There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Last night, I made my long-delayed entrance into Icecrown Citadel, and lo, it was good. Well, pretty good.

Being that it was in the midst of the holiday weekend, this was something of an impromptu event, with only a handful of signups and the rest made up on the spot. There had been two full raids earlier in the week, which meant most of our raiders' mains were locked out, leaving about half the raid to be filled with slightly less well-geared alts. I'm fairly sure this was what determined the upper limit of our progress for the night.

In broad overview, we successfully moved through Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, and the gunship event; we put in several very good attempts at Saurfang, but ultimately couldn't take him down. I found all of the encounters so far quite enjoyable. I don't believe any of them are difficult in terms of execution, but they do require everyone to pay attention, making for some engaging, interesting fights.

The Deathbringer Saurfang encounter is definitely a gatekeeper for the next segment of the raid. Last night our gear was well and truly checked, and found... wanting. The guild has taken him down in previous weeks, with our best-geared raiders, but that gear margin is clearly the difference between success and failure here. By our last attempt, we had what I feel is a sufficiently tight strategy: slowing the Blood Beasts with a frost trap while focusing fire on each, one at a time, kiting with everything we've got - Distracting Shot, Concussive Shot, Disengage - yes, hunters, rejoice, for this fight makes us specifically useful! The problem we ran into was the amount of time it took to kill each Beast; by the time the first was down, the second had made its way to a delicious healer. If there had been two hunters in the raid, I'm sure we could have kept them both occupied, but as it was, our DPS just wasn't sufficient. We ended the night on our best attempt, with Saurfang at 15%, and his mighty cleave dropping me to 0%, the bodies of my comrades strewn about the terrace.

Still, I'm happy with our effort, and looking forward to killing the bastard for many weeks to come.

If You Can't Beat 'Em

Since my gaming PC is out of commission, I've been reduced to hunkering down before the glow of my laptop, so raiding has been put on hold. However, after getting used to finessing the latency, I've found 5-mans are within its capacity, and have been exploring the wonderful world of cross-server PuGs.

My experience so far has been about what you'd expect; groups have ranged from casually-paced and chatty, to dead silent and chain-pulling like there was a prize for clearing the dungeon in under five minutes. Many have been perfectly competent, and while some groups have ultimately failed and fallen apart due to unfamiliarity with the new Icecrown dungeons, I have yet to encounter any true incompetence. Don't worry, I'm sure it'll show up sooner than later. I think I can give no better endorsement than to say that I'm going to be using this thing every day, whereas I never used to run with PuGs. ...all those extra badges may or may not have something to do with it >_>

The new dungeons themselves have been fun, with some interesting mechanics. Bronjahm is quite possibly the coolest, both tactically and musically, while the latter half of Halls of Reflection is suitably demanding for everyone, especially tanks, which reminds me...

I love new Misdirection! No more DoT ticks using up the effect before the trash actually reaches the tank! I did prefer the original animation, and I'm not sure why it was changed, but eh...

Ok, finally, the mammoth in the room: the new ammunition engineering schematics from the Ashen Verdict faction. The Iceblade Arrow schematic requires Gnomish engineering, while the Shatter Rounds requisite specialization is Goblin. There has been much head-scratching concerning the explanation for segregating ammo-crafting in this way. For one thing, among end-game ranged weapons, bows and crossbows significantly outnumber guns. This makes one specialization much more desirable than the other, both for hunters who happen to be engineers themselves, and in terms of market value for non-hunter engineers. Granted, as a dwarf hunter who strictly runs 10-man raids, the best weapon available to me happens to be a gun, and I'll be putting my Goblin engineering to good use. Still, I can understand the frustration of 25-man raiders and non-dwarves generally.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Ever since the Blizzcon '09 announcement that, in Cataclysm, "focus" will be replacing mana as the resource that Hunter abilities draw upon, there has been much speculation and commentary in the Hunter blogging community about what this will mean for our shot sequences, talent choices, and overall DPS. As with most changes that have ever been announced for this game, the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative.

Now, I'm not about to say I'm totally confident that the developers will be able to implement this change in a balanced way right off the bat, but there are a few things I'm keeping in mind that have kept me firmly at "wait and see" on the RAINBOWOFOPTIMISM <--> SLAPINTHEFACEWHERE'SMYPONY spectrum.

First, the majority of complaints about the proposed system are based upon the assumption that the key abilities of each talent tree (i.e., Explosive Shot, Chimera, etc.) and their relative power levels will remain the same as they currently are, and we will be dependant upon the sub-optimal Steady Shot for focus regeneration. However, it has been stated that talent trees will be massively overhauled, as part of a trimming of passive-bonus talents. So, why should we assume that the primary abilities we have now will remain as such? And with five more levels and a tree-pruning, I can easily see room for re-scaling attack-power coefficients, to say nothing of the possibility of new abilities. Steady shot will likely remain a 1x or 2x filler shot, only now it will be recovering focus rather than killing time during cooldowns.

Now, admittedly, I generally welcome changes to the game; the opportunity to learn and optimize under a new set of conditions is one of the things that keeps the game interesting for me. At the same time, I can see that a change of this magnitude won't appeal to everyone; the same kind of playstyle preferences that lead players to choose Beast Mastery or Survival or Marksmanship will likely divide those who prefered being cooldown-constrained to being resource-constrained.

But I don't think focus is going to sound the death knell of the class.

Theorycraft From the Comfort of Your Browser

My guild-leader and fellow hunter has just brought to our attention something that should be of interest to the hunter community: Shandara's Hunter DPS Spreadsheet is now available for use in-browser, no Excel necessary!

Making Friends

Egads, what a weekend.

Beginning Friday night, we cleared both the Siege and Antechamber, getting our first Orbital Bombardment in the process (Two emblems of conquest! Only ten more weeks, and I'll be able to buy something!). We are now beginning to hone our runs down to a level of efficiency at which we should be able to do a full clear in two nights of raiding, ala Naxx. I am especially proud of our progress in light of the fact that we have something of a rotating cast of raiders, with at least one or two Ulduar-virgins every week.

Saturday night was no less rewarding. We finally repeated our first Hodir kill (ok, so you don't actually kill any of the Keepers...), and even managed an accidental I Have the Coolest Friends. We then moved on to Thorim, who we had only faced once before, and not successfully. But, after a couple of attempts in which we got the hang of taking down the constantly spawning adds in time without pulling aggro off the tank (ahem... >_>), we defeated him quite easily.

Next was Freya, who none of us had actually attempted before. Our plan was basically to get some easy emblems from the three Elders, and then put in some time learning the main encounter. We went about clearing the trash (protip: according to one of our Paladins, the dragon mobs are immune to Repentance) and the Elders without much trouble.

The first couple attempts on Freya herself were indeed learning experiences; Snaplashers killing tanks, Gifts of Eonar not getting cut down in time, etc. But on try number three, everything just clicked, and, well...

(Protip #2: since the Snaplashers won't attack melee who are not on top of their threat list, Hunters can hit them with a distracting shot once their debuff roots them, allowing melee DPS to continue hacking with impunity)

Finally, we moved on to the Spark of Imagination (a.k.a. Mimiron's workshop, a.k.a. coolest trash pulls ever. I'm not going to spoil it for you - it was a neat little surprise for all of us :D). We rode the bullet train (You heard that right. Seriously, Ulduar really does get more awesome the farther in you go.) to Mimiron's inner sanctum, said hi, and were promptly vaporized. It was after midnight at that point, so we called it a night, content in the knowledge that the Old Gods and their minions will soon fall before us.

And, because I know you care, here's the weekend's hunter loot haul: Belt of the Blood Pit, Boots of Unsettled Prey, and Shawl of the Shattered Giant.

Back in the Saddle

In which our hero returns to the villain's lair, and leaves dragging a sack of loot.

Night one of this week's Ulduar was positively overflowing with win. First, it was an official Night of Hunter Loot (TM) - there were three of us, and we each left with at least one upgrade. Myself, I finally replaced the old Nesingwary with this piece of Titan technology, not to mention these imitation tier 8 shoulders!

Even more impressive (as if anything could be more impressive than hunter loot), we scored three deathless boss kills and one o' them cruel and unusual punishments, bringing us that much closer to classy titles and rusty dragons.

Tonight - the Keepers!

What Treachery is This?!

No, your eyes don't deceive you, that's a Beast Mastery at the bottom of that there tree!

I've decided it's high time I experience the one Hunter spec I've never tried. I leveled as Marksmanship back in vanilla WoW, and have been Survival ever since I returned during the latter part of Burning Crusade. Yes, even during its heyday, I just wasn't interested in trying Beast Mastery.

But now I feel the need for a change. I want to see just how different the BM playstyle is from that of SV. As a Survivalist, I treat my pet like a weapon: I basically fire him at the boss and let him do his thing while I focus on my shot rotation and maintaining my DoTs. Beast Masters, on the other hand (at least as my uneducated mind imagines them), treat their pets as extensions of themselves: the pet is responsible for a greater proportion of overall DPS, so keeping it alive is of much greater importance.

I purchased dual talent specialization, so my SV spec is still ready at hand for raiding (at least until I feel supremely confident with BM), but I'm excited to try my hand at some Big Red Pet wranglin'.

And seriously - Spirit Beast!

I Can't See a Damn Thing in This Tin Can!

So, after tonight's regularly-scheduled lich beating, we decided to give EoE10 a few shots, mainly just to test out our druid's new Key to the Focusing Iris - honestly, you'd think Maly would have changed his locks by now.

We walked, nay, swaggered into his domain - and were repeatedly vaporized. We gave it three good shots, making it to phase three almost flawlessly each time, but we definitely need more practice on the drake riding bit. Also, on the final attempt before our healers had to split, we encountered a bug which ejected us from our mounts, only to re-mount us a few seconds later. Needless to say, that pretty much blew any rhythm we had going (and have I mentioned how much I HATE "vehicle" combat? Unwieldy, buggy, contrived vehicle combat? Occulus, EoE, that storm giant in Zul'Drak, and yes, even Flame Leviathan can all go die in a fire).

I was, however, quite pleased with my DPS and overall performance. I consider this the first meaningful test of my spec and gear post-3.1, and it saw a moderate damage increase, and possibly even better mana efficiency than before (perhaps due to 3/3 rather than 2/4 Hunting Party).

I even managed to pick up two new pieces from Naxx: Heroes' Cryptstalker Headpiece and Claymore of Ancient Power. Very slight upgrades, but upgrades nonetheless.

And shit, they look cool.

Blizzard Has My Back

The very day I conclude that my DPS would benefit from shifting a few talent points around, BAM! - free re-specs.

So, ever since 3.1 dropped, I've been snubbing the new Sniper Training - Ulduar, and even much of Naxx, just has too many fires that must not be stood in, and I believed those points would be better spent in Entrapment, mainly for kiting Gluth's zombies.

I still stand by those basic assertions, but now that Naxx is slowly being phased out of my regular raiding schedule, Entrapment is looking less appealing, whereas the extra crit to Kill Shot, especially in conjunction with its glyph, is pushing Sniper Training ahead. My only concern regarding the loss of Entrapment is controlling the adds during Ignis, but I'm hoping the interplay of 3/3 Trap Mastery and 2/3 Resourcefulness will allow for a constant ice sheet to keep them in line.

This is all just theoretical right now, as I won't be testing anything until this weekend at the earliest. As always, if your experience contradics my suppositions, tell me how wrong I am!

Don't Let the Cinematic Trailer Fool You

Varian Wrynn was afraid to go to Ulduar! Yeah, His Surlyness just wants to go back to farming Naxx until Armageddon drops.

But we - the unknown, the unappreciated, the unaccountable for our actions - have answered Brann's call! Man, poor guy must be really hard up for help...

So, yes, last night was the guild's first look inside Ulduar. It wasn't our first official run; that comes next week. This was merely an attempt to get a feel for the first 3-4 bosses, seeing how far we could get.

And let me tell you, for anyone worried that Blizzard would not live up to their promises of more difficult content: Ulduar is HARD. Razorscale and her two-shotting fireballs. Ignis and his codpiece hellfire. And the trash! My God, the trash! Fire giants that Silence your healers, iron dwarves with magnifying chain lightning, fire elementals that hurl fire tornadoes that have a knockback and will chase you!

When you feel you've accomplished something after clearing a couple trash mobs, you know something's different. I know I'm excited.

One final note for my fellow Survival Hunters on slowing/rooting the iron constructs during the Ignis fight:

You may very well have Entrapment - that's good!
But remember, all of your traps share a cooldown with Black Arrow - that's /facepalm

This is the Greatest and Best Blog in the World...

Tribute.

As you should have heard by now, the bar-setting, internal-dialoguing, mass-marketing, pod-casting frontman of the Hunter community, Big Red Kitty, has made the hard, but undeniably right, choice to turn away from WoW for his wife and family.

BRK's was the first WoW blog I regularly read, upon returning to the game a year ago. He never went into the same obsessive depth of theoretical exposition as some other bloggers (and Lord knows, I loves me some math-craftin'), but he presented important fundamentals of the class in a highly entertaining manner, and I credit him with my Hunter becoming my main, rather than my Warlock, all those months ago.

Good luck, BRK. I'll raise a cup o' raspberry latte to ya.

Trap Two-Stepping

The latest PTR update has some intriguing changes for Survival Hunters, namely:

* Entrapment redesigned: When your Frost Trap, Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Snake Trap are triggered, you entrap all afflicted targets, preventing them from moving for 2/4/6 seconds.

* T.N.T.: Gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.

* Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9, and is now a 3-point talent.

* Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.

It seems as though they are trying to make traps a more significant part of what the Survival tree is all about, rather than simply a desultory string of talents on the way to getting the most powerful shot in the game; I approve.

And the new Entrapment is going to make kiting Zombie Chows during the Gluth fight a lot easier :D

I Can't Read Your Crazy Moon Language!

Among other things, patch 3.1 will be changing the outlay of glyphs available to Hunters, both introducing new ones, and changing old ones. For your convenience, here they are:

· Glyph - Aimed Shot -- Reduces the cooldown of your Aimed Shot ability by 2 sec. (Old: Reduces the mana cost of your aimed shot ability by 20%)

· Glyph of the Monkey -- While Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Dragonhawk are active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. Can only occur every 20 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects. (Old: Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey -- While Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Dragonhawk are active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.)

· Glyph of Wyvern Sting -- Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 6 sec. (Old: Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 15 sec., but decreases the damage it deals by 20%.)

· Glyph of Snake Trap -- Snakes generated by your Snake Trap take 90% reduced damge from area of effect spells. (Old: Your Snake Trap creates 2 additional snakes)

· Glyph of the Hawk -- Increases the haste bonus of the Improved Aspect of the Hawk effect by an additional 6%. (Old: Renamed from Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk)

· Glyph of Chimera Shot *new* -- Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.

· Glyph of Explosive Shot *new* -- Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.

· Glyph of Kill Shot *new* -- Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.

· Glyph of Explosive Trap *new* -- The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.

· Glyph of Scatter Shot *new* -- Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.

· Glyph of Raptor Strike *new* -- For 5 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.

Obviously, your choice of glyphs will depend upon your spec, style, and whether you’re focusing on PvP or PvE. That being said, I have some initial thoughts:

· The fact that Glyph of Aimed Shot no longer reduces its mana cost by 20% would seem to invalidate it as a regular part of most shot rotations. The only thing Aimed Shot seems useful for now is its healing reduction effect, so reducing the shot’s cooldown below that effect’s duration is pointless. I know I’ll be dropping it.

· The 20 second cooldown on Glyph of the Monkey is certainly a nerf to its PvP efficacy (I imagine – I don’t use it, and I only occasionally PvP).

· The revised Glyph of Wyvern Sting and new Glyph of Scatter Shot, on the other hand, might be more worthwhile for PvP.

· Glyph of Kill Shot: Yes, please. Especially in 25-person raids, where that last 20% can last a while.

· Glyph of Explosive Shot: Yes, please. Now that we don’t get a crit boost from T.N.T , this looks like a good choice.

For myself, I’ll probably be running with Glyphs of Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, and Steady Shot, come 3.1. What about you? And hey, Marks Hunters, is Glyph of Chimera Shot going to be worth it? Spec-curious Hunters want to know!

Hunters, Grab Your Napkins!

Because it’s time for some math.

So, as you’ve probably heard by now, Blizzard’s imprecise language regarding changes to ammo and the removal of quivers was just that – the 15% ranged haste still applies to steady shot.

Things look less rosy for Explosive Shot, however – the reduction to base damage and attack power scaling will cut the shot’s damage by a little over 11%, a gap that will become fractionally larger as attack power increases.

As much as I hate to agree with a nerf to my own spec, Explosive Shot probably was a bit overpowered compared to talents equally deep in other trees, like Chimera Shot.

Now hand me that napkin, I need to dry my tears.

*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?

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?