Atonement

I'm not a guild-hopper. I'm really anything but that. I spent two years in one and three in another. I really loved both guilds. I spent the past couple weeks in a ten man guild, made entirely of people who came from the previous guild.

We had about 15 good solid raiders in the 10-man guild to ensure it would succeed. None of us had any interest in recruiting any more. And then one, two, three of those people left or were out on extended unknown breaks. And in a very short period of time, raids dwindled to nothing. More people left. There had only been 8 raiders logging in at all in a week's time. I was alone in guild a few nights last week. There was nobody to talk to about it. Things weren't viable. The writing was on the wall. Maybe even in neon letters.

I was being asked to pug some raids. I was also being asked to join one of the most long-lived raiding guilds on the server. And asked and asked. The guild had eleven people I already knew. Some of whom I know their real names better than their character names. My work buddy also belonged to the guild years ago and told me the GM was great and the guild was a perfect match. However, my raiding friends weren't there. But they weren't anywhere anymore. There wasn't anyone to talk to about it in guild. There wasn't even anyone to see my /gquit.

Within about 30secs of accepting the ginvite I was receiving a raid invite and summon. I didn't do anything dumb, dps'd only what I should, when I should, and how fast I should, got Misdirects to the tanks (and not healers!), and tossed some good damage. I know the other competitive hunter pretty well. He is marksman and the class leader. He's exceptionally well geared and will probably put me to shame next time.

Now all I need to wrangle is the new raid night schedule.

Marks' + Volley = Win

Ghostcrawler says:

The AP coefficient of Volley has been increased from 0.0586 to 0.0837. Base points did not change. This probably did not make the patch notes.

Since Volley isn't exactly in a dps rotation, this won't nudge anyone's theory-craft. Marksmen of course get the most bang for the buck out of Volley. It certainly will help bump up the meters if you care for that thing. And official AoE responsibilities may be more possible. Heck, somebody might actually have the Glyph in a secondary spec.

It's interesting they're doing this while also nerfing Rogue's AoE by 30%.

Undocumented Live Hunter Pet Change

So, I discovered a bug the other day with my pet talents. Blizz offered this kind suggestion:

1. Open your World of Warcraft directory (This is commonly located at C:Program filesWorld of Warcraft)
2. Run the repair.exe utility found in the World of Warcraft directory
3. Click the button "Reset and Check Files"
4. Once the repair utility has completed, you will need to reapply the patch to enter the game.

Since I thought that idea worthless, harmful, and time-consuming, I instead went to the pet trainer and unlearned my pet talents while in the crazy state. It worked! And then I learned that re-talenting my pet in the field is no longer possible. (Re-talenting a pet without visiting a pet trainer was possible by switching to BM, summoning, talenting to 20pts, switching back to non-BM, and summoning.)

Pet talent specs are now remembered along with your hunter's talent specs. So, when you flip from one hunter talent spec to another, you can have completely different pet talents chosen and remembered. This is a blessing and a curse. It's a curse because you can't do crazy respec'ng in the field per encounter. Admittedly, this is really only useful for pet-tanking. But of course, it's a blessing since you will not run around with an un-talented pet by accident.

Rhok On

Yes, I was bored. I went and got this last week. It only took a few different days to get the mobs. I'll make an exception and keep it in my gun rack. ;-)

Photo Trivia: Pet Talents Gone Wild

See anything wrong with my pet talents? Does it look good or bad?

More on the PTR Bestial Wrath Change

The new PTR tooltip reads:

“Increases all damage you deal by 10% and while your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing mana costs of all spells by 20% for 10 sec (down from 18). While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed.”

So the new spreadsheet results are showing a +2% total DPS increase for BM hunters. It's still well below SV and MM though.








More math:

Hunter
Beast Mastery

• The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
• Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.

So, this is a little bit more info. It's unclear if it would be +10% at all times and +10% on top of that when it's active. As I already did the math below, if it's just 10% all the time it ends up being a 1% damage buff for BM hunters but a big nerf for them in PvP. If it's +10% and +10% it will be a little more.

Nuts and Bolts of Beast Change Math for 3.2 PTR Build 10433

Nuts I say!

Hunter
Beast Mastery

• The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10%. (Apparently at all time ... Would have to check in-game)
• Bestial Wrath now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 18 sec)

If this is true then BM is dead as an option for PvP arena folks. It's all Survival. That's nuts.

Bolts?

If it really is +10% of the hunter's damage -- all the time -- what does that mean for BM as a viable raiding spec? Well. Let's look at the stratospheric best possible gear ever and most ideal buffs, situation, etc-everything numbers right now:

Best BM Template:

Total DPS: 9457,14
Hunter DPS: 5455,90
Pet DPS: 4001,24
AP: 9651
Crit: 57,80%
Hit: 100,00%
ArP: 566
Shot Queue: KS/Sp/MS/AS/SS
Wait Delay: 0,00s
Spec: 54/12/5
Race: Orc
Pet: Devilsaur

Best MM Template:

Total DPS: 10781,46
Hunter DPS: 9530,54
Pet DPS: 1250,93
AP: 8978
Crit: 58,58%
Hit: 100,00%
ArP: 1230
Shot Queue: KS/Sp/CS/AiS/SilS/SS
Wait Delay: 0,00s
Spec: 7/57/7
Race: Orc
Pet: Wolf

Best SV Template:

Total DPS: 10106,81
Hunter DPS: 8650,25
Pet DPS: 1456,56
AP: 11676
Crit: 77,33%
Hit: 100,00%
ArP: 526
Shot Queue: KS/ES/BA/Sp/AiS/SS
Wait Delay: 0,00s
Spec: 2/18/51
Race: Orc
Pet: Wolf

EDITED TO ADD: So now we do some math. We can't just add 10% to the BM hunter's dps.

The loss of 8 seconds of +10% damage from normal Beast Within needs to be accounted for. It doesn't sound like a lot, but take Longevity, the BW Glyph, and the original hunter BW and calculate its damage boost uptime over ten minutes. Then multiply that uptime percentage by the 10% to see what the base damage boost is. Then do something similar for the loss of pet damage from a reduced uptime of its Bestial Wrath. Here are my calculations:


























So what does this mean for BM hunter dps in ideal conditions? Well, their pet does a little less damage. They do a little more. The combination of the two do an extra 1% damage.

So BM is still far far below MM and SV. Nuts. But what can you expect if they are completely redesigning our class from scratch? Honestly, I'm surprised they're making any changes. What's most surprising is that this looks like this is just a big nerf to BM hunters in arenas. I don't understand what the heck they're thinking.




EDITED TO ADD: New News => New Math.

My World of Raids

Life in Table for Ten is certainly different than Blade of Honor. It's smaller. I still know everyone and am friends with everyone. But there's no doubt it's smaller. We had a guild meeting and got the lay of the land. I now have friends all over the place. Many of these folks are in 25man raiding guilds. It's a little strange to think that I may know a lot of people in a guild that I've never done anything with.

We ran some stuff last night after the guild meeting. The Faction Champions continue to be a problem. I have to think it's because many people just don't have a PvP hat to slap on. Either that or we're missing something. And I can't dig through details because my auto-combat-logger addon wasn't configured to save for the 10man instance. I would like to see if we have enough purging, decursing, spell-stealing, etc. going on. I think some of it is just that some may not think about helping out others. The roles in PvP are a bit more overlapped and fluid than in PvE. We also seemed to lose dps off the bat a lot. For some reason in their canned mob logic, I rarely got CC'd and was usually the last alive. I'm not sure how many attempts we made, but it was about an 80g repair bill.

With an hour left to raid, we went into Ulduar and got a few achievements. Unbroken and Shutout was kinda nice. We'll do another one for towers up. I suppose we could have tried them together, but that probably should be a different stacked achievement. We also did Heartbreaker. Got it on our second try without reading strats, so I'm guessing it's pretty damn nerfed. The gun did not drop. The silly ring did.

Worst Excuses?

What's the worst excuse you've heard for leaving a group or raid? What's the worst you've used yourself?

I'll go first. Heard on vent an hour into a raid by a guildie: "I'm sorry guys, my internet seems to be down." When we sorted through that he wasn't joking he couldn't really explain himself. It was pretty funny though.

Guild Changes

About three out of every four active guildies in Blade of Honor had already left by last night. This is the guild that I've been an officer in for approximately three years. When logging in, I was receiving far far too many whispers to respond to adequately. It was the classic "tell-hell". I guess this is what happens when a guild scatters and "/g" and "/o" are no longer adequate. (We've since begun forming a channel.)

In amongst the tells, I received a few kind requests from friends and old friends to join their guilds. It was humbling.

By Tuesday I had decided that I wanted to lay low in terms of responsibilities. I didn't want the completely new. I also knew I didn't want the isolation of guild-less-ness. So last night, I joined Table for Ten, run by my friend [Chrysom]. As it's name indicates; an expressly ten man raid guild. We will be focusing on progression before Wrath ends.

I am still interested in 25man raids, but it is often too difficult for many reasons. 25man raiding guilds want a little more time than I'm willing to put in. The accomplishments can be great, but far fewer than I might like.

Interestingly enough, my top 25man raiding guild choice runs on days I will most likely not be running guild 10man raids. I don't know if they have a policy on out-of-guild substitutes. But it might be possible to scratch that itch every once in a while. I know a few of them. And it would be nicer than out-right pugging.

I'm feeling pretty free and resilient about all this. I've caught glimpses of many guilds here and there. Their guild forums, pugging in their groups and raids, listening to them on vent. I've only been in three guilds before this. One I co-GM'd for a couple years. One was only a few months. But the last was the best guild I've experienced. RIP Blades. RIP.

Excitement Can Be Sad

So, today my guild of the past three years imploded. I guess it's been imploding for a day or two already. I won't go into details. It's not from crazy drama. It's mostly from real life pressures. But it's very sad for it to come to an end. I'm wondering who will turn out the lights.

While I was in the whisper zone with remaining members, I was also in a pug trying the new VoA boss, Koralon. Got him on the second try. I think all that made me do was crack a frown though.

Gorilladin FTW

Nice job from Durante.