Kheldul on Episode 189 of the Hunting Party Podcast

I'm the big eye beholder guy.

Nice Immediate Changes for SV and MM

Hot off the presses!  Some very nice immediate changes for MM and SV.

• Hunter
  • Marksmanship
    • Chimera Shot's damage has been increased by 50%.
  • Survival
    • Explosive Shot's damage has been increased by 10%.

SV has been considerably lower for me.  Including "AoE fights" (e.g.- Galakras and Dark Shaman).   You'd think with the slimes that an unlimited AoE SV multishot would rule the charts.  It's not bad, but it's not like Tortos bats.  The ExS change is probably not enough to change things until we get into 4pc T16 set bonuses.  I may flip my second Specialization to a pet-tank setup just for the bars and what-not for a bit.

The Marksmanship change has been LONG overdue.  Again they probably need more but it's great to see attention there.  It's also very nice to see it in the right ability.


It's a great way to close out the second week of Siege.  Well in related news, our guild killed three new bosses tonight.  That brings us to 9/14 in normal.  We weren't planning on doing the last boss, Malkorok, but we cleared trash (there's a lot!) while one person watched a video.  I believe we got him on our second try, so I'd call him pretty damn easy.

Making Hunter Aspects Great in WoW 6.0

Current State
The current state of Hunter aspects is meager.  There is not a clear need for them.  We have our Hawk/Iron hawk attack aspect and we have travel aspects that are not normally of any use during PvE or PvP encounters.  We also have an aspect we can glyph for: Aspect of the Beast.  It would be a fairly simple matter to get rid of aspects; Hawk could be our default baked-in state and the remaining travel "aspects" could just be spells.  There isn't a need to toggle off Hawk while in a travel state.  This makes me sad.

History
In the past, we had other aspects which made choosing an aspect meaningful.  We had Aspect of the Fox.  We had Aspect of the Wild.  And long ago, we had Aspect of the Monkey.  Aspect of the Wild provided a large amount of Nature resistance as an aura and had a PvE use in about 1/5th of boss encounters.  Aspect of the Fox was short-lived.  It allowed for casting many cast time spells on the move and provided greater focus regen.  Aspect of the Fox wasn't successful as a design because people macro'd it into Steady Shot or Cobra Shot and then macro'd in a switch to Aspect of the Hawk before signature shots.  This was a predictable automated form of "aspect twisting" and not in any way desirable, so it was retired and SS/CS were redesigned.  Aspect of the Monkey was an early defensive CD hunters got long ago.  You could flip to Monkey mode and it greatly increased your Dodge percentage.

General Principles
I believe hunter aspects are an interesting part of being a hunter, but they should be meaningful again.  I believe aspects should allow a hunter to make a choice in their gameplay that doesn't require a re-spec or re-glyph, and which can be chosen while in combat.  I believe aspects shouldn't be something that is switched to often and should be a manual effort, such that they don't make sense to do within any form of rotation or regular activity.  Generally, I believe hunters should want to be in their normal Hawk aspect because when they are not, they should not be able to do as much damage.  Each hunter specialization should provide access to one unique aspect to increase specialization identity.  Glyphs affecting aspects should be changed.  Level 45 talents should be tailored to improve a particular aspect.  Only one aspect can be active at any time.  And finally to reduce aspect twisting, there should be a minimum three second cooldown on changing aspects.

Kheldul's New Hunter Aspect Dream Lineup
Hunter aspects can be great.  Below, I start with the basics and work my way up to the specialization-specific aspects.  Your comments and ideas are definitely welcome.

Aspect of the Pack
Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a pack of cheetahs, increasing movement speed by 30%. (No daze effect exists anymore.)  Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Cheetah
Removed.  (A personal travel aspect is no longer required.)

Aspect of the Hawk
The hunter takes on the aspects of a hawk, increasing ranged attack power by 35%.  (Not being in this aspect will greatly diminish your damage output.) Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Prowl
The hunter takes on the aspects of a stealthy cat and becomes untrackable.  (Previously known as the rarely used Aspect of the Beast.)  Movement speed is reduced by 40%.  If the hunter is under the effects of Camouflage, their movement is in stealth. (Folds a Glyph-for-only ability into a situational ability.)  Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Spirit
The hunter takes on the aspects of the natural interdependent web of life, increasing his and his pet's health regeneration by an additional 2% every 2 seconds.  Imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Protector
Party and raid members within 15 yards of the hunter take on the protective aspects of the turtle, reducing damage taken by 20% but also reducing movement speed by 40%. This aspect may be used until canceled, but has an activation cooldown of two minutes and imposes a 3 second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Monkey
Available only to Survival hunters.  The hunter takes on the aspects of a monkey, reducing the cooldown of Counter Shot by 12 seconds, increasing agility by 10%, and increasing dodge by a total of 10%. (The agility increase should always be worse than the Aspect of the Hawk RAP increase, including when under most proc effects.)  Imposes a ten second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Beast
Available only to Beast Mastery hunters.  The hunter loses themselves in their pet acting as one, taking on all aspects of the current pet, improving all forms of pet damage by 40%, and increasing run speed by 30%.  If the pet dies, the hunter is stunned for five seconds. (The hunter mounts the pet like a vehicle and controls all pet abilities similar to the old spell Eyes of the Beast.  Tenacity pet abilities like Taunt should work on bosses.) Imposes a ten second aspect-wide cooldown.

Aspect of the Eagle
Available only to Marksmanship hunters. The hunter takes on the aspects of an eagle, increasing ranged attack power by 50% but increasing all damage taken by 10%. (A glass cannon that will irritate theory-crafters.) Imposes a ten second aspect-wide cooldown.

Comments and ideas welcome!

Hunting Tortos - Tips and Recommendations for Hunters

Level 60 and 90 talents are vital.

First my disclaimer:  I've only killed him once and it was close.  Well actually the previous attempt we got him down to 0.01% health so that was closer.  But you get the idea.  I'm not an expert.  And everyone's raid needs are different.  But I am able to do 150-170K dps over the course of the fight so I do have some advice to share.

Now let's talk talents.  You want to be doing this fight as Survival.  Serpent Spread is just too useful here.  I have done a lot of tinkering with trying to optimize Beast Cleave for BM, but it really doesn't compare.

As Survival and AoE heavy, you want to take Thrill of the Hunt.  You'll be doing a fairly ridiculous number of  multishots and it doesn't hurt to make that easier.  And if it procs when multiple targets aren't around, regening focus while tossing arcane shots isn't bad either.  You also really really want to take Barrage.  The cooldown on it is perfect for it to be available once for every bat phase.

Can you tell when the bats are out?

Now since I just mentioned a boss mechanic, let's talk about some fight info.  Most likely, you'll need to be misdirecting bats to a tank so they don't insta-kill your healers.  This means you have to do it with a misdirected multishot or a barrage.  You want to always have some focus for this.  I was running with another hunter in our 10man so we split into sides of the room.  If you're by yourself, you may need to be closer to the middle.  The reason is that it seems like the bats don't always spawn within range of all locations.  The other trick is that there isn't a very good timer for when the bats really appear.  So you'll want a targeting macro you can slap a lot.

Here's the video.  I'm not dead on the ground for the whole fight. ;-)

Hunters and Horridon

Here are my hunter tips for Horridon 10man.  Below my recommendations are the deeper issues of the fight that go into why I'm recommending them.

Recommendations

• Keep your pet on the mobs.  Killing the adds is priority number one and two.
• BM has pet control issues on this fight.  If you have to go BM, Blink Strike will increase your DPS.  But you will still see range and control issues.  Macro'ng /petattack type commands into everything can help.
• Go Survival and mow down the adds.  Entrapment is decent as well.  You will be happier and you'll do much better damage.
• As SV, take Lynx Rush.  Damage on the boss doesn't matter much before the doors go down.  Hold on to Lynx Rush until you have mobs to use it on.  Yes, it's delaying DPS but it's an important delay.
• Do not blow CDs off the boss pull.  Never blow DPS cooldowns on the boss until you're done with the doors.  Blow them on the door mobs once each second wave comes out.
• If you have two good DPS with short interrupt CDs then they should handle interrupts and you should take binding shot and use it often -- but most especially on the third door.  Otherwise, you need to take silencing shot.
• The fight is 11+ mins long.  Blow Stampede on the second door when wave two and three jump out at once.  Destroy the priests.
• Use Rapid Fire and Readiness often.  Sadly, you probably don't need it on the first door.
• Finish off mobs that are 25% health or less before moving on to a different priority.
• If all your buffs are taken care of and you're starting to look at debuffs, then either take an extra interrupt with a Gorilla, or a casting speed debuff with a Sporebat.  I did not have raid experience with hitting the interrupts via a pet, I took the auto-casting sporebat.
• AoE generally isn't worth it.  Glaive tosses always are good.  Explosive traps are worse than a black arrow for SV because of all the mob movement, but okay to do in downtime with MM or BM.  SV multishots to apply stings are good, but you want to remove mobs one at a time not have them all up until they are all down.
• Drop frost traps in the foci of the doorway.  They'll proc your LnL but also control the mobs.

The TL;DR Issues Section

First off: your pet will attack Horridon.  Fine.  But it will always go back to attacking Horridon after you kill a door mob.  Even with another mob right there that you've already started attacking.  The boss will often be positioned away from these mobs by a decent amount.  So much so that BM's Kill Command, Lynx Rush and the like are out of range.  You can counter that with a lot of control-1 commands or macro'ng every shot.  You can also use blink strike.  But it still is a problem.  You can counter it by diminishing the importance of the pet by going with SV instead.

My guild runs a 10man.  Horridon 10man was tuned incredibly tight last week.  This week they nerfed the health of the add waves to make it more accessible to the non heroic-raiding guild.  The issue with the difficulty of the fight isn't actually about DPS and mob health.  But that DPS can help muscle your way through and beat down what you can't deal with otherwise.  My 10man generally has 1-2 warlocks, 1-2 hunters, a mage, a DK, a monk tank, a warrior tank, and a resto druid.  Rotating in are a new holy pally, a holy priest, and a resto shaman.

I'm not going into all the fight descriptions, but suffice it to say, you need to have good interrupts, good slows, and good dispel and cleansing.  Each door is a different type of thing that needs to be removed if it lands on a person.  If your raid makeup only has one class that can cure disease, then you're probably going to hit a wall.  Same goes for poison (though it's much more common).

So with a 24 sec CD on silencing shot, we're not too great on the interrupt front.  But if you run with a mage and two warlocks then you need to take it because their interrupts are just as bad.  On pet selection front, if the buffs are all taken care of and you're mainly looking at target debuffs then I recommend the sporebat.  Yes, he can give spell haste as a buff.  But he also freely gives the casting speed debuff.  And one multi-dot poison can make or break the fight.

We are decent at slowing mobs, and that's the main deal on the third door.  Slow traps, binding shot (if you didn't need to take silencing shot), concussion shot, and I think scatter shot also works.

But disease debuffs will go out and we need to rely on the raid to deal with them.  On our kill, I had 6 stacks of disease and was swallowing over 100k damage ticks crying for a cleanse.  Here's who can do what type of dispelling:

Druid:  Curses,           Magic (if healer), Poisons
Mage:   Curses
Monk:           Diseases, Magic (if healer), Poisons
Pally:          Diseases, Magic (if healer), Poisons
Priest:         Diseases, Magic,             Poisons (if healer)
Sham:   Curses,           Magic (if healer)

Other than that, a 'lock's imp can singe magic, but it doesn't look like an auto-cast.  Good dwarves can remove poison from themselves for the second door.  And a resto druid can Symbiosis a pally and get cure disease.

If your raid is weak on interrupts, you need to be strong in cleanses.  Or vice versa.  If you are in heroic raid gear you can just muscle through 10man with overwhelming DPS.

If you're doing it in 25man, there aren't extra mobs!  So interrupts should be covered a few times over!  That  means there will be far less to cleanse/dispel.  It also means you can focus more on control and nuking down individual important mobs.  25mans can also bring three tanks.  From what I can tell from the dozens of threads on this, in the first week heroic and normal 25mans and heroic 10man raiding guilds got him down.  A tiny number of 10man normal guilds got him down with a perfect mix of interrupt classes and healers with the right cleansing/dispelling.  My guild didn't have a problem with DPS.  But we hit a wall from interrupt & cleansing/dispels.  And it was all just class balance.

The Rise of MM & SV and the Decline of BM

Very very interesting PTR hunter buffs close to release.  Marksman is getting a ton of love.  Overall, I'm pretty excited to see these changes.  It's been a while since I played MM.  It may be what it needs to get back in the playlist:

- Aimed Shot damage +10%.
- Chimera Shot damage +50%.
- Steady Shot damage +20%.

I am a little concerned.  The issue I have is that these numbers look extremely round.  That means lots of changes ahead -- probably as hotfix nerfs since they wouldn't hotfix buff other specs/classes.  Steady Shot is just a straight-up win.  Chimera as well.  But Aimed Shot is still a bit of a puzzler;  It isn't clear if just +10% damage turns it into a win or not -- over say Arcane Shots.

Of course nothing for BM.  No spill-over buffing of Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot or the signature KC/BW.  But Survival is also getting some extra love for [mostly!] single target: 

- Black Arrow damage +15%.
- Explosive Shot damage +15%.

So where do I get off calling the "Decline of BM"?  Sure perhaps there's some hyperbole there.  But consider: if MM and SV are looking to be made on equal footing as BM for single target damage then BM will be behind overall -- as it lags on AoE fights.  I'd suggest that perhaps BM could get a Beast Cleave buff as BM AoE is anemic.  BM is an important role for 10man guilds as we can bring most every buff and debuff.

And it's also mentioned by GC that Power Shot is wonked in PvP.  I'm thinking the following may be in regards to stuff like what Braindeadly shows on YouTube.

- Hearing lots of concerns about Power Shot in PvP, so we may need a PvP-specific tweak there.

Picking the Best DoTm Up Approach

With the recent hotfix buff(*) to Serpent Sting (SrS) I'm considering what to change to best take advantage of this.

I have three thoughts on this so far.  If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.

1) Do nothing and enjoy a small lift in damage.

2) Go back to SV.  This might be harder to stomach than I originally intended once I flipped to BM.  I really like the ability to spirit mend myself and my pet.  That said, Serpent Spread would be quite attractive on some fights especially if (and only if!) it is close to BM on single targets.

3) Make a mouse-over SrS macro.  I'm thinking this would need to be a different key instead of a target/mouseover multi-type macro.  I use my mouse a lot and wouldn't want to accidentally SrS a random mob while the other part of my brain is doing a normal opening rotation on a mob!  Unfortunately, like most BM hunters, I'm a bit loaded on keys and keybinds.  I have F1-4 almost as finger twitches for disengage, fetch, spirit mend (me), and tranq.  I have 1-9,0,-,+ all full.  I also have 'r' for arcane shot and 't' as an ingrained twitch for interrupting.  I already feel full as far as buttons go, so I'm thinking of looking at special mouse buttons and mouse-over.  I could give up fetch, but it is pretty damn handy.  A mouse-bind seems logical.  I probably should have it for other things as well (i.e.- fear beast, tranq, spirit mend, master's call).  Unfortunately, I have an over-sized ergo mouse(**) without a lot of button options.

No matter which routes we chose, we will all want to make sure our enemy health bars show SrS in some easy to consume way so we can keep the stings up.


(*) - "Serpent Sting’s damage has been increased by 100%, and its cost has been reduced to 15 Focus (was 25)."  Th ere is also a normalization for SV's ISrS but it looks like Serpent Spread is still good.

(**) - Moderate to severe carpal tunnel in both wrists will put you on that path.

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.

Heroic Spine Hunter Macro

There is an odd situation with targeting the Burning Tendons via a macro on Heroic Spine in DS.  /target Burning Tendons will not work under a variety of situations.  I have a bunch of hypotheses as to why.  But there is a simple solution which is rumored to always work: /target boss2.

Below is the macro I'm going to be using now:

#showtooltip
/target boss2
/cast Hunter's Mark
/use Kiroptyric Sigil
/petattack

/cast Call of the Wild

There are some very nice DPS tweaks for hunters already listed at the Wow Hunter's Hall.  At this point, I think that swapping our stat-stick is a bit agressive and unnecessary given the substantial nerfs to DS now.  I'll stay SV.  I will most likely do the pet dismiss rotation.

MoP's SV Hunter Lacks the Bounce

MoP's SV hunter definitely lacks some bounce.  I don't have my addons ported over but I can easily see how it will play out.  I'll be watching DoT timer bars and getting LnL weaving.  That isn't any different.  What is different is standing around.

Black Arrow currently has a cast time of two seconds and no cooldown and costs 40 focus.  I would really like to see the first two things changed.

The lack of a cooldown is nice as you can toss in a fire trap as well, but it screws with you thinking that "it's off cooldown, I should shoot it again".  So I guess I could take or leave the lack of cooldown.  Its CD aligning with the duration of the DoT makes sense.  The tooltip in MoP (screenshot, wowhead) however confirms that there is no CD and a cast time.

SV must be maintaining BA DoTs for LnLs to occur. (How's that for alphabet soup?) The big issue here is that BA has a cast time.  If you don't like standing around for Cobra Shots, you really wont like standing around for BA.  With Cobras, you at least have the option of doing it in Aspect of the Fox.  Not that Aspect Twisting is anything anybody really wants to do.  But BA is a damaging shot not a regen or just a proc generator.  So even if AotF worked with BA you wouldn't want to do it.

I'd like to see BA with a CD equaling its time of DoT and have the cast time removed.  Being able to fire a few BAs on different targets is just not a good trade-off for a second cast time spell.  Cast times are the land of Marksmanship and taking time to aim.

EDITED TO ADD: I posted a version of this in the MoP class forums.  If you're going to comment, do it over there.

SV in MoP

So in MoP SV feels far less bouncy and more cast-time watch-the-bars-align challenged.  More than Marks IMHO.  The 2 second cast for BA and it's wonky ability to hit stuff around the main target is the main cause.

I think I'll take Marks for a spin later.   It is refreshing having an interrupt "as SV" though.

Hunter 4.3 PTR Buff

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.

Water No More

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!)

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

1. It was true that BM, SV, and MM were all quite close in damage dealing back in the end of June.  
2. Since July, taken as a whole, MM hunters are topping SV and BM.  Often by a lot.
3. MM hunters can pump out enough AoE damage to top SV hunters on AoE-heavy fights.
4. If you're looking at spending time with a target dummy, you might try swapping out one of your talent trees and try MM.
5. 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.

Dark Intent 4.1 PTR Change?

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.

Revised: Survival 4.0.6 Latest Hotfixes Talents and Serpent Spread

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.

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.

Kheldul Should Be Glowing Red

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.

RIP Halion

Once again, real life intervened and left our 25man raid quite short.  I think we had about 17.  So we formed a 10man and visited Halion.  About half the group had been there on Tuesday.  (Tuesday is our official 10man night.)  We got him very close a number of times.  We got to phase 3 each time.  Keeping the damage even was a bit tricky.  We had one floater and then a death.  I was happy to have gotten killshots on her in both realms. We finally got the smack-down on her not too late in the night.

I was running as Survival for the only source of replenishment.  It wasn't a bad thing not needing to try to do steady shots in the shadow realm.

On The Road To Being a Marksman - Part 13 - Loot Combinatorial Headaches Cause Mistakes

I did everything I said I would in my previous post. It involved buying a T9.5 and a T10.5, downshifting two use T9.5x2 and shuffling over to use different T10.5x2. It required gems and re-gemming. It required a chest enchant. It required me shooting out to Ebon Hold for the helm enchant. It required me to go to IF to respec. It required me to reset all my macros in the UI. I had to deal with addon issues from the patch. I tried some target dummy stuff. I made another Outfitter gear set. I did all this an hour before the raid.

But I made a mistake. I had been using the DPS calculator which also helpfully shows your hit rating and percentage. I wrongly thought it didn't include my Draenei buff. But it looks like it did take that into account.

I loaded a full +3% from talents. I snagged a Draenei in group for a +1%. But my "DPS-MM-Sting" gear set only had +3% hit. 3 + 3 + 1 = 7. We need 8. I'm looking at this after loading up on some new arrows and thinking about how I just regemmed everything. And then the raid started.

I got nervous and flipped to SV for the trash. I knew the sting set would suck for trash anyway. I flipped back to MM for Marrowgar and auto-equipped my new my sting gear set. I was second or third on damage done and had three missed auto shots. I didn't check the rest. One thing I learned though: it's difficult to roll your sting forward and still do a lot of immediate damage to people who are spiked. You kinda have to hold back a little.

So I was a little disappointed, but I kept at it. On Deathwhisper, I did my adds job. But again, I had to retain the Chimera just for the boss who I had a nice sting rolling on. Luckily the adds go down quickly so I didn't feel bad about the less-than-amazing damage I did on them. That said, I managed the #1 spot on damage for that fight.




For the Lootship Battle, I didn't take a cannon and I didn't just shoot from our deck. Instead I rocketed over and killed the mages. That was fun. But for that fight, I flipped gear (but not spec) to my previous MM-DPS gear set. No stings to really roll there...

For Saurfang, I went with the stings. It was reasonably easy to keep the nice sting refreshed and still kill my beast (and help with others). Again, I had to restrain myself and not completely unload on the beasts.

For Dreamwalker I went with an obvious non-sting set but again stayed with Marks. I probably should have flipped to SV for the better instants and traps, but no biggie.

We then hit the Princes. We don't have good combatlogs from the night because people were DC'ng quite often (thanks to the patch). That said, I think I went with stings for the Princes. We had FIVE hunters, so I didn't have any orb duties. I'm not sure if using crit-stings was a win or not on the fight. You end up targeting five different mobs in the fight or so.

We also hit VoA and cleared it looking for a mount drop. (No luck!) I stayed in my crit-sting gear and it was easy to keep it rolling throughout each fight there.

The crit-sting gear should be great for Rotface, and Festergut. I'm not sure about Putricide and his adds. I guess it depends on how many ranged we have and how fast they go down. There are also those two pauses where the sting can (will?) fall off.

That said, I think we're hitting Sindragosa tonight.