Hunter DPS

Awesome Job

2012-02-10T18:32:00.000-05:00

Hunter solos Algalon. Most likely the first solo because of the mechanics.

How to Resist Cabin Fever

2012-02-08T09:45:00.001-05:00

Lately there has been a lot of fading interest in our noted lame duck period. Our latest patch gave hunters our spots -- or at least a chance at our spots -- on the DPS charts again. Giving deterrence a damage reduction for things they choose it not to affect was a clear winner as well. But we're still here in a winter dole-drum. So what is there to do? Below is how I've been resisting cabin fever.

Talents
I changed my specs. I flipped from a Marksman PvE and Marksman PvP combo to a Survival PvE talent spec and a Pet-Tank BM. I spent a total of about twenty minutes feverishy making macros, adjusting my NeedToKnow bars, and practicing a rotation that uses Arcane Shot. Then I did it all over again with BM. I've run all of four bosses on Normal with SV so don't ask me too many questions about my experience.

Raiding
We've been knocking over normal Dragon Soul for a while. This week will be our third or fourth week of Morchok on heroic. We played around and got a bunch of achievements. But we've had some serious tank shortages. One night zero tanks. Another night, we did way more than you're supposed to be able to do with just one tank. However, this puts heroic progression on the back-burner.

BM Pet Tanking
Our tank shortage is one of the reasons I chose BM as a pet-tank spec. Normally, you'd want to use Marksman for self-heal in solo'ng older instances. Well, I'm thinking it might not be bad to try some raid pet-tanking if the need arises. I'm happy to have BM back; and along with it all my exotic pets that I have missed for a long time. It is a wonderful thing to have a giant red dinosaur named Chuckles chomping the bad guys.

Loots
My ten man raid group has a feral druid, rogue, and myself all vying for agility stuff. Of the countless weeks, only one agility trinket has dropped and only one agility ring has dropped. Meanwhile strength and intelligence rings and trinkets have been disenchanted for weeks. I am in pretty nice shape in other regards. I scored the first polearm. And I have a full second set of Tier-13 gear gem'd, enchanted, and transmorg'd just for pet-tanking.

Achievements
I have three long-standing achievements that I've been working on. For a long time. One is to get my rep to Exalted with as many groups as possible. I've been at a large number for a long while and have had "the Exalted" title for a while. But there have always been a few lurking at the edges. I haven't finished the seal people in Wrath. I never did the Netherwing in Burning Crusade. And I never touched the Darkmoon Faire because it was truly insane. I have a strong desire not to grind the hell out of my brain and make my eyes bleed. Well. Until now. My second and third long-standing achievements are the collection of mounts and non-combat pets. I got a neat little addon to show me all the things I'm missing. Well, now I'm grinding out Netherwing. In three days I'm already Revered. (Thankfully, I held on to the Black Temple portal neck piece! Still a long way to go, but it isn't as bad as I had feared. Certainly not as bad as it was years ago. And of course, I'm getting the max number of fair tokens (and associated rep) so I can purchase both mounts. I already have the strider and am a little shy of the bear. I also slid into doing the Elder holiday. Following that I'm finding myself pulled into the hearts holiday. I had avoided that stuff like the plague before. But now I have the pets and think the achievements might not be bad either. Help me. This is clearly a disease. Somehow I'm smiling about it.

A Hunter Legendary Questline

2012-01-13T16:53:00.001-05:00

Hunters know that we haven't had access to a legendary in years. The other classes have all had their shot.

Legendaries used to be a horror of a chore and/or farming bosses for literally a year for either the actual legendary as a drop, or a single ingredient for the legendary. That incredible rareness was not fun in the least. Recently, we had the healing mace, Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings which required lots of drop acquisition. It was somewhat reasonable since the drops did drop. It wasn't particularly fun.

Shadowmourne acquisition was the start of legendary questlines that weren't as much of a grind in-that they had a bit of a story and quests and special stuff you needed to do to get it. You also had to be a bit of a pro. It of course was available for the plate dps. The quests activities for it were kinda neat.

Dragonwrath, Taregosa's Rest was a great and still great for dps casters. It rocks the socks off anyone that doesn't have it. Because of 25mans, the ease of FL, and it not being locked to a class, there are some guilds with most caster dps with them. Forgotten Hunter woes aside, this was a rather excellent legendary because it had very special quests, special group activities and solo'ng challenges. In addition to the staff having bad-ass stats, it has bad-ass procs, and it can be a special mount.

Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages and Golad, Twilight of Aspects supposedly have amazing quests and bad-ass solo'ng. Like the previous legendaries, you do have to gather things from the dead bosses over weeks. But the quests sound completely excellent.

So I can only yearn for the old days of when I had to solo the demons for the Rhok. It was tough. Of course hunters can't even access those quests any more. It's no longer in the game. It wasn't a legendary. It was replaced pretty quickly. It was a hunter quest series. It did have other drawbacks of the demons being rare spawns on long timers. It allowed anyone to spoil the kill. And then the kill itself wasn't cake.

We have pet-taming challenges. That's great. My stable is full.

We could use some class-specific quests that challenge our skills and gear to the limit. What skills would we need to stretch? Kiting. Pet-tanking. DPS burning. Trapping. I don't need legendary stats. I'd love for hunters to have legendary looking gear that makes it clear that the hunter is a bad-ass.

Love This

2012-01-12T10:27:00.002-05:00

http://www.dphowell.com/2011/12/22/thoughts-on-dragon-soul/

Radical Re-tuning of Rotations

2012-01-11T14:41:00.002-05:00

My guild cleared Deathwing (normal 10) back before Christmas, but because of poor raid and LFR drop luck I only got my 4pc T13 last week. I had previously been dancing T12x2 and T13x2. T13x4 is a different world. But T13x2 is a completely different world from T12.

I'm not sure it's something that can be easily modeled for calculating dps differences. Sure, we can and should still use femaledwarf.com to work on "what's better", but we may need to put in some assumptions and take things with a bit more salt.

The crazy part of having T13x2 is that as a MM hunter doing hard-cast AiS, you sometimes do shot fragments like this:

CS -> AiS -> SS -> SS -> AiS -> AiS -> SS -> CS -> SS -> SS -> AiS -> AiS -> SS -> SS -> [repeat]

MM rarely if ever did anything like that because focus wasn't available to do much of any value except another SS. And you really wanted to do that second SS to keep the improved steady shot up.

Well so in walks the 4pc T13 and the proc is very very good. I find I am compelled to get the T13x4 to proc. Again, I play MM and previous to 4pc would do a great deal of hard-cast AiS -- basically any time except when on the move or on trash that would die too soon. But now I'm doing different even more weird shot fragments like:

CS -> AS -> AS -> SS -> SS -> AS -> AS -> AS -> AS -> SS -> SS -> [repeat]

until I get a proc and then I switch into hard-cast AiS.

While I list "rotations" or "priorities", the coming of T13 turns all of that on its head. MM has many priorities. Keep the sting up, use chimera, maintaining ISS, and getting that T13x4 proc. When you add in movement and game mechanics, it really can't be called anything other than nuts.

One essential item for all hunters is having a very visible hunter focus bar front and center. If you don't have one you need to get one. Here are a few that do it for you (in my order of preference):

Uncovering The Cloak Problem

2012-01-06T11:48:00.001-05:00

Cloaks do not drop in the Dragon Soul raid. There are a whole bunch of cloaks that are Firelands tier or better which we might have. But really only three of them look good. (And I don't mean for transmogrification.) Those three are the following:

1: Lord Rhyolith's Dreadfire Drape. It's old Firelands and item level 378.

2: Lord Rhyolith's Heroic Dreadfire Drape. It's pretty pimped at item level 391.

3: The Batwing Cloak. It sounds great and has the highest item level at 397.

Okay so what's the problem to uncover? They all do look pretty good. They do, but the Batwing Cloak has less agility than not just the heroic FL cloak, but the normal FL cloak drop. If we assume non-heroic gemming, then the stats work out like this:

1: Lord Rhyolith's Dreadfire Drape: 312 agility, 138 hit, 95 mastery

2: Lord Rhyolith's Heroic Dreadfire Drape: 341 agility, 158 hit, 113 mastery

3: The Batwing Cloak: 301 agility, 162 crit, 176 haste

Agility aside for a moment; The trick here is that the Rhyolith cloaks are laden with mastery, while the valor cloak has large amounts of good crit and haste. My napkin math says the valor has 338 points of good secondary stats, while the normal Rhyolith cloak has only 138 hit, 57 mastery, and 38 crit ... call it maybe 200 good points. So we have a difference of -11 agility and +140 good secondary stats if we use the valor cloak. The highest item level agility cloak has the least amount of agility. Agility is our primary stat and generally worth 3x "crit/haste stats". Because 33 is less than 140, then it is of some benefit to upgrade to the valor cloak. It certainly isn't something to do any time soon.

The heroic Rhyolith cloak however is something to write home about. The biggest issue here is that heroic Rhyolith is a pain in the ass. The napkin math looks like trading -40 agility to get around +85 secondary. Because 120 is not less than 85, the valor cloak is not even close.

The mediocrity of the Batwing Cloak is shown a bit more if heroic gems are used, but the results are the same. Upgrading to it from a Dreadfire Drape is either a very low priority, or a bad move.

The Raiding Hunter's Valor Ring Upgrade!

2012-01-05T11:48:00.001-05:00

The valor ring, mastery aside, looks quite nice. It is a good deal and a great item for most hunters. For the population of hunters possessing the exaulted-with-Firelands ring, upgrading it is not very compelling.

The FL ring: 286 agility, 181 haste, 134 mastery.
The valor ring: 291 agility, 184 haste, 148 mastery.

Now of course you can use two rings! But if you've got a nice raid or LFR drop then you may have a better place to spend valor.

Ultraxion Post-Kill Notes Considering Making it Easier

2011-12-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

Apologies if you're looking for a strategy guide. This is a musing look at making Ultraxion easier for me next time.

I know I wasn't dps'ng at 100% efficiency on the kill. I could have been doing more things in the seconds right before needing to click the button... but it wasn't a safe option. Especially when the Fading Light debuff sometimes started at only 5sec and was hidden behind buffs. I could probably get a bit more dps out with practice. 1-5K dps maybe. But there are other safer options.

One would be: I could reduce my dps but bring a cunning pet that increases spell damager's dps (via Lightning Breath). The cat or wolf does 3.1k dps and has direct synergy with me. A cat brings buffs like Roar of Courage, that may be covered elsewhere -- and a wolf brings Furious Howl. But I could lessen some of the damage with a few Roars of Sacrifice... though probably the only the last one toward the end of the fight is needed. I don't know what this will come out to be dps-wise. We'd have to check all the buffs. More to figure out... and it'll vary based on raid makeup.

Another idea: ensure everyone is back in shadow before heroism is fired off. (+2K dps) I know I missed it at least on one attempt. The kill graph looks like my dps went down during heroism compared to everyone else. So I'm thinking it happened and I missed it.

Another idea: don't have a dps die and need a brez (+2K dps) We frequently had dps die because they watched Deadly Boss Mods timers or screamed wrong things in their ears. Make sure DBM is up to date and realize that the timers only show when an ability is about to start casting.

Another idea: cycle in people with various 100% defensive CDs. Deterrence looks to mitigate 100%, so they could stay in instead of a tank taking damage which needs healing. Pallys could bubble, etc.

Yet another this-time crazy idea: Go with two healers. Healing is "light" until the last third of the fight. Bring a person who can do some reasonable dps in the first 2/3rds of the fight and then start healing (with the third crystal's help). The extra damage might mean far less time in healing-hell time.

Alizabal

2011-12-06T16:51:00.003-05:00

A friend dropped me a raid strat for Alizabal, the new BH PvP boss which comes out today. (Sadly, I don't have the source for the strat, so I'll only quote part of it here.)

Everyone, including the affected player, should remain stacked when the boss casts Seething Hate. This strategy will effectively mitigate the otherwise unsurvivable damage from this ability by distributing it between 8/23 players. Please note that even stepping a few yards away from the group can have devastating consequences as the damage is only distributed between players within 6 yards of the affected player.

This has me wondering. Six yards the important number. And six yards is very very tiny. Very important. You do not want to eat it by yourself.

So. Can hunters shoot the boss from melee or not? (Some bosses and boss adds allow it, some don't.) If they don't, we will need to get melee to swing from the farthest out they can -- and we'll stand a hair away from them.

It looks like there's a 8 second cooldown on the ability, but it also appears that it may be an instant cast.

Progression

2011-12-02T13:24:00.001-05:00

I'm kinda thankful that our progression slowed down a bit. In one night, we were 4/8 in DS 10man normal. The second night, and we're now 5/8. We "only" got one new boss down and a bunch of tries on the gunship. If we went too fast this would be gone in a flash. And the heroic versions don't look too fun. That said, the gunship doesn't look too hard.

Elusive Pet Bars

2011-12-01T20:50:00.000-05:00

Can we say, "Yay!"?

Pet bars will no longer sometimes disappear when zoning.

Too Easy?

2011-11-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

We walked into the Dragon Soul 10man normal on our first raid night this week and knocked over the first four bosses. The fifth didn't seem too bad, people just didn't have the UIs set up for it and we started a little late. This has me wondering if we'll be spending most of our raid time on heroic versions of the encounters.

I got the tier shoulders and new boots. They match my set nicely.

Checklist Checked

2011-11-30T00:16:00.000-05:00

Update addons. Check.
Test dps'ng a target dummy. Check.
Get under but real close to 4k honor and 4k JP. Check.
Transmorgrify. Check.
Run the three new 5 man instances. Check.
Rake in gold in the AH by "creating value". Check.

Two trinkets, improved steady shot, and a rapid fire equal +153% haste.

2011-11-18T01:43:00.002-05:00

Two trinkets, improved steady shot, and a rapid fire equal +153% haste.

I was trying to clock the individual steps of haste to see if is all multiplicative, but it was pretty late. I saw numbers go from 20% to 47% to 69% to 153%. Then I tried to reproduce it and write down the haste ratings and couldn't for over half an hour. So all this is ... is eye-candy.

I had just made the NeedToKnow addon bars I was making for the trinket procs. I don't think I can monkey around with the proc of the Matrix Restabilizer to get it to do crit (via extreme reforging) because my Hungerer trinket proc will overwhelm it. They both certainly proc easy enough at the start of a fight.

Anyway, this is probably okay since I made the bars to alert me to focus down and throw Aimed Shot after Aimed Shot after Aimed Shot...

The Hunter Transmog Gear List - Take Two

2011-11-16T15:47:00.001-05:00

Charger's Mail
Warrior's Mail
Battle Chain Mail
Infantry Mail
Cadet Mail
Veteran Mail
War Torn Mail
Brackwater Mail
Soldier's Mail
Runed Copper Set
Bloodspattered Mail
Raider's Mail
Burnished Mail
Rough Bronze Set
War Paint Mail
Defender Mail
Outrunner's Mail
Fortified Mail
Grunt's Mail
Lambent Scale Mail
Hulking Mail
Battleforge Mail
Spiked Chain Mail
Glimmering Mail
Sentry's Mail
Silvered Bronze Set
Banded Mail
Slayer's Mail
Wicked Chain Mail
Phalanx Mail
Combat Mail
Green Iron Set
Thick Scale Mail
Barbariac Iron Set
Pillager's Mail
Renegade Mail
Emissary's Mail
Enduring Mail
Knight's Mail
Orcascale Mail
Marauder's Mail
Patient Mail
Chief Brigadier Mail
Golden Scale Set
Sparkleshell Mail
Jazeraint Mail
Steadfast Mail
Captain's Mail
Ravager's Mail
Brigade Mail
Ancient Mail
Blackforge Mail
Bonelink Mail
Turtle Scale Set
Champion's Mail
Counterfeit Mail
Khan's Mail
Sweet-Tempered Mail
Tough Scorpid Set
Warmonger's Mail
Gryphon Mail
Myrmidon's Mail
Angor Mail
Formidable Mail

Workforce Mail
Lord's Mail
Protector Mail
Crusader's Mail
Ebonhold Mail
Ironhide Mail
Merciless Mail
Ornate Mail
Bear Oiled Chainmail
Bloodlust Mail
Fifth Hunter Mail
Engraved Mail
Heavy Scorpid Set
Impenetrable Mail
Radiant Set
Hero's Mail
Magnificent Mail
Unyielding Mail
Felstone Mail
Mercurial Mail
Netherstalker Mail
Warstrike Mail
Masterwork Mail
Nexus-Strider Mail
Triumphant Mail
Wrathfin Mail
Fenclaw Mail
Fel Iron Chain
Marshcreeper Mail
Blood Knight Mail
Ironspine Mail
Der'izu Mail
Scaled Draenic Armor
Garmaul Mail
Skettis Mail
Warcaster's Scaled Links
Njord Mail
Sundered Mail
Skorm Mail
Talhide Mail
Netherstorm Mail
Orca Mail
Amberpine Mail
Trapper Mail
Shoveltusk Mail
Mammoth Mail
Frostscale Binding
Nerubian Hive
Wolvar Mail
Cormorant Mail
Ulduar Mail
Spiderlord Mail
Bramblescar Mail
Spectral Mail
Hiri'watha Mail
Everstill Regalia
Highperch Mail
Razorshell Mail
The Big Wave
Thornsnarl Mail
Tsunami Mail
Windbound Mail
Talondeep Mail
Frayfeather Mail

More Transmog Gear Help

The AH
So, the above sets are nice. And sets can be nice. But really sometimes you can substitute out one piece for a solo, non-set piece and it looks almost the same. Or maybe you just like them better. For instance, I kinda like the Spored Tendrils Spaulders. It's a family of shoulders that are available in many ways. But they don't belong to any set. I found them super-cheap on the AH. The AH has a great little checkbox that lets you see the item as it would look equipped. Try it out.

Vendors
There are a surprising number of vendors out there. When I was putting together my sets, I hit up vendors all over the place. Some require raid drop tokens. Some honor. Some justice points. I traveled to the Isle of Quel'Danas for old PvP tier and non-tier gear, to Shattrath for a cloak, and hit the legacy PvP vendors in Stormwind (I'm a dwaft dammit.) But this is a tiny subset of the vendors still hanging out waiting to serve you. Note: if you want to do some Honor or Justice sales and you regularly hit the 4k cap, you definitely should make your purchases before the end of the season when Valor and Conquest fall into Justice and Honor and prices reset.

Boots and Bracers
There are a very small number of boot differences out there. If you're looking for a wild color, you may not get it if it isn't already "in a set". Otherwise, you most likely have something that matches already. Bracers will often not even be a factor in display.

Belts
The AH approach works especially well with belts. Belts tend to have a lot of transparency in them so the armor itself will dominate them. This isn't always the case, but browsing belts is an easy thing.

Cloaks
I haven't found the best source for a cloak transmog service. But this one is close. It still takes a lot of work. Most good cloaks are not available from the AH. You'll need to farm or buy them for small amounts of points.

Weapons
Last but definitely not least are our weapons. I don't think we really need to talk too much about style options here. If you've been playing your hunter for a while, you have developed a friendship with your favorite stat sticks and ranged weapons. If you have trouble remembering some of the guns available, you can look back on my Ole' Gun Rack Post.

Hunter 4.3 PTR Buff

2011-11-15T10:08:00.003-05:00

For Beast-Mastery:

Focus Fire is going to last 20 seconds instead of just 15 seconds. I would guess that the CD also becomes 20 seconds. Yes, a longer buff is nice. But it says one thing to me: BM hunters were blowing it as soon as it was available and not trying to get more stacks of Frenzy. So now BMs have more time for additional Frenzy stacks to pile up. When they get a large stack they should blow other CDs to multiply the effect. So yes, this is an easy buff, but in the right hands and care it could be used as a larger buff.

I've always felt there was more to be gained there. But I couldn't see how to squeeze it much more without adding a huge amount of complexity. This was greatly reinforced when Kripparrian said that he just macro'd them into all his shots when he did Heroic Rag in a BM spec. (So he just got whatever stacks he got every 15 seconds.) Of course that's about as top-line raid awareness as it gets, so over-complex application of abilities isn't that desirable.

For Survival:

T.N.T is going to proc much more of the time. It will go from a 12% chance to 20% chance. That's a beautiful thing for improving single target DPS.

It will fix the issue with just waiting and waiting for abilities to come off CD. And it might even help some of the focus starvation. It will certainly give SV hunters a little more to think about in balancing out their attacks and ensuring the DoTs keep being applied.

Transmogrification Gear

2011-11-10T00:59:00.000-05:00

I think I will transmogrify my stylish Firelands and Conquest PvP gear. But I'm having some second thoughts. This is the plan. I'm feeling tentative...

My current PvE Firelands gear (heroic and non).

My rustic look for transmog PvE.

My "I am a bozo Pet Tanker" transmog set.

My current PvP gear (Ruthless and Vicious).

My black shaded transmog PvP gear.

Loot Reaver Loot Fail

2011-11-07T13:54:00.018-05:00

I'm looking for the Merciless Gladiator's Chain Spaulders for one of my transmorgrify sets. Every hunter should solo Loot Reaver once. The nice thing is that it's easy. ;-) Click any image for a slide show.

Very simple fight. I was already in T5x2
so I didn't even need to use mend pet or pull him out for stomps.

The mortars he throws are of course "old school"
and don't have those ground target sign effects.
But with the MM self-heal you don't really
even need to move around unless you want to dance a little.

The trash is more difficult than the boss.

This raid is configured for 25man only, so you get
three T5 tier tokens. Of course no hunter tokens.
So, I guess I'll come back next week.
As a consolation gift you get 250g cash too.

Happy Power Outage Weekend!

2011-10-31T16:29:00.001-04:00

No running water, electricity, phone, or internet. Good trick!

OMG

2011-10-24T10:19:00.003-04:00

Second round was awesome.
Watch it all.

Hunter Builds for Mists of Pandaria (MoP)

2011-10-24T09:53:00.000-04:00

Wowhead has a new MoP talent tool up. The particulars of the talents will be changing a fair amount I'm sure. Some of them just don't quite seem balanced.

That said, give them a try.

Here's my PvE build and my PvP build.

No Minimum Range!

2011-10-21T16:55:00.000-04:00

No minimum range! No worries on melee weapons!

From the liveblog:

1:49PM Hunter Minimum Range - (he's milking this)

1:49PM GONE!

1:49PM Hunter melee weapons gone.

1:49PM "Nothing is a hunter weapon." - GC.

1:50PM Range slot for all other characters gone.

Looking Good vs Feeling Good

2011-10-12T09:44:00.001-04:00

I already wrote about my shoulders and how I hate the T11 and opted for the PvP ones.

Well here's the visual of what I raid with, PvP with, and what I think I may transmorg to.

Raiding color assault.

PvP gears not especially stealthy.

A nice authentic Dwarvish look.

Kheldul's Silly Gear State and a Night's Raiding Progress

2011-10-06T06:52:00.003-04:00

This post is just about Kheldul's gear. Feel to ignore.

I've been really jones'n to get rid of my extremely ugly, goiterish merlock scavanged shoulders resembling a bubonic plague attack. I had missed a few pre-nerf Thursday raids where we usually took down Domo. So anyway, as a backup-plan to not getting any love from Beth'tilac or a fifth T12 token I started dumping Valor into Conquest. After yesterday's raid I went and got my backup PvP item. The phrase, "It's better to look good than to feel good" may apply until 4.3 drops. Of course the agility is nothing to sneeze at.

Oh and in the raid, I got our first heroic upgrade, so my plans on getting the 378 gun are history.

We had putz'd around and killed the spider boss, Bael, and Aly. We had Heroic Shannox in mind but were hoping our normal raid leader would show up. But we were standing in Baelroc's cleared room and I suggested it might be a nice place to fight Shannox. It so happens that it's the place Shannox spawns (right in the middle). And it was a very nice place to fight him. There was no clutter, a lot of symmetry, and ranges were easy to understand. We got Heroic Shannox on the second try. On the first try our Riplimb tank was using immobilization traps all over (and sometimes way out of range) and not leaving any for Rageface. That wasn't too bad. The mage and I kited Rageface to drop stacks, but then there was a rageface on our Riplimb tank who was at extreme range. But the second shot was pretty simple.

An Agility Gun? From the 4.3 Five Mans?

2011-10-05T07:29:00.001-04:00

I know they will probably change it into a crossbow. I know they will probably have it sound like a bow. I know it will be replaced by the first raid drop bow. But it's a gun. And I'm a Dwarf Hunter.

The Dragonsmaw Blaster.

Overflowing Focus, the Bad BA Bug, and Juggling

2011-10-01T03:54:00.008-04:00

If you regularly hit and stay at 100 focus then you're rotation is wrong in some way, right?

My answer is: yes, but I end up doing it now as a marksman hunter.

And I do it much more often now thanks to having the Burning Adrenaline buff active (from 4pc T12). This can have you completely swimming in focus. And it has a bug that makes that swim in a lake instead of a pool.

Here's the issue. Some shots only register when they land on the target. The Burning Adrenaline buff is only removed when the shot lands. If you are far away from the target there is a travel time to the target. Say you're a MM hunter. You have the buff and have 100 focus, fire a "hardcast" Aimed Shot and then immediately a Chimera Shot. The buff will be consumed and both shots will be free.

This in theory is a boon, but really it just screws up all sense of rhythm for the MM hunter. MM hunters always want to do two steady shots in a row to keep their +15% haste buff rolling. Letting that drop is a bad thing. They also have a fairly close call on their Chimera Shot. Letting the sting fall off is a bad thing. And they're good hunters who have trained themselves that capping focus is bad which is exactly what will happen after allowing Burning Adrenaline to consume an Aimed Shot.

So what is there to reach for for a MM hunter? Firing two or three Arcane Shots takes a lot of time and will let something in your rotation fall. Hitting Kill Command eats a big chunk in one shot for a little DPS ... and it might not actually work if your pet isn't meleeing.

I think the right approach is to try and lob in as many Arcane Shots as possible and try to at least start the first SS while your ISS buff is still active. This may cap your focus a bit too long. KC may be better. But choosing Arcanes will set MM up nicely for the T13 bonus and it works for our BM and SV specs too. Of course BM or SV should prefer to use KC and ES as always, but sprinkling in Arcanes is good for them too.

Hunter DPS Pro Tip #2: Information is Power You Need to Know

2011-09-30T06:44:00.002-04:00

Take four minutes of your busy in-wow time and visit a target dummy. Do this if you're a novice. Do this if you're advanced. Plow damage on the poor wooden thing. While you're doing that, look at the things you don't normally look at on your screen. Check your proc'd buffs. Watch your timers. Look at your key-presses. See if your UI is showing you what you need to see and if it's pushing away the junk you don't need to see.

I bet in those four minutes you will find something you want to change -- and it will improve your play.

It might be getting a mod that alerts you to a proc. I used to use Power Auras but I fell out of love with it. I want to know the precise duration for a proc and sometimes even the internal timer for it to be available again. I like a nice visible progress bar, so I use NeedToKnow.

When I visit a target dummy I am there to add something. I always end up tweaking something else. Sometimes I remove something. Too much information can be worse than too little. Your brain starts filtering out stuff and you fail to notice important things. Changing colors of UI components can help. Making small macros. Moving things around.

JS' Hunter Bar a.k.a Serenity

And there's also the opportunity to try new mods out. Since I know your time is limited I'll only recommend one addon you may not have heard about: JS' Hunter Bar which is now re-written as Serenity. It presents a focus bar with color shifting levels, shot availability, stings, CC timers, hunter mark status, and if something targeted needs tranq shotting. I really have to say that it is quite powerful, well-organized, compact and doesn't tell you more than you need. I use it in conjunction with a few NeedToKnow timers.

Pet Tanking Ideas

2011-09-29T06:52:00.032-04:00

Eidotrope over at outdps.com suggests a number of ways to make hunter pet tanking a viable tanking option. I do truly like the notion of pet tanking. I have a mostly 378 item level pet tanking set gemmed and enchanted for mostly stamina for raid tanking. But pet tanking is in a sad state.

One of my main concerns is that one tree would become a tanking tree. This seems like a wrong move. It would inevitably be the beast master tree, and I don't think that is a perfect match.

I would more envision it as another hunter aspect that works along the line of other class stances -- and with a redesigned Tenacity tree. e.g.-

Aspect of the Beast (redesigned) is a hunter aspect that can be used with a tenacity pet. When activated, it switches your bars, and has the character "ride" the pet. All tenacity pet abilities are still possible through direct control. In this aspect, the hunter is completely focused on controlling the pet and takes no direct actions. Because the hunter is not firing his weapon they are able to much more actively handle their pet; They help the pet cause more damage and threat with a better understanding of their opponent's weaknesses and they help the pet avoid a substantial amount of damage similar to druids.

Some pet abilities that are currently from pet talents would need to become baseline pet abilities. Other abilities would need to be strengthened for proper tanking and boss tanking.

Time for Heroic Modes

2011-09-27T05:10:00.000-04:00

So, the nerf seemed pretty huge. I was away for business last week, but the group did everything except Rag in one night. That isn't new. We usually got that with our normal group. The big part was that the group had two or three people in the ten man that hadn't been on [m]any runs before. So last night we went in and kicked Rag's belly and got him in the first hour.

Of course on the kill I got killed by a few un-healed Ragnaros lava bolts. But again, that was because we barely knew what we were doing with the meteors and were using way too much of the platform. But a brez fixed the problem.

In any case, if you're guild is like ours you'll be looking at which heroic modes to try out. Our raid leader posted these stats on heroic boss kill order. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly where to credit the numbers to. Heroic Shannox is one hunters have a good role in.

H: Shannox: 12087 (34.13%)
H: Lord Rhyolith: 8393 (23.70%)
H: Majordomo: 6338 (17.90%)
H: Alysrazor: 5812 (16.41%)
H: Baleroc: 4876 (13.77%)
H: Beth'tilac: 4679 (13.21%)
H: Ragnaros: 312 (0.88%)

Hunter DPS Pro Tip #1: Plan Your DPS

2011-09-14T19:21:00.007-04:00

Get a mental picture of the important things you're going to do before you start a boss fight. Specifically, think about the transitions, think about if you're going to need any burn phases or any AoE phases. Understand what talent tree will get you and how you'll operate with that spec. Plan when you want to rapid fire(s) to maximize its use but also to maximize it against specific targets (e.g.- when they're > 90% health). Plan your on-use trinkets based on the rapid fire and bloodlust/heroism. Plan when you need to already be at max focus for a phase transition instead of trying to scrape together focus.

Somewhat independent of the particular fight transitions, you should know how long the specific fight will be. How many times should you be able to use Rapid Fire? When will bloodlust/heroism kick in? For on-use trinkets, how and when will you use them? Will you be using a DPS potion or a health potion on the fight?

Generally, you want to stack your "power up" buffs. Use your trinkets as often as possible, but do use them during rapid fire. For proc events, monitor them. They'll usually pop pretty soon into a fight, when they do pop your manual power ups to multiply the benefit.

This doesn't happen much in Cataclysm, but it used to sometimes be prudent to not blow everything at once. There were some level 80 boss encounters where you might blow everything and then find yourself incapacitated for a substantial amount of time. In those types of fights, spreading out some of the risk was more prudent.

What Hunter Class Leads Look For in Raider Apps

2011-09-08T19:02:00.005-04:00

I'm the hunter class leader for my guild. This was a bigger deal when we were actively raiding 25mans. Now it's just a level of leader within the guild. But I do evaluate applications for raiders. For a ten-man raid, we like to have 15 or more active raiders so we can have a good group on any particular night. People are absent some nights and you want to keep a balance of tanks, heals, and damage. So we try to keep a few hunters on the raiding roster -- active or non. We take posted applications ("apps") for raider positions.

When I look at an app, I want to see it written well. It isn't a resume, but it is a reflection of the person behind it. Will the person mix well?

After that, I go through a little checklist.

I look at the gear. Does it all make sense? Is it what they should be wearing at that stage of the game? If they haven't done any FL content, have they done what they could with normal Valor points? Have they done what they can with rewards from dailies? AH items? Rep? Specifically, do they have the iLevel 365 items? The two rings. The boots. The cloak. How are they progressing on the three tier-12 items? The bracers? The neck?

Then I look at gems and enchants. Do they have the appropriate bonuses for BS, LW, Ench, JC, etc? Are they using Agility gems unless they get a +20 agility socket bonus? Do they have the helm and shoulder rep enchants? Do they have the right meta gem? Did they get a belt buckle? The enchants don't need to be the most expensive versions, but really those prices are coming down a lot.

Then I look at talents. Are they completely nuts, or is it a reasonable approximation of a good spec?

Then if things look okay so far, I look at their reforging. I load them up in femaledwarf.com and/or askmrrobot.com. I really like to see their hit really close to 100%. I want to see mastery sacrificed for crit and haste.

And finally, to know what they know, I look at what boss kills they've done and how many times they've done them.

In a nutshell for the TL;DR crowd:

Decent written app.
Badge gear.
Dailies / Rep gear.
Proper gems.
Proper enchants and rep enchants.
Reasonable talents.
Good reforging.
Bosses they farmed.

Classic Tips inc

2011-09-07T17:24:00.000-04:00

I plan on going through my two dozen hunter DPS tips -- clean them off -- prune them for patch differences -- and lay them out once again all nice and pretty.

Water No More

2011-08-30T22:05:00.001-04:00

My DNS server was under water thanks to a basement rack in the lovely north-east and Hurricane Irene. But we are back in action once again!

Which Hunter Spec Is Best? (OMFG!)

2011-08-23T18:21:00.000-04:00

Despite my inner voice yelling, "OMFG! Don't go there!" I'm feeling the need to "help". Sure you wouldn't want to "help" a random stranger and suggest things they should be doing in a 5man or PUG raid. It won't be taken constructively. My rational side however is telling me that people visiting a site called "Hunter DPS" want to know these things.

The below graphs show the average DPS of hunters of a given talent tree over the course of the last 180 days. The data comes from all the public combat logs uploaded to worldoflogs.com and is parsed and prepared by raidbots. This data is from all raid bosses. DPS increases as gear increases over time. The graphs are a breakdown by raid size.

I include the 10-man and 25-man raid data here. I'm excluding all the heroic raids. There isn't enough data there to be fair to beast mastery. And for the most part, heroic raiders have already leveraged information like this and skew the scales.

In the 10-man normal raid DPS chart we can see that all the specs were very competitive with each other in patch 4.0.x and 4.1.x. But then 4.2 happened. MM and SV received nice benefits from 4.2 in talents and gear. BM continued to plug away on its previous course without much benefit.

When looked at in 25-man normal raids, we see a different picture. SV appears to be at the same level it is in 10-man normal raids. It appears to receive no significant synergy benefit from being in a larger raid with every buff covered. BM however does benefit significantly more in 25-man. But far and away MM leaps to new heights.

Then I looked at what T12 fights MM is not top dog. I was surprised. MM is top on every fight even the AoE-heavy ones like Beth'tilac and Lord Rhyolith. 10-man or 25-man ... it doesn't matter. Mind you, SV is close and very much able to top a particular MM hunter, but the majority of MM hunters do better than the majority of SV hunters in the parses.

Then I looked at the main stand-and-fight boss, Baleroc. SV hunters are doing about 4k DPS higher than BM hunters. And MM hunters are doing about 4k DPS higher than SV hunters there:

31,844.5

27,329.0

23,379.5

Take Aways

It was true that BM, SV, and MM were all quite close in damage dealing back in the end of June.
Since July, taken as a whole, MM hunters are topping SV and BM. Often by a lot.
MM hunters can pump out enough AoE damage to top SV hunters on AoE-heavy fights.
If you're looking at spending time with a target dummy, you might try swapping out one of your talent trees and try MM.
But as always, you should always play what you know best and feel best playing. On normal fights, the boss is going to die if everyone is playing well and you are doing reasonable damage.

RIP 11 Warcraft Hunter Blogs

2011-08-22T12:00:00.002-04:00

It's been many months since I combed my listing of hunter blogs (see sidebar). I'm fairly shocked to be staring in the face the long list of blogs which are now quite inactive. Here are the changes:

http://thehuntersrefuge.blogspot.com/
Removed: The Hunter's Refuge - No more Wow for Shaedon

http://www.thebrewhall.com/
Hmmm.. The Brew Hall - for some reason this blog's feed fell apart and it was showing the most recent post as being from last year. This is not the case. It's fixed now. Sorry Darkbrew!

http://theangrybutterfly.blogspot.com/
Removed: I loved Negathle's sass. Sorry if that makes me sound like I'm 70 years old. However her tauren has moved to greener pastures.

http://35yards.wordpress.com/
Keep: He's on hiatus. One would hope!

http://mirshwow.blogspot.com/
Removed: Mirshalak uninstalled wow many months ago.

http://www.maniasarcania.com/
ReMoving... Mania's blog isn't active anymore, but I want to keep links to the pet database so I'm adding a link to Petopia and removing the blog listing.

http://www.aspectofthehare.net/
Removed: It appears that Pike and her sister incarnations have cleared the field of wow. I loved her sketches and icons.

http://oonoes.blogspot.com/
Removed: Short lived and apparently no longer up. Farewell "It's a Trap".

http://www.stabilizedeffortscope.com/
Removed: No updates in nearly four months ... and those were about Rift. Really it's been almost a year since Rilgon graced us with his heated dialog.

http://www.lethalshots.com/
Removed: No updates in a long while. None on Wow really since his site blew up.

http://www.qqpewpew.com
Removed: Drotara has been MIA since March

http://slowwolf.wordpress.com/
Removed: No updates since February from Klinderas.

http://bigredrhino.wordpress.com/
Keep: No updates since Feb. But I'll give it some time. Pet tanking is often secondary to most hunter objectives. Plus it usually requires that you over-gear the raid boss -- or at least have a second set of the same gear that you gem, enchant, and reforge differently. I'm still putting my set together myself.

http://www.mmnassira.com/
Removed: Not even a domain name anymore. See ya "Diaries of a Marksman Hunter".

http://www.bigredkitty.net/
Keep: Always great to see anything here. He has sworn off any new posts, but I have to just leave it here in case some arise.

http://wtfareyousurvival.blogspot.com/
Removed: Kordwar hasn't posted in a long long while.

Which Transmorgrification Will You Use?

2011-08-18T07:30:00.004-04:00

I'm fairly stupidly excited over the transmorgrification news. I was just looking over some of the gear I have kept and was considering throwing out stuff. Now I'm wondering what I did throw out over the years and will miss. What I know I do have is a very full gun rack. Now I can pick things just based on their model. But which? My gun rack has increased a bit since two years ago.

Pet Growl Threat

2011-08-17T07:22:00.000-04:00

What will Pet Growl Threat look like now? Will it still be a huge challenge to get it to be enough? Or has it increased too?

Hotfix: The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.

Easy Hunter Epics

2011-08-15T05:28:00.006-04:00

If you're in solid 359 gear, this list can help you. If you're in all green gear, this list can help you. Firelands is a bit of a gear reset. You can grind unlimited Justice Points and buy all sorts of gear using those points. You can get three of your Tier-11 set (chest, legs, and hands). You can get tons of epics by running just normal and heroic dungeons. Then you can start accumulating Valor points and Valor gear. But before all that, the below list shows you the super-easy gear that's a step up from the old 359 iLevel world.

Rings

Matoclaw's Band
RATING: SUPER-EASY
Take note: 365 does not equal 359! Even if you have one of the four or five nice iLevel 359 rings, this is an upgrade for you. What's it take to get? If you've done the basic quests in Hyjal, then it takes maybe 40 minutes of running around doing the quests leading up to the Firelands dailies. They made it so you can get to the Molten Front in the first day of doing these quests. (You used to have to spend three days doing it.) Go inside the cave in the Molten Front and pick up this nice ring. Along the way, you'll also pick up a fair amount of questing gold.

Band of Glittering Lights
RATING: TIME-INVESTMENT
Another nice ring from running the second tier Firelands dailies. Unlike Motoclaw's Band, this requires more than just one day of dailies. It requires a few weeks. You should choose if you want Ricket's trinket (listed below) or this ring first. This ring is better than the 359 rings. Note though: if you've got a 359 ring, this may only be 0.05% better. Yes, it's an upgrade, but don't expect amazing returns. But if you have room for a nice epic ring this is a wonderful addition.

Band of Ghoulish Glee
RATING: SUPER-EASY-IN-OCT
When Hallow's End comes to a dungeon finder near you (as early as Oct-18) you can get this free and super-duper ring.

Cloaks

Mantle of Doubt
RATING: SUPER-EASY
This is the easiest item to grab. It's a gift from Thrall and Aggra after you do a series of quests to help Thrall out. Any fresh 85 can do it. Any seasoned 85 should do it.

Sleek Flamewrath Cloak
RATING: MEDIUM-HARD
If you do have some gear or you can at least put out say 14k dps, then you probably can get into a reputation-oriented PUG for Firelands. Get to friendly rep with the Avengers of Hyjal and snag this fine cloak.

Dreadfire Drape
RATING: EXAMPLE ONLY
This is not an entry-level easy hunter epic. But I do put it here so you can compare it to the above cloak. They're the same iLevel, but one can can easily get to 332 agility and the other only gets 227. And it's not even the heroic version.

"Guns"

Extreme-Impact Hole Puncher and the Lava Bolt Crossbow
RATING: EASY AS WRITING A CHECK
If you have tons of gold to spend, these are easy. If you don't then just ignore this section. The 365 gun is crafted by engineers. It is listing for around 10k gold on my server. The crossbow that wants to be a gun is a random drop in the Firelands raid. It isn't especially common and usually can be found selling for anywhere from 20-40k gold. Please note its DPS. It warrants the price. It will have a very significant affect on your damage dealing.

Trinkets

Ricket's Magnetic Fireball
RATING: TIME INVESTMENT
If you've got the nice 359 trinkets, this one does not work out to be better. But it's pretty damn close. The on-use ability may make it better in some situations. If you have room for a nice trinkets then this will be a wonderful addition. How do you get it? Run Firelands dailies for a few weeks.

Coren's Chilled Chromium Coaster
RATING: SUPER-EASY IN SEPT
When Brewfest rolls around at the end of September (Sept-20 - Oct-5) you'll be able to get this freebie trinket.

Bracers

RATING: EASY AS WRITING A CHECK
There are also two flavors of BoE bracers you can pick up if you're flush with the shiny coin. The valor ones and the raid BoE ones. Both will cost several thousand gold. Neither is worth it over say the BWD raid BoPs. But I know they took forever to drop for me. And FWIW, I wouldn't have bothered equipping the new raid BoE except that our guild got two and one was already rotting in the bank.

Stat Sticks

RATING: EASY AS WRITING A CHECK
There are many BoE stat sticks available. All are over-priced in my opinion. And I'm fairly flush with the coin. There is a premium raid BoE, a blacksmith polearm, and one of those world 5man bosses drops a BoE polearm. There aren't any 2h axe or 2h sword options. You can do the dual-wield thing, but the agility wont work out for you as well.

EDITED TO ADD: The premium raid BoE glow stat stick dropped last night. Interestingly, our pesky untame-able feral wasn't in the raid so I'm blessed with it.

Alysrazor and the Flying Hunter

2011-08-11T19:20:00.002-04:00

Let's be clear: Dwarves like to be on the ground. Being thrown is right out. Flying is almost okay. It's really the domain of Goblins and Gnomes though. You know; The little people. If there's a short mage then this should be their job. Unless they are scared of heights.

We've been hitting Alysrazor since I got back from vacation. I guess this is the third time we got attempts in. Past nights, we had just about every typical problem happen and some weird ones too.

If you're not flying, then you're DPS'ng and interrupting the caster adds and helping the tanks, then running with the cyclones, and then contributing considerable DPS on the boss. Then you do it two more times.

If you are flying, then you're flying through hoops while DPS'ng the boss, running with the cyclones, and then contributing massive DPS on the boss. Then you do it two more times. If you're doing it all night from various wipes ... well insist on a bit of a break between attempts to stretch your hands and brain. It's a bit like doing the Heigan dance in 3D. The fire cyclones are often the relaxing change of pace.

Flying means you really really want to get every flame hoop acknowledged as having gone through. I've gone through them too fast and not gotten the little fireworks effect. I had the camera following my feet through the ring and nada. So pass through it and linger on the other side until you get the effect. Move as soon as you get the firework effect in anticipation of a new hoop appearing. They disappear quite quickly. If they disappear just after you go through it you probably wont get credit either. They can appear quite far to the side or be obscured by the flak. Don't go into the flak. It's easy not to. When Alysrazor drops down to shed more feathers, you'll have rings above her. She'll molt twice and then the third decent will be to start the cyclones.

Try to keep a reasonable dps rotation going. While flying you can do Aimed Shots. Think of it as Aspect of the Fox with a triple espresso. It's a nice shot to reach for while you're paused after a hoop. You really can't afford to miss more than one hoop in a row. You want to be at 25 stacks of the hoops ASAP. This gives you a +75% crit buff. If you do the hoops correctly, you'll be at 25 when she comes up from her second molting. Again remember that you can see yourself go through the ring but not always get the buff. And if you miss three or four in a row, your flight wings will disappear and you'll plummet to the ground. Death is bad.

When you land, you must land close -- but not too close -- to the center. If you land in the second-to-outside or outside cyclone lane you will take a insta-kill shot for being "too far". Even though you really aren't. Go figure. To counteract that from happening, I land towards the middle and have a /cancelaura macro for my wings. I suspect landing more centrally than outwardly is the key.

After landing, you need to run with the cyclones and you really want to crab a ring or two. They will appear on the ground. Don't die to get them, but if you can get one or two it will refresh your crit buff time and leave you sitting pretty for the P3 burn phase. Summon your pet if they despawned, click your rapid fires and pot and lay into her after the cyclones end. Here's what I got last night:

You'll notice the DPS drop just before the spike. This is the cyclone phase and mostly just auto-shots ringing. Then following the cyclones is the burn. I was "only" doing 60K the first time around. I think this is because I was doing a fairly normal DPS rotation. In the second and third burns, I was laying in as many "hard-cast" aimed shots as possible. I don't have the cast time of them, but it felt like it was 1 second if not trying to be less. While "focus" is not specifically mentioned as a refund item, focus was hardly ever any sort of problem, so I suspect it is refunded at a fantastic rate.

After Alysrazor gets up to 50 focus she'll get up and start tossing some serious damage. You should be grouped up and getting AoE heals. She wont still have her burn phase debuff, but you will still have some of your buffs. Crank what you can.

Then repeat all this. Three times.

That means you roughly want to take her down 1/3rd health each round. If you're MM, you'd ideally like to have her at less than 66% if you're the one flying. You do a lot more damage to her when you're in the careful aim range. Ideally, you'll have her down below 93% health before even the first cyclones. Toss in a hero on the third time through the burn phase and you probably want her around 63% health at the end of the first round.

Lord Rhyolith and Baleroc

2011-08-08T05:49:00.001-04:00

In a nutshell, hunters don't do anything different than any other ranged DPS for these fights.

With Rhyolith, you want to get those adds down but still keep enough focus handy if your wheelman asks for burst DPS on a particular leg. I've used SV and MM and don't see a big difference. I think I prefer MM because with SV I have an almost uncontrollable urge to drop frost traps. Snake traps are okay with SV but I feel that frost traps obscure the ground on that fight too much. Save your Rapid Fire for burst dps on a leg and/or when he's entirely a tank and spank.

Baleroc is a bit of a breather for DPS. The movement is minimal so MM hard-cast aimed shots are fine and SV sniper training comes into play plenty. Just don't get tunnel vision on your DPS rotation and miss your turn with taking the crystal. It's approximately a 5m50sec fight so you'll get to use Rapid Fire twice (or four times for MM).

Easy Upgrades

2011-08-02T19:09:00.002-04:00

So I was looking at the Flintlocke's Woodchucker engineering scope. It should be a nice upgrade over the slow to proc Gnomish X-Ray Scope, right? There are a few people with the plans now and actively making them.

The Undermine Journal puts it in the 500g range off of the AH but only costing about half that in mats.

But then I went to femaledwarf.com and plugged things in. In the hyper unrealistic theoretical world, I'd be doing 27,164 dps with this instead of the X-Ray scope. How much better is it? Less than 23 extra dps. Yes, less than one-tenth of one percent better.

That said, it's occasionally throwing small critters so it's gotta be great.

PS: My two-week hiatus here was due to a well-deserved vacation touring England and Wales. It was "well good" as I heard up in the Yorkshire a few times.

PPS: I got the scope and the squeal sound effect is a bit more noteworthy than the "x-ray" effect. TBH, I don't even know if the "x-ray" effect has any effect other than the buff icon.

Beth'tilac and the Hunter

2011-07-20T19:03:00.001-04:00

In phase one of the Beth'tilac fight, SV Hunters are great. We bring excellent AoE dps and you have two types of traps that can slow the little spiderlings. Toss a frost trap and in a pinch, toss a snake trap. Entrapment is a great SV talent here.

Set your beast tracking to on and zoom your mini-map so you can easily see where each large pack spawns from. You'll be relying on the mini-map to turn and toss out traps.

When you have a spare moment, use a Distracting Shot to pull down spinners from their strands. There are a limited number of taunts available in the group and you have one. Note that those adds don't do much damage, so pull them down and continue to dps the spiderling packs.

You will not be able to solo dps down the spiderling packs. Don't try. The first priority is to get them slowed. Toss your LnL explosive shots on drones if you have time. Multishot, cobra shot, multishot. Sounds easy but it gets a little dicey. You will have help AoE'ng. Your target will go down quicker than the rest of the pack, so make sure to have mob health bars up. Always try to cobra shot on the highest health spiderling. You need that shot to fire to be refunded focus. At times you may need to break away from spiderling packs before they are dead before the other AoEer(s) do. You need to get those traps out to slow the next wave. Also, don't forget that you are casting a DoT on all of them. If they're low on health they may go down without any more help.

Just before phase two starts you need to have all the spiderlings dead. A new pack may just have spawned, which can be trouble.

In our fights, we either were experiencing a bug or horrible timing situation. The first time, the boss came down directly in a pack that had been out for about 5 seconds. Okay. So we thought 5 seconds may be too long during the special transition. But the second time we did it, a new pack had just spawned from a far away wall. I already had them trapped and had at least one multishot in. I was at 41' and Beth' was behind me. But then somehow Beth' reached a yellow beam at one and ate it. Maybe she ate three in one beam. But it was from at least 55 yards out and it was one beam. She had been around 72% health when she came down. After the beam she was back to 100%.

We burned her from 100% to 0%. Our healers and DPS shined.

Went Back and Got Shannox

2011-07-12T07:46:00.004-04:00

Third time in with as many different groups of tanks. I think this time it was helped greatly by setting out raid markers to visually cue tanks on where to generally go, where to move to when the spear is thrown, and what boundaries not to exceed. The only flaws we had were some healers getting crystalized. I chalk that up to them not all having the latest DeadlyBossMods installed.

I don't usually raid on Mondays. I'm glad we did go back and nail him. Seems easy now.

Our strategy was fairly ordinary. Position one tank with Riplimb ~50 yards from the tank with Shannox. Put raid markers where they are generally tanked. Put a raid marker inbetween those positions. Ranged is spread out between the Riplimb and middle position. Then put another raid marker out another 20 yards so you have room to shift if you need to.

When the spear is thrown, the Riplimb tank carefully runs to the middle with Riplimb. A crystal trap may be used then or spaced for when he goes for the spear. We had a DK DPS on Riplimb the whole time to be able to apply chains. I would intersperse concussion shots. We didn't use slowing traps to help avoid accidental raiders stepping on Shannox's traps. The Shannox tank strafes left or right to extend the time.

DPS burned the hell out of Rageface. If you can be Marksman, you should for this fight. You need to hit hard and break Rageface's face. His stunning damage attack is random on a player. But he'll attack (non-stunning) the player that snaps him out of his humanoid-feast. This will likely be you, mages, and elemental shammies. Luckily, you'll crit a lot when he's face-down into one of your friends. When he comes after you, throw deterrance if it's up and drag him through Shannox's explosive traps (not the crystal ones). You can get some space to fire off some shots, but don't disengage. You'll screw up your fellow DPSers, healers, and that's if you don't land in a trap yourself.

After Rageface is down, I nuked Shannox from 100% to 90%. It was damn quick. Then the other DPS kept on Shannox, while I joined the DK on bringing down Riplimb. We had it fairly balanced so Riplimb went down as Shannox was at 30%. That's fairly ideal. Generally, you will want to get Shannox down to 37% or so and nuke Riplimb and then burn Shannox. We lucked out on DPS balancing.

Then it's burn phase on the boss. You go from 30% to 0%. There still isn't any taunting. Carefully move to a more open space. If your healers aren't OOM you're golden. If the tank goes down, then there's no recovery and it's a 9 minute fight that you lost. So don't take any stupid damage in this phase. Stay in range of heals, but don't count on them. Use your healthstone after everyone takes spear damage. Blow all your DPS cooldowns. Don't chatter in vent thinking it's a sure thing. Enlarge this image if you need help visualizing that. ;-)

Tears Before Bedtime

2011-07-07T23:30:00.002-04:00

Sure the DoTs might have got him, but he laughed and went to his happy place instead.

Hunter Valor

2011-07-01T22:33:00.003-04:00

We're in a weird time. We hunters need to be maxing out our Valor per week, but 40 minute queue times ain't making it easy.

Valor and You

There is a lot of iLevel 378 gear available for purchase from the valor vendors. It is very nice stuff. You want it.

Unfortunately, you can't have it. At least not much or very fast. You only can get a maximum of 980 valor per week from all sources, be they random heroic rewards, Firelands raids, or heroic BoT/BWD/T4W. If you're downing lots raid bosses, you'll cap your valor pretty quick. If you're not then you need to get on the stick and start running random heroics and random Zuls.

Every purchase-able valor piece costs more than one week's worth of valor. Some cost more than two weeks worth. And that's if you're capping your valor. If you're not, it will take a lot to catch up.

Getting That 980 Valor Cap

You can run random Zul instances 7 times a week - one right after each other if you are into punishment. This gets you 980 valor (140 * 7). You can also run 7 random heroics. But that only gets you a max of 490 valor a week (70 * 7). When Occu'thar appears as the new loot pinata in Baradin Hold, he'll be worth the same as killing a Firelands raid boss: 120 or 140 valor in a ten-man or 25-man raid respectively.

What You Might Be Tempted To Get

Nice Bracers (1250 valor) upgrades to Very Nice Bracers (with a heroic boss kill token)
Nice Ring (1250 valor) upgrades to a Very Nice Ring (with a heroic boss kill token)
Nice Neck (1250 valor) upgrades to a Very Nice Neck (with a heroic boss kill token)

But What You Really Should Want

T12 Chest (2200 valor)
T12 Legs (2200 valor)
T12 Gloves (1650 valor)

Of course if you're raiding, there are a lot of drops and crafting options that may come much faster than valor gear. If you're not raiding, I wouldn't count on the leatherworking hands and feet becoming available any time soon. They require raid drops to manufacture.

Recommendation

I would recommend you always cap your valor every week. Find a healer or tank and run the trolls. I would recommend you run BH every week starting July 5th. It can provide a tier piece or two if you're very lucky - which is a huge amount in un-capped valor. I would also recommend you don't spend valor on anything except tier pieces and buy the chest first. The legs or gloves may drop in BH. Or you may get the helm or shoulders in a bad-ass raid. If you have T11 bonuses hold onto the valor until you can at least get a two piece T12 bonus. Oh, and you can get a cape, belt, trinket, and ring upgrade from Avengers of Hyjal rep vendors from running or farming Firelands. You might also get a nice BoE 2h weapon or crossbow. ... although they reduced the drop rates of those BoEs!

Our Buggy BoE

2011-06-30T07:17:00.001-04:00

I shelled out 40,000g for a shiny crossbow that really wants to be rifle. It was once called the Lava Bore Blunderbuss. It's now a rather ugly Lava Bolt Crossbow. What's funny is that when I fire it, it sounds like a gun. It's also a little bit bugged. I went to the reforger. You can not reforge -30Mastery into +30Haste. It only suggests you can reforge Crit or Mastery. Time will tell. The 744.1dps is king though.

New Pet Bug on Nef

2011-06-29T23:05:00.000-04:00

If you're polishing off Nef the Hyper-Nerfed, be aware that you will not be able to get your pet to attack either Ony or Nef at all. No matter the pet stance, no matter the command, even typed /petattack. It will just blink and be on you. You'll get to use your pet when you're on the pillars. That's all.

I haven't had any problems with any other bosses or mobs anywhere. And I didn't have this problem last Thursday on Nef.

What's Up With Traps?

2011-06-28T07:00:00.001-04:00

Traps now scale with hunter stats such as hit, expertise, spell penetration and attack power as intended.

What does this mean? Better AP damage? Worse? Gearing for expertise? I have to imagine we don't change anything we do and things work better. That's the pattern Blizz hunter changes have impressed upon me in the past year. I do hope they continue the good job.

Questions on Pet Stances

2011-06-27T07:00:00.000-04:00

Will the new-fangled "Aggressive pet stance" cause my pet to do less dps if the mobs are small and they die quickly?

In "Defensive pet stance," will I still be able to have my pet manually attack enemies who may not be attacking me [yet]?

The Aggressive pet stance has been removed and replaced with the Assist stance. This stance will cause the player's pet to attack the player's target. The pet will not change targets unless the master attacks a new target for a few seconds.
The Defensive pet stance will now only cause the player's pet to attack enemies which attack the pet or the master.

I suspect the answer is "yes" in both cases.

Hunter Queue Times

2011-06-18T21:30:00.000-04:00

Does any hunter think the bribes for tanks and heals are working?

Account Security

2011-06-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

This is opening up a bunch of loopholes.

If you use an authenticator – and we hope you do – you may soon notice that an authenticator prompt may not appear with every login. We’ve recently updated our authentication system to intelligently track your login locations, and if you’re logging in consistently from the same place, you may not be asked for an authenticator code. This change is being made to make the authenticator process less intrusive when we’re sure the person logging in to your account is you.

We hope to continue improving the authenticator system to ensure the same or greater security, while improving and adding features to make having one a more user friendly experience. If you don’t already have a Battle.net Authenticator attached to your account, don’t wait until it’s too late.

Firelands. Soon. June 28th.

The Summer Bleh

2011-06-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

The end-of-school summer drag has been bleeding off all the 25mans on our server. We've got 10s running, but it's rarely progression stuff in our guild.

We have a couple more hunter mains gearing up, which is nice. I'm hoping for some more energy to be pumped in with the release of Firelands.

And an old (slightly younger) friend of mine passed a couple weeks ago. It's put some things in perspective for me. I haven't hung up my gun or sworn off WoW. But the lack of gun drops in Firelands isn't helping..

The addition of new hunter pet "taming challenges" is very interesting from the standpoint of Blizz doing something special for hunters. Of course you have to "look a gift horse in the mouth" and see that the rewards aren't special.

ABOUT TIME!

2011-05-26T10:10:00.000-04:00

The Lava Bore Blunderbuss.

Woodchucker

2011-05-09T19:05:00.000-04:00

Crazy. It seems like a April Fools day item, but that was a while ago... It seem that I'll need to listen to the Hunting Party Podcast before I figure out what it is.

All my characters

2011-05-06T07:55:00.000-04:00

Kheldul is deciding if he should burn some Conquest for a new PvP head and shoulders or if he should get the gun. Because of the damn Conquest weekly caps he has to wait a week to do the deed either way. Contrast that with the possibility of getting the ZA shoulders and helm and it's a bit of a wait-and-see situation. That said, he PvPs enough that there wouldn't be a bad choice.

Khelark has taken a back seat as far as doing heroics. She healed ZA once and finished, but the quality of PuGs has really really declined since 4.1. She's in full 346 and will pick up two T11 when she has enough for two at once. The drop in spirit with just taking one is a bit scary. She is primarily making mountains of gold coins from jewelcrafting. She just tipped over 100k.

Khelduwath is my DK tank. I had a lot of fun leveling him just in dungeons. He got up to 333 and just got sick of the PuG quality and didn't want to subject his low health pool on heroics. That said of course he could do that and get it fixed pretty quick through upgrades. But it's sad to inflict that on people IMHO.

Khel is my little leveler warrior. He's tricked out in tank BoAs and has a second set of dps BoAs. It's sometimes fun to level ... but it happens a bit too fast.

Okay.. that's not all my characters, but it's all I feel about mentioning at the moment.

Thoughts on T12 Set Bonuses

2011-05-05T07:48:00.000-04:00

Here are the data-mined set bonuses for the tier gear coming in 4.2:

Hunter

Hunter 2 Pieces - Your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have a 10% chance to trigger a Flaming Arrow, dealing TBD% instant weapon damage as Fire.
Hunter 4 Pieces - You have a 10% chance from your autoshots to make your next shot cost no focus.

Comments!

Flaming Arrow. Why the continued rifle hate Blizz? Why not call it a Flaming Shot? IMHO, it should look like some sort of tracer round for guns.
The four piece bonus certainly looks to benefit Marksman for two reasons.

Steady shots => 15% haste. This is the common MM rotation. Steady shots are not part of any other tree's rotation. 15% more auto shots == 15% more shots available for no focus.
MM is gated by focus more than BM and much more SV. SV's big shots are gated by cooldowns. MM can always pull out a "manual cast" aimed shot. That shot is almost always worth doing if it makes sense from a focus stand-point. Would you rather get a free Kill Command as SV or get a free Aimed Shot as MM?

Hurray!

2011-04-23T22:49:00.002-04:00

It certainly took long enough!

Dark Intent 4.1 PTR Change?

2011-04-08T12:49:00.000-04:00

Currently warlocks sometimes put Dark Intent on Survival Hunters who DoT-crit a lot. It is also put on Druids of the Boomkin and Resto flavors. It's a nice buff. You'll fire a fair amount more. A warlock will usually want to put it on someone who crits a lot. If the boomkin in your group doesn't crit as much as you, then you're a good choice. Both SV and boomkins benefit from it. Boomkins may benefit more if the number of DoT crits is comparable. If healing is low however, the warlock should put it on the resto druid to help them. Generally it wont hurt the warlock much.

The new PTR notes for 4.1 show this language:

"Dark Intent: The friendly target of this ability now receives 1% (stacking 3 times to 3%) periodic spell damage and healing bonus instead of 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%). The casting Warlock still receives 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%)."

Note the words "spell damage". Spell damage doesn't look to help us at all. It's also not haste. So... if this isn't just a typo, all the previous Dark Intent calculations are out the window.

That said... it is not at the time of this writing... what is shown on wowhead's PTR tooltip for Dark Intent. Yet.

Epic Gear QQ

2011-03-31T18:37:00.003-04:00

I imagine many other hunters are in the same boat as I. My guild runs 25man raids. We had a drop in attendance and went three weeks without 25man raids. We seem to be back now.

We are 10/12 in ten man raids and 8/12 in 25mans. This means we haven't taken down just Nefarian and Al'Akir in ten man and additionally Ascendant Council and Cho'gall in 25man.

Hunters have some difficult raid drops.

There is only one epic wrist bracer with a 20% drop rate. One.
There is one non-tier mail helm that drops 22% of the time from ... the Ascendant Council combo-boss.
There is one non-tier mail shoulder that drops 26% of the time from ... Nefarian. Whee.

The bracer issue doesn't get better come 4.1. However, the helm and shoulder issue may be alleviated somewhat with the new heroic dungeons. Now, they aren't exactly iLevel 359 items, but the Headdress of Sharpened Vision and Pauldrons of Nalorakk do have two things going for them. 1) They will be obtainable. 2) They won't make you look like King of the Fish-Heads. Bird plumes and bear skins maybe. Hollowed-out Murloc skulls as helms... never.

Seeking Wow Hunter Blogs

2011-03-17T15:31:00.000-04:00

Has anyone found a new wow hunter blog lately? I need a few more. Too many are falling by the way-side.

Name Those Beasts

2011-03-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

Something to keep an eye out for in 4.1

2011-03-02T11:20:00.004-05:00

New wands and guns will feature in Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub.

I haven't been able to find anything else on this other than they probably will be item level 353 epic items. That will rock for dwarf hunters. I'd retire my Themios the Darkbringer in a sec for a good gun.

EDITED TO ADD:
The updated version of the Gurubashi Dwarf Destroyer is suckage tank crud: Gurubashi Destroyer.

4.1 PTR Gear Improvements

2011-02-25T12:17:00.001-05:00

I'm one daily heroic from swapping two heroic pieces of gear out for two pieces of the "tier-11" gear. I was trying to decide if I wanted the gauntlets and chest pieces or the gauntlets and leg pieces. I'm glad didn't buy anything yet because it looks like the crafted gear is getting buffed. These were originally slated to have the slots added, but they canceled it. Now it looks to be back in. But with good socket bonuses.

I currently have both of these crafted mail items.

Chest: Current - PTR
Belt: Current - PTR

As you can see, thanks to the red socket bonus and desirable +40 agility gem, these would net +30 agility each. This is definitely worth considering if you have either and are thinking of retiring them. So hold on to them until 4.1 rolls around!

Marksman 4.0.6 Latest Hotfixes

2011-02-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

I used Female Dwarf to look at different talent possibilities, different shot rotations, and generally changing anything from my previous post. There do not appear to be any significant changes.

You still will do non-instant Aimed Shots as a focus dump. You still avoid Arcane Shot. You have the same talents. All good except you'll be doing less damage. Any other alterations don't look like they can squeak out more dps.

Revised: Survival 4.0.6 Latest Hotfixes Talents and Serpent Spread

2011-02-23T07:29:00.004-05:00

Survival Talent Overview
For Survival it looks like 3/7/31 gets me the best bang for the buck. However, I'm thinking 2/7/32 may be better for the AoE encounters. In both cases, I'm opting out of some free pet focus for the now very potent one with nature talent. At 85, our Aspect of the Hawk is getting us 2000 AP or 2600 AP with a full three points in one with nature. REVISION: I haven't figured out the Serpent Spread question, but I'm going with a different 3/7/31. It is a theoretical +41dps (meaning nothing) but it gives up on point in the stay-in-one-spot buff talent, which is often questionable, for an always-there buff.

Serpent Spread Now Makes Serpent Stings
While playing with the target dummy I noticed something interesting. I do not know exactly when this happened. I suspect it is new. It used to be the case that when I multi-shotted, my serpent spread talent would apply a DoT very similar but not exactly the same as a Serpent Sting. In the past, I could not "re-fresh" that DoT with a cobra shot. But now we can.

3/7/31 or 2/7/32?
Multi-shot is generally not modeled or considered important for most fights. AoE is kinda dumb, but we still like Survival for it's awesome multishot ability.

I don't know is if the 9 seconds of a tier two serpent spread with the improved serpent sting talent uses that 9 seconds now. Again, this really isn't modeled anywhere that I know of. Generally, when I am AoE'ng I don't wait 9 seconds between multi-shots. At most, I'll do one cobra shot in-between. That's far less than 9 seconds of DoT time. So I don't know if I should recommend a level 1 serpent spread or a level 2 serpent spread. I do know however that taking a third point in one with nature gets you a nice single target boost. It would also help boost all serpent stings which use a (RAP * 0.4 + (460 * 15 sec / 3)) damage formula.

I suspect, I'll have to go back to the various forums and see if there are any claims with confirmations about the behavior of Serpent Spread DoTs.

Beastmastery in 4.0.6 Post-Hotfix

2011-02-23T07:28:00.000-05:00

I show BM as vastly more potent than it was. I also show it besting SV by a small margin (without factoring in AoE).

Hot fix makes senseless overuse of Aimed Shot dumb

2011-02-20T21:38:00.001-05:00

This is coming in on Tuesday:

Hunters

Aimed Shot damage has been decreased to approximately 160% weapon damage (at level 80+), down from 200%.
Aspect of the Hawk now provides around an additional 2000 attack power at level 85.

It makes the senseless overuse of Aimed Shot dumb. Aimed Shot is still a good focus dump, but it isn't something to avoid a Chimera Shot for.

The change also helps out SV and BM a bit too.

Marksman Hunter DPS in 4.0.6

2011-02-17T07:08:00.000-05:00

Talents
I am using a 7/31/3 Marksman talent build for all my non-AoE fights. I've heard a few questions about talents in the past week or two. First, you want one point in Rapid Killing so you can get Rapid Recuperation's big benefit of +50 focus. Second, I put two points in Frenzy and three in Pathing. This works best for my gear. For other gear levels reversing the two may be marginally better.

Glyphs
I am habitually addicted to double-tap Kill Shots. A better Glyph to take would be Chimera Shot. It's not radically better especially with the current de-emphasis on Chimera Shot. If you have double-tap Kill Shots wired into your fingers and you like to hit readiness right after to do a second round, then I recommend the following. If you don't, then go with the Chimera Shot glyph instead of the Kill Shot glyph. The major and minor glyphs are good but not huge DPS differences.

Shot Priority
If you have call-outs on the timing of a boss pull, you can tee-off with a manual cast misdirecting Aimed Shot against a marked boss. Pre-pots are kinda expensive and you lose ~3sec on the AiS cast time, so it's not exactly worth it in a majority of situations.

Generally speaking for Marksman, you want to always be casting steady shot in pairs of two to keep your haste buff up.

You want to toss your chimera shot to refresh your serpent sting. It is possible to get better DPS right now by gaming the system by tossing a cobra shot, saving the focus and using it on manual cast aimed shots -- while the boss is at 80% or above. If that was a confusing sentence, don't worry. I don't recommend this. The shot priority you want is to do your two steadies, take your chimera shot when it's off cooldown to refresh the serpent sting, and use the manual long cast Aimed Shot as a focus dump. If you can't do Aimed Shot because of moving, then and only then you can dump some focus by using an Arcane Shot.

You will always take the focus-free instant Aimed Shot as soon as possible.

Definitely don't forget to use Rapid Fire twice at the beginning of a fight and twice at the end. Not only is it better to get to use it twice, but at the beginning you are in the Careful Aim health range and at the end you are in the Kill Shot health range. (Make sure to get an extra two Kill Shots with that readiness.)

Gems
Your meta gem is new. It's most likely still a little pricey. It is worth it. You should ignore socket bonuses in almost all cases and gem for agility. If the socket bonus is too incredibly tasty stop and consider that agility is at least twice as good as crit. Often it's three times as good. Do the math.

Reforging
Reforge everything that can be made crit into crit. Then reforge everything that isn't crit into hit until you meet the hit cap of 961 hit rating. Then the rest to haste until your personal soft cap, and then mastery. You can find out your personal haste soft cap with a nifty little tool. Or you can see what works for you by playing with the shot simulator and varying your haste and raid buffs. There probably wont be too much wiggle room anyway.

Note: I was planning on letting things settle down, but it's time for an update. That said, we have a nerf to Aimed Shot en-route. I authored this post in anticipation of that, but also with the current state of play.

Thoughts on the latest 4.0.6

2011-01-18T13:58:00.002-05:00

I'd like to be level-headed about the changes that come around in the PTR. Clearly SV hunter damage is a bit too high. I would like to see them add an interrupt for SV and knock off about 5% damage. They appear to simply want to knock off about 20% damage.

Below are the current testable changes:

Beast Mastery
Animal Handler now provides a passive 25% bonus to attack power.
Arcane Shot damage increased by 15%.
Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.
Cobra Shot will eventually benefit from haste.

Marksmanship
Chimera Shot's overall damage increased by 50%.
Aimed Shot weapon damage increased to 200%. In addition, the base cast time has been reduced to 2.4 seconds, down from 3.
Arcane Shot damage increased by 15%.
Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.
Steady Shot will eventually benefit from haste.

Survival
Black Arrow damage has been reduced by 15%.
Explosive Shot damage has been reduced by 15%.
Serpent Spread still possible
Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.
Cobra Shot will eventually benefit from haste.

So on the surface, it's clear they'd like to make MM much more potent, BM a little more potent, and SV far less potent. That said, they're going to shift the earth a bit more with two rather huge changes; 1) Cobra and steady will eventually benefit from haste, and 2) Auto-shot on the move -- without stutter steps.

I know I don't need or even want the auto-shot change. I find myself on the verge of attacking the wrong mob plenty of times and just need to move until my fingers can find the escape button. (Since you can no longer click the ground to unselect your current target.)

Other important questions:
#3 - Is SV still getting the -5% to agility nerf too?
#2 - Will the Chaotic meta gem requirements benefit SV more than MM?
#1 - Will SV start firing Arcane Shots instead of Explosive Shots now?

Fun in Heroics

2011-01-04T18:00:00.003-05:00

Last night I ran Grim Batol heroic. It was with my guild so it was a blast. What made it so? For three of us it was our first time. We cleared it in 45mins. On two bosses we were three-manning it. (I was one of the dead one of those times!) Why was it fun? We didn't know the fights but figured them out on the fly.

What else has been fun in heroics? It's usually the unexpected.

I had to train-trap a big ugly heroic mob for four minutes while a pug tank fixed his router.

With only me and a healer up (who tried to dps), I kited a different big ugly heroic mob around while widdling its 1M health down.

I got called into heroic Deadmines while doing my TolB'd dailies. I unfortunately still had my gorilla. After the tank went down to the whirling blades of the robot in the forge the healer somehow thought to heal the pet. I threw on growl and MD and the damn pet took hardly any damage.

Being SV, my only boss interrupt for the first boss in heroic Shadowfang Keep is to use my Gorilla and pummel up to every 30sec. I was astonished that I was able to do it. Pummel works a lot better than it once did.

In general, the heroics feel like five man raids. Like raids, pug raids can really really suck. This is magnified by pug players that you will never ever encounter again from other servers. But if/when you have a good group the runs challenge your abilities and certainly keep you awake.

Meta Gems, Primary vs Secondary Colors and Stats, and Reforging!

2010-12-20T12:33:00.004-05:00

My Issue
Hey, so over the weekend I went through some meta gem soul searching. My meta gem of choice requires me to have more blue than red gems. Most of my gem slots are currently red! So I went with almost entirely purple which gets the slot bonus but keeps the playing field of red vs blue even and then I tipped the balance by one for blue. Then because I used purples with reforge-able stats I adjusted a little bit with reforging.

This was done in the context of having a jewel crafter and purchasing patterns useful for others.

Primary vs Non-Primary Colors and Stats
Non-primary colors (orange, purple, green colors) give you a +20/+20 in the rare quality. Primary colors (blue, red, yellow colors) give you a +40. The difference between the two is that it's usually +20 primary-stat / +20 secondary-stat vs +40 primary (or secondary) stat.

Primary Color/Stat Gems
If you're using a primary color, you want a primary stat on that primary color. That's the advantage of using a primary stat color. Otherwise don't bother with a primary color. Primary stats on primary color gems can't be reforged-to (or reforged away).

Non-Primary Color/Stat Gems
Unless you're a tank don't take stamina as a second stat without a really good reason. e.g.- Take +agil +hit. If you're over the +hit cap, just reforge some away on your gear into a more useful stat. This can get you the meta requirements you need MUCH more easily.

Primary vs Non-Primary Stats and Reforging
Item stats are either Primary or Non-Primary. Reforging can shift 40% of a non-primary stat on an item into a new non-primary stat which is not already on the item.

Primary Stats that You Can Not Reforge:

Attack Power
Agility
Intellect
Stamina
Strength
Resilience

Non-Primary Stats that You Can Reforge to/from:

Critical Strike Rating
Dodge Rating
Expertise Rating
Haste Rating
Hit Rating
Mastery Rating
Parry Rating
Spirit

Summary
If your meta gem has ugly requirements and you don't want to lose out on gem slot bonuses, consider using reforging and some non-primary gem stats to get the slot bonuses and meta you want. If all you want to stack is one primary stat, this wont work, but most of us have many primary and non-primary stats we need to balance now.

These comments are general purpose, but are specific to the current meta gem of choice. Back a while ago, we were told that the old gem was flipping back to a requirement of "more red than blue" instead of the current "more blue than red". But that was mostly about the old gem and a month ago. They should switch it, but until they do you still really want your critical strikes increased by 3%. That is... until you have tons of gems.

Pet Tanking in 4.0.3

2010-11-18T08:11:00.002-05:00

Wow I love my TequilaShock. I've done some city invasions with him and he can chain tank and do it well. The threat buildup is really nice. Kill Command, Thunderstomp, Acid Spit, and Growl are the main keys. KC really does the job. Throw in taunt, last stand, intimidate, bestial wrath, and burrow and it's a nice package. I may even try and work in intervene.

I do need to learn to use Misdirect more often, but it's really nice what I can do without it. Mind you, I'm not auto-attacking here with the pet on aggressive. This is a fair amount of work and every GCD is used. I do spare some for MDs, but I can't seem to get more in without a lot of other stuff falling by the wayside.

In these city invasions, you really don't have any idea who is a tank and who isn't unless you see their health going down; Looking for shields takes a bit too much effort! For this reason, I have my pet trying to get a mountain of threat on at least one if not multiple elementals.

BM is Too Fun

2010-11-16T07:28:00.002-05:00

I fully plan to keep BM as one of my talent trees. The pets are just too damn fun. The issue is that I'm doing far less DPS with them.

I'm often using my Ghost Worm, "Tequila Shock". I don't even need to use Misdirect with him. He's got two AoE abilities. And between Kill Command, Growl, and his Acid Spit he generates great single target threat. Add in the on-demand never-on-cooldown Misdirect-to-pet glyph and they are pretty amazing.

I also got back Fluffy, my Molten Core core hound who can now do Heroism.

I picked up three of the four different devilsaurs, each with a unique smile. I tell the kids that somehow I found Chuckles again.

I have the cat and bear spirit beasts and I love their ability to toss out heals. But wow are the spirit beast spawn points camped!

I still have my handsome wolf. And my Ghost Hydra, Malcolm. And my silver fur, green-eyed gorilla, Jason. And Flash, my hyper-resilient turtle.

To round out my "ghost pet" theme, I got my "Ghost Cat".

Looking at all those pets, only a third of them are usable if I'm MM or SV. These days you can use a different pet between each pull. I guess I just need to work on doing more DPS as BM ... and layoff the tenacity pets. They're just too fun.

Distracting Shot

2010-10-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

Has anyone noticed anything disfunctional with Distracting Shot? I tried to use it on a Twin Emps [skull level] boss the other day to get his attention and it failed rather miserably. It's true that I may never have tried to do it on a raid boss before... so perhaps it just doesn't work on raid bosses. Is this known? A feature? A bug?

Love it

2010-10-28T12:43:00.002-04:00

http://www.femaledwarf.com/ works.

Damage +15-25% on Hunter Signature Shots

2010-10-21T11:23:00.000-04:00

[Source.]

"We have pushed a hotfix to improve hunter damage."

"Specifically, we increased the damage of the signature abilities (Chimera Shot, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Kill Command) by 15-25%. This will both improve overall damage-dealing and make sure that these abilities are prioritized higher than other shots. We think this will bring hunters to a good enough state until they hit 85. Aspect of the Fox and Cobra Shot solve some specific issues at higher levels. Marksman hunters may still trump Survival and Beastmaster hunters until they’re 85, since their rotations rely a little on Cobra Shot."

That Ole Trinket: The Oracle Talisman of Ablution

2010-10-17T11:49:00.000-04:00

I was working on some of my gearsets (trimming actually) and I had to decide if I was going to nuke my Outfitter toggle for my [Oracle Talisman of Ablution] trinket. I had been wondering about it and so, I went and did some testing. Let me tell you, it's rather hard to do it if your pet is on the target too.

I was thinking it might be giving me focus back. It makes the near little spell effect. But no, it benefits every other class except us. Woe is QQ.

Tier 11 Gear Embarrassment

2010-10-16T21:34:00.005-04:00

These are the hunter tier 11 sets. I could maybe see this gear as green level 20 gear or something. Wearing a mean murloc head as a helmet? Fishnet handguards? Boat bumper floats across the breastbone for when docking? I really hope this isn't kept around. I mean... it's gotta be a joke, right?

DKs are bad-ass. So are mages. Pallies are pretty regal. Shaman are okay and at least respectable. The only other class that might want to complain are the space-suited priests. But a space suit isn't like a rolly-polly fish-head.

Hunter Spec/Build Observations

2010-10-15T15:26:00.001-04:00

So I think the SV 0/4/32 choice might be good at level 80. Of course we'll want to ditch those sting talents at level 81. In any case I feel compelled to toss down two steadies to keep the buff up, and that plus LnL procs have me with reasonably comfortable focus. (And that's as they should.) So pulling one point of focus saving for one point of damage increasing seems logical for me. I like to have to think harder. I may put it back when I need to think more about the raid I'm in though. ;-)

BM (32/2/3) can do good damage in novice faceroll mode. It is also pretty damn challenging at the moment. It has some interesting proc decisions and interesting powerups. I think it can be more challenging than SV. It certainly has a lot of options. I was mostly facerolling it. While doing that I was completely swimming in focus as you'd expect. If I play it better I'm sure I'll be able to eat that up.

Oh and BM tenacity pets are really quite wonderful. Send them at a pack of five mobs. If you don't use multi-shot then you probably wont have credit for the kill on them all. The number of stable slots is also quite amazing, and BM can get some of the best ones out there.

What's The Best Hunter Spec Now?

2010-10-13T22:31:00.002-04:00

"What's the best hunter spec now?" I've been whispered that. I've seen it in trade chat. Do we need to have this question raised so soon? First off, everyone is "short" 5 talent points. Secondly, all our numbers are certainly not finished being tweaked. Third, your gear is a bit borked. 4.0 just launched on Tuesday.

That said, here are the level 80 hunter specs I'm using right now:

Survival: 0/10/31. Why? Because I still have a ton of crit and want to play with the crit procs. Now of course it's really only 0/5/31 until we're 85.

BM: 31/7/3. Why? Because BM is fun and you want to tame every last animal you used to have and even the ones you never could, because you weren't BM-spec'd!

Marksman: 5/33/3. Why? Based on the talents, Marksman should be the best there is for DPS. Sure the others should be good. But Marksman has the fewest non-DPS talents of the group.

Personally, I'm planning on changing a lot and enjoying the ride.

UPDATE
Changes already! See http://hunter-dps.dungeoneer.com/2010/10/hunter-specbuild-observations.html

New Addon To Try

2010-10-12T12:31:00.000-04:00

The mythical is-it-April-Fool's-Day hunter addon that tracks DPS that was left on the table will be available for 4.0: DPScheck.

You Are Not Prepared: Hunter 4.0 Specs, Glyphs, Pet Changes, Spells, Macros, Shot Priorities

2010-10-11T08:20:00.000-04:00

Time to re-learn the hunter game! I've been trying to get onto the PTR since it opened. My loader just didn't want to keep downloading. It died frequently and only got about 1/3rd of the PTR down. This was almost enough to load screens, but nowhere near close enough to play.

I've been spending most of my hunter time collecting acheesements (hero, did it years ago, pacman, master wg, 74 mnts incl. a hog, a whole bunch o pets, and not quite insane 36 rep incl. fur love).

I've also been preparing for tomorrow. I prepped myself by getting every Glyph that exists today (including some that will be junk tomorrow). I bought out a few AH markets that may be blossoming tomorrow.

All that said, I don't know the ideal spec. I don't know how much I'm going to re-forge or into what. I don't know the best glyphs to use, best shot selection or even my UI and macros. It's all changing.

Here's the thing though: It's okay. In the next month, we'll work it all out. But most likely nobody really cares about level 80... least of all Blizzard. They are only balancing and tweaking things for level 85. I mean, SV and BM don't even have access to cobra shot (the non-Marksman version of steady shot).

Everyone's UI is going to suck. Auction addons will be broken. Macros will need to be stripped down and re-built from scratch. It's all okay. I'm not even overly concerned that my uber armor pen gems will become crit gems. I may just reforge other crit and might even switch to SV for a while.

But I'll be keeping my eye on what works, playing with test dummies and showing off what I'm using. I really love all the specs. To me: BM is like sittin on the floor givin your pet a good scritchin'. MM is all about the ranged weapon and headshots. SV is like dancing with your enemies and blasting them to bits.

Hack Attempts

2010-09-24T19:13:00.000-04:00

In the past 25 days, I've received 43 forged emails attempting to steal my Blizzard account. Fun times. They don't have misspellings. They don't have bad graphics. They don't look wrong. The content of the email is about account suspensions, credit card expirations, game card extensions, account locks due to suspicious activity (Oh! The irony.), automated notices of account modifications, beta emails, inactive accounts, etc. Basically, they've copied any email that has ever been sent from Blizzard to anyone (and many that would never be sent) and addressed it to me. The language on the emails is usually perfect and identical to Blizzard's boilerplate support messages.

Here are some of the fun domains the links end up pointing to:

www.garena-cataclysm.com
www.battle.net-wowlogin-admin.com
www.battle.net-wowlogin-Secure.com
www.battle.net-wownotice-login.com
www.battle.net-wownotice-admin.com
www.battle.net-wownotice-Security.com
www.battle.net-wownotice-suppor.com
www.battle.net-wowadmin-notice.com
www.battle.net-wowadmin-management.com
www.battle.net-wowsuppor-admin.com
www.battle.net-wowsuppor-login.com
www.battle.net-wowloginadmin.com
www.battle.net-wowloginsuppor.com
www.battle.net-wowadminlogin.com
www.battle.net-wownoticeadmin.com
www.battle.net-wowsupporlogin.com
www.battle.net-wowadminmanagement.com
www.battle.net-wownotice-supporadmin.com
www.battle.net-wow-suppor.com
www.battle.net-wow-Security.com
www.battle.net-wow-login-admin.com
www.battle.net-wow-login-suppor.com
www.battle.net-wow-notice-admin.com
www.battle.net-wow-admin-notice.com
www.battle.net-wow-admin-management.com
www.battle.net-wow-suppor-admin.com
www.battle.net-wow-suppor-login.com
www.battle.net-wow-admin-Security.com

Tip: Buy the $6 authenticator or get a free app if they have one for your mobile.

This Stuff Always Makes Me Smile

2010-09-13T08:02:00.000-04:00

Pet Abilities Round One

2010-09-11T17:03:00.001-04:00

Sweet stuff for Exotic pets (tame-able by Beast mastery hunters). The big list is over at MMO-Champion. Kings, heroism/bloodlust, sunders, heals, etc.

Kheldul Should Be Glowing Red

2010-09-03T07:53:00.002-04:00

Late the other night, I went in and did the unthinkable. I nuked my secondary (Marksman) talents. It was late and I had actually meant to nuke my primary (Survival) talents. So following that mistake I went in and decided to make Marksman my "primary" talent choice. That was neat. After doing that I [thankfully] realized I had to re-glyph out of SV and into MM glyphs. But why did I start all this?

I decided to almost drop Survival. I made my secondary talents into a PvP spec. It's focused around my normal Marksman talents and abilities. I also keep all the same types of keys, but the macros under then are a little different. I pulled a little out of the stand-and-shoot type stuff and more into mobility. A little bit less DPS and a little more bells and whistles. And a silly surprise.

Okay, I like PVP. I've never had a PVP talent spec before. This was kinda fun. And the talents are fun. And I can and do fire off three Arcane Shots in a row with my silly surprise. But seriously, this is not why I started all this.

I started all this because of gear. I got one upgrade and it made me shift at least five pieces of gear around for my primary Marksman DPS set. If/when I get the 5th Sanctified piece, I'll trade in my 264 ArmPen shoulders for it, trade out my Sanctified pants for the ArmPen pants and call it a day. Anyway, the main reason I got rid of Survival is that I re-gemmed all my gear to ArmPen. Previously, I had half a set of ArmPen-Marksman-only gear and a full set of Agility-Survival gear. Well, I said "fuck it" and re-gemmed half of the Survival gear's Agility with ArmPen. That left Survival with a DPS loss (on top of it being behind) and we can't have that now can we?

I have twenty-two Armor Pen gems in my gear. Hell, I even swapped out Zod's with the bone bow so I could slap in a gem and pick up a tiny hit. I should be glowing red.

PS: 0/53/18 is a nutty PvP spec. I do love to trap dance though. And I never had Entrapment before!

PPS: I previous dragged around my previous Marksman set, my Marksman-sting-rolling set (T9x2), my Survival set, my PvP set, my Pet Tanking threat set, and my Pet Tanking stamina set. I even toted around some of my toys and costumes. I only left my frost-resist set from the Naxx days in my vault. This talent change means I can vault the sting set and survival set. While they weren't complete standalone sets, it's a fair amount that I can stop needing to consider. Reducing complexity is very very nice.

Continued "Spell" Cata Changes

2010-08-31T17:56:00.000-04:00

Curious Observation #1: Are there mana drain and disarm effects with Chimera if those venoms are gone now?

Curious Observation #2: Kill Shot no focus cost, but nerfed and CD extended. Hmm.

Curious Observation #3: Multi-shot. Kinda expected but a little disappointing in the "how is that supposed to work??" area.

Abstracted from MMO-Champion:

Beast Mastery

Viper Venom and Scorpid Venom seems to be gone.
Widow Venom no longer mentions "Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.", I guess the 2 previous venoms are indeed gone.
Focus Fire now has a 15 sec cooldown. Down from 30 sec.
Improved Kill Command now Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 5/10% instead of reducing its cooldown.

Marksmanship

Kill Shot now deals 150% weapon damage (down from 200%) and scales with 30% of your Attack Power (down from 40%). Base damage reduced by 50%. Cooldown increased from 6 sec to 10 sec. Focus cost removed.
Multi-Shot - Fires several missiles, hitting your current target and all enemies within yards of that target for x% of weapon damage. / 40 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
Aimed Shot no longer deals 300% of weapon damage, now deals [ 40% of RAP + 681 ] damage. Cast time increased from 2 sec to 3 sec.
Arcane Shot base damage reduced by 60%, now scales from 19% of Attack Power, up from 17%.
Chimera Shot no longer deals 190% weapon damage, now deals [ 24% of RAP + 401 ].

Survival

Serpent Spread - Targets hit by your Multi-Shot are also afflicted by your Serpent Sting equal to 6/9 sec of its total duration.
Point of No Escape no longer affects Freezing Arrow.

Hunter AoE

2010-08-30T18:25:00.000-04:00

All DPS classes need to be able to AoE with some effectiveness. We currently do fairly well. We do great as single target DPS, so we don't need to be the best in AoE. Personally, I feel that warlocks, boomkins, and mages should be better than hunters, spriests, and melee in the AoE department. Our trap and volley are both nice and get the job done. Heck, if you're SV, you can trap, volley, wait for a LnL proc (or two if you drop a frost trap too) lob in 3 Explosive Shots, and go back to volley and trap. You can be top trash dps if you want.

In Cataclysm, we will no longer have Volley. We'll be "making more use of multishot" to paraphrase. I have to agree that our channelled Volley spell is kinda hokey and using a "shot" is a better idea. The idea that we have too many buttons and need some trimmed is a bit of a red herring IMHO.

Losing Volley will also further remove one more item from our losing rogue-hunter battle. We can't damage them unless we see them. And we can't get them out of stealth with an AoE. To that end, I say fix the real problem: Flare really kinda sucks and should have its travel time greatly reduced and it should have its cooldown removed to just the global cooldown.

In Cataclysm, we'll be able to launch our traps as if we attached dynomite sticks to the arrows or had a grenade launcher slung under the barrel of our rifles. That's nice, but it's not good AoE DPS or expected to be good AoE DPS. Plus, the cooldown on traps suck.

So we're told Multishot will work to fill the void of the Volley. Honestly, Multishot seems hokey too. I kinda get it for bows, but don't really visualize it for crossbows or guns. And Multishot in its current form doesn't come close to filling an AoE void. So Multishot must change too, right?

Will it be a cone-like attack? A cone-like attack sounds like a shotgun, but where does that leave bows and crossbows? Will it simply change to hit more than just three targets and remain a bit odd?

What about something crazy? How about a shot that sounds like it should be called TNT Shot. Target one mob and fire it. It does instant damage to all mobs near it. Sounds like it should be called Explosive Shot, right? That's how right it is for the hunter class. Oh, and they already gave us something similar 20 levels ago. Not that we ever used the thing.

Then again perhaps we should all just run around with a different pet.

Profession Switching

2010-08-14T13:01:00.000-04:00

I'm currently Blacksmith/Miner. It isn't the worst, but it generally sucks. I get two extra gem slots. I got no craftable weapons for a hunter and no craftable mail (unlike in Vanilla and Burning Crusade). I hardly ever mine. I don't ever have my detect mining up because I've left my improved tracking off once or twice before. So, Blacksmithing really just gets me some stamina. Cataclysm's Blacksmithing weapons are all BoE. The same with Leatherworking. Engineering however looks to have some fabulous ranged weapons and of course the helm. They also have some gem-like stuff. Engineering items are listed as Bind on Pickup. But World of Raids refers to them as BoE. If they are BoP, it will suck big time and might push me over to doing BS/Engineering. Reminds me a little of college.

Cata DoTs

2010-08-11T17:43:00.000-04:00

Cataclysm will not be allowing (or demanding of) you to front-load the crazy empowered crit SrpS for the Chimera to refresh for the entire fight. That sounds like good news to me. I don't like flipping into my T9x, T10x2 set in LK and wont want to do something similar in Cata.

HoT and DoT refresh
Dots and hots adjust on the fly now when they're refreshed. There is less reason to try and get everything lined up perfectly for big numbers before you cast the spell. You'll be able to game it a little bit for the initial spell duration, but it won't refresh infinitely with the big numbers.

We have to rebalance the entire game anyway given the magnitude of the Cataclysm changes, so don't worry about being penalized for any old mechanics that may no longer be relevant. (Source)

You Wont Want To Wear Leather Anymore

2010-07-23T15:30:00.001-04:00

You wont want to wear leather anymore. You'll strive for all mail because your class likes it like that. I'm glad they put down the stick and handed out a carrot.

Cata Talents

2010-07-23T07:25:00.000-04:00

I was playing with the new Cataclysm hunter talents. They are starting to take shape. SV is very expensive. Their 5th and 6th tier talents need to have their ranks reduced. There just aren't enough points compared with the other two trees. Admittedly MM is a bit light, but BM looks right on and it's considerably less than SV.

Secret?

2010-07-19T15:59:00.001-04:00

Secret? I didn't catch the WHU podcast live. (House repair, pool, BBQ, and then True Blood was my Sunday line up.) Looks like the linked image was made on Saturday.

Hunter Blog Roundup

2010-07-14T12:27:00.000-04:00

Cataclysm changes abound. The talent trees were announced and a few other cool things. Here's a quick round up.

Darkbrew talks a bit about the datamined starter spells for each talent tree (see also at worldofraids.com).
Mania has info on the pet stable slots, including some screenshots.
Rilgon is disappointed but not surprised by the fail of the MM talent tree.
and finally, MMO Champion has a the current unpolished Cataclysm talent calculator.

Multi-tracking

2010-07-13T19:04:00.000-04:00

MMO Champion has a brief mention which has me quite intrigued. It reads, "Last but not least, the Minimap now allow you to track multiple things at once! Hurray!"

As someone with mining as a lame-ass skill (Yeah, OMG, he has mining as a skill?!?) This change is a godsend if I can use it and track DPS targets at the same time. Generally these days, I don't use mining for anything. I'm waiting to see how buff other trade skills will be in the expansion.

Pet-Tanking Set Used For Self-Tanking

2010-07-11T12:42:00.000-04:00

RS and PvP Happenings

2010-07-10T12:55:00.001-04:00

Tuesday was a bit of a wash. Got in on just four ICC-10H bosses. Wednesday was decent. We had 25, so we finally hit Halion. It wasn't an ideal 25, but we eventually got everyone with the program and downed him. It was certainly fun, but also tiring. THE trinket dropped. I bid essentially 28 full raids worth of DKP, but lost.

I found 10man easier and harder. It was easier to orchestrate phases 1 and 2. In fact in 10man, I don't think we ever didn't get to phase 3. But in 10man balancing the damage is harder and you need to have more people flipping back and forth. In 25man, we had people who had issues with the shadow realm dance. But balancing the damage was a bit easier. It wasn't easy, but it was easier.

The heroic version adds all sorts of extra perfection to the boss. I imagine we could do it in 10man because the dancing element was easier with a smaller group, and the void zones would be less of an issue with a smaller number of people. Heroic 10man offers shoulders which might be an up for my current MM ones.

I've been trying for a few more PvP achievements. So far, just making progress. But some are quite evil. Overall, the PvP is fairly fun.

I finally visited all the horde cities. That was neat. It was a completely and utterly fail group that somehow managed to just barely not fail. It was about 10 new level 80s, 10 not-new level 80s, and 10 level 60-75's. The level 60 didn't even have Burning Crusade, so he couldn't go to the Blood Elf boss... Oh! And me and two others basically took her down. Even though she kept going into EVADE and resetting to full health. We spent 20minutes downing her, her guards, the pvp bosses, and killing the occasional real player. We had no real horde competition though.

It did provoke a strong counter-attack, but they hit IronForge. IF's throne room is basically a death-trap of a place, and that's what we made it. It was another 15minutes of hunting down stragglers hiding in all the different rooms there are in IF.

Add in some random battlegrounds and Wintergrasp, and it was a PvPathon.

Holy Shit: Talent Trees

2010-07-07T13:03:00.002-04:00

The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don’t think that’s possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents.

Well, that'll simplify a lot I guess.

Talent trees will have around 20 unique talents instead of today's (roughly) 30 talents, and aesthetically will look a bit more like the original World of Warcraft talent trees. The 31-point talents will generally be the same as the 51-point talents we already had planned for Cataclysm.

While leveling, you will get 1 talent point about every 2 levels (41 points total at level 85). Our goal is to alternate between gaining a new class spell or ability and gaining a talent point with each level. As another significant change, you will not be able to put points into a different talent tree until you have dedicated 31 talent points to your primary specialization.

Pets, Pets, Pets, and More Pets!

2010-07-03T17:28:00.002-04:00

More pet fun info:

You have 5 active pets and 20 (or more) stable slots. You can summon an active pet whenever you want, out of combat. This replaces the remote stable spell. In other words, if you have a crab, a bear and a wolf, you can swap from wolf to bear in between encounters.

You must visit a stable master to change which are the active pets though. There are a lot of stable slots, so you can catch Spirit Beasts or rare spawns or whatever you want, even if you don't think you will use them often.

Hunter DPS

Awesome Job

How to Resist Cabin Fever

A Hunter Legendary Questline

Love This

Radical Re-tuning of Rotations

Uncovering The Cloak Problem

The Raiding Hunter's Valor Ring Upgrade!

Ultraxion Post-Kill Notes Considering Making it Easier

Alizabal

Progression

Elusive Pet Bars

Too Easy?

Checklist Checked

Two trinkets, improved steady shot, and a rapid fire equal +153% haste.

The Hunter Transmog Gear List - Take Two

Hunter 4.3 PTR Buff

Transmogrification Gear

Loot Reaver Loot Fail

Happy Power Outage Weekend!

OMG

Hunter Builds for Mists of Pandaria (MoP)

No Minimum Range!

Looking Good vs Feeling Good

Kheldul's Silly Gear State and a Night's Raiding Progress

An Agility Gun? From the 4.3 Five Mans?

Overflowing Focus, the Bad BA Bug, and Juggling

Hunter DPS Pro Tip #2: Information is Power You Need to Know

Pet Tanking Ideas

Time for Heroic Modes

Hunter DPS Pro Tip #1: Plan Your DPS

What Hunter Class Leads Look For in Raider Apps

Classic Tips inc

Water No More

Which Hunter Spec Is Best? (OMFG!)

RIP 11 Warcraft Hunter Blogs

Which Transmorgrification Will You Use?

Pet Growl Threat

Easy Hunter Epics

Alysrazor and the Flying Hunter

Lord Rhyolith and Baleroc

Easy Upgrades

Beth'tilac and the Hunter

Went Back and Got Shannox

Tears Before Bedtime

Hunter Valor

Our Buggy BoE

New Pet Bug on Nef

What's Up With Traps?

Questions on Pet Stances

Hunter Queue Times

Account Security

The Summer Bleh

ABOUT TIME!

Woodchucker

All my characters

Thoughts on T12 Set Bonuses

Hurray!

Blogroll Additions

Dark Intent 4.1 PTR Change?

Epic Gear QQ

Seeking Wow Hunter Blogs

Name Those Beasts

Something to keep an eye out for in 4.1

4.1 PTR Gear Improvements

Marksman 4.0.6 Latest Hotfixes

Revised: Survival 4.0.6 Latest Hotfixes Talents and Serpent Spread

Beastmastery in 4.0.6 Post-Hotfix

Hot fix makes senseless overuse of Aimed Shot dumb

Marksman Hunter DPS in 4.0.6

Thoughts on the latest 4.0.6

Fun in Heroics

Meta Gems, Primary vs Secondary Colors and Stats, and Reforging!

Pet Tanking in 4.0.3

BM is Too Fun

Distracting Shot

Love it

Damage +15-25% on Hunter Signature Shots

That Ole Trinket: The Oracle Talisman of Ablution

Tier 11 Gear Embarrassment