Damage Adjustments

A recurring theme in the Hunter forums I read is the level of underwhelment at our new main nuke spell, Steady Shot. I can understand how their expectations have been thwarted. It's damage is roughly analogous to our normal auto-shot attack (for me, around 400 normal and 1k on a critical strike), which can be dissapointing when we've been used to massive Aimed Shot and Multi Shot crits we were used to in our old shot cycles. When Wulf was Marksmanship spec, he used to crit for nearly 3k damage on an Aimed Shot, and there were folks with better gear doing more.

What they miss when they're only looking at the big numbers flying above the heads of the mobs is incredible efficency. At 110 mana per cast (99 mana with the right talents), it's one of our most mana-efficent shots yet. With Aspect of the Viper and some gear with decent Intellect bonuses, this shot can be fired in between our free auto-shots almost indefinately creating a flat, sustainable level of damage that can be maintained throughout the even the longest boss fight. Where this change to our class mechanics hurts the most is PVP, where the lack of massive Burst damage

The adjustment hasn't all been smooth on my part, I must confess. I'm actually finding that I pull enemy attention away from the tanks quicker these days than with my old aimed/multishots. The threat generated by these smaller shots mounts up quicker than the old "shit, 3k crit, better ease off!" approach, so I'm having to pay more attention than ever before. The other challenge has been finding a good weapon to use with Steady Shot. As a Beastmaster, Wulf has the Serpent's Swiftness ability, which makes his attacks 20% faster. Combined with the 15% haste given by his quiver/ammo pouch and there's a difficulty in finding a weapon that has:

*An attack speed that allows him to cast a Steady Shot without delaying the following auto-shot. I've found that a base weapon speed of between 2.60 and 2.90 is perfect for this.

*A decent DPS rating.

*An awesome-looking model! :D

To this end, I've found two likely suspects: This is a reward from a long quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley. It's reliably obtainable and shouldn't be too hard to find friends in CD to help me with this. This on the other hand, is a rare random drop from level 69-70 mobs, so I either need to be incredibly lucky to have one drop, or I need to check the Auction House and spend a (probably) obscene amount of gold on it if one appears.

Still, it sure is nice.

In other news, Wulf hit 69 last night. At this rate, I'm expecting to hit level 70 on Friday night. I'm still about 200G short of the cash needed to get my flying mount though, so I expect I might just try grinding cash for one level.