Pets, stables, and hunter laws?

Sorry about the lack of posting -- It's been slow around the hunter info parts lately.
The last week or so has provided some niffty little info tidbits though.

Pets -
Devilsaur? wtf?!
Yes its true, the blue's suggestion to try to tame a devilsaur came through. They really are tameable. Even that hugh mother effer in ungoro. You may be thinking "well what about shrinking, might as well just get a raptor!", Wrong. After shrinking they're still pretty large, about twice the size of my hunter (dwarf) -- and their pet family skill is a buff stack that increase ap and size. I can't wait to fight some lonely mage in av, "ZOMGDINO!".

This brings up an interesting question of what other pets might be trainable. Kodos? Murlocs? Giraffes?!

Also, exotic pets, wtf?

Stables -
"So blizz, how about bigger stables?"

"yes."

Thank the lord.

Hunter laws -
Humorous listing of all the hunter laws, much like man laws but for your average cat wrangler.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=5B27D345AD3ACC9A9BAC4CFA4BE396E8.app11_07?topicId=6286790064&sid=1

WotLK pet talents!

First thoughts while browsing the new pet talents: ZOMG! PETS ARE TEH LEEEET
Second thoughs: Turtles!

For as long as I can remember, the turtle has been my favorite pet. Because of its lack of usefulness however, I never actually trained one.

Come LK I plan on having three pets. A dps (cat) A tanker for leveling (turtle) and a utility (most likely for fun / random pvp (dragonhawk)

Go to wowhead to check out the talent calc, make sure you hit "bonus points" if your bm.

For my cat I plan on having
-- http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?petcalc=0Vdz0fszszk

For my turtle
--http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?petcalc=Mc0GhbGzbko
Together with the turtle family skill, Shell Shield (reduces damage taken by 50% for 12 secs), and last stand / roar of fortitude, leveling will never be easier.

For my Dragonhawk
-- http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?petcalc=czbo0MhzGrko
Dragonhawks are gonna be a nice little "pewpew to plate wearers" pvp pet :)

*edit* After looking over the talents / pet skills, I may try out a raptor for my raiding pet, and a nether ray for pvp.

Enjoy :)

WotLK Talents !

Browsing the new LK talents brings up some interesting questions. Is BM too over powered? Will MM be viable in PVE? Are the 51 point talents worth a damn?

Well, in short, yes. Here's why.

BM
The beast mastery tree is getting a slew of new buffs that benefit raiding in a tremendous way.
The best part about the BM tree is the fact that pets get their own talents now. This means that each pet is unique and viable in any situation. Of course there will still be higher dps pets, or more tanking oriented pets, but on the whole pets are getting buffed out the wazoo.

The talents in the BM tree specifically target the new pet talents. Invigoration for instance, avalible in the 8th tier, regenerates mana each time your pet scores a critical strike with special ability. This means that claw, bite, rend, lightning breath etc etc, will now result in returned mana.

The ninth tier gives two new talents. Longevity reduces the cd time of your BW, intimidation, and pet specials. This provides more DPS all together. Cobra strikes is going to increase DPS and mana regen by a crap ton. You gain a 60% chance (with 3 points) to cause your pets next three specials to critically hit, which gives back 6% total mana, when you crit hit with arcane, steady, or kill shot.

Again, mana regen is a big theme with the 10th tier which is aspect mastery. maxed out it gives 10% more mana regen with viper, and 50% more ranged bonus from hawk. Yay!
The final talent may seem a little dumb and useless, but it isn't. Right now the way the pet talent trees are set up you only get 16(17?) points to spend. With the 51 bm talent that bumps up to 21(22?). If you take a look at the pet talent trees, you'll see why this is an amazing talent.

MM
Marksmenship is getting some great PVE and PVP buffs.

Focused aim was stuck into the first tier of talents and is amazing for areans and soloing alike. No more major dps cuts from melee in pvp!

Piercing shots (7th tier) is a nifty little warrior/pally pvp compensation. Not much, but it helps.

The true pve/pvp blurred line of talents begins with Rapid Recuperation. This talent (8th tier) deduces the mana cost of all shots and abilities by 60% while under the effect of rapid fire. More damage, more haste, less mana? awsome.

Wild quiver may not seem to "leet" but now that steady shot no longer clips auto, you have a 10% chance to hit the target 3 times in 1.5 seconds. *drool*
Improved steady shot is a great way to work arcane shots into your rotation, more damage, less mana.

Marked for death is a nice talent that gives more reason to mark the target. Now you get bonus RAP and crit chance. It also boots the crit chance of aimed, steady, and kill shot by 10%.

The final talent Chimera shot is a hot debate right now. Good or bad? useful or useless?
I personally think it could do wonders in pvp, not so much pve. It is however a situational talent making it hard to be the most optimal for raiding. I can definetly see rogues cursing us out in battlegrounds though.

Survival
Survial is more and more all about crit and agility. I can see this tree working for PVE late endgame with enough agi, but undergeared it could severly gimp your dps.

The two talents that are really useful are hunting party, which restores mana, rage, energy, or runic power for every crit shot. The other talent is Sniper training.

All in all the survival tree is about targets below a certain percent health, and raid buffs.


Killshot is a new skill that deals extra damage to targets below 20% health. The best part about this skill is that it has a 6 sec cooldown, but is an instant cast. Perfect for escaping targets or on the going.

All in all the new hunter talents are making raiding and pvp look to be a bright future for the most unloved and disrepected DPS class.

Lich King Hunter Info!

So WotLK is officially out of alpha and the NDA was lifted, meaning that a whole crap ton of info was released.

Here's some nice hunter changes to chew on

skills - http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=620

wowhead talent calculator http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent

tons of good stuff can't wait to try it all out!

I'll talk about the new talents and such when I get more time to write about it.

WoW Heroes

Check out WoW Heroes. It checks out your armory profile and rates your character based on gear, enchants, and gems and places you on a slider that reconmends what end game instances you should be in.

Very helpful.

Quickly - addons that I use

Bongos
Xperl
Huntertimers
DBM
Omen
Recount
Auctioneer
equipcompare
rating buster
vbagnon
titan panel
mob info 2
SCT
Lightheaded
Cartograher

All of these are avalible at curse or wow interface

Agi Vs (R)AP - Gems, Enchants and scaling.

The two most imporant stats for a hunter are Agi and (R)AP. Agility is the bane of all hunters, without agi we would hit like a holy pallly.

Agi is in most cases better than Rap for two reasons. One is that agi gives more stat bonuses. At level 70 each point of agility increases RAP by 1, .552 critical strike raiting, 2 armor, and a marginal amount of dodge. RAP however, only increases - you guessed it - RAP.


As a rule of thumb, for every 1 agi you should have ~ 2 rap
It is best to find a balance between the two. (thanks to kyo for helping out with this.)

Now lets look at scaling. One of the best buffs for hunters in the pally buff Blessing of Kings that increases all stats by 10%. The problem with BoK is that it does not stack with RAP.

Lets say a hunter raiding Kara has 400 flat agi unbuffed. Once he takes an agi pot (+35 agi) and buff food (+20 agi) (I know these are off, but it makes it easier for the example) he comes out with 455 agi. 455 agi x .10 = 500 agi. Just by taking agi buff food and pots you come out with +100 rap. That comes out to more than stacking AP food, which results in more DPS.



Gems
Once you hit your hit cap of 142, stack as much agi as you can. The best right now is the +10 agi from the SSO. The problem is that it costs 15 gems and a tip if you're not a JC / can't find a guildie to cut it for free. Although you may be tempted to get those socket bonuses by sticking green quality yellow gems in there don't do it! +4 int or minor increases to rap is not worth it.

Enchants
Again, do whatever you can to get +agi. If there is no +agi avalible due to lack of mats / recipe / piece of gear your enchanting go for +rap then + crit.

First gruul kill!

Great job to FA on our first gruuls kill. And thank you much to those who stepped in to help.
Grats to everyone who received loot!

Hunter Raid Mechanics pt III - Pets and mana effiency

So now that we've covered shot rotation lets go over the wonderful world of pets.

One of, if not the, most attractive features of hunters in WoW is the pet. The pet is what makes the hunter class so unique and enjoyable. Your pet not only serves as a great way to make questing easier, but choosing your pet shows alot about your play style.

There are three basic categories of tameable pets in WoW - Those are the "tanking" pets which have low dps and high armor and hit points, the "dps" pets which have high damage and low health and armor, and the "middle of the road pets" which have mediocre stats of both.

The biggest factor in determining which pet you should use is what you like. The second most is what your using it for.

Because WoW is a game of fun, nobody should tell you which pet you should be using at all times. However there are certain pets that excell in certain situations.

Before the changes to a normalized pet speed, I would have suggested a faster attack speed pet. However a pet of choice for leveling is a boar due to high hit points and their aggro gathering abilities from their charge.

(please keep in mind that because BM is at the moment the most optimal raiding spec, the pets chosen will be best used with a BM spec.)
Since this is a article on raiding mechanics, we'll be covering which pets are most usefull in raiding.

To start off with the pets that are the best for raiding situations are any from the cat, ravager, windserpent, or raptor pet familes. These are high DPS, low health and armor pets. The reason you want a high dps pet is because A) they wont be taking much damage (hopefully), and B) Higher DPS of your pet = higher DPS of your toon.

That being said, I found that the best pet to start off with is a cat. This is because of their extremely fast attack speed and high damage. Especially as a fresh 70, the cat is extremely viable in both PvE and PvP. If a cat isn't your fuzzy companion of choich a Raptor is another great pet to have. Ravagers also have great DPS and very high armor for a DPS pet which makes them really good for PvP.

Windserpents are a very unique pet. Once you hit around 32% crit chance (with raid buffs) a wind serpent shines. This is because their trained ability lightning breath causes an average of 115 nature damage to your ememy and ignores armor. Not only that but it barley generates any threat. That combined with Go for the Throat gives your pet a very dangerous skill that can greaty increase your damge.

My reccomendation for new raiders is to start with either a cat or a ravager. These pets have the highest DPS and attack speed avalible and will increase your DMG quicky in very noticeable amounts. Work towards the 32% crit and switch to windserpent.

For soloing (farming, dailies, etc) I use my trusty warpstalker Blinky. Their blink abilty combined with intimidation is a great way to pull with your pet and catch enemys that are trying to run away. They also tend to have higher health then cats or ravagers.

Remember to also give your raiding pets the highest ranks of bite / claw and cower if they can learn it. Also, training cobra reflexes is very important.

For more information on pets in general go to petopia.brashendeavors.net
Here is a niffty little pet talent calculator - http://www.thehuntersmark.net/projects/petcalc.html


Mana effiency

Ever since the change of the intellect - spirit relationship change hunters have really gotten shafted on mana regen. Yes we have a buff that restores mana, but that works based on our total int which isn't avalible on most gear pre t4. So what do we do you may ask? First thing first, learn to pot and to pot often. During a high mana intense fight (prince, nightbane, bear boss, eagle boss, lynx boss, etc) the best thing to do is pot as much as you can.

I find the best way to restore mana during these fights is to do the following.
First of all bring at least 10 fel mana pots to any raid your in.

Use a fel mana potion at 80& mana, 50% mana, and 20% mana. when you reach 20% mana use the following:

Make a macro that switces aspect of the hawk for aspect of the viper and activates rapid fire, such as
/castsequence aspect of the viper, rapidfire, aspect of the hawk

push it twice to cast aspect of the viper and rapid fire, push it a third time to go back to hawk.

After viper and rapid fire are activated, switch to just auto shots and use your fel mana potion. This technique is best used at low mana - 20% or so - and can get back almost all of your mana in a short time.

The best way to manage mana is to get used to how much you use per rotation, for me its about 2% total mana, and get used to potting as much as you can. Nobody likes an OOM hunter.
Also avoid abilites such as arcane shot and multi shot on high mana intense fights. Unless of course you have a nice little shadow priest in your group :)

Well, until next time I think of somthing to write about
-MoMo

Hunter Raiding Mechanics Pt II - Shot Rotation

3rd post today, it was a lonnnngggg day.

This will be a more in depth post about raiding with hunters covering the ins and outs of shot rotation.

One of the most overlooked and most essential things of the Hunter class is the shot rotation. Prior to level 62 a shot rotation is your basic auto shot with stings and arcane shot thrown in where ever. Once you hit 62 however, you gain a spell called Steady shot.

First thing, do not ever use aimed shot mid shot rotation. Aimed shot is a 3 second cast that barley increase damage output. It also wastes mana and screws up your rotation.

Steady shot that has a cast time of 1 second and a base mana usage of 110. The great thing about steady shot is that because of the short cast time and scaling with ranged attack power (RAP * 0.2 + 150), it is a great way to boost your dps. The hardest part however is working in steady shot with your auto shot to create a shot rotation that optimizes DPS with the least amount of mana used.

The basic shot rotation is a 1:1.

Here is the macro:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=3 steady shot,!auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This means that for every auto shot you get to fire off one steady shot. This normally boosts your DPS by a large amount. However, because of a global cooldown you end up clipping your auto shot. Because of this cast sequence macro, clipping your autoshot (or pushing the button before the cooldown is ready) causes the macro to stop.

This is very bad for steady dps.

If you are looking for the basic shot rotation, use this.

However if you are looking to maximise your DPS and get the most DPS possible (mana usage aside) look at this next one....

the 3:2 shot rotation.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !Auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

The 3:2 means that for every 3 steady shots there are two auto shots fired. Why is this good you ask? Because on average steady shot does more DPS than autoshot because of the fast cast time. Unless your Ranged attack speed is less than 1.6 steadyshot will always do more dps. The only thing with the 3:2 is that you have to be able to time it your self, otherwise it will stop the macro. It also tends to use alot more mana, because instead of the steady --> auto (mana regen) -->steady it becomes -->steady -->steady -->auto (mana regen) --> steady --> steady.

3:2 works by casting steady shot, and then another steady shot before the autoshot cast allows autoshot to cast. This means after your second steady shot there is no dely for the autoshot qued up resulting in steady+auto almost at the same time.

The 3:2 raises DPS between 50-100.

The optimal dps is a true 1:1 steady:auto rotation. To achieve a true 1:1 rotation your ranged attack speed must be as close to 1.5 as possible. The great thing about the 3:2 is that it scales with your changes in attackspeed.

The other main part about these macros is that they activate Kill Command whenever it is avalible. Kill Command is a spell which is activated after a hunter crits and allows his/her pet to instantly attack. The great thing about this is that with a default BM spec, everytime your pet crits you gain additional damage that applies to the group. The more your pet attacks, the more the chance to crit is.

Let's recap

• There are two shot rotations, the 1:1 and the 3:2
• The best one for the most dps output is the 3:2
• 3:2 uses more mana than 1:1
• faster attack speed is always better
• Kill Command is awesome
• NEVER USE AIMED SHOT MID ROTATION!
  

That should about do it for this post. For more info go over to http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-hunter_shot_rotation_illustrated/ which is a very very very indepth explination of the theory crafting behind the shot rotation.

Also, coming in WotLK they are making it so that steady shot will not clip auto shot, chaning the way shot rotations work, I'm not sure how yet. But we'll just have to wait.

Sorry if this post was confusing, but it's a very confusing matter to sort through.

Hunter Raiding Mechanics

*edit* this will be a basic overview of the diffrent parts to make PVE succsessful. I will go into greater depths at another time.

If you take a look at all of the forums on the interweb that have to do with WoW and raiding, 90% of the time you'll find other class complaining about how bad hunters are (or can be) at raiding / 5 man instances.

I've done a ton of research and learned a lot of stuff to make sure that when I go into an instance the other people come out with me on their friends list.

• Know your class type!

Hunters are not a "crowd control class", we are a DPS class. Yes, a DPS class. We do have a very nice crowd control ability, but it severly gimped compared to other forms of crowd control in the right situations. If mastered, the crowd control we do have can be extremely usefull, but I'll go over that another time.

• Learn how to DPS efficiently

Even though hunters cannot match the unadulterated pure DPS of a mage, we can come darn close. Three things factor into the DPS of a hunter.
1) Shot Rotation
2) Using your Pet
3) Mana Useage
Make sure you know your shot rotation! Do not go into any sort of instance thinking that leaving auto shot on auto and leaving your keyboard will make others happy. Make a macro! The two basic macros are a 1:1 and a 3:2. I will go into more depth on those in another post. Your pet is always at least 25% of your total dps if used correctly. Also make sure that you use your mana wisely. Running out of mana half way through a pull is no way to prove that you know your class.

• Come Prepared

Do not ever leave town without food,water, ammo, and pet food. Do not EVER assume that a mage will be there to make a refreshment table, not only is the ignorant it's just plain rude. Also make sure your gear is always repaired, nobody wants to stop half way through an instance so that someone can go and repair.

• Play smart

Everyone makes mistakes. However, because of our class sterotype hunters must work espiecially hard to break the sterotype and prove we can play our class. Things such as staying behind the main tank in aggro, keeping your pet on passive, listening, and not causing wipes can change people's attitudes. Everyone is there because they enjoy the game, so have fun! But do not waste your group members time by making mistakes that can easily be avoided.
If a mistake is made, just apoligize and make sure that it does not happen again. The worst thing you can do is repeat the same mistake twice.

• Thank your group members

At the end of a run, especially in pugs, thank everyone for coming.

• Have fun!

duh.

Ding! First post!

I've decided to create a new blog that will document my adventures as a level 70 (dwarf) hunter on the staghelm realm. Mostly this will be a place for me to discuss the issues that I come across is playing my hunter, weather it be raiding, farming, pvping, or just interacting with other people.

A little backstory (I'll try to keep this brief):
My first day of WoW was January 1st, 2006. Prior to WoW I never had any MMO experience other than the occasional login of Knight Online (before Pay-to-play) with a few friends I had met through various other online games, mostly FPS. That is neither here nor there.

My first toon was a Night Elf Hunter that I played for 3 levels before deciding to reroll a mage. I got my mage to level 10 purely by grinding mobs. I didn't know how quests worked, let alone talents or spell trainers. My first serious character was Mowat. I relearned the game with him.

After bouncing between various guilds on the Hakkar realm and getting to level 36ish, I decided to transfer to boulderfist where a few of my RL friends were playing. I really enjoying the guild I was in over there because of the friendships we had. Around level 50 my friends decided to stop playing. I stopped playing alliance at that point to try out horde. I really enjoying horde, it felt like a toatally different game.

Almost one year ago I was listening to my weekly podcasts and came across a new one. The hosts of this podcast had almost the same playstyle and game values that I had at the time, minus being max level. I decided to go back to my level 50 hunter and switch realms to play with these people. That ended up being what saved me from quitting the game.

I quickly leveled from 50-70 and started soft raiding with them and it was a blast. Totally reinvented the game for me.

Anyway, that's just my abridged history of my WoW life. I'm now a fully commited huntard and an altaholic to boot.

I'll try to keep this blog updated as much as possible with whatever comes up, until next time
- Momo, the huntard.