolls over. (Banks slots. Oh, God. It probably won't work.)

Glyphs show up in your glyph interface as a list, so you know what you don't know, such as it is. I haven't managed to acquire any more yet. (If there's a glyph vendor, I haven't found it yet.)

I haven't touched most of the other professions yet - I should probably transfer more toons over and see how they translate. (Priest and warrior, maybe?)

Interface, guilds, etc.

The basic interface (where your buttons are, etc.) hasn't really changed, but once you pop open a screen for anything (character, spellbook, trainer, etc.), you see immediate changes. I... think? I like the trainer changes, but I'm not entirely sure.

I definitely like the spellbook changes. Pets, mounts, and such are all over there now. Your spellbook tells you when you have something new to pick up, too, if you haven't hit your trainer yet. The talent UI is... better than before, but for some reason comes across as arrogant to me. I know that sounds weird, but opening my talent pane makes me feel somehow affronted.

The professions UI has a couple nice options - filtering by what gives skill-ups, and revised chat linking options. The new character sheet is nicely customizable - you can move around various stat blocks or minimize them if you don't care about them.

The auction house and vendors haven't really changed. I'm hoping AuctionLite translates over to 4.0, because I still like its buy and sell panes better (even if the new default sell pane is essentially a ripoff - the auto searching and price setting is nice).

The guild UI has changed a little - there's a sort of messages page, and you have various sorting options for the roster. Ranks are easier to rearrange. And of course there's authenticator options for ranks.

Beta Adventures, Part 6

(A shorter session)

There was a guild wipe, so I'm now in the beta SHP when my husband remade it.

Dude, Millhouse Manastorm. Was NOT expecting him like that.

The box quests are always fun.

So much ore, and I can't find a forge. Argh.

My pet's dot shows up on the minimap again. /awesome

Hahaha... Avalanchion, we meet again.

New elemental stuff stacks higher than 10. Awesome.

Bugged right now to constantly run in place. While mining, eating, bandaging, etc.

167 Agility!

Troggzor! Earthinate!

Finally got a crab for Nespirah.

Good lord, people, stop skipping the quests in Vashj'ir that get you water breathing and the seahorse.

Beta Adventures, Part 5

The notes from the 5th beta adventure session:

Nespirah's floor is glitchy. Can't do the quest to communicate with her.

Can't loot mining nodes. (Relogging to see if it fixes it.)

Ok, at least got Nespirah to work. The floor is still like Swiss Cheese, though.

Haha, Obsidian requires a forge to smelt.

Ok, the crabs have all fallen through the floor in Nespirah. Going elsewhere.

Hey, kvaldir dudes.

Ooo, Ruins of Vashj'ir.

Ok, going to go wait for a crab and see if that works. Meh, I'll go find the instances.

Oooo... IN the whirlpool.

I think I know *why* they're making 310% fly speed trainable - the old world is friggin' HUGE.

Ok, in the Throne of Tides.

Holy God, I like this new Multi-Shot AOE. It's like shooting a fistful of arrows at a group.

Hey, a cut scene.

Level 82!

Apparently the squid at the end of Throne of Tides is bugged.

Mining Elementium. :D

Whoops - alt+tab/click to move/fatigue line.

Ten minute flight paths still, heh.

Trained up, set my hearth to the Valley of Wisdom.

Into Deepholm! The obsession with whirlpools is unexpected but somehow amusing.

Mining past 500 - I can do rich elementium now.

Deleting my cache to see if I can get the bugged items to work.

Deepholm is gorgeous. I love the alabaster.

I just mined an elemental for Savage Leather. I MINED FOR LEATHER. WTF?

Holy shit, Myzrael!

Ah, damn, the Gorged Gyreworms can't be tamed.

Hahahaha... Ok, so there's a quest you're supposed to jump onto a griffin from the airship in Deepholm. I disconnected right as I jumped and sailed off into the air. Log in: Parachute Cloak for the win!

And people wonder why I want to roleplay a Dwarven Shaman. Dude!

And off to raid!

9/26/10

This sparked much excited cackling.

Hello from Amazon.com.

We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on September 07 2010 (Order# [order number code]):

"World of Warcraft: Cataclysm"

Estimated arrival date: November 26 2010

SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!

Beta Adventures, Part 4

This is Part 4 because I didn't write anything for my level 3 undead hunter (stupid missing quest mob), my premade level 85 *cough* blood elf *cough* hunter (it was my only Horde race choice at the time), or Dusk's flying tour of Uldum (cat people! camels!) after I was able to transfer her.

So we're beginning now with my flight up to Hyjal (awesome scripting on the first flight in) and my adventures in archaeology.

Discoveries:

The pet bar is currently letting me change all 10

Why the **** am I wearing my tabard of the explorer on the loading screen? It's not the one I had on!

Anyway, the pet bar is letting me change all 10 buttons around.

Oh, hey, Mabs is transferred over. (Logging in.)

...

...

...

Crashing in?

/waits

Hm, many of my old keys are gone. This saddens me.

I've learned already that the epic quiver from the Molten Core Leaf quest chain becomes a 24 slot bag. It looks like the other quivers are maintaining their bag size (although I didn't have a 28 slot quiver made for testing).

Tenuous Dreadstones all become Glinting Dreadstones (Agility + Hit Rating).

Anywho, back to Duskhawk.

Pet talents seem to be unlearning every time I log.

(Waiting to see if I crash again. Looking likely.)

Nope!

More Night Elf artifacts.

Huh, my bear can "rest" now.

Farming thorium is less painful with flying. Not that I can do anything with it, since engineering is Not Yet Implemented. /sigh

Dancing Troll Village: now with Alliance quests? o.O

Holy God, Darkshore is visually *much* more interesting. Chasms, whirlpools, vortices... Twilight Drakes? Huh.

Tree branches are still 2D, heh.

... Bear is going to sleep every time we enter combat. /Turns off Rest's autocast.

Dig sites seem to have about 3 artifact spots per site so far.

Hey, Fishing works. Just had to retrain it... like everything else. o.O

Flight paths have definitely been reworked.

You know, I got on the boat to Vashj'ir, but after hearing the speech, I'm not sure I'm still interested.

On the other hand, I kind of like Vashj'ir itself.

Huh. The crossbow off Lich King 10 has higher damage than the heroic Njorndar Bone Bow.

Lol, a Gollum quote.

And another crash.

/deletes caches

Teehee, schools of undead fishes.

Hm, I can smelt obsidian with no forge. I guess I'm gluing glass shards together?

Giant sea serpents!

Huh, a JC pattern.

Did I mention that every time I zone, my pet's talents reset?

Ooo, a fox.

Hey, Tirion. You seem shorter.

Oh, hi, Alexstrasza. Fancy meeting you here!

Ettins!

Damn, I can't mine Elementium yet.

I can't queue for any Wrath dungeons. >.> I haven't 'found' them.

Take these orbs and make snake tornadoes!

Much crashing. Almost 82. Off to fill a spot in ICC25 on (undergeared) Duskmoon for two fights.

9/5/10

Undergeared, sure

So Mabs hit 80 on Thursday, 5 minutes before I had to log over to Duskhawk for Icecrown-25. The guild she's in took her along to Trial of the Crusader-25 today to fill an otherwise empty slot.

Mabs is wearing mostly leatherworking blues. So, yeah, her DPS wasn't spectacular - mostly around 2k, somewhere up over 3k on the Twin Val'kyr thanks to empowerments - but I at least know how not to die.

What I do find interesting is that at that level of gear, Dusk was doing about 1300 DPS in Naxxramas. It's interesting to see how much better player I am now than I was about a year and a half ago.

We didn't get Anub'arak (the perils of an alt raid), but afterwards I was able to get the T9 shoulders for her. Not that I could find a Tenuous Dreadstone for them over there (on the Alliance side).

It may take some time to spread the Agi/mp5 gospel before Cataclysm rewrites the book.

#104

Because my husband is awesome.


A guildie ran 1.5 Shattered Halls/Heroic Shattered Halls with me to get Thrallmar exalted, and then we went and hit up Old Hillsbrad for a hat (we couldn't find him o.O) and Keepers of Time rep.

My husband went along for OHB just to help, and when I asked him to make me some arrows, he traded this back with it.

8/21/10

Macros

For the longest time, I played with no macros. The first ones were things like /p /cast ones to tell people I was feigning or bandaging; it wasn't until we were hitting the later parts of Karazhan that I made something more useful - the first /castsequence I used. That macro was made because I knew I wasn't using Steady Shot enough, and it would reinforce me using it, along with (at the time) Aimed, Multi, and Arcane.

This is a consolidated list of my current hunter macros. You may notice that I'm fond of left click/right click/middle click macros for some things.

The Shot Rotation /castsequence (swap Arcane to a Steady if your Armor Pen allows)
#showtooltip
/castsequence Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/cast Silencing Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
Chimera + Silencing + Kill Command
#showtooltip
/cast Chimera Shot
/cast Kill Command
/cast Silencing Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
Misdirect
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, target=focus] Misdirection; [button:2] Misdirection; [button:3, target=pet] Misdirection
Stings
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Serpent Sting; [button:2] Scorpid Sting; [button:3] Viper Sting
Taunt the Deformed Fanatic for Kiting
#showtooltip Distracting Shot
/tar Deformed
/cast Distracting Shot
Cheetah Pack
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Aspect of the Cheetah; [button:2] Aspect of the Pack
Fire Traps
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Explosive Trap; [button:2] Immolation Trap
Frost Traps
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Freezing Trap; [button:2] Frost Trap; [button:3] Freezing Arrow
Feed Pet (put the food in the appropriate slot)
#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use 3 1
Mend/Revive
#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Mend Pet; [button:2] Revive Pet
Melee
#showtooltip Auto Attack
/cast Raptor Strike
/cast Mongoose Bite
Eat/Drink (put food & drink in the appropriate slots)
/use 3 5
/use 3 9
Mount Macro (adapted from WoWwiki)
/run C=CallCompanion if(not IsMounted())then if(((GetZoneText()=="Dalaran")and(GetSubZoneText()~="Krasus' Landing"))or not IsFlyableArea()or IsModifierKeyDown())then C("MOUNT",13)else C("MOUNT",16)end end
/dismount
Random Pet (from WoWwiki)
/run DismissCompanion("CRITTER"); CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")));

Hunter F.A.Q.

So a couple days ago my brother texts me about hunters and Armor Penetration. I'm not a theory crafter - I really haven't got the time what with everything else I do - but I do tend to remember what I read. As such, I'm going to compile the questions I get asked a lot. I'll link back to sources when I can find them.


Q: What's your rotation?
A: After Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, and Rapid Fire, Chimera, Aimed, Steady x4. Readiness when Rapid Fire falls off, Rapid Fire again, and resume Chimera, Aimed, Steady x4. Kill Shot as soon as it's available. When moving I may throw in Arcane.

Keeping in mind that I use a /castsequence macro with Kill Command and Silencing also tied to it, if I move, it tends to get lost in the Steadies. So if I have to move, I hit the rotation manually to resynchronize it with the macro.

Q: Does the shot rotation macro work?
A: If you're as bad at doing the rotation manually as I am, yes.

Q: What should I gem?
A: As Beast Mastery, either Attack Power (AP) or Armor Penetration (ArP), depending on your base ArP. As Survival, Agility (Agi). As Marksman, Agi or ArP depending on your base ArP.

The level of ArP at which you switch gemming to ArP is about 400 for BM, and about 800 for MM.

If you want to match socket bonuses, for blue sockets you'll want purple gems with Stamina for BM or Surv, and mp5 for MM. Yes, mp5. Stamina does nothing for a MM hunter's DPS. For yellow sockets you'll want orange gems with either hit or crit rating, depending if you need the hit rating.

Q: Do I really want to drop Arcane Shot as MM at some point?
A: Probably, yes, after you have about 450 base ArP. Drop the talents, drop it out of your stationary rotation, and pick up Improved Steady Shot if you don't already have it.

I don't know if it's worth dropping from BM's rotation at any point, since you probably don't have the points to improve it anyway.

Q: Is it worth hitting Steady Shot over Auto Shot?
A: Steady doesn't clip Auto anymore, so yes, spam it. Your talents and its scaling make it more valuable. If you're not casting something, you're losing DPS. Push a button, dammit.

Q: Haste - should I gem it?
A: No. Just, no.

Q: Where'd you get your wolf?
A: Mulgore. He didn't bark when I tamed him (March 2006).



That's all I've got for the moment - I'll add more as they crop up.

7/19/10

How crazy am I?

Crazy enough to be working on a second Loremaster.

I have 7 level 80s on my main server, all Horde. Add a DK serving as a name holder and bank rogue, and that leaves me one slot: Mabs, my original character, my first Marskman hunter.

She's 71, with heirloom gear from Dusk (I actually own two sets of the hunter mail heirlooms). I sent her over money for the fast flying (via my husband and the neutral auction house), although given my first project on her, it probably could have waited.

She got the Kalimdor loremaster achievement today, and is about 80 quests from the Eastern Kingdoms one. (Go go dwarf newbie zone!) After that it's Netherstorm, Shadowmoon, and Blade's Edge (plus cleanup in the other zones), and back to Northrend.

I've been doing the exploration quests on her at the same time; I think I just need to finish Durotar and Mulgore, and then mix and match single locations in four or five zones in the Eastern Kingdoms. I figure this way I'll see as much as I can of all the stuff that's going to be gone in a couple months with Cataclysm (or the 4.o patch, rather) finally hits.

7/7/10

*grumble*

*grumble* *grumble*

Stupid talent point changes.

*grumble* *grumble*

Stupid real names on forums thing.

*grumble* *grumble*

(Reduction of talent bloat? Awesome. Making you put 31 points into a tree before getting access to the others? Grr. I want my Hawkeye, Scatter Shot, and fast pet Revive before I want my 31-point Marksman talent, Blizz.)

7/2/10

Cataclysm stuffs! Woo!

So, with that non-disclosure agreement lifted, MMO-Champion has lots of tasty info posted. Unfortunately Engineering is not yet implemented, but the hunter stuff seems to be mostly there.

Highlights: (Stop reading now if beta mechanics aren't what you're into)
  • Aimed Shot is being reverted to its Vanilla flavor. Normally I don't care for Vanilla, but Aimed Shot out of Camouflage? I loved Aimed Shot out of Shadowmeld. This will be awesome, especially when combined with Readiness and, if needed, Feign to get out of combat. (That old Subtlety Rogue/Marksman Hunter multiclass I used to dream about? It's happened.)
  • CRAZY LIKE A FOX. Autoshots on the move if needed.
The new Widow Venom + Chimera Shot will have a modest self-heal. This is a nice bonus, especially if persistent damage is as common in Cataclysm as it seems to be in Icecrown.

With the redone talents, and 5 extra points, I think I'm going to be able to pick up everything I want in the Marksman tree, plus Improved Revive Pet, Hawkeye, and Scatter Shot. /swoon

While we're at it...

Blood Queen 25 - she took a while.


Oh, look, Valithria stood up! (Oh, hey, still kiting zombies...)


So we're 10/12 on ICC25 now.

6/30/10

Screenshots or it doesn't count (Halion)

Yeah, my monitor is huge, heh.

Halion, the Twilight Destroyer

I'll admit that, after we downed the third mini-boss in the Ruby Sanctum last night, I was initially underwhelmed by being confronted by a giant fuchsia dragon. The only lasting disappointment, however, is the color.

So, a bunch of us were in various Vault PUGs yesterday evening when, essentially, "WTF, Ruby Sanctum is available?" happened. A few minutes of, "Do you want to go to..." mixed in with, "I'm in VOA at the moment but..." and, "Wait, we're all in VOA at the moment," ended up with ten of us in Ruby Sanctum at about 7:30 EST last night.

The trash took some time - the dragons have a lot of health. There was much giggling about "Help me! I'm trapped in this tree!" The first miniboss (on the left) wiped us once because, hey, raid marks don't stick when he splits. The first of the five-dragon trash packs half-wiped us, but we quickly picked up that the commanders had to die first, and splitting the second of those packs went much better. The second miniboss, the drake, almost wiped us, because, hey, that patrol comes over really close, but we recovered with only two deaths. (And, hey, another chance to use Tranq Shot.) After that, the third miniboss was surprisingly not too bad - misdirecting the adds as they came in made it much smoother after the first wave. I think all that took us maybe a half hour.

Halion took us the next hour and a half or so; I was 6 minutes into my third flask when he died. (Note to self: Get more flasks before Thursday's raid.) To be honest, I didn't mind the wipes. This is, hands down, my favorite raid encounter of the expansion. (Sorry, Ony! You're still my favorite Vanilla raid boss.) I think I like it because while it requires "don't stand in the fire," the actual fire is forgiving enough to let you move out of it, and there's plenty of room to maneuver. The basically insta-gib laser in the Twilight phase is, if you're paying attention to the rotating orbs, easy enough to avoid, but not forgiving if you're not watching for it. Good DPS was important, but it wasn't a DPS race; balancing DPS, backing off or jumping over to the other phase if needed in phase 3 was more important.

In short - it requires coordination, it requires some precision, but it's not as frustratingly unforgiving as Sindragosa. (Sindragosa could have been much more fun if the whole fight were just phase 3. Maybe without chaining ice tombs.)

If the Ruby Sanctum is indicative of Blizzard's continuing evolution of raid encounters (that is, if it at all foreshadows what bosses in Cataclysm will be like), Azeroth 2.0 can't come soon enough.

6/24/10

June, argh

June has been a busy month, and it's not even friggin' done yet. The first three weeks basically went vacation, Kingslayer, conference. I found Sindragosa to be a much more difficult fight than the Lich King was. Maybe that's just me, though. (I'm so glad I switched to rocket boots.) I'm still toting around Bloodsail Admiral from Memorial Day weekend, though.

There's been mild drama in the guild, but it's not so much of the volcanic argument type as the slowly simmering personality conflicts eventually pushing someone to go. It really sucks for those of us, officers or members, who like all the people involved. I don't like feeling as though I've disappointed other friends by not being able to keep all of us together in the guild. But at the same time, I learned to accept several things a while back that have helped me deal with it.
  • I can't fix everything. Not every problem has a win/win solution.
  • I can't make people like each other. Some personalities just clash, and not everyone is willing to deal with someone they just don't get along with.
  • I can't change other people. People have to change themselves.
One of the hardest things is that some people don't recognize that they are part of the problem. They expect everyone else to conform to their expectations or standards and don't realize that maybe it's their expectations or standards that are part of the problem. If there are problems, I generally assume that I'm contributing to them somehow, and look at what I've done or how I've interacted with people to see if there's anything I can do to remedy the problem.

I've had a lot of friends leave the guild over the past four and a half years, but I think, in an MMO, that just happens. Their goals shift, and they want other things out of the game. Or there's someone that they're just tired of dealing with. And it's a game; there are ways to keep in touch and continue to play with the people you like spending time with even if you're not in the same guild anymore. People shouldn't stay in a guild if it's going to make them unhappy.

My rogue just finished the holidays for the Violet Protodrake, and my priest should finish up tonight or tomorrow, depending how much time I have if I'm raiding tonight. Last week the guild downed Putricide in 25 for the first time, which bumps us up to 8/12 for 25s. (I think I'm personally still at 6/12.) Hopefully I'll get to see Princes on 25 sometime - I've managed to solo-juggle kinetic bombs in 10s twice now.

5/17/10

I am not a Kingslayer...

But as of last Wednesday, 10 of my guildies are.

I have reached the ennui stage of raiding, I think. I've had my 4-piece T10 long enough that I've sold six or seven Primordial Saronites on the auction house. Our raid nights only align with my free evenings on one night right now (I'm available 5/7 nights a week most of the year), so I'm seeing the same content, or variations thereof, in ICC10 every week. This doesn't mean I'll stop signing up (unless the glut of DPS means I'm taking a spot someone who could use the gear needs), but I'm hoping that my Wednesday nights opening up will at least get me some variety in content. Next month our 25s move back to Thursdays, too, which will give me another night of raiding (hopefully). I prefer the larger raid size, and I miss 40-mans.

This Saturday's ICC10 group 2/night 2 was canceled for lack of healers, so I spent this weekend getting my baby hunter to 80. Yes, I have two level 80 Horde Marksman hunters on the same server. I regret the Blood-elfy-ness, but I can't afford to race change her, and the name doesn't seem Troll or Orc-ish to me, anyway. And two Taurens would be even more silly. The baby hunter is my jewelcrafter/new scribe. (The death knight scribe will be deleted in Cataclysm, to make way for... an undead hunter. Ahem.)

Next up will be the shaman, then the warlock, and then Mabs, the Night elf hunter who is my original. Mabs did 1-70 with a nightsaber named Kitty, but I'm going to do 70-80 with a crocolisk to see how that tanky pet works out. Kitty was pretty much Mabs's only, pet, too. I went to look at her again, and all she had in her stable was Kitty. (Kitty was aptly named Kitty, because Duskhawk's KitTabik, the wolf, is always called Puppy, despite having a proper name. Most of my other pets I actually refer to by name - Hadrian, Darius, Violet, Olin, Chad... I don't remember what Duskmoon's blue strider is off the top of my head.)

But those are pretty much my plans until I'm getting more raiding in - level the alts so they're ready for Cataclysm.

4/9/10

Whee! Cataclym Hunter Preview

The Cataclysm Hunter preview has been posted! And not, as I suspected it would be, at 3 a.m. EST. Of course everything in it is still subject to change, since they've just started sending out the press invites for beta, so we're a while from release yet. At least a likely late-summer date of some sort means I won't be standing for 45 minutes around midnight outside a Wal-Mart that lost power in an ice storm, waiting for it to reopen. (That was TBC. I could have gotten a collector's edition, but didn't.)

Anywho, stuff:

The new abilities: Cobra Shot, Trap Launcher, and Camouflage.

The first is supposed to act as a nature-damage version of Steady Shot, which says to me that, basically, Armor Penetration (besides going away on gear) is definitely not going to be like it has been in Wrath. Instead of stacking a stat and dropping non-physical shots for heavily armored targets, we'll instead have something in our arsenal to deal with it. (I wonder how it will work in PVP versus plate wearers.)

Trap Launcher just makes me squee because I want to throw snakes at people. Actually, the idea of traps being less situational and more useful from a distance (you know, add pack over there just aggroed on your mage) is awesome all around. And not having to run up to drop frost traps for Saurfang's blood beasts...

Camouflage won't, unfortunately, be quite as awesome as Aimed Shot+Shadowmeld was in Vanilla, but since it will provide immunity to ranged attacks, we can be over on one side, dropping our traps safely, and the mage or pole-dancing dot/hot Disc priest that won't die will have to actually come over and, you know, hit us to break it... setting off our carefully laid traps, muhaha.

Focus

We've known about this for a while. From what the preview said, focus will regen slower than a rogue's energy, but Steady Shot, Haste, Rapid Recuperation, and other things will help us regen faster.

I'm looking forward to this change, even though it means I'll need to relearn what I'm doing. My rotation macro will be completely dead, and to some extent it will be more like playing my rogue, but at range, without finishers or combo points or any of that to worry about. No, it'll be more along the lines of hitting Chimera, Aimed, Arcane whenever they're available, keeping my stings up, and hitting Steady/Cobra in between. Not really much different, but almost certainly not cast-sequence macroable. I've got 3 hunters to level and learn on, though. I may see if I can train myself to keyboard exclusively without the mouse in combat so I can keep using wasd...

Other changes

Ammunition is going away, and quivers become large hunter-only bags! (Note to self: make a large quiver for each hunter before change just in case. Since Iceblade Arrows are Gnomish Engineering-made only, I've actually been considering going back to a quiver. Just so I don't have to bug my husband for ammo as often. I'm not too keen about the idea of going back to a 4-slots open normal bag crunch, though.

Stables being expanded with limited active pets is nice - I have pets I don't want to ditch, but probably won't use much, or would use in rotation. (Bored with the cat for a while? Switch to the hyena.) That cat was leveled up the old way from 8-70 at 70, damn it. I don't want to get rid of him. Since they're making more pets have varying utility skills, this is especially nice. No lock in the raid? Bring your wind serpent. No kitty druid? Bring your hyena, and your Hunger-for-Blood Assassination rogue will love you.

Hunters starting with pets I think will lead to less confusion for people picking up the class who aren't long-time or intuitive gamers. I didn't start sending my pet in to tank for me until I was in the 50s - I'd shoot something and let the pet pull it off me before that.

Alas, poor Mongoose Bite, we knew you.

The Mastery bonuses all seem pretty straightforward, although the mechanics of "Double Shot" aren't really laid out. Whether it will act like Lightning Overload, or like a Black Mage's "Double Cast," we don't know yet. I kind of doubt the former, actually, given that we already have Wild Quiver (unless that's going away), but if it just randomly procs a "next shot is free, causes 50%, and does not trigger the global cooldown" buff, kind of like Surge of Light, it could be neat.

Something is off when...

Something is off when I'm thinking about booting my own alts out of the guild. But no, I should try to figure out what it is and if it can be fixed.

The feeling is the same as when there was a rogue who would bully the officers, and we were just taking it, rather than just kicking him. He would swear at us, throw tantrums when things didn't go his way, and so forth. I considered just leaving the guild rather than having to put up with his antics.

Well, I'm much more invested in the guild than I used to be. I put anywhere from 3 to 15 hours a week just into administration, depending what's going on at the time. Some nights my entire 1-2 hours of play time is eaten up by the guild bank, or roster management. So just ditching it and going solo again (which is much more feasible than it used to be) isn't really a good solution. I've invested too much of my own time to just let it go down the tubes because something needs work.

I'm just not sure what. Yeah, we've got some personnel issues, mostly a bit of a healing shortage, that's made me question some of the decisions we made two months ago regarding our healer corps and some of our more recent recruitment decisions.

I have a gut feeling about what part of the problem is, but I don't know if I can really... fix that, or if it would just make more problems.

But I'd imagine me kicking 5 of my own toons to put them in my bank guild would cause quite a lot of consternation (even if the bank access would be oh-so-awesome).

4/6/10

Five years, and the tune never changes

One of the things I discovered when I was going through our guild's forum archives, deleting about two years worth when we were being evaluated by our forum host for suitability for Google ads, was that with regards to raiding, there have always been, and always ever seem to be, the same arguments about raiding.

1. We're becoming too hardcore/casual!
Since we are, at our heart, a casual guild, this comes up any time we set up standards for progression. We're still casual; we're just not going to stick our heads in the sand about what kind of requirements are needed for actually getting all the way through a particular tier of content. People have been squealing about this in our guild since Molten Core, but it's never really been true. We're not going to be a "raids 7 days/nights, you have to be at every raid" kind of guild. None of us have the time.

2. Loot Distribution.
Do long-time raiders have first dibs over newcomers? Do you roll for loot, use a point system, etc.? We've gone through several loot distribution methods, and there are still people who are worried about getting their shinies first. First shouldn't be as much of a concern as keeping the raid as a whole improving. Starving your newer players of loot through overly restrictive system doesn't help the raid as a whole, and if their butts in the seats are what's making the raid happen, you're not being fair to them.

3. Raid slot distribution.
Who gets to go when? I think this is something we generally do fairly well - we take people who are qualified first, people who aren't quite there but qualified for the next tier of content down next, and so on. Within each pool, the attendance gets shuffled around so that people still get an opportunity to raid. We don't have as many raid nights as we used to - a peak of six or so in late Vanilla, and we're down to about three - so it's harder to fit people in that it used to be. We used to just do roll outs, and if you were only available certain nights and had really bad luck, you could end up raiding next to never. Scheduling in advance at least lets people know they can make other plans some nights.

4. Mains and Alts.
What's a main? What's an alt? Which gets priority on invites/loot? Yeah, this is a perpetual topic for debate. Do you look at every character that person has ever played when defining the terms? Their active toons? Their toons on your server? Their toons in your guild?


I think what frustrates me the most about any of these topics is when someone takes one side at one point, and then when it's personally advantageous, or no longer personally advantageous, to support the other side, they switch. What that tells me is that neither position is right or wrong. So I tend to go with what seems to be in the best interests of the guild in the long term.

3/25/10

Screenshots or it doesn't count

Before I forget again.



Yeah, I have a kinda large screen. I'm the one in the tabard, next to the black & white boy cow.

(If you're not familiar with ICC, that's Fester-25.)

Ready to Raid? Maybe, Maybe Not

I'm not particulary familiar with either Beast Mastery or Survival; I dabbled in them for a few levels at a time here and there (mostly on my Elves), but I drift back towards Marksman pretty quickly. (I like big numbers, I guess. Chimera Shot is critting in five digits now, and it's hard to back away from that.) Despite that, though, I've read enough that I think I can exposit on some general information for more than just my favorite tree.

The question, of course, is, "Am I ready for Icecrown Citadel (10/25)?"

Your raw output will probably give you the best idea, based on the guidelines of the raids you run with. Websites abound which will tell you what your gear has you ready for. The one I look at most often nowadays is WoW Heroes; it gives a good breakdown of where your gear lands you in terms of where you're likely to be successful.

How well you're doing versus how well your toon can do are different matters. If you don't have a DPS meter, both Recount and Skada are pretty accurate. Recount has pie charts that I'm partial to, but Skada is more modular and lightweight, so you may prefer one or the other. If you're not familiar with Elitist Jerks or have no idea how to use Excel, Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer takes Shandara's hunter spreadsheet and puts it into a web form - import yourself, check the rotations for shots you do/don't use, and hit Update DPS without buffs to see what your baseline, unbuffed DPS maximum potential is. Then, while unbuffed, take yourself and your pet over to one of the boss level Target Dummies, reset your DPS meter, and go at it for at least 5 minutes. (Hunter's Mark having a 5-minute duration is a good way to guesstimate your timer if you don't have another convenient way to measure.) To cleanly end the test, if you have Serpent Sting up, put up Scorpid Sting, pull your pet back, and Feign as quickly as you can in succession. Otherwise Serpent Sting will keep ticking and lower your meter's reading.

Compare your target dummy meter with your theoretical number from Zeherah's analyzer, and you'll have a good idea of your stand-still numbers; you can extrapolate it upwards by figuring what percentage of your maximum you're hitting (I hover around 90% on target dummy tests), then go to Zeherah's analyzer and enable best raid buffs and debuffs, take the percentage you're pushing, and you can guesstimate your ideal 25-man stand-still output.

You don't normally get to see these numbers on bosses, though sometimes things like the Icebound Wards will approach them, or, if you get your movement down cleanly, you'll get close on Festergut. They will tell you if there's something seriously wrong with your execution, however. And if your raid leaders tell you they want to see 5k minimum, and your analysis on Zeherah's says your toon's maximum output is 4k with raid buffs, no matter how good you are, you've got some work to do.

So, what can you do to bring your numbers up?

The first, and fastest, thing is to look at your talents. Other people have done the legwork, and there's a lot of information out there. The summary is basically that, at the highest gear levels, the top tree is Marksman, then Survival, then Beast Mastery for raiding output. All the trees can meet the minimum enrage timer thresholds for fights like Festergut, but, especially if you want to raid as Beast Mastery, you need to know what you're doing. If your execution isn't as tight, you'll probably want to try each spec and see which one meshes best with your capabilities. Don't just toss points wherever; respecing is expensive. Poke around the various hunter blogs (I link a whole bunch over to the right) and Elitist Jerks and see what good options are for the tree you're using. (For example, some distribution of 7/57/7 is the most common Marksman raiding spec, but going through Aspect Mastery in BM or including Hawkeye in Survival isn't uncommon or wrong.)

If there are talents you absolutely love but which don't help you with raiding, consider dual-specing to have the talents you enjoy most on your own time in one spec and the talents that make you most productive in a raid in the other.

How are your glyphs? Some glyphs that are great for soloing aren't so hot for raiding, and if you're going to stick with one spec rather than dual spec, you might want to invest in a stock to swap back and forth.
  • Marksman will probably want Serpent Sting and two of Steady Shot, the Hawk, Kill Shot, or Chimera Shot.
  • Beast Mastery will want some combination of Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, the Hawk, Kill Shot, and Bestial Wrath.
  • Survival will probably want Explosive Shot and two of the Hawk, Kill Shot, Steady Shot, or Serpent Sting.
What pet are you raiding with? As cute and lovable as your spore bat might be, a wolf (top choice in most cases because of the AP buff), cat, raptor, or even a wasp or worm for raid debuffs will probably be a better choice for your raiding pet.

Are you pushing the right buttons? Rotation is one of the hardest things to fix if you've been playing a long time; if you've got some bad habits ingrained, it might take a while to break yourself out of them. Unlike some people, I don't consider being a clicker to be a bad habit, but if that turns out to be the core of your problems, unfortunately I don't have a recommended way to break out of the habit (at least for a ranged toon). Kill Shot at 20% and below is important; Kill Shot has edged me over someone I was competing with on meters because when it crits, it's sweet, and it's end-of-fight burst not everyone can match.
  • Marksman will, at the beginning of a fight, put up Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting, pop Rapid Fire, hit Chimera, Aimed, possibly Arcane, and Steady Shot until Rapid Fire wears off, hit Readiness, pop Rapid Fire again, and then fall into the Chimera, Aimed, possibly Arcane, Steady x3 or x4 rotation until Rapid Fire and Readiness are off cooldown. I say possibly Arcane because after you get about 500 Armor Penetration (ArP), you want to drop Arcane from your rotation (and talents), because you'll get a better return from physical damage at that point (Steady Shot, Piercing Shots).
  • Beast Mastery starts out with Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting, then falls into an Aimed, Arcane, Steady rotation; remember to refresh Serpent Sting as needed. I don't know enough about Beast Mastery to tell you when the ideal Bestial Wrath usage is, but if you're set on raiding as BM, one of the hunter blogs over to the right should have information. At some level of ArP, Beast Mastery will also drop Arcane from the rotation.
  • Survival will put up Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting to start, then go through Explosive, Black Arrow, Aimed (or Multi depending on spec), Steady, refreshing Serpent Sting as needed and taking advantage of Lock and Load procs whenever possible. Arcane isn't even on Survival's radar.
If you're pushing the right buttons but not getting the numbers you think you should be, find a hunter who plays a similar spec and does put out the numbers you want and see if they can help you figure out where things are going wrong. (Browse logs for your server if you don't know of someone to go to, or try the WoW hunter forums.)

How's your hit rating? You want 8%, which is ~263 hit rating without talents; if you put points in Focused Aim it can be as low as ~164 hit rating. This is the only stat that has a hard and fast cap number that you really have to worry about hitting - everything else is either capless or isn't worth going to the trouble of capping unless you're in a top end raiding guild (in which case I really hope you don't need to be reading my guide).

Are you gemming and enchanting right for your spec and gear level? Different specs use different gems, and at different gear levels, some gems are better than others. Meta gem requirements need to be met, as well. Nightmare Tears are always good options for turning on a meta if you're gemming straight through with your best gem stat. Your meta gem is probably going to be a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, but if for some reason it's not, it's probably a Chaotic Skyflare Dimaond. If your hit rating is low or you don't want to invest talent points in Focused Aim, a few pure hit rating gems may be required. If you need to for socket bonus or your meta gem, pair it with Agility (Marksman or Survival), Attack Power (Beast Mastery), Stamina (Beast Mastery or Survival), or mp5 (Marksman).
  • Marksman hunters want to gem for Agility until they hit about 800 passive ArP on gear. After about 800 ArP, gemming for ArP will give better returns than Agility. If you want to flesh out your socket bonuses (I'm a little compulsive like that, too), pair Agility with Crit or Hit (depending on your needs) for yellow sockets or mp5 (yes, mp5) for blue sockets.
  • Beast Mastery hunters generally gem for Attack Power, but they can start gemming for ArP at a much lower threshold than Marksman. Crit, Hit, and probably Stamina (more pet health) are good secondary parts for orange and purple gems for socket bonuses.
  • Survival is similar to pre-ArP Marksman, except that Stamina being a DPS gain for Survival means they will want that instead of mp5 on any purple gems they need. Agility stays good for Survival since they will never switch to ArP.
For the most part, you're going to want to enchant along the same priority as your gems: Agility for Marksman or Survival, Attack Power for Beast Mastery. If a slot only has one or the other, either is fine. Your head enchant will come from the Ebon Blade quarter master, and unless you're a scribe, you'll want to grind reputation with the Sons of Hodir for your shoulder enchant. (It's not as bad as it used to be - after getting to Honored, you can buy about 400-500 Relics of Ulduar and pop up to Exalted.) Beast Mastery and Marksman hunters will probably want Icescale Leg Armor, while Survival may opt for Frosthide. Take advantage of your profession's special buffs - cloak and glove enchants for engineers, extra sockets for blacksmiths, better gems for jewelcrafters, etc.

What's your ammunition? If you're still using vendor-sold ammunition, see if you can't find an engineer willing to become your supplier of higher-end ammunition.

Do you die too often? No matter how theoretically awesome your toon is, dead DPS is 0 DPS. Are you pulling aggro? Get a threat meter or turn on the in-game threat warnings. Omen is the tried-and-true in threat meters, and Skada can act as one, as well. Get the Feign Death minor glyph. (And, you know, use Feign. A lot.) Other than persistant damage (damage that hits the whole raid no matter what, or things like Saurfang's Boiling Blood), DPS shouldn't be taking damage. Yes, when you get a slime on Rotface, you'll take some damage, and your healers should keep you up long enough to merge the slime and get back to DPSing. But taking damage from standing in the slime pools would be your fault. Damage from standing in fires (fiery, poisony, or otherwise) is your own fault, and don't blame your healers if you die from it. If you're not seeing damaging effects, check your graphics settings. Turn down what you can live without if you need to for system performance issues, and make sure projected textures is turned on. Make sure you have Deadly Boss Mods or a similar addon to tell you about damaging effects as they get close. (For example, DBM will tell you when Putricide is throwing Maleable Goo at or near you.)

If you're doing everything else right but just have low ilevel gear, you'll need to invest some time running Heroics and older raids, and then spending badges. Trial of the Crusader runs aren't uncommon still - the raid is trashless and a good run can take less than an hour. If your guild or raid group isn't hitting it still, a PUG on your server probably is. Weekly raids, either in-guild or PUGs, will land you bonus badges and sometimes shots at gear you may need. Onyxia can be a fast, fun run with good gear (particularly a helm and guns). Even if you don't PVP, the Vault of Archavon in Wintergrasp drops tier gear.

If you're not sure what gear to go for, hit up some of the hunter blogs linked to the right, or WoW.com, and look for the various hunter gear lists. Or, do what I do, and go to WoWhead, pull up the Item->Armor->Mail->Slot I'm looking to upgrade and filter by stuff with Attack Power. Then I sort by ilevel, find what I've got, and see what's available that's better that is reasonably attainable.

And when you get to a raid, remember:
  • Bring your flasks, food, and any other self-buffage reagents.
  • Be stocked up on ammunition.
  • Be on time, and try not to need a summon.
  • Remember to swap into your raid spec and pull out your raid pet if you have more than one of either.
  • Pee before you go! (To quote my husband.)

3/19/10

Moving on

After the shake-up of our raid leadership and, to some extent, our officer corps, our Icecrown 25 raid group has moved on.

Festergut is dead. (Pictures later when I get home.)

Yes, there's a 5% damage/health/heals buff in Icecrown now, but a raid DPS output of over 152,000 means that we could have done it with out the buff. (Technically. Psychologically may be another matter.)

We did a single ranged collapse point, in case of missing spores, but it was more or less unbugged for us. Once we had all figured out what we were doing for the collapses (some of us have only seen him three or four times ever), and everyone remembered to push buttons and not die, we were sailing smoothly. :35 extra on the enrage timer, as well.

Apparently repeating "shoot" obsessively to myself throughout the fight helps me remember to continue pushing my buttons during movement/spores - that was one of my biggest problems; I'd move over to the spore collapse point, and then be so focused on staring at the spore, waiting for it to pop, that I would forget to push buttons.

Quartz has proven useless to me - I can't get it to remember anything. I set it up, and as soon as I zone, it loses the profile, or something. The profile's still there, and still selected in the dropdown, but it's not being applied. I'm about at the point of deleting it. (All I wanted was an autoshot timer, and maybe a global cooldown bar.)

I don't think we have another 25 scheduled for this lockout, but if they decide to put one up on Monday, they'll probably be playing with Rotface.

2/22/10

Oh! And...



Yeah, yeah, he's way over in the corner. We followed it up with a Dreamwalker... kill? an hour and a half later. Dreamwalker is the first boss that I got the adrenaline rush after the fight was over, because once we hit bloodlust (somewhere after 75%), the fight was over fast. I wasn't watching her health %'s at all (I think if I get to see her again any time soon I'll suggest popping one of the healers up on the oRa tank list), and then suddenly giant green dragon stands up behind me. (And of course then she ports out, so there's no pretty screenshot of her.)

I am hoping eventually we'll be able to get Putricide down in two 10s every week - but we have to be getting Rotface down in two consistently first. Eventually people will figure out how to kite slimes properly. Right?

So they didn't use the article, but since it's already written...

And because I ran into someone I actually voted "yes" to kick for the first time last night - ok, that first: There was a DK in my Heroic ... Old Kingdom, because I can't remember how to spell AK, who was in the group as DPS. We kept telling him - if you keep running out ahead of the tank, you're going to die; please stop taking us with you. Two wipes entirely caused by him running ahead of the tank and pulling stuff later, we get rid of him, and the replacement takes over as tanking, which lets our previous bear tank go cat. The rest of the instance (the last three bosses, skipping only mushroom man) was done in maybe fifteen minutes.

But yeah, I wrote up one of those "5 tips" submissions for wow.com, but didn't get picked. Since I've already got it written and that DK reminded me of it, I'm popping it up here.

Five tips for DPS running random heroic dungeons

Random heroics tend to get different groups of people together: the “Woohoo, I hit 80!” crowd, the “Damn it, I got rolled out of ICC-25 again” crowd, and the “All I do is heroics” crowd, possibly with some other miscellanies thrown in.

As DPS, you can use a variety of tactics to make the randoms go more smoothly, both socially and mechanically.

1. Don’t stress your tank and/or healer. You don’t know when you start a random instance how good your tank or healer is, so play it safe until you find out if it’s okay to open up the throttle all the way. As they say on WoW_ladies, you can’t heal stupid (and they don’t all say it, but you don’t heal jerks). Don’t be stupid or a jerk.

If you don’t already have an assist macro or keybind, now is a good time to make one. Personally I prefer to focus the tank and use a /targetfocus keybind (in my case, G), supplemented by an /assist keybind (for me, F). So after initially focusing the tank (also useful for my Misdirect macro as a hunter), I spend much of my time just using G->F to pick my targets.

Wait for the tank to hit stuff before hitting it yourself, including if you’re going to AOE a trash pack. Pulling aggro because your tank hasn’t had a chance to touch something stresses both the tank and the healer. And don’t run away from the tank when you do pull aggro. Running away just means you’re tanking it longer. Related to that: It’s not your job to pull. This is not Molten Core; this is a 5-man heroic instance. The tank can shoot/throw shields at/freeze/faerie fire mobs all by him- or herself.

Don’t stand in fires. Or lightning novas. Or bright green poison pools. You have projected textures turned on, right? If you can’t turn on projected textures because your computer is too old, at least watch your debuffs. The first time I healed Halls of Stone in a random heroic, two melee DPS stood in Sjonnir’s lightning nova. I’m an undergeared discipline priest, and the tank was squishy. The two melee DPS died because I had to spam-heal the tank to keep him up. If your healer says it’s okay to stand in Loken’s nova, then it’s okay, but don’t do it unless you’ve already gotten the go-ahead.

2. Don’t roll on gear for your offset until you find out if the active tank or healer needs the gear. It’s just not polite. Given the risk of things getting sharded if you greed on them, ask if the tank or healer is going to roll on something you want for an offspec, and if they don’t want it, then feel free to need. Loot rules vary from server to server, guild to guild, party to party, but needing for offspecs over people actually playing those roles will not make you a lot of friends.

3. If your class can tank or heal but you don’t have the spec or the gear for it, don’t queue for the roles just to get in faster. I’ve seen so many groups fall apart and had to sit out the 15 minute debuff because the warrior queued to tank as Arms in Arms gear. (And I’d rather re-queue than sit and wait for a new tank for yet another Halls of Stone run.) Queue as DPS, wait it out, and then tear the place up. I tend to do dailies during the DPS queue. (Or take out the garbage, make dinner, etc.) Just make sure whatever you do in the meantime lets you still see your screen, because coming back to your computer right as your “Dungeon is ready!” notice is expiring sucks.

4. Figure out the basic mechanics of your class before you get to the point of random heroics. Melee should stand behind mobs. Distracting shot is a taunt. Frost presence is bad for Death Knights who aren’t tanking. It’s okay if your DPS isn’t ICC-25 quality, as long as it’s not Karazhan-quality. (If you’re only doing 500 DPS at level 80, please, please, go find a mentor.)

Some of you have crowd-control abilities that can be used to supplement a new-ish tank who doesn’t have as much health as you might like, or a weak healer who can’t keep the tank up through more than a couple mobs at a time. (Traps, sheep, saps, etc.) I know we’re all AOE-happy nowadays (I myself have the talents to maximize Volley), but rather than drop group and sit out the debuff, actually using your abilities properly might make a run work out. If they ever make instances like Shattered Halls or Shadow Labyrinth again, you’ll be very happy to know how to effectively crowd-control.

5. Hold off a little on the /votekick until you find out if the person is hopeless or just new. You’ve been playing since launch. You’ve seen most of ICC-25’s current content die. And, oh, my God, that rogue is doing 500 DPS. Rather than immediately vote-kick them, first see if any glaringly obvious problems stick out. (In a rogue’s case, are they spec’d Subtlety? Mutilate with swords? Standing in front of mobs? Stacking spirit?)

A lot of new 80s are open to advice, and the more newbies you educate, the fewer abysmally terrible players you’ll run into. If they just don’t want to listen and are keeping you from actually finishing the instance, though, /votekick may be in order. If your DPS is good enough to get by with their minimal contribution, it may be faster to just keep going.

Running random heroics with someone of a different playstyle than your own can be frustrating (or, if you’re a fresh 80 and you’re looking at someone with tier 10, intimidating), but you can run randoms together successfully.

2/3/10

Room to Run

So, I saw Rotface for the first time last Saturday, and Toravon last night. (Neither of them died.) What struck me the most about both fights is how crunched I feel for space.

I think I'm actually nostalgic for Molten Core.

The first thing that comes to mind is Golemagg's room, actually, although most of Molten Core had plenty of room for all the bosses. Sure, you had more people, but really - space management is a huge part of both fights.

For Rotface, you have to kite the slimes, stay out of the ooze puddles in the corners, and not stand in the spewing. It's actually the ooze puddles in the corners that cause me the most problems. When Rotface is being tanked in the middle of the room, my 5-yard minimum means I can't just stack up on his leg to not be taking damage; I have to move. This can be problematic when he spews. Maybe I should just be switching groups.

Toravon was a huge frustration for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that his Frozen Orbs weren't properly despawning after each wipe - instead, the ones that were up when we wiped remained on the floor as corpses... forever. Once you have a dozen or so up, trying to distinguish live orbs from dead ones was very disorienting. Additionally, moving away from three orbs in that space while trying to kill them was a pain. Kiting them like Drakkisath in UBRS (up the hall) might work out better.

I'm kinda glad Survival's Sniper Training isn't distance-related - they'd be screwed if staying at least 30 yards away were still required. (Not that I'm ever likely to play Survival, but I was jealous of that talent when I first saw it - similarly to how I was upset when Hawkeye got moved over there.)

Arcanelessness

Ok, yeah, I just kinda made up that word.

I've been trying out the Arcane-less Marksman build and... I don't know if it's had a noticeable effect or not.

My current Armor Penetration (I've been told I shouldn't use that word in raid chat) is a little lower than I should really have to do it - I think I'm down to 475, with the Scorpion for procs, but I was over 500 when I respeced. But getting 2-piece T10 and going from the T8.5 to the T9 breastplate otherwise made a lot of sense.

Anyway, as much as I love that Marksman is about having lots of shots, I think dropping Arcane makes for a more logcial rotation - and, except for when you have to push extra buttons for Rapid Fire, Readiness, and such, it really is a rotation again: Chimera, Aimed, Steady x4. Kill Shot mucks it up a little, but critting for 20k is awesome (thank you, Void Boss Dude in Violet Hold, and I hate you, combat log bug that prevented me from screenshotting said crit).

Really, with my current level of ArP and the Scorpion, I should be doing a Chimera/Aimed/Arcane/Steady x3 type of thing, and only dropping Arcane during procs, but given the unpredictability of procs, it's really not practical. I'm not that good.

My DPS is definitely up a bit - I broke 8k on I think one of the spiders before Lady Deathwhisper the recently in 25s, and I broke 6k on Festergut in 10s (the night we don't have a log for, damn it, but I did at least screenshot that) - but that's just as likely due to gear changes as the spec/rotation change.

Dropping Improved Arcane from my talents was a bit sad for me; I absolutely loved the talent when it was a reduction in Arcane's cooldown. Ten-second and five-second cooldowns would have been mathematically easier to plan for... if our GCD weren't stuck at 1.5 seconds. Anywho, dropping Improved Arcane let me pick up Improved Steady, and since my rotation is stacked the way it is, the buff from Improved Steady is always going to Chimera.

One nice benefit of not regularly weaving in Arcane is that when I need an instant shot now - say, for web wraps or some such - I have one conveniently off cooldown to use. And I can still toss it in when I have to move.

As my gear gets upgraded (please, please let the cloak and belt be next), my ArP should go up, and it will be a more solid switch, but for now it's at least not hurting.

1/23/10

Attrition

One of my officers stepped down this week. It wasn't entirely unexpected; he's mentioned the possibility off and on for a while now. His wife had been doing the scheduling for our 25s, as well as leading them, and all in all, they were getting overloaded.

The other shoe was that the couple that had been scheduling our 10s has decided to server-transfer. I found out about that one after the fact - when it actually, as they say, dropped.

So on the one hand, our raiding is doing great - we're into ICC and making steady progress, our raid population has been pretty stable, and stuff is happening.

On the other, something about the administrative side is broken, because we're burning people out. Maybe the workload isn't spread out enough; maybe our raiders are starting to feel entitled and are pushing too much. Maybe our communication needs to be improved. (Ok, I know our communication needs to be improved.)

Regardless, I hate losing people. On some level it means I'm not doing my job right, which is trying to build and balance a structure to make playing together with people you like playing with feasible at the level of play you want. Within limits, anyway - we can only support so many flavors of raiding in one guild, but we also have PVPers and non-raiders happily under our umbrella.

So at our next officer meeting we have a lot of structural stuff to discuss - possible promotions, reallocation of administrative work, and so forth.

I just wish stuff would settle down until I had my tenure binder assembled, heh.

1/14/10

Still Groping Around in the Dark

So I've been the leader of my guild for four months now. I have no idea how to tell if I'm doing well at it or not. Complicating that is that anywhere I might try to go for advice - anonymously, you know, since my guildies are all good people, and sometimes I just need to figure out if there's a way I can de-escalate a problem or hurt feelings that have, more than likely, been caused by the communications breakdown that the nature of text and time-delayed systems - it's complicated by that I have guildies active in all the same online WoW communities I'm in.

So while I could really use some outside, objective, anonymous input sometimes, I don't want to throw out scenarios - with names redacted, of course - and have it come back and hit me.

The long and short of it, though, is that I'm debating if I should keep raiding. We're really pretty over-crowded on the DPS side of things, and I don't know if stepping out of raiding to not be part of the headache would help, or if disconnecting myself from active raiding would make me less useful on policy issues. When I start working Wednesday nights again, I may have to drop 10s, anyway, so maybe it'll be moot.