Changes...

I'm not going to start off talking about the leaked 3.1 patch notes, I'll get to them later. I'm still not sure how I feel about some of the proposed changes yet anyway.

As I stated in my “Grand Reopening” post, I've become a little more involved in the PvP community than I once was. I'm still working on getting my pvp gear together. Currently, I'm using the Swiftarrow gear that my wife made me on her druid. My total resilience is a whopping 299! Yes, I know that is a horribly low number, no need to point it out to me. If you've looked at my armory page you'll also notice that I'm in a 2v2 team now as well. The team consists of my wife's resto druid, myself and a night elf rogue friend of mine. We basically just take turns getting our 10 games in for the week. The first week I participated in the arena matches we ended the week with a score of 2-8. 2 wins, 8 losses. This is mainly due to our rating being higher than our gear range. The following week my wife and I did our 10 games and finished up 7-3, much better than the previous week. I'm hoping to get into a 3v3 and maybe even a 5v5 team to get more arena points. In a few weeks I should have enough arena points to start getting an actual pvp set together. It'll be much faster than grinding the massive amounts of honor needed to purchase the pvp gear with just honor points. I've currently got about 53k saved up.

Another interesting development, I've finally been all the way to Kel'Thuzad in 10man Naxx! This last run got me my Wraith Spear, and my T7 shoulders!! (I'm going to be overhauling the site soon so I should be able to get my item links and stuff working again...) I really need to do more heroics and try to get the rest of my emblems of heroism so I can get my t7 chest piece. At the moment I've got 51 emblems of heroism, and 10 emblems of valor. I'm seriously debating on trading in my 10 valor for heroism. I don't really get to do much 25man content, aside from Sartharion and Vault. Still on the fence about the trade off though.

Ok, the patch notes. Here is how I feel about the possible upcoming changes:

“Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.”

Wow. This reminds of back when I played EQ and finally got my Endless Quiver ability. I had one super arrow that I kept in my ammo slot and that was it. I had others that I carried for their elemental damage properties, but they rarely saw action. Prior to gaining this ability I had an item that allowed me to summon arrows, and it took forever. I'm interested to see how they implement the ranged attack speed increase from quivers/ammo pouches, but all in all I've got mixed emotions about this one. On one hand it will be nice to have that other bag space available, but I don't really miss it. Not once have I complained about my bag space compared to that of my DK.

“A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.”

I'm glad to see that Blizzard realized they tried to beat the BM hunters to death with the nerf bat instead of the usual love taps they typically passed out. The new tier of pet talents, which will really only benefit BM hunters with their 51 point talent is supposed to give pets a fairly decent DPS boost, no word on the tenacity tree though. Yes, I'm sure non-BM hunters will be able to get into the new tier, but it will take some serious point shuffling to get into it, and probably not enough to justify spending the points. They are more proposed changes to the BM tree, but this is the only consistent change I've seen, and I'd rather not post any more misleading information than necessary.

“Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter. Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.”

I'm not sure if the change to Hunting Party is going to be a buff or a nerf at this point. The passive benefit, depending on what exactly it is, will be interesting. Currently I've only got 2 points spent in this talent and I usually get about 75 mana per tick. I might just go ahead and max it out after the change and drop that point I've got in IAotH. The change to sniper training is definitely going to hit PvPers with this talent where it hurts. I rarely get the change to stand still for more than 2 seconds in PvP, especially arena matches. It may very well end up being an overall PvE nerf as well, as many boss fights don't allow you to stand in one place for an extended period of time. I guess it's a good thing I've been practicing my trap dancing.

Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.

I haven't been deep enough into marksman in a long while, so I'm not really concerned about this one. Rogues won't like it, but then again rogues don't really like anything about hunters. I'm personally going to stick with my Wyrven Sting. It will however give MM hunters a nice boost in PvE as well.

I can only hope that the upcoming changes will actually balance out the class. I've never really liked the “one beat-all” spec. I'm enjoying my time as a Survival hunter, but I resented the fact that I had to spec that way to be a viable choice for raid DPS. If we actually get our Dual Specs in patch 3.1 I'll most likely have a BM build and a PvP build. Only time will tell. Till next time, take care and happy hunting!

Respec?!

The BM nerf seems to be the hot topic since patch 3.0.8 went live, and honestly it's the first nerf that I ever actually felt full force. I went into 10 man Obsidian Sanctum with my 51/15/3 spec (which I had only started using about 3 days before the patch) and noticed a severe decrease in my DPS. I came in about 6th on the Recount meter, not far down from my 2nd or 3rd spot where I typically sat. What bothered me was the fact that the other hunter in the raid out DPSed me by almost 2k DPS. Something had to change! So I went and respeced to a 9/15/11 spec and went to 10 man Naxx. The difference was only about 300 DPS. I only moved up the DPS chart on spot, and the other hunter still did almost twice as much DPS as I did.
I'm fairly certain that part of the reason the change wasn't very significant is due to the fact that I was having hell getting my shot rotation down. I kept missing Arcane Shots, forgetting to reapply Serpent Sting, etc. I was also in a bad mood and very frustrated so that wasn't helping either. After the raid I logged off and played my DK for awhile. When I finally got back on my hunter I went back and respeced back to BM, back to a variation of my original 53/18 BM spec.
A day or so later I went to a 25 man VoA PuG and gave my BM spec another try. This time I stayed in the top ten. My lowest ranking was 7th, for the most part I started in 4th to 5th place, which is a feat for me. I don't have any fancy graphs or reports to post comparing the specs, yet. I'm going to have to do some homework and see if I can get WWS to work for me. I've never tried using it before, and I'm hesitant now because I don't want it to drag down my game performance. I guess I just need to sit down one day and give all the specs a thorough run on the training dummies and see what kind of numbers I get. I haven't even touched Survival yet. Who knows though, maybe I'll give it a shot. Till next time!

Grand Re-Opening!!

Well, I'm back!! Just to introduce myself, or to get re-aquainted with those of you that used to read my blog, I play a level 80 Night Elf Hunter on the Turalyon server. I'm currently in the guild . A rather interesting group of individuals to say the least. I recently came back to WoW shortly before WotLK was released. After playing a bit of catch-up on all the changes that were made, I respeced Beast Mastery and have been slowly climbing the progression ladder with my fellow guildmates. I'm also more involved in the PvP community than I was before, so perhaps I can provide some insight there as well.
Some changes that were made out of the game are the fact that I'm now pursuing a criminal justice degree through the University of Phoenix. Maybe all these essay writing classes I'm having to take will improve the quality of my blog writing. Another interesting tidbit since last time I wrote on this blog, my daughter turned a year old this January, and my wife and I discovered about a week ago that there will be another baby on the way. So things are probably twice as hectic now, but definitely more interesting.
I look forward to actually writing this time around and I'm hoping to get at least one post a week. Keep your eyes peeled and don't be afraid to offer any advice or criticism. I can handle it, I promise! Till next time, take care & happy hunting!

Comeback Tour?!

I've been mulling over the thought of coming back and writing my blog again. I had a lot of things happen that caused my extended hiatus. Those things have been resolved so I'm thinking about giving this whole blog thing another shot. So the three of you that actually read this thing when it was live, feel free to suggest whether or not I stay here, or resurrect my WordPress blog that I deleted. Hope to hear from you!

Farewell

I know what you're thinking..."You already quit once!! WTF?!" Well probably not, but a guy can dream can't he? Regardless, I'm not quitting...I've made the move to wordpress and my new blog address is Hunters, Inc. The first five people to update their links (are there even 5 of you?!) get a free post request and I'll post about whatever topic you request (well...maybe not any) and you'll also recieve!!! my eternal gratitude. Look forward to seeing you all at my new home, that is still under construction so bear with me. Take care and happy hunting!!

Just So You Know

If I'm not mistaken my cable internet service is going to be interrupted against my wishes in the near future so I'll be unable to play WoW or post. I'm hoping this doesn't happen, but I just wanted to warn everyone in the event that it does. I'll try and get everything back in order ASAP if it does happen, which shouldn't be long. After the first of the year at the most.

On Kiting, Zul'Aman & Gear Upgrades

I had one of the best instance runs in my WoW career the other night. It was almost as much fun as the time I went to Shattered Halls and the Ret pally was tanking and healing. This time we were in Shadow Labs, yes I'm still trying to get the Sonic Spear. The group makeup wasn't ideal by any means. Fury warrior tanking, two enhancement shamans healing, my wife's mage and myself. What made the run so great was the attitude of everyone in the group. Rather than bickering about who caused who to die, and no it wasn't a wipefest, we just resed the dead and moved on. Attitude makes a big difference when grouping. If you're in a group full of pissed of people, it's going to make the run seem to drag on and eventually you'll be in a bad mood too. At one point the tank dced and we had a 3 man pull left before the first boss. After a brief discussion, we decided that I was going to tank the pull. Mage sheeped on, I trapped one and kited the other while the shammy's healed/dpsed it down. The tank came back in the middle of the pull and was laughing when he saw that we had pulled and weren't dropping like flies. Then we aggroed the boss before we were ready so that wasn't as fun. We managed to get him down with no deaths though so it wasn't all bad. Then we got to the auditorium pulls and I accidentally broke my own trap (I'm my own worst enemy sometimes) and trap still had 2about 15 seconds to go so I decided to kite this one as well. I almost died, but one of the shaman's threw a heal my way as I ran past with the mob trailing. It made my day when the tank said that he forgot there were actually good hunters out there. I've certainly been called much worse. After that I was assigned a kiting target on the rest of the pulls. I love kiting! It's not something you can just pick up and start doing right away, it takes skill and demonstrates that a hunter at least has a firm grasp on their abilities. Now I just need to learn how to double trap when the un-break it.

Zul'Aman...Zul'Gurub's pissed off little brother. Went for the first time last night, and it was interesting to say the least. RF has only gotten to the bear boss, but we haven't focused on ZA due to the fact that we are trying to progress further into SSC. It is definitely more challenging than Kara, but still fun. We had a few wipes clearing to the bear boss, and wiped 3 times on the boss himself, but once we moved some people around and got a rhythm established we burned him down without a problem...which leads me to my rant...

Does anyone remember before TBC was released, and when you got your tier armor the only thing you upgraded it with was the next set of tier armor or nothing at all? WTF happened to that?! I know the loot in ZA is supposed to be better than the loot in Kara, it's a harder raid, of course it's going to yield better drops. The drops should not be on par with T4 in my opinion. My T4 shoulders, fully gemmed and enchanted are only slightly better than [Pauldrons of Primal Fury], which means as soon as I slap some gems on them and get the
[Greater Inscription of Vengeance] applied to them they'll blow my T4 out of the water. I'm not happy about it, and I wasn't happy that they made me take them either...they were an upgrade for the other hunter as well, but when I said I didn't want to break up my t4 gear I was told to "Get over it, you're going to have to break the set up sooner or later.", and later I shall...when I get my t5 shoulders...

/rant off

Take care and happy hunting!