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.