Tier 8 art~

Woohoo tier 8! I love how the new Warrior sets look, but is it just me or does Hunter t8 look like Death Knight gear?! I mean, down to the skulls even.

But the fist-claws are pretty cool. Rawr, Wolverine! The new melee weapons look pretty cool too. Those swords! So shiny!

New 3.1 changes

Source - WoW Insider

Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot.
If my internet wasn't capped you can bet I'll be on the PTR testing that right now... *sigh*

Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30 min cooldown.
Yes, we already knew that. But according to BRK, it has the potential to delete your pets. Use with caution!

Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
Flat out nerf to Explosive Shot if I ever saw one. :(

Quite a long list of pet changes too!

Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.
I LIKE THIS. Pardon the caps. I've never been a huge fan of the gorilla as a pet, the only reason I got it was because it was the best tanking pet. But now that they've made the best pet tanking ability baseline, I can just go get a bear or something. Yay!

Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn't up 100% of the time.
Very interesting. I've been tossing up for a long time over getting a wolf, since I have a spare stable slot. But since Furious Howl doesn't stack with Might or Battle Shout, I never did. Looks like I'll be heading to Storm Peaks for one soon. It'll be interesting to test dps between wolf and cat if you're Surv or MM.

New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.
Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses.
Hooray for Blizz trying to make pets more survivable in PVP! Not that I do much of it. But yay!

They've also added new last tier talents for pet talent trees, which look very promising.

A few nice glyph changes too...

• Glyph of Explosive Shot: Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.
• Glyph of Explosive Trap: The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Kill Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.

What do you mean I have to choose between my glyphs now?! What is this?!

Darion Mograine

My favorite character in the Ashbringer comics... his WoW in-game model really doesn't do him much justice.

New header image!

I'd call it a new layout, but that'd be a lie.

Also added an Email Me and RSS graphic.

How to: Solo the Raptor boss in ZG

Been trying to farm this guy for a few weeks now, and since BM is a viable raid spec again I can do it without having to respec!

Undocumented changes (so far!)

omg Ashbringer spoilers! Not. I do wonder what on earth that Argent Tournament thing is gonna be about.

*New Skill* Call Stabled Pet - A pet of your choice busts out of its stable and joins you no matter where you are, replacing your current pet. Cannot be used in combat. Instant. 30 min cooldown. Requires Level 80.
Hehe, I giggled a little when I read that... "busts out of its stable"... I have to draw something about that now. Of course, this is pertaining to dual specs. Which apparantly cost 1000 gold. Time to get farming guys!

Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range. It can now be used in melee range.
Die pesky rogues, die! /cheer

*New Talent* Black Arrow (Tier 9) - 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.
Aforementioned Black Arrow which I'd never heard of. Is apparently the talent you have to get before getting Explosive Shot. Interesting trap, though it only procs from the dot component. If it didn't, and you combine this with that new fire-any-trap talent, it would be awesome for LnL proccing. I can see this trap being a staple in Surv's rotation due to the damage increase buff, especially since you can fire it from range with that new talent.

Improved Wing Clip has been removed from the game.
Lol, who specs into Improved Wing Clip?!

Click here for new Hunter talent tree.

Excuse Me Sir

But I do believe the 3.1 notes are out.

(I tried to find a relevant picture, honest... but I couldn't, so just have some Lucario chargin his lazer)

Let's have a little look-see.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
Woot, about time. Hope it's good.

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.
We already knew that. Confirmation is awesome!

Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
H-H-H-Hot. I can foresee people putting full points into this even though they have high enough crit to keep Replenishment up with just 1 point.

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.
Hmm. I don't really like that they changed it to periodic damage for Immolation trap. And did you guys forget about Explosive Trap, hmm? And Black Arrow? I do believe this is the first we've heard about it. Looking forward to the new spell effect and sound though.

New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
Seems our prayers have been answered! Sounds exactly like what people have been asking for too - a talent that lets you shoot traps like Freezing Arrow. Woot!

Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
I lol'd.

Grr, hope the PTR character copy queue eases up a bit.

I would also like to wish Resto4Life's authoress Phae all the best. It is a shame that such an excellent blog is going to be shut down, but RL calls.

/salute

Grats on Malygos!

Our guild Renaissance downed Malygos on 25man tonight! Congratulations, and good work everyone.

I also finally got my Favor of the Dragon Queen, of course socketed with a 16agi gem. However, this brings me below the hit cap once again... Seriously, WTB Black Ice.

Incidentally, I have also been running around as BM lately. Toshi didn't see much raiding action this week, as I was on Tora a lot of the time. I mainly respecced to farm ZG for that raptor, and to see how Spirit Beast dps is doing.

I'm quite happy to say that BM dps is good again. Not quite restored to its former glory, but competing quite well with Survival. It's taking me a while to get used to having to manage my pet again, heh.

2 sketches

Many <3s to Pike for linking me on her blog today.

Our two MTs really need some lovin'!

Tora's UI

Back when I first brought Tora into Northrend, she had a very drab, plain UI. Stuck at level 69, I didn't have much resolve to level her at alll.

Then one day, I saw a screenshot of a beautiful UI and it inspired me to make what you see here. I spent a lot of time on the eepanels, especially the Recount and Omen ones. To this day the OmenBorderTop still gives me problems and I have to change it every time I log in... but it's so worth it.

Oh, one of the mods I forgot to mention in the previous post...

OmniCC, for tracking cooldowns. I used to use CooldownCount, but found that OmniCC put the cooldown on debuffs in Pitbull as well, which is highly useful for timing Rake/Mangle/Rip reapplications.

Anyway, Tora finally (FINALLY!) got Staff of Trickery from Violet Hold tonight. The Naxx10 guild alt run we did was also pretty productive, I got me some shoulders, a kitty 2h mace, and a very nice chest. My avoidance is up about 2 or 3%, and health increased by 1k, which I am very pleased about.

Incidentally, I ran as kitty dps in the Violet Hold run that got me that staff. Pulled about 1.8-1.9k dps, came 2nd place just shy of the Death Knight, which I'm very happy about. All that reading about kitty dps rotations has really paid off, I think. Didn't do too well on Cyanigosa herself due to an actionbar malfunction though, but I'm really not too fussed.

Overall, Tora's feral dps and tanking sets are coming along awesomely. Hope next week's Naxx10 run is just as good. WTB set bonus! (legs, hands and helm would be nice) :3

Speaking of UIs...

Pike's recent post about her UI just reminded me that I was about to do one of those eventually. I'm one of those who will spend hours tinkering with things like eePanels to get just the right look, so I take pride in showing off screenshots of them, usually.

And yes, I love the look of minimalistic UIs. I try to keep things as simple as possible, but at the same time trying to have utility and just the right amount of information avaliable on screen.

I've been running that UI (and various iterations of it...) for several months now. It started out largely inspired by Rayne's Burnt Black Cherry Lite in BC, and over the months I've changed little things about it but managed to have it retain the same general feel.

Here's a little "progress montage".

Anyway, here's a quick and comprehensive addon list.

Pitbull, the one UnitFrame mod to rule them all. When I first started adding addons, of course XPerl was the first one I went to for unitframes. But after looking at a few shiny minimalistic ones on various sites, I was drawn to Pitbull. It may not be as easy to configure as XPerl out-of-the-box, but it has a ton of features and configurations. You could literally spend hours figuring out what does what. And when it comes down to looks, it does so very efficiently.

MikScrollingBattleText, or MSBT. I was initially using SCT, until patch 3.0 hit and suddenly my screen was flooded with a floating wall of green healing text, thanks to the new Bloodthirsty pet talent. Our GM at the time was also talking about MSBT, so I decided to give it a go, and haven't looked back since. It is much more customisable than SCT, especially the size of the text columns, which was my problem with SCT. All in all, a very useful mod.

eePanels, the mod that lets me put that delicious 1px white border on my unitframes. I've been told to update to KGPanels, and I did try it once, but it had too many settings and I wasn't in the mood at the time. :P I may go back and give it a go, but for the moment eePanels is the one for me. If you're interested in trying out making some art with eePanels, there's a brilliant tutorial on omgphatloots.

SL Data Text, text mod that shows various stats. I've been seeing UI screenshots that had durability, gold, fps, etc. in text along the bottom and was wondering for ages what it was before I finally stumbled across a post that listed it. It's really handy in that you can put whatever data you want, wherever you want it. I can't have a UI without this mod.

As for the others, well, they're pretty standard really.
Dominos for actionbars
Recount, Omen and DBM
FuBar
Atlasloot
Chinchilla for minimap
Bison for buffs/debuffs
Prat for chatlog
Quartz casting bar
Aloft for nameplate modification
ButtonFacade
oRA2 for maintank targets
You'll be able to find all these mods over at WoWInterface.

I'll post one of my druid tomorrow, since she uses a completely different UI.

The BW that never was

Ah, we can all dream, can't we?

In case you're lazy to click the image, here's the flavour text.
The Beast Within
When activated, the Hunter takes on all aspects of his pet, increasing damage by 300%. During this time he may only use his pet's special abilities. Lasts 20 seconds.

Clicky for full view! The preview doesn't do it justice.

Ulduar preview

More on MMO-Champion, of course.

The bosses revealed so far - Freya, Thorim, Hodir, Iron Council.

Iron Council sounds kinda like Illidari Council/High King Maulgar... hmm.

But hang on a sec, Freya, Thorim, HODIR?? Didn't we help these guys out while questing? What's going on!

/confusedkitty

I was on the verge of quitting yesterday (got bored, sue me) and they throw this on me... @_@ Just hope the PTR comes out soon.

broken

sketch dump

Enjoy! <3

Torakitty

More art coming!

Mickey Mouse is NOT amused

Hey guys, remember what we said about removing ammo from the game in 3.1? Sorry! We were kidding.

Gemming for Survival

In the Burning Crusade, gems for hunters went as such - Agi, Agi, Agi.

In the world of Wrath, where the old be-all-reign-all spec was BM, and where pet attack power scaled with its owners', BM hunters were encouraged to gem for Attack Power. Trueshot Aura now scaled to 10% of AP instead of giving just a flat 120.

Gemming for Survival is easy. If you're a BC-baby like me, you won't have any problems. Just keep stacking Agi gems like you used to. Spread out into other gems for Metas and socket bonuses if you must, but Agi conquers all.

Why? Agility is the reigning stat for Surv hunters. In BC, there used to be a minimum amount of Agi you needed before you could spec Surv to raid.

Expose Weakness grants 10% of our Agi in a fight whenever we have the buff up. (And if you have a decent amount of crit, it'll be up at least 98% of the time in boss fights) Agi contributes to Crit, which is what Surv is all about. Agi scales with Kings.

You could gem for Crit of course, but it's highly inadvisable and just plain silly.

Here's a list of gems that have Agi as a stat on them. I'll only include Wrath blue-quality ones here, since the BC gems are pretty much irrelevant now. If you want to look for the BC-era (or Wrath green-quality) gems, just plug in the name of it (eg. Delicate for Agi gem) into a search engine like Wowhead.

Red
Delicate Scarlet Ruby

Orange
Deadly Monarch Topaz (personal fav)
Deft Monarch Topaz
Glinting Monarch Topaz
Lucent Monarch Topaz

Purple
Shifting Shadow Crystal
There is supposed to be a blue-quality version of this gem... except Blizz apparently forgot to put it in the game. The best avaliable now is of course the Perfect version of this.

And finally, the gem that I really wish they didn't make - Tenuous Twilight Opal. I can understand Enhancement Shamans or maybe Ret Paladins wanting it, but with the ability to regen mana whenever we want (Viper!), I really don't think its a wise choice of gem for any hunter. And especially for Surv, where we get AP from Stam.

HUNTERS SHOULD NEVER STACK MP5.

Thank you.

Itemisation Talk - Crit vs. Haste

NOTE! Keep in mind that this post is written from a very subjective standpoint. I have no head for numbers, and really don't care too much for such in depth theorycrafting. If you're into that sort of thing, I suggest paying the EJ Surv Hunter thread a visit.

I've "mentored" a few hunters in my time (in the game of course). One of the most common questions that come to me are - which piece of gear is better? *links two different gear*

Well folks I'm here to clear that up. In the era of Wrath, Haste has become a very commonplace stat on gear. It even shows up on greens from quest rewards!

The simple debate here is which is better, Crit or Haste? Let's look at several possibilities. Keep in mind that Steady Shot can only be hasted down to 1.4 seconds, and that the hunter global cooldown is not affected by haste whatsoever. Crit is, of course, always welcomed in copious amounts.

Say you're a BM hunter. With the Serpent's Swiftness talent, you will reach the haste cap without stacking it on your gear at all. In this case, Crit > Haste.

On the other hand, if you're a Marks or Surv hunter, you want to take a look at your SS cast time and your crit rating before making a decision. If you are a new-to-80 hunter with an abysmal amount of crit, you'll want that over haste. As you collect more gear, haste becomes more abundant and commonplace, especially on the Tier 7 sets. Put it this way, every piece of Tier 7 has haste on it. Several other hunter-centric mail have haste as a socket bonus as well.

From personal experience, the haste cap is not hard to reach even for Marks or Surv hunters, without even trying. My current SS cast time is 1.5 seconds, which really is not too shabby. With Heroism it drops down to 1 second, and with Rapid Fire it's 1.1 seconds.

So what's our lesson of the day?

Crit always > Haste

Gem and enchant guide for Surv coming tomorrow!

Hot Press - 3.1 Hunter Changes

IMPORTANT: Please go here for the updated 3.1 news!

I just read the news on WoWInsider. Just to break it down, and give my own reactions...

Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game.
Can we get an OH YEAH? Can we get an OMG? Hells yeah! I can't be the only hunter around happy about this. This change has been a long time coming. Every hunter and their alt unite with me in saying THANK YOU BLIZZ!

About the haste on the quivers though, I'm interested to see where they'll be putting it instead.

A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added.
One of the reported buffs for BM in 3.1, this will probably be only accessible with the extra pet talent points you get with Beast Mastery.

Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
An interesting change to say the least, considering Hunting Party in its current form being 5 ranks. Any decent Surv hunter with good enough crit usually only needs to put in 2 or 3 points in it. I'm also interested to see what this "passive bonus" is.

Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
Wow. A bleed effect! It currently just reduces armor on the target for Steady Shot. With the changes to feral druid and rogue bleed effects, I assume this can only be a good thing.

Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
A good change, as compared to getting a damage bonus a certain distance from the target. With the current raid bosses, this talent is highly unviable. The change is helpful, but on bosses where you're moving around in phases (Heigan, Thaddius, Malygos, etc.) it won't be that useful.

We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.
Finally. FINALLY. Am I seriously the only one who remembers GC saying Trap Mastery in its current form is still a work in progress? I have the point, yeah, but it's only filler so I can get Explosive Shot... it would be nice if it actually worked.

Overall, some nice changes, and of course the best one being the removal of ammo. I am looking forward to 3.1!

Raiding as a druid

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. ^^; I've been busy and such.

Tonight I went to Naxx25 as a Resto druid, instead of on my hunter. To be honest, I was getting mind numbingly bored of Naxx. Each week it's the same old thing. So I thought I'd shake things up a bit.

In an ideal world, I would have gone as Feral and tanked my happy bear butt off. But no, we always have enough tanks. So I respecced Resto and went raid healing. I'm not a huge expert on it, but I figured, it can't be too hard right? Just watch some health bars. My experience healing Outland dungeons to level at least taught me as much.

Regardless, my noobish-ness and undergeared ass did fairly well. My best fight was Heigan, where I think I performed admirably. Being used to dps on the run already, it was a simple matter of spamming heals on the raid instead of instants on Heigan. So I'm pretty happy with how that turned out.

I got two pieces of loot tonight, Robes of Mutation and Shawl of the Old Maid. Well, not exactly Tora's first ever epics, as a few days ago I'd gotten her Bands of the Great Tree from Emblems of Valor, seeing as they're BoE. I also had Trollwoven shoulders crafted for her tanking set, which I will unfortunately now put in the bank, much to my disappointment. Well, at least they got to see some action tanking a few heroics and Sartharion. I guess the next time they'll come out is when dual specs are rolled out.

Overall though, my druid has been going fine. And Toshi, on the other hand, has been working on Elder. I got Elders of Eastern Kingdoms about an hour ago, gonna try and hit Orgrimmar early to finish up the Horde elders, and then we'll be running heroics the rest of the afternoon for the remaining dungeon elders as well as heroic dungeon achievements.

We're so close to the Red Proto Drake! I can smell it!