Marksman Hunter

In three colors!

2012-02-01T00:12:00.001-05:00

You (probably) won't see it anywhere else, so here's my tallstrider family:

The mount is from the Darkmoon Faire, the hunter pet is the Clutchmother, and the pet-pet is the Mulgore Hatchling. I've gotten as many questions about where to get the mount as I got when I first tamed the identical strider back during the Burning Crusade. I named mine Violet way before the Faire did, though:

Tracking and aspects on the toolbars, Mongoose Bite, Viper Sting, Scorpid Sting, mana potions, quiver... Yeah, that was Burning Crusade. Also, I appear to be on fire in that particular screenshot. Ahem. I don't even remember the name of the DPS addon I'm using there. Something pre-Recount.

New Shot Macro

2012-01-18T00:13:00.002-05:00

I picked up the 2-piece tier 13 recently, and I've been staring at my focus bar again, watching it sit way too full and debating what to do about it. The obvious answer is to use more focus, but I couldn't cram in enough Arcane Shots in to burn off the excess without losing my haste buff or Serpent Sting from missing Chimera.

Enter Kill Command. I wanted to maintain my ~10 second rotation (Chimera's unglyphed cooldown) but burn more focus, which meant using a focus dump that wasn't Arcane Shot. Kill Command is a lot of focus, it hits hard, and it doesn't disrupt my existing rotation. When I get the 4-piece bonus and have to deal with haste procs, then I'll have to reevaluate the rotation again and what it's most useful and feasible to squeeze in with the extra time in the ten seconds between Chimeras.

For now, though, the cast sequence looks like:

/castsequence Chimera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Kill Command, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

I wanted to maintain the pairs of Steady Shots before and after Chimera Shot so that when moving through the rotation, I keep the haste buff up, I'm keep Serpent Sting up by having enough focus for Chimera, and I have some focus to do something with after Chimera. The biggest problem I had was on target switching if I happened to be at the Kill Command point in the macro and my pet was still running over, so I'd hit some other buttons and reapply Serpent Sting if needed in the meantime.

The result on LFR Zon'ozz:

Not the most amazing of numbers, but a personal best for him. He's a nice, easy, stand-and-shoot fight in LFR, so he gives pretty numbers to start with.

Updated Transmogrification

2012-01-12T16:05:00.001-05:00

Well, I still haven't found the gloves I want for Dusk (and I haven't found a set for my shaman), but here's updated pictures of my transmogrified toons:

Duskhawk, Marksman Hunter: Blood Knight, Battleforged, Talhide, Felscale, Malefactor's Eyepatch

Elsabeth, Disc Priest: Primal Mooncloth, Boots of the Long Road, Vicious Fireweave Gloves

Throop, Prot Warrior: Flintlocke's Piloting Pants, Shinkicker Boots, Tyrant's Shield, Oath-bound Gauntlets, Coldrock Pauldrons

Noski, Subtlety/Assassination Rogue: Vengeful & Merciless Gladiator, Skystalker's Leggings

Katrine, Destro Lock: Dark Coven Shoulderpads, Ebonweave Robe & Gloves

#WARCOOKIE

2011-12-12T09:57:00.001-05:00

My Forsaken ladies: Noski, Elsabeth, and Viatrix

Disciplinary Action put together a Warcraft Christmas Cookie exchange, and since I was looking for an excuse to make cookies anyway, I signed up. Rather than exchanging actual cookies, recipes were exchanged, and I got a molasses spice cookie recipe to make and Warcraft up this weekend. Unbeknownst to me, my cookies were going to be sponsored by the plague. (No, seriously, I have some kind of sinus plague going on.)

Given the levels of misery that were to be had this weekend, the extent of my Warcraftification of the cookies was mostly limited to OMGSPRINKLES.

OMG SPRINKLES

Alliance cookies in the oven

Horde cookies waiting to go in the oven

Alliance cookies out of the oven

Horde & Alliance cookies

There, ah, may have been some PVP involved. As you can see, the Alliance got raided while waiting for the Horde to get out of the oven. There's also a bit of a faction imbalance; there were 17 Alliance cookies to start, versus 19 Horde cookies. Given that the recipe estimated that I would get 24, and I got 36, obviously Gramma's indoctrination of proper cookie size is hard to shake.

Transmogrifying

2011-12-04T22:47:00.001-05:00

I hadn't originally planned to change up Dusk's Firelands gear, since the set really didn't look that bad sans hat. But then I found pants I really liked, and, well...

Blood Knight/Battleforged, with some Talhide Shoulders and Heavy Scorpid for the pieces I couldn't find. And my 365 boots since I didn't find any others that worked better.

My priest, on the other hand, I knew what I wanted to do with. It's not completely done, but I loved my Primal Mooncloth set, so voila!

I just need to find a different staff...

4.3

2011-11-30T19:26:00.001-05:00

I really did intend to do the new 5-mans yesterday, but I came home and ended up sleeping for two hours. So while there were no new dungeons run, I did get the formerly Valor Point/now Justice Point neck and ring, then bought bracers for my shaman and warrior.

And of course, I got a boatload of new ponies.

New ponies whose wings flap when they walk, not when they fly.

But anywho! There were several quality-of-life squee moments yesterday:

Putting my trinket collection into void storage. I had two and a half bags of trinkets in Dusk's bank, and I pushed them all into void storage, along with some older "I got it when it was still in the game" stuff. I had 47 inventory slots free when I got done! That means I have 33 slots free in my bank now!
Archaeology site tracking! I initially noticed the sub-menus in the tracking menu, then noticed the archaeology and quest area tracking, and I may have made stupid noises of joy in guild chat for several minutes. (I get to uninstall an addon because of this addition.)
Transmogrification! Actually, T12 hunter gear isn't too bad, and I'm not going to bother transmogrifying most of it. T13, on the other hand... (How could they name such an ugly hat after Zeherah?!) I have both the hunter tier .5 and tier 1 sets in the bank for options, though, along with the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, also known as the coolest looking ranged weapon in the game. For now, though, I've just turned my hat into a better hat.
Unbound Squashlings! I had six I didn't vendor before the patch, and now they're going to go away through the auction house. Hopefully. I spent two thousand gold pushing stuff into void storage, and I could use a little cash.

I'll get home late enough tonight that I'm probably still not going to get a chance to run the new dungeons, but I may do some more rare hunting and farming now that I have more than 2 slots free.

Keybinds and Macros

2011-11-20T14:16:00.001-05:00

I have an Intellimouse Explorer 3.0, and I love it to death. Literally: I think I'm on my third.

A lot of my macros use mouse:1, mouse:2, and mouse:3 for targeting the same spell, not just for my hunters, but also for my priest. (Button:4 is bound to Escape, to stop casting, and button:5 is bound to, ahem, Fishing.) Mouse:3 is also my Ventrilo push-to-talk key, and has been for five years. This hasn't been a big deal; I don't use mouse:3 targeting much on my hunters, which are usually what I'm playing when I'm on Vent.

My priest, on the other hand? Mouse:1 is generally @self; mouse:2 is @focus, and mouse:3 is the unspecified cast, which means whatever I target or whichever party member I hit the function key for or click on. Most 5-man dungeons I can just get away with Atonement splash healing with Penances on the tank (@focus casting), but raid healing tends to require a lot more direct healing.

I didn't raid heal much in Wrath of the Lich King; maybe three or four times. In Burning Crusade, on the other hand, my priest was just as geared as my hunter for most of the entire expansion. She healed for Karazhan; she healed for Gruul's and Magtheridon's Lairs; she healed in Zul'Aman. Other than the last 800 reputation for the Caverns of Time faction, I even did the reputation grinds to get her the enchanting and tailoring patterns from reputation. I healed with a hybrid 33/28/0 Discipline specialization, and I actually found it relaxing compared to the pressures of maintaining DPS levels on my hunter. Karazhan was the raid that pushed me to actually start looking at hunter mechanics and for which my shot rotation macro was born. For my priest, though, she was one-half of the guild's first two-healer raid through it.

In Wrath we tried very hard as a guild not to end up in the same rut we'd been in Burning Crusade, mostly running Karazhan for three or four combinations of alts and never progressing out of the first tier or tier and a half of content. This meant I didn't really raid on my priest much, and given how fantastically we progressed through the raid tiers in Wrath, I was content with that. I missed raid healing, but I would rather see my guild progress.

So now we're running Firelands, and we had been running alt/main Tier 11 raids to get people later to raiding more up to speed. I had mostly been running on Duskhawk for these when I went, since we had plenty of people wanting to heal, but I took my priest a couple times recently to make the raids happen when we were short a healer. So my priest has about one and a half Blackwing Descent runs under her belt. Raid healing is an entirely different strategy from Atonement healing for most fights; a few (Omnotron Defense System, especially, but even Magmaw if I'm tank healing) actually work quite well with it, but many fights end up Prayer of Healing/Penance/Shield focused.

A couple weeks ago we switched from Tier 11 alt runs (waning interest) to Firelands alt runs (more interest and, since we're clearing it in about two nights, more slots per week needed to get mains in). Like I said, I have about one and a half Blackwing Descent runs under my priest's belt; last Saturday I ended up taking her to the alt Firelands run.

It was terrifying! I had an awful time figuring out where to stand so I could reach both tanks on Shannox (but I managed not to stand in any traps, woo!), and on Beth'tilac, I was immensely frustrated by Prayer of Healing's party-based targeting. We tend to run in three groups for her, with the Phase 1 Beth'tilac tank and his/her healer in Group 3 and everyone else over in Groups 1 and 2. I just couldn't seem to manage Penancing the targeted tank in Phase 2 and to still do sufficient Prayers of Healing on the other two groups in three groups.

The main thing I ended up getting out of that raid (besides a staff) was that I needed to rework my Penance macro to handle tank swaps. I use default raid frames while healing, plus Decursive, and everything is smooshed down in about a six-by-eight inch area of my screen, by the parts of the toolbars that I use for most of my healing. My DBM warnings are also dragged down there, along with the timers. So my set-up is pretty basic, and pretty focused. My Penance macro, for the longest time, was

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, @focus][button:2] Penance

This was unlike all my other healing macros, which look like

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, @self][button:2, @focus][button:3] Heal

I really didn't need to target myself with penance; I have Alt set as my self-cast button, and I tend to just Shield and Alt:Renew myself if I need healing. To handle a tank swap without changing focus targets or targeting my non-focused tank, I needed to change up something in that standard macro line. What I ended up with was

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, @targettarget][button:2, @focus][button:3] Penance

This lets me maintain the boss as my target for Atonement opportunities (because if I can sneak in some stacks to pull out Evangelism, woohoo!), and when I hit Penance with button 1, whatever tank is getting facemelted gets the Penance. When we did Beth'tilac last night, I was able to manage just fine with the three-group setup. There are occasional hiccups; I'm pretty sure I Penanced Baleroc at least once last night when I had a tank targeted.

Speaking of Baleroc and mouse buttons and macros: this is what I actually meant to write about today. So I got pulled into healing Firelands again last night, and you've seen my healing macro pattern now, and I've told you I use middle-mouse (mouse:3) for Vent's push-to-talk.

Baleroc is a healer rotation fight, at least the way we run it. You spend two cycles healing shard targets and then switch to the tanks on the third shard in your rotation. Since this means hitting targets as they get the shard debuff (the little blue person icon, I know now - DBM puts marks on them, but as I've said, I look at a 6"x8" section of the screen while healing, and if it's outside that area it doesn't exist), it's a lot of mouse:3 healing.

Mouse:3 healing, which is my Vent key.

As this was my first time ever healing Baleroc, and fourth time this expansion raid healing at all, I was doing a lot of talking to myself and swearing. About halfway through the fight, I realized:

"You all can hear me, can't you?"

They thought I was asking if they could hear me, because I got a, "You're cutting in and out," response. I was more concerned that the swearing was coming through, but apparently the "F--- me," that came out during one of my "which tank is getting hit" panics didn't come across. (I still use oRA2, and my target-of-target for it just creeps into my healing field of vision, so I started using that to pick my tank healing target.) I temporarily remapped my Vent key for the rest of the raid. >.>

Random coda: On the drive in to work this afternoon, I realized: Wait a minute. Baleroc, who has fire and shadow attacks. Balrog, a creature of shadow and flame. /facepalm

poke

2011-11-01T10:11:00.000-04:00

So, I looked at the page-view stats for this blog for the first time today, and mostly it was kind of depressing, because they're about seven times the stats for my other blog - and I haven't written anything here since June.

There's a really simple reason for that - huntering hasn't really changed dramatically over the course of the past year. Firelands added some new pet models (and Deth'tilac, as much as I hate spiders, is very pretty), but none of them have tempted me to try taming them. Heck, I didn't pick up Skoll until this expansion (looking for the Time-Lost Protodrake, of course). I don't go looking for most rares for taming purposes. (As much as I love Har'koa and the Zul'Drak quests, her boyfriend is so dead if I ever find him.)

But no, this expansion has been pretty stable for Marksman PVE. The secondary stat numbers (haste, specifically) for when one's rotation changes (adding a Steady or an Arcane, basically) are so huge that you really don't need to think about them. It's not like the magic 800 for swapping to stacking Armor Penetration was.

Guild drama has been minimal all summer; raiding has been good; I still don't have the Headless Horseman's pony for Duskhawk. Brewfest threw daggers to all my toons but my rogue.

Mists of Pandaria was rolled out at Blizzcon last week, and I was stuck at work, obsessively refreshing WoW Insider's live blogs. I like the talent changes - 3 specs that you get your special abilities just by picking the spec, and then one talent tree of fun stuff that you can put points in regardless of your spec. I hope improved mend pet ends up a glyph or something.

In the meantime, I've been playing a baby priest Alliance side on another server to play through the quests again - an RP server, at that, although I'm far too shy to have actually done any interactive role-playing. When I leveled my priest on Bronzebeard, I was fashion-conscious on her to the point of getting ribbed for it - there are some awesome robes out there, and I refused to have shoulders that didn't coordinate. I also may have used her little pillbox hat from a rare spawn in Hillsbrad well into the 50s.

I'm leveling as discipline again, partly because the dot-dot-channel playstyle of shadow has never appealed to me. I've tried shadow, briefly, at 85, so that when I want valor/justice points on my priest and there's already a guild healer going, I can still take her, but I much prefer healing - atonement healing, that is.

Anywho, a priesty-comic I did (stick figure art!) a while back, since she's the alt I'm playing right now:

Replay Value

2011-06-14T10:17:00.001-04:00

I played through Diablo II (including the expansion) all the way to the end at least four times; I made new characters and played them into the fourth or fifth chapter quite a bit more. Diablo II was a solo player game for me, and I never did its "hard modes" - I didn't take a character I had beaten Baal on and replay the content with that same character.

I did, however, enjoy running through the game with a new character, to try out a different class, or a different playstyle. (Charged bolt sorceress! Woo! Actually, the Amazon with charged-bolt-releasing gear was probably the most fun charged bolt experiment...)

I'm bringing this up for a couple reasons. Firstly, I've got a fairly serious stable of alts: 9 characters on my main server are level 80+. WoW is so much more of a time-sink than Diablo II was; getting characters to similar levels of investment and playability would require more time than my commutes 45-minutes both ways, works 50+ hours a week life allows. Secondly, WoW, to me, is the original Diablo III.

Right, right, Diablo III is still in development, and Azeroth is most certainly not the setting for Diablo II. They're entirely separate franchises.

At the same time, there's a lot overlap in the character classes and basic user interface design; paladins have auras and can heal or tank; barbarians and warriors both have a couple of different fighting styles and utilize various shouts (although I really miss the shout that got me potions... and dual wielding throwing knives, which was awesome); assassins and rogues both use a combo point/finisher style; amazon + druid = hunter + druid; necromancers and warlocks share a few traits; and of course sorceresses and mages.

WoW built on and expanded a lot of what I was already familiar with in Diablo II, which made switching to it as my graphical game of habit fairly easy. (I was replaying Diablo II up until I started WoW, and I've still gone back to it a couple times.)

What WoW didn't initially do was make it easy for me to "replay" it; this wasn't so much a matter of the content not being accessible from scratch, and hey, I could mail my alts money! No, the problem was the time sink. Leveling took time, traveling was slow, and the barriers to entry at higher levels were pretty steep.

For the most part, Blizzard has been really good at improving on WoW's replay value: between changes to the leveling experience and the introduction of heirlooms, a new character doesn't have to repeat content I didn't like, nor do I have to slog through every kill-and-collect quest I did five years ago on another character. Running dungeons lets me collect points for gear, so if I decide to go to alt raids on a character three tiers in, I have a reasonable route to gearing her up.

The biggest remaining time-sink in alt leveling? Reputation grinds. Oh, but there's tabards! Sure, and the tabards help. But I don't run dungeons on my alts nearly as much as I do on my main, and I can hit 85 in two or two and a half zones. Hyjal is nice and fast, and Deepholm is generally the follow-up, at least until I hit a level to go to Uldum or Twilight Highlands.

Skipping out of Deepholm, however, no matter how tired I may be of some of the quests there, locks me out of shoulder enchants on my alts. In Wrath they ameliorated this problem by making reputation based enchants bind-on-account; you could just mail them to alts. It remains to be seen if Blizzard will do so again this expansion. If they don't? I'm pretty sure my alts will never have anything better than the blue shoulder enchant... once I drag them all back into Deepholm to finish the zone and open up the Therazane vendors. I don't do dailies on my alts unless it's for profession tokens.

The Sons of Hodir were the barrier to entry for non-inscription shoulder enchants in Wrath, and you couldn't just waltz into Storm Peaks and start working for them. But maybe three hours of questing and I could unlock their dailies (including turning in boatloads of tokens for fast tracking exalted, prior to the BoA change). Therazane is buried so far in Deepholm (it's the last quest chain, no?) that it takes me much longer to get to and open. The time invested/reward ratio is steeper than my patience is willing to bear six years in.

Don't get me wrong - WoW's replay experience has gotten a zillion times better than it was originally, or (ugh) in Burning Crusade, when running heroics on my alts meant a rep grind again. (Most of them weren't too bad to get to honored, but the heroic dungeons in Auchindoun seemed terrible to unlock.) But tying profession recipes to reputations? *grumble*

For the longest time, Sporeggar was my rogue's (my third most played character's) only exalted reputation... because she was an herbalist and could farm the hibiscus. (Tiny sporebat, omg.) Yeah, yeah, flask recipes on reputation vendors... no, thanks. Don't have that kind of time.

Five and a three-halves toons into this expansion, I really don't have the patience for reputation grinds anymore.

My guild...

2011-04-15T00:43:00.001-04:00

... is awesome. :)

We can now rent cars without paying extra for insurance. >.>

So close

2011-04-11T13:08:00.003-04:00

Last Monday, my guild hit level 23. At 23, the caps on guild experience come off, and if you're crazy about grinding raids or heroics, you can hit 25 in a very short amount of time.

We're not that crazy - two of our raid nights this week were devoted to Nefarian (a fight I am unexpectedly in love with, despite dying twice on many attempts), so we're sitting pretty about 20% into 24 as of when I went to bed last night.

That 10% discount at level 24? It applies to flight training. That was the push I needed to buy fast flying on the two toons I'm currently trading off leveling.

I took my shaman into Vashj'ir this week to try to get deepsea scales for leveling leatherworking (and guild experience from quests); I hadn't done Vashj'ir on my priest or warrior, so I haven't really touched the place in four months. I still love it. Viatrix, on the other hand, is at level 70 in the Borean Tundra. Fast flying will make Northrend much less painful, and I'm looking forward to hitting Zul'drak again.

I'm eclectic in my WoW loves - female undead animations, tauren architecture and city planning, troll lore, my orc's hair while casting (3-foot wind-whipped braid: awesome). I think most of what I like about my blood elves is that they make feminine look bad-ass.

Level 25 will bring us scorpion mounts and mass resurrection. The mass summon has been pretty awesome so far - raids, "crap, my hearth is still set to Dalaran," "crap, I'm stuck, and can't hearth," etc. It was nice when you could summon someone who fell into a bad spot in a dungeon but didn't die back to where you were, but I understand why they disabled inside-dungeon mass summoning. Mass resurrection is going to make feigning or vanishing despite a bloodlust debuff desirable again, I think.

I'm dubious about the scorpion mounts, though. The stinger is right behind the rider's head.

Moving On: Guild Achievements

2011-03-27T17:23:00.002-04:00

It's maddening when the one thing you need to get off your chest is one of those things you don't talk about in public. Long story short, I had a falling out with one of my guild's officers, which has mostly left me sad about how the situation resolved. But I've gotten to where I'm thinking about more than my frustration with the episode again.

One of the things I would love to be more help with, but can't without deleting characters, moving them off server, or paying for race changes, is the Classy achievements. The only up-and-coming I have that will be useful is my Undead Hunter, and my God, but I love her.

I'm actually not a fan of Forsaken policies. No, I'm with Argent Apothecary Judkins: Sylvanas is off her rocker, and I'm not going to spend my undeath helping a Banshee Queen replace the Lich King. But I love all my undead characters - my priest, my rogue, and my new baby hunter. (Well, "new." I rolled her when 4.0 hit. She's 66 now, with a stupidly large number of heirlooms.) I'm torn between changing my warlock to Undead and leaving her a Blood Elf; I love the Undead caster animations, but I like her BElf hair. Silly reasons, but still.

Besides Classy, which is what we need for Bank Tab #8 (oh second deposit tab, how I covet thee...), recently we have gotten done 100,000 critter kills (I spent two or three hours in the bug tunnel in the Plaguelands for the last three or four thousand) and the 50,000 fish caught. The fishing was a guild-wide accomplishment, and it made me happy to see how involved people got with it. The first 50,000 critter kills (for the Armadillo pet) was a guild raid in the bug tunnel - done while I was at work, so I missed the fun. Our Alchemists finished off the flask achievement to get us cauldrons, as well. Several groups have been working their ways through all the older 5-man dungeons.

So March has been hit or miss so far - my guild is awesome, but I miss talking to the officer who left. On top of it, I've been sick for the past two weeks - a cold that became bronchitis and an eye infection. I've been to the doctor more this month than in the past ten years.

PS: I got to see Cho'Gall last night! 47% to go.

Patch love

2011-02-11T09:15:00.003-05:00

Aimed Shot is hitting and critting hard enough I was cackling at the target dummy. In fact, it's hitting hard enough I'm finding it worth opening on mobs while soloing - because if it crits, it's sometimes half their health.

One of the paragons of hunter-dom, Frostheim over at WHU, wrote a guide on using Aimed post-buff.

The Chimera Shot and Arcane Shot buffs were also nice - I'm sure the Kill Shot one was, too, but usually by that time in the fight I'm watching things besides my crit numbers. Overall I saw a 2-3k increase in DPS in Baradin Hold without gear (or even rotation) changes.

(The other thing that has made me giggle this week was watching my warrior's new Toxic Wasteling eat critters. She has the best holiday boss drop luck - Headless Horseman's mount and the Wasteling. If only I could have sent them over to Dusk. >.<)

More thoughts on the /castsequence

2011-02-03T13:32:00.003-05:00

I'm running with a spec that looks something like this.

Since actually raiding Tol Barad (three times now), I've dropped one of the Arcanes from my macro, due to focus starvation outside Rapid Fire, and finally realized that dude, I can pop Aspect of the Fox during Felfire and keep my rotation going during all the running around.

No, other than the opportunity to raid-test the macro and tweak for focus consumption, my thoughts on the cast sequence have been centered around two of the other Steady Shot-centered talents: Piercing Shots and Master Marksman.

Ignore, for the moment, that Marksman is bottoming out raid DPS rankings right now. We play Marksman because we love it, right? (There is some irony, I think, that the hunter specs are sandwiching that list.) Besides, 4.0.6 will bring us some changes that will help with that. Aimed, Arcane, Chimera, and Kill Shot are all getting damage buffs. We'll be able to Auto Shot while moving.

Aimed Shot is one of the main things I've been thinking about regarding the cast sequence. We really only use it on proc, and the proc is reliant on Steady Shot and the RNG. The only way to really get more Aimed Shots in is to get more Steady Shots in. Add to this the bleed damage both Steady and Aimed (and Chimera) can inflict. If Aimed Shot hits harder, the target is going to bleed harder. Add in a bleed debuff from an Arms warrior, Subtlety rogue, Feral druid, or one of our own pets (I favor the hyena for this when needed), and we're looking at some nice little boosts.

But again, we need more Steady Shots to get more Aimed Shots. If we prioritize Chimera to be every 10 seconds (in a normal rotation; if you use Kill Shot or Rapid Fire or Readiness, the spacing will vary slightly), that means we've got 9 other seconds of global cool down to work with. Getting Steady down to a one-second cast requires amounts of haste that are more or less insane. How insane? Not quite 9000. Yes, with the two hunter haste talents (Pathing and Improved Steady Shot), you need 8817 haste rating to get your Steady Shot down to 1 second with no other haste bonuses.

No, a 1.5 or 1.6 second Steady Shot cast is probably what we're sanely looking at most of the time, without extra haste boosts - that is, for most of our normal rotations. That means that the two bundles of two Steady Shots makes sense, and pairing it with two Arcane Shots will make sure we're not sitting on buckets of Focus.

What about that extra second or so of GCD? We could add another Arcane Shot, but raiding Tol Barad - a fight that is, more or less, the ultimate in stand and shoot fights for 98% of it - has shown that 3 Arcane:4 Steady will leave us Focus starved at points. 2 Arcane:4 Steady makes sure we have enough Focus for our next Chimera. 2 Arcane:5 Steady, however, pushes us past the 9 second mark, towards an 11-second rotation.

At this point I'm going to stick with the 2:4 Arcane:Steady ratio. The half a second is useful for flexibility when you need to pop some extra shot (Kill Shot, Tranq, etc.) or a trap, or perform some other utility action. If you've got the extra time or Focus, another Steady or Arcane can be added, but with the upcoming changes to Aimed, I would lean towards the Steady Shot.

So for now, the macro remains:

/castsequence Chimera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

How to 5

2011-01-13T14:09:00.006-05:00

Or, an introduction to small-group play in WoW

I read WoW Ladies. I'm not the most faithful or dedicated reader, since I stopped posting to my own LJ years ago, but they're a good bunch, and I learn quite a lot about how other people interact in the game there. One subject that crops up regularly is anxiety or fear about running dungeons with strangers. Having dealt with my own social anxiety issues, I understand where the problem has its roots.

There's a lot of nuance, and etiquette for 5's can vary from server to server and battlegroup to battlegroup. Now that there are cross-battlegroup random dungeon groups, some of that may begin to homogenize. But for someone who has never really grouped with others in a dungeon, it's all new and possibly confusing. The generalities will be summarized here. (Some things may be particular to Bronzebeard-US or the Cyclone battlegroup, but I think most of them apply pretty broadly.)

Group Roles

There are three roles in a dungeon group: one tank, one healer, and three damage (DPS). People who have been soloing almost exclusively are often unaware that the delineations mean that someone who signed up as damage should not try to "help" tank, or such. The biggest point of etiquette regarding party roles? Queue as the role you want to perform. If you don't want to tank or heal, don't queue for the role.

Some things every group member should do:

Buff. Regardless of your role in the party, if you can cast a buff, do so. Especially when you're running with people you don't know, you may really need that little extra boost. If you're a hunter and you're not leveling a pet (or using one for specific RP reasons), you might consider swapping out to a buff you don't have if your party has what you give. (I keep running with multiple shamans, so my cat is often superfluous so far as buffs.)
Dispel/Decurse/etc. If you can dispel a debuff, do so. Your healer will be happy not to have to deal with it, especially if it's one he can't do.
Move out of AOE damage if possible. Some abilities, like Anraphet's Omega Stance, will cover the battlefield, and it's damage you're expected to take. Void zones and most blast-wave like abilities, however, should be moved out of. The common phrase for this is "Don't stand in the fire." (This is why "Stood in the Fire," the achievement for getting killed by Deathwing when he flames a zone, is funny.)
Crowd control (CC). If you have a spell that can lock down a mob, and your tank or group leader wants you to use it, do it. A very patient warrior taught me to trap about 5.5 years ago now by telling me where to put traps. If you don't have Trap Launcher yet, a hunter trapping should put the Freezing trap somewhere it won't get broken and pull the target into it. Regardless of your form of crowd control, put the spell somewhere on your bars that you can get to it easily. CC-ing unexpected adds can prevent a wipe.
Communicate. If people don't know who's going to be doing what, disaster is likely. Raid markers (Skull, X, etc.) are shorthand for a lot of communication on trash - see common raid marker usage under "Crowd Control" for more. Some bosses are killed multiple ways, and if your group doesn't seem polite to a relative newcomer and you're unsure of the boss at hand, asking which strategy they intend to use may get you a better answer than asking what the strategy is. Going into things blindly can be costly.
Repair beforehand if possible, keep a supply of food and/or water on hand, and have some reagents if you still need them for anything. (Glyph of Mend Pet is highly recommended for pet happiness.) If you're going to need flasks or potions, keep them with you. Repairing beforehand is admittedly not always possible if your DPS queue is 40 minutes and you're mid-dailies when the queue pops, but at least repair before you go do your dailies so you have more to work with once you get into your dungeon.
Let the tank go first. If the tank accidentally pulls something, the healer is usually most prepared to heal her, and the tank is best able to take the damage. If you're the tank, go first. Everyone is probably waiting for you.
Stay with the group. If you go wandering off by yourself, you're likely to die. WoW is not like D&D; the dungeon encounters generally aren't random.
Protect your healer. If there's a mob on the healer and the tank hasn't gotten to it, crowd control it, or at least get it off the healer. A DPS dying is generally better than the healer dying, and without a mob on him, the healer may be able to keep you up till the tank gets to it.

Tanks
A tank's responsibilities are pacing the dungeon by the speed (fast or slow) of the pulling of mobs; pulling, unless a crowd-control or misdirect pull has been arranged; holding aggro on the mobs being fought; breaking crowd control; picking up adds. The tank may or may not mark the crowd-control targets; tanks often do it, but sometimes the group leader will, or crowd-controllers may be asked to pick a mark and mark their own.

When pulling, a tank should not outpace the healer's (or DPS's, but especially the healer's) mana. If your healer has no mana, people die. Dying slows down a run. If crowd control has been used, in many cases the tank will want to move the remaining mobs away from the controlled targets so as not to accidentally break the others early.

A tank is expected to keep the mobs being fought off the healer and DPS. Sometimes you may find that one of your DPS far outgears your tank, and you may not be able to keep everything off him. Usually the vastly over-geared person has queued with a lesser-geared friend, and he should be polite about the vast gear difference. If he is not, ignore him. The only way to improve your gear is to keep running instances, so keep running them. The gear differences are likely the reason for difficulty maintaining threat.

If you have difficulty maintaining threat against similarly-geared players, you should look for a blog or website devoted to tanking, or your class's specific tanking tree. There may be a suggested ability rotation, gem or glyph usage, or stat priority that will help.

Tanks are expected to pick up adds that get pulled (if they don't get immediately crowd controlled), and being able to will make you a more desirable tank. Some fights will have adds by design; sometimes a trash mob will be feared, or a player or pet will be feared, and you will have new frenemies when they come back. Sometimes the hunter will, ahem, accidentally shoot something.

(Note: With the removal of the toggle in Interface Options that allowed a hunter to turn off automatically switching between Auto Attack and Auto Shot, if a hunter hits an ability right when his current target dies, the game will auto-target another mob in range. Even if the hunter manages to cancel the ability he hit, Auto Shot may still go off and pull it. There is much swearing in the hunter community about this.)

Only the tank should break crowd-controlled targets for the group to kill. Druid tanks may want to hibernate something, depending on the group make up and the pull at hand.

Healers
Healers are expected to keep a party alive. This doesn't mean that every death is the healer's fault, per se; tanks and DPS should do what they can to keep themselves alive, as well. Sometimes something happens (feared out of range, player won't get out of a damaging AOE) that there's nothing a healer could do to save you. It does mean that a tank or DPS should not be casting healing spells on themselves most of the time, however.

Healers may be expected to crowd control, generally for a pull rather than mid-fight. Healers are also generally expected to remove whatever curses, diseases, poisons, or magic debuffs they can. Being able to effectively dispel while healing will make you a more sought-after healer.

A healer should do what he can to manage his own aggro, either via Fade or Wind Shear, or whatever druids and paladins can do to keep their threat low if needed. Usually threat isn't a problem for healers, but if your tank is undergeared (or rather, you outgear her) or inexperienced, she may need all the help she can get.

Healing takes some practice, and if you're just starting out, it's good to remember that your #1 healing priority is the tank. You are #2, unless you're actively taking damage, and DPS are #3, 4, and 5. (If you want get detailed, you can prioritize the DPS by how much damage they're doing, if their form of CC is especially important, etc.) Basically, if either you or the tank die, the party probably will too. If one of the DPS dies, the fight will probably just be longer. There is a tipping point - if you and the tank are the only ones left, it may be impossible to kill the boss before you run out of mana. Sometimes recognizing futility and dying is a faster road to success than perservering through the current attempt. (I'm looking at you, 20-minute Heigen kill.)

You'll lose some people just starting out as a healer - your gear probably won't have as much haste, crit, or spellpower (Intellect) as you would like, so you'll likely have some DPS die to AOE in order for you to keep a tank or yourself up. If you're having trouble still as your gear progresses, there are quite a lot of healing blogs and sites that will be able to recommend healing strategies, addons, macros, glyphs, and so forth.

Damage (DPS)
DPS are expected to kill mobs, crowd control, and avoid taking damage as much as possible.

Most DPS classes have a way to reduce their threat in some way. (The plate wearing hybrids are the main exceptions to this, and I think Boomkin may also lack a threat drop.) Hunters can feign, priests fade, rogues vanish or feint, shamans wind shear, mages ice block, warlocks soul shatter, cat druids cower. Find your class's spell and put it on your bars somewhere you can get it while panicking. (Yes, while panicking, because OH GOD THEY'RE ALL RUNNING AT ME is often panic inducing.) It's good to use your threat-drop before the mobs actually start running at you.

When DPSing, there are two general methods of targeting: focus fire or area of effect (AOE). When focus-firing, target the Skull-marked mob if there is one, or target the tank's target if there isn't. (Some tanks may say, rather than marking, "Kill X," but not necessarily target it after initial threat gain; focus what the tank asked for.) Focus fire, where the three DPS in the group all hit the same mob, should be your default method of targeting in most groups. Some instances or trash packs of mobs are easier to kill if you just hit them all at once, in which case you can simply use AOE spells. (Many Wrath-content instances are like this.) If you don't have a real AOE, use focus fire methods of targeting. Regardless of what targeting method you're using, don't break a crowd-controlled mob free. If a crowd-controlled mob is wandering among the other mobs of the pull, focus fire rather than AOE-ing.

DPS should debuff mobs in any way they can. This is especially true on bosses, but some trash pulls also see noticeable benefit. Whether the debuff reduces the mob's armor, spell resistance, ability to hit, or whatever, using the tools you have will make the fight that much easier.

DPS with dispel abilities (generally casters) should do what they can to remove curses, poisons, disease, and magic debuffs, at least from themselves, and from others, especially the tank, if the healer can't (either due to class limitations or because he needs all his global cooldowns just for healing).

Usually DPS who are hybrid casters should not be healing. There are some boss fights that may benefit from a DPS switching to heals during a certain period of AOE damage, but most fights need a certain minimum level of damage from all the DPS in order for the boss to die before your healer is mana-starved. Avoid taking damage in the first place if at all possible, instead.

Similarly, even if your class can tank, if you didn't sign up to tank the instance, don't. If you signed up as DPS, damage is your job. If the tank dies, that's when it's okay to switch over, though if you're in tank gear and spec, you're doing bad DPS (usually), so you shouldn't keep it on "just in case." Use a DPS spec and wear any DPS gear you've got. If you have an ability that does a lot of damage but also causes high threat, avoid using it. (Searing Pain specifically comes to mind; I believe Ret pallies also have an ability that's both a taunt and a hard hit.)

Unless the tank asks you to, don't pull "for" them. It's usually annoying to the tank, who may be relying on one of her opening pull abilities for the snap threat to keep the mobs off you. It's especially annoying to the whole party if you and the tank pull different groups.

Kiting is something of a forgotten art, but once upon a time, hunters especially were often called upon to kite mobs. The first classic kiting fight was the last boss in Upper Blackrock Spire, General Drakkisath, a 10-man, often-pugged raid. The two tanks would pick up Drakk's two adds, and the hunter would grab the General and run, heading out over a bridge and back through the halls, often to the Beast's room, but you could take him all the way to Rend's room if you were good before he would automatically start running back. Later fights (the first boss in Blackwing Lair, Gruth in Naxxramas, et al) required some kind of kiting as well. If you are called upon to kite, for whatever reason, just remember: don't fall off the bridge. (You land in Lower Blackrock Spire, among the orc camps on the lowest level. >.> Ahem.) Use any slowing abilities you have and run or strafe; don't back up. Earthbind totems, Ice traps, Concussive Shot, Wing Clip, Hamstring, Frost Nova - all of them can make kiting more feasible. Good kiting can save a party from a wipe after a tank dies, so it's still worthwhile to learn.

Often times a DPS's weakest spot isn't his ability to survive, crowd control, or manage his pet, but his actual damage output. At that point one is probably best served by looking for a blog or website that focuses on your class or spec and looking at talents, rotations, glyphs, gems, and so forth and seeing if you have a bad habit, or lack a good one, that's making a noticeable difference in your damage.

Pets

Several classes, mostly DPS, have pets. There are a variety of pet etiquette points for groups that aren't necessarily obvious to a solo player.

Remember to turn off your pet's threat/taunt ability. For hunters, regardless of the variety of pet, this is Growl. If a moving gold border is visible on the icon, the ability's autocast is turned on. To turn off the autocast, right click on it. If you're using a tenacity pet for whatever reason (leveling it, it has a buff you want, etc.), you will probably also want to turn off Taunt and Thunderstomp if you have them talented. Charge is more optional, but the root component can be annoying for tanks, so you may want to turn it off, as well.

If you're using a Tenacity pet regularly in instances for some reason, you can actually make macros to turn the abilities on and off. The commands are basically just /petautocastoff and /petautocaston . So you can use a macro that looks like:

/petautocastoff Growl
/petautocastoff Taunt
/petautocastoff Thunderstomp
/petautocastoff Charge

And similarly make one to turn them all back on while you're soloing. This was more useful, really, prior to having multiple stable slots to tote around, but if you take your bear or turtle everywhere, they may be helpful to have still. The commands should work for any pet that gets an action bar.

It's generally bad form to have your pet on Aggressive in an instance. Defensive used to be a no-no, but it is the default de jour. Passive is always fine if you're worried about your pet wandering off and will remember to send it to attack.

One of the most common pet "oops" moments comes when the party jumps down off something. The classic example was taking the shortcut in Upper Blackrock Spire and jumping into Rend's arena from the balcony, rather than coming through two additional trash packs in the hallway. A pet would not jump, and it would run around and bring those two packs with it. If you have to jump off anything, especially if you're unsure which way your pet would go, dismiss it first. Similarly, pets sometimes have trouble with elevators or other movement mechanics (the whirlwinds in the Lost City come to mind). Dismissing them will let you resummon on the other side, rather than having them stuck out of the fight.

If you have multiple pets available to you, consider switching them out for a buff or ability that will make a fight easier, even if it's a minor DPS decrease. In Molten Core, a warlock's Felhound could be a huge help with Baron Geddon's mana burn, since it would dispel debuffs. Some hunter pets offer buffs now that can affect an entire party or raid. If, like me, you find yourself running with three shamans, it might be worth swapping your cat for another pet, since one of them will probably be dropping a totem that provides strength and agility. (Probably not your wolf, though, if you have an elemental shaman, since elemental oath will provide the crit buff.)

Don't expect your party's healer to heal your pet. Mend pet was made a HoT for a reason. Your pet will probably get a lot of splash AOE healing, and its ability to reduce about 90% of the AOE damage it would take will keep it from getting killed too often.

Crowd Control

Crowd control (CC) is used to make a large pull easier by incapacitating some of the mobs until the party is ready to deal with them. If there are unexpected adds of a type you can crowd control, you probably should. If the tank wants to pick it up immediately, she will.

Good crowd control can make or break a group. Some tiers of content were made with the use of crowd control in mind. (See especially level 60-70 dungeons and levely 80+ dungeons.)

Regardless of who does the crowd control marking, there are a few common conventions:

Skull - first kill target; not crowd controlled
Red X - second kill target; not crowd controlled
Blue Square - hunter trap
Moon - mage sheep
Orange Circle or Yellow Star - usually rogue sap
Purple Diamond or Green Triangle - usually shaman hex or banish (elementals)

I haven't run with a warlock who needed to seduce/banish in so long, I don't know what the mark for them is, but we usually used the same as for the shaman. If you don't have enough of the 'right' marks for the party, just clarify at the start whose mark is what. Mages and hunters especially are used to squares and moons, however.

Not everyone can crowd-control everything. Some mobs, additionally, may be immune to one or more forms their type is normally susceptible to. (Only long-duration, at-the-pull crowd controls are listed here; there are things like Gouge, Frost Nova, etc. that are short-duration, in-combat control methods that may help situationally, but aren't set up using raid marks prior to a fight.)

Mage - Sheep (Polymorph) - Humanoids and Beasts (and Critters, but, you know...)
Rogue - Sap - Humanoids, Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin
Hunter - Freezing Trap - Most things
Shaman - Hex - Humanoids and Beasts
Shaman - Banish (Bind Elemental) - Elementals
Druid - Cyclone - Damn near everything
Druid - Sleep (Hibernate) - Beasts and Dragonkin
Warlock - Seduce (Seduction) - Humanoids
Warlock - Banish - Demons and Elementals
Priest - Mind Control - Humanoids
Priest - Shackle Undead - Undead
Paladin - Repentance - Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids, Undead

Dispelling/Decursing

Taking harmful spells off of party members is often thought of as a healer's job, but several classes, healers or not, can do so. Not every class that can remove one can necessarily remove another, and who can dispel what changed with Cataclysm.

Priests - Magic, Disease
Mages - Curse
Shaman - Curse, Magic (resto talented)
Druid - Poison, Curse, Magic (resto talented)
Paladin - Poison, Disease, Magic (holy talented)

Loot Etiquette

Loot etiquette is something that varies most widely server to server; whether or not it is considered polite to need or greed certain BOEs, disenchanting, crafting materials, etc. is something best discussed beforehand if there are issues. Regarding boss loot, however, there are some more widely accepted points of etiquette.

If you queue for a particular role, that is considered your "main spec" for that instance. If you normally tank or heal, but queue as DPS, it is generally considered rude to roll "need" against the person actually tanking or healing the instance for items of that spec. Similarly, if you are tanking or healing, it is rude to roll "need" against the DPS in the party for a DPS item.

This does not mean you can't roll need on something - it's better gear is used rather than sharded. If it's not for your active spec, however, ask first. If no one else needs it, it is perfectly acceptable to roll "need." Someone's chance at a shard does not have priority over a piece you will use in your other spec.

Greeding on a piece is generally always acceptable, unless an arrangement is made at the beginning of the instance for some purpose. It is straightforward - you don't need the piece, but may want it for cash or enchanting materials. This is the point of need and greed, and it should broach no arguments.

Skinning, herbalism, and mining in an instance are best arranged either at the beginning or when the first gatherable object is encountered. Gatherers rolling on ore nodes, herbs to pick, or corpses to skin, generally alternating thereafter, is a common arrangement. If you are an enchanter, rolling "need" to disenchant something is extremely impolite, and will likely get you vote-kicked or /ignored. Leveling your professions is often seen as "greed" rather than "need."

Addons

If you're playing solo, you probably don't need a lot of addons, unless you like to customize your interface. There are a variety of addons that can make your life easier in group play, however. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other addons which can, in some way, make your WoW life easier, or at least your interface prettier, but they are mostly a matter taste.

Threat meters
WoW has built in threat warnings now, but if you prefer a compact little box with bars representing your relative threat, there are two widely used ones. Omen is one of the oldest and widely used threat meters. Skada, which is also a damage meter, has a threat meter function, as well.

Damage meters
Damage meters can be a blessing or a curse, depending if the DPS are watching them instead of their threat, but they can be useful for finding out how you're doing so far as DPS, dispels, overhealing, threat generation, and a variety of other data, depending on which on you're using. Two common ones are Recount and Skada. Skada is more lightweight and modular; Recount gives you pie charts if you want them. (Mmm, pie...)

Boss mods
Bosses have generally always done their special moves on predictable cooldowns, but there was not always an emote or warning associated with them provided by the game. (Now there usually is.) Deadly Boss Mods and Bigwigs are two of the more common boss mods, which will give you timers for boss ability cooldowns, alerts about events in the fight, and generally help you notice what's going on without you having to watch your chat box for a boss emote. Most are customizable, and you can choose which abilities and bosses you are notified about.

Healing addons
There are several addons which can help you heal in a group, either by changing your party or raid layout, providing pre-written macros for you to put on your bars, or creating special ability bars. Among the most popular are Healbot, Vuhdo, and Grid, often in combination with Clique. Decursive is still popular for dispelling.

Voice Chat

Voice chat can make a run easier mostly by smoothing communication, but if social anxiety is a problem for you, it could be a nightmare. If your group is using Ventrilo or Teamspeak or Mumble but you're not comfortable talking, don't. As someone who has a serious phone phobia, I recommend baby steps. Even if you never get to the point of being comfortable talking, you may be able to get comfortable with listening in. This can be helpful if strategy is getting relayed verbally, but not always entirely transcripting into party chat. Many PUGs don't bother with voice chat, either because it's unavailable, or because waiting for all members to install software or configure to connect to a server is inconvenient.

The common voice chat options are Ventrilo, Teamspeak, and Mumble, and there is built-in voice chat for WoW, although its quality is at times questionable. Skype is probably also an option, but I've not seen it commonly used.

General Resources:

Web sites:

WoW Insider - general WoW news, plus class and spec columns, often with links to other resources.
Elitist Jerks - theory crafting for all classes and specs.
WoWwiki macros - Macros, including links to the class macro pages.
Tank Spot - for boss fight strategies and other WoW information.
WoWhead - item, mob, and ability database, as well as having write-ups for many bosses and a blog for WoW news.
Curse and WoW Ace - common addon sites. CT Mod and Deadly Boss Mods are specific addon bundles, but self-host.

Suggested Google searches: (Replace with the specific one you need; words separated by | you pick one of.)

rotation|glyphs|gems|macros
tank|heal blog wow|

Examples: hunter marksman rotation; tank blog warrior

Of /castsequences and haste

2011-01-10T11:34:00.003-05:00

So, due to my own mediocrity, I am the user of a /castsequence macro. During most of Wrath, with our 1.5 second global cooldown, there was only so much wiggle room in the rotation - you could do one Chimera, one Aimed, and a combination of one Arcane and two to four Steady Shots, depending on your Armor Penetration, talents, and haste.

In Cataclysm, our GCD has dropped to 1 second. One second, with instant-cast, no cooldown but the global cooldown Arcane Shots. Steady Shot still has a base cast time of 2 seconds. Chimera Shot's cooldown is still 10 seconds (since I don't glyph it).

Our goal is four Steady Shots to every Chimera Shot. Why? Improved Steady Shot. We want these four in bundles of two. With 1 second of the 10 second rotation given to Chimera itself (GCD), a maximum of 8 seconds will go to the four Steady Shots. With no haste, that gives you time for one Arcane Shot, preferably between the bundles. When haste pushes your Steady Shot cast down, however, you're looking at extra time in your rotation, and face it - you're probably carrying extra focus. Add in Rapid Fire and your Imp. Steady Shot haste and you're probably rolling in focus and GCD time.

This was what I noticed - my focus bar was always too full. My Steady Shot cast is down to 1.54 seconds - that's about an extra two seconds in my rotation, which is two extra Arcane Shots. Obsessively watching focus consumption in a heroic (the only of two heroics I have successfully completed) got me killed on Anraphet, so it probably wasn't the best idea. I had been popping an extra Steady Shot onto the end of my rotation when my haste procs were up, waiting for Chimera to cool down, but more focus doesn't do me any good. Arcane is a focus dump for a reason.

So! The /castsequence now looks like:

/castsequence Chimera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

With my usual lines for the engineering tinkers, tooltip, error clearing, and such, of course.

I couldn't leave it the way it was and manually add the Arcanes - I really want to be hitting two Steadies before my next Chimera to assure I have the focus for it. The flexibility comes between the Steady bundles. There's still enough room in this for Aimed procs without losing Serpent Sting, although the shorter Serpent Sting duration due to the glyph change does make things a little tighter.

I would say that my DPS did edge up afterwards, but that heroic was really not a good run to judge one's DPS on.

As haste probably continues to edge upwards, additional Arcane Shots will, at some point, be untenable to add - three in a row seems to be about the limit for the focus pool following a pair of Steadies. Further shots added to the rotation will probably be Steadies, depending how the haste goes.

Unexpected delights

2011-01-07T10:36:00.008-05:00

Hm... I was especially emo yesterday, no? Today, something more positively reflective!

With the change to focus, et al, that hunters underwent, quite a few changes didn't become apparent until I'd started playing a while with them. Many of these were awesome.

You can Multi-Shot while moving! For the longest time, Multi-Shot had a built in cast time of .5 seconds, which meant you had to stand still for it. Now you can spam the button as long as you have focus while desperately backing up and hoping that the pet-targeted Misdirect you just cast will eventually stick one or more of the bazillion mobs you're trying to get at range with back on your bear/crab/etc. Multi-Shot is one of my long-time favorite skills, and I was including it in my regular rotation in Burning Crusade before an Arcane Shot/Multi-Shot/Steady Shot rotation was de rigueur. There is nothing quite so satisfying as being the unorthodox player whose methods suddenly become, for your spec, the orthodoxy. True, enchanting my 2-handed weapons for Int, or getting +mana librams on my T1 (more mana = less feigning to drink mid-boss), never caught on, but leveling in "of the Falcon" (agility/intellect) gear was more appreciated once the Int -> Attack Power talent went in. Of course, those days are gone.

That green and orange cat in Felwood is tameable! No, seriously! I've named him Octavian, and he's currently my DPS pet in 5-man's just because the color scheme is so hilarious. I need to team him up with a troll feral druid for something...

Glyph of Misdirect is amazing. I mentioned this in my macro post a couple weeks ago - if you're soloing without Glyph of Misdirect, you're missing out on the awesomeness of sending your pet into a pack of a gazillion mobs, dropping Mend Pet on it, and alternately spamming Misdirect and Multi-Shot. If you are like me, you will forget the first two Misdirects and end up in the scenario described under the Multi-Shot entry above.

Trap Launcher is surprisingly fun, if still clunky to use. I have not yet developed good macros for making Trap Launcher more stream-lined, but being able to toss an Explosive Trap on a tank for non-elite adds, or to throw my Snake Trap over at an add on a healer to hopefully pull the aggro off onto the snakes, is really handy. I wish Trap Launcher + Freezing Trap were more useful for something besides crowd-controlled pulling, but it seems like every loose add I want to trap is bleeding or poisoned or burning or in the throes of agony from a curse. Hence the substitution of snakes for adds on the healers.

Camouflage is quite fun, although I've yet to use it for its supposed strength, PVP. Mostly I pop it on in 5-man's as we're moving towards or around groups to avoid my huge cow ass pulling something. (I had problems with that in Nexus for a long time. >.>) The additional bonus of cloaking my pet is great if I don't have the cat out.

The fox pet dances! I got a Black Fox a couple weeks ago (from Redridge) and named him Hawkins. If you don't get that joke, I am disappointed in your movie tastes. "Play" + "Move To" was highlighted by someone else, but for especial hilarity, go to Thunder Bluff and dance your fox back and forth across the pond. I was giggling way too much.

Scatter Shot is a baseline skill! This wasn't a surprise, but despite having it sitting there on my bars, I had mostly forgotten about it until I went to Tol Barad the other day (successful defense, woo!) and oh, God, Silencing is still on cooldown there it was! It was a favored shot while leveling, and having it around again is great. Hawkeye, the other talent Survival stole from Marksman years ago, also sort of went baseline - most of the damaging hunter shots have longer range, although Multi-Shot, Silencing Shot, and Tranquilizing Shot still seem to have the old base range, which means on fights you're going to need them, you have to make sure to move up enough for them. Basically, the two formerly Markman talents that made me put points in Survival in Burning Crusade and Wrath are now mine for free.

Hey, I can get Improved Mend Pet! I don't know if I'll keep it when I put together a raiding spec (and my devilsaur and worm are doomed to a life in the stables), but it's been coveted for a good four years, so it's definitely staying in my soloing spec.

A non-huntery unexpected delight were the quests in Uldum. I love Vashj'ir - it's gorgeous, and the ecological details were greatly appreciated. The ultra-violet canyon is beautiful, and for some reason the secluded emptiness of the Abandoned Reef makes it one of my favorite places. (It is also where Ghostcrawler roams - beware the Nerfbat.) But Uldum - it took a little bit to get into, but as soon as I ran into Harrison Jones, the quest chain just skyrocketed in its level of awesomeness. The end of the chain (spoiler) was unexpected but had me laughing. The reworked Silverpine and Hillsbrad are also amazing for their quests - Siliverpine for the drama, Hillsbrad for the comedy.

There are always disappointments with changes (Aimed Shot's more or less neutering is one of them - if it's going to be only for opening or a proc, at least make it hit hard enough for it to be special - it's our friggin' specialization skill), but I am enjoying most of the changes.

Notes on a Guild and my (often ham-fisted) leadership thereof

2011-01-06T11:55:00.006-05:00

I've been with my guild 5 of its 6 years (we turned 6 on Christmas); an officer for 4.5 years; GM for 1.3 years.

I don't come to leadership naturally (I make decisions slowly - or rather, I admit my decisions slowly), so I don't think I've done the best job of it. On the other hand, we're still here, so I haven't entirely botched it yet.

Problems I've generally handled badly:

Intra-officer conflict. It tends to happen in whispers and private messages, so I haven't really found out about it until someone is on the verge of quitting. This is very frustrating, and officers who are all buddy-buddy aren't necessarily the best thing in a guild of 150 people. I don't expect everyone to be best friends, but we all have common goals, and I'd think we could all be at least collegial about it. On top of it, it's very difficult for me to watch two people I like argue. Sometimes there are no ready or obvious solutions. (Sometimes the solution is so foreign to your mindset that it doesn't occur to you that it was obvious until about 6 months too late.)
Personality conflicts. These tend to show up blatantly in guild chat, but again, we're a large guild, and they're going to happen. They can be difficult to deal with when, say, the humor is a matter of taste, and someone refuses to believe that while the subject probably shouldn't be in guild chat, it's not a reason to boot someone. (Some things are just flat out, though - racial/ethnic slurs, casual use of 'gay' or 'rape' - not everything is a matter of taste.) I generally handle them badly mostly because I'm not easily offended. (I am sometimes disappointed in how people react to being offended, but it's their loss.)
Dealing with the trigger points I do have. There are some things that will set me off. They're generally narrow, specific, and involve raiding. If someone's in the guild, I'm of the opinion that they have equal access to all our amenities (at least on their mains; alts have different privileges so as not to edge out other people's mains). I mean, hell, that's written into our charter. If someone is capable of the content, I think they should be eligible for our raids. Sometimes the metrics for determining "capable" seem arbitrary or capricious. (16 hit rating gem versus 20 hit rating gem, when you only need 12 more hit rating (prior to reforging existing), but our raid requirements would have made you buy the epic. That's a "WTF?" moment for me.) So suggestions of set raiding teams or other methods that would pare our raiding pool of ~45 people down to ~15 irritate me, and I don't always manage to be civil about it.

Things my guild did well in Wrath while I mostly stood by and organized the bank:

Raid progression. Oh. My. God. We got past the first tier of Wrath raiding. In Vanilla WoW, we raided Molten Core, Ahn'Qiraj 20, and Zul'Gurub. We took shots at the first boss in Blackwing Lair, but we never got anywhere. In Burning Crusade, we cleared Karazhan and Zul'Aman, and with the lovely Daughters of the Horde, took on Gruul and Magtheridon. Later we managed to kill the Lurker Below and Hydross, as well. That was the extent of our progression, however. In Wrath, we killed everything, most of it on both 10 and 25. (What's missing on 25: Thorim, Freya, Mimiron, Vezax, Yogg-Saron, and Algalon from Uldamon; Sindragosa and the Lich King from Icecrown Citadel; and Halion from the Ruby Sanctum.) We didn't do the hard modes for everything, but some were done.
Kept calm and carried on. Even when raid leaders or officers or guild members were leaving (it wasn't often, but it did happen), the guild kept going. Someone always stepped up to help out. Raids happened, bosses died, and we eventually saw the Lich King die. Heroic dungeon drakes were obtained. Alliance faction leaders were slain. Old raids and reputations incomplete were organized and finished.

Cataclysm brings some logistical problems to our raiding - specifically, the 10 vs. 25 debate in that the loot is the same; and single-boss lockouts regardless of raid size, so that if you go to a raid Tuesday, you can't help with the guild's scheduled raid of the other size Thursday. Given what I've seen out of the guild in five years, this is mostly a headache for the raid schedulers, and not the end of the world. I do have constant concern about burnout for those who organize and run our raids; we lost four officers in Wrath after I became GM, and we have, besides me, four left. Only one of those actively works on raid organization, and we have one designated official raid leader outside the officer corps. I think there is room for growth there, but it's unlikely I'll know who will fill those shoes, or even if there are indeed some sitting empty, until we've gotten back into raiding.

There are aspects of Cataclysm I'm curious to see how they work out - rated battlegrounds, later guild levels, longer-term guild achievements, and so forth. Being as old as we are, it's a little bit of an affront that we have to do the guild leveling from the beginning, but really, it'll be done in a couple months, and the real benefit will be for the long haul. Of the large Vanilla Horde guilds on Bronzebeard, we are one of the last handful remaining. Going into the next expansion, probably two years down the road, I would guess there may very well be another 5 guild levels, which we will be poised to start as soon as it launches. Some people, I suppose, would be surprised by an online gaming social group lasting so long, but really, it's no different than a bridge club meeting for years. We're just location-independent.

So... Lessons I learned from...

5 years as a Pirate: Pirates are awesome! I play WoW with some of the best people out there. Even though I have neurotic fits and normally push me away from online social groups after about a year, somehow this group has managed to get around that.
4.5 years as an officer among Pirates: There's always someone who can step in to help, even if you haven't realized it yet. The vast majority of the people who get into the guild are awesome, and the bad apples either disappear quickly on their own or find that they can't really be a bad apple if they want to stay a Pirate.
1.3 years as the guild master of Pirates: I'm not used to overseeing other people with authority. Everyone has different standards for other people, and mine are stricter than some's and laxer than others'. Still learning how to balance that. I think, overall, I've learned that some people I like are going to disappoint me. I won't babysit adults; I will help mediate problems, but people have to let me know there's a problem first.

I decided a while back, when we were going through one of those "where's our raiding going" rough patches, that the one thing I would be stubborn about is that I'm not going to get bullied out of my own guild. (One person in particular tried it.) There are very few points of policy that I'm adamant about; the rest don't affect the flavor we've developed. I could probably better communicate which are the "this is how we are" things and which are the "just my opinion, but I don't really care which way we decide, because it'll all work out in the end" things. There are quite a few of the latter. For the most part, the guild works, and my biggest goal is to not break that.

Oh, God, I've been writing on this too long; I'm starting to edit for grammar and style. Enough navel gazing for now. ;)

Current Hunter Macros

2010-12-07T11:01:00.003-05:00

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

2010-12-07T10:48:00.005-05:00

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!)

New Familiar Friends

2010-12-03T10:41:00.006-05:00

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.

Baby hunter, again

2010-11-26T12:50:00.002-05:00

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.

Yogg +1

2010-11-17T20:00:00.004-05:00

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.

Worgen hunter

2010-10-24T20:40:00.002-04:00

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!!

2010-10-24T20:16:00.003-04:00

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.)

More Coherent Beta Stuff

2010-10-03T19:31:00.002-04:00

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

2010-10-03T19:30:00.001-04:00

(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

2010-10-03T00:19:00.001-04:00

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!

This sparked much excited cackling.

2010-09-26T00:47:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-26T00:44:00.005-04:00

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.

Undergeared, sure

2010-09-05T02:31:00.002-04:00

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

2010-09-05T02:27:00.004-04:00

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.

Macros

2010-08-21T21:18:00.004-04:00

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.

2010-08-21T17:35:00.006-04:00

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.

How crazy am I?

2010-07-19T00:29:00.002-04:00

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.

grumble

2010-07-07T19:12:00.002-04:00

*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.)

Cataclysm stuffs! Woo!

2010-07-02T00:22:00.003-04:00

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...

2010-07-02T00:14:00.005-04:00

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.

Screenshots or it doesn't count (Halion)

2010-06-30T23:58:00.001-04:00

Yeah, my monitor is huge, heh.

Halion, the Twilight Destroyer

2010-06-30T13:48:00.002-04:00

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.

June, argh

2010-06-24T10:36:00.006-04:00

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.

I am not a Kingslayer...

2010-05-17T11:42:00.002-04:00

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.

Whee! Cataclym Hunter Preview

2010-04-09T13:36:00.005-04:00

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...

2010-04-09T10:43:00.002-04:00

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).

Five years, and the tune never changes

2010-04-06T14:36:00.001-04:00

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.

Screenshots or it doesn't count

2010-03-25T19:46:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-25T15:53:00.012-04:00

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.)

Moving on

2010-03-19T11:07:00.002-04:00

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.

Oh! And...

2010-02-22T15:32:00.003-05:00

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...

2010-02-22T15:18:00.004-05:00

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.

Room to Run

2010-02-03T19:55:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-03T19:35:00.002-05:00

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.

Attrition

2010-01-23T13:40:00.003-05:00

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.

Still Groping Around in the Dark

2010-01-14T15:13:00.002-05:00

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.

I have a lovely husband.

2009-11-03T00:30:00.004-05:00

Proof:

He went into AQ40 with me tonight so we could take out the 4-packs and get me the last 3 bug mounts. The green one was #100. :)

Thanks to Sawyer for pointing out to me last night that the trash is soloable. (Though I needed a second person to do the multi-pulls.)

For the complete collection, check me out at Warcraft Mounts.

The Betrayer and the Sun King

2009-11-02T09:41:00.003-05:00

Yes, I totally stole the blog title from an Echoes of War track. It's totally relevant, though - go check out my five most recent achievements.

Friday night I came home and got like, three whispers asking me if I wanted in on a Kil'Jaeden kill in Sunwell. (M'uru was apparently still a bitch, and I am to be glad I missed it.) I was amused to see Velen show up at the end - we've been killing him on a weekly basis for a month now.

So Sunday, after a fizzled attempted at killing the king in Ironforge (I think after a month they're finally on to us, and we were running light), we headed to the Black Temple to see Illidan. We apparently skipped two phases. (The raid leader kept saying about how he's going to transform into a big demon - no, no... we went straight from flaming sword elementals to ohai, Maiev!)

We had planned to just run Black Temple, but someone mentioned Hyjal, so we headed there next. (Port to Dalaran -> portal to Caverns of Time. Nice and fast.) Hyjal... was not fast. Stupid undead waves. /tap

Ulduar-25 is scheduled for Sunday nights, but we were on a roll, and the vote was to do Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. We hit up Lady Vashj first - the fight would have gone faster if we didn't have to wait for orbs to drop. Then we fished up the Lurker Below for good measure and trucked ourselves over to Netherstorm.

Tempest Keep's trash was much less painful than I remembered from our past forays in there. There was a brief pause to ooo and aah at A'lar, and then we headed up to Kael'thas's room. The fight wasn't bad - we burned the advisers so fast we had to stop and wait for the speech timer to catch up. However, burning through the mind control phase too quickly apparently confused Kael a bit much, and he went all glowy from the waist up and got... stuck. We tried having the people he had "aggro" on die (yay pallies with Divine Intervention), but that didn't help, so we all hearthed, and the pallies (who popped back conveniently at the graveyard by the summoning stone) summoned us back so we could try again.

This time we followed the old Onyxia video - "DPS really ******* slowly" - and things went off fine, and he switched phases smoothly. No Ashes, though. We hit up A'lar on the way out for good measure.

So, that's another achievement done (Outland Raider) that I never expected to get done.

The leveling guide

2009-10-28T19:59:00.005-04:00

The leveling guide, such as it is, is done!

Now, the posts in order of appearance, rather than the reverse-chronological that the tag gives you:

Cataclysm will change so much with the switch to Focus, but until then, hopefully it's at least an okay overview of what to expect leveling as a Marksman hunter.

Marksman 1-80: Level 80

2009-10-28T19:38:00.004-04:00

Level 80

Welcome to level 80!

At level 80, I put the last talent point into Combat Experience, for that little stat boost. You also get a new major glyph; I generally go with Trueshot Aura, since this is a soloing/PVP build, and the aura isn't going to be overwritten.

Skills, Level 80:

80: Aimed Shot (Rank 9), Aspect of the Dragonhawk (Rank 2), Call Stabled Pet, Freezing Arrow (Rank 1), Kill Shot (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 10), Mongoose Bite (Rank 6), Multi-Shot (Rank 8), Volley (Rank 6)

You get a bunch of new ranks at 80, plus two new skills. One is Call Stable Pet. Right now it's on a 30 minute cooldown, but that's getting shortened to 5 in the 3.3 patch. It lets you swap pets without going to a stable master. I use it when I switch between my soloing and group specs, to go from my bear to my wolf, and also in Trial of the Crusader to pull out my hyena (for the hamstring) for the Faction Champions.

Your other new level 80 skill is Freezing Arrow. This lets you drop a Freezing Trap at ranged, which is good for pulling with a trap. (We were using it with some success on our Thorim-25 attempts, and with another Hunter, we duoed a couple level 70 heroics using simultaneous ranged traps.) It shares a cooldown with the other Ice traps.

At this point, if you're interested in 5-mans or raids, your spec isn't terrible, but isn't optimal; this is why I developed a raiding spec. It has evolved over time, depending on hit rating from gear and whether or not I was likely to have Replenishment.

If you want a nice pre-raiding ranged weapon, there are several options. The crossbow from Heroic Utgarde Keep is popular; Loken in the Halls of Lightning drops a nice gun; engineers can make you a nicer gun. There are other options - the Argent Tournament, Heroic Culling of Stratholme, Heroic Old Kingdom.

For other level 80 pre-raiding gear, there are shoulders and a good two-hander from the Ebon Blade, a head enchant from the Ebon Blade, a breastplate and a cloak from the Argent Crusade, good pants in both Heroic Halls of Lightning and Heroic Azjol-Nerub, a good BoE belt (Tasseled Lanterns), the amazingly long-lasting Eaglebane Bracers, good boots off Keristrazsa in Heroic Nexus, great gloves off Cyanigosa in Heroic Violet Hold, a good badge trinket (Mirror of Truth), a nice haste-proc trinket in Heroic Utgarde Pinacle, and various nice rings and necks. Assuming you don't go straight to buying stuff with Conquest Badges and pick up some tier 8.5 for the very nice 2-piece bonus.

You might want to pick up a wolf for groups if you haven't yet. No matter how much you love your soloing pet, people you PUG with who know anything about hunters will go, "Hm..." if you have something besides a wolf or maybe a cat.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 71-79

2009-10-28T19:33:00.002-04:00

Levels 71-79

Talents in the 70s are more Marksman ones, leading up to getting Chimera Shot at 78. Improved Stings are great for it, and the bleed from Piercing Shot is a nice damage boost. (It'll keep rogues from restealthing for the duration, too.)

Skills, Levels 71-79:

71: Explosive Trap (Rank 5), Kill Shot (Rank 1), Raptor Strike (Rank 10), Steady Shot (Rank 3)
72: Immolation Trap (Rank 7)
73: Arcane Shot (Rank 10), Serpent Sting (Rank 11)
74: Aspect of the Dragonhawk (Rank 1), Mend Pet (Rank 9), Multi-Shot (Rank 7), Volley (Rank 5)
75: Aimed Shot (Rank 8), Kill Shot (Rank 2), Master's Call
76: Aspect of the Wild (Rank 4), Hunter's Mark (Rank 5)
77: Explosive Trap (Rank 6), Raptor Strike (Rank 11), Steady Shot (Rank 4)
78: Immolation Trap (Rank 8)
79: Arcane Shot (Rank 11), Serpent Sting (Rank 12)

There's a lot of new ranks through the 70s, and you also get three new skills, on top of Chimera Shot from talents.

At 71, you get Kill Shot. This is sort of a ranged execute, usable when the target is under 20% health, with a longer range than other shots (for picking off runners). It has a 15 second cooldown, which can be reduced with a glyph. It hits hard and crits harder. (I've seen 12-13k on the Headless Horseman's head over the past couple weeks, and with damage boosts or on vulnerable bosses, you can get crazy numbers.) I wasn't initially sold on it for leveling until it saved my behind against an elite on a group quest in the Borean Tundra that I was trying to solo.

The next new skill you get in the 70s is Aspect of the Dragonhawk. It combines Apsect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Monkey, but alas, did not get Aspect of the Monkeyhawk (or Aspect of the Flying Monkeys of Doom) as its name. However, if you want to talk about survivability against multiple pulls or adds, it really helps. (I dodged Onyxia a couple weeks ago when the tank dropped at the start of phase three during a messy run. It was awesome. I immediately Feigned.)

You also pick up Master's Call at level 75. This will make your pet break you or someone else out of a snare. Although primarily a PVP skill, there are some boss fights where this can be helpful. (Hodir comes to mind.)

At 78 you should have enough points in Marksman to pick up Chimera Shot. This is a hard hitting shot that will hit harder if you have Serpent Sting up, possibly disarm your target if you have Scorpid Sting up, or give you a shot of mana if you have Viper Sting up. It has a 10 second cooldown which can be shaved slightly with a glyph.

Chimera Shot is the shot to which I have most other stuff macroed. I don't have any On Use: trinkets, or those could be included, as well.

#showtooltip
/cast Chimera Shot
/use
/cast Silencing Shot
/cast Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

Ranged weapons are plentiful throughout Northrend, though they seem to favor guns. Or at least, as an engineer able to make Mammoth Cutters, I favored guns.

Marksman 1-80: Level 70

2009-10-28T19:28:00.002-04:00

Level 70

By level 70, we've invested enough points in Marksman to pick up Silencing Shot; you get your third minor glyph, as well, so you can get the Revive Pet one.

Skills, Level 70:

70: Aimed Shot (Rank 7), Misdirection, Mongoose Bite (Rank 5)

Not a lot of new ranks at 70. Silencing Shot, from talents, is both a silence and a real interrupt now, in case the target is immune to silencing. Great for trapping caster mobs, interrupting heals, and PVP. Also a nice little damage boost that may be worth throwing into your rotation. It's not on the Global Cooldown, but it has a 20 second cooldown, so you can macro it to another shot.

You also learn Misdirection, which lets you transfer some of your threat to another target (usually a tank). It can help for keeping things on your pet, as well. There are a variety of Misdirection macros out there; I use one like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, target=focus] Misdirection; [button:2] Misdirection; [button:3, target=pet] Misdirection
/p A message to let your party know you're MD.

It can be shortened, but is basically left-click goes to focus, right-click goes where to your current target (if a player) or to what you click on next, and middle mouse goes to pet. Useful for pulling bosses.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 61-69

2009-10-28T19:24:00.003-04:00

Levels 61-69

If you've gone with the Survival talents, you can pick up Scatter Shot at level 61. Woohoo! After that, it's back to the Marksman tree.

Skills, Levels 61-69

61: Scatter Shot, Explosive Trap (Rank 4)
62: Steady Shot (Rank 2)
63: Raptor Strike (Rank 9)
65: Immolation Trap (Rank 6)
66: Kill Command
67: Multi-Shot (Rank 6), Serpent Sting (Rank 10), Volley (Rank 4)
68: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 8), Aspect of the Wild (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 8), Snake Trap
69: Arcane Shot (Rank 9)

Scatter Shot used to be the 21-point Marksman Talent (similarly to how Readiness used to be the 31-point Survival Talent). It's a Disorient, and breaks to damage, so it can be used as a precursor to a Freezing Trap, as a brief stun substitute, or a spell interrupt. It's good for PVP, soloing, and for 5-mans where crowd control actually matters.

Skills are no longer just on even levels after level 60, so you'll want to hit up the trainer more often.

At level 66 you can learn Kill Command. This has been redesigned over time, and now buffs your pet's next three special attacks. Not as a big deal for Marksman as for Beast Mastery, but still a nice little buff. It's on a 1-minute cooldown and off the Global Cooldown, so you can macro it to something and mostly forget about it.

The last new skill you'll pick up in the 60s is Snake Trap. It doesn't share a cooldown with any other traps, so you can drop it in addition to the others. It'll release a bunch of little snakes which will run off (well, slither off) to attack and poison things in their vicinity. The snakes aren't always smart, and will run off to attack adds (and occasionall rats) in the area, as well. I love them; they make me giggle.

You're probably in Outland by now; you can get a decent gun in Nagrand from the Nesingwary quests, and if you go through Shadowmoon's chains, there's a nice bow.

Marksman 1-80: Level 60

2009-10-28T19:21:00.002-04:00

Level 60

Level 60 lets you finish off the Survival talents requisite to getting Scatter Shot at 61. You can learn to ride flying mounts now at 60, at either of the starting towns in Hellfire Peninsula. If you've spurned both the Beast Mastery and Survival talents so far, level 60 is the earliest you can pick up Chimera Shot.

Skills, Level 60:

60: Aimed Shot (Rank 6), Arcane Shot (Rank 8), Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 7), Deterrence, Freezing Trap (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 7), Multi-Shot (Rank 5), Serpent Sting (Rank 9), Tranquilizing Shot

There are a lot of new ranks at level 60; there are only two new skills if you're waiting on Chimera Shot.

The first is Deterrence. Once upon a time, Deterrence was a Survival talent. Now it's a poor man's Evasion, buffing your Parry and give you spell deflection for 5 seconds. It's one of those things that may buy you some time to survive.

The other skill you get is Tranquilizing Shot. Once upon a time, this skill was learned from a book which dropped off Lucifron, the first boss in Molten Core. It was necessary at the time because it would remove Magmadar's Frenzy. Now it's been transformed to our Dispel, and it can remove certain enrages (Gluth's, possibly warriors' and rogues'). Very useful in PVP and for some boss fights.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 51-59

2009-10-28T19:16:00.003-04:00

Levels 51-59

There are two ways to go with talents at this point - you can hop over to Survival to head towards Scatter Shot, or you can continue in the Marksman tree to get to Chimera faster. I've mapped out Scatter Shot first. This will also get you increased range and increased damage from having tracking on.

Skills, 51-59:

52: Aimed Shot (Rank 5), Arcane Shot (Rank 7), Mend Pet (Rank 6)
54: Explosive Trap (Rank 3), Multi-Shot (Rank 4)
56: Aspect of the Wild (Rank 2), Immolation Trap (Rank 5), Raptor Strike (Rank 8)
58: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 6), Hunter's Mark (Rank 4), Mongoose Bite (Rank 4), Serpent Sting (Rank 8), Volley (Rank 3)

In terms of skills, the 50s are even more boring than the 40s. New ranks, but nothing new. I usually do the Jintha'alor quests in the Hinterlands around level 50-52 (trinket), then head up to the Plaguelands. If you go through all Blightcaller's quests up through killing the Scarlet Oracle, you can get yourself a pretty nice bow.

And then go to Outlands and replace it in Hellfire Peninsula, but still.

Marksman 1-80: Level 50

2009-10-28T19:15:00.002-04:00

Level 50

The talent point for level 50 isn't flashy, but it's really handy - you can finish off Improved Revive Pet for 4 second pet resuscitation. You do pick up your second minor glyph slot, and the Feign Death is probably a good second one. If we had gone purely with Marksman talents instead of getting faster pet revives, level 50 is the earliest you can get Silencing Shot.

Skills, Level 50:

Serpent Sting (Rank 7), Steady Shot (Rank 1), Track Dragonkin, Volley (Rank 2)

Level 50 gets you a bread-and-butter hunter shot, Steady Shot. The cast time is 2 seconds, but when all your other shots are on cooldown, this gives you something to do on top of Auto Shot. At higher levels (the upper 70s to level cap), this shot is part of why you want to aim for the soft haste cap; getting your Steady Shot cast to 1.5 seconds lets you use it every Global Cooldown possible between your longer cooldown shots.

You also get Dragon tracking, which will be useful if you quest in zones with them, or if you want to farm for whelpling pets.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 41-49

2009-10-28T19:12:00.001-04:00

Levels 41-49

Talents in the 40s give you some options. Improved Barrage is good to get for the removal of pushback on your Volley, and then you can get either Improved Aspect of the Hawk or Endurance Training over in the Beast Mastery Tree in order to pick up a reduced cast time on Revive Pet.

Skills, 41-49:

42: Multi-Shot (Rank 3), Serpent Sting (Rank 6)
44: Aimed Shot (Rank 4), Arcane Shot (Rank 6), Explosive Trap (Rank 2), Mend Pet (Rank 5), Mongoose Bite (Rank 3)
46: Aspect of the Wild (Rank 1), Immolation Trap (Rank 4), Scare Beast (Rank 3)
48: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 5), Raptor Strike (Rank 7)

The 40s, like questing in the 40s can be, aren't terribly interesting. (Welcome to Tanaris. It's a big, monotonous desert. I almost always quest it out entirely, but the scenery... eh. The other option is Feralas, with the harpies. I prefer the desert.) Lots of new skill ranks; one new skill. The new skill? Aspect of the Wild, an aspect that lets you increase nature resist for you and your party/raid. Very useful for certain bosses, but not for general play.

Marksman 1-80: Level 40

2009-10-28T19:07:00.003-04:00

Level 40

Level 40 used to be when you get your mount; now you're just going to pick up Trueshot Aura and your epic mount if you can afford it. You also learn to wear mail armor.

Skills, Level 40:

40: Aspect of the Pack, Freezing Trap (Rank 2), Hunter's Mark (Rank 3), Raptor Strike (Rank 6), Track Giants, Trueshot Aura, Volley (Rank 1)

Aspect of the Pack seems dinky when you're getting your epic mount, until you realize you can use it when you're indoors. This is the "running back from the graveyard through a dungeon" Aspect, and as long as there's nothing to daze you, your party will appreciate it. Just remember to turn it back off when you get back to where you need to be.

Level 40 also gets you Giant Tracking, useful for several quests looking for wandering giants. A lot of giants in Azeroth are still roaming elites, too, so this can also be used for avoiding getting smooshed.

Trueshot Aura, your talent point, is a 10% AP boost. It is no longer a 30 minute buff, but it does still turn off when you die. It will get temperarily overwritten by Enhancement Shamans' and some Death Knights' 10% AP buff procs, making the glyph for it less useful in raids, but it's still a good buff to have overall.

Volley is your last new level 40 skill, and it is great. Even if you're leveling with a tank pet, you're probably going to be pulling aggro off it by now, but if you're careful about it, you can start doing some AoE fighting. Combine it with an Explosive Trap for extra oomph. When I was leveling my baby hunter, this is the skill I was impatient to pick up.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 31-39

2009-10-28T19:04:00.003-04:00

Levels 31-39

Talents in the 30s are pretty flexible; I generally go with Focused Aim, Careful Aim, and Barrage. You won't have Steady Shot for a while yet, but the extra 3% to hit will help if you want to kill stuff higher level than you. As a Marksman hunter (at least till Cataclysm, when we get to learn to operate with Focus), Intellect is your friend, and more AP from it is good. Not everyone is a Barrage fan, but the damage boost on Aimed Shot is worth it.

Skills, Levels 31-39:

32: Flare, Raptor Strike (Rank 5), Track Demons
34: Explosive Trap (Rank 1), Serpent Sting (Rank 5)
36: Aimed Shot (Rank 3), Arcane Shot (Rank 5), Immolation Trap (Rank 3), Mend Pet (Rank 4), Viper Sting
38: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 4)

New skills in the 30s aren't as flashy as some, but there some useful ones.

At level 32, you get Flare. It's been tweaked over time, in terms of both duration and cooldown, but right now it's a 20 second cooldown and a 20 second effect. It puts a flare on the ground that makes an area that will reveal stealth. Depending how a rogue or druid is specialized, it can be very useful in PVP. It's also useful for the stealthed cats and wolves you'll start running into in this level range. Oh, and those stupid stealthed infiltrators in Dustwallow... grr...

Anywho, you also pick up Track Demons at 32. Like most of the other tracking skills, the utility depends on if you're somewhere with demons. (If you run Dire Maul at level later, you can use it to keep an eye out for the patrolling Eye of Kilroggs that will summon a couple of mean Voidwalkers.)

Level 34 gets you Explosive Trap. This is an area-of-effect fire trap that will pulse for periodic damage. Now that traps are on separate cooldowns by fire/frost/nature, they're more useful, and more fun; you can drop a Frost Trap and an Explosive Trap together and have slowing plus fire.

I use a couple macros for traps to keep my bars less crowded; they're basically along the lines of:

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Explosive Trap; [button:2] Immolation Trap

I have a separate one for the ice traps.

At level 36 you'll pick up Viper Sting. This is a bit more useful than it used to be, and the mana gain from it can be beneficial. Combined with Chimera Shot at later levels, it's sometimes better to use than switching into Aspect of the Viper.

Marksman 1-80: Level 30

2009-10-28T19:00:00.005-04:00

Level 30

Level 30 isn't as exciting as it used to be; still, you can pick up Readiness with your talent point, and a second Major glyph slot is available. I'd go with whichever of Mending or Serpent Sting you didn't take at level 15.

Skills, Level 30:

30: Feign Death, Mongoose Bite (Rank 2), Multi-Shot (Rank 2), Scare Beast (Rank 2)

In addition to the new skill ranks, your talent point here is probably Readiness. Readiness resets many of your hunter abilities that have cooldowns - shots, traps, Rapid Fire, Feign Death, and so forth. It's useful at the higher ends for resetting Rapid Fire for a little DPS boost, and it's useful all the time for resetting traps and Feign.

Speaking of Feign Death, you pick it up at level 30. Feign Death is what will let you sometimes get away with running through things you can't kill, or survive when the rest of your party wipes. It lets your hunter play dead. (Unfortunately, your pet will not play dead with you, so if you're trying to survive something with an area damage effect of some sort, tell your pet to go play with it while it's not by you, or otherwise send your pet somewhere else. You can always revive your pet, but you have to run back from the graveyard.)

Note that Feigning will shunt the aggro onto the next person on the aggro table, which may be your healer. Sometimes it's better for you to have the aggro if the healer can keep you up long enough to kill it. This is where knowing how to kite is more important than having Feign.

Feigning can also be resisted. Bosses in particular like to resist (or don't care if they think you're dead, they'll still hit you... one or the other). Some bosses won't reset while you're Feigning, so if you're in that situation, just stand up and die, or you'll make your party angry. (Attumen in Karazhan almost always resisted me. My best night: Feigning successfully on every Hydross attempt (about a dozen) for the three hours it took us to kill him the first time. Deaths for the night: 0 is awesome.

Ahem, #94

2009-09-30T00:15:00.003-04:00

Totally unexpected.

Monday night I came home from gaming (D&D) and logged in to see inquiries about whether anyone else wanted in on a Darnassus raid. I had planned to just do Brewfest dailies on my alts and go to bed, but I decided to go. So! We one-shot Velen and Tyrande with 21 people with no problems, and get on the boat to Stormwind. Varian was at 9% when too many of the PVPers by the battlemasters came over and said hi.

So tonight, when we didn't have enough for an Onyxia-25 raid, we headed back to Stormwind. Varian went down this time with a raid of about 24 people.

Then we logged off in the tram.

For twenty minutes.

A few of us have Alliance toons, so we logged over to watch /trade and /localdefense. Eventually the Alliance got bored and stopped watching the tram.

So everyone logged back on after we lost Wintergrasp, and we hit Magni Bronzebeard with about 26 people. For the Horde!

Then hearthed, flew back to the Zoram Strand, went back up to Exodar and Darnassus and wiped out those bosses again.

Bears for everyone!

#93

2009-09-20T15:23:00.004-04:00

I think he looks rather sassy at that angle, don't you?

Yes, he's 310%, and I owe my guildies lots of props for the help over the past year - especially with Halloween and Brewfest; I can't remember at the moment whether the others required groups.

I also picked up the pink baby elekk this morning (#92 for small pets).

And, ahem, I was made guild master last night. Our GM of almost five years is crazy busy with school, and won't be able to play for much of the next... 6 months? year? Sad to see him go, even temporarily. We gave him a send-off in Booty Bay with Pirate Day going.

Second time I've inherited an online group - I got made leader of my clan on the MUD I used to play on after the previous leader quit playing. Hopefully I don't screw this up.

Race/class changes in Cataclysm

2009-09-09T15:46:00.005-04:00

So, since I'm trying to consolidate down to one WoW-related blog and one non-WoW blog, there will be non-huntery posts here.

Anywho, I'm full on Bronzebeard. I have three toons under level 70, one being a level 66 death knight, a level 26 rogue (my bank guild toon), and a level 18 warlock. All the other toons have a profession at high levels, and I don't to transfer off my night elf hunter because I still want to be able to check the auction house over there.

The complication is that toons off Bronzebeard pretty much never see level 20. (The exception is a human paladin I transferred off when it was free, at level 36, to free up a slot. She's still 36.) I admittedly don't have a ton of interest in playing a goblin or a worgen, other than the starting zones. (I did the same thing with a draenei - starting zone, and that's about.)

No, what I want to play is a dwarf shaman.

I have an orc shaman; she's level 70, elemental, and tons of fun. I've never really played a dwarf - I have a level 2ish one somewhere, I'm sure, but I don't do anything with them. I have three hunters, two rogues, and I deleted my second priest. My warrior I'm content with having just one, and paladin just doesn't do it for me. I think these are major contributing factors to the lack of dwarf, besides that they're Alliance and I, ahem, am for the Horde.

I'll confess, part of it is the hair. My orc has the 3 foot braid, and when she casts, her hair does a flying-in-the-wind animation. Dwarf women have the same long-hair kind of options, I think, and I for some reason find the idea of a dwarf shaman intriguing.

Maybe on an RP server, but honestly, the only reason I ever talk to people on Bronzebeard is because my husband got me into a guild (which subsequently merged into a larger guild)... and I'm sure there are people in the guild who wish I would stop talking sometimes. I'm painfully shy around new people. Online I'm better, but I'm still not likely to approach people. So I'm not sure if there's a point to playing on an RP server if I'm never going to RP outside my own head.

And then there's the whole problem of my gnome (deleted at level 11) being my most-hit-on character ever. I'm wondering if a dwarf female would have similar problems.

Brief thoughts on the Cataclysm

2009-09-06T16:10:00.003-04:00

The leveling guide will continue shortly.

In Cataclysm, hunters are going over to focus. I've heard that in the pre-release versions of WoW, focus was the planned resource system for hunters, but for one reason or another, we got switched to mana. This is probably the biggest change I saw for hunters coming out of the eventual 4.0 release; I'm looking forward to it. It'll take some relearning, but we simply have too many stats to watch right now. Cutting Int out of the equation entirely is good. I have a level 74 rogue, so I'm not unfamiliar with that style of resource.

Haste, on the other hand, will change some things. Haste will make focus regenerate faster, but since it won't affect our attack speed, that also means that our autoshot speed is probably going to be less mutable, and Rapid Fire and Improved Aspect of the Hawk procs will be more important to watch.

Attack Power on gear is going bye-bye. (/cheer) I loathed the switch from 2 AP from Agi to 1 AP from Agi and AP on gear since it happened. (From my enchanter's point of view, things are going to get... weird. All those Spellpower and Attack Power enchants are probably going away - possibly to be replaced with Agi, Int, and Str enchants? We'll find out!)

The change to talents - paring out passive stat/damage boosts for "fun" talents - should prove interesting. I play heavy MM in both my specs, and 5 more points means you should be able to invest enough into a 2nd tree for the first or second mastery bonus.

I like that we'll be coming back to Azeroth. I'm looking forward to underwater mounts. (I'm sitting at 90 pets/90 mounts right now.)

Marksman 1-80: Levels 21-29

2009-08-13T16:17:00.002-04:00

Levels 21-29

Level 20 was busy for skills, and the rest of the 20s are no different. Rapid Killing, Go for the Throat, and Efficiency are probably good places for your talents in this level range.

Skills, Levels 21-29

22: Hunter's Mark (Rank 2), Scorpid Sting
24: Beast Lore, Raptor Strike (Rank 4), Track Hidden
26: Immolation Trap (Rank 2), Rapid Fire, Serpent Sting (Rank 4), Track Elementals
28: Aimed Shot (Rank 2), Arcane Shot (Rank 4), Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 3), Frost Trap, Mend Pet (Rank 3)

You'll pick up new skills every even level in the 20s; in addition to a new rank of Hunter's Mark, level 22 will teach you Scorpid Sting. The Vanilla version of this was a small Str/Agi reduction to the target; in the Burning Crusade it became a 5% reduced chance to hit. For normal soloing play, this is probably most useful on elites. In raid settings, this was a huge help on hard-hitting bosses that had the potential to 2-shot your tanks. (I'm looking at you, Prince Malchezaar.) It hasn't been as much of an issue in Wrath raiding, although I occasionally threw it up on Patchwerk. The Chimera Shot bonus for Scorpid Sting is a disarm effect, which can be useful in PVP.

Level 24 has a new rank of Raptor Strike, Beast Lore, and Track Hidden. Track Hidden is, ahem, basically useless. The increased stealth detection isn't nearly enough to make it useful in PVP (the rogue can still Sap you before he's in range of being seen), and the only PVE use I've ever found for it was the quest to find the Theramore spies in Dustwallow Marsh, because they blend in with the terrain too much even when you're close enough to see them, and they're neutral to you, so you have to hit them first. Beast Lore is a nice little utility spell that will give you a beast's stats, abilities when tamed, and diet in their tooltip when you mouse over them; it'll also tell you if they're tameable. So if you spot something cool and don't want to go to Petopia (because you'd have to tab out, etc.), you can pop this on the mob and see if it would be useful (oh, it's an family, I don't really want it) or if it would be a hassle to feed (cheese and fungus only?!).

Level 26 will let you learn new ranks of Aimed Shot and Serpent Sting, and you'll gain Elemental Tracking. The more exciting new spell at 26 is Rapid Fire, which your points in Rapid Killing will reduce the cooldown on by a full two minutes. You won't get a lot of use out of this skill unless you're in a stand-and-shoot situation (since the point of haste is basically Steady and Auto Shots, and you don't get Steady till 50), but for boss fights (and even some elites), the extra damage will be noticeable. When you pick up Rapid Recuperation later, your shots will cost less while Rapid Fire is active.

When you get to level 28, it begins to look more like your higher levels are going to - four new skill ranks, this time for Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Aspect of the Hawk, and Mend Pet. You'll also learn Frost Trap, which is your area-of-effect (AoE) ice trap. Unlike Freezing Trap, it doesn't freeze targets in its area, but slows them down. This makes it useful for kiting, and it's a staple for getting at range from enemeies in PVP.

Marksman 1-80: Level 20

2009-08-06T23:10:00.002-04:00

Level 20

The 10's are always levels with lots of new stuff. Level 20 is no different, and really, is much more exciting than level 80, where you'll only pick up one new skill, and lots of new (expensive) ranks.

Skills, Level 20

20: Aimed Shot (Rank 1), Arcane Shot (Rank 3), Aspect of the Viper, Disengage, Freezing Trap (Rank 1), Mend Pet (Rank 2)

Your level 20 talent point should go into Aimed Shot. After this, the order in which you take your talents to get up the tree isn't as pressing; you just really want to get to this shot as soon as possible. It's the hardest hitting thing you'll have till Chimera Shot (although Arcane Shot, when fully talented, can compete). Aimed Shot shares a cooldown with Multi-Shot, and it costs less mana, so you'll want to reserve Multi-Shot for when you really need to hit more than one target. It also adds a "Mortal Strike" debuff, which decreases healing taken by the target by 50%. (This refers to the classic Arms Warrior talent, Mortal Strike.)

In Vanilla WoW, and through most of the Burning Crusade, Aimed Shot was a 3-second cast and hit much harder; at one time it reset your Auto Shot timer, as well. "Clipping" Auto Shots used to be a DPS concern - losing Auto Shots to your special shots meant lower overall DPS. There was a golden period for Night Elves where it didn't break Shadowmeld until it went off, allowing Night Elf hunters to have serious ambushing capabilities in PVP. (Having played a Night Elf through that period, I will confirm that it was awesome.)

Alas, much of that is no more, and Aimed Shot is now an instant cast, 10-second cooldown, moderatly hard-hitting, Mortal Strike type ability. It's quite useful in PVP (that was much of the impetus of its change to instant Mortal Strike), and with it being an instant cast, it earns a place in the hunter shot rotation again, which it hasn't had since the days of Molten Core, save as an opener. Since you don't have Steady Shot yet, the rotation is fairly simple - just hitting Aimed and Arcane Shots whenever they're available. You're still beginning with Serpent Sting and possibly Hunter's Mark.

You may be noticing your pet not holding aggro very well, especially in the upper parts of a 0-9 range of levels. Pets learn a new rank of Growl on the 10's (automatically - pets are very low-maintenance now), so they're not pushing out as much threat as you in the upper ranges of the brackets. So when your pet dings 20 (you'll notice that your pet has its own experience bar, in his tab in your character sheet), he'll pick up a new rank of Growl and start holding on to things better again. He'll also pick up his first talent point, and get a new one on levels divisible by 4 (24, 28, etc.).

So! Besides Aimed Shot and pet skills and talents, you're going to pick up new ranks of Arcane Shot and Mend Pet, and then you have three new skills. You pick up an Aspect at level 20, the Viper. Viper is your mana regeneration skill. It used to be learned in the 60s, as it was a Burning Crusade addition to hunters; at that time, though it was a passive regeneration boost, and I basically raided exclusively in Viper. Now, though, it's a mix of active and passive, and you deal 50% damage while it's active. Basically, turn it on during down time, or when you run out, but keep Hawk up in combat otherwise.

Besides the new Aspect, you pick up Disengage, another hunter skill that has been completely redesigned since the days of Vanilla WoW. This used to be similar to the rogue's Feint - a melee attack that reduced your threat. However, it also stopped your attacks completely. It was useful in PVE - if your Feign was on cooldown, you could hit it once, maybe twice, and your pet could usually recover aggro. It was useless in PVP, though. So now, instead of reducing your threat, it flings you backwards through the air for up to thirteen yards. It is sensitive to the slope of the ground - you can't really Disengage uphill. Disengaging downhill can lead to flights much farther than thirteen yards (and falling damage). And you can disengage off cliffs, or into additional mobs. (Into lakes of fires. Ahem. I did miss the lake. But not the extra elementals...) If you're snared, you won't go anywhere.

The last new thing you get at level 20 is Freezing Trap. Freezing Trap is another ability that will, basically, save your life. If you pull multiples and you and your pet can't handle them, drop a Freezing Trap, and it'll be frozen, in a block of ice, for about 10 seconds. As your ranks increase, your Freezing Traps will last up to 20 seconds, and with the 30 second cooldown, you'll be able to chain your traps. But not yet. Traps have a 1 second arming time, so it's always good to drop the trap before you'll need it - if you're looking to pull a group, for example. It's handy in PVP as well, although its duration there is capped to 8 seconds, as most crowd-control abilities are. Combined with Disengage, which you also just picked up, Freezing Trap will be part of your arsenal in PVP to get at range.

Starting in patch 3.2, you can also learn to ride and buy your first mount. The cost is a far cry from the 100g or so it would cost you at level 40; now it'll be closer to... 4g. I would be jealous in a get-off-my-lawn kind of way if it didn't also mean my bank/auction toon will be getting a mount.

Marksman 1-80: Levels 11-19

2009-08-06T22:50:00.003-04:00

Levels 11-19

Getting your pet quests done can easily get you a level or two, depending on your questing style. Levels 11-19 introduce a lot of your skills. You'll want to be putting your talent points into Lethal and Mortal Shots.

Skills, Levels 11-19

12: Arcane Shot (Rank 2), Distracting Shot (Rank 1), Mend Pet (Rank 1), Wing Clip
14: Eagle Eye, Eyes of the Beast, Scare Beast (Rank 1)
16: Immolation Trap (Rank 1), Mongoose Bite (Rank 1), Raptor Strike (Rank 3), Aspect of the Cheetah
18: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 2), Multi-Shot (Rank 1), Serpent Sting (Rank 3), Track Undead

Level 12 makes your kiting easier, even though you now have a pet: you get Wing Clip, a melee attack to slow your target down. It no longer does any damage, but it's still quite useful in PVP, as well - you can use it to try to slow a flag runner in Warsong Gulch long enough for help to catch up if you can't kill it yourself. You also get another rank of Arcane Shot and learn Mend Pet. Mend Pet used to be channeled, but is now just a heal-over-time (HoT) on your pet, a vast improvement. You also learn Distracting Shot. This used to just be a high-threat shot, but it's now just an out-and-out taunt (which is important to remember much later, when you get Misdirection). Distracting Shot will be more useful to you later, when you're trying to pull mobs into a Freezing Trap, but you can also use it to pull a mob off your pet or a friend for kiting.

The Beast Mastery skills you get at level 14 are interesting, and fun to fool around with, but most of the time have limited application. Scare Beast is the most useful; you can use it to temporarily shed an extra mob, but it really shines in PVP, against druids in a Feral forms, and to a lesser degree against shamans in Ghost Wolf form. This means fearing the flag runner in Warsong Gulch. Enjoy. ;)

The other two skills you get at level 14, Eagle Eye and Eyes of the Beast, are of less frequent utility: they're basically scouting skills. As I mentioned when I was talking about glyphs, Eyes of the Beast was basically used for pulling two bosses in Molten Core, as it lets you put your sight into your pet and control it directly. (Running around on your pet, if it has Dash, and hopping all over is, admittedly, kind of fun. It can also freak out newbies unfamiliar with hunters.) Eagle Eye is similar to the shaman Farsight - you click on a distant spot of land, and your point of view is transported there. You can change your camera angle, but not move it. This is another skill that can be useful in PVP, especially places like Arathi Basin, if you're trying to find a weakly defended node to assault. All in all, though, they're more fun, or for scouting, than readily combat-useful.

At level 15 you can equip your first glyphs, one major and one minor. I'd go with either the Serpent Sting or Mending glyph for the major slot, and the Mend Pet glyph for the minor slot.

Level 16's skills are somewhat more useful - you pick up your final melee special attack, Mongoose Bite (which can crit nicely at higher levels with a slow two-handed weapon), another rank of Raptor Strike, and your first trap, Immolation Trap. Immolation trap is a single-target trap that does fire damage over time (a DoT). It's a nice bit of extra damage that keeps ticking while you're, if needed, kiting. (I'll include my trap macros when we get a second trap.) You also get Aspect of the Cheetah, which you used to have to wait till level 20 for (as of patch 3.2 - so not quite yet, but soon). Cheetah is a nice speed boost, as you won't get a mount until level 20 (as of patch 3.2 - originally it was 40, then 30), assuming you can afford it. The major detractor is that if something attacks you, you're going to get dazed. It's only a 30% boost, not the 40% shamans and druids get, but it's still quite nice.

When you reach level 18, you pick up new ranks of Aspect of the Hawk and Serpent Sting, and you get to track Undead. No, this does not include the Forsaken - they're under Humanoid tracking with the rest of your fellow players. You also pick up Multi-Shot, which is your first multi-target ability. For a long time, when Aimed Shot had a 3 second cast, Multi-Shot was in its position in the full Marksman shot rotation. Now, though, with its higher mana cost and Aimed Shot benefiting from the same talents, save Multi for actual multiple-target situations - it's especially nice in PVP, as you don't have to worry about pulling aggro off something (although you're likely to have someone in your face, regardless).

If you're playing Horde and have the Burning Crusade, doing the quest chain in the Ghostlands that leads up to "The Traitor's Destruction" will land you a nice blue bow. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent ranged weapon from quests on the Alliance side. If you don't want to hit up the Ghostlands or, alas, are playing Alliance, there's a slightly better bow from Lord Serpentis in Wailing Caverns.

Marksman 1-80: Level 10

2009-08-06T21:59:00.002-04:00

I suppose you're all well past level 9 now. >.> Here's level 10!

Level 10

Level 10 changes the flavor of hunter-hood: Your hunter quests at level 10 will net you a pet.

Skills, Level 10

10: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 1), Serpent Sting (Rank 2), Track Humanoids, Tame Beast, Call Pet, Dismiss Pet, Feed Pet, Revive Pet

When you talk to your trainer for your skills at level 10, you'll get Aspect of the Hawk, a new rank of Serpent Sting, and Track Humanoids. You'll be using Aspect of the Hawk a lot. You'll also get your first talent point - start with Lethal Shots in Marksman so you can get to Aimed Shot by level 20.

Your trainer will also give you quests for taming pets. If for some reason you've left your native newbie zone, the local hunter trainer may not have the quest for you. Taurens need to go to Bloodhoof Village, Night Elves to Dolanaar, etc. Your trainer will give you three successive quests to tame some kind of local fauna, and then you'll get the skills to tame your own pet. Make sure you talk to both the hunter trainer and the pet trainer so that you pick up the full gamut of skills - Tame Beast, Call Pet, Dismiss Pet, Feed Pet, and Revive Pet. A lot of hunters wander around confused about the feeding process initially; it's usually because they missed the quest for the skill.

A couple pet-related macros:

#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use 3 1

This will cast Feed Pet and select whatever food is in the specified bag slot. The location format is . Bags, from left to right, are numbered 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0 for the backpack. The slots inside the bag are labeled from the upper left-most to the bottom right-most; in a bag whose slots aren't divisible by 4 (say, a 10-slot bag), the left slot in the top row of two is slot 1. Just keep whatever food your pet likes in that slot, and when you click the button, you'll be feeding that food. If you prefer, instead of using a bag slot, you can use the name of a food, but if you have a pet like a boar or bear that eats anything and are just using randomly dropped food, the bag slot macro will be less of a hastle.

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Mend Pet; [button:2] Revive Pet

This is a left-click, right click macro. I use a lot of these. This one casts Mend Pet (which you haven't learned yet) when you left click and Revive Pet (which you do have) when you right click. Even if you don't have one skill or the other, you can still use it for the other skill with the appropriate button.

Your pet is going to come with Growl, Cower, and some family-specific abilities. Petopia is an awesome source for browsing pets. Regardless of what you pick, you'll want to open your Spellbook, go to your pet's spell page, and drag Growl, Cower, and maybe some of his other abilities down onto your pet's action bar. Right clicking on an ability will toggle autocast; if there's a moving gold border around the spell, it's on autocast. You want autocast ON for Growl and OFF for Cower. (Note that in groups with a tank, the opposite is true.) Also keep your pet's basic special attack (Claw, Bite, etc.) on autocast. You can always left-click an ability to cast it, as well. Note that pet spells tend to be buggy and turn themselves back on to autocast if you don't leave them on the toolbar. This is why it's important to keep skills you don't want to use on the toolbar.

3.2 PTR notes

2009-07-16T15:00:00.003-04:00

So, the 3.2 background downloader has started. 3.2 is probably going to pop before we down Yogg-Saron at this rate, but I guess that's ok. Hopefully Ulduar does not fall off the schedule just because something new is showing up.

Anywho! The current Hunter notes are on the PTR forums - who knows how much will actually go live, but there it is. Not much is changing that will affect Marksman talents.

Highlights:

Because of the mount changes, Cheetah will be learnable at 16.
Deterrence is no longer just frontal.
Traps only last 30 seconds before they despawn, but! They've finally broken traps out into Fire, Frost, and Nature. Explosive Frost Snake goodness!

Marksman 1-80: Levels 1-9

2009-07-16T14:43:00.004-04:00

Because the 10's levels tend to have some major addition in terms of skills or other mechanics, I'm doing these in the pattern of 1-9, 10, 11-19, 20, etc.

Levels 1-9

As a hunter, you're going to start play with your Hearthstone, a ranged weapon, 200 units of ammunition, a 1-handed melee weapon, pants, a shirt, and possibly shoes. You'll also have a small quantity of food and water. (I don't know if you still get a quiver/ammo pouch by default, but you probably do.)

Skills, Levels 1-9

1: Auto Shot, Raptor Strike (Rank 1), Track Beasts
4: Aspect of the Monkey, Serpent Sting (Rank 1)
6: Arcane Shot (Rank 1), Hunter's Mark (Rank 1)
8: Concussive Shot, Raptor Strike (Rank 2)

Hunters begin play with two skills, Auto Shot and Raptor Strike. If your hunter has funding from another character and you want to make the trip to the mailbox, you can run over and train Track Beasts at level 1, as well. Tracking has its own mini-menu through a button on the minimap. The button is by the World Map button, and it will display what type of thing you're tracking. (You can also track certain types of vendors through this menu, in case you can't find something, like an ammo vendor.)

Depending how you have your settings, right-clicking on a target may or may not turn on Auto Shot. I believe the toggle that lets you automatically switch between ranged and melee attacks depending where your target is affects this. Having it enabled, you can turn on your Auto Shot with a right-click on the target, but you may also find yourself breaking a lot of your own traps when your target runs up to you and you automatically switch to melee. I'm a clicker, so I'll mention clicking on skills a lot, but if you're more comfortable with the keyboard, just hit the appropriate keybind.

You won't have a pet till level 10 or so, and you won't have a Freezing Trap for longer, so level 1 is a great time to practice basic kiting - especially since you're not likely to die to the mobs from the first couple quests. (And, if all else fails, you do have Raptor Strike for melee.) Target a mob, stand at maximum range (back up till the number on the skill turns red, then edge back in till it's white again), and either right-click on the mob, or click on Auto Shot, depending on your settings. The mob, of course, will come running towards you. If you don't think it's going to die before it gets to you, strafe (Q and E on the keyboard by default - I'm not sure how you do it with the mouse) to get some distance from it (you run faster than a lot of mobs unless dazed) and stop to do some more Auto Shots at it. If it gets close to you, either right-click on it to switch to melee, or click on your melee attack or Raptor Strike to switch.

Since you have no way of slowing mobs down yet, you're going to spend a lot of time meleeing. That's okay; it saves ammunition. Levels 1-3 are pretty much the same; learn Track Beasts at level 2 if you couldn't afford to at level 1. At level 4 you pick up your first Beast Mastery skill, Aspect of the Monkey (appropriately - you're meleeing a lot, so the dodge is good), and what has become a bread-and-butter Marksman skill, Serpent Sting.

Once you have Serpent Sting, get in the habit of opening with it, unless you're planning to trap (or otherwise crowd-control) the target. A lot of glyphs improve one or more of your shots when Serpent Sting is active, and when you eventually pick up Chimera Shot, Serpent Sting is a must. Once you have Serpent Sting, you can probably take Auto Shot off your action bars and almost never need it again. (Especially since clicking on skills for which you don't have the mana now turns on your Auto Shot.)

At level 5 you can learn professions, and it's also generally about when you'll finish your "newbie zone" quests, and move on to the town with the first mailbox and inn. You may have to do some traveling to get your professions if you pick something not readily available in the first town. Pick up First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing, as well, if you have the money available.

At level 6 you'll pick up Arcane Shot and Hunter's Mark. Arcane Shot is your basic magic arrow - arcane damage, instant (so castable on the run), hits fairly hard, 6 second cooldown. Once you have Arcane Shot, the basic kiting you were doing earlier becomes easier, since Arcane Shot can be use while moving. You'll basically be running, using every instant shot you can until you run out of instants or are at good range again, and stop for a short time to do some Steady and Auto Shots, and then start running again. Hunter's Mark is important if you pick up Marked for Death at higher levels, and is a good habit to get into, since the ranged AP boost is never bad. (I'm very bad about remembering to use it.)

Level 8 makes kiting even easier: you get Concussive Shot, which will daze your target for 4 seconds, slowing them down. You also get another rank of Raptor Strike.

You're probably not going to have to eat or drink much during these levels, but you'll definitely want to watch your ammo consumption. If you don't have an addon that tracks it, you'll probably want to drag your ammunition onto an action bar somewhere so you can keep an eye on how much you have. It stacks in 1000's now, so you can load up a bit without taking up too much space.

Next: Level 10

Marksman 1-80 (Part 8: Hunter Races)

2009-06-30T17:00:00.002-04:00

It's been a while! I've been going through the process of applying to, interviewing for, and (I hope!) getting the job I've been doing for the past year. Now! Hunter races.

Races

Your Alliance options for playing a hunter are Night Elves, Dwarves, and Draenei. (No humans, no gnomes.)

Night Elves' racial abilities are Shadowmeld (a kind of stealth during which you can't move), a reduced chance to be hit, better resistance to nature spells, and wisp form (you move faster while dead). If you're playing Alliance and want to PVP, Shadowmeld gives Night Elves another ace up their sleeve, since, combined with a cat for Prowl, your opponants won't have quite as easy a time getting the drop on you. It's also great for laying ambushes if you're on defense - a couple of Night Elves, or in combination with rogues, can lure opponents into an area by making it look unguarded. (My first character was a Night Elf.)

Dwarves' racial abilities are a bonus to hit with guns, Stoneform (increases armor and removes bleeds, poisons, and diseases), better resistance to frost spells, and Find Treasure (tracks chests and some other objects on the minimap). (They also have a bonus to maces, but since hunters can't use maces...) I've never actually played a Dwarf (mostly because I switched to Horde before I got around to it). However, some of my favorite pet models (the snow leopard, the black bear) are available in Dun Morogh. (Before Wrath, Dun Morogh was the only place to get a snow leopard.) The gun bonus is also nice. A Dwarf hunter with engineering would be able to make his/her own guns and ammunition, find chests, and blast them open with seaforium if needed. Lots of potential.

Draenei's racial abilities are Gift of the Naaru (a small heal), a bonus to party members' hit rating, a bonus to jewelcrafting, and better resistance to shadow spells. They actually begin play with crossbows, and are the only hunter race to do so. The heal and the hit rating bonus both make them a good option. (I have a level 15 or so Draenei hunter.)

Your Horde options for playing a hunter are Taurens, Trolls, Orcs, and Blood Elves. (Basically, you can't be undead.)

Taurens' racial abilites are Warstomp (an AOE stun), better resistance to nature spells, an herbalism buff, and increased hit points. Warstomp is fantastic in both PVE and PVP - you can use it to help chain Freezing Traps, or any time you need to briefly stun mobs to set up for doing something else. The herbalism buff is nice if you want to go into Alchemy or Inscription, or just for the cash. (My main is a Tauren.)

Trolls' racial abilities are Berserking (a haste boost), Da Voodoo Shuffle (reduces the duration of snares), faster hit point regeneration, a bonus to hit with bows, a bonus to throwing weapons (ahem, lol), and deal more damage to beasts. The haste boost and the bonus with bows both make Trolls an attractive option for a Marksman hunter. Faster hit point regeneration can also mean less down time. The snare reduction is fairly new, and I haven't actually tried it yet. (I have a level 13 or so Troll hunter on an RP server.)

Orcs' racial abilities are Blood Fury (an attack/spellpower boost), increased pet damage, better resistance to stuns, and a bonus to axes. Orc is the other race of hunters I haven't actually played (as a hunter, anyway). The AP boost and the increased damage both make orcs good hunter options, although the latter is more attractive to Beast Masters. The stun resistance is always nice in PVP. And a lot of good hunter weapons are axes.

Blood Elves' racial abilities are Arcane Torrent (an AOE silence which also restores some mana), a bonus to enchanting, and better resistance to spells. Blood Elves start with a larger mana pool than any other hunter race, so that favors the Marksman mana-intesity. The silence can be good both in PVE and PVP, especially before you pick up a spell interrupt through talents. (I'm currently leveling a Blood Elf hunter.)

So, none of the hunter races are particularly bad for the class, but if you're looking at a particularly niche (PVP, PVE, farming) or spec, some of them might have better perks than others.

Next up: the actual leveling guide! Woo! (Hopefully 3.2 patch notes don't make me revise more than Aspect of the Cheetah for what's already written...)

Missed Screenshots

2009-06-04T13:16:00.000-04:00

There are quite a few screenshots I wish I'd taken, but just didn't think to at the time. (This applies to most max-level dings on my toons - I don't remember where most of them hit 60/70/80.) The one that comes to mind first, though, is the gnome in Warsong Gulch.

I used to do a lot more PVP, and despite how much I loathe it, I was, for whatever reason, in WSG. I think I was actually on my priest at the time, probably around level 59, probably getting marks for her level 60 undead pony.

Anyway, I'd just run into the Alliance base via the upper upstairs door, heading for the balcony. I was in that space between the balcony and the ramp when a little female gnome mage pops out. Now, my priest has always been mostly Discipline with a good deal of Holy, and this was well before the healing/spellpower change. She did most of her WSG by healing the flag runner, or running it herself until she died and someone else could pick it up.

The mage almost immediately sheeped me, and then, as I'm wandering around all sheepy-like, she pulled out a rocket launcher.

Yeah.

I so wish I'd gotten a screenshot of that.

Marksman 1-80 (Part 7: Pets)

2009-06-01T15:09:00.004-04:00

Ok, back to the guide! This time...

Pets

Being a Marksman hunter, your pet isn't going to be as tough or do as much damage as a Beast Master's pet. Although a pet with the Tenacity tree may make leveling easier, it's not hard-and-fast required. (I've been using a tallstrider with my current baby hunter because it's a pretty blue.)

Your best source for pet information is Petopia. Between the skill information and the gallery, you can pick a pet that will fit your preferred playstyle and your taste. There are 11 cunning pet families, 11 ferocity, and 10 tenacity.

I haven't leveled with a broad variety of pets - I used a cat 1-70 on my night elf, a wolf 1-70 and a bear 70-80 on my tauren, and my blood elf has used a cat, crab, and tallstrider at varying points. I've played at some point with a cat, wolf, bear, tallstrider, crab, and hyena (and dabbled at one point with a boar and a spore bat), but other than taming most things once or twice for skill ranks (way, way back), I haven't done much with the rest.

At the upper end, for raiding, you'll want a wolf. Their AP buff now stacks with other AP buffs (Might, Battle Shout), but is hunter/pet only. That's okay - it's enough to give them a competitive edge over a cat. Cats are still solid DPS, and the difference in output between a cat and a wolf isn't huge. Noticeable, but not enough that you're likely to catch flak for it.

For soloing, the bear's swipe, combined with Thunderstomp at higher levels, makes group pulls easier. (Note that the bear will indiscriminately break your traps if you let him Swipe at will, though.) The crab's Pin and the hyena's Tendon Rip both help keep things at range longer. (The crab is sturdier, though.) The tanking pets are good for quite a lot of group quests if you have a healer with you - the bear tanked the Headless Horseman multiple times at 67 or 68.

If you're a Night Elf, Shadowmeld + Prowl (cat) never really gets old in PVP. It's not as sweet as when Aimed Shot was a 3 second cast and didn't break your stealth till it went off, but it's still nice. Tenacity pets, though, do generally fare better in PVP, just from their survivability. Cunning pets aren't bad (I hear the spider's Web is nice), but are a bit squishier.

Pet talents start at 20; there are several good combinations, but these are the ones I tend to use:

Note that I don't put points into the pet happiness talents in ferocity; I do in tenacity because it's an extra threat talent. I have the Mend Pet glyph (happiness from healing), and I always have food on me, so I figure it's a waste of points that could go to a better DPS boost. If pet happiness drops to yellow in combat, I just toss up a Mend Pet. I don't have talents for a cunning pet up because I don't have any, but you can easily gear them towards damage (Wolverine Bite, Feeding Frenzy, etc.) or utility (Roar of Recovery, etc.).

Regarding food, bears eat everything - you can toss them whatever random food you find while questing, and it's all good. Crabs are a bit pickier, but they'll do fish, so if you're fishing, you should be all set. Most pets eat meat, and if they don't eat meat, they probably don't eat fish (crabs and turtles are the exception) and will eat everything else (bread, cheese, fruit, fungus). There are some oddballs out there, but Petopia's got a good table if food type is important to your pet choosing process.

Current stables:

Duskhawk: wolf, bear, cat, hyena, tallstrider (wolf for raiding, bear for soloing)
Duskmoon: wolf, cat, crab, tallstrider (crab for soloing, wolf for instances)
Mabs: cat (she's only ever used the cat)

Next up, a brief analysis of hunter races, and then, the real fun: levels 1-9.

3.1.3 Hunter Notes

2009-05-27T08:24:00.002-04:00

The first 3.1.3 patch notes are floating around out there, and the two hunter items are both nice for Marksman:

Hunter's Mark: The ranged attack power bonus from this ability has been increased from 300 to 500.
Master Marksman: This talent now also decreases the cost of Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot by 5/10/15/20/25%.

I'm curious to see if the changes to Master Marksman will be enough to let me move 2 points from Efficiency into Combat Experience. I'm pretty sure the increased Agi and Int will be a larger DPS increase if the mana consumption isn't too bad.

Marksman 1-80 (Part 6: Professions & Secondary Skills)

2009-05-19T15:57:00.004-04:00

This time I'm going to go over what may be my real obsession, professions. I'll talk a bit about the secondary skills, as well.

Profession Notes

Hunters benefit reasonably well from leatherworking, engineering, jewelcrafting, alchemy, and enchanting. Inscription is useful to a lesser extent, but the offhands aren't really focused on a hunter, so you're probably better off buying your glyphs, unless you're doing inscription for the money. Blacksmithing produces some mail, and some useful weapons, but not enough to warrant taking it yourself. Tailoring makes bags, but the rest of what it produces isn't likely to be useful to you. If you specialize your leatherworking, dragonscale is the mail specialization. Whether you go goblin or gnomish engineering is mostly a matter of whether you want the sapper charges or the gnomish gadgets. Alchemy specialization depends more on what you want extras of.

Leatherworking is a good choice for making your own armor, and is fantastic for self-sufficiency while leveling. It will produce armor kits for you, and give you bracer fur linings, even after you upgrade beyond what you can craft. Several of the crafting bags are made by leatherworking, as well. If you specialize, Dragonscale makes mail.

Engineering is good if you want to make your own ammunition and/or weapons (guns) while leveling. It also produces an array of gadgets, trinkets, and explosives which can assist you while soloing. (The goblin landmine can render you a bit over-powered in the 30s and 40s.) Goblin and Gnomish are probably equally useful, and the difference is negligible at the upper levels. Engineering also makes scopes, which come in damage, crit, hit, and haste flavors. (You'll have to farm Molten Core for the hit scope schematic if you want it, though.) Seaforium charges aren't as important in Northrend, but going into Dire Maul (North) you'll probably want them to get to the last couple bosses, as well as in Shattered Halls to avoid the slime tunnel. (Seaforium will also open chests and lockboxes.)

Jewelcrafting will make you, at lower levels, mostly rings, necklaces, trinkets, and little statues that will heal you. The statues that heal you are pretty awesome - it's like a bandage you don't have to channel yourself. At the upper end, you'll get some of the best gems, and be able to make some awesome rings and necklaces. Gems are also perennial best-sellers on the auction house, for a ready source of cash.

Alchemy provides healing potions, mana potions, elixirs, flasks, a few miscellaneous concoctions, transmutes, and a handful of trinkets. The trinkets (at least a philosopher's stone, initially, and later upgrades of it) are required for transmutes - they also have decent stat boosts, and enhance your regenerative potions. Alchemists get potions specific to them which act like a rejuvination potion, plus give a random elixir buff. Some alchemy products sell well at auction. Specialists have a chance to create extra items.

Enchanting is useful because you can crunch all those greens you get while questing to either buff your own armor or sell for cash. Enchants can be put on scrolls and auctioned now, so it's a little easier to make cash without hanging out in town, but scrolls don't sell as readily as you might think. (It's a paradigm shift that hasn't quite happened.)

The gathering professions - skinning, mining, and herbalism - are easily paired with a crafting profession to provide materials, or can be used as a source of income. Mining and herbalism are both more lucrative than skinning right now, although arctic furs sell very nicely.

Secondary Skills

Cooking, Fishing, and First Aid are all useful to a hunter. Don't sell your cloth until you max that type of bandages. (I know, I know... wool is insanely overpriced in the auction house, but you can get money much more easily, later, with the oodles of mageweave you'll be getting.)

With the changes to out of combat mana regeneration, hunter mana regen is even worse than it's been in the past. So while you're probably going to be spending a bit of time in Viper, you're also probably going to be drinking quite a bit, especially if your health is down, too. In other words, you're going to be eating a lot. Cook your food for buffs; eventually you'll be able to make pet buff food, too.

You can talent your pet to not need food often, but sometimes it's still faster to just toss your pet a piece of food to make him happy. Fishing can both give you ready pet food for several popular pet families and give you access to nice buff food. You can fish anywhere at any level now - you may not catch anything useful, but you can skill up fishing wherever your fancy takes you now.

Next up: pets. (Yes, pets. You're still a hunter.)

Marksman 1-80 (Part 5: Glyphs)

2009-05-15T11:52:00.002-04:00

So far we've gone over talents, stats, and gear. This time:

Glyphs

Hunters have a lot of major glyphs and... 6 minor glyphs.

Picking 3 minor glyphs is easy: Feign Death, Mend Pet, Revive Pet.

Revive Pet basically means less kiting, more pewpewing, and the glyph for it means you're getting it off in no more than four seconds (once you talent for it). Mend Pet means you're not feeding your pet as much, which will either save or make you money, depending how you get your pet food. Feign Death's shorter cooldown makes it easier for you to push aggro back onto your pet (or bail if things go really badly), which again cuts down on kiting time. I'd probably pick up Mend Pet first, and then either of the other ones next.

The other three really just aren't as useful. Scare Beast might be if you do a lot of PVP (where feigning really isn't as useful), and the Pack glyph may have situational uses (I've heard something about Yogg-Saron's brain), but really doesn't apply that much. The glyph of Possessed Strength is just... well... odd. The only thing Eyes of the Beast was ever useful for (besides prowled cat scouting) was pulling Baron Geddon and Shazzrah in Molten Core back into Garr's room where there was more room to maneuver. So, yeah... probably best to just skip those three for most purposes.

Major glyphs aren't as cut-and-dried; you have 27 options.

Glyph of Serpent Sting is important once you get Chimera Shot, because more Serpent Sting damage means bigger Chimera Shots. Glyph of the Hawk is also a solid DPS boost in group settings when you can mostly stand and shoot during your Hawk procs, to take advantage of the haste. It's probably not as useful for soloing, due to the amount of movement minimizing the boost (from extra auto shots) from the haste. Glyph of Steady Shot is also good during group play - more stand and shoot time, so more Steady Shots, and you'll rarely not have Serpent Sting up. Reduced cooldown glyphs are popular (Chimera, Aimed, Kill Shot), but are mostly a boost in fights where you can't stand and shoot; the Steady Shot glyph and the Hawk glyph will net a larger DPS gain in fights where standing still is viable. The overall net DPS for a raid may be about the same.

Those are mostly end-game glyphs, however. The Serpent Sting glyph is probably useful regardless of level; some of these may suit you better outside the raiding environment:

Arcane Shot: The mana return may be good for soloing, especially at lower levels where higher level glyphs aren't available yet.
Freezing Trap: Especially nice for PVP.
Mending: Increased healing means your pet lives longer - with a tenacity pet, may be especially nice for soloing.
Trueshot Aura: Better for solo play than group play - some of the other +10% AP buffs seem to overwrite the aura when they proc, minimizing this glyph's usefulness in groups with those classes; the DPS gain is about the same as that of the Glyph of Steady Shot, however, and given the more mobile aspect of soloing, the Trueshot Glyph is probably more useful.

Other glyphs may be of use to you depend on your play style, but most of the others are either better for other specs, or just not very useful.

Next up: Professions (and secondary skills).

Marksman 1-80 (Part 4: Gear Notes & Gems)

2009-05-14T22:49:00.004-04:00

Having covered stat priorities for Marksman, next up is gear and gems.

Gear Notes

Marksman hunters, especially now that they get AP from Int via Careful Aim, should look for "of the Falcon" (Agi/Int) gear while leveling. Marksman has always been a mana-intensive playstyle, as well, so you'll want the mana, anyway. (The "of the Falcon" mail is stupidly expensive on the Bronzebeard Horde auction houses right now.) After that, Monkey (Agi/Sta) is the best option, then Tiger (Agi/Str), Wolf (Agi/Spi), or Eagle (Int/Sta). Straight up Agility or Attack Power doesn't hurt, either. Crit is good for a Marksman. You're not going to find much hit rating gear while leveling, so don't worry about that until you start getting closer to the top-end dungeons. I'd prioritize gear as Agi/AP, Crit, Int, Sta until you get to the point where hit rating and haste start to appear.

Ranged weapons are kind of spotty in old world leveling - they crop up a lot more (and in a lot more variety) once you get to Outland and Northrend. Questing, you'll find one every ten levels or so; if you run instances at level, you'll probably find upgrades more often. There are more bows than guns, but they're both fairly common; there are about half as many crossbows as either bows or guns, though. If you're not particular about which you use, you can carry some of either kind of ammunition and just switch as needed.

Bows: List from low to high
Guns: List from low to high
Crossbows: List from low to high

Your melee weapons are basically stat sticks. Don't worry much about two-handed versus dual-wielding; just go for the best combination of stat boosts you can get out of them.

Gems

Gems are mostly a reflection of your stat priorities. You'll of course want to meet the requirements for any meta gems first. If you don't care about your socket bonuses, gem for AP.

NOTE, 9/6/09: Agi has supplanted AP for some reason. I'm not sure on the math, but when AP goes bye-bye in 4.0, it's not going to matter anyway. I believe it has to do with more crits = more Piercing Shots procs, and more bleed damage is more damage.

Red Gems: AP. If for some reason you can't immediately get an AP gem, an Agi gem is good in a pinch.
Yellow Gems: Hit if you're not capped, crit if you are.
Blue Gems: Don't get a purely blue gem. Pick up a green or purple gem instead.
Orange Gems: AP/crit, AP/hit, depending on your hit rating. Similar to red gems, if you can't for some reason get an AP version, there are Agi versions to substitute until you can.
Purple Gems: AP/Sta. There are Agi/Sta, AP/mp5, and Agi/mp5 gems if you can't get the AP/Sta one right away.
Green Gems: Sta/crit, Sta/hit, depending on your hit rating.

Next up: Glyphs.

Marksman 1-80 (Part 3: Stats)

2009-05-14T21:42:00.003-04:00

I'm going to talk about gear next, so first I should probably talk about stats.

Stats

Hunters all generally look for the same stats: Agility (Agi), Intelligence (Int), Stamina (Sta), Attack Power (AP), Critical Strike Rating (crit), Hit Rating (hit), Haste, and Armor Penetration (not worth abbreviating). For PVE, a Marksman hunter looks for them in basically this order:

Hit rating, until you reach 8%; this is about 165 hit rating with 3 points in Focused Aim at 80. This can mostly be ignored till you get past 70, at which point you'll want to start watching more for gear with hit rating. Leveling gear has pretty much none.
Attack Power, but make sure you watch AP contribution from all sources when comparing gear. You get 1 point of AP per point of Agi (this was nerfed down from 2:1 I think in the 2.0 patch; it was towards the end of Vanilla WoW one way or anther); you should also be getting 1 point of AP per point of Int. If you're looking for a net gain in AP when you switch gear, make sure you calculate for the Agi and Int, as well. Sometimes prioritizing for AP means using pieces with less straight AP and more Agi and Int, because the overall AP gain is larger. Valuing pure AP over Agility is mostly true for gems and enchants; in straight up determination of gear, you'll want to take your crit rating into consideration.
Agility, since it contributes both AP and crit. While leveling, you may want to value Agi over AP for it's crit contribution.
Critical Strike Rating, since a Marksman hunter is a crit junkie. You should be getting 10% from talents by the time you get towards the end of the tree, so you're going to want to aim for a minimum of 30% on your character sheet at 80. You'll have more like 12% at around level 50.
Intelligence, since it contributes AP and mana. You will always be a mana-reliant spec as a Marksman, so don't neglect it. (I used to enchant for it when BM was the favored spec and Int was scarce on hunter gear.)
Haste, since your goal is 1.5 second cast Steady Shots (they used to be, until they were tweaked to be 2 second casts). The "soft cap" - the point at which you get 1.5 second Steady Shots just from haste contribution from gear - is 522 or 523, however you want to interpret the math. You're probably not going to see haste from gear until you get to Northrend, which is okay - you're probably going to be moving enough that you won't get the full benefit from it until you're doing dungeons regularly. Besides, 5 points in Improved Aspect of the Hawk with the Hawk glyph will more than haste cap you when it procs. Any extra haste just means extra Auto Shots (which is nothing to sneeze at - they add up); hunters' global cooldown can't be shortened from 1.5 seconds.
Stamina, since it helps keep you and your pet alive. It's not something to ignore, but not something to stack for over things that make you hit harder or faster or more often.
Armor Penetration, since hunter damage is mitigated so much by armor, isn't something to ignore; it's also not terribly common until you get to Northrend, and not worth stacking in the place of AP/Agi/Int/crit. If you're at the haste cap, you probably would benefit from picking up some armor penetration.

In PVP, you're going to favor Stamina, resilliance, crit, and AP, in some order - there's only so much PVP gear, and it's all gotten through PVP anyway, so there's not a lot of debate about what pieces to pick up. You're probably going to be gemming for resilliance.

You don't need to worry about Strength or Spirit. If you see gear with Str and Agi on it, it's really meant for a melee DPS class. It's not terrible for you if it's the best you can get at the time, but you'll want to be looking for a way to upgrade to more useful stats. Spirit isn't common enough on hunter gear to be worth stacking, and our out-of-combat mana regen is terrible enough that it's just never going to be feasible to improve through Spi. You can also ignore Spellpower entirely, in all its flavors; it's not going to do anything for us. Spell penetration is similarly pointless (although it may still interact with some trap mechanics, that will eventually be fixed).

Marksman 1-80 (Part 2: Detailed Marksman Talent Notes)

2009-05-14T14:00:00.003-04:00

Continuing the Marksman 1-80 information... This time I'm going to go through the Marksman tree's talent options.

Detailed Talent Notes

Improved Concussive Shot: Dazing talents can be nice while soloing (easier kiting), but when they took the stun proc off Improved Concussive Shot, I dropped the points from the talent. The stun was its entire appeal to me. But if you don't like some of the talents I've taken, they're not terrible choices for leveling.

Focused Aim: Although you might not pick it up right away, this is worth getting especially after you pick up Steady Shot at level 50. While soloing, you're more likely to have something jabbing at you while you're trying to cast it. The 3% hit rating is good as well, especially at higher levels when you're trying to get hit capped.

Lethal Shots: 5% crit is a must. Your first talent points will probably going here.

Careful Aim: Another talent you'll want eventually (your intelligence will be a solid AP boost), even if you don't get it right away.

Improved Hunter's Mark: Depending how much you like Hunter's Mark, this will buff it and make it cost nothing. There are better places to put your talents.

Mortal Shots: Increased crit damage is good. You need this to get Aimed Shot. Marksman hunters are big on crit.

Go for the Throat: This talent will keep your pet growling (or boost its DPS), dependent partly on your crit rating for usefulness. You'll want it for soloing to help keep stuff off you and on your pet.

Improved Arcane Shot: This is a talent you'll want to pick up at some point for the DPS boost. Arcane will be part of your rotation.

Aimed Shot: A must in the Marksman world. A mortal strike debuff for PVP, an instant, still somewhat hard-hitting shot. (Admittedly, it crits at 80 for about what it did at 70 when it was still a 3-second cast. Our burst is gone, but you still want the shot.)

Rapid Killing: This talent is useful for leveling in the next-shot damage boost you get from killing something. It's useful at the higher levels for the 3-minute cooldown on Rapid Fire.

Improved Stings: Something you'll want eventually - increased Serpent damage is increased Chimera damage.

Efficiency: Efficiency is a much debated talent - soloing, you'll want it. If you end up raiding at higher levels with persistent replenishment buffs, you can probably drop it. (I still have it in my raiding spec.)

Concussive Barrage: See Improved Concussive Shot. Not bad for PVP, not bad for kiting. You can't daze much of anything in a raid environment, so it's pretty useless there.

Readiness: This used to be a Survival talent; when they took Scatter Shot from us, this is what we got instead. It is awesome. This is a spare trap, back-to-back Rapid Fires, double Kill Shots, an emergency Feign, or whatever else you suddenly find yourself needing that's on cooldown. Plus, you want Trueshot Aura, right?

Barrage: This is another much debated talent, along with its followup. Its usefulness is partially going to be determined by whether or not you're using Aimed Shot in your rotation. (You should be.)

Combat Experience: A nice, solid talent. The extra Agility and Int are always nice. If I ever freed up any points in either of my specs, this is where they would go.

Ranged Weapon Specialization: 5% more damage is 5% more damage.

Piercing Shots: The bleed is a nice damage boost, and it'll keep rogues from restealthing. ;) (It's not a magic effect - it can't be Cloaked.)

Trueshot Aura: 10% AP boost is great. Death Knights and Enhancement Shamans can proc an equivalent buff, but this is persistent, and always useful.

Improved Barrage: Like its prerequisite, a debated talent. I love it for the uninterruptible Volley, and the crit boost is solid.

Master Marksman: This used to be an AP buff; now it's 5% crit and cheaper Steady Shots. Go for it.

Rapid Recuperation: A good leveling talent in conjunction with Rapid Killing, and nice for raiding because of its Rapid Fire component. I like it.

Wild Quiver: This is a nice damage boost - nature damage, to boot, so I believe it's not affected by armor as much.

Silencing Shot: Nice for soloing and PVP, and since it's off the global cooldown, you can use it as an extra damage pop in raiding, too. Also nice for instances and such where you have a caster you want to pull closer.

Improved Steady Shot: Not a bad talent, although you'll get more of a DPS boost out of Wild Quiver. Better for raiding than soloing, where you'll be in combat long enough to both get and use the proc.

Marked for Death: A good DPS boost if you remember to use Hunter's Mark. If you don't get it for a soloing spec, you'll want it for a raiding spec.

Chimera Shot: This will be your hardest hitting shot when you get it (besides Kill Shot). This is why you want to buff Serpent Sting as much as possible - the Serpent proc will easily keep this shot doing 5-8k on crits at 80.

Marksman 1-80 (Part 1: General Talent Notes)

2009-05-13T16:25:00.003-04:00

I'm going to do this in chunks, because I've been writing it out and it's getting long. This won't be so much of a leveling guide as a Marksman guide. Leveling is pretty general - go to zones where you can get quests and don't die immediately walking out of town, and kill mobs and do quests. Leveling as a Marksman in particular, on the other hand, means knowing what you want for talents, what your skills are useful for, and what kind of gear you should be using. So then:

Marksman 1-80

A lot of people level as Beast Mastery. It's easy - send in the pet, turn on Auto Shot, let the pet do all the work. Marksman doesn't have to be hard, though. Leveling as a Marksman hunter can help you develop some skills useful later in the game, since you can't always count on your pet or your tank to hold every mob in a pull (and sometimes you don't want them to, either). Kiting and chain trapping will always be more in the realm of Survival, just because they have talents built towards minimizing snares on the hunter and maximizing traps. These skills can, however, be learned and developed as a leveling Marksman hunter.

General Talent Notes

I run with two Marksman builds; one is geared towards a generalist playstyle - soloing, casual PVP, instances - and the other is focused on raid DPS output. The former is the one you'll want to look at for a leveling or soloing build - 7/53/11. You'd probably want to do Marksmanship talents first until around when you've got Improved Barrage filled out, then pick up probably the Survival talents to get Scatter Shot. (Or, if you're impatient, toss the 7 points into Beast Mastery for a faster pet revive.)

Soloing Spec (7/53/11)
Raiding Spec (2/62/7)

Survival talents: Scatter Shot is fantastic in solo and small group play - it's short term crowd control, which you can use either to extend locking down a mob until your trap cooldown is back up, or use it to get a mob off your healer or a clothie until you can either get it trapped, or your tank picks it back up, or you can hit it with enough damage to pull it off to kite it. It's also another spell interrupt, and lasts long enough for most of a fast pet revive. Improved Tracking (5% more damage against most mobs), Hawkeye (another 6 yards of range), and Survival Instincts (4% less damage taken and 4% more crit for Arcane and Steady Shot) are good ways to get there.

Beast Mastery talents: Improved Revive Pet is awesome. If you're mostly soloing and your pet doesn't hold aggro well (and after a while, it probably won't, if your gear keeps up), use Endurance Training (10% more pet health, 5% more health for you) to get it, instead of Improved Aspect of the Hawk (10% chance to proc a haste boost) - you'll probably be kiting too much while soloing to really take advantage of the haste proc.

Next up: A more detailed look at Marksman talents.

Raid UI

2009-05-08T08:57:00.005-04:00

http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/vv7/duskhawk/WoWScrnShot_050709_213511.jpg

The numbers in Recount are from Archavon on Tuesday, mixed with whatever soloing I did on Wednesday, so they may not mean anything.

This is the UI that goes with the 2/62/7 build.

Addons

oRa2
Recount
Omen
DBM
Viper Notify

Macros

The Shot2 macro is:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/use Handgrips of the Savage Emissary
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

(The gloves being for the ROCKETS!!! Teehee.)

The Misdirect macro is:

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, target=focus] Misdirection; [button:2] Misdirection; [button:3, target=pet] Misdirection
/p Misdirecting... hope I click the right one!

I have an Intellimouse Explorer 3, so that's left, right, and middle mouse buttons.

Other macros, all space savers:

/cast [button:1] Aspect of the Cheetah; [button:2] Aspect of the Pack

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Explosive Trap; [button:2] Immolation Trap

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Freezing Trap; [button:2] Frost Trap; [button:3] Freezing Arrow

#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use 3 1

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Mend Pet(Rank 8); [button:2] Revive Pet

And the mount macro from WoWwiki:

/run C=CallCompanion if(not IsMounted())then if(((GetZoneText()=="Dalaran")and(GetSubZoneText()~="Krasus' Landing"))or(GetZoneText()=="Wintergrasp")or not IsFlyableArea())then C("MOUNT",57)else C("MOUNT",34)end end
/dismount

This uses the green nether ray and the orange raptor.

Of spreadsheets

2009-04-21T13:26:00.002-04:00

So, I downloaded the hunter spreadsheet off Elitist Jerks' forums this week. So far it's telling me that there was maybe 100 DPS difference between what I set up as my general use build and what I decided on for a raiding build. It's also telling me that the Chimera shot glyph really wasn't worth that 50g, because I'm probably going to switch it back to something else tonight. It also suggests that my gut instinct - to keep 2 points in Go For the Throat - was the right one - another change I'll take advantage of with the free reset tonight. I may even talk myself out of Hawkeye (one of the things I love dearly).

So... my raiding build may become even more optimized for raiding. Yay? Maybe it was worth the 1000g and the download...

It also suggests that the unbuffed DPS #'s I was seeing on the target dummy aren't totally off. Phew. Now I just need to learn to push buttons as well as Excel. >.<

Post-3.1 Spec

2009-04-15T13:26:00.004-04:00

Ok, I haven't dual-spec'd Dusk yet. I did the priest and the warrior, but I have less than 4k gold left, and for some reason that makes me uncomfortable. And being dual-MM spec'd - not just that, dual PVE MM spec'd - well, ok, I already know I'm crazy.

So, my general spec hasn't changed too much - I bumped a couple points around to pick up Piercing Shots, and so I'm now 7/53/11. Major glyphs - Hawk, Serpent Sting, Trueshot Aura. Minor glyphs - Mend Pet, Revive Pet, Feign Death.

The second spec will be more optimized for raiding - so, cutting out things like Scatter Shot, and actually analyzing my haste rating and seeing just how many points I actually need in Improved Aspect of the Hawk... and then shoving all the extra points into things like Marked for Death (once I find out if it works with other hunters' marks) or Ranged Weapon Specialization (a talent I used to have, before they added so much fun stuff in 3.0).

I didn't actually test this spec much of at all. No, I logged out Monday night parked in Feralas, in order to begin farming Sprite Darters as soon as the server went up. Which I did, sometime around 8:45ish EST. I was all alone there until about 9:50, when another Tauren hunter showed up. The egg dropped for him after about five minutes. >.< Mine dropped at 10:00 on the dot, which was coincidentally the time I had decided I was going to stop a half hour before, so that I could go do the cooking and fishing dailies and buy the three new Horde faction mounts.

Small pets: 73; Mounts: 77.

Tonight: Gnomeregan! (For Lil' Smokey.) And then, assuming I'm not invited for Ulduar (I don't anticipate being asked to come), I'll start on the Emerald Whelpling.

Bah

2009-04-14T09:36:00.002-04:00

Well, 3.1 is here. This means I'm going to have to accept that I'm not getting upgrades from Naxx-25, which is frustrating, because I really kinda sorta wanted the bracers off Grobbulus. Yes, of all the possible hunter drops in Naxx, for me, the bracers are what I wanted the most. The good news is that there's another similar pair of bracers in Ulduar-10. The bad news is that it's in 10, which means there won't be purchaseable bracers of iLVL 219, so I'm going to be relying on drops again.

Yeah, yeah, only four Naxx-25 Grobbulus kills in my stats. (42ish boss kills total? And nothing from them?) It's still frustrating. Maybe with the changes to Efficiency and Chimera Shot I'll be able to take the hit to mana (and the AP loss) and switch out to the Bands of Anxiety. Going to need to pick up a smidge of hit rating, though. Why do the Eaglebane Bracers have to be so all-around awesome?

Ah, leveling

2009-04-06T13:25:00.004-04:00

Mabs hit 60 sometime in August 2005. Duskhawk hit 60 in May 2006. And since then my pre-60 leveling on hunters has been pretty sparse, the first 15 levels or so on the scattered baby hunters that were to try out a starting zone, or a server.

Now I'm leveling my baby hunter on Bronzebeard, the one that was to try out the blood elf zone and jewelcrafting. Having leveled one hunter 70-80 in Wrath already, I had gotten used to Volley. Uninterruptable Volley. Very used to it. Much of the past week has been an, "Oh, my God, when do I get Volley already?" haze. (At 40, apparently. Not that it's a huge help, with single-target pets and not having points in the uninterruptable talent yet.)

I soloed Shadowfang Keep on her last night at 40 (with the blue tallstrider from Ashenvale, heh) to clear out those quests from my log; sometime in the next couple days I'll probably hit up Razorfen Kraul, as well. (And hopefully get a group of some sort for Razorfen Downs, since I want the sword to offhand with the sword from the Scarlet Monastery quest.)

The early 'of the falcon' mail is stupidly expensive on Bronzebeard. Argh. I really don't have to make myself some Tough Scorpid leatherworking stuff. (I mean, seriously... Agility and Spirit? Who came up with that one?) Dustwallow has had unuseful quest rewards, though, so I'll probably hit up Tanaris (for the lucrative Zul'Farrak quests, at least) next.

The Nature of Drop Percentages and Stat Spreads

2009-03-30T13:00:00.003-04:00

I've been through Naxx-25's Construct Quarter three times now (with 2 Thaddius kills), Military twice, and Spider, Plague, and FWL once. That's 100 individual loot items, including tokens but excluding trash drops. How many of the pieces I'm interested in have dropped?

None, of course. :P

What am I looking for? This, or this (or this for this, I like both, and they're both upgrades), or this. I'm sure there are other things that are small upgrades in there (like shoulders - I should probably look into shoulders), but those are the pieces I know I can't upgrade elsewhere (yet, anyway).

The bracers in particular I'm not satisfied with the 'equivalent' i-lvl items; I don't like the stat spreads. The 7.5 chest is another piece I don't like the stat spread for. I'd rather keep what I've got than take a piece that's really better for a different spec. Part of it is balancing hit rating - not dropping too low, and such. I would be okay with swapping gems out for crit or AP again if I got a piece with more hit rating, but so many of the potential 'upgrades' would drop my hit rating to the point I'd have to reenchant for it, which would probably result in a net crit or AP loss.

So, ahem...

2009-03-26T20:27:00.002-04:00

The baby hunter is now also MM. >.>

And, I can't seem to daze anything in raids, so that plan's out the window.

PTR musings

2009-03-17T09:07:00.003-04:00

I haven't been on the 3.1 PTR at all. I haven't felt motivated this time, since the changes aren't as big as the 3.0 PTR (we're not getting two new tiers of talents, and whatnot).

The changes that have been put forth for hunters, though - not the ammo changes, or the pet changes, but the tweaks to the Marksman talents - they're going to require some spec and rotation tweaking.

Why? Daze, Chimera, and Steady Shot.

I'm using a Chimera, Aimed, Arcane, Steady x3 or x4 rotation. I'm looking at this spec. So I'm going to want to switch things up - probably Arcane, Aimed, Chimera, and then my Steady Shots, however many I can squeeze in with Haste. (Three or four.)

This hinges on the changes to Concussive Barrage - Chimera and Multi will have 100% daze chances. PVP change? Oh, no. This is to buff MM hunter's Steady Shot damage in PVE. (Okay, maybe not, but it's how I'm going to use it.) Add onto that the bleed from Piercing Shots which Aimed, Chimera, and Steady will add...

Yeah, bosses are immune to the daze. This rolls Concussive Shot's effect into Chimera and Multi, though - which means you have a multi-target daze. For non-boss situations, this is going to up Steady Shot damage, as well as give a hunter more kiting options.

Oh, right. Who still kites nowadays?

Of baby trolls

2009-03-02T13:37:00.000-05:00

I have a baby troll.

She's a fury warrior. (rar!)

Back when I first started playing Horde, I made a bunch of toons, one of each race. I had a Night Elf hunter main at the time, so I made an undead rogue (my Horde main for a long time), a Tauren druid, a troll warrior, and an orc warlock. The warlock was deleted early on, and the account was eventually pared down to two Alliance toons and grew a complement of eight Horde. The druid lasted until the most recent expansion, when I deleted her to make a death knight. (It now stands: Night Elf hunter and priest; undead rogue and priest; Tauren hunter and death knight; blood elf rogue and hunter; troll warrior; orc shaman.)

The baby troll, though, is older than my main, the Tauren hunter. She was sidelined for a long time - I didn't understand warriors at first; stances were confusing. I died too much, so I leveled as protection in defensive stance until I got dual-wield at level twenty. At a later point, after I had switched factions, shelved my undead rogue at level 50 (for nine months!) to make a Tauren hunter, and raided in Molten Core for a while, I finally started to get an idea of how warriors worked. Not through doing - I didn't touch my warrior for a long time, and for a while she spent time as storage space for snowballs and low-level engineering items. No, from hearing the Vent chatter during raids, about how the warriors tanked - stance-dancing for Magmadar, grouping up dog packs, off-tanking Golemagg's dogs.

After the undead priest had been leveled (she was supposed to be a place-holder for a blood elf priest of that name, but I started playing her and liked it too much to wait), I thought, hey, maybe I could level that warrior and fill in for 5-mans as a tank sometimes! So the warrior made it into the 40s.

I had transferred a human paladin off the server when it was free, since I had sunk time and money into her alchemy, and didn't want to 'lose' the investment. (Arcanite transmute! 5g!) And then... I made an orc shaman with the same name. (The irony! Human paladin to orc shaman! Old school battleground rivals!) Anyway, the orc elemental shaman is sitting at 68 now, having taken up what could have been the warrior's turn at leveling.

And now we're in a new expansion. I have a death knight - at 65. But of my 3 Horde 70s, only the hunter has made it to 80. The rogue is 71, the priest 72. The shaman is still 68, and the death knight is only up to 65. But... The rogue's alchemy is at 450. The priest's tailoring is at 415, and her enchanting is at 423. The shaman's leatherworking is at 437. The death knight's inscription is at 410, and of course the hunter's engineering is at 450.

I'm a profession junkie.

The jewelcrafter is a level 34 hunter; the blacksmith? My baby troll. In order to get blacksmithing above 375, the toon has to be at least level 65.

The troll is level 62 now. She's dual-wielding the Warsong Howling Axe from the Blood Furnace, and a white two-handed sword from a vendor at Falcon Watch. (At level 63, I have a pretty "of the beast" green two handed sword.) And her blacksmithing is at 303.

Heroic Naxx

2009-03-02T13:23:00.003-05:00

So, this past Thursday I finally went along to the guild's Heroic Naxx run. There were 20 guildies, one former guildie, and 4 PUGs. We went through the first three bosses of the Construct wing (Patchwerk, Grobbulus, Gluth), then pounded our heads on Thaddius a while before giving up for the night.

Saturday, one of the PUGs opened our raid ID up to a bunch of other people. Without asking. Grr.

About 10 of us (from the guild) got asked back in on Sunday night for another crack at Thaddius (the PUG couldn't get him either, lol). Our best attempt got him down to 40k. Every time the raid leader would start talking on vent at the transition time for a polarity shift, I would die. That was two of the attempts, including the 40k attempt. Apparently I can't pay attention to visual cues with audio distractions.

I was pushing 3k-3.1k on all the attempts, generally coming in around 10th, but 6th-8th for overall damage. (Familiar problem as a MM hunter.) (My husband on his elemental shaman was pushing 4.5k-5k DPS and coming in 1st-3rd for both DPS and damage on almost all attempts. Egads.) I would have killed for replenishment, but - no priests of any flavor, no Survival hunters, and no Ret pallies.

I'm still irritated about the raid ID getting stolen, and a lot of the people who were in the PUG run I really don't have any interest in running with again. Hopefully we can keep things all in-guild or with trustworthy friends (like the former guildy, or the nice ladies from DotH) this week.

Woo! AOE bear!

2009-02-26T13:22:00.003-05:00

Thunderstomp: Coming to a bear/boar/crab/croc/rhino/scorpid/turtle/warp stalker/worm near you! (And the gorilla still can has too.)

I have stubbornly held on to Hadrian, my bear, as my tenacity pet. Combined with the remote stable spell, I'm probably going to switch back to the bear for solo play once this goes in.

The idea of pet talents and individual pet family skills was, if I recall correctly, that more than just three pet families would get used. The gorilla becoming Gorilladin sucked a lot of people in, with their superb AOE farming ability.

There will soon be most awesome irony when I go farming for Chilled Meat in Sholazar. /cackle

Yeah, totally not a MM thing, other than that no pet holds aggro for me right now (outside groups, as weird as that is - Hadrian tanked Headless Horseman with just Misdirects and his taunt), and this might actually change that. MM farming may stop being a combination of kiting and standing there taking hits with the un-interruptable Volley.

3.1 Patch Notes

2009-02-25T09:35:00.004-05:00

The 3.1 PTR is up, although I'm not over there, and I've been hearing conflicting information about what's actually on the PTR so far as changes to Survival, vs. what's in the patch notes. But, I'm a Marksman hunter, so other than academic curiosity, I don't care what they do to the deep Survival talents. :P

From the patch notes:

Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.
Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.
Talents
Beast Mastery
Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.
Marksmanship
Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an auto shot, to 80%.
Survival
Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.
Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.
Pets
Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.

None of that seems particularly awful; we already got our nerf. The Disengage change is minor, and tweaking the CD back up a little after having it reduced previously isn't huge - especially since one of the undocumented changes is the removal of a minimum range on Kill Shot. You don't have to back up to pick someone off. (Side note: Something about the synergy of raid buffs last night in Naxx had me Kill Shot critting for 10k. We didn't even have a warrior or a druid. 2 prot pallies, 1 frost DK, 3 shamans (one of each flavor), 2 holy priests, a warlock, and me. I don't know what was going on, but it was sweet.)

The Frost Trap change is a small nerf, if I'm reading it correctly; it means that if the person/mob who triggers the trap resists or is immune, the trap just fizzles, instead of them just ignoring the effect.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk apparently looks different now - I'm guessing something along the lines of the cobra animation for one of the deeper BM talents, but we'll see. I'm not sure why the Improved Wing Clip mention fell under the BM notes - that's a Survival thing, and one of the few things I wish I still had from my 2-day Survival experiment.

The Piercing Shots change was announced a while back, and I will be shuffling points (or using dual specs for a raiding spec) to pick it up. The reduction of the points for Ranged Weapon Specialization means I may also pick it up for a raiding spec, but I'll see how many loose points I have to play with. Wild Quiver... meh, still probably won't bother.

The Survival changes mention Black Arrow, so I'm not sure why they didn't list it in the Survival talent section, but hey, at least you get the inkling that Survival hunters will now be able to do Fire, Nature, Arcane, and Shadow damage, on top of physical damage and two traps counting as Frost. If you ever doubted that hunters were casters, we may be the only ones with all five schools now. Woo. o.O

I'm really not familiar enough with Survival to know how good or bad some of the changes are, but it seems like they're trying to bring down the somewhat crazy numbers that Survival started doing after the 3.0.8 changes. Trap Launcher: a cool idea I've seen tossed out on the Hunter and Suggestion forums occasionally, and I'm a little curious how far down the tree it is. It should make Survival's trap dancing a little easier (to synergize with the undocumented tweak to Sniper Training?), but the idea of throwing a snake trap across the field at someone is just awesome.

The Roar of Sacrifice change - I don't have a Cunning pet right now (long story short: I had 3 pets that turned out to be Ferocity when they added talents, and wanted a bear as my Tenacity pet; I initially picked up a sporebat as my 5th, but switched it to a Hyena, theoretically for PVP). But this was the mana regen talent? I'm guessing it wasn't meant to be used on anyone but the hunter, and they're just fixing it. The rhino nerf disappointed my GM (who, post-3.0 warlock changes, has been a hunter full-time o.O), since he had a ball during the Lunar Festival 'defending' Thunder Bluff's elder from Alliance. (No, our guild wasn't subsequently KoS at the Alliance elders, really.)

Changes mentioned on the official forums that didn't get included in the PTR notes: remote stable use, and the ammuniton changes. I kind of wish remote stable use had been a saleable engineering item, but oh well. (It could have had awesome RP possibilities... /e pulls out her Goblin SAT Phone and issues the command: "Release the hounds!" Ahem.) The ammunition changes apparently aren't coming all in one piece - for now they're just increasing the stack size and removing (?) quivers. Hopefully this means that my Mammoth Cutters won't be useless yet, and that when they do eventually change, Engineering ammunition will just become a relic-like item of some sort, which we can still craft. We make some of the better ammunition in the game, and it would be nice if that didn't disappear completely.

Um, yeah, I've mentioned I'm a Goblin Engineer before, right? >.>

Two gear upgrades last week - both unexpected. A belt off Gothikk, and a sword off the Four Horsemen. My 2h sword skill was at 116 when I got it, heh. I mostly dual-wielded up until the Zulian Stone Axe (with an Agility enchant) from Venoxis in Zul'Gurub, and then mostly had two-handers from there on out, other than a brief switch into dual Stellaris with +Int enchants until I got the S3 axe. One of the things I've always understood about playing MM is that you can't neglect your mana pool; at least the gear reflects that now.

Marksman Hunter

In three colors!

New Shot Macro

Updated Transmogrification

#WARCOOKIE

Transmogrifying

4.3

Keybinds and Macros

*poke*

Replay Value

My guild...

So close

Moving On: Guild Achievements

Patch love

More thoughts on the /castsequence

How to 5

Of /castsequences and haste

Unexpected delights

Notes on a Guild and my (often ham-fisted) leadership thereof

Current Hunter Macros

Drafts

New Familiar Friends

Baby hunter, again

Yogg +1

Worgen hunter

Engineering!!

More Coherent Beta Stuff

Beta Adventures, Part 6

Beta Adventures, Part 5

This sparked much excited cackling.

Beta Adventures, Part 4

Undergeared, sure

#104

Macros

Hunter F.A.Q.

How crazy am I?

*grumble*

Cataclysm stuffs! Woo!

While we're at it...

Screenshots or it doesn't count (Halion)

Halion, the Twilight Destroyer

June, argh

I am not a Kingslayer...

Whee! Cataclym Hunter Preview

Something is off when...

Five years, and the tune never changes

Screenshots or it doesn't count

Ready to Raid? Maybe, Maybe Not

Moving on

Oh! And...

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

Room to Run

Arcanelessness

Attrition

Still Groping Around in the Dark

I have a lovely husband.

The Betrayer and the Sun King

The leveling guide

Marksman 1-80: Level 80

Marksman 1-80: Levels 71-79

Marksman 1-80: Level 70

Marksman 1-80: Levels 61-69

Marksman 1-80: Level 60

Marksman 1-80: Levels 51-59

Marksman 1-80: Level 50

Marksman 1-80: Levels 41-49

Marksman 1-80: Level 40

Marksman 1-80: Levels 31-39

Marksman 1-80: Level 30

Ahem, #94

#93

Race/class changes in Cataclysm

Brief thoughts on the Cataclysm

Marksman 1-80: Levels 21-29

Marksman 1-80: Level 20

Marksman 1-80: Levels 11-19

Marksman 1-80: Level 10

3.2 PTR notes

Marksman 1-80: Levels 1-9

Marksman 1-80 (Part 8: Hunter Races)

poke

grumble