Achievements

No, not the kind that pops up on your screen and announces it to everyone. (Though those are fun too!)

I'm talking about things like soloing group quests, or collecting a full Tier set. Perhaps even class related things.

Here's what I want to get done.

• Get a full Valorous Cryptstalker set. I'm 3/5s of the way there!
• Finish the last Hunter quest for that epic quiver. I only need to kill Azuregos now. Damn dragon is never there when I knock...
• Solo some BC heroics with my Gorilla. For rep, for fun, and just cos' I can.
  

Hunter gear best-in-slot list

I've been wanting to do this post for a while. Here's a list of the best hunter gear in the game. I base the gear off three things - their stats, their sockets, and their green stats (crit, hit, etc.) The best gear on the list will usually have the highest stats, sockets (where applicable) and hit, crit and attack power as their green stats. I'll also list where the item is dropped, and the best enchant for that appropriate item slot.

While I understand Haste is important - especially for Surv and MM - I value hit and crit above haste. So, without further ado...

Head
Unfortunately, there is no helm with my three valued stats, so we'll have to look at a few.
Hyaline Helm of the Sniper - The only ilevel213 helm with hit on it, you'll want to get this if you're still working toward the hit cap. Drops from Sartharion-25.
Valorous Cryptstalker Helm - Tier 7.5... really goes without saying. Drops from Kel'thuzad-25.
Blue Aspect Helm - Highest itemlevel mail physical dps helm, disappointing that it has less agi than the previous two mentioned. It instead spends the points in lots of attack power. Would be great for BM hunters, if only the haste was hit. Drops from Malygos-25.

Enchant: Arcanum of Torment from Knights of the Ebon Blade

Neck
Favor of the Dragon Queen - Gemmed with a 16agi, it is undoubtedly the best physical dps neck for any class. Quest item from Sapphiron/Malygos-25.

Shoulder
Valorous Cryptstalker Spaulders - Tier 7.5, again goes without saying. Drops from Loatheb-25 or bought with 60 Emblems of Valor. Upstanding Spaulders comes very close though.

Enchant: Greater Inscription of the Axe from Sons of Hodir.

Back
Drape of the Deadly Foe - As with the neck mentioned above, the best in slot for physical dps. Drops from Kel'thuzad-25.
However, if you're looking for alternatives... Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak is pretty good and bought with 25 Emblems of Valor.

Enchant: 22 Agi. Contact your friendly neighbourhood enchanter!

Chest
Tunic of Masked Suffering - The boatload of Agi on this one makes it the clear winner, even over Tier 7.5. The tiered chest does have hit though, so if you still need that, the tiered chest is a close second. Drops from Noth-25.

Enchant: +10 stats.

Bracers
Slime Stream Bands - All of my favourite stats, a socket, and it's BoE to boot! A real no brainer for this one. Drops from Grobbulus-25.

Enchant: 50 attack power.

Hands
A bit of a toss up on this one...
Gloves of Calculated Risk - All my favourite stats, but no socket compared to Grotesque Handgrips and tier 7.5. Drops from Patchwerk-25.

Enchant: 20 Agi.

Belt
Torn Web Wrapping - Another no-brainer, despite the lack of socket. Also BoE! Drops from Maexxna-25.

Enchant: Not an enchant, per se. Get the belt buckle and slap in a 16agi gem in there.

Legs
Leggings of Failed Escape - All the good stuff, even compared to the tier 7.5 legs. Gothik has been giving me grief over these for the past few months...

Enchant: 75 ap, 22 crit.

Boots
Boots of the Renewed Flight - Unfortunately, it wastes some points on the armor penetration, but otherwise, because of the amount of agi and ap on it, it's the best. Crippled Treads from Noth-25 is a good substitute though. (and they look better!) Drops from Malygos-25.

Enchant: 16 Agi.

Rings
Strong Handed Ring - Awesome stats on these, even with the haste. Drops from shared loot table from first bosses in all four wings in Naxx.
Surge Needle Ring - All my favourite stats, and again, another BoE! Great for if you hate doing Malygos.

Enchant: (assuming you're an enchanter) 32 attack power.

Trinkets
Darkmoon Card: Greatness - 90 agility flat out from this trinket... what's not to like? Be prepared to spend a lot of gold on this one though... even I don't have it. Created by Scribes.
Fury of the Five Flights - Once you get the stack up to 20, it will keep refreshing itself throughout the fight. It's practically a free 320 attack power! Again, not just the best for hunters, but all physical dps classes as well. Drops from Sartharion-25.
Mirror of Truth - One of the first epic trinkets you will probably get. No brainer, really. Bought with 40 Emblems of Heroism.

Melee weapon (otherwise affectionately labelled stat stick)
Black Ice - I like this one for its hit, mostly. Drops from Malygos-10.
The Undeath Carrier - Since patch 3.0.8 opened up druid staves as viable hunter stat sticks, we've had more options to choose from just the usual two handed swords and polearms. This is probably the best for Surv hunters, who can take advantage of the Stam to AP conversion. Very nice amount of crit on it too, compared to Black Ice. Drops from Heigan-25.

Enchant: 110 ap.

Ranged weapon
Envoy of Mortality - You probably knew this one already! It has the appropriate stats for its itemlevel, and has the highest tooltip dps. My only complaint is that it doesn't have any hit. Drops from Kel'thuzad-25.

Enchant: 40 ranged crit.

Hope this helped, feel free to email with any questions. ^^

The Big Post of 3.1 Hunter Changes

Taking a leaf from T&C's book, I've decided to compile a post detailing the 3.1 changes for Hunters. I've found one of the popular searches that turn up at my blog are pet changes, so I'll start with that.

Changelog:
6 March - Added changes from Build 9637.
8 march - Added changes from Build 9658.
18 March - Added links to Ulduar loot lists.

Pet Changes
A new tier of pet talents has been added, and are only accessible to Beast Mastery hunters who have the 51 point BM talent.

Wild Hunt (two ranks) increases your gear contribution for Stam and Attack Power to your pets by 40%. This talent is present in all three pet trees. At the moment cited to be a little overpowered, watch for that percentage to drop a bit before going live.


Shark Attack (two ranks), increases pet's damage with all attacks by 6%, and is the new last tier talent for Ferocity pets.




Silverback (two ranks), heals your pet for 2% of its health every time it Growls. New last tier talent for Tenacity pets.



Thunderstomp, the former Gorilla family special, is being added to the Tenacity tree. All Tenacity pets may now have the ability. One rank only, and has had a slight damage reduction but still confers the bonus threat. Pummel (similar to Warrior ability of the same name) has been replaced as the Gorilla family special. It has a cooldown of 30 seconds and is a 2 second silence.

General Hunter Changes

• All ammo now stacks to 1000. Quivers and ammo pouches are being removed. This change is currently not yet live.
• Call Stabled Pet, a new ability which lets you change your pets anywhere and implemented for the benefit of dual specs. Has a 30 minute cooldown.
• Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range, and has its cooldown reduced by 3 seconds.
• Haste bonus previously from ammo pouches/quivers has been incorporated into Auto Shot.
• Aspect of the Pack now affects whole raid, and increased to have a 40 yard radius.
  

Marksman Changes

• Piercing Shots now places a bleed effect over 8 seconds upon critical hits, instead of increasing armor penetration.
• Ranged Weapon Specialization reduced from 5 ranks to 3.
• Wild Quiver has a 2% increased chance of proccing at max rank.
• Viper Sting has been changed - Stings the target, draining 4% mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster's maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained.
• Chimera Shot mana cost reduced by 4%.
• Rapid Recuperation now gives you 4% of your mana every 3 sec while under the effect of Rapid Fire.

Survival Changes

• Explosive Shot has been nerfed - base damage reduced by 10%, attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
  
• Black Arrow is the new 50 point talent, and is needed to take Explosive Shot. It increases your damage to target by 6% and deals damage over 15 seconds. It shares the trap cooldown and can proc Lock and Load. Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.
• Lock and Load now only procs off traps and Black Arrow.
• T.N.T. now increases damage done by Explosive Shot/Explosive Trap/Immolation Trap. (used to increase crit chance of Explosive Shot and chance to stun)
  
• Trap Mastery moved to second tier.
• Hunting Party now 3 ranks instead of 5.
• Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec. Now has an increased cooldown of 1.5 minutes.
  

Graphical changes

• Rapid Fire activation has a new animation.
• Lock and Load proc has a new animation.
• Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc has a new animation.

Ulduar hunter loot

• Hesston over at Auto Shots has made a post compiling all the possible Hunter gear from Ulduar.
• The Hunter's Mark also has a good article about the new Emblem of Conquest loot and what they can be upgraded from.

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?!

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.

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.

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!

Dear BM brethren

Rejoice and be glad.

Well... Soon. (tm)

The demise of raiding BM

As mentioned in my previous post, I respecced BM before tonight's raid to see how Spirit Beast dps would hold up.

And as you can see from the title, it's pretty abysmal.

The nerf to pet damage has really hurt the tree's raiding potential. I'm not sure it was really called for. Blizz should probably have chosen to either nerf Steady Shot (and in turn affect all three trees) or just decrease pet damage.

Compared to Survival, I was doing a good 300-400 less dps as BM with Loque. 2.3k dps on a target dummy is all well and good, but if you can't put out better in a raid situation, with all the mages, warlocks and shadow priests doing upwards of 3k, you can kiss your raid spot goodbye.

I'm not really sure if I should say anything else. I'm just really disappointed that I had to hearth out and respec before Sapphiron because I wasn't performing as well as I usually do.

Tora's Epic Flight Form Fund took a hit because of the double respecs in a day, but I guess I don't mind. I'm the class leader after all, I have to see what works best...

Sadly, tonight was probably the last time I take Loque out of the stables for a long time. At least, until we get dual specs.

Goodbye Bestial Wrath, though I can't really say I'll miss you.

Art - The Survival Hunter

Whoo! *wipes brow* Finally a nice, decent pic of Toshi and his main pet, Hige. You've no idea how much time I spent agonizing over those shoulders. *cry*

And while I did draw Tmiel with his Slayer of the Lifeless, believe me I did try and draw Toshi with Arrowsong, but damn... the details are too much for my poor brain to handle. Maybe some other time... T_T

Also avaliable with no background.

How to: Thaddius (heroic) video

We finally downed Thaddius on 25-man tonight, along with Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad.

Sadly, no Envoy of Mortality for me yet. :( Also lost a roll on Drape of the Deadly Foe, le sigh.

Anyways, the video shows how I do things as Surv... because yeah, I stayed Surv for 25s this week, hehe. I wanted to see how it'd hold up against BM/Readiness, and surprisingly, it's pretty good. Notice the trap dancing on the adds. It would have been impossible to trap dance safely with the charges though, so the only time I can proc LnL from traps is to drop a trap when running from negative to positive side.

Thoughts about Hunter changes in 3.0.8

I was bored this afternoon, so I thought I'd copy myself to the PTR and give it a whirl, maybe look at how much of a dps reduction I can expect after the next patch goes live.

(Note - Toshimitsu was flagged for a namechange, so for all intents and purposes in this post, Toraneko = Toshi)

Since I was pretty much free to do anything there (multiple respecs kgo), I tried out all three specs to see how the dps difference between them would be. And to my surprise, Survival is currently coming in with top dps.


Surv was the first spec I tried, and it was simply the same spec I'm playing with on live at the moment. The recount above is myself self buffed, no raid consumables. I did another pass a little later on with consumables (agi and int pots, and agi food) and surprisingly the difference in dps was negligible, only about 50-80dps difference from burst.

Suffice to say, the new cooldown on Lock and Load will be annoying to work with. For one, it completely eliminates the rotation of trap dancing, because if you are specced into Resourcefulness, you will be either waiting 14 seconds to get a L&L proc, or wasting 8 seconds waiting for the LnL cooldown to go off.


Next we have the Marks tree. I haven't been MM in over 3 months, so I might have been a bit rusty with the rotations. It seems to be holding mid ground in terms of dps on the PTR, which you will understand once I show you the BM charts. Overall though, the Marks spec is still probably very solid and has nothing unexpected. Aside from the change of mana to Arcane Shot of course, which is nice for this spec.

And here are the charts for BM. Hold on to your seats people...


That's right, BM is currently a whopping 200dps below Marks, even with a Cat. It seems the Cat is still by far the best pet, though the Devilsaur is coming in close. One way or another, I'd say you can take either one and put out the same numbers.

The numbers I got with the Spirit Beast however, were a bit disappointing. It was below both Cat and Devilsaur dps by about 50. It seems the Spirit Beast will simply remain a trophy, and nothing more.

Now, these numbers are not set in stone - I might be doing something wrong, I may be biased towards Surv at the moment, or maybe there's something up with the PTR. However, all accounts I've read are pointing towards Survival doing the most damage on the test realms.

All in all, I'm not sure how to react. I'm honestly not too fussed with the Steady Shot nerf, but this sudden upheaval in the hierarchy of the specs has me reeling a little bit.

More experimenting with Surv

As mentioned in a previous post, I thought I'd save 10mans for Survival testing. Well, tonight was the guild's weekly 10man Naxx, and I thought I'd try out a different spec from last week.

This week, I put in that one point in Go for the Throat (which in my haste last week I forgot to do) which was suggested on the EJ Surv hunter thread.

Instead of putting full points into Sniper Training and 1 in Imp. Feign Death, I decided to go Trap Mastery and Resourcefulness this time. Because this was a clean run of Naxx (as opposed to just two bosses like last week), I had more opportunities to use Explosive Shot's AoE capability.

My main rotation on trash would be to wait for tank to pick up and establish aggro, run in and drop an Explosive Trap, wait for Lock and Load to proc, use up L&L's charges, and then Volley until Explosive Shot is off cooldown.

Usually, after proccing L&L, you can just sit back and literally listen to the fireworks. It's like music.

What surprised me though, is that I topped dps for most bosses. (Of course discounting the fact that we'd taken a few undergeared people in to get some loots for them...) There were a few fights were our Fury TG Warrior out dpsed me, but that was by a rather small margin and so I don't really mind.

Since there is no WWS report tonight, I can't really tell how well Replenishment went for the raid.

See that Explosive Shot three in a row crit? Oh yeah baby...