Back to the Cat!

Well I took advantage of the Christmas break to get Stormpaw up to level 60. He hit 60 whilst main healing a doomed run to Strathholme Undead. As soon as that was over, I got asked to join an Upper Blackrock Spire raid being run by a guildmate's Raid Group.It went ok despite a few wipes and Storm's going be raiding with them a bit in the future.

Apart from that, I've sadly abandoned Storm's Moonkin spec in favor of something not dissimilar to what he used before the patch. He's now a decent healer, a capable damage dealer and a serviceable tank. In fact, last night I attempted Storm's first run as main tank since Wailing Caverns at about level 18, in Scholomance.

There was a steep learning curve involved, but two of the people in the party had played Warriors before and were in a position to give me advice. Despite some deaths, we managed a decent run on the place, everybody learning their new roles in familiar surroundings.

Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational Battle Chicken!

A couple of pictures of Stormpaw in Moonkin form:





I'm really enjoying the Moonkin whilst soloing. Not only does Stormpaw do a lot of damage, but he has the resilience to take some hits if an enemy gets close. The only downside is that it costs me some of my efficency as a healer in groups, but I should be able to mitigate that over time.

Stormy as it stands is 3/4 of the way to level 57, and I'm going to push to get him as close to 60 as I can before the weekend. Wulf hasn't been getting that much love at the moment, I only log on with him every so often to kill a few Dragonkin to keep my hand in. Part of me regrets stopping raiding with Adventure Lovers, but then again, I know if I was still raiding with them, then I'd be thinking about playing my healers. There's only so many hours in a day after all.

Attack of the Killer Alts!

Well, I haven't been playing Wulf that much recently, although I've managed to get on a couple of raids with mate's groups, and my current spec seems to be performing admirably under those circumstances. I'm going to concentrate this post on my two alternate characters who have been taking up most of my playing time right now.

Stormpaw's gone through some changes recently. Up until the patch, he was focussed on the Feral talent tree, dealing damage through his animal forms. It's great for soloing, but since Storm doesn't really use his feral forms that much when grouped with others, I decided to change his set-up. Initially I split his talents pretty evenly between the Balance (offensive spellcasting) and Restoration (healing spells) trees, which worked pretty well in groups, but Gave him some problems whilst soloing. That in mind, I ended up respeccing him to focus more on the Balance tree. The end result, he now has the ability to shapeshift into a Battle Chicken (well, ok, it's technically called Moonkin, but it looks like a frigging battle chicken!).

In this form Storm becomes more physically robust, able to take a pounding, but sacrifices his ability to cast healing spells. He also tends to draw a lot more aggro than a lot of other offensive casters, which means I won't be using it much in groups (no problem, I'll end up healing in most groups anyway). He also tends to run out of mana very quickly, although there are ways around this that he'll be exploiting.

I've also been levelling Delanthir, my elven priest. He's only level 28 at the moment, but I'm finding his ability to grind XP almost as smooth as my Hunter's, thanks to a slightly unorthodox talent spec reccomended by some friends. I doubt he'll hit lvl 60 before the expansion, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

More on 2.01 and Pics.

As promised, some pictures to illustrate my point.

First of all, on Tuesday Night, before the patch hit, I took a couple of Screenshot's of Wulf's old status quo:


This is how his combat stat's used to pan out with his old 20/31/0 spec. What the old interface doesn't show you is that his Ranged combat critial strike chance was at 23.09%.



This was the stats for his trusted Wolf, Fellpaw.

Now, after the patch, things changed remarkably.

First of all, Wulf's endgame DPS went up despite a drop in ranged attack power:



Also, Fellpaw now got a percentage of some of Wulf's stats, which boosted his combat effectiveness somewhat, even before I'd applied Beastmastery talents:



Of course, once he was fully specced out, things got really silly:



(Editorial note, I don't remember Fellpaw having that high damage unbuffed, I suspect I took this at the tail end of using Bestial Wrath.)

Speaking of Bestial Wrath, Wulf has also gained the ability to share in Fellpaw's Bestial Wrath with The Beast Within. Although the visual effects are endearingly silly:



Finally, a few other changes I really like about Hunters in this patch:

New Ammo: The new level 55 Wicked Arrows are a godsend for Hunters. Before, our most common option was the Jagged Arrow that added 13 damage per second to our ranged attacks. They're pretty awesome when you get them at lvl 40, but twenty levels on, they kind of leave a bit to be desired. Whilst it's possible to get better ammunition by either going to the Alterac Valley Battleground (16.5 DPS) or by taking up engineering (17.5 DS), both options require a lot of time and money (you can expect to spend roughly 60 silver for 200 of either of these options, compared to 10 for the Jagged Arrows.) Having arrows now that not only do more damage (22 DPS), are cheap (16 silver per stack) and are freely available is a massive boost.

Scorpid Sting: This was something of a poor cousin before. It's old form (reducing a target's Strength and Agility by 68) it was useful, but not groundbreaking. The new form (reduces target's chance to hit with melee and ranged spells by 5%) makes it damned-near *essential*. It will now be my sting of choice when soloing.

Pet Scaling: All pets now benefit from the bonuses given to their master's armor, stamina, attack power and spell resistances. Incredibly useful, since it gives your pet a chance to keep up with your damage output as your gear gets better.

UI: The default character screen now has more detailed stats for ranged combat, melee combat, spells and defensive values. I can finally see things like my Ranged crit chance right next to my ranged damage stats.

Post patch: First thoughts.

Went with this Beastmastery/Marksmanship spec in the end:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=mE0h0xxRVuVoVx

The white numbers are sick! My wolf went up from 70DPS pre-patch (with 20points in BM) to 107DPS post-patch, and that's before factoring Frenzy, Bestial Wrath and Ferocious Inspiration.

For my part, I had something like 1480 RAP-self-buffed before the patch, that now sits at 1184. That said, thanks to Serpent's Swiftness and the new 22DPS vendor ammo, my self-buffed paperdoll DPS has gone up from 190 to 224!

Haven't tested it in raid situation, but the inital numbers look encouraging. Although I suspect a lack of Mortal Shots will hurt my overall raid damage output somewhat.

I'd taken some before and after screenshots, but I've yet to upload them for the web, so they'll wait for a future post.

The more things change...

Well after a fun couple of weeks raiding with Adventure Lovers, I've come to the conclusion that I wasn't avoiding playing Wulf because I couldn't raid, but rather because I didn't have fun playing him. I've cancelled my application, returned to Chaotic Divinity and am currently dividing my playing time between Stormpaw and Delanthir, my elven Shadow-specced Priest.

I won't be playing Wulf much before the expansion. That said, I made some screengrabs of his stats before the changes made by today's patch. If I can get on tonight, I'll make comparisons about how the changes have affected him.

The process of application.

Well, I've now been on three raids with Adventure Lovers as a candidate. It's been fun raiding again, and they're good people. Haven't had much feedback, good or bad, yet but the chat's always friendly.

Last night, I was with them on an attempt at Nefarian, the final boss in Blackwing Lair, who they had yet to kill. There were a few wipes, and it seemed that even the server was against us as most of the raid (myself included) sufferred the most horrific lag. We decided to make one more attempt and then call it a night, and on that attempt, everything clicked.

Ten minutes later, Nefarian fell to the Adventure Lovers for the first time. I'm honestly chuffed I could be part of it. The Nefarian fight is still one of my favourite fights in the game, and I'm glad I was able to experience it again.

One down...

Well, it turns out I had my first run with Adventure Lovers last night, to Blackwing Lair. There were a few wipes and it was apparently an unfocussed raid for them, but we still cleared as far as Firemaw.

It was a lot of fun being in a raid again, the folks there are every bit as friendly as Chaotic Divinity and almost as nuts. Hopefully my incessant banter hasn't turned them off me yet. Their tactics are slightly different to CD's, but similar enough that I was able to adapt quite quickly (90% of Hunter tactics are knowing where to stand before we hit Auto-shot. ;))

Since it's looking increasingly like we'll be getting the new patch (2.01 I think it's been designated as) next week, I'm going to have to look into how that affects my playstyle. Rather than just diving immediately straight down the grinding/soloing/levelling utility of the Beastmastery tree, I might have to give a serious look into deep Marksmanship for the upcoming raids.

Plus ca change.

As of my writing this, it looks like Wulf's time as a CD member is coming to a close. With the recent collapse of our 40-man raiding, I found it harder and harder to work up any enthusiasm to log in. This was brought into sharp relief by the fact that many people I relied upon in CD had chosen to be elsewhere, or had elsewhereness thrust upon them. I decided to stop coming to ER, rather than sit on my hands in Ironforge or spend my time mindlessly grinding cash.

I spent two weeks playing Stormpaw (who's now lvl 51) and I found that to be much more rewarding. I pretty much decided to mothball Wulf until the expansion and made a post on the CD forums to that effect.

Then two hours later, our erstwhile hosts, Adventure Lovers announced they were looking for another Hunter. Having spent a month or so chatting to folks on there, I've found them similar enough in temperment and experience to Chaotic Divinity that I felt I could fit in and be useful. I figured I'd take the shot at applying to them with Wulf rather than spending the next couple of months saying "what if?".

As it turns out, I've been accepted as a candidate. I should hopefully be coming on my first trial run this Friday. Of course, I feel bad about leaving CD, which has been Wulf's home for fourteen months now. But as it stands, CD is restructuring and realigning itself, and if I had to leave, I believe a time of change and reorganisation is the best time to do it.

Back to the matter in hand!

Well, looking back over my last few posts, there's been a lot of moping, moaning and angsting about the logistics of trying to hold a raid group together, and not enough about my exploits as a hunter!

Where to begin?

Recently, as part of an experiment, I got the pieces together for a set of epic gloves with an interesting ability:

"On successful melee or ranged attack gain 8 mana and if possible drain 8 mana from the target."

Given that Wulf's mana pool is something like 4110 at best, it doesn't seem like much, but I was interested to see how they'd work out in-game. Combining it with a set of gear with some additional mana regeneration on it, I decided to put it to the test. The results thusfar have been encouraging since I can now happily grind upwards of a dozen elite dragonkin before running out of mana, which really boosts my grinding efficency.

Might see if I can get a group willing to go to Dire Maul West at some point to try and get me one of these beauties to boost my efficency further. :D

Speaking of grinding, that's pretty much all Wulf's good for atm, so I've repurposed him slightly for that. I was holding off changing his talent spec until the 1.13 pre-BC patch, but in the end weakened and went back to a 20/31/0 spec to boost my pet for grinding. Still can't solo the demons in southern Winterspring though. That said, I'm finding I have next to no downtime against the Dragonkin, and I can grind them faster and easier that the supposed cash cow that is Tyr's Hand. I'm currently about 300G short of Wulf's epic mount fund, and I'll hopefully manage that at the weekend.

CD RIP: A Retraction.

Well, given that the title and somewhat tired, resigned tone of my last entry gave folks the wrong idea, I'd like to state, for the record, that Chaotic Divinity is most certainly not dead. It's merely resting, and not doing any more 40mans.

Various circumstances meant we were haemmoraging members at a faster rate than we could recruit them. Also, the quality of applicants we were getting were fine for a group starting Molten Core, but they wouldn't have helped us get back into Blackwing Lair or beyond with much hope of success. It didn't seem to be worth recruiting another twenty people for two months of Molten Core runs, after which we'dve had to shed most of them as we slim down for the Burning Crusade's 25-man raids.

It hasn't helped that a blizzard seems to have taken out (erstwhile CD Leader) Gunvladh's server, which hosted our forums, our DKP records and our Ventrilo server. We have found an online refuge thanks to Sialilyth and the lovely folks at Adventure Lovers.

That said, CD continues, diminished, but clinging to the values that have made me stick with it to date:

"Peace, love, and pew-pew-pew!"

CD RIP.

Well, Chaotic Divinity's been caught in something of a spiral for months now. Folks leave so we can't raid. Because we can't raid, more folks leave. Worse still, some of the old-timers start eyeing the door, but don't want to be seen as turning their back on their friends here.

It all came to a head last night, when it was decided that our days as a 40-man raid group were over. We'll still do ad-hoc runs to 20-mans, but no more Molten Core, Blackwing Lair or AQ40. Folks are welcome to go try out for other raid groups for the last two months, and hopefully, we'll all reconvene when The Burning Crusade's out and we can start levelling and exploring the new content together.

I'm deeply saddened by this. After fourteen months with the group, they are, in a very real sense, my home on Azeroth. As it stands now, I have the option of either trying to find another raid group for the last couple of months, or just giving up Wulf until TBC hits. There's really not much out there for a well-geared, raid-specced Hunter other than more reputation grinding or running countless battlegrounds. Neither option is particularly appealing to me.

I could attempt to level an alt, but outside of Stormpaw, I really haven't had much success on that one. Solo-levelling is a bore and if it wasn't for my CD mates pushing me on, I probably would have abandoned Stormy a while ago. So I guess all that's left to me is spend the next two months on Moonglade levelling my Horde alt away from most of the CD folks.

More on the cancellation of Christmas.

Well certain friends like to say "I told you so", but I genuinely (if foolishly) belived that Blizzard would make The Burning Crusade available before Christmas.

What they have said is that there'll be a Content Patch before Christmas which will essentially make most of the changes to the game that will ensure compatability with the Expansion. So we get the new talents, changes to the UI and also to the way hit/crit/defense and other abilities of that nature are calculated, but we can't level past 60 or access the new content in Outland.

What this means for Hunters, essentially, is that we'll be smacked hard with the nerf bat. There will be substantial changes in the class that will only be balanced properly when we attain levels beyond 60. Aimed Shot will be changed so that it can only serve as an oppener, but we won't get skills to boost our normal damage rotation like Kill Command and Steady Shot until level 62 and 66 respectively.

That said, I'm wondering which way to go with my talents. When it looked like I'd respec at the launch of the expansion, then I was going to go for a Beastmastery Spec for levelling and five-man instances. That said, given I'll still be raiding for a month or two now before I start levelling to 70, then I wonder if a Marksmanship build might be more appropriate.

It's a tough choice, my heart says "Beastmastery" but my head tells me "Marksmanship".

Bah, and quite possibly, Humbug!

Blizzard cancelled Christmas.

Ah well, if we can pull our collective fingers out, I might still have a chance at my full T2 set before the expansion hits. :)

Ch-ch-changes.

Dear old Chaotic Divinity is a strange place atm. One of our main leaders has gone on extended hiatus, and the other has stepped back due to work and family commitments. Also, in the last few weeks, several of our best and brightest have left for various reasons. Into this vaccum, Ridley, the GM of Surprised Survivors has stepped up to try and keep things ticking over.

For my part, I'm now joint-in-charge of recruitment, attempting to filter out any potentially disruptive influences. So now, I get on average 2-3 separate whisper conversations every time I log in from potential applicants, as well as questions in the main CD chat channels, all whilst I'm trying to raid and grind. That said, I approach things in my typically surly fashion. I do everything in my power to talk potential recruits out of joining and if they still want in, I'll invite them to trial.

The raiding scene's weird atm and CD's raid attendance has been low now for weeks. Since the Burning Crusade Closed Beta started, a lot of folks have come to realise that our gear won't be worth much compared to the items we'll get in the first few levels after 60. Even the most powerful gear currently in the game will probably be superceded by more easy-to-obtain items by lvl 66-67. On one side, this is great, since it means we'll all be on a level playing field again come lvl 70, but on the other, it's taken some of the luster out of any shineys we accumulate now. Added to this, many of our more hardcore players have decided that they'd rather turn their back on the friendship they've developed with us and go take a last look at AQ40/Naxx with a different raid group. Doesn't make sense to me, but hey, they pays their cash for the game same as I do.

As it stands, there's a devoted core to CD, one that will benefit from the smaller raid instances in TBC. By the same token however, I can't shake the feeling that we're just treading water until then. Even if we could be bothered to progress, we don't currently have the raw power to do so.

Burning Crusade: Final thoughts:

Ok, and finally, after all that, we come to my overall thoughts on The Burning Crusade changes. I love them.

They've really worked hard to give each of the talent trees their own twist. Beastmasters work closely with their pets, needing a good range of stats and solid micro-management skills to get the most out of thier severely boosted pet. Marksmen can focus soley on getting the most Attack Power and Intellect Possible, relying on a big slow ranged weapon to get big, high-damage shots. Survivalists on the other hand, need to focus in Agility, Stamina and Crit Chance, since their bag of tricks often brings them close to the enemy, a faster ranged weapon will help them activate their special abilities more often, and make them an asset in both PVP and in raids.

As for Wulf, well there's two ways I can take him, depending on the as-yet unreleased information about pets. If pets look like they'll become viable in the endgame, then I'll spec him like this and make him a Beastmaster like he was in his pre-raiding days. If it turns out that pets still don't scale correctly, then I'll adapt his current Marksman build into something like this.

Whichever way I go, the new spells and changes have convinced me that Hunters will have a role in the endgame. Not only will we have damage that will scale properly and make gear upgrades meaningful, but we have our role as pullers cemented by the Misdirection spell. Misdirection will let us open fire early on a target and then pass the aggro our first three shots do straight onto the tank without the need for a clumsy Taunt/Feign Death handoff. It also means we can direct the attention of trash mobs onto the mouthy Mage who's been bugging us, if we were so inclined! ;)

Now all I need is a final word from Blizzard on our pets in TBC and I'll be sound as a pound.

The Burning Crusade Hunter Changes Part 3: Survival Talents.

My least favourite tree, I have to say. I've tried playing with a Survival spec a few times, but I've never found it suited my playing style.

Monster Slaying and Humanoid Slaying: Good damage versus certain types of monsters. Not deal makers or breakers, but fun in and of themselves.

Deflection: Up to 5% added to your chance to parry melee attacks. Great if you're PVPing, or if you end up having to be closer to a mob for longer than you expected, but nothing I've ever wanted for Wulf.

Entrapment: This has been a big part of Wulf's current arsenal, but looking at specs post-expansion, it's not one I think he'll be taking. Still it's had it's cost reduced from five talent points to three.

Savage Strikes: Something else Wulf has used extensively in the past, but not something I see him picking up in the expansion.

Improved Wingclip: A useful talent in PVP, it'b be great for raids if most mobs weren't immune. Still, like Entrapment, it's getting a lot cheaperand alot more effective in TBC.

Hawkeye: This used to be in the third tier of the Marksmanship tree, requiring thirteen points to max out, which most Hunters didn't notice in amongst buying Lethal Shots, Aimed Shot and Mortal Shots. Now it's a second tier Survival Talent, requiring me to spend eight talent points on the uninspiring low-end of the Survival Tree to max it out. It's a shame because the extra six yards is almost vital for raiding.

Clever Traps: Great talent for boosting the effectiveness of your traps. Very useful in PVP, but the question of traps usefulness in PVE is still on the board.

Survivalist: You can't argue with +10% health if you're going this far down the Survival Tree, it's amazing.

Deterrance: The Panic Button. This boosts your dodge and parry chance incredibly for a limited amount of time. It can keep you alive when you get unexpectedly attacked at short range.

Trap Mastery: Reduced trap resist chance. Never seen a trap resisted, so I don't know what use this is.

Sure Footed: Gives +3% to hit and +15% chance to resist movement-imparing effects. Useful talent in PVP, or in PVE until the Hunter gets around +9% hit chance from his gear.

Improved Feign Death: Something I've wished Wulf had the spare points for time and time again. Feign Death is a massive part of the Hunter classes viability atm, and having it resisted is the worst thing that can happen.

Survival Instincts: Interesting new talent, reducing any incoming damage by 4%. It'll help keep a Hunter alive longer, I imagine.

Killer Instincts: No reason not to take +3% crit chance if you're this far down the survival tree. It'll boost the chance to get your other abilities later on.

Counterattack: Lets you immobilise a target after a successful Parry. Great escape move in PVP, not sure of the useability in PVE.

Resourcefulness: Nice mana efficency talent, and the reduced cooldown on traps is also good.

Lightning Reflexes: This used to be the reason to spec survival. Since they're reducing the overall effectiveness of Agility for our DPS, I'm not sure how much use an extra 15% will be. Still it's a must for PVPers thanks to the extra dodge and crit chance it gives.

Thrill of the Hunt: Your crits return 40% of the mana cost of the shot used. This will allow the Survival Hunter to survive happily on a smaller mana pool than his Beastmaster and Marksman peers.

Wyvern Sting: This talent's getting a big buff in the expansion, since it can now be used in combat. Taking an enemy out of the fight for 12 Seconds can be a life saver in a bad pull.

Expose Weakness: A 30% chance for your crits to buff all attackers against that target with attack power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Agility. Given Survival Hunters often have over 600 Agility, this will be a nice group buff, balanced by it's unpredictability.

Master Tactician: A 6% chance per hit to gain +10% crit chance for 10 secs. Not that amazing given it's place in the tree, but it should see good results with a fast ranged weapon.

Readiness: Instantly resets the cooldown of all Hunter abilities. This is pretty sick for those who are willing to go that deep in Survival. All in all though, I'm of the mind that Survival is the weakest of the trees. Possibly because it seems to be designed with PVP in mind.

The Burning Crusade Hunter Changes Part 2: Marksmanship Talents.

Improved Concussive Shot: Whilst it's undoubtedly a useful talent if you PVP, it's not one I've seen a lot of use for with Wulf, and it's not one I'll be picking up post-expansion,

Lethal Shots: This has been moved down to a first-tier talent, and it's the bread and butter of every Hunter: +5% crit chance with ranged weapons. Indespensable.

Improved Hunter's Mark: Still as dissapointing in TBC as it is now. Still, it'll probably be the place I put Wulf's spare talent points in if I go down the Marksmanship route.

Efficency: Now a second-tier talent since swapping places with Lethal Shots. Still utterly indespensible for any Hunter who regularly engages in long, drawn-out fights.

Go For The Throat: Gives your pet 50% of it's Focus back when you score a critical hit. I fully intend to take advantage of this if Wulf ends up a Beastmastery Spec.

Improved Arcane Shot: With the changes in Arcane Shot, this talent becomes a better investment. Still not one I'm going to bother with though.

Aimed Shot: Currently an indispensable part of any Hunter's arsenal. It's going to be repurposed into more of an opening shot in the Expansion, but I'll probably get it, mainly because it opens up Mortal Shots.

Rapid Killing: Worth it just for reducing the cooldown of Rapid Fire from 5 minutes to 3. There's also a nice damage bonus that'll help in solo grinding.

Improved Stings: Finally a Sting talent worth getting! That said, I haven't yet found the points in any test build to include it, so it possibly isn't *that* worthwhile...

Mortal Shots: This gives +30% damage to all our critical strikes. It used to be indispensable, but some of the builds I'm playing with post-expansion for Wulf don't use it.

Concussive Barrage: Hmmm... 6% chance of your autoshots dazing the target for 4 seconds. This is potentially interesting when combined with the new Steady Shot spell. Of course it's usefulness to Wulf depends how many mobs can be dazed in raid instances.

Scatter Shot: Useful now, unchanged in the expansion. Our last line of defense if someone get's too close for comfort.

Barrage: A major part of Wulf's current arsenal. I see no reason not to include it if he goes for a Marksmanship Spec.

Combat Expertise: This is nice, giving a +4% bonus to Agility, Intellect and Stamina (a Hunter's main stats).

Ranged Weapon Specialisation: Like Barrage, this is an indispensable talent that will retain it's utility in TBC.

Careful Aim: This is sweet! A Hunter gets to add 45% of his Intellect to his Ranged Attack Power. That's easily another 100+ Attack Power.

Trueshot Aura: Unchanged, and one of the nicest group buffs out there. That said, I'm glad both the Beastmastery and Survival trees got group buffs as well, since that gives the Hunter who chooses to specialise elsewhere the ability to buff their group.

Improved Barrage: This is amazing, simply amazing. If you have Barrage, there's no reason not to get this as well.

Master Marksman: An extra 10% Ranged Attack Power on top of everything else makes Marksmanship Hunters undisputed kings of ranged DPS.

Silencing Shot: Interesting final talent. Useful in PVP, not sure of it's PVE use yet.

The Burning Crusade Hunter Changes Part 1: Beastmastery Talents.

Well there was a lot changed in the new Hunter Talents, so I'm going to cover it in multiple posts. First up, I'll look at the changes to the Beastmastery Tree, which deals with a Hunters realtionship with his pet.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk: In it's current form, it's one of the staples of Wulf's Damage-dealing ability. It's not been nerfed so much as altered. Rather than the old version that gave your shots a 5% chance to trigger a 30% speed increase, the new version gives a 10% chance to trigger a 15% speed increase. It's still a nice talent, but I imagine that unless I take a Marksman-oriented build, I'll be spending a lot of time with the new Aspect of the Viper on, which means my use of this talent will be limited.

Endurance Training: Interesting change in this talent. As well as giving your pet an additional 10% health, it now gives the Hunter himself an additional 5% health. Whilst this doesn't directly affect Wulf's damage output, the additional 250 or so health will keep him in the game a bit longer when things get nasty.

Focussed Fire: An extra 2% damage when the Hunter's pet is active is a great bonus, not to mention the +20% crit chance on the new Kill Command ability. This is a must really for a minimal investment in BM.

Improved Aspect of the Monkey: No real change there, and not a talent Wulf has ever invested in.

Thick Hide: Like Endurance Training, this now shares a buff with the Hunter. Pets get +20% armour, Hunters get +10%. Nice!

Improved Revive Pet: This is a nice grinding talent, since it saves you time and mana when your pet dies. It's something I'd invest spare talent points in, but I wouldn't make it a feature of the build.

Pathfinding: Bonuses to skills I rarely use in any situation where it's vital for me to have another 8% speed. I'll pass.

Bestial Swiftness: Every time I watch Wulf's pet walk to the next mob whilst grinding, I wish I had this talent. That said, it's use is situational, and like Improved Revive Pet, I wouldn't make it a main feature of the build.

Unleashed Fury: Unchanged since 1.9/1.10, but then again, +20% pet damage is not to be sniffed at.

Improved Mend Pet: Useful for solo play, and it saves healer mana in instances. Wulf'll probably take it if I take him this far down Beastmastery.

Ferocity: Like Unleashed Fury, an unchanged staple of the BM tree. It gives a flat +10% crit chance and opens the door to Frenzy.

Spirit Bond: I've sneered at this talent in the past, but considering Wulf can reach around 6K health when buffed, this offers 120 health to him and his pet every 10 secs. It's a nice top-up and something that once again reduces downtime whilst grinding in the wilderness.

Intimidation: A good move to use when your pet loses aggro on a mob, or when another player tries to attack you. Also opens the doorway to the higher-end BM talents, and as a result is essential.

Bestial Discipline: I used to swear by this talent back when Wulf was BM-specced before. Since I was using a Cat with both Claw and Bite, the talent let me keep up a stupid stream of damage by ensuring it always had enough Focus to use all it's abilities. However, Go For The Throat in the Marksmanship Tree renders this kinda useless for me.

Frenzy: Your pet's critical Strikes will cause it to increase it's attack speed by 30%. This is beyond nasty. When Wulf was a Beastmaster before, he could keep this buff on his cat almost constantly.

Animal Handler: Interesting talent, if only for the +hit it offers the pet, which will help it keep up a steady stream of damage on Raid-level targets.

Ferocious Inspiration: This excited me when I heard about it. It causes your pet's critical strikes to boost party damage by 6% for 10 secs. At last, the BM Hunter gets the ability to support the raid and a reason to send the pet into combat.

Bestial Wrath: The reason all other PVPing classes think BM hunters are cheap. For 18 seconds, your pet cannot be feared, trapped, stunned or otherwise stopped, and deals 50% extra damage.

Catlike Reflexes: Another "two-in-one" talent: +9% Dodge for the Pet, +3% Dodge for the Hunter. If I had spare points, I'd definatley invest in this to help my pet's survivability.

Serpent's Swiftness: This is beyond awesome. Both Pet and Hunter gain +20% attack speed; actually giving the BM Hunter some decent Damage-dealing ability, and boosting his pet to levels of sickness previously unimagined. (+50% speed in Frenzy, thank you very much).

The Beast Within: The final talent and it's a doozy. When the pet enters Bestial Wrath, the Hunter does as well. He is similarly immune to any form of Crowd Control, but "only" does an additional 30% damage.

Update on an update...

Well the new Hunter talents and spells for the forthcoming expansion are finally with us, along with some additional information on changes. Suffice to say I'm pleased with them and I shall be continuing to play Wulf post-expansion. :)

I'll do a more detailed brainfart and speak of other news later on.

Update for update's sake.

Well it's been a trying week for CD. Our two leaders have had work and health issues which have seen them cut back on their ability to lead as effectively, and two of our best Main Tanks have left CD for other raid groups over in a cloud of burn-out, deception and ego-driven self-flagellation. This has basically halted any and all progress in AQ40 and made Blackwing Lair much harder work than we're used to.

On the plus side, another old MT returned from a break, and has quickly been brought up to speed on tactics. We were able to get Chromaggus down this week, even if we didn't get anything else done.

In other news, my beloved guild, Surprised Survivors, has undergone a rejuvenation in the last fortnight or so. Some old members returned from other guilds/semi-retirement and the guild chat is once again a place of joy, laughter and crude innuendo.

Finally, it seems that the wait will soon be over, and by this time next week, the Hunter talents from the Burning Crusade expansion will be released. Expect my commentary, thoughts and decision wether or not to abandon Wulf to follow in due course. :)

On Altoholism...

Over the last few weeks I've been wrestling between my desire to do something different than just the "Monkey DPS" of a raiding Hunter and my compulsion to help my friends in CD during a time when most of our regular Hunters are becoming, well, less regular. Ideally I'd like to be able to play an alternative character whilst having the ability to assist CD in its progress on an ad-hoc basis.

Sadly, much as I love playing Stormpaw, he doesn't allow me to do this, since he's not only on a different faction, but a different server to CD. Earthen Ring is a flakey piece of crap as servers go, and there's always massive queues at peak raiding times. Even if I was able to recieve word that Wulf was needed, transferring from Storm to him would involve sitting in a server queue for anything up to fifteen minutes. Not ideal for me or for CD.

So obviously, I needed an Alliance alt on Earthen Ring. I first tought about my Night Elf priest, Delanthir, who is currently sitting at lvl 25 in Stormwind disenchanting whatever goods I send his way and selling the proceeds to fund Wulf's raiding. I pretty much dismissed that idea because, powerful as a Shadow Priest can be, I hated solo-levelling one. They have neither the survivability or burst damage to take down powerful mobs solo, particularly if other mobs add. As with most casters, as soon as they run out of mana, they're dead.

I briefly considered another Druid, but I dismissed it for two reasons:

1. The Night Elf starting zone is one of the dullest and most isolated zones in the game. The only way to get to the other Alliance zones is a long run through a level 20+ zone which manages to combine the worst aspects of being dangerous and interminably dull.

2. I really wanted to try a different play style.

In the end, I settled on the one healing class I hadn't tried and rolled a Human Paladin called Greysun*. I started him last night and got him up to level six before Wulf was called in to take down the Brother/Sister team of Onyxia and Nefarian. Paladins seem to be pretty fun, at the moment, and in raids, their role is the polar opposite of the Hunter. Whilst the Hunter is a ranged damage class, all DPS and little utility, Paladins are a melee support class, all utility and little DPS. :)

*I originally wanted to call him "Grayson" in a tacet reference to Dick Grayson, one of my favourite comic book characters. Grayson was taken or forbidden however, so I settled for the phonetic equivalent. I am geek, hear me roar!

A Moo-ving Tale...

Ok, for this post I'm not going to talk about our titular hero and his adventures in Huntardom. Mainly because I've really scaled back my time playing Wulf recently. I'm recharging my enthusiasm for raiding before I launch myself back into it with hopefully renewed Gusto.

So instead, I've been taking the time to level Stormpaw, my Tauren Druid:



Since moving him to Moonglade, where I've had the pleasure of playing with some of my old friends from CD. I've also managed to get him up from a rather humble level 19 to his current level 38, which is a hitherto unprecedented feat for an alt of mine. Having friends to play with regularly helps, as I quickly tire of the solo game and normally give up on alts by their mid-20s at the latest.

The Druid playing style is pleasingly varied as well compared to the rather dull "send in your pet and hit autoshot" play of the Hunter. In his normal form, Storm can cast spells to damage opponents or heal himself and his friends. He can then shapechange into a Bear where he's able to absorb a lot of damage, and has abilities that allow him to hold off a large group of opponents for a while (assuming there's someone there to heal him). He can also change into a cat where he is able to sneak around and deal a lot of damage at close range, but he lacks some basic survivability. Most of the time when he's soloing, Stormpaw stays in Cat, sneaking up to his target, doing a lot of damage and then repeating. If he get's too badly hurt, he can quickly switch to caster form, heal himself and then move onto the next target.

When grouped with my friends (Shaman, Priest and Mage normally), I'm usually able to stay in Cat Form and help the group take down targets quickly. However, sometimes we get extra enemies adding and our priest's healing isn't sufficent to keep everyone alive. At that point, it's normally a good idea for Storm to switch to caster and help out. It normally works fine, but given that Storm's normal gear is focussed around his physical damage stats (Strength and Agility), it tends to leave him without much mana. To this end (and with the help of a couple of nice quest rewards), I've started putting together a hybrid set of gear. This sacrifices some of his damage-dealing ability for more Stamina (for Health), Intellect (for Mana) and Spirit (for faster Mana recovery). This second set of gear will probably be what I'll wear for most of Storm's group playing, since it gives him more versatility. The downside is that he has to wear what the game refers to as a "kilt":



Now I'm Scottish, and I know kilts, if only because I make a point of refusing to wear one. That, my friends, is a skirt, not a kilt!

What am I grinding for again?

Wa-hey, another rant. This time it's about armour, and more specifically the sets of armour a Hunter can obtain going through the various raid instances.

We'll start with my favourite: Giantstalker. Giantstalker armour peices were some of the first pieces of Epic-level gear Wulf ever got, and they were a massive upgrade to the armour Wulf wore up to that point. The set bonuses were kinda questionable, however. If you wore three peices, you could heal your pet better. Not that big a deal, but hey, I'm getting nice stats from all this stuff anyway, so who cares. Then at five pieces, we get a buff to your pet's stamina and resistances. OK, once again, not that big a deal since my pet's normally out of harms way, but like the three-piece, it helps me when I'm grinding. Finally, we get to the eight-piece, and we get the real money shot: +15% damage to my Multi-Shot and Volley skills. Finally, a bonus that actually buffs my damage, and it only took me eight months of grinding the place to get it.

Meanwhile, I've started collecting Dragonstalker armour as well, since that's the next big upgrade. But wait, the stats aren't that much better than Giantstalker, ah well, the bonuses might compensate. Three piece is +20% Ranged Attack Power to my Aspect of The Hawk buff. Doesn't sound bad, but it only really equates to 1 extra Damage Per Second, as opposed to the approximately 7 DPS buff my 8pc Gianstalker gives me. Wonder which one I'll be wearing? Then the five-piece bonus which is a buffed version of the Giantstalker five-piece, nice, but once again, not enough to break up my five-piece. Finally we get to the eight piece and again, we get the good buff: A chance to boost the Ranged Attack Power of the entire group by 450 (32 DPS) for 7 seconds. Shame I have to get a drop from Ragnaros, one from Onyxia and then six from Blackwing Lair to get it. Given the fact that we've had five sets of the leggings drop in six months of Ragnaros kills makes it unlikely I'll ever complete that set.

The we get onto Ahn'Qiraj and take a look at the set there. It's only a five-piece this time, so you can keep that oh-so-uber three-piece set bonus from Dragonstalker if you wish. Stats are nice as well, no +hit but I've got that covered. Shame about the dodgy spell damage on it. The we get to the set bonuses. The three piece reduces the cost of my Arcane Shot (which only gets used in kiting or PVP) by 10% (around 20 mana saved, woo!), and again the full set bonus is utterly uber (Rapid Fire every 3 minutes rather than 5, gimme!).

And this is my problem. The only truly worthwhile/useful set bonuses from the Hunter sets from MC-AQ40 are the end bonuses. I don't expect the lower tier bonuses to be as useful, but it would be nice if there was a genuine advantage to wearing anything less than the full set.

Amusingly enough though, the set from Naxxramas reverses this trend. In the Naxx set, the two,four, and six-piece bonuses are all pretty respectable, but the eight-piece one's a joke.

What's prompted this post is CD's retiral of MC from our regular raids to focus on AQ40. With that gone, I'll never manage to get my 8-pc Dragonstalker set (although I might just get the shoulders for coolness and wear five pieces of DS). As for the AQ set, it's a sad joke before the 5-pc bonus. So it looks like I'll be sticking with 8/8 GS until the expansion comes and we kiss goodbye to BWL and Naxx in favour of what the lvl 70 raidholes have to offer. If Blizzard can be bothered to fix the Hunter class by then.

On Gratuity.

So tonight, we clear BWL from Ebonroc to Nefarian. Excellent run, no wipes and less than a dozen deaths all the way through. Ebonroc also dropped his rather nice Drake Fang Talisman for the second time. This time, I was the winning bidder and I now wear it proudly. However, in stark contrast to my earlier post, I now have a completely gratuitous +16 to hit in my normal gear. (Anything above +9 to hit isn't nessesary for ranged damage against a raid-level target).

The only real +hit I can afford to lose however is from my trusty old Band of Accuria, which will be recieving an upgrade when I can acquire a Circle of Applied Force, or some other equally nice ring. Pretty much everything else is inherant to whatever item I'd place in those slots (like my Giantstalker armour set and Onyxia Tooth Necklace) or from talents I don't want to lose, since I'll need them in cases when I'm not wearing as much +Hit gear (such as when I have my Nature Resistance gear on)

Of chips and yellow water...

A curious phenomenon I've become aware of over the last few days is the curious need people on the internet need to metaphorically "piss in the chips" of their peers. I was first struck by this when, after putting up my last post to thank Cd for helping me acquire an item, a Hunter from a guild further into Ahn'Qiraj left the following comment:

"Not to rain on your parade, but Hunters should NEVER be wearing NR for Huhuran. There are only 15 people that need to have huge NR number in this fight, usually the rogues, warriors, shamans i believe. Hunters main part in this fight is to tranq, and then once she hits 30%, go absolute BALLS OUT dps. You don't want to be wearing NR when 30% hits, as you will never kill her due to lack of DPS.

Truthfully, 75% of the huhuran fights, you will never take damage in."

Now to answer him here and now. First of all, as should be evident by my many screen shots, Wulf is a Night Elf, and is therefore part of an Alliance raidgroup. This means that we don't have Shamans to fall back on, and our Paladins will most likely be doing a little thing called "Cleansing" throughout the fight. Therefore, assuming a "balanced" raid with five of each class, then the fifteen should be made up of Warriors, Rogues and Hunters (who can wear a large variety of armour types and therefore have an easier time maxing out their Nature Resistance).

Secondly, whilst I appreciate you've found a tactic that works for you, it's not nessesarily a road we'll go down with that fight. From a raid perspective, I'd rather take the hit to my own DPS and let the Mages and Warlocks (who have abilities that actually help boost each others DPS) worry about the massive burst damage needed at 20%.

The bigger issue however, is why do we (and I've been guilty of this myself on occasion) feel the need to belittle the achievements of others simply because it's not the route we ourselves would have chosen? Are we genuinely that insecure in our knowledge that we can't envisage any way other than our own?

Now, before you believe I'm picking unnecessarily on you Aeigelus, this isn't something I see restricted to your input. To Hunters claiming constantly we're useless in Naxx, to people sniping about gear. A new Hunter can't even ask for advice on what to do with their newly-ground Fire Resistance enchant or for advice on what to do on their first Molten Core run without the veterans getting into an off-topic discussion about how much Fire Resistance gear is actually needed in Blackwing Lair. Drives me to distraction sometimes, it really does. :) (I should point out that most of the time, TKAsomething.com's a brilliant site for any Hunter player, and these examples are isolated incidents.)

In other news, CD's made some progress into Ahn'Qiraj. We've got the first boss down now and we've made about half-a-dozen attempts at Battleguard Satura, but it's proving a difficult fight to get under control. Then again, it wasn't that long ago, I said the same thing about Nefarian and we got him in the end.

The hardest thing for me is keeping up interest in the place. I love Molten Core and Blackwing Lair to bits, and I can't wait to start Naxx, but Ahn'Qiraj just bugs me (pun unintentional). The look and design of the place just doesn't compell me or capture my imagination in the same way as the other instances.

I love CD!

Now we almost have BWL on farm status, I've been looking more and more into preparing Wulf for the 40-man An'Quiraj instance, which will prove to be CD's next challenge. To this end, I've started getting a decent set of Nature Resistance gear together for him, however, the problem I forsee is that the third boss (the first to require major Nature Resitance) also requires Hunters to provide Tranquilising Shot to cancel her frenzies. Given that there's next to no Nature Resistance that offers +to hit, this could prove to be a headache (missed Tranq Shot = Dead Tank = Wipe). I've mitigated this problem partially by taking a talent in the Survival Tree which gives me +3% to hit, but this still only leaves me at +5% to hit in my NR gear. To this end, I've decided to get a new Scope for Wulf's Crossbow which will give it +3 to hit. The only problem is that the list of components is intimidating to say the least:

2x Lava Core
2x Essence of Earth
4x Delicate Arcanite Converter (each converter requires 1x Arcanite Bar and 1x Ironweb Spider Silk)
6x Dark Iron Bar
1x Thorium Tube

Easily a few hundred Gold's worth of materials there. So, steeling myself to grinding most of the materials solo, I put up this post on the Cd forums Last Thursday asking for a couple of the difficult/impossible to grind/buy materials from the group's bank.

As you can see, almost immediately, folks offerred to grind the items for me. By Sunday, the people of CD had provided most of the items free of charge (well except for an applicant Rogue who charged me less than half the going rate for an Arcanite Bar). Frankly I was, and still am, shocked and humbled by folks generosity. All I need to do is wait for the CD banker to get back online and I'll get the Lava Cores needed to make it. So once again, I would like to thank the following:

*Svetle for proving 6 Dark Iron Bars, a Thorium tube and 4x Ironweb Spider Silk for the Delicate Arcanite Converters
*Niloc for providing the Thorium Bars and 2 Arcane Crystals for the DACs
*Creyldor for providing 2 Essence of Earth and transmuting one Arcanite for me.
*Hurby for selling me one Arcanite Bar at a reasonable price
*Tibarin/Betty for providing me with the last Arcane Crystal and doing the Transmute to boot.
*Hadji for performing an Arcanite Transmute.
*And Demaz for agreeing to log in each morning to check wether or not I've sent him the bits to make it yet.

Bye-Bye DPS...

So after BWL yesterday, I also respecced for the umpteenth million time. (Sidenote: My name's Paul and I am a respec addict. I'dve probably been able to afford two separate Epic mounts if I didn't spend all my gold on a new Talent Spec every few weeks.)

My most recent spec was an optimised damage spec which I heard about from Hunters doing Naxxaramas. By all accounts the only Damage-dealing talents in the shallow end of the Survival tree didn't apply in there or in AQ40 (a distinct lack of Humanoids, Dragonkin, Giants and Beasts in either). Their response was to reinvest points that they'd normally put in the Survival tree into Beastmastery, which made your pet tougher and able to do more damage. On paper, it seemed to be a good idea, but in practise, ten months of raiding have taught me not to send my pet into combat, and that's a hard habit to break. I'm too used to having my Wolf beside me in raids providing a useful buff to my ranged damage.

Given reports on Hunter DPS in Naxxaramas, and my own experiences that even our best-geared Hunters are being left behind in the DPS stakes as our Rogues, Warriors and offensive casters start to get access to BWL and later-level gear, I've decided to bow out of the damage race.

Don't worry, I'm not rolling a Paladin *grin*, but I've decided to respec to a 0/21/30 build that's focussed around having a bit more utility in raids than just "straight" DPS. This build is focussed around Survival in raids. Survivalist, Deterrance and Improved Feign Death will help me get out of sticky situations (like pulling) until the tanks and healers can get mobs off me. Survivalist also means I can take a couple more hits before showing up on the Healer's Emergency Monitors, giving me time to get the mob off me, then bandage, before I waste their mana. Surefooted also means I can sacrifice some of my +hit gear for resistance gear in certain fights.

I also went for both the trap talents, since they've proved pretty useful in Razorgore and Nefarian in Blackwing Lair and on the Core Packs in Molten Core. Improved Feign Death will also improve my chances of laying a trap in Combat.

And of course we have Killer Instinct and Lightning Reflexes to compensate for the loss of DPS from MM, giving me about 140 attack power and just over 4% crit chance in my normal raiding gear. That said, losing Improved Aspect of the Hawk, Barrage, Ranged Weapon Specialisation, and Trueshot Aura hurts my DPS badly (I'm still about 5 DPS down even with another Hunter's Trueshot Aura buffing me).

Farm Status?

Well, yesterday we went to BWL and cleared from Ebonroc to Nefarian. What's more amazing is that we did it with only one wipe (a three-hunter Tranquilising Shot rotation on Flamegor is tighter than we're used to, and a druid aggroing him into the group at the start didn't help). Annoyingly Ebonroc dropped the trinket I was after, but I had nothing like enough DKP to win it. Ah well, next time!

The Chromaggus and Nefarian fights are still the most rewarding and fun fights in the game for me. And the fact we pulled them both off flawlessly on our fifth (Chromaggus) and third (Neffy) kills amazes me. It won't be much longer until we have BWL down to a one-night farm status. :D

I went to level Stormpaw for a bit after BWL, and tried to get back for AQ40 in the evening. Sadly, Earthen Ring had a 380+ queue that I couldn't be bothered wading through, so I went back to Moonglade and got him to lvl 29! :D

Naxxaramas: The Death of the Hunter Class.

(Copied from a rant I made on the Cd forums.)

This thread fucking depressed the shit out of me. It gave me flashbacks to forums before the 1.7 "Hunter love" patch again.

Cut through the whining and beating of breasts and at the core, there seems to be a very real problem: Our DPS just doesn't scale with the other classes past BWL level. And when you get down to it, apart from the tacked-on Tranq Shot fights, we're here for our DPS, which is becoming quickly obsolete. Therefore, why take a Hunter over a Rogue, Mage or 'Lock? Hell, even those DPS warriors in CD who haven't already out-DPSed us will be doing so soon.

Which is a fair point, most of the in-game ranged weapons were designed under assumptions that were changed in the 1.10 patch. The only ranged weapon in the game that offers a decent upgrade to a Ashjre'thul/Huhuran's Stinger-equipped Hunter drops from the last boss in the Naxxaramas! Imagine a meleer getting a nice weapon from Chromaggus and then finding out there's nothing more worthwhile for them in the following two instances.

Guess I should get back to levelling my alt before I find myself doomed to obsolecence. :(

New Signature.

Quick shout out to Valyir again for hooking me up with an amazing signature to celebrate my shiney new Crossbow of Imba Doom!

On smiting.

Well last night, Chaotic Divinity went up against Chromaggus in Blackwing Lair. It was our first time trying him with his Time Lapse breath, and despite reports from other Raid Groups of the difficulty of this particular iteration, we were able to take him down quite easily. This was only our fourth Chrommy kill, so imagine our Hunters surprise and delight when he dropped his fabled Crossbow of Smiting, an impossibly cool-looking ranged weapon that I've wanted for some time. Luckily then, I was able to win it, thanks to one of the Hunters with more DKP passing for me (I reaped the Karma for fitting out the fellow with full Black Dragonscale armour at no cost).

It looks so cool!





And it kicks like a mule to boot! With that in my grasp we went on to take down Nefarian on our first try with only half-a-dozen deaths. Not bad at all for our second Neffy kill. I also fell in love with a new mod which managed to prevent my new precious from suffering the ill effects of Nefarian's class calls.

The least said about the clean-up run to MC afterwards, the better. I'm really tempted to kick future MC runs in the head and concentrate on levelling Stormpaw during them. There are a couple of items I'd still like from MC, but nothing that's worth the constant grind.

Oh, and I should mention that I've changed my talent spec (again!). I've now invested heavily in the Beastmastery tree, which means my Wolf can actually survive being used to pull mobs and can also hold aggro a lot better when grinding Dragonkin.

On Missed Downings...

I don't normally discuss the demon that is RL on here, but last night I went out to see some bands and drink beer.

Today I'm hungover, my ears are still ringing, and I missed CD's First Nefarion Kill.

Congrats guys!

Tidings...

It's been about three weeks since I touched this thing. What's been going on since then?

*I blew most of Wulf's carefully horded DKP on the first Crown of Destruction to ever drop for CD in five months of Raggy kills. And then I proceeded to dump an Arcanum of Resilience on it and use it only as a Fire Resistance helm. (My full Gianstalker is still the best for normal DPS purposes).
*Chaotic Divinity got Nefarion down to 5% last night. We've got the fight incredibly stable up to the transition from phase 2-3 (when we're zerged by the skeletons of everything we killed in phase 1). With a bit more practise, he's going down! The most frustrating thing is the horrific lagspikes that ruined two otherwise promising attempts at him. Earthen Ring really needs a hardware upgrade pronto!
*I've realised I have nothing I want to do with Wulf outside of raiding whatsoever. Rep grinding quests really have no further interest for me, and Dragonscale farming has stopped being fun due to the fact that most of the best spawn points have 2-3 Goldfarming bots grinding them constantly.
*I moved Stormpaw from Earthen Ring to Moonglade, where I'm levelling him in-between raids with a few ex-CDers. Having a lag and queue-free server feels more of a luxury than it should be right now.
*Finally, I set up a new UI for Wulf last night, which is really, really, Purdy.



Kudos to the maker.

Finally!

Well, after weeks of grinding Molten Core for it, it's finally happened... Wulf has the Giantstalker's Helmet and the full set bonus. And I can now begin saving all my DKP for Ashjre'thul!!!



I'd like to thank all the CD Hunters present. Although I was wiling to sink all my DKP into this last peice, they were kind enough to all pass and let me get it for minimum bid. :D

Of Balance and Restoration.

Well, given my recent burnout from endgame raiding, and the departure of yet another dear friend from Chaotic Divinity, I decided to take a break from Wulf. In his place I started work on one of my alt characters, a Tauren Druid called Stormpaw:



The Druid levelling experience is quite different to my experiences with Hunters. They don't have the damage output of a Hunter that knows what he's doing, so more often than not they end up having to outlast an opponent with healing, or, where possible, by taking on the form of a big bloody bear:



(Don't ask me why Stormpaw has only one horn, but his bear form has two, blame Blizzard's crappy modelling.)

It's a very different style of play, one that I'm still learning. Funnily enough, it feels kinda "lonely" not to have a pet at my side when I'm questing solo, but the class itself provides new challenges.

Healing's tricky for a Druid. Most of our powerful spells have a 2-3 second casting time on them (which becomes even longer if you're being hit), and that's a long time in a boss fight. If you're the only healer in the group, you're having to constantly guess who's likely to need healing and direct your heals around that. They're also pretty mana-intensive, and I'm usually running out of mana in an extended fight if I try and cross heal a group. That said, as long as I load up on the +Int gear, I should be fine.

The other side if the coin is tanking. In Bear form, Stormpaw can happily substitute for a warrior, but I'm still struggling to get to grips with handling multiple mobs and keeping them from attacking the casters.

PVP's pretty fun as well, got dragged into Warsong Gulch by a mate yesterday. Moonfire and Entangling Roots really help with taking out enemy flag carriers, and Storm's no slouch in melee range either. I managed 95 HKs in one game and got the winning flag cap.

I'm not about to give up Wulf right now, but I'm enjoying this break and seeing the game from a different perspective.

Burnout.

Well we didn't manage to down Nefarian on Monday or Tuesday. Because of delays, technical difficulties and no-shows we didn't even manage to get a stable tactic on the go for phase one. This one's going to require a bit more work, assuming we can get past Chromaggus as easily next time (I suspect we were lucky with the random breath attacks he had first time).

But I probably won't be there to see it. The burnout I've alluded to in some of my earlier posts has taken firm hold, and I need a break from raiding 4-5 nights a week. Apart from anything else, in RL, my band is preparing a mini tour of England in early August and I could use the practise time. So effective from Sunday, I'm taking a break from raiding until mid-August. I'm gonna take some time to grind with Wulf, maybe level a new pet, do some PVP, or level my oft-neglected Priest alt.

More downing!

Blackwing Lair is an instance that has, on more than one occasion, threatened to break Chaotic Divinity. Since we entered there back in March, every progress has come on the back of a lot of wipes, which understandably drain's the groups enthusiasm for the place. Our normal progress to date has been to take down the first 2-3 bosses on the first night, then spend the rest of the week wiping against the next two. Not so this week.

On Friday we entered BWL and took on Firemaw, the fourth boss (we'd killed the first three on a great run on Wednesday). He went down on the second try, so we started clearing the lab packs on the way to the next boss, Ebonroc. The Laboratory packs are normally tricky pulls for us, but I suggested we use my pet to pull the group down to a safe area to fight them. It worked great, and a group of trash mobs that can normally wipe a raid went down with minimal casualties. Before long at all, we were stood before Ebonroc. And to our suprise, he went down first try! We then faced off against the sixth boss, Flamegor, who also went down first time!

From this point on we were into uncharted territory, so we killed the few trah mobs between Flamegor and the seventh boss Chromaggus, gave him an experimental try and called it a night.

Tonight was to be our first serious attempt, and it would not be an understatement to say we were daunted. We'd heard of raid groups spending weeks learning Chromaggus, and I feared this would prove another stumbling block. Not so! In the end, it took about nine attempts and four hours to finally get him down, but down he went:



Which meant we were finally able to take our first look at the eighth and final boss of BWL: Nefarian.



Doesn't look like much, but he promises to be the greatest challenge we've faced to date. Still we've got tomorrow and Tuesday to work on him before the server resets and we have to do the whole thing all over again!

Queer Eye For The Straight Huntar...

So as I promised in my last post, pictures.

This is Wulf in the hybrid gear as of last post:



Pretty ugly, althought I'll admit the Dragonstalker helm looks better from the front than it does when I'm playing Wulf. We can deal with some of the Uglyness by clicking the "hide helm" option however:



That said, at the weekend, I decided to change talent spec. My new spec will probably see me kiss goodbye to my slot in the top ten damage dealers, but it offers me a lot of fun options for PVP and the few times I have to get close to the mob I'm fighting. However the spec really requires me to focus on items that give me solid bonuses to my agility. To this end, I've removed the Zandalar items and replaced them with Gianstalker again, so now I look like this:



Which I find infintely preferrable. Of course, if I had my way, I'd have Wulf wander around like this:



However, Blizz have, like, totally nerfed nudity!

Mix-and-Match Epix!

I've been playing around with Wulf's gear at the moment, trying to find a good balance of stats with what he has at the moment, rather than pinning my hopes on a helm that won't frigging drop!

It's not like he doesn't have a selection. He has the Helm and Belt from the Dragonstalker set, 4/5ths of the Zandalar Predator's Armour and of course, 7/8ths of the Giantstalker set. My current goal is for him to get the Giantstalker's Helm and complete the set. The bonus he gains from having all eight pieces fits his current talent spec perfectly, and will be hard to replace with later gear.

That said, as I've previously noted, the Gianstalker's Helm refuses to drop for me. And since we've started clearing Molten Core on the weekends, I can't get in there much over the coming months. (Damn you RL!!)

Therefore, rather than sit there with seven peices and only a five peice bonus, I started picking up cheap bits of Dragonstalker from the early bosses of BWL. My plan is to marry the five-piece Gianstalker to the three-piece Dragonstalker until I can get the helm. Last night, I managed to get the belt, which leaves me one piece away from the three-peice bonus. I have no intention or ability to pick up the later peices since a) the boots are ugly, b) the gloves are still needed by Hunters with more DKP than I and c) we have yet to take down the bosses that drop the shoulders and chestpiece, so I'll be waiting until next Wednesday now for another crack at Razorgore and the bracers (the only part I can get that I'd reasonably wear atm).

Essentially, after playing around with a few different gear set-ups, I decided to go with the following:

Boots, Leggings, Chestpiece, Gloves and Belt from the Gianstalker set: Good stats, decent three and five piece set bonuses.
Helm from the Dragonstalker set: Once again, great stats, and nothing more worthy to replace it with.
Shoulders and Bracers from the Zandalar set: Weaker stats than their Gianstalker counterparts on paper, but the two-piece set bonus means that Wulf actually ends up with 10 more attack power. Plus they also have mana regeneration stats on them, and I'm curious to see how that pans out over an extended fight.

The end result looks fine on paper, if a little weird in-game. I'll post a picture of the bastardised set-up later.

Edit: In answer to Peter's question in the comments, the PVP 2pc is a pretty nice +20 agility, and the two rank 7 pieces collectively have about 8 less agility as their Giantstalker counterparts. It's a question of wether or not I can be bothered to grind honour up to Rank 7 (which would take some 4 or so weeks from my current Rank 3 I estimate), and then there's the fact that they're very, very green!!!

On Covetousness.

Yesterday afternoon, we went into Molten Core for another run. That place offers no particular excitement or interest for me anymore, I just go there in the hope that the final piece of my Gianstalker armour set will drop. Predictably, it didn't, and now given CD's current policy of doing MC on weekends, it means I'm gonna have to wait three weeks for another crack at it.

At this rate, I'm honestly wondering if it's worth the boring MC grind when I get back in the hopes of getting a 7% drop item from the fourth boss of the instance. I might just start looking at the Blackwing Lair set as an upgrade.

Raiding as a Hunter

Well I was bored, so I figured I'd collect some of my assembled wisdom on being a Hunter in a raid group. Well, ok, "wisdom" is too self-aggrandising a term, more a rambling, unfocussed collection of ideas on how I play. Life as not, this will doubtless expose the flaws in my style, but it might open folks up to a couple of new tricks.

Rule 1: Above all else, listen to the raid leader and do what they say. The time to question an order is afterwards when either the loot's been divided or we're waiting to be ressurrected.


1. When to DPS

In a normal fight, I tend to wait until the mob's got 3-4 Sunder Armour debuffs on it before letting loose. In fights where there's multiple tanks working for aggro on one target, or there are special attacks that can affect the tanks ability to hold aggro effectively, i wait for the raid leaders say-so before starting a shot cycle.

2. Shot Cycles

Normally, I try to cast shots in the following order:

Aimed Shot - Auto Shot - Multi Shot - Auto Shot - Auto shot

I like to open with the Aimed for the most effective DPS, since i can start the casting normally when the mob's on 2 sunders and it'll hit it when it's on 4. If something goes wrong in the meantime, then I can cancel the casting with a sidestep and wait for the raid leader signal.

Multi shot's a tricky shot and one that's given Hunters a bad name in the past. It does good DPS, has no real casting time and can hit multiple targets. It's a big part of our DPS, but it must never be used near crowd-controlled mobs (well, except banished ones). The pathing's weird, and sometimes a mob you think's safe will be hit. However, if no mobs are being cc'd, then don't be afraid of it, let it rip. With the Barrage talent from the Marksmanship tree and the 8pc Gianstalker bonus, you can really do some damage with it!

If the fight's gonna be a long one, I tend to use Rapid Fire early so that it's cooldown is over before the fight's over. If the fight's gonna be short or especially aggro-sensitive one, I'll save it for the bosses last few percent of health.

Usually, it's a good idea to feign death straight after first Multi-shot and to continue doing this whenever the feign comes off cooldown. If your feign is resisted then stop DPS altogether for 10 secs (the length of your Multi shot cooldown)

3. Serpent Sting

One bad habit I have from soloing and occasional PVP is to use Serpent Sting. This should be avoided in 40-man raids. With 5/5 points in Improved Serpent Sting (and face it, who wasted points there) and Rank 9 of the spell from AQ 20, the sting only does 122 damage per 3 sec tick, or just over 40 DPS for one of only 16 debuff slots on a mob.

There are far more effective debuffs that can go in that space that will increase your damage more (Hunter's Mark, Faerie Fire, Curse of Recklessness and the aforementioned Sunder Armour). The only time one should really use Serpent Sting on a mob is if it's vulnerable to Nature damage (like some of the Drakonids in BWL), or if it's a fight where a lot of debuffs are required (like Onyxia phase 2). In 5, 10 and 20 man raids, you can usually get away with applying it however, but keep an eye on the enemy's debuffs and if it's getting too many, don't reapply.

4. Mana.

We don't have to worry about mana as much as other ranged DPS classes, since we can keep up a high level of DPS with just auto shot. But let's face it, auto shot's dull as holy hell, you wanna nuke! Sadly, a raiding Hunter's mana pool is usually around half that of a raiding healer/offensive caster, and therefore, we tend to run through it fairly quickly. The only time I've been able to all-out nuke indefinately without running OOM is when there's a Paladin judging Wisdom on the mob, which sadly can't always be counted on.

With Blessing of Wisom and a 4K mana pool (in my fire resistance gear), I'm usually running out of mana just before the Sons phase in Ragnaros, so that's roughly 3 minutes of all-out nukage. Even then, if I take aimed shot out of my rotation, I can normally manage to cast multi-shot each time it's off cooldown. Many Hunters prefer instead to Feign Death and drink, since this lets them replenish their mana to full in 20 seconds or less. I only tend to do this in long fights, since I'd prefer to fire my diminished shot cycle for a few minutes than stop DPS altogether for 20 seconds in a fight.

5. Marking/Pulling.

The other thing Hunters do. If you're main assist for the night, make sure you target the right group as quickly as possible and put a Hunter's mark on the target so everyone knows that's the one to be hit. If you're not the main assit, then don't use Hunter's Mark. It's bad manners at best and confusing at worst.

Pulling takes practise and it's something I reccomend that every hunter should practise. Go to an area with a lot of swarming high-level mobs (Silithus and Winterspring are good for this) and practise pulling one away from the group without aggroing those nearby. It'll get you used to things like social aggro, effective pulling distances and, of course using Feign Death to avoid a bad pull.

Most Hunters tend to reccomend using Distracting Shot for the pullshot. Lazy sod that I am, I tend to use a max-rank Arcane Shot, since it's usually on my hotbar. Max rank is normally enough damage to override any social aggro the mob might have (like a tank charging it's friend), but not so much that the tank you're pulling to will have any problem getting the mob off you, assuming your feign resists.

Pet pulls are another fun thing. To pet pull effectively, you need a pet with the Dash or Dive skill. You then possess your pet, run it up to the mobs you want to aggro and then quickly right-click the spell's icon to dispell it before the mobs destroy your pet. Because you and your pet share aggro, the mobs should charge back to you and can then be scooped up by the tanks.

It's an exceptionally safe way to pull, assuming you don't accidentally aggro additional mobs (or a boss!). Generally speaking, I pet-pull mobs that would need to be kited a long distance back to where the raid is (like the Lava Packs, Baron Geddon and Shazzrah).

So that's basically it, my rambling wit "and wisdom" of the role of a raiding Hunter as I see it. Maybe one day I'll actually play like this.

Raid angst.

Bit of a moan this time...

Wulf has now been raiding with CD for about nine months. In that time we've completed Zul'Gurrub, Molten Core and Onyxia, got all but the last boss down in AQ20 and have taken down five out of the eight bosses in Blackwing Lair. Not the most stellar career, but not bad for a semi-casual raid group which started with a load of folks in sub-standard gear.

As it stands, Wulf's gear is pretty much as good as it can reasonably get. He's almost got his full Tier 1 armour set, his epic quest bow and a set of really nice weapons for both raid use and for PVP/soloing. Once he gets his Helm from Molten Core, he'll be by and large sorted for gear.

And I'm spending 3-4 nights a week working on Blackwing Lair with CD, and realising nothing I want drops there, with the exception of a couple of trinkets/jewelry. The Hunter Tier 2 is a sad joke, not enough of an upgrade from Tier 1 to be worth the effort to obtain. Plus it makes Wulf look like Barney the sodding Dinosaur!

AQ40 is a similar boat, ugly class armour set and nothing of real interest beyond a few trinkets and a couple of weapons.

The sad fact is, because they changed the way Hunter damage worked in patch 1.10, most of the ranged weapons in instances before that (all the ones I've just listed) just don't offer that much of an upgrade, so therefore aren't worth the stupid bidding wars that will follow their drops. This is frustrating to say the least, given that every patch and every new instance sees newer, sicker weapons for the melee classes that see them pull further and further ahead of us in the damage stakes. Hunter itemisation sucks because we're the only class that actually relies on our ranged weapons.

Now Naxxramas, the new instance in 1.11, finally starts to offer something in the way of compensation for this change, in the shape of cool-looking class armour and a ranged weapon that is actually a substantial upgrade at long last. Sadly, since CD haven't even managed a foothold into AQ40, I'm not sure when we'll be getting into Naxxramas.

So week after week, I'll show up for raids, watch my DKP total go up, my gold go down as I pay for ammo and repairs and see drop after drop which honestly isn't worth it. Why? Because I love the people I'm playing with, and the challenges that these new encounter bring, but I've grown weary of the rewards my beloved class recieves for it.

On my pets.

Well, now that my epic quest's over with, I suppose I should try another bit of Hunter writing, rather than another iterminably dull "Wulfsblood gets lewt" posts. So, I'm gonna talk about that oft-maligned and marginalised part of the Hunter class, the pet.

As soon as a Hunter hits level ten, they get the ability to tame wild beasts as a companion. Principally, these are used to distract an enemy and keep them at a distance so that the Hunter can unleash his wide variety of ranged attacks at keep them at a distance. This is one of the reasons why Hunters are so devastating in solo play, since they effectively have a second character which, whilst not as powerful as the Hunter himself, can do respectable damage and prevent the Hunter himself from being hurt.

Compared to Warlocks (the other pet-using class) our relationship with our pets is a unique one. Hunter pets require feeding and care to maintain their loyalty. A neglected pet won't be able to learn many skills, it won't fight as effectively, and will eventually abandon the Hunter if this isn't checked. Also, they usually need to be trained in new abilities as they gain experience which the Hunter himself has to learn by taming other wild beasts.

All in all, a Hunter's pets are a labour of love, the mechanics behind them cause some to become frustrated with this aspect, but for me and most others, it reinforces their importance, and the relationship they have with the character. I have spent hours levelling and training various pets for Wulf, and rarely has it felt like time wasted.

However, the sad fact is that whilst pets are a powerful leveling tool, their uses in Raid instances are limited. Once they hit level 60, there's no real way to make the stronger or better, so they tend to contribute comparatively less and less to a raiding hunters damage output. They don't warrant much attention from healers, which means they tend to die very quickly if the enemy has heavy damage area of effect attacks. That said, I've found a few uses for my pets which make them invaluable.

Ironically, given his name, Wulfsblood didn't actually take his first Wolf pet until he was level 60. For most of his levelling, Wulf, like so many Hunters before him took a succession of cat pets. The cat is a solid choice for a levelling Hunter. It does higher damage than most other pets, which means you can kill enemies quicker, but it has less health and armour, so it'll die if you're not careful. The higher damage output also makes it ideal if you're at all interested in Player Versus Player engagements. Currently Wulf keeps a cat for this purpose, a Frostsaber Pride Watcher called Felrazor. Using the Prowl ability, he's able to sneak up on enemy before unleashing a series of brutal attacks that will injure the enemy and prevent them from casting spells effectively whilst Wulf finishes them off.



However, for 90% of his time since hitting lvl 60, Wulf has relied on his main pet, a Worg called Grymhowl which he tamed in the depths of Lower Blackrock Spire. Wether he's raiding with Chaotic Divinity or soloing Dragonkin, Grymhowl tends to be his pet of choice, and he's almost as well known in CD as Wulf himself is! Wolves are average pets, they don't do as much damage as a cat, but they have better armour and health, so they can survive a beating for a bit longer. Grymhowl also has a strange quirk. Sometimes when he's summoned he's black...



and other times he's brown...



Wolves also have the Furious Howl skill, which lets them add to the damage of everyone in the party once every 10 seconds. I've set up a Macro that causes Grym to Howl just as Wulf casts an Aimed Shot, which gives the already powerful shot a touch more "oomph". This skill is especially useful since it means that Grymhowl can actively contribute to most fights without having to put himself in the line of fire. Also, For some fights, Wulf will actively possess Grymhowl and send him to get the attention of far away mobs, since once Grymhowl's dead they will follow the trail all the way back to Wulf and the rest of the raid. It may seem heartless, but it's easier and cheaper to ressurect a pet than it is to ressurect a character.

I have to confess, the pet aspect of the Hunter class was the least attractive part of it when I first started playing Wulf, but over time, I've come to see them as an integral extension of my playing style, solo and in raid. And to be fair, I've probably got two of the more conventional pet choices out there, considering Hunters can also tame six-legged crocodiles, winged serpents and giant scorpions to name a few. Still I'm happy with my choices and I wouldn't change em for anything!

W00t!

Finally got Wulf's Gianstalker Breastplate during last night's Molten Core run. All he needs now is the helm and he'll have the complete set. Can't wait to try out the eight-piece set bonus!

Newness!

A couple of bits of news on the Wulfsblood front. Sadly, Molten Core resolutely fails to drop the last two pieces of Gianstalker armour. After some six months of grinding that particular instance, I begin to appreciate why Blizzard moved to a token-based system for class-specific drops in their later instances.

However, I have finally reached Exalted with Zandalar after some seven months grinding Zul'Gurrub, so i got a shiney new shoulder enchant which boosts his damage dealing ability considerably.

And then, today with considerable help from Saphide, another CD Hunter, I finally got Artorius' head and was able to complete my Epic Quest!



Very cool bow as a reward!

And they call it shiney love...

Still no progress on Artorius. I've made a couple of scouting runs to his spawn point, but no sign of him. Still, I'm off work most of next week, so I might get a shot at him then.

Still, I've consoled myself with a couple of new shineys from Blackwing Lair. The Axe in particular is pimp as fook!



Also, because I keep running into folks who read this thing online or in-game, can you post a comment if you read this? I'm just curious about who the hell reads my interminable ramblings.

Pew Pew Pew!

It's been a less than happy couple of weeks for Chaotic Divinity. Summer is upon us and many of our regular raiders are busy with exams or strange activities relating to warm weather. Also, several of our Druids and one of our Priests have left for a variety of reasons, which is making raiding progress difficult. A recruitment drive is underway though, so we'll see where that leads us.

In slightly happier news, a CD Paladin pointed me at a fun mod this morning called Critman.

The effects are pretty funny:









It also plays the appropriate sound effects. Now all I need is the Batman TV Show soundtrack to enhance my gaming experience! :D