Friday, February 27, 2009

*ahem* "Fire!"

Ok, I've been working all day, so just a quick post tonight before I fall asleep at the keyboard.

The latest round of updates to the 3.1 patch notes have been released, and among other things, many of which had already been noted by other sources, two changes in particular regarding
hunters immediately caught my attention:

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.

The important thing to note is that the 15% haste now only
applies to Autoshot. This means that Hunters who were previously haste capped for Steady Shot now may not be. Secondly,

Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by
12.5%.

I haven't even run the numbers yet to see just how much this will cut my
damage by (tomorrow, tomorrow...), but this is a pretty significant throttling.


That's all I've got for now. Has anyone on the PTR been able to confirm these changes?

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The State of the Hunter...

...is in flux.

So, as Broxigar seems to have stabilized, and I'm able to play for more than five minutes without crashing and losing all of my keybinds, I've been able to do some very cursory testing and comparison of my DPS in the current patch build versus the live realms. My testing build looks like this, and here is a representative sample of my DPS in 3.1 (no comments on my DPS as an absolute value, please :P - this is strictly for purposes of comparison):





This is using a shot qeue of Aimed Shot, Explosive Shot, and Steady Shot, while maintaining Serpent Sting and Black Arrow. Compare with my current live build and DPS:



Here I'm using a similar shot priority, albeit with Immolation Trap to proc Lock and Load, and of course lacking Black Arrow.

A few things of note:

  • My new DPS is within 75.1 of what I'm pulling now. Not an insignificant decrease, but not game-breaking.
  • My Explosive Shots are critting exactly as often as before. This leads me to wonder if the change of the T.N.T. talent from a crit- to a damage increase has actually been implemented yet.
  • Finally, and most troubling to me, is the fact that I ran out of mana in almost half the time on test as I did on live. Lock and Load may not account for a huge DPS boost, but without those guaranteed procs, my total damage (before I would have to go into Aspect of the Viper) is more than cut in half. (It is worth noting that some of this mana inefficiency is due to the fact that Glyph of Aimed Shot no longer reduces its cost by 20%, and I simply don't have the gold to pay the obscene prices that glyphs are demanding on the PTR.)

So, that's how things are looking right now. Any thoughts? Have I overlooked anything obvious?

The Rug Beneath My Feet, It is Yank-ed

So, after days of refreshing the character copy page, and hours of downloading and installing the PTR client, Eidtalheg's alter ego was finally settled into his new home on Broxigar. Now, let's spend those talent points, and hit up the training dummies!

This program has encountered a critical error and must shut down.

What the? Ok, don't panic, let's try this agai-

THE WORLD SERVER IS DOWN.

...

Really, I will be posting my initial perceptions of patch 3.1, I promise - any day now...

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Future's So Bright...

...I've gotta use cliches.



Hello, and welcome to Improved Tracking! It is my hope that this blog will become a source for commentary and discussion of all aspects of the game World of Warcraft, with a focus on the Hunter class.

I've been an avid browser of the WoW blogosphere for quite a while now, and I've gotten frustrated with not having a central hub at which to contribute my own thoughts on the hot topics du jour. So now, with patch 3.1 right around the corner, I feel the moment is rich with opportunity to dive into the blogging scene. The new content patch, in addition to the Ulduar raid instance, is bringing a world event, sweeping changes among all the classes, and, who could forget, new achievements to... achieve - and I plan on covering it all!

I do hope you'll choose to join me on this adventure.

Cheers,
Eid