Mists of Panderia Coming Soon

Stay tuned I'll be back soon with new hunter news, advise and information on the new builds and testing.

BEING "RAID READY"

     If you haven’t already you need to see some fantastic new videos that are causing laughter heard from one end of Azeroth to the other.  The WoW=RL themed videos from the team at Raid Ready are a huge hit on youtube with our WoW community.  But these hilarious epic shows are only the tip of the iceberg of what is going on at camp Raid Ready.  (View my submission for their Raid Ready video contest on YouTube Huntard) They’ve got a system being developed that will have raid leaders and GMs happier than a fat kid in a candy store! 

While we as raid members have add ons in game for raids such as DBM, and we have tank spot videos for research, there are still missing areas for raid preparedness when it comes to raid leading.  Raid leaders still have to go through the long process of checking the armory and wow heroes when selecting group members.  While this is a necessary process to ensure the strength and readiness of a team, it’s still an arduous task.  Well there is a light at the end of the tunnel coming soon for GM’s and raid leaders alike from the team at Raid Ready.  They are working on a system that will revolutionize and take the frustration out of the raid creation process. 

     As a raid leader your team counts on you to make sure all the members are ready for the content.  There are so many things to consider such as proper gemming, enchanting, talent build, etc.  It’s a thankless job that we as team members may take for granted.  As a hunter I know my talents inside and out and am confident I’m geared and spec’d properly and that I’ve reforged stats to optimize my performance etc.  But ask me if the warrior tank in my group is doing things correctly and you might as well ask me to disarm a nuclear bomb while I’m at it, I wouldn’t have a clue ‘cause I don’t play that class.  But raid leaders are expected to be a swiss army knife of knowledge when it comes to all classes to ensure team success.  And as I said there’s no streamlined easy way to check up on your crew in a simple easy manner.  I’ve had the pleasure of participating in a skype call with Eric, one of the creators and brains behind their soon to be released project.  I really liked what I heard and I think they’ve got a real winner on their hands.  Here is a brief synopsis of what's in development, quoted from their site:

"Raid Ready is a new way to approach raid planning. Rather than having raid leaders check several different sites repeatedly to determine the readiness of their raid team for the content they want to take on Raid Ready takes the raid as a whole into account. Raid Ready takes the community's best research applies it to the members of your raid in one place and on one page and the best part is you never have to do the math.

Raid Ready is the result of four years of research and development by frustrated raid leaders. The Raid Ready system only uses cumulative player stats and not the individual stats of items. This is especially important given the recent changes which allow players to further customize their characters' stats through gemming, enchanting and reforging. Raid Ready is designed to balance stats against known required values and determine player and raid readiness through careful balancing of stats and stat flexibility. The end result is a simple go / no-go solution, extended data on raid members and a raid report that's designed to provide a raid leader what they need most, situational awareness."

I sent a Q&A over to the guys at the Raid Ready camp and here's what I got so far from Stubby the web designer and developer :

Please introduce yourselves and tell us who is the team behind Raid Ready?

Stubby - The web designer/developer and the guy who came up with the Raid Ready applicatoin.

Eric - The video guy and marketing guy and a large part of the creative force behind Raid Ready.

Seth - The idea incubator.  Seth takes creative ideas and makes them 10 times better.

Obviously you guys play WoW.  How long have you been in the game and what toons do play?

Stubby - Played since launch.  I prefer not to mention my characters since they might color people's opinion of Raid Ready.

Eric - Has maybe hit level 13?  He has a Worgen hunter.

Before we touch the raid planner what's up with the funny videos?

We wanted to market the app in a new way.  We were really trying our best to be endearing and embraceable by the community because when you boil it down we really are just three guys trying to help make WoW a little easier to play.  Being funny comes naturally to us and really seemed to serve the purpose of making us more approachable and human.  We always want to be able to work with the community as well as be in it.

What made you want to build a new way to raid plan?  Are any of you raid leaders?

Stubby - I've been leading raids since BC.  I took a break between vanilla and BC to have a daughter and I lead a rather large guild.  Entry level for raiding in BC is a 10 man raid which complicated raid building.  To avoid accusations of favoritism I did some research on what different classes and roles needed to start raiding and created a spread sheet that would weigh these values against each other.  If someone wanted to dispute my decision I could point to it and give them some direction on what they needed to work on to make themselves ready to raid.  Looking back Karazhan is an extremely easy raid, but I wanted to be able to have something to point at and some way to help my raiders that would be simpler than telling them to research for themselves.  It made my raiders better raiders and made me a more useful raid leader.

So on your Raid Ready site you describe briefly this new system you're planning.  What exactly are we in for?

The simplest way to explain what we're doing is to say that when you research a class and spec you generally get a list of 5 stats that are important to that class.  We take it a step further and find what neighborhood those stats should be in and then measure your raiders stats against those to determine their level of readiness.  No two players are going to play exactly the same so we try to allow for a little variance in stats and do some math to see if that variance is within some level of tolerance.  We take the results of those and measure them against other players in the raid to determine whether your raid as a whole is healthy enough to complete a raid or not.  This doesn't mean that every raid that passes can make it, it's really meant more as a tool to understand what you're going in with and give a raid leader some situational awareness.

Will the Raid Ready system stop at raid planning calculations or do you have plans to build other aspects into your system?

We certainly don't want to stop with our raid planning calculations.  We have a lot of plans we're not talking about just yet.  What we do in the future depends entirely on the success of Raid Ready and the willingness of the community to help us help them.  We want to grow our tool to best support the community.  By no means do I think we have all the answers and, really, the community is what's going to make it work.

Will this be a downloadable program or a web based application?

We're launching a web application that pulls from the armory.  Currently that's our only plan and, like I said before, it really depends on the success of Raid Ready how we proceed after.  We certainly have the expertise to do more, but we want to focus on one platform and make the best service we possibly can before trying to branch out to other platforms.

Is there any pricing decided upon yet?

Nothing is set in stone as of yet.  We won't be able to keep working on Raid Ready without some income for sure, but we've not decided what price that will come in at.  We want to stay reasonable, no more than what you might pay for a small app anywhere else.  We know the community is already paying $15 per month for the game itself so we want to come in at a fraction of that so that it's a very easy thing to make the decision to subscribe to the tool while still allowing us what we need to put the time and resources into making the best tool we can for the WoW community.

     As the project progresses I'll keep you up to date on developments as they become available.  Be sure to check their Raid Ready site and sign up for email notifications and also to be eligible for possible beta testing. You can also follow them on twitter as @RaidReady.

www.wowraidready.com

WARCRAFT HUNTARD VIDEO

Posted my first ever video on YouTube.  "Huntard"

Take one typical husband thrown into the usual mall shopping dilemma with the wife, apply a failed huntard trap mistake and voila.  LOL, Enjoy!

THE OTHER GUYS

There are a ton of podcasts for Warcraft that can be found in iTunes, some great, some good, some you can line the cat litter box with.  What I offer you today is some info and a Q&A with the hosts about a better than great new show that just started.

Two of our favorite Warcraft podcasting personalities have joined forces to create a brand new WoW podcast: The Other Guys.  Andy Dino, best known as his Warcraft toon alter ego Daewin, is a member of the awesome guild Solace on Zul’jin.  Brian Hough is a long time player since Beta and is mostly on with his resto Druid.  I’ve known my guild mate Andy for a while and was thrilled when he gave me the inside scoop a while ago that this was in the works.  Both of these talented players have been co-hosts, guests or group members on many shows.  Andy is best known from his work on The Hunting Lodge, Polygamerous, Everything Blah, Redneck Geek and Cajun Gamer as well as several guest spots on shows like Raid Warning and Twisted Nether.  Brian, who was until recently a co-host for Raid Warning, can also be heard on The Creep and The Football Pub.  Wanting to get away from being just “the other guys” they decided to make a bold new start together as partners and get away from the guest/sidekick role to create a new show. I listened to the first episode the day it came out and I can’t recommend it enough, 5 stars all the way!  It has a very laid back casual style that really makes you feel like you’re listening to two friends just shootin’ the shit about a game they love.  The show has a great flow and the conversation is very fluid and interesting.  The two play off each other really well and give you your WoW content in a very funny and charismatic way.

There are many good WoW podcasts that top the charts as far as technical information, lore, discussions on current content, etc.  What sets The Other Guys apart is not new and breaking inside news about the game but rather how it’s delivered.  They understand that we read forums and blue posts and are probably already familiar with any patch notes before we ever hear them on a podcast.  So instead of repeating what we already know from places like wowwiki, they keep you entertained from beginning to end with their own fun takes on whatever WoW topic comes up.  You’ll still get info on the latest happenings, just in a fun unique way that makes for a great listen.

Listen online or download now at The Other Guys on itunes and please be sure to take a moment and leave feedback. 

I was fortunate enough to have Andy and Brian take some time and answer a few questions so you, the WoW fans, can get to know the hosts…

What drew you guys into wanting to be podcasters and what shows did you start out with?

Andy:  I've wanted to podcast since I heard my first one.  I have a lot of knowledge about games in general and WoW, and wanted to  share my opinion with everyone.  My first podcast was the hunting lodge with Brigwyn

Brian: I actually got my start with a soccer podcast called The Football Pub, that I am still doing on a weekly basis. Though most people probably know me from my time on Raid Warning. I  had always been interested in radio and got tired of people telling me I had a radio voice and doing nothing with it. So I started a podcast. It worked out in the end, cause now I work in Radio. 

The new show The Other Guys Podcast was named that for a reason, can you tell us about how you arrived at the name?

Andy: When we were discussing names it was kinda funny that both of ushered "sidekicks" on the shows we did.  So for me it was brigwyn and "that other guy".  So we ran with it.

Brian: It kinda just happened one night while Andy and I were talking. We both were the "sidekicks" of our previous WoW shows and wanted to have a little fun with that concept. 

What kind of format or style are you guys going for?

Andy: Everyone in the wow world regurgitates the news all the time.  We pick one thing we find interesting or important and ramble about it for awhile.

Brian: We just wanted it to be laid back and an easy listen. We didn't want to hit you over the head with news and in depth theory crafting. More of a show that sounded like your friends do when you're all chatting about WoW. 

How long have you been playing Warcraft and what toons do you have?

Andy: I have been playing wow for about 2 years.  I have my hunter Daewin (main), alts- pally, warlock, shaman, priest, and a warrior.

Brian: I have been playing WoW pretty much since Beta. I currently play mostly my Resto Druid, which has been my main since before Wrath. I spent  most of BC as a Shadow Priest, and Vanilla as a Resto Shaman. 

What changes would you most like to see implemented to Warcraft either in a patch or the next expansion down the road?

Andy: There really isn't anything I would like to see.  The game is good as it is.  Yes they have some bugs but I can't wait to see what blizzard has in store for us.

Brian: Account wide achievements and pets/mounts. I am notorious for hating alts. I don't like that all the work I've put into my main goes away if I switch mains. One of the main reasons I've stuck with my Druid is I don't want to lose all the things I've earned/collected on him. 

What are your thoughts about Blizzard selling virtual items now, i.e. pets and mounts?

Andy: It's cosmetic stuff.  It really doesn't matter and people will buy them.

Brian: I'm fine with it. It doesn't change the game for me whether or not I have the items. As long as it stays like that, no complaints here. If you don't like the idea don't buy them. I own most of the pets myself. I think the sparkle pony is a rip, so I didn't buy it. Simple as that. 

Give one bit of advice for players, anything at all directed at newbies, veterans, pvpers, raiders etc, whatever you want.

Andy: Research your class and don't be afraid to ask questions.  Most of all have fun.

Brian: It's just a game. I know that seems odd coming from someone who is active in the community, but don't ever forget it. I see too many people whose RL is dominated by the game. It's not healthy and in the end will ruin the enjoyment you get from playing it. 

If you were handed 100K gold in game what is the first thing you would want to buy?

Andy: Nothing.  I would hold it for raiding because all that stuff costs money!!

Brian: Mounts! I don't mess with the AH enough to be rich and I wish I could get things like the new Alchemist Drake and Chopper. Pets and Mounts are the one thing in game that sticks with you no matter how many expansions and raid tiers their are. Money well spent! 

 

Well there you have it folks, hope you enjoyed the Q&A and I know you’ll enjoy the show even more.   They will be recording every Sunday night around 10pm so look for the show to be posted in iTunes shortly after.  If you don’t already you can follow Andy and Brian on twitter for updates and tweets for show info and questions.  Andy is @Daewin and Brian is @b_hough on twitter.

IT'S ALL SITUATIONAL

     Here’s a bit of a long response to an email I got from Sam T., a hunter from the Dawnbringer server.  He asked “How the heck am I supposed to follow a set rotation with focus?  I always seem to run low.  Plus how do you deal with all the demands of having to use traps and stuff and not interrupting that rotation?  Oh and can you give me a good MM rotation. Peace and WoW :)”

Back a few posts ago I praised the fact that we are back to the days of the utility hunter.  Besides the fact that we now have the ability to bring missing group buffs by our choice of pet but we are also responsible for handling a lot of CC duty.  Now in Wrath most of our time was spent static just laying down the dps, and when we had to move we’d stutter step or time our movements so as not to interfere with our sacred rotation.  Well that’s not so simple or really the case at all anymore.  Our fight strategies and rotations have become situational and a bit more complicated.

( Sit·u·a·tion ) n. The combination of circumstances at a given moment; a state of affairs.)

There are still dps races for us to challenge the meters in Cata but there are also many, many fights that are going to require situational play styles and rotation adjustments.  Thankfully we have aspect of the fox to assist us with this but we still have to often times break into our rotations to do some type of CC duty whether it be launching a well timed trap or kiting a mob.  What this means for us is that we have gone from being 24/7 slaves to a set rotation, we must now be able to think on the fly and prioritize shots based on focus regen and CC duty as well as dps. 

Now back in the day we hunters had to learn (or at least you should have) the fine art of stutter stepping.  What this meant was if it was a moving fight you needed to basically shoot and move in certain fights.  Get those shots off, run while watching cool downs and then stop to fire off a shot then rinse and repeat.  Well with aspect of the Fox this method has become much easier.  Notice that I’m not saying that stutter stepping is gone it’s just become obsolete with aspect switching to fox.  There may still be fights that require minimal movement and every now and then you can still adjust your position with well-timed shots just before moving.  If you can pull that off without switching to fox then all the better, because while aspect of the fox does allow you to fire shots previously not castable while moving, it does decrease your dps from what you would have in hawk.  Plus we now have the benefit, as of 4.06 to auto shoot on the move! 

Ok so what all this means is, for example, here is my MM rotation:

Apply hunter’s mark and Serpent Sting

Rapid Fire then time Readiness after Chimera Shot to pop Rapid Fire and another Chimera

Chimera Shot

Aimed Shot - for the first 20% of a boss fight, after that you’ll get a proc

Arcane Shot – after the first 20%, before that steady and aimed are doing more damage because of careful aim and piercing shots

Steady Shot twice

Kill shot at the end when available.  Although if they’re available chimera and aimed should get priority for now since they’re doing more damage.

Now if a situation arises that requires me to CC or switch to an add, for example the pesky poison bombs from Toxitron, then you’re going to be breaking your rotation to mix in some concussive shots.  Once down you need to quickly assess your focus amount and adjust your rotation on the fly until you can get back into it. 

The main take home message that I would like you to have is that it’s a whole new world for us with focus.  The mana system made it a whole lot easier to keep a set rotation going.  But with focus we need to carefully time our shots to make sure that when chimera or kill command or whatever is off cd, you’ve got the focus to get it off every time.  This is basically why you’re hearing that our rotations have become very situational in some fights.  Be very mindful of your focus regen and try to memorize how much focus your shots use so you’ll be one step ahead of yourself all the time.  Don’t worry you’ll still have the opportunity to stay planted sometimes and destroy the meters with a standard rotation but remember, whether it’s a pug or guild run, you’re part of a team and your personal dps does not outweigh what’s best for the group.

Thanks Sam for your email.  I’m always happy to answer any questions so just send them on over to warcraftzone@att.net 

LOOT CARD WINNER!

Grats to Eric our random winner for the Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit loot card.  
Thanks to all who entered and those that left feedback on iTunes for The Other Guys Podcast

P.S. By the way as it turns out Eric is also one of the guys working on Raid Ready be sure to  sign up on their website to keep up to date on their upcoming app for raid planning.  They've also got some really funny WoW videos on youtube.

GAMES ARE FUN, RIGHT?

What?! You’re a human hunter?! Hey you over there!  What were you thinking rolling a night elf hunter?!  ‘Cause you didn’t want to roll a dwarf,…you like the LOOK of the night elf instead!?  Are you people out of your minds!?!?

These folks are absolutely NOT out of their minds, they’re playing what is fun for them.  Uh remember how games are supposed to be fun?  There is a lot of talk from time to time bashing people for their race and class combo.  Ripping on them for not selecting the best racial bonus for a toon is just ridiculous imo.   Now that’s not to say that I’m casting stones at the people who do min max and roll a character based on bonuses.  That’s THEIR game and sqeezing out every last little bit of extra numbers is fun for them.  Others want to have a specific race for the look, or had a RP back story thought up before rolling.  In any case you should play what you enjoy. 

Let’s take a close look at what all the fuss is about in plain simple terms.  I’ll take the dwarf hunter for example.  There has always been that stigma that if you don’t roll a dwarf hunter for the gun specialization then you’re rolling an inferior hunter.  The gun specialization gives you a 1% crit bonus when you use a gun.  WOW! 1%!  You all better run right now and race change for that giant dps raid changing amount!  Come on, the gain is so minimal it barely affects you.  Here’s an example from elitist jerks on the difference 1% crit will give you at 20% vs 21%:

20% Δ 21% = (.21*2.378+.79) - (.20*2.378+.80) = 0.01378

0.01378 is by no means a number that’s going to make or break you in a fight.  But like I said there are those that want to take pride in pushing the limits and maxing out every last bit of dps they can.  Kudos to you if that’s what you enjoy.  But for many of us we have special attachments to our characters in other ways and log in to play them for other reasons. 

So the bottom line I’m throwing out there for this quick little post is this, when you’re staring at that character creation screen choose what is going to be fun for YOU to play, not what you think anyone expects you to play.  If you know your class and play it well you’ll perform just fine whether your racial bonus is beneficial or not.  

WOW LOOT CARD CONTEST!

    

      For this contest I am giving away a Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit . Ok, originally the contest was for commenting here and leaving a review for The Other Guys Podcast in iTunes.  I've received a couple of emails from people who listen to the show but don't have iTunes accounts.  So for the contest it can be one or the other. All you have to do is leave a comment here or an iTunes review for The Other Guys Podcast. That's right, just leave a comment on this post or head over to iTunes and add a review for the podcast and a random person will be chosen and the winner announced on an upcoming episode of  The Other Guys Podcast.   Of course it is a great show and iTunes reviews are greatly appreciated. 

Contest will run until Saturday January 29^th, 2011.  

 

The winner can have the option of having the card mailed to them or the code sent in an email, your choice.

GOOD LUCK!

SMARTER PETS

Sorry readers for the short hiatus I have taken, but for medical reasons I’ve been a bit dark for a while.  But I’m back and doing well.   Now onto the show…

SlowWolf has yet again posted an excellent blog on the cunning tree for pets.   He has, as usual, a very well written explanation on talent points for this particular pet tree that is another must read.

If you haven’t yet please read Furious Raiders: The Cunning Mk. 2 by SlowWolf  along with this post  to get the most out of the information we're providing.

What I would like to do is take the time to explain and expand on the types of pets and why you should be selecting certain ones over others.  Pet selection is as important imo as proper point placement in their trees.  Choosing the right pet can make or break your performance in a substantial way.  Although all cunning pets are geared more towards pvp they don’t all behave the same or provide the abilities that will separate you from a “huntard”.  Especially now with all the changes in pet buffs and new abilities that have taken place for us in Cataclysm.  If you haven’t read my blog on the new pet abilities and buffs in Holy Crit! you might want to read or reread it to see why I’ve made the choices I have.  I will also be going over again, as I did in a previous blog, about the possible utilization of a cunning pet in a pve environment because they do have their use.  In fact with the changes in Cata, cunning pets are performing very well in dps contribution more than ever.

Much like ferocity and tenacity pets are geared towards dps and tanking respectively there have always been certain ones that perform better than others, the same goes for cunning pets.  One of your main concerns are the slowing or rooting abilities they have.  The paramount purpose of a cunning pet is its capacity to hold an enemy to promote kiting and attack methods.  You’re not going to be concerned so much with how much damage they can contribute as much as how long can they snare that opponent to make it easier for you to keep them at bay.   That’s not to say you want to completely ignore their dps contribution but when you’re pvping keeping your adversary at range is essential to getting the job done and staying alive long enough to do it.  There are definitely talent points that are going to be placed in dps abilities as SlowWolf showed in his talent tree examples so be sure to follow these point placements exactly.  He’s given perfect examples of point placement for both BM and non BM specs.  There are also utility talents that you don’t want to ignore because they’re going to be helping your pet get in there to do the job faster and more effectively.  Of particular note is dash/dive, this is extremely important because, obviously, the faster fluffy gets to your opponent the faster he can hold him in place while you begin the destruction.

First off, as a side note, pvp gear is in the game for a reason.   If pve and pvp gear was easily interchangeable then everyone would just pick out the best of one or the other for both types of game play.  But the fact is you NEED that resilience.  Don’t think that stacking stamina on extra pve gear that you’ve accumulated will make up for a good resilience rating because it won’t.  If you’re dying too quickly then your pet selection and pvp strats won’t mean squat.  So be sure to do your best to begin acquiring some pvp gear.

Now let’s talk pets.  Like I said your main concern is their snaring/rooting abilities and which have the best durations and cooldowns.  You’ll be using these in conjunction with your icing type traps as well as concussive shot.  In fact keep in mind and practice getting in the habit of firing off concussive as often as you can.  With the cool down being practically the same as the duration you should do your best to never let that buff drop off.   You also need to be practicing kiting an opponent, never ever, ever, back peedle away from someone.  It’s just too slow and will do you more harm than good.  So with these things in mind let’s examine the best pets.

The spider.   The spider has long been one of the most preferred pets in pvp because of it’s web ability which is an excellent snare.  Now the difference in a snare vs a slow ability are simple and the names say it all.   A snare is going to affect an opponent by holding him/her in place while a slow is just that, it slows them for a certain percent of movement speed.  Now the spider’s web has a 5 sec root, dogs and silithids have a similar ability but they’re only a 4 sec root with dogs and silithids are 5 but are an exotic so they’re limited to BM hunters.  All have a 40 second cooldown so this is why you need to be conscious of using icing traps and concussive shot in the meantime.  Overall I still think this is the best overall pvp pet just based on the extra second you get in the snare duration especially if you’re in a soloing pvp situation.  Plus the great thing about the spider is no leveling necessary if you go tame a Darkwood Broodmother from Tol Barad, he’s an 85.

The ravager.  The ravager is a really sweet cunning pet for a pve environment.  This guy is actually incredibly helpful due to his ability/buff ravage.  This gives you a 4% increased physical damage for 25 sec with only a 15 sec cooldown.  This is a perfect example of, depending on your team's makeup, your ability to bring in a useful buff just based on your pet.  

The monkey.  I mention him only because he is a new addition with Cata but he’s sorely lacking.  His blind ability has a 4 sec duration but with a 1 min cooldown.  Pass on this dude he’s bringing so much less to the table than the spider.

On a quick side note I want to bring up a couple of ferocity pet equipped with  some very pvp type moves.  With these two you're getting pretty close to the best of both worlds with the ferocity tree dps and a cunning type ability.  Raiders rejoice!

The dog.  Now the dog is still a very viable alternative in pve fights where you need a snare and will give you more overall dps since it is in the ferocity tree.  It’s Lock Jaw ability will hold for 4 sec and has the 40 sec cooldown.  If you’re in a close pvp group situation where you’ve got a healer close by and other dps it may be a good choice to help burn down an opponent fast

The hyena.  Same bonuses as the dog but with a slightly different ability Tendon Rip, it’s no longer a slow ability as it has been, it now increases bleed effects by 30%.  So again if you’re in a pvp group setting you could experiment with this one if you have another team member with a snare ability and you want to bring something extra to help send him off to the graveyard faster. 

As for the rest of the cunning pets they’re going to be situational choices if you’re running in a pvp group.  For example, if you and some guild mates are grouped up and you’ve got a healer and say a dk, mage, and warlock in the group running with you a dragonhawk might be a good choice because of it’s firebreath that increases magical damage by 8%.   Or you may have a lot of melee in your pve group and they'd love to have that ravager along for the buff to help overall team dps.  Again experiment with your choices to see what works best with your makeup.  But overall the spider is still king of the hill in pvp. 

Visit Petopia for a detailed rundown of all the pets abilities, skins, locations, etc.   Everyone's needs are going to differ depending on your team's members and what buffs they may be missing, so choose accordingly. 

Now as I mentioned a cunning pet may be one you want to have along in a pve environment.  As we saw in Wrath with Saurfang and the spider or the Valks with the hyena you may come across a fight where it may be your job to concentrate on a mob and keep it at bay by kiting and slowing.   Keep this in mind and you may experience some trial and error as some mobs can be slowed but not snared by your pets like the Valks.  It's all situation, situation, aaaand situation.  Always a good idea to check strats for a fight online and see what is working for the top raiding guilds.  Who knows, as in the case of the ravager, you might save the day by bringing the missing buff.

HUNTER TANKS

     Got my first email today, whoot! The sender asked not to be mentioned because he doesn’t want “to sound like a noob”.  I’ll respect your wishes but just know that imo the fact that you’re seeking knowledge and advice about your class makes you a smart hunter not a noob in that respect.  So with that said, on to the email.

The question is, “I just got the expansion and am excited to level again after having been away for a couple months.  What is the best tank pet right now that I should be leveling with?”

Great question.  While all the tenacity pets are designed to be a “tanking” pet I’ve found my top 2 picks are the bear and turtle.  Now there’s a lot of love out there for the crocolisk but I just don’t have time to carry around 3 tank pets and level em all so I’ll explain why I’ve passed over this guy in a bit.

     First of all the bear, the bear will be a great help not only as a tank but his swipe will help to add to your dps.  Now his special is not a full 360 effect but rather only a 180 so attackers from the rear won’t get the aggro from this.  But you have Thunderstomp in your talent tree to to help with this.  For single target tanking he’s just about the best you can do though.  Now to counteract the problem of swipe is simple, you’ve got misdirection which if used with the glyph of misdirection, which you should be using especially when leveling, will reset the cooldown if used on your pet.  Good deal!  Also if you’re dealing with an unusually large mob wait for the pet to get in there and get the aggro and if any pull away feign and reapply misdirect.  Keep in mind I would reapply misdirect anyway since you don’t have the cooldown knee capping you with the glyph.  Plus the bear has a great special ability Demoralizing Roar which reduces the enemy’s physical damage by 10%.

     Now the turtle is a great pet to keep with you as well.  He is a bit situation dependant because he doesn’t hold aggro as well as the bear but is more resilient imo.  His ability of Shell Shield which when activated bubbles him and reduces damage to him by 50% keeping him alive longer.  Great for extreme soloing or if you’ve got a quest against a difficult boss type target.  Again you can compensate for aggro loss with misdirection the same way that I stated before with the bear.  So if you find yourself in a situation where the bear is hard to keep up it’s nice to have the turtle on the bench to bring out when you need him.

     So I chose the bear over the croc because even though I’m sacrificing the extra aggro (the croc has a 360) there’s a way around it with misdirect and Thunderstomp, and I’m not losing dps.  The croc is definitely less damage per single or double targets than the bear.

Also check out Petopia for a complete listing of all the different bear and turtle looks available.  Hope this helps and welcome back to the game!  Good luck on your way to 85.

Anyone else with a question feel free to email me at warcraftzone@att.net

FEROCIOUS INSPIRATIONS

     This post started out a little differently with a lot more explanation on talent point placement.  But that was covered in detail in another excellent article.  I suggest you first read Furrious Raiders: The Ferocious Mk.2 by Slow Wolf before continuing.

NON BM PVE TREE

BM PVE TREE

       Ok so now you're back and you've got a good idea on where to put all those points and why.  We're concentrating this time around on ferocity pets in a PVE environment.  I was hoping for maybe some kind of a debate with this but PVE pet talents are really very straightforward.  As you read in Slow Wolf's post we are a dps machine.  When we're not trap dancing and helping to CC mobs or save the healer, our job is to lay down the damage fast and heavy.  And as you should already know, especially in BM, a good chunk of damage is coming from your pet.  And just like us our pet's have optimal and not so optimal talents.  Now in the article Furrious Raiders: The Ferocious Mk.2 you got a nice full explanation on what your points are doing and why you're putting them there.  Ok so why wouldn't you want the ones left out?
 

• Great Stamina and Natural Armor: At fist glance you'd think "Hell, why wouldn't I want better armor and more stam for my pet? You guys are telling me I need my pet alive!"  Short answer is yeah,  you want to keep your pet up, but the percentage of health and armor gain from wasting points in these talents isn't going to give you the kinds of life saving returns you're hoping for. Certainly the returns you'll get from putting the points in dps talents far outweigh the minimal returns you'd get from these two abilities.   If that tiny extra bit of stam and armor is what is separating your pet from ripping a boss's head off or the pet pushing up daisies then you're in an "oh shit" moment and it's not going to make a difference.  Better to spend those points down the road to maximize your dps.
• The rest of the unused talents, like Slow Wolf mentioned, are geared towards pvp.  Lionhearted, charge etc. none of the unused talents are going to offer ANYTHING beneficial in a PVE environment.   Just mouseover the talent and read 'em carefully and you'll see when something is geared towards stuns, movement impairing etc. it's for pvp.
• Lick your wounds can lick my b*@#s, it's useless and you've already got mend pet.

   
        BM Alert!  Now Heart of the Phoenix is one hell of a talent.  I really want to emphasize this one because you're going to need it and you're going to be happy as a fat kid in a candy shop when you use it.  We've been pushing through content for awhile like nothing could stand in our way, mainly because for awhile, nothing could.  Speed runs were common and healers could keep up with whatever was being dished out.  Well new content has brought us back to heroic wipes and having to think and sometimes struggle a bit.  So I tell you now friends, your pet IS going to die.  But with Heart of the Phoenix you can get him right back up and into the mix.  A dead pet is a big loss for any hunter and HUGE for BM.  You just can't afford to get halfway into a fight and have Fluffy explode and hope to keep your numbers up. Specing BM is so pet dependent you just can't afford to lose your best friend.  Popping this ability isn't the same as revive pet at all, your pet will return instantly (no cast time) with FULL health.  

      The one thing I'd like to add is the use of macros.  Macros are beyond easy to do and you can find tons of useful hunter macros by just doing a hunter macro google search.  Personally I have a macro set up for each individual pet and swap em out depending on the pet, wolf, cat, core hound etc., onto a keybound space.  Here's an example:

#showtooltip Pet Attack

/petattack

/cast Dash

/cast Rabid

/cast Furious Howl

/cast Call of the Wild

/cast Kill Command

 
     Now the first line is pretty standard in any macro the #showtooltip Pet Attack just labels your macro, you can name it what you like.  This one is for my wolf.  It's not something I constantly spam in a fight but gives a nice beginning burst along with your own starter cooldown abilities like rapid fire or beastial wrath.  When you hit it your pet will attack target full speed ahead with dash.  You force furious howl and call of the wild for the extra damage buffs.  And finally, pay attention BM, Kill Command.  Now you will have to hit this button again once the pet gets within melee range of the taget for Kill Command to work but that's fine, for me it frees up a button spot for just Kill Command on it's own.  Even if the other abilities are on cooldown, when Kill Command is up hitting the macro will set it off.   Plus you'll be kicking off the fight with some nice opening burst damage.  Combine this with an explosive trap launched in before the pet and you'll be sitting pretty.  Now certain pets have different abilities such as rabid that you can add in the /cast lines to make that macro specific to that pet.


Now the next installment of the pet talent tree post should be very interesting.   I hope the curious side of you raised and eyebrow at the end of Slow Wolf's post about cunning pets in PVE.  Oh yes they have their uses to be sure.  Remember in my post 3,2,1 Trap! when I talked about the spider and hyena in Lich King fights?  Hmmm, well has blizzard improved some of the cunning pets to do better dps while still keeping some nice pvp abilities that are useful in some fights?  Stay tuned..... MMUUHAHAHAHA!

SMARTER PETS

Hmm what to do, what to do?

      One of the hunter class's strongest aspects (no pun intended) has been the huge online community of ours.  We have dedicated podcasts and blogs like no other class in the game.  However, one of the least talked about topics are the pet talent trees.  You can search high and low yet find very little to help newbie and veteran hunters alike about where to best place your pet's talent points.  Oddly enough this is a blog post I've been working at recently and noticed today on twitter that another established hunter blogger Slow Wolf is also working on a similar post.  This type of guide is long overdue and is one of the questions I get asked most in game by friends and fellow hunters. 

      Over the next week I will be working out a guide for the various pet types, (cunning, ferocity, & tenacity), their point placement, why, and the reason for pet macros.  I'll also have a special section on my opinion of points when leveling.        In the meantime you can catch up on the new pet abilities and buffs in my previous post  Holy Crit! and check out Petopia for a complete rundown of hunter pets and info.

     I look forward to comparing my ideas with what Slow Wolf has to say.  Make sure you don't miss his posts or mine on this well needed subject!  For updates join my follower list and my twitter link to the right, you can follow Slow Wolf on twitter here: Slow Wolf Twitter Page

PET LEVELING

 

Quick Hunter Pet Leveling Tip

If you don't want to bring an under level pet into a raid or instance then finding a spot where there's plenty to kill can be a problem.   Personally I like to bring a fully leveled pet into my groups as you won't level one as quick through a dungeon as you would in an area with tons of mobs.

In Wrath the best place to go out just to level up a pet was around in Sindragosa's fall.  All the mobs are level 80 and by the time you make a full pass around the ravine they'll respawn.  

Now in Cata I've found a terrific place to run your pet for some fast leveling.  In Twilight Highlands as soon as you arrive in Highbank just head a bit north to were all the mechanical mobs are and start killing.  make your way up and around the coastline and inland.  They're high enough level that you can get your pet to 85 in about an hour or so depending, if you just go on a killing rampage and don't stop to loot.  I'm on a high pop realm and I don't have a problem at all running into people questing that particular area any more, so it's pretty wide open.  By the time you make a full pass around there will be plenty of respawns  to continue on.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Happy Holiday to all of you in the Warcraft community.  

I would just like to take a minute and address my guild and wish all of you, my WoW family, a very happy, fun, and safe holiday.  As some of you know I came over to this server for the sole purpose of joining this guild.  Probably the best decision I ever made.  I would like to specifically thank Gorte, Beerrun, Carrierwave, Firemist and all the rest of you who made me  feel very welcomed from the very start.  On my old server I guild jumped quite a bit never finding the right group of nice, for lack of a better word, people.  All of you without exception have been the most helpful and generous people I have ever encountered in game.  Always going out of your way to include me in runs, help me with enchants, or give advice.  It is truly a rare thing to find such a mix of people in the game let alone in one guild.  I am proud and very happy to be a member of such an outstanding family.  So thank you again and always know that if I can ever do anything to help anyone just send me a tell.  Solace without a doubt lives up to it's reputation of "Random Acts of Kindness".

3,2,1 Trap!

     As a whole we've been spoiled lately, easily plowing through content and tearing up dungeons one after another on speed runs.  Little attention was paid to mob types, why would we, they were usually dead before they could finish a cast bar.  Well CC is alive and well in Cataclysm. As hunters we're more support and utility than ever in some cases.  Personally, although there was the fun of bragging rights with stand and shoot and top the meter, it was getting boring.  I like challenge, and I like the fact that our class changes have made us more valuable.  We first started to see the move towards utility at the end of Wrath with the final Lich King dungeons and ICC. Blood beasts anyone?  The Saurfang fight is a perfect example.  Just before the blood beasts spawned our strat was to run up drop a slowing frost trap, disengage back and wait for the spawn.   Distracting shot, the spider goes in for the web, then burn him down mixing in concussive to slow and kite if necessary.  I was so happy when we first got to this fight and realized the mechanics involved, I was like, sweet, we have to use our brains again.  Later on when you got to the Lich King there was a little more of this with bringing the right pet.  Web wasn’t working on the Valks so I went out and trained a hyena for the tendon rip slow.  It worked like a charm and all in my group were happy.  It’s was a really fun time in the game for me.  I spent many times on the phone and in vent with my friend Andy (Daewin) as we worked out these strats for ourselves and went over the best pet choices.  Nowadays our pet choice is more important than ever, as I explained in the last post “Holy Crit!”

     Ok so what else do we have going on?  Concussive shot is one of the best slowing/kiting abilities in our arsenal. For those of you who didn't know, the cool down is practically equal to the duration.  So basically you could keep concussive up and kite something all day long.  Now I think the obvious benefits of this are clear and don't need much explanation. 

      Used to be our traps were a very defensive and reactive mechanic. But with the addition of trap launcher our cc abilities just before a pull are better than ever.  Freezing a caster or healer in a mob and saving him for the last kill has been one of my main jobs in my group.  And let’s not forget tossing in an explosive trap on a boss for an extra dps burst.  Trap launcher is a bit of a clunky mechanic and not exactly a quick ability to get off in the thick of things, but good timing on your part will make it worthwhile.  After the tank goes in and you’re waiting those few seconds for him to build up aggro, get that launcher ready, aim, and before you attack with your regular rotation let it fly.   Now imo the other duty for us is to help protect our casters and healers.  We’re all ranged classes but we hunters have much more flexibility to get out of shit than they do for the most part. Getting our fellow dpsers and especially our healers out of trouble should always be a main concern.  A well-placed explosive trap will cause enough damage and threat to mobs going after our teammates to pull them onto us.  Toss in a distracting shot if you need to and get your ass moving.  If they’re easy kills, kite em and burn em.  Switch to aspect of the fox in this situation unless they’re fast movers then you may have to pop into cheetah.  Drop a slowing ice trap to help keep em at bay.  If you can wipe em out without too much trouble by all means do so, if it’s going to be you kiting all day long on something that should be with the main or off tank, drag em over there misdirect and feign. 

     Like I said we’ve really been spoiled with a lot of stand in once spot and watch the ridiculous numbers on recount for quite awhile.  Utility is back baby, dust off your brains and get back to thinking on your feet.

HOLY CRIT!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from fellow hunters lately about how dramatically our stats have changed, not to mention a startling dps loss on the road to 85.  So I’m going to put your minds at ease, take a deep breath everything is going to be fine.

First off agility is still our prime stat and you should be gemming and going after agility loaded gear still.  Agility is still giving you attack power and crit bonus. 

However,  if you’re not hitting your target none of that is going to mean a whole lot.  Yes boys and girls our hit cap has gone up and gone up a shit load!  Try about 700 more points to hit cap.  Yes to reach our new raid goal hit cap of 8% you’ll need 961 (841 for Drenei) to hit a raid boss.   Now this doesn’t mean you need to start reforging and gemming for hit straight away at level 81, 82 etc.  Blizzard implemented a nice little feature in our character pane that when you hover over your hit rating it will give you your current miss percentage for level appropriate mobs depending on what level you’re at.  

The quest, reputation and JP gear is really quite good and will quickly get you moving along to where you need to be.  Plus if you find yourself getting behind at all a quick trip to the reforger can carry you along till the next upgrade is attained. 

Now as for our secondary stats, which is where all the questions seem to be arising from  especially now that we can reforge items:

The debate about crit and mastery is still ongoing with plenty of well known community hunters doing testing.  As far as returns go crit seems to be more beneficial than mastery right now.  Not by a huge margin only within a slim percentage point, but if you’re min maxing you’ll want to keep an eye on these as you replace gear.  Now I realize due to the stat changes that happened during the last patch that you noticed your crit dropped by a huge margin.  Again breath easy, I know it’s a huge change but it is across the board to all of us hunters and isn’t anything you did or need to worry about.  Like I said your gear upgrades just from leveling will be substantial and carry you into heroics.

I’m not going to go into confusing in depth number calculations and percentages instead I’ll give you a simple rundown on what’s going on.  In BM 1 mastery is giving us about a .75% increase to overall dps whereas crit is a just a hair more than a 1% flat dps increase for each point.  In SV mastery gets 1% on magical damage, but doesn’t apply towards auto shots, kill shot, or pet dps numbers.   Crit however gives 1% to all of these.  So feel free to reforge into some crit over mastery right now, even if you didn’t have mastery on anything you still get 8% because that’s the baseline to start anyhow.  I recommend playing around with reforging crit and mastery numbers and testing on the dummy to see how your own numbers are stacking up.  It’s easy to just read online about who’s doing what and copy them, but doing a little of your own testing will help you see for yourself how it’s affecting you. 

MM is still a viable spec but right now it isn’t top dog over SV anymore, at least for now.  So my recommendation is to have a BM and SV spec until they let us triple spec.  BM for questing/soloing and in case your 5 man needs a buff from an exotic.  And SV for dungeons and raids. 

Real quick, I mentioned above about possibly running BM in a group for buffs, well as most of you already know many of our pets now grant group buffs similar to what other classes bring to a raid.  For example let’s say you’ve got a 5 man going and there’s no Shaman, uh oh no heroism.  Not so fast, just bring out the core hound and they have an ability called ancient hysteria that when you pop it will have everyone in the group asking “Holy crap where did heroism come from!?”  Here is a list of the raid buffs and abilities for the pets, happy hunting!

Ferocity Hunter Pet Buffs

• Agility and Strength: cat, spirit beast (exotic)
• Burst Haste: corehound (exotic)
• 5% crit: wolf, devilsaur (exotic)
• 12% armor debuff: raptor
• 30% bleed damage: hyena
• Cast speed reduction: corehound (exotic)
• 10% melee attack speed reduction: tallstrider, fox

Cunning Hunter Pet Buffs

• Health: silithid (exotic)
• 12% armor debuff: serpent
• Cast speed reduction: sporebat
• 4% physical damage taken: ravager
• 8% spell damage taken: dragonhawk, wind serpent
• 10% physical damage: carrion bird

Tenacity Hunter Pet Buffs

• 5% stats: shale spider (exotic)
• 10% physical damage: bear
• 30% bleed damage: rhino (exotic), boar
• 4% physical damage taken: worm (exotic)

• Bat Sonic Blast:  2-second stun.
• Bear Demoralizing Roar: reduces physical damage caused by all enemies within range by 10%
• Beetle: Harden Carapace — reduces all damage taken by 50%
• Bird of Prey Snatch: disarm.
• Boar Gore:  increased bleed damage.
• Carrion Bird Demoralizing Screech: reduces physical damage caused by all enemies within range by 10%.
• Cat Roar of Courage: Str/Agility buff.
  Prowl: stealth.
• Chimera (exotic) Froststorm Breath: conical damaging attack.
• Corehound (exotic) Lava Breath: 25% cast speed reduction.
  Ancient Hysteria: attack speed increase (Heroism/Bloodlust).
• Crab Pin: 4 sec root.
• Crocolisk Ankle Crack slow effect.
• Devilsaur (exotic) Monstrous Bite: reduces the effectiveness of heals received by 25%
  Terrifying Roar: 5% increased crit chance buff.
• Dog Lock Jaw: 4-sec root.
• Dragonhawk Fire Breath: increased magic damage taken buff.
• Fox Tailspin: attack speed reduction
• Gorilla Pummel:  2-sec. spell school lockout.
• Hyena Tendon Rip:  increased bleed damage taken.
• Moth Serenity Dust: interrupts/prevents spellcasting from that school of magic for 2 sec.
• Monkey Bad Manner: 4-sec blind.
• Nether Ray Nether Shock:  interrrupt/spellschool lockout.
• Raptor Tear Armor: armor debuff [I'm sure this will be fixed to stack 3 times for 12% like every other armor debuff.]
• Ravager Ravage: increases enemy’s physical damage taken by 4%
• Rhino (exotic) Stampede: bleed damage increased by 30%.
  Horn Toss: knockback.
• Scorpid Clench: disarm.
• Serpent Corrosive Spit: armor debuff. [Note: I'm sure this will be changed to stack 3 times to be the same as all the other armor debuffs in Cataclysm.]
• Shale Spider (exotic) Embrace of the Shale Spider: 5% stat increase (like Kings or MotW).
• Silithid (excotic) Venom Web Spray: 5-sec root.
  Qiraji Fortitude : stamina increase (fortitude).
• Spider Web: 5-sec root.
• Spirit Beast (exotic) Spirit Mend: targeted heal and HoT.
  Roar of Courage: Str/Agility buff
  Spirit Walk: stealth
• Sporebat Spore Cloud: cast speed reduction.
• Tallstrider Dust Cloud: attack speed reduction.
• Turtle Shell Shield: damage reduction.
• Warp Stalker Time Warp: movement speed reduction.
• Wasp Sting: 2-sec stun.
• Wind Serpent Lightning Breath: increased magic damage taken.
• Wolf Furious Howl: 5% crit chance increase.
• Worm (exotic) Acid Spit: increased physical damage taken.
  Burrow Attack: AoE attack

References: WoW.com & Petopia