Hunters are a Fun Class

Good stuff over at MMO Champion.  They looked at all level 85 characters and determined how many of them were leveled up to 90 during MoP.  They found that only 27.44% of Hunters made the effort.  In previous expansions numbers were similar but a little bit lower.  It appears that many people either stop playing or switch mains or don't bring all their ups up.

Interestingly, that 27.44% number is larger than during Cataclysm.  More interestingly, that 27.44% is larger than every other class in wow.  I suppose that's not entirely true though; Monks are infinitely more leveled than during Cataclysm...

in any case, this can be interpreted in a different ways.  I choose to think that it means that Hunters are easy to level, fun to play, and a desirable class.

REVISED: Heroic Madness of Deathwing Hunter Tips for 5.0.4

With one raiding week left, Blizzard has made Heroic Madness much easier.  Previous to 5.0.4 it wasn't a cake-walk but it was one of the easiest fights.  Immediately after 5.0.4 it was almost impossible for some 10man raid makeups because of bugs.

It's not clear if they fixed all the bugs or if they just nerfed around the edges.  The bloods start out as normal moving mobs and appear to be slow-able still; It isn't clear if they made everyone's slows work again.  Pet pathing issues are fixed as far as I'm concerned; I didn't have my pet run out of range and dismiss himself on almost every platform.

There are many bugged issues with the current Heroic Madness of Deathwing encounter.  Slowing the bloods still may or may not be a bugged encounter issue.  There were always reports of some slows still working.  We used everything that we could.  Because nobody ever got failure messages in previous bugged attempts we have no idea which -- possibly all -- worked.  We can hope that it gets fixed soon if it isn't already.

I used a completely new talent and glyph setup just for this fight.  I expect that phrase will become cliche in MoP.  We had way more DPS than we needed for the fight, so pulling back on some was an easy choice.  Everything about the spec is to defeat the bloods that heal Deathwing ASAP:

1. Glyph of No Escape and Ice Trap - not sure if the traps slowed them but it's the obvious choice.
2. Binding Shot Talent - also not sure if it worked or not, but I always shot it.  I finally got an immune message on this.
3. Thrill of the Hunt Talent - totally can change your rotation but excellent for more multi-shots.
4. Lynx Rush Talent - great for bloods if you don't have focus available.

EDITED TO ADD: At this point it's not worth really taking #3 and #4.  It can help, but with #3, SV is contending with the 5.0.4 bug that has the instantaneous damage from multishot's serpent spread serpent stings not being applied.  Lynx Rush can help with a little bit and really aMoCs isn't really useful on this fight.  But now the bloods move reasonably slow so you can steady/cobra between multi-shots anyway.

Add to that list these standards:

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera Talent - I disengage on this fight a surprising amount.  I don't recommend it -- and I probably could argue myself out of doing it.  Except I'd still do it.  But you don't take this talent for the disengage.  Use it for deterrence when you get infected with a blood or when you get targeted with shrapnel - the Dream was bugged last Thursday.
2. Aspect of the Iron Hawk Talent - The standard PvE talent if there was one.
3. Glyph of Deterrence - 50% damage reduction is a nice thing when you're infected with the blood.  You have to pop deterrence on the last platform if you get infected and if you've got your cancel aura set up then you should pop it every time you get infected.  It's only a couple seconds of downtime and takes a lot of sweat off the healers.

You do a surprising amount of standing around doing nothing on Deathwing's platform between each 5% round.

It feels quite rewarding to have finished a tier - albeit terribly nerfed - within that tier.  I suppose not being able to use Dream for Corruption tanking and Shrapnel -- and having incredibly difficult to slow bloods -- compensated for that nerf.  We never had DPS or healing issues.  It would have been more interesting to have those challenges. ;-)

EDITED TO ADD: It still feels rewarding to kill heroic madness.  Some of it is that I've only done it four times so far.  Some of it is that we're cycling in more and more new people for the kills.  And we're challenging ourselves to do it in different rainbow orders to help some other people get more achievements.

Hunters Need To Know

Yes, I actually bought a fraps license and figured out what was wrong with my microphone boost.  All this to bring you a YouTube video describing my new NeedToKnow setup!  My bars show the uptime of our spells and the remaining CD all in one bar.  They're not complete; Call them a first draft.  But they are pretty important.  In order to have competitive damage numbers you need to use new MoP/5.0 hunter abilities mixed in with the old.

Black Arrow N2K Import String:

bv1:{VOn=true,Typ=CASTCD,sIc=true,TF=Fmt_Float,Clr={r=0.80392156862745,g=0,b=0.88235294117647},VCl={a=0.30000001192093,b=0.89019607843137,g=0.87843137254902,r=0.77254901960784},BCl={a=0},Aura=Black Arrow,VEx="4"}

Dire Beast N2K Import String:

bv1:{VOn=true,Typ=CASTCD,Aura=Dire Beast,sIc=true,TF=Fmt_Float,Clr={r=0,g=0.43921568627451,b=0.78823529411765},BCl={a=0,b=0.88627450980392,g=0.85490196078431,r=0.90196078431373},sCt=false,VEx="15"}

A Murder of Crows Import String:

bv1:{VOn=true,Aura=A Murder of Crows,sIc=true,TF=Fmt_Float,Clr={b=0.87450980392157,g=0,r=0.43137254901961},VCl={a=0.30000001192093,b=0.78823529411765,g=0.77647058823529,r=0.75686274509804},BCl={a=0},sCt=false,Typ=CASTCD,VEx="90"}

Our Madness

Our guild took down Heroic Spine for the first time on Monday.  Then 5.0.4 landed on Tuesday.  Then we took down everything including Heroic Spine on Wednesday in two hours (we wiped in a few weird places for weird reasons).  We put in two attempts on Wednesday on Heroic Madness but the bloods kicked our ass.  Then Thursday we hit Heroic Madness again.  For three hours.  We couldn't understand a lot of why things just weren't working.  We even got him down to 6% once.  Finally we noticed that it really was broken.  It was nice to think we weren't idiots.  Here's how broken it is:

• Bloods come out every 5% of Deathwing's health.  If they get to him, they heal him significantly.  None of our group's multiple slows worked on the bloods on the final platform.  Hunter, DK, Rogue, Mage, and Druids.  No immune messages or the like.  They just bee-lined to Deathwing and healed him with us just getting frustrated.
• Dream didn't do anything against Corruptions or Shrapnel.
• Hunter pets disappear from doing long distance pathing to things not a long distance away.  (Not the Kill Command bug.)   I also saw my pet in the water behind a corruption on the third platform instead of attacking from the side (on ground).  This is manageable as DPS isn't really any problem.
• We had two people with lag.  One was playing with hotel internet.  So while this was nice, it was also nuts: We were also able to get more than one battle rez off in a 10man.

                               

ROFLSTOMP DS and Shot Priority Complexity

Ten of us managed to update/change our addons, select and learn our talents and glyphs, reforge our gear and try to raid.  We started our raid a little late but in a little over two hours we learned that some people don't know how their character works now and some do.  We also learned that a 35% nerf to DS can overcome everything.  We cleared everything on heroic up to and including spine.  We took two people who weren't in our original heroic spine group before and got it on our third second attempt.  Not that the heroic spine fight is exactly the same anymore.  Because of the cleansing changes -- and despite the raid mechanic changes -- you have to cheese the cleansing a little with positioning, but it was probably easier that way originally too.

As a Survival hunter, I found that if I did my old rotation employing all the previously known spells (SrS, BA, ArS, ExS) I did significantly less damage.  When I added in Dire Beast and aMoCs I was coming close.  When I threw in Rapid Fire and Readiness I had the ability to burst.  I didn't realize how much I missed the ability to burst.  I didn't even need to use the valor trinket to feel like a king.  I like my wow 5.0 talents and glyphs.  I really like the defensive attributes around Deterrence (100%/50% resist and 1min CD).  Marked for Death isn't a bad thing either.

Now all of this is a much bigger job.  Much more complexity!  I look at that with approval.  If better hunters can do more in a better way and get more damage that's a good thing.

If you think of A Murder of Crows as a DoT, you can also think of Dire Beast and even your own pet as DoTs.  Add SrS, BA, and even ExS and you've got six DoTs.  Thankfully, you don't really need a bar to watch your pet (though honestly they're pretty complex).  Our biggest DoT (ExS) doesn't need to be watched anymore thanks to how they can all be dumped in as fast as is smart.  Still we have many more DoTs and cooldowns to watch.

I put together a pretty nice NeedToKnow configuration to watch all this stuff, which I'll share in another post soon.

Down to the Wire

With only a few hours until wow-5.0 lands and everyone has to re-learn their character abilities...

Cataclysm Raiding: Tired or Wired

Wednesday night we kicked off our raiding week.

I picked up "OS" off-spec gear.  I take it when nobody else needs it for their main spec or off-spec.  I got three pieces.  Heroic pieces.  I am upgrading 397 tier pet-tanking gear to heroic 410 pet-tanking gear.  /face-palm?

We raided and one-shot the first three bosses on heroic and then two-shot Hagara.  It was only our third kill of her.  We had previously done everything right except a for two things that seem like they shouldn't be an issue.  1) We didn't previously have the boss positioned on the edge facing away from everyone except the tank.  Ice lances used to shred us.  2) We used to have eight people chain the lightning (in four groups of two).  It is far, far, simpler to have two groups of two chain the whole thing, one working clockwise and one working counter-clockwise.  I'm always one of the four and enjoy when my group does one or two more than the other group.  Oh, and your pet can help or hurt chaining you.  I have a how-to I need to share for heroic Hagara.

After Hagara and Ultraxion, we realized we only had 45mins to try hitting heroic Blackhorn.  We also realized the other two raid nights had no tanks available.  So we all logged onto our alts and finished the instance in normal mode.

I have to say it was quite fun and enjoyable.  But I'm not sure if I'm tired or wired.

The Madness of Deathwing Bow Is Really Good

Yesterday I got the Heroic Horrifying Horn Arbalest off of Zon'ozz.  It's a item level 410 weapon with over one thouuuussand base damage per second.  My current bow from Normal Madness is only 939 base damage per second.  So I do a little happy-dance, slap on a woodchucker scope, and transmorg it into a gun.

Then something gives a little tug at the back of my mind.  "Is it actually better?"

I hit up femaledwarf.com and plug in everything revert the weapon and... it looks to make my dps better by 0.081%.  Yes. Notice the decimal point?  That's not even one-tenth of one percent better.  And this is of course factoring in all the perfect buffs and debuffs.  Without that perfection the margin would be even smaller.  It is also not taking any movement into account.  At all.  With the movement the proc DoT from the Madness of Deathwing bow will tick while I move.  The higher item level crossbow will not do much.  So if Zeherah's summary modeling of the proc is good, then the Madness bow is better.

Porting Around Azeroth Without A Mage

Before the beginning of Cataclysm, I knew there would be a lot of moving around across the globe. I didn't realize portals would be in Stormwind (or the Horde's Orgrimmar) such that people would just move in there.  Because I was dumb, and not a mage, I started acquiring a few items. I've added a few but they all seem to come in handy for various activities. Here's my list.

[Direbrew's Remote] - Need a quick pitstop? Need to smelt some dark iron?  Want an ugly hearth between Ironforge and Stormwind?  It's better than a boat or zeppelin. Just don't be a jerk and use it a BG and ask people to click it for a present.

[Baradin's Wardens Tabard] - This is a wonderful secondary hearth.  Land in the quest hub and click on the portal to Stormwind.  Or you could actually do your dailies if you're going for a mount or pet.

[Wrap of Unity] - Another wonderful secondary hearth that level 15 Cataclysm guilds can provide. There are Horde and greater / lesser versions.

[Band of the Kirin Tor] - How often do you need to get to Northrend?  Or Dalaran?  No?  What about going to Dalaran and taking the portal to the Keepers of Time and Dragon Soul instance?  This thing used to be considered expensive.  Now a few thousand gold is pocket change.  There are other styles and upgrades, but there's really no point to them other than the hearth.

[Blessed Medallion of Karabor] - Need to get to Outlands and not near a portal to The Portal?  This will get you there nicely.  And if you're doing dailies for your drake mounts you'll crave this item.

[Argent Crusader's Tabard] - Would you like another Northrend port?  How about to that dailies hub that has all those mounts and pets?  For DPS waiting in a queue, this is a nice immediate activity.

[Hearthstone] - The list wouldn't be complete without this handy item, right?  Level eight guilds augment it with[Hasty Hearth]. A long time ago, I accidentally dropped mine.  I was quite relieved to learn I just needed to talk with an innkeeper for a new one.

[Stormpike Insignia Rank 6] - If you're a BG'er, this can have its uses; This is especially true if you're going for achievements.

And there's simply hoofing it.  But hunters should do it in style: [Master Riding], [Mount Up] and a [Blue Dragonhawk] (ss).

If I was an engineer, I'd have a generator or two, but alas I'm stuck in my ways and not going engineering.  I'm also not interested in expensive consumable hearths to Deepholm since I'm not an alchemist.

And if you're in a group, you should show that you're extremely fast and a gentleman to the lesser classes by tossing a [Have Group, Will Travel] summon.

Average Agility of Kiril, Fury of Beasts?

The average agility gain of the proc from Kiril, Fury of Beasts is a somewhat complex thing to discover.  What I found is a little disappointing.

I have the normal polearm which, on proc, provides +107 agility buff once a sec to a stack count of ten and then persists for ten more seconds.  The LFR version provides a stacking +95 agility.  The heroic provides a stacking +120 agility.  With some modeling and a 45 sec ICD, I expected the normal to provide approximately an average of 365 agility in the best case scenario when averaged over the course of a whole five minute fight.

For the record, I expected the LFR version to provide 324 and the heroic version to provide an average of 410 agility.

That was very optimistic and simplistic modeling.  I was guessing I could get it to proc within the first second when it really only as a 15% chance to proc per shot.  Put another way, I was expecting to have some level of the buff (from one stack to ten stacks) for 44.67% of a five minute fight.

What I see in practice is quite different.  Below is a heroic Ultraxion and normal Gunship from last night.  I expected to see much much better buff numbers and uptime from Ultraxion.  I see only 27.9% and 31.7% overall uptime of any stack count.  In the below images, the green zones are when the buff is active (at increasing stack counts):

Given these observations I'm thinking my optimistic theory-crafting is supplanted by the observed data.  My average uptime is really only about 30% so my average agility for a fight is about 68% of my original calculations.  So the average agility gain from the proc would land around these:

LFR: 221
Regular: 249
Heroic: 279

No Woes to the Nerf

I'm not going to complain about the increasing nerf.  It certainly makes heroic modes much more attainable.  This past raid week we put some learning in on Yor'sahj and got him to 40%.  He's typically the second heroic kill for guilds so we should have him soon.  (For whatever reason we found heroic Ultraxion easier.)

Let me tell you, the 10% debuff does have some weird effects on normal modes.  We have easily nine-manned bosses. Last night, our raid leader jumped "accidentally" off the gunship.  I suspect he just wanted to /afk on a boss we don't use call-outs for.

On normal Deathwing, we were taking down limbs before they even started casting Cataclysm. Then we wiped because we did too much damage.  We brought limbs down to below 70% just as a tentacle popped; This meant we were spread out for the tentacle but we had blistering bloods on the limb just ripping us to shreds.  So we had to dial our dps back a ton.  We are working on the Chromatic Champion achievement to learn the fight in different ways.

It is kinda nice to think that all the heroic modes are within reach.  I can't recall thinking that before.

How to Resist Cabin Fever

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.

Uncovering The Cloak Problem

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!

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.

Time for Heroic Modes

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 Valor

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!

Thoughts on the latest 4.0.6

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

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.

Love it

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

Hunter Spec/Build Observations

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.