Miss Direction

Hunter's Guide to Ulduar, pt. 1: The Siege

2009-06-29T22:30:00.020-05:00

The Siege: Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Ignis the Furnace Master, XT-002

Flame Leviathan
The Flame Leviathan is the first of Mimiron's creations you'll face. During the fight itself and the preceding gauntlet, you'll either drive a vehicle or serve as its gunner, so class is irrelevant for the most part.

On its simplest mode, the FL fight requires that two things happen: Demolisher drivers keep their stacks of pyrite up on the boss, and everyone driving the Demos and Siege engines successfully kites the boss when he focuses them. Kiting is aided by the Bikes, who leave a trail of sticky oil behind them, which snares the Leviathan.

Harder modes increase the boss' health and add elements that need to be avoided (freezing beams, flame walls, etc.). Since class doesn't play a big role here, I'll leave the details to the reader. My only suggestion is that hunters pick up the role of a Siege or Demo driver since we're fairly used to kiting and the timing needed to do so.

Regardless of what you're driving, back off of the Leviathan when you get the five second warning from Deadly Boss Mods telling you that he'll be switching targets soon - this'll give you a comfortable head start if he does target you.

Phat lewts to look for...
10-man:
Pyrite Infuser - a fine upgrade from Grim Toll. ArPen isn't the best stat for hunters, but it's nothing to sneeze at since a good 60 - 80% of your DPS is likely to be physical depending on your spec.
Kinetic Ripper - this one isn't really a hunter weapon in particular, but if there aren't any Enhancement Shamans clamoring for it and you have a nice main hand weapon, it might be worth considering. If melee need this one though, leave it to the melee. There's better out there for hunters.
10-man Hardmode: Mantle of Fiery Vengeance

25-man:
Gloves of the Fiery Behemoth - These are quite nice, especially if you're hit-capped already. The high agility makes them a very nice Survival piece, but they're definitely worth supplanting for the 4-piece set bonus if it comes to it.

Razorscale
For some background, Razorscale is actually Veranus, the proto-drake brood mother and companion to Thorim you are most likely acquainted with from the Sons of Hodir questline. After being enslaved by Yogg Saron, she was fitted with iron plating and has since turned on those who would save her master - that's you. The idea behind the fight is that you're defending the Expedition from the Iron Dwarves as its mechanics repair the turrets that will allow you to chain Razorscale to the ground and destroy her.

Entering her Aerie, you'll be able to see Razorscale circling high above the platform. To start the fight, chat with the Expedition Commander near bottom of the stairs and let them know you're ready.

The fight runs in three stages:
- Air Phase
- Grounded
- Permanently Grounded

Air Phase
You'll see the Air Phase first. Razorscale herself will be out of range during this phase. The raid will move to the eastern portion of the platform to await the Iron Dwarves who'll use mole machines to make their entrance. For the most part, these will be AoEd down - hooray for Volley.

The mob you'll need to worry about is the Dark Rune Sentinel - these guys have a nasty whirlwind and need to be taken out post haste. Your group will probably have an OT to worry about these guys, and you'll want your Misdirect macro set up to send these guys to the OT when they appear. They're easy to recognize as the tall Vrykul model, and they pop out of their own special mole machine - when you see a machine rise a bit west of where the others do (closest to the center of the platform), you can hit that macro and MD the Sentinel to its tank. Do not send your pet in after this guy; his whirlwind may eat Fluffy alive.

This phase is pretty healing intensive for a newer group, so do your healers a favor and *don't stand in the fire*. Razorscale will randomly target players throughout this phase with two abilities - Fireball and Devouring Flame. You'll eat the Fireball, which leaves an orange trail and you'll move the hell out of the way of the Devouring Flame, which leaves a blue trail and a patch of blue flames on the ground. The flames it leaves behind deal about 5.5k per tick.

During this time, the friendly NPCs will have been repairing the turrets - two of them on 10-man, and four on 25-man. Once these are ready, they'll be fired at Razorscale, pulling her down to the ground and beginning the grounded phase.

Grounded Phase
This phase lasts 30 seconds. During this time, Razorscale will be stunned, so DPS as hard as you can - beat everyone else to the top of Omen. Unless there's a Sentinel up during the Grounded Phase, ignore the rest of the adds and let the tank hold them.

Most raids will use Bloodlust on the second of the Grounded Phases, so you'll want to use your Rapid Fire during the first.

Once the 30 second stun is up, if she's above 50% health, she'll knock everyone back with a wing buffet, and you'll be back in the Air Phase. If you do get her down to 50%, you'll head into the Permanently Grounded Phase.

Permanently Grounded
Once she's permanently grounded, your tank will grab aggro, which might be tough if you've been going all-out on the last phase, so don't hesitate to throw MDs up, and be ready to Feign if things get hairy.

Razorscale will only be casting Devouring Flames on the tank at this point, so the raid should be taking little to no damage once the remaining adds have been cleared out. She'll also use Fuse Armor on the tanks, forcing them to taunt off of one another after two stacks.

The usual way to handle this phase is to have the ranged DPS/healers in the center of a circle in which the alternating tanks will kite the boss. At this point, all a hunter needs to worry about is avoiding pulling agg - not a point to be ignored as your tanks will be taunting the boss off of one another to let Razorscale's debuffs wear off. So, pew pew, keep an eye on Omen, and enjoy the ride.

Lewtz!
10-man:
Razorscale Talon - Nothing to write home about, but worth rolling for if the melee aren't eyeing it.
Bracers of the Smothering Inferno - A good set of bracers with pretty evenly distributed stats.
Band of Draconic Guile - A nice ring for hunters, rogues, and the like. It's lacking in the Int department and there's better out there, but it's a nice piece nonetheless.

25-man:
Saronite Mesh Legguards - These are *the* pants. Get them, love them, do a little dance.
Remorse - another passable one hand weapon.

Ignis the Furnace Master
Ignis is a single-phase fight with a few tricks to keep in mind. Necessary Evil's usual strategy is to kite Ignis back and forth along the line in the middle of the room, always facing the furnace whence he came. The rest of the raid behind him, avoiding the flame patches on the ground. Since Ignis starts out about 42 miles from this convenient line, we usually use a Misdirect for the pull, just to keep things neat and clean.

Once the boss is pulled, you'll be fulfilling one of two roles: pew pew Boss or pew pew Adds.

Boss: Don't stand in flames, don't pull agg. Stop casting when Ignis starts casting Flame Jets. If you're caught in the middle of a Steady Shot when the Flame Jets cast finishes, you'll be locked out of spellcasting for a few seconds - bad news. You're still able to use instants freely here, so it's a good fight to switch over to Marks spec for, if you happen to have it.

Adds: In 10-man, we assign one ranged DPS to the adds and two in 25-man. Usually, it's something other than a hunter, as we don't have as much burst on demand capability as other classes. Hunters can do it, though, so here's what you'll be on the look out for: every 30 seconds or so, Ignis will summon one of his adds ("Arise, soldiers of the Iron Crucible!"). Your OT will grab this add and hang out with him in one of Ignis' flame patches. Once the add is properly Molten (bright red), the tank will bring him over to the nearest water pool, which will rapidly cool the add, making it brittle (gray). Once brittle, the tank should call out for you whether it's in the left or right pool. In order to damage it, you'll need to hit it with over 5k damage on a single hit. Do not send your pet in to help out - it won't do anything. Once the add is down, head back to the boss and wait for the next brittle add.

The only other thing to watch out for on this fight is the Slag Pot. Ignis will choose one raid member at random to hang out in his bellypot - this is a painful experience. Healthstones will *not* work if you're in the pot, but your healers should be on the watch for slag victims. Thank them if you live and use the resulting 100% haste buff to pew pew like crazy.

Woot loot!
10-man:
Rifle of the Platinum Guard - this is an okay ranged weapon. Definitely not the best out there.
Relentless Edge - A fine hunter weapon. You'll see feral druids and arms warriors rolling for this one too, but it's definitely one for hunters to keep an eye out for. The high AP is a friend to BM hunters everywhere.

25-man:
Helm of the Furnace Master - quite a nice helm, one of the better ones currently available,
Cindershard Ring - a pretty nice ring for hunters, strong quantity of agility for a ring and a good way to edge up ye olde hit rating. There don't seem to be a whole lot of hunter-friendly rings floating around Ulduar, so take note when this one drops.

XT-002 (hard mode)
This jolly fellow is the antithesis of his creator, Mimiron. He's gargantuan and gregarious - kind of reminds one of a less oozy Patchwerk, when you think about it. This is one of the fights for which I can cover hardmode, too, so I'll say a few words about that at the end.

Normally, this fight runs in two phases: Play Phase and Heart Phase. The fight will start out on Play Phase when the boss is pulled. Our raid uses a Misdirect for this pull as well, because we use a very particular tanking position: against the eastern wall, directly between the two junk piles. This is important because, if the XT is close enough to those two piles, he will NOT summon adds from them during the heart phase. Suggest this position to your raid leaders if they're not aware of it, as it makes the job of ranged and healers much, much easier.

Play Phase: During the play phase, you'll be DPSing the XT while using /range to stay at least 10 yards from everyone else at all times. This is important because of two abilities the XT will throw out there: Light Bomb and Gravity Bomb.

Light Bomb (properly known as Searing Light) will be thrown out on a random raid member (non-tank) and deal significant damage to that player and anyone within 10 yards of him. If you're already 10 yards from everyone around you and a good distance from the melee, you'll make the healers' job much easier.

Gravity Bomb, on normal mode, is mostly an annoyance, and will pull anyone within about 15 yards of you to where you're standing when it expires (think AoE Deathgrip). Do your best to avoid getting pulled by it.

The other ability to be aware of during the Play Phase is the Tantrum. Be sure you're within healing range (40 yards) when this starts, as it knocks out 10% of your health each second for 8 seconds. Be ready to blow a health pot or stone at this point - this is a ton of damage for a new raid to deal with.

Heart Phase: Every 25%, the boss will get tired ("So tired...!"), and his heart will drop out of his chest for 20 seconds. DPS the bejeezus out of the heart. If you kill it, you'll activate hardmode, if you don't kill it, you'll take out a pretty good chunk of the XT's total health, depending on how much you took off the heart.

As the heart phase ends, adds will be summoned from junk piles far away from the XT. Three types of adds may be summoned - repair bots, assault bots, and bomb bots.
- Bombs need to be taken care of from range, lest they explode on contact and blow up the raid.
- Assault bots are large bots with a pretty good amount of health. If you're doing normal mode, you may or may not have a separate tank for these. Don't worry about killing them - they don't do too much damage, and will take a while to knock out. If you don't have a separate tank for them, just MD them to the tank and let them get killed by splash AoE.
- The repair bots are the tiny ones who come in gaggles of 3 - 6. When these start getting near, drop a frost trap to slow them, and unleash the AoE on them. You should have no trouble getting the lot of them down in the span of two Volleys with the help of the other ranged DPS. If they get to the boss, they'll repair him, so don't let this happen.
Once the adds are dead, head back to the boss. Rinse and repeat. If you're juuust shy of killing the heart when the 20 seconds are up, you'll have very little to go before the next heart phase, so be on your toes with the adds (stay in healing range though, the Tantrum can happen on the heels of the heart phase).

Hard Mode
If you're planning to give hard mode a shot, use the first heart phase to get it rolling. No raid damage will be going out, so healers can DPS, and you'll definitely want to blow Bloodlust to make it happen.

Once hard mode is triggered by the death of the heart, the XT will heal to full health and his abilities will have some new tricks to them. Note that, since the heart is dead, you won't see any more Heart Phases - just Play...

New Light Bomb: Just like before, this will deal damage to those within 10 yards. Once it ends, however, it will spawn an add called Life Spark with around 50k health on normal and 175k on heroic. These are very nasty little adds - they deal nature damage to the entire raid and can usually be found smacking your healers. They pack quite the wallop and MUST be first priority for ranged DPS to take out. I recommend a /target Life Spark macro. Also, if you have a Shaman, Nature Resist totem should be down, and if you don't, Aspect of the Wild should be up to help with the AoE.

New Gravity Bomb: In addition to being annoying, gravity bomb also leaves behind a shadow pie a la Lady Blaumeux of the Four Horsemen. Tip: don't stand in it, and don't pull people into it. These are really pretty easy to avoid, just be aware of them.

When Necessary Evil did this, we had only two ranged DPS, if memory serves, so the other hunter and I spent almost the entire time on the Life Sparks. The best thing to do is leave your pet on the boss and do everything you can to keep these guys off of your healers.

Loot!
10-man:
Gloves of Taut Grip
10-man Hardmode:
Magnetized Projectile Emitter - the red gem socket on this puppy helps to push it heads above a good number of the 25-man weapons. It's well worth the effort.
25-man:
Brass-lined Boots - Not an astonishing set of boots, but a reasonable upgrade from the old Pack-Ice Striders. Twisted Visage - Though it's most likely to go to a feral druid, this is a very nice hunter weapon. It's a good replacement for Black Ice.

That's it for The Siege of Ulduar. More as more comes.

Also: Necessary Evil is recruiting! We're primarily in search of DPS right now, ranged or melee. Head over to the Recruiting Forum at http://www.necessary-evil.net/ for details on how to apply.

Hunter's Guide to Ulduar, pt. 0

2009-06-29T22:25:00.006-05:00

Necessary Evil has been making its way through Ulduar for the last few months now and we're down to General Vezax, Yogg Saron, and Algagon. So, I figured it might be worthwhile to write up some short hunter guides for the bosses we've downed. Many of these fights have roles that hunters fill quite well, and those will be highlighted in each guide along with a list of the loot that might be of interest.

For the sake of expediency, I'll assume that you're using Deadly Boss Mods.

Part 1: The Siege
Part 2: The Antechamber
Part 3: The Keepers
Part 4: Descent into Madness

These are coming out to be pretty lengthy, so there are links within each post to the specific fights. A short list of the loot hunters might find interesting is also included with each description.

Servers... guilds... stuff & things.

2009-06-03T12:06:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, I moved my characters from The Venture Co. to Bloodhoof, and joined Necessary Evil. There are many reasons behind the move, and overall, it's been a good decision.

Bloodthunder Tribe was the first guild I helped run, and it taught me a great deal. Primarily, I learned that an organization with ambivalent purpose is a weak one. The guild leader and I started Bloodthunder when we were in our 30s or 40s, intending to develop a role-playing guild (VeCo is, afterall, an RP-PvP server...!). People grow, however, and goals change. Ambivalence swelled as the guild's leadership found purpose in different aspects of the endgame. For me, RP became secondary. I still do it - still animate my characters' reactions, read all of the quest text, and hunt down or create lore when I can. The game changed for me, though, on my first Naxx PuG. From there on out, raiding steadily climbed its way to the top of my priorities.

Progression on a low-population server, such as VeCo is difficult. That isn't to say that there are no good players - quite the opposite. There are many very strong players, and many who happen to be good people as well. Progression as a strict RP-only guild on a low-population server, however, is a herculean effort. The prevailing model is RP-tolerant progression, in which RP is welcome, but not required, and the guild's focus is progression. This model works well because it allows a great deal of flexibility in the raid force while maintaining the RP aspect. On the other hand, it does not support things like in-character /g chat and frequently scheduled RP-events (squashing valuable raid time with RP does not go over well with your raid force).

Some of Bloodthunder's leadership favored this model, some favored the strict-RP model, so we kept the strict-RP model with which we began. Over time, it became clear that putting together a reliable 10-man raid force was unlikely. Waiting and hoping for our recruitment to pick up for 9 months was a draining experience. Losing the Goldilocks members - those who felt that we RP too much or too little, never juuuust right - was painful. Between these things, PuGging 30-50% of a weekly 10-man, and leveling & gearing a healer myself to fill a scarce role, the guild became more stressful than what I had imagined.

A lot of good came out of the guild, though. The friendships and experiences I found in Bloodthunder are deeply cherished. I wish only the best to you all. Thank you to those who have been understanding and have maintained contact and friendship.

As for the future, I am very happy in Necessary Evil. Playing alongside family is a great feeling, and taking down Thorim for the first time last week was a blast. The Cask of Dalaran Red was totally worth the gold.

Mr. BRK, you will be missed.

2009-04-01T12:02:00.006-05:00

I think the news of Mr. BRK's departure from blogging is well known by now, but I want to say, with the deepest respect, that it takes a big man to step down from doing what he loves to focus on who he loves.

Brain, BRK, I wish you all the best, fo' shizzle.

/cough

2009-04-01T11:54:00.006-05:00

I may have been somewhat distracted of late. Bloodthunder Tribe now has its very own level 80 resto druid.

But... I have not been slacking, I promise.

I still need a new gun, though... ~_~

Leveling Instances & Pets

2009-03-25T11:33:00.011-05:00

I PuG most instances and the Bloodthunder Tribe is a bit scarce on Hunters, so I don't often have the chance to group with other hunters while playing Nadie, especially not those still leveling. As a resto druid, however, I do! I'm glad for it because I love having a hunter around, of course, but it also gives me a chance to see the class from the outside and hear how its players feel about it.

A few nights ago, I was getting ready to heal Gundrak (for which one should always have a hunter) with a group of very friendly people, and we were chatting away while waiting for people to make their way to the stone. We were on the topic of PuGs in general, and the level 77 hunter in the group lamented having been booted from a PuG earlier that day for having a level 76 pet, rather than a level 77 pet.

While we didn't hear the other players' side of the story, it struck me as odd to go so far as to boot someone from a non-heroic, 5-man instance for having a pet one level lower than himself. Now, it takes a whole lot to convince me that someone needs a boot in general, but even so... Trying to see this from the other side, I can only guess that the party leader must have been familiar with the importance of having level 80 pets in heroics and raids, and must have applied the same sensibility to his leveling party.

It's a fact of leveling that your pet will spend the first 20% or so of your next level being one behind, but if you're doing non-heroic instances your own level, this shouldn't be an issue. This isn't to say that pet levels don't matter. They do. They matter a lot. The difference between a level 79 pet and a level 80 pet is huge. The difference between a level 78 pet and a level 79 pet, on the other hand, is fairly minimal. Allow me to illustrate:

Chance-to-hit
In a raid setting, it's imperative that pets be max level. In heroics, pets really ought to be max level, but if the group is okay with a hunter knocking out that last level, and you can absorb the DPS loss, a level 79 pet is alright. 78 is pushing it. For regular instances, it's nice if the pets are their master's level, but it shouldn't really be an issue if the pet in question is the one the hunter has been leveling with, since it should never be but a level behind the hunter.

Why the difference? In part, it's the mobs you're facing off against - a level 78 pet is going to miss heroic Keristraza's big, red, level 82 hide a whole lot more often than a level 80 pet will. The same goes for any pet four levels below the mob it's attacking. Missing 15% of your attacks is missing 15% of your DPS. If your pet is ~40% of your total DPS, that's 6% of your DPS down the tubes. Ick.

Trash mobs in raids are levels 81 - 82 and bosses are 83. In heroics, trash mobs are 80 - 81 and bosses are 82. In regular, level 80 instances, trash mobs are level 79 - 80, and bosses are 81. So, the hit cap for a level 80 instance is 5.2%, or 165 hit rating. If your pet is one level below you, his hit cap against a level 81 mob is 5.4%. Problem though: pets only inherit full percentages of hit from their masters and Focused Aim does not apply to pets. So, unless you're astonishingly well-geared for having just hit 80, and you have 197 hit rating (granting 6% hit), there's very little difference from your pet's perspective. In fact, there is a .2% chance-to-hit difference. If you're Beast Mastery, the expertise from Animal Handler should go a long way toward limiting the other worrisome factors of glancing blows and parries.

This can be applied to lower-level instances as well. Boss mobs are usually one level above the instance level, meaning you and Fluffy have about a little more than a 5% chance to miss them, regardless of whether he's your level or one behind.

Pet Skills
The other important factor is pet skill ranks.

Just like us, hunter pets learn new skills and new skill ranks as they gain levels, with the last set of skills being learned at level 80. Unlike us, though, they do not gain new ranks of one skill or another every level, or even every other level. Take Cats, for instance. A new rank of Claw is learned every eight levels, while a new rank of Rake is only learned every sixteen levels!

This holds true for all of the pet family skills. Each family (such as Bears, Ravagers, Crabs, etc) has two skills.* The first is a DPS skill, while the second is either a DoT or a utility skill, depending on the family. The DPS skill gains a new rank every eight levels, while the second skill gains one every sixteen levels.

For a Ferocity pet, these special attacks comprise about 40% of overall DPS, so those shiny new ranks are a big boost. The last ranks of both abilities are learned at level 80. Between 72 and 79, however, the pet learns nothing new. The only difference will be the relative levels and base stat improvements. These are nice improvements, of course, but handing Fluffy a sack of Spiced Mammoth Treats would go a long way, too.

Of course, if you're doing Halls of Lightning at level 76, well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

*Cats and Spirit Beasts are special. These families have Prowl, as well, which ranks at levels 30 and 50. Spiders, Tallstriders, Warp Stalkers, and Tutles are exceptions to the sixteen level rule, as their utility skills, Web, Dust Cloud, Warp, and Shell Shield, have only one rank.

Tier 8 Set Bonuses

2009-03-19T11:53:00.003-05:00

The indispensable MMO-Champion posted the newly available Tier 8 Set Bonuses this morning. Us hunters weren't left out of the fun:

(2) Set: Increases the damage done by your Serpent Sting by 10%
(4) Set: Your Steady Shot has the chance to grant you 600 attack power for 15 seconds.

Here are the 25-man and 10-man set screen shots, if you'd like to take a peek, too.

The two-piece bonus, I have to say, is not terribly exciting. It's undeniably nice, but it's the four-piece bonus that's really the nice one. This one is like having a third "proc on attack" trinket, rather than a set bonus - and a none-too-shabby trinket at that! It's not unlike the Mirror of Truth, although the proc is bound to Steady Shot alone. The real measure of this bonus will come when its proc rate and internal cooldown can be determined. It's safe to say, though, that since the Mirror of Truth and Grim Toll stack, the set bonus will probably stack as well. 1600AP plus 612 armor penetration? Gimme.

Jerry has a new icon!

2009-03-19T11:31:00.005-05:00

This falls into the category of truly inane PTR novelties, but several of the existing pets and mounts have new icons. Most importantly, the humble Cockroach. Jerry, my cockroach, was the first pet I picked up on Nadie, so I'm glad to see him get some love. The new icon really says "KA-BLAM-O!" - a pleasant reminder that Jerry and his fellow cockroaches will probably be the sole survivors of the goblins' next "super safe" invention...

The windriders have unique icons now as well, distinguishing the swift from the not-so-swift, and giving them a bit of color, too. It's the little things, right?

Apologies for the lack of updates, it's been a very busy week. I am still working on the Pet Stats post! It will be up soon :)

Gondria's Spawn Locations

2009-03-11T18:22:00.014-05:00

Gondria is our newest Spirit Beast, revealed earlier this morning by Flatty over on the WoWHead Hunter Forums. Mr. BRK has already managed to tame her, too! For now, she's relegated to the PTR, but it looks like she'll hit live with patch 3.1.

As of this writing, three spawn locations have been found, and here's a map from WoWHead with the coordinates included (the map below is the same). I'll keep this map updated as I come across new reports! Happy hunting!

Here's a quick macro for easy targeting:
/tar Gon
/stopmacro [noexists]
/w (your name here) You've FOUND >%t<

Current known coordinates:
62, 42
69, 48
66, 77

Gondria, like Loque'Nahak is a Rare Elite. At the moment, her spawn timer remains unknown.

Update: I've updated the list of coordinates slightly to zero in on what seems to be the most common spawn point: 66, 77, just southeast of the Temple of Har'koa, right near the border with the Grizzly Hills (I suppose I'd have expected to see Loque lurking around here, rather than this pretty lady, but, hey, I'm not picky...!). I saw her spawn there this morning (April 20th) at 8:36am on The Venture Co. & tagged her. Post to follow, of course :D

Some have suggested that there may be multiple spawn points in the area, as she's been seen a bit north of the 66, 77 position. It's definitely a possibility, though it may just be that Gondria has a very large patrolling range.

Wild Hunt vs. Shark Attack for Survival

2009-03-08T16:06:00.013-05:00

So far, choosing pet talents has been pretty clear cut for the Ferocity Tree. Come 3.1, however, this is not quite so clear.

Between Wild Hunt and Shark Attack, there are four fresh spaces to spend talent points, each requiring 15 points in pet talents. For Survival and Marksmanship Hunters, this leaves one point. For Beast Mastery, all four can be taken, but there are some significant costs to doing so.

For Survival, that one point is best spent in Wild Hunt. The scaling benefit from Wild Hunt outstrips Shark Attack's 3% damage increase right around 2500 hunter attack power.

Here's an illustration:

The blue is the pet DPS you're likely to see now, based on your attack power, although this chart does not include the bonus from Hunter vs. Wild (which grants 30% of your Stamina to your pet as Attack Power). Currently, my 1050 Stamina grants 315 Attack Power to Imeut, granting an additional ~22.5DPS - yours is probably similar. This chart does include the benefit from the two piece set bonus, but the results aren't drastically different either way.

The issue with taking this talent point, however, is that you'll lose some pretty substantial benefits from elsewhere in the tree. This build, with Rabid and Heart of the Phoenix is a nice one, but something has to give in order to fetch that last point in Shark Attack. I'll go with this build, exchanging the points in Rabid for Spider's Bite and Call of the Wild. For a spec without Improved Mend Pet or Improved Revive Pet, HotP is tough to pass up - even if your pet is a measly 14% of your DPS... I'll still be doing some DPS tests to see whether the loss of Rabid is made up for in Call of the Wild.

I imagine the same holds true for BM if you don't choose to go for the 51-point talent, Beast Mastery - but, given the shiny new talents, why do that? I'll take a closer look at the scaling with Beast Mastery's talents in the next few days, but I'm guessing it will be similar.

Dual Spec: PvE/Pv... E?

2009-03-04T11:06:00.011-06:00

I'm going to come right out and say it, before more than, like, five people stumble across this blog: I'm terrible at PvP.

I could blame it on being left-handed and bereft of Nostromoness. I could blame it on playing on a laptop and having no numpad. I could blame it on playing the Hunter class. But, no, it's really that my AAAHHH RUNAWAY! It's gonna EAT ME! /panic instinct is just too strong. I do pretty well on Damage Done in the BG-meters, sure, but I die a lot. ...And Arenas terrify me - I'm pretty sure I'd die a lot there, too. Dying is still bad, right? I'm relatively certain you're supposed to avoid that whole Spirit Healer ordeal.

And, seriously: Why can't I Misdirect the stupid Paladin to the Warlock? Hm? Why? /grumble

SO. Dual Specs for me will not be PvE/PvP. PvE/PvE, though? Now we're talkin'.

On the PTR right now, Nadie has a Beast Mastery spec and Raid-Survival spec set up, and that's pretty much what I intend to do for her when Dual Specs go live. Why spend 1000g on this? Malygos, Sartharion, Maexxna, Heigan, and Gluth. These five are examples of encounters for which one spec will perform significantly better than the other.

Malygos: Favors Survival. During the Vortexes of Phase 1, instant casts are still available, meaning that Lock and Load procs can be taken advantage of during the time when the Beast Mastery pet would be out of commission. Furthermore, when the Vortex drops the raid in the center, a trap can be dropped before running away from Maly, allowing for another LnL opportunity. Phase 2 is Survival-friendly as well, since the last of the scions will be in the air, leaving Fluffy to lick his fur for a while (unless you're really good with Eyes of the Beast...?).

Sartharion: Favors Survival. This one is less clear-cut, but the extra six yards of range from Hawk Eye make staying out of the Tsunamis while still pew-pewing more realistic. Calling a Beast Mastery pet back when the Tsunamis rise, and sending him back in once they've passed also takes a large chunk of DPS-time that isn't as painful when your pet is 15% of your damage, rather than 45%.

Maexxna: Favors Beast Mastery. The role of ranged DPS in this fight is to not only DPS the boss, but also, and more importantly, to pull people from their Web Wraps on the back wall. Spec'd for Beast Mastery, the hunter has an advantage no other ranged class shares: 45% of your DPS gets to stay on Maexxna for the entire fight.

Heigan the Unclean: Favors Survival. While it's fun to keep Fluffy alive during this fight as a Beast Mastery hunter, the number of GCDs spent on making use of that Improved Mend Pet is stupendously high, and Fluffy's tiny, tiny brain will send him to the back of Heigan, right into the plague waves every time. Survival, on the other hand, can take advantage of LnL procs during the entire Dance Phase.

Gluth: Favors Beast Mastery. Stick with me here. This is one that may actually change with 3.1 and Resourcefulness becoming part of the Survival raid build. For now though, the most common Survival and Beast Mastery raid builds have the same cooldowns on traps, so, for kiting the Zombie Chow, the build choice is pretty inconsequential. The advantage for BM, however, is that Fluffy can fight Gluth while the hunter kites mobs around. As one of the kiters, you're not going to show prodigiously on the meters either way, but a BM pet will still rack up some reasonable numbers. On a side note, Tauren are the best.

Then there are plenty of fights where the spec won't make too much of a difference: Patchwerk, Grand Widow Faerlina, Thaddius, The Four Horsemen, etc. Each has a few supporting arguments one way or the other, but they're pretty even at the end of the day. It's a good thing, too, because that 30 minute cooldown on Call Stabled Pet would be cumbersome, were it otherwise.

All told, I'll be speccing... EvPet/EvPewPew!

Woo! Head buckets!

2009-03-03T02:44:00.001-06:00

I love PUGS.

Now to go to sl--/snore

Pet Scaling and Stats, Part 0: My Lovely Assistant

2009-02-27T21:32:00.017-06:00

Pets, much like life, do not come with an instruction manual. Well... they do, but it's from Vanilla WoW, everything's way out of date, and it's pretty nebulous anyway.

Those numbers from the PTR really got me thinking though - just how much of a buff is Wild Hunt? A 40% increase in Stamina and AP contributions sounds good... and speccing into it sure looks good (even if a certain crab has alluded to problems with their original PTR implementation)... but what are those points really adding up to? The first step here is knowing what the current numbers are. The most solid numbers I had for pet Stamina and AP were ~45% and ~22% of hunter values respectively, gleaned from Mania's pet scaling page over at Petopia, and a brief, semi-accurate note over at WoWWiki. So, I sat down with pen and pad, and came up with some numbers. I'll be covering pet scaling in two parts, the first dealing with current hunter/pet scaling along with the talents, set bonuses, and abilities that affect it. In part two, I'll cover the 3.1 abilities and how they'll impact pet scaling, as well as gems and consumables aimed at making the most out of scaling.

Imeut will be my lovely assistant, and we'll look at both Survival and Beastmastery talent specializations in each part.

Changes to Shark Attack

2009-02-26T11:36:00.005-06:00

The newly added 6th-tier pet talent Shark Attack saw a reasonable update with this version of the PTR (9626). The original version granted 4/8% increased damage to all attacks, while the new version is only 3/6%. Wild Hunt remains unchanged, still granting 20%/40% increased Stamina and Attack Power contributions to the pet.

Given the astounding numbers from the earlier version, this isn't a terribly surprising change. Shark Attack is still an awesome buff. With 3.0.9, Kindred Spirits was returned to 20% damage increase at max rank, and Serpsent's Swiftness 20% pet attack speed. In BM-specific changes, this left only the nerf to Unleashed Fury, from 20% pet damage to 15% lingering from the painful changes of 3.0.8. Shark Attack, even with this latest change, more than makes up the difference and still leaves a point to be spent in Wild Hunt.

Of course, these are PTR abilities, and both may change dramatically before 3.1 drops.

New Pet Talents, BM unnerfed. (Updated)

2009-02-25T15:20:00.018-06:00

I love BM. This is not at all evident from my earlier entries, but Beastmastery is definitely my spec of choice. I even have The Laser Kitty.

But, it was nerfed horribly.

Then, it was unnerfed acceptably.

Now, it's being buffed... massively.

Ferocity Pets now have two new talents, Shark Attack and Wild Hunt:

Wild Hunt
Melee Range

Increases the contribution your pets get from your Stamina by 20/40% and attack power by 20/40%

Shark Attack
Melee Range

Your pet does an additional 4%/8% damage with all attacks.

Each has two ranks, and is in a new 6th tier of pet talents.

What difference do they make? Let's compare.
BEFORE:

Attack Power: 1602 Damage per Second: 396.4

AFTER:

Attack Power: 2445 Damage per Second: 592.7

That's an 843-point jump in AP, and nearly two hundred more DPS on white damage. I'll be looking more carefully into how these stack up in the near future, but it looks like BM is back in business!

Recount isn't working correctly on the PTR at the moment, so I'm at a loss as to how these numbers pan out, but I can't imagine it's anything other than beautiful.

Update: According to this post over on the WoW forums, the original implementation of Wild Hunt was done incorrectly, and granted too much extra AP. So, these numbers aren't accurate at this point in time. But... I'm leaving the photos up, because PTR bugs are always fun to look back on.

Survival Build: Black Arrow + Resourcefulness

2009-02-25T12:02:00.007-06:00

On the current version of the PTR (9614), the benefit from Resourcefulness does, in fact, impact the cooldown of Black Arrow, lowering it to 24 seconds. This allows for 62.5% uptime on the LnL proc DOT (rather than 50% without Resourcefulness).

This pushes me to favor a Survival build along the lines of this one. Along with the points in Resourcefulness, this build drops three points into the revised Hunting Party, which now grants 3% agility in addition to its current mana-battery effects. The bonus from Hunting Party multiplies your total agility *after* the Lightning Reflexes bonus (15%), which is lovely.

So, the formula looks like

Agi * 1.15 * 1.03 (as opposed to Agi * 1.18)

If you start out with 990 agility, Lightning Reflexes brings you up to 1138, and Hunting Party takes you to 1172. Nice.

Not-so-nice things about this build: No Improved Aspect of the Hawk, only one point in Go for the Throat. There are a lot more crits to be found in a Survival build, but not 50% more, so Imeut (the black not-Pitch lion) is likely to be pretty focus-starved. /grumble

Also. Sea Kodo! <3

Gummy Tigers?

2009-02-24T17:12:00.006-06:00

o.o

Am I supposed to want to lick the new mobs?

Misswhatnow?

2009-02-24T15:01:00.010-06:00

I wanted to get the posts about Black Arrow and the revised Lock and Load up right away (before I lost my notes, forgot what I wanted to say, or, you know, procrastinated to the end of my days...), but I'd like to take a moment to explain the blog, its name, and my little obsession with the hunter class.

Level 70 came for me around the end of Burning Crusade. I ran a few Heroics, but never really got into raiding. I enjoyed the game, but was the definition of casual. I remember the very first heroic I ran - Underbog. I was horribly undergeared and absolutely terrified. I pulled agg and caused at least one wipe, but chain-trapped like a pro, and did reasonable DPS. I had this really confusing spell, though. Misdirection. It sounded neat, but really tough to make work in the hectic environment of an instance.

So, I ignored the it for a while.

Eventually, though, I came upon a macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection
/Assist focus

Until that point, I didn't like instances much. Messy affairs, those dungeons. It's hard enough to find a tank who'll mark targets even now (or, especially now), and a hunter who doesn't bother with MD is all too likely to pull threat from a tank who doesn't outgear her (especially if she doesn't Feign Death... /cough).

The Misdirection macro made all the difference. With trepidation I stepped into Mechanar that day, armed with a freshly bound SHIFT+1, and I stepped out of that instance brimming with a new-found love for my class. Hunters, I realized, are utility incarnate, divine DPS, and they're fun!

I had no idea that such a simple change could have that sort of impact.

Since then, I've taken it upon myself to learn everything I can about the class, its mechanics, and how it fits into the ever-changing World of Warcraft. I hope what I've learned (and continue to learn!) can be of use to others, and so, with inspiration from certain bloggers, I hereby claim this tiny piece of virtualestate in the name of The Hunter Class! /cheer

Black Arrow (and its Sordid History)

2009-02-24T14:21:00.004-06:00

PTRs: Present Testing Realms or Punishment and Torture Realms? Insofar as Black Arrow is concerned, the PTRs are most definitely the former this time around.

Meet Black Arrow:

5 - 35 yd range
30 sec cooldown

Black Arrow
6% of base mana
Instant cast

Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [ 10% of RAP + 785 ] Shadow damage over 15 sec. Costs 6% base mana. 5-35 yard range. Instant Cast. 30 sec cooldown.

It's another instant shot, it deals nasty, nasty Shadow damage over time, and it increases our damage against the target by a burly 6% (you know, between the DOTs from Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Claw, and Black Arrow, I'm beginning to have flashbacks to playing a Warlock... /shudder). No word yet on the initial damage of this shot, if there is any.

Black Arrow currently shares its cooldown with traps - this seems to be an effort to limit the number of LnL procs you can expect per minute, as well as discourage trap-dancing in PvE. My hope on this one is that, since it shares the 30 second trap cooldown, it will also benefit from talents, like Resourcefulness, that lower the trap cooldown. Will we see raiding hunters in four pieces of PvP gear? No. Will they be talented down to a 24 second BA cooldown? I sure hope so.

With a 30 second cooldown, the BA damage bonus works out to a neat and clean 3%, while a 24 second cooldown would push it up to a 3.72% overall buff (on a per-minute basis). Not too shabby.

That said, we've seen Black Arrow before. In fact, it's been in the game files since beta, in one form or another. Will rise from the dead talents graveyard this time around? We shall see.

Update: Black arrow does share the Resourcefulness cooldown reduction

Lock and Load, Old and New

2009-02-24T13:39:00.009-06:00

On the 3.1 PTR, we're seeing a hefty overhaul for Lock and Load.

The current version runs as follows:

30 sec cooldown

Lock and Load
Instant cast

You have a 100% chance when you trap a target and a 10% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Serpent Sting to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. 30 second cooldown.

The PTR version, on the other hand, looks like this:

Lock and Load

You have a 100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow, or Frost Trap, and a 10% 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.

So, what's the difference?
- Fire-based traps and Snake Trap no longer trigger LnL
- Immolation Trap and Black Arrow DOTs replace Serpent Sting as the 10% trigger.
- 30 second CD on LnL procs isn't mentioned in the PTR version, but I'll assume that's still in there, and just left off of the tooltip (Lock and Load, Chapter Two: Cooldowns...)

"ZOMG! NARFZ!"
Well, maybe. Maybe not. From a PvP perspective, this will tone down burst damage fairly substantially and pretty clearly counts as a nerf,* but from the PvE side, things might not be so gloomy.

Old
100% of the time, you have a 10% chance to proc LnL (which triggers an internal 30 second CD), at a cost of 27% of base mana per minute (assuming you've glyphed your Serpent Sting).

New
50% or 62% of the time, you have a 10% chance to proc LnL (which probably triggers and internal 30 second CD), at a cost of 12% or 15% of base mana per minute (no glyph needed).

50% or 62%
The Survival Build-o-the-Month does not currently include Resourcefulness, because trap cooldowns aren't terribly important to PvE. Given that Black Arrow is reported to share the trap cooldown, however, it's probable that Resourcefulness will effect Black Arrow's cooldown as well, making it a necessary part of a reasonable PvE Survival build. This would suck out the few points that might have been spent on Improved Aspect of the Hawk, and make all that haste on our T7 tastier.

I'll put up an update on that this evening.

Even so, if Black Arrow's cooldown can be shortened, 62% uptime is a lot less than 100%, so where's the not-ZOMGNARFZ? In Black Arrow itself.

Sources:
MMO-Champion and their shiny, new Hunter Talent Calculator

* A needed one, too. I killed a pally the other day with the current SV spec. Way, way OP.