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.
3/26/09
So, ahem...
The baby hunter is now also MM. >.>
And, I can't seem to daze anything in raids, so that plan's out the window.
And, I can't seem to daze anything in raids, so that plan's out the window.
3/17/09
PTR musings
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?
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?
3/2/09
Of baby trolls
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.
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
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.
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.
2/26/09
Woo! AOE bear!
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.
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.
2/25/09
3.1 Patch Notes
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:
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.
From the patch notes:
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.)
- 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.
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.
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