3.3 for hunters... So Far

Hunter T10 set bonuses

* 2 Pieces: Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for until cancelled.
* 4 Pieces: (Updated) When your Viper Sting, Serpent Sting, and Wyvern Sting abilities deal damage, you have a 5% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 seconds.

Overall

* Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
* Culling the Herd - When your pet's Claw, Bite, or Smack ability deals a critical strike, you and your pet deal 1/2% increased damage for 10 sec.
* Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas



Beast Mastery

* Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.
* Mend Pet, Scare Beast had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.


Marksmanship

* Silencing Shot additional tooltip text - Non-player victim spellcasting is also interrupted for 3 sec.
* Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Serpent Sting, Volley, Hunter's Mark had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.


Survival

* Explosive Trap now burns all enemies for [ Ranged AP + 900 ] additional Fire damage over 20 sec. (Up from 900)
* Point of No Escape now increases the critical strike chance of all of your attacks on targets affected by your Frost Trap, Freezing Trap and Freezing Arrow. (Old - "Increases the critical strike chance of all attacks")
* Deterrence now also reduces the chance ranged attacks will miss you by 100%.
* Lock and Load now has a 22 sec cooldown. (Down from 30 sec)
* Wyvern Sting, Mongoose Bite, Raptor Strike, Counterattack, Freezing Trap, Explosive Shot had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

* Misdirection redesigned - The current party or raid member targeted will received the threat caused by your next damaging attack and all actions taken for 4 sec afterwards
Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.


Pets

* Demoralizing Screech now decreases the melee AP of all enemies in melee range by 574 (Up from 410). Lower ranks increased accordingly.
* Venom Web Spray now has a 30 yd range. (Up from 20 yd)
* Cower is now a one-rank ability and reduces damage taken by 40%. While cowering, your pet's movement speed is reduced by 50%.
* Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
* Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
* Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
* Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
* Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
* Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
* Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
* Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

Bug Fixes
* Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
* Point of No Escape: This ability no longer stacks and now only functions for the hunter.

Will keep you posted on any other changes

Sahirestar shelved for now

Well at the moment I’m having a break from my hunter as she has pretty much exhausted all the in game raid content that I can do with my guild Gurkhas she has full t9- and a new mount. I still raid lead once a week for TOC / Onyxia 10 man and still having fun. Cant wait to get my druid in these.

So I am levelling my Druid Talamh who is now level 70 !!! Swift Flight Form at 71 YEY!!!

I will still be blogging for hunter and I have new Beast Mastery Video Guides on the go, which will hopefully be on the site next week.

A big thank you to all who read my blog and get in touch especially those that even go so far as to make a level 1 and contact me in game to say hello and ask me advice, which I am more than happy to do. You wonderful people can still email, comment or contact me in game on Talamh to discuss hunters.

Also on a side note Saphirestar now has the Violet proto drake for completing the “what a strange trip it’s been” achievement. I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about world events anymore :)

Small overview on the Marksmansip guides

Sorry for the delay in this coming, but here it is finally a summary of each part of my Marksmanship guide



Part 1 Marksmanship

I talk about stats in part 1 with a chat on the virtues of Armour Penetration

Agility over Attack power
Attack power
Hit (164 with 3/3 in focused aim or 264 with 0 points in Focused aim) not inc Draenei racial bonus
Intellect
Armour Penetration (soft cap of 500)
Haste (cap of 524 not essential) (disregard haste if Beast Master spec)

Trinket procs
Chance on crit or chance on hit which is better? I explain about both
chance on hit being better for non Survival hunter or those with less that 40+ Crit%

Glyphs
Chimera Shot
Serpent Sting
Tru-shot Aura

An explaination of Chimera Shot, its related CD and serpent sting debuff

You can go to my You tube channel you can find a video of my Chimera shot testing for damage.

Shot Rotation
Serpent Sting - Chimera shot - Arcance Shot - Aimed Shot - Steady Shot fillers - then watch cd for those that are coming round. The addon Omni cc is crucial for this.

Damage meters


Part 2 Marksmanship

A review again on shot rotations from the previous post

Abilities and when to use these
Call of the wild + Rapid Fire / Readines / Rapid Fire
Nore: remember to have Aimed Shot and Arcane Shot and Chimera Shot all on CD before using readiness as all these shots will come off CD intantly to use again straight away giving you a nice amount of burst damage.

Pet damage builds
Remember pet have to up for Call of the wild to work and the talent Focused Fire to be activated.
An explanation of pet builds and talents



Part 3 Marksmanship

Build overview and talent explanation (with a starting emphasis on HIT)
164 hit with 3/3 points in Focused Aim
264 hit with 0 Points in Focused Aim
228 with 0 points + Draenei Racial (non Draenei players dont rely on this go for 264 and this has a range)
Full build run down talent by talent


Hope this 3 part guide has been very usefull to you.

3.2.2 - Crush BM some more, why dont ya?

o Beast Mastery
The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.

hmm I wonder why Blizzard dicided to do this as really no hunters are BM any more and BM has the least dmg of all three build atm so why nerf it again?

I've been a big advocate for all the specs in raid but after 3 months now ive sen few to none Beast master hunters in Raids or Heroic pugs and i can fully understand why as Beast Mastery no matter how good you are as a player take so much effort to play and you do so little damage compared to Survival / Marksmanship, why beat yourself over the head to stay Beast Mastery. It is such a shame that Blizard continue to crush this spec.


Master's Call: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds, Frostfire Bolt, and Slow.

Trap Mastery's (Survival) tooltip now states the correct amount of snakes summoned.

Glyph of Freezing Trap: The effect from this glyph will now log properly.

All ranks of Sonic Blast now properly have an 80 Focus cost.
Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.
Furious Howl: Ranks 1-5 will no longer give slightly more attack power than is listed in their tooltips.
Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
Roar of Sacrifice: Damage transferred to pet is now considered Nature damage.
The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.
T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.

Hunter Tier-9 2-Piece Set Bonus: Critical damage from Serpent Sting will now work properly with the Mortal Shots and Expose Weakness talents.

These are all the changes to hunters that I can find in the patch notes.

New 3 part Marksmanship guide

I have made a 3 part hunter guide for those wanting to know more about Marksmanship

Part one is about stats, armour penetration and chimera shot specifically


Part 2 is about shot rotation and pets


Part 3 is about the Marksmanship build



References
WWS report http://wowwebstats.com/w6qrixw1wmuea
Petopia
Hit Rating / Focused Aim numbers

On a side note: I am really sorry about the sound quaility for these video my mic hisses alot even tho its noise reducion is switched on and its supposed to be a noise reduction mic.
So again sorry for the sound.

Armor Penetration Nerf in 3.2.2

There is rarely an ideal time to announce a nerf. In the case of e.g. the Prot paladin healing nerf, we had already decided we were going to fix it and how we were going to fix it so we announced it relatively early. The armor pen decision included more debate. I am sorry if the timing was bad for any of you personally, but we certainly can't promise that future nerfs or buffs won't necessitate gear changes.

I wouldn't focus too much on the issue of using too many of the same kind of gem. There are plenty of situations where that has been the case since BC (though it's not ideal in a perfect world). Rather the case was that classes that had been using Agi or Str or whatever were now switching almost exclusively to armor pen and being greatly rewarded for it. Gear without armor pen was being passed over. Specs that benefited a lot from armor pen were outstripping specs in the same class. As many other players have concluded, it was just too good.

That said, we don't think it will be a trash stat if we make this change. If you could beat plate-wearers in PvP before we don't think that will suddenly flip overnight. We don't think you'll feel the need to shard your items with armor pen.

We also think the change is good for both PvE and PvP. My earlier comment was to try and discourage players from thinking their PvE got nerfed for PvP reasons, though that absolutely happens sometimes when we can't avoid it. Some players have been concerned about the power of melee classes in Arenas. While this change alone isn't likely to sway their opinions, chilling out melee damage in PvP probably isn't a bad thing.

Yes, armor pen is gone in Cataclysm, at least as a rating on gear. Until then we want it to be a good stat but not one that trumps every other gear consideration.

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won't cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.

We're letting you know now so that this doesn't feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won't come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

the Changes to Armour Penetration

Not wishing to get bogged down in calculations and debates over the worth of Armour Penetration here are 3 posts on the subject for ppl to think about.


http://www.qqpewpew.com/2009/05/11/new-information-about-armor-penetration/


http://outdps.com/2009/07/17/agility-vs-armor-penetration/

http://outdps.com/2009/08/10/taking-arcane-shot-out-of-your-rotation/

Bug Fixes Specific to Hunters in 3.2

Bug Fixes

All ranks of Sonic Blast now properly have an 80 Focus cost.

Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.

Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.

The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.

T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.

Upcomming Hunter Changes in 3.2

A comprehensive list so far for the changes in 3.2 for hunters.

Items: General

* Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.

Classes: General

* Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
* Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3 second interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.


* Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

* The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.
* Traps now have separate 30-second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

Talents

Beast Mastery

* Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.

Survival

* Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.
* Lock and Load: Now has a 22-second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.
* Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
* Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.
* Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.
* T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow ;D

Pets

* Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target.
* Roar of Sacrifice cooldown has been reduced from 2 min to 1 min.
* Rake (Cat) now deals 47 to 67 bleed damage and an additional 19 to 25 damage every 3 seconds at max rank. (Up from 19 to 25 additional damage over 9 sec)
* Wild Hunt now increases the contribution your pet gets from your Stamina by 20% and attack power by 15%. (Up from 10%)
* Furious Howl: Ranks 1-5 will no longer give slightly more attack power than is listed in their tooltips.

Glyphs

•Glyph of Arcane Shot - Restores mana equal to 20% of your Arcane Shot's mana cost.
•Glyph of Freezing Trap - When your Freezing Trap breaks, the victim's movement speed is reduced by 30% for 4 sec.


Nothing from MM hunters :( well atleast its not a nerf :D

New Hunter Video

I'll be working on my new hunter video as soon as i can log into WoW I have some info on Beast Master hunters that i have before my break. So keep an eye out for my new video...Coming Soon!

Break Over

After 2 weeks of a WoW break im coming back to the game refreshed and ready to go.

Strict instructions from my other half that I only play WoW 3 nights a weeks and have 4 nights where we do something else as opposed to the 5 days in WoW 2 nights off like before.

So no more hardcore raiding for me. Playing in a more relaxed environment with no stress or anger.............Yeah........right!

Anyway thats the plan

/readycheck
r

A wow break

Taking a break from Warcraft for the time being. I'm a bit burnt out from raiding every week and dealing with lower than average dmg/ dps and ppl not listening. So after 4 long years a break is very much needed.

I'm not off the WoW grid just yet, I'm still replying to reader emails and doing the best i can to help those who need my advice on hunters. I'm still intouch with alot of friends from the guilds I've been in via vent and msn. I have no idea how long my break away from WoW will be, but i very much doubt it will be permanent.

So im playing a few other different games atm most are free to play with micro management facilities for those wanting to spend some money on them. But all optional.
Battle Forge
First of those is BattleForge
An RTS/ TCG a reall good free to play game with micro management to buy more cards

A really good game, and not easy to play, quite hard actually. Im very impressed by its graphics and its ability to really get you in its thrall and want you to play more, to farm over and over again for those upgrades to the cards you use the most.
Here is a screen shot of the action It has 1 player 2 player 4 and 12 player scenarios to team up and play for loot and also PVP sparring duels for you to pit yourself against other players to help you gain points and honour to buy those upgrades that just wont drop in the PVE side of the game.
All in all a really good game and fun to play. I've spent some money on the game and have 2 decks of cards ive spent money on a full nature deck and a Frost/Fire Deck.
There are Four types of cards Fire Frost Nature and Shadow. I have a friend who has gone shadow and found it quite hard to get to grips with as a starter. The Shadow deck is a great deck and ive read the cards for someone who can comprehend and use the deck to its maximum potential it would be an amazing deck to use.

Here is a wiki i found on the game http://battleforge.wikia.com/wiki/BattleForge_Wiki The loot table is very handy for those wanting to collect all the upgrades.

Didn't think i'd be so into the game but i am.

Next is Runes of Magic

Gettng back into that game after a while away from playing lots of patches to download and talk of some new classes are intruging. Warden and Druid both of which some very interesting.
Magic the Gathering: Planeswalker
Also started Magic the Gathering on the 360 Arcade but only started that yesterday. Taking some time to re learn the rules of the game. I'm sure i still have my White Deck in the house somewhere. :D Sad i know. Cost wise, it wasnt too bad i guess £8.25 for the 800 points i needed to buy it on Xbox arcade but cheaper than a store buy.



Steam Games
Completed Portal, World of Goo, Plants vs Zombies all of which are great and fun to play. All these games where so fun to play, amazingly intuitive, inventive and good at getting that sluggish grey matter in my noggin moving again. Very good for getting to thinking strategically, logically whilst having a blast at the same time.
Steam also have the new Monkey Island available nd i'm very tempted by that toovery nostalgic i loved the old MI 1 2 and 3.






Rock Band2
Also Rocking out with Rock Band 2. Singing and Playing bass is hard but alot of fun and getting Hangman to sing is almost impossible. Another game im really enjoying. Rock Band is cool and i must say ive found quite a few songs that i didnt think i would like, that i do like alot. From old cheesy rock to hardcore headbangers its alot of fun and sometimes really hard to play. Roping Hang in now and then to get his guitar. Yes we have 2 guitars for RB2, tho not a porper microphone :D



All in all leaving wow has given my alot more time to play other games ive wanted to play and never gotten round to. I feel liberated and lonely all in one go. WoW has been such a big part of my life for so long and the chat from guild and wow members was so constant the void that not playing WoW leaves is something major im struggling to fill.

Really liking co-op games to play with my Hangman wish there was more out there, like RE5 coop that werent big burley men that would be fun and appleaing for me to play from a female perspective.


All i can say is WoW is great and everything but take time away from it to do other things. I'm obsessed and still think of WoW everyday what im missing, things i could be doing in the game but im hoping the obsession will fade in time and i can return to the game refreshed and not the WoW obsessed raider i was.

:D

Uk Mobile Phone Directory

Nothing to do with wow but something i feel very stronly against


Maybe you have heard about this but early next week all UK mobiles will be on a directory which will mean that anyone will be able to access the numbers. It is easy to unsubscribe but it must be done before the beginning of next week to make sure that you are ex directory. I have unsubscribed and you may want to suggest it to all your friends and family who have UK mobiles or they could be swamped by unsolicited messages and calls. Removal is recommended by the BBC - see link below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8091621.stm


Just done this myself. Double checked it wasn't a scam and it is actually on the bbc website recommending to do this.


The Directory of Mobile Phone numbers goes live next week. All numbers including those belonging to children will be open to cold calling and the general abuse that less scrupulous telesales people subject us too.

To remove your number go here. (you need your mobile phone with you to do this, they text you a code)

http://www.118800.co.uk/removeme/remove-me.html

When on the site, click "Home" then "Ex-directory" this will remove you from the directory.

You can remove your number from this list, and tell all your friends - especially those with children who have mobile phones. I personally believe my mobile number is private and I should be able to chose who I give it to - none of us agreed to this when we sign mobile phone contracts.

Twitter

Heya all

I am now on twitter

@Warcraft_Hunter

If you have any questions or you are in need of advice you can now get me on there.

:D

Happy Hunting

My First Hunter Guide

Woot I am now on youtube channel, the address is the hunters sanctuary
I'm still a little rough around the edges with Windows Movie Maker but i am getting there. Here is my first crack at it. Forgive the low volume if you have issues.



Sorry for the low volume on the video. I am really struggling to sort out audio levels between World of Warcraft and my microphone. Either I’m too low and wow is too loud or the other way round I can’t find a good balance. I am using FRAPS and Windows Movie Maker if you have and ideas on how I can level my audio out or at least increase my mic input volume which currently is at max that I can see. I’ve tried to microphone/ headsets and both give a low input volume. Any way to add-ons...


Omni-CC
A small subtle add-on that give you a numerical countdown for all you and your pet skills and abilities.

Kharthuss-hunter-timers
A running timer buff add-on that indicates active hunter and pet buffs as well a number of racials and trinket PROCS (inc Heroism and Darkmoon Cards)

CT buffs – CT Mod Advanced
This package contains: CT_Core v3.017, CT_BarMod v3.019, CT_BottomBar v3.017, CT_BuffMod v3.011, CT_ExpenseHistory v3.005, CT_MailMod v3.008, CT_MapMod v3.006, CT_PartyBuffs v3.005, CT_Timer v3.006, CT_Viewport v3.005.
I however just use CORE and CT_MailMod and CT_BuffMod in my Interface/Addons folder so I don’t have 2 bar addons running.

Power Auras Classic
An add-on to provide Audio and Visual stimulus for buffs and debuffs and PROCS
Blood Arrows PAC Guides Part 1 and Part 2 check out his blog posts on these for his Aura-String and URL for the audio files used in the guide
How to import these into Power Auras

1. Right click on one of "download" links on Blood Arrows post save "Save Target As." the file to your computer.
2. Open file with a text editor (like notepad.exe)
3. Open Power Auras in World of Warcraft ('type /powa')
4. Click "Import" button.
5. Paste the contents of the text file into the Aura-string, and click "Accept"
6. The aura will be instantly created in Power Auras.
7. Repeat for each of the auras you want to try.
Please note: some auras wont show until the add-on sees the buff or debuff on you. So when creating new ones for example “Rapid Fire” create the “Aura” then after coming out of the menu Activate Rapid Fire you should then see the Aura or Symbol you have used to then adjust where on the screen it appears and size. If it doesn’t appear wait for the cooldown and try again. It should work. It took me a few tries on some auras for it to show on screen.

MSBT – Miks Scrolling Battle txt
Scrolling damage text and notifies of PROCS and ability cooldowns. This can also be configures to give audio signal for cooldowns too. This is difficult to configure to start with to give the Audio indicators e.g.- “Serpent Sting Out” etc but these two videos helped greatly. I watched these over and over until I understood how these where done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4r6LYYCwOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFd4wYoZpSs

Pet Info
To remind you to feed your pet or if you have the Glyph of Mend Pet to use Mend Pet to keep your pet happy and doing 125% damage. Note that you can use Mend pet in combat so having this glyph will mean you can keep your pet happy even if in combat. Whereas without the glyph you would have to come out of combat before feeding your pet.

Viper Notify
A reminder to swap Aspects fro Viper to Dragonhawk when mana is full and Aspect of the Viper is still on. An Audio and Visual stimulus that can be set at different thresholds other than 100% mana if you want to know when your mana is at a level you deem full enough.

Z hunter
A collapse able bar add-on for all aspects of a hunter. Traps, Aspects, Pet skills even MD notify to raid/ party. I use it to keep bars at a minimum and free up screen space. It can be set to not collapse and left or right extensions if required. I also use the MD functionality for /raid chat to notify the tank I’m “Misdirecting to” that a mob will been interested in him. This also covers your back to show you have MD’d the target the Raid Leader may have been asked you to and also to coordinate with other hunters in the raid who may MD the same tank in a chain MD pull or various other tanks in a sequence pull. It can also give the tank that you are misdirecting to an indication you are struggling with threat if say a Feign Death has been resisted or if his/her Threat per Second is too low and to kick it up a notch. Screaming your threat (tps) is rubbish usually falls on deaf ears. So show you are trying to reduce your threat and are giving him some of it through Misdirect.


I hope this guide has been a help and please leave me feed back so I know what to change and do better for next time.

Happy Hunting

Saphirestar

Some Tweaks to my MM build

OK after some messing around I now have a new Marksmanship Build that has improved upon my dps as well as changing a glyph from Kill Shot to Chimera Shot, that has also helped.

Clip of my Armoury talent page below and my latest WWS Report on my dps frm 25 Man Ulduar.




Still totally loving Marksmanship Spec

Oh on a side note im getting to grips with FRAPS and video editing so should have some video tutorials and guides soon :D

Happy Hunting
Saphirestar

3.1 Survival Build

Survival was always one of my favourite builds in The Burning Crusade when it was an underpowered build to be and only a few hunters could pull it off with any decent dps.
In Wrath, after the major buffs this build received many hunters turned to this spec with a huge amount of DPS output. It was sad to say many of these hunters could not do this build justice and with some lower geared hunters just didn’t have the stats to back up the build.

Survival is a very stat dependant build with Agility at its core. Many of these hunters had come from the Beast Mastery tree where Attack Power was the core of that spec and it just didn’t transfer over. Survival is all about PROCS that come from having massive amounts of Agility.
Before the change to Survival, your main PROC was Lock ‘n’ Load from either traps or Serpent Sting DOT tick, now after 3.1 it’s from again Traps and now the new Black Arrow shot DOT tick. The other proc was Expose Weakness a buff that increased your Attack Power by 25% of your AGI for 7 seconds. Also, Thrill of the Hunt, which regenerates mana each time you critically hit, so again the more Agi you have the higher your crit chance. Therefore, you can see AGI means a lot to this build and this is why the abilities like lightning reflexes are build into the tree. This is why a lot of the hunters that went from Beast Mastery to Survival found that although the spec was so over powered and they could do massive dps with it; once Blizzard resorted the tree with the new redesigned Lock ‘n’ Load at its heart it just didn’t work as well as it should. Again, they lamented on the World of Warcraft hunter forums.

I personally no longer like the Survival build much to my despair, as I loved it so much in TBC. The new redesigned L’n’L proc just isn’t for me, and to be honest I don’t like a build designed around a random proc that as of 3.1 very rarely happens.

Some talents to think about

Lock and Load -
You have a 100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.
The main talent at the Survival heart. However most hunters get this wrong and spam two explosive shots one after another. This unfortunately over rights the Explosive Shot DOT tick, which as of 3.1 can now critically hit, so ensuring the tick happens is necessary. To do so power Auras addons help, some macros can also help with this two with I will highlight later on. For now let’s think about the L’n’L proc rotation. When you hear that magic sound happen:
Explosive Shot -> Aimed Shot (if you have it in your build) -> Explosive Shot if not use Explosive -> Multi -> Explosive. By doing this instant shot in the middle you ensure the Explosive shot DOT tick happens and you don’t over write it.

Expose Weakness -
Your ranged criticals have a 33% 66% 100% chance to grant you Expose Weakness. Expose Weakness increases your attack power by 25% of your Agility for 7 sec.
OK sounds good right? 3/3 all the way. Whey hay 100% woot! NO! Think about this for a second. How much Crit do you have? 30% crit and above? Raid buffed you are talking almost what 40% and that’s with medium gear. High End gear it will get even higher So you are critically hitting most of the time with one shot or another, with 100%, every time you crit you are over writing the buff over and over and over and not letting it run to its 7 second duration. Is this making sense now? Therefore, this 100% 3/3 talent point is a bit of a waste of 3 points. With high end gear you probably only need 1 point in Expose Weakness as your Crit will be high enough that more often than not you are under the influence of the buff, more than 1 point would be a waste and these points could be put elsewhere in other damaging talents. Again, this shows that AGI is at the core of this build, as AGI will determine how much this buff will be and increase your crit freeing up 2 points to use elsewhere.

Go For the Throat (Marksmanship Tree) -
Your ranged critical hits cause your pet to generate 25 Focus.
I will bang on about this repeatedly. Your pet is your friend; it’s why you rolled a hunter. Give it some love. Remember those points you freed up from Expose Weakness? Show your pet some love and give it 1 point in this talent. Only the 1 mind you don’t need any more than that, and I’ll tell you why. You either have a wolf for the Furious Howl talent, which gives you a nice amount of Attack Power buff, or say a cat or raptor something decent for damage or just for the buff it gives you. You are not Beast Mastery so you pet won’t have talents like Bestial Discipline so its threat generation will be extremely low, so low in fact that after the initial Dash ,Charge, Rend/ Furious Howl, Claw/Bite it won’t regenerate Focus to do much more that Claw or Bite or say Rend. Rendering the other damage talents or buffs useless as it will use the Focus Dump first using up whatever Focus it had leaving the other talents to sit their languishing not used. This is called Focus Starvation. With 1 point in GFTT, your crit is so high, so much so that each time you crit your pet generates 25 focus to use for whatever is ready to use. Meaning that it can focus dump more, which means more damage from your pet and overall more dps from you, and if that all-important Howl is ready, you get it every 40 seconds without fail. So why not 2 points? 2 points would give your pet 50 focus every time you crit this sounds better, but in fact your crit is so high that you pet would end up over gorged with focus and not able to use it all so again this would be a waste of a point that could be used to better effect elsewhere.

So know you know a bit more about the Survival tree, and why some talents are just not worth maxing. I must bang on again about IF you don’t have the hit cap of 264 or 164 with 3/3 in Focused Aim, you might as well throw your DPS in the bin. It won’t matter how much AGI and crit you have if you don’t have the hit cap you’re not going to hit anything and your DPS will fail! So get to that all-important hit cap first with 3/3 in the Focused Aim talent (found in the Marksmanship tree) and then get more Hit on gear so you can reduce the amount of points in this talent to put elsewhere. Here is a build to use IF and I say IF you are already at 264 HIT. If you aren’t you will have to take points from this build to put in Focused Aim. Ideas like taking out Aimed Shot and use Multi-Shot, take out Nox Stings until you have the required hit and then put these talent points back and use Aimed Shot and Nox Stings.


Macros
1st macro is my Black Arrow/ Pet abilities macro
#showtooltip Black Arrow
/cast Black Arrow
/cast Call of the wild
/cast Rabid
I tried with Black Arrow off this macro and to be honest, it’s just too many things to keep track of. Black Arrow works well on the macro as you hit serpent sting just before your first opener of Black Arrow this means your pet is already in combat so you don’t waste any uptime of call of the wild and rabid in the time your pet gets to your mob. You can add /Cast Furious Howl as an extra line if you want, if you are not happy to leave it on auto cast.

2nd macro is my main/spammy macro. Not used to extent, it used to be and now Kill Shot is on the GCD (Global Cool Down) it has to be removed from the original macro. However, this has made things somewhat better. The macro I use for all builds as it is generic.

#showtooltip
/console sound_enablesfx0
/cat Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/console sound_enablesfx1
Use this when all other shots are on CD and mash it so kill command is used when it’s available. You will still hear the roar when it’s used.

3rd macro
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=2 Explosive shot, Aimed shot

Now I tweaked this about according to how much haste to few seconds before it reverts to Explosive shot and you miss the Aimed shot timer and too long before it resets and you waste time before it swaps back to Explosive. I tried 6 secs and that was far too long Explosive shot was coming back faster and I was waiting for it to swap back to Explosive for me to hit it. In addition, this meant I couldn’t use this macro when Lock ‘n’ Load PROC’D. So try reset=2 and see how it goes I found this to be the optimal time between shots rotation. This also means that when Lock ‘n’ Load PROCS you can hit Explosive shot -> Aimed Shot -> Explosive shot one after another without any worry the DOT tick from Explosive Shot will be over written.

Kill Shot
Now kill shot is on the GCD we can no longer add this too macros (tis a pain but simple enough to remedy. Either put it on its own or you can make another macro easy enough to use.

/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot

This simple macro should stop whatever you are doing (usually Steady Shot) to fire Kill Shot meaning you don’t miss any time waiting for the cast time of Steady Shot to end.

Shot Rotation
Well you now have three DOT timers to watch as well as a PROC and a PROC rotation to remember. So what to use first? I didn’t stay Survival long but the shot rotation I used is as follows:

Hunter’s Mark/ PetAttack -> Serpent Sting -> Black Arrow (Macro) -> Explosive shot -> Aimed Shot-> Steady Shot x 2/3 depending on haste and then watching cooldowns depending what is ready to use.
Whether you use Black Arrow then Serpent Sting first is up to you. With the Serpent sting buff being slightly longer (with Glyph and Resourcefulness) I use the longer DOT timer first.
Lock ‘n’ Load rotation
As explained above Explosive Shot -> Aimed/ Multi Shot (depending what you have in your build) -> Explosive Shot

Glyphs
Explosive Shot
Serpent Sting (with noxious stings this glyph helps you to have serpent sting DOT up longer)
And either Kill Shot or Aimed Shot
I prefer the Kill Shot as with Survival your Kill Shot hits so massively when it crits its well worth the reduction of 6 seconds on the cooldown. It’s up to you though.

Pets


Again, it’s up to you. Your pet is secondary to your dps so think of pets that will either be happy if left to itself or will add a buff to you like the wolf. Pets like Cat, Raptor will happily do decent dps on its own doing Claw and Rend/ Savage Rend and with 1 point in Go For The Throat will have more than enough Focus to do these over and over without much interference from you. Alternatively, the new Wolf with Furious Howl that won’t do great damage but will give you a nice buff every 40 seconds again if given focus to use.

Level 1-58 Hunters Guide

This guide will get you to outlands level 58 with the basic understanding of a Hunter and how to play your class. Hopefully :D

Hunters are the only ranged physical DPS (damaging) class in World of Warcraft. They wield bows, crossbows, or guns to unleash a stream of arrows or bullets at their enemies. Attuned with nature, hunters can track nearly any type of life form and tame beasts to fight alongside them. Pets draw attention away from their masters, allowing a hunter to deal damage from afar (this is called Tanking). A hunter can also place traps for enemies that can harm, slow down, or even incapacitate enemies who trigger them. With many useful abilities, a hunter played well can be a huge asset to a party or a worthy foe.
Racial Abilities
Racials (a race’s abilities) are the first thing to consider before you make your hunter. Some racials are more suited to a hunter than others. But in the end go with what you like but consider these as you roll your hunter.
– Alliance
Draenei – 1% to Hit: this means your hit cap is 1% less than that of other classes, which becomes very important at level 80. Jewel Crafting bonus comes in handy at Level 80, too.
Dwarf – 1% Increase Critical damage from guns, and Stoneform that is handy for PvP (While active, grants immunity to Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects. In addition, Armour increases by 10%. Lasts 8 sec).
Night Elf – Shadowmeld very handy for PvP (Stealth like ability), Reduced chance that melee and ranged attackers will hit you by 2%.
– Horde
Blood Elf - Silence all enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec and restores your Mana. Good for PvP
Orc – Blood Fury – a self buff that increases attack power by per character level. Lasts 15 sec. Duration of Stun effects reduced by an additional 15%. Damage dealt by pets increased by 5%.
Tauren – Warstomp - Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec. Base Health increased by 5%
Troll – Beserking self buff that increases your attack speed by 10% to 30%. At full health the speed increase is 10% with a greater effect up to 30% if you are badly hurt when you activate Berserking. Lasts 10 sec. Increased chance to critically hit with Bows is increased by 1%. Health regeneration increased by 10%. 10% of total Health regeneration may continue during combat.
Choose the race you prefer. I chose Draenei for the heal ability, but other racials are better (horde side mostly: for the pet damage and weapon damage bonuses), but don’t let that put you off choosing an Alliance Hunter.

Gear
To begin with, gear is varied. In the beginning, it doesn’t really matter what gear you come across as you will be swapping and changing it on a day by day basis from quest rewards and drops, but it’s advisable to go for gear with Agility, Stamina, Intellect and, later on, Attack Power. Strength and Spirit don’t do anything for hunters and neither does Mana/5 secs. Some players like to ‘twink’ their characters and this is fine for them, but it’s not really necessary. I got the crossbow “Crystalpine Stinger” at level 27 from the AH (Auction House) and used it all the way up to level 59 Outlands (only because I knew the crossbow you get from Outlands quite early on from Hellsfire is great and it wasn’t worth spending money on other ranged weapons as I know how good this crossbow was going to be). As far as memory serves, the crossbow is the Expedition Repeater from a level 58 quest “Colossal Menace”.
For level 1-58 gear in Azeroth, go for “of the Falcon”, “of the monkey” or, if all else fails, “of the wolf”, though “wolf” isn’t great but the Agility is okay. “Of the monkey” is usually best for Agility and Stamina. Use this website to look for gear.
Weapons
The race you pick determines the ranged weapon you’ll have at the beginning; as Draenei it’s crossbows, as dwarf it’s guns, etc. The melee weapon remains the same: it’s always a dagger/sword. It is worth going to each of the weapons trainers in each city and learning every type of weapon early on; ranged and melee is available to Hunter class. When you come across new and better weapons, it’s an easy swap to level your new weapon straight away on easy mobs. This is easy as a hunter: pet tanks the mobs and you shoot your weapon skill levels go up. Melee weapons aren’t that important for hunters and you really shouldn’t have to use them all that often. As a hunter you are only interested in the stats that are on the melee weapon, that’s why as this present time a Staff is the best weapon in game for hunters at level 80. (Journey’s End) it is best in slot for the stats that are on it. So learn each of the different ones you can, be that Staff, 2 Handed Axe, Polearms, etc., and you are ready for later gear.

Pets
The class you choose will determine your starting point and what pets are available to you. Here are some examples of what you can find in the different starting areas.
Draenei – Cats, Tallstriders, Ravagers, Bears
Dwarfs – Cats, Boars, Bears
N-Elf – Spiders, Cats, Boars, Wolves

Blood Elf – Cats (in 3.1, I’m told, Turtles have set up home along with Bears in the Ghostlands)
Orcs/ Trolls - Scorpions, Boars,
Taurens – Boars, Cats, Wolves

Pets Come in 3 different types: Cunning, Tenacity, and Ferocity. At level 10, any pet will do. Once you get to level 12 -13, start to look at pets more seriously. There are plenty of websites out there; Petopia is the best resource. It is generally accepted knowledge that hunters should level with a Tenacity pet as these pets are designed specially to tank for you. These pets have Improved Growl, more armour and health, and can take the damage from mobs, which is what you want. Now, I’m not saying that a cat (as a Ferocity pet) won’t do this for you; cats will do the job just fine, but for ease and speed, Tenacity pets rule. They are bears, boars, worms, cockalisks, rhinos, and more. It is advisable to find these pets in your starting area and get one of these from the beginning.
If you press N, you can see your talent trees: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival. We will talk about these a little later; for now, see the tab on the right hand side under yours? That’s your pet’s talent tree. Your pet will start to gain new talent point as it hits level 20 and 1 talent point every 4 levels after that. I will do a post on Tenacity builds and Ferocity builds at a later date.

Professions
It’s probably best to start with Leatherworking (LW) and Skinning. You can make gear for yourself, it’s a nice money-spinner, and it can get you the money you require for upgrades in gear, talents, and mounts quickly. When you get to a high level at a later date, it’s advisable to get Mining and Jewel Crafting (JC) as LW high level has no real use except AH playing. JC has some very nice JC-only gems that far outweigh the LW recipes that you will have. JC gems will give you a good head start for raids. Levelling in Mining isn’t hard, but it can be laborious: it can be levelled to 300 (Outlands) in a few hours.
Secondary Professions
Take all of the Secondary Professions (First Aid, Fishing and Cooking) since they are good money-makers. You’ll be able to feed your pet cheaply; the pet treats at level’s end are expensive and much easier to make yourself. It’s a good idea to get Fishing because it will make levelling in Cooking easier, and there are daily quests that will give you money and a chance for pet/mount rewards.
Levelling
Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, decided to not give pets to level 1 hunters, so you’ll have to wait until level 10 before you get a quest to tame a pet. Unfortunately, this leads to confusion in the class: for the first 10 levels of your hunter’s life, you’ll have a bow and a dagger only. Most hunters will attack mobs and beasts with melee weapons for the first 10 levels, forgetting they actually own a bow. Again, unfortunately, when they do eventually get a pet that will tank for them, they still melee. So very, very wrong. A pet should tank the mobs while you shoot from range this is the essence of a hunter and makes levelling as a hunter that much easier and stand you in good stead when you get into groups and raids.

http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/09/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-one/
http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/16/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-two/
http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/16/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-two/ http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/16/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-three/
http://odeo.com/episodes/24427933-Project-Lore-BigRedKitty-Baby-Hunter-Part-4

These 4 videos are an excellent guide through the first few levels, and you should take his “kite and kill” ability on through all your levels.
I am sorry to say that the celebrated BigRedKitty won’t be continuing these videos, but at least they’ll give you an idea of what to consider when killing mobs as a hunter.
You can do dungeons that you find along your way; they will have some of the better gear for your level and give nice experience. For speed, though, just do quests. I will talk about instances and a hunter’s role in quests in a later article.

Melee hunter /sigh
There are so many of these: hunters that run in and fight mobs with their dual wield daggers, pets doing nothing, looking bored and bewildered. This is where the term “huntard” comes from: rolling an easy class and not understanding what you are doing or how the class works. Hunters are a “ranged” damaging class, with a pet for a tank or companion DPS (“damage per second” that will increase your DPS by buffing you and its own raw damage). The higher your DPS the faster your target will die. You don’t need to worry about high dps at this point in your hunter life, just keep in mind that DPS is your function later on in groups and raids and managing this again your threat is important. We will talk more about this in another post. You’ll just make things harder for yourself if you run up and use melee weapons.
You can see in the video how easy it is to kite mobs, even at low level, and once you get a pet to tank for you this makes killing mobs so much easier. Don’t run in and melee while your pet is hitting the mob, use your, bow, gun, or crossbow, your main damaging weapon. Mobs will die that much faster if you DON’T melee. You can just use auto shot but, again, that’s not making things easy for you. Use the skills you are given in turn, something that is called “shot rotation”.

Shot Rotation

“Shot rotation” is term for the sequence of abilities you have and when to use them. “Auto shot” will fire with out any help from you and is usually left out of rotations because you have no control over it.
For a low level hunter the “Rotation” will be Serpent sting then (Arcane shot -> Auto Shot). Serpent Sting has a 15 second duration, so when 15 seconds is up, reapply it. Continually do Arcane Shot every 6 seconds as the shot has a 6 second cooldown (CD), so you can only fire it once every 6 seconds;with auto shots in there that will fire without you pressing anything. If you check the Beast Mastery tree, you’ll find that that’s all the shots you have for now. If you look at the Marksmanship tree you will see there are other shots: Aimed shot and Chimera Shot; in the Survival tree there is Explosive Shot and Scatter Shot. These are added into shot rotations depending on your build: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, or Survival. Beast Mastery is by far the easiest tree to use while levelling as a hunter. This is also a good way to learn shot rotations without overwhelming yourself with too many different shots at a time.

Have fun with your hunter and if you need more advise and help, feel free to email in at thehunterssanctuary@gmail.com

Happy Hunting

3.1 Beast Mastery Build

Although Beast Mastery has taken a knock in recent months from the massive amount of changes to damage and pet damage, its still remains viable in PVE. If have stuck with Beast Mastery through the changes in 3.1 and found damage output to be roughly the same if not slightly increased since the patch.
The Best pet for this spec is still the Devilsaur followed by the spirit beast and then cat/raptor. I know a lot of people are going for Gondira but to be honest I’m really not impressed with it, it’s just lazy blizzard reusing a skin they already have and not creating a new one.

I have been tweaking my Beast Mastery build quite a bit and I’ve found this one to be the best so far. This build has taken a tweaking and I get really good dps out of it.


Shot rotation
Shot rotation remains the same for Beast Mastery, as always
Send pet/ hunter mark macro -> Pet management macro -> Serpent Sting -> Arc Shot -> Multi-Shot -> Steady shot and then its a matter of Steady Shot till the other shots are ready.

Macros

Again the usual macros can be applied
The 1st one being the pet management macro
#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Call of the wild
/cast Rabid

This is easy enough 2 keep track of with the Omni CC addon. The tooltip is Bestial Wrath to keep to eye on its CD at all times
2nd macro is my main/spammy macro. Not used to extent, it used to be and now Kill Shot is on the GCD (Global Cool Down) it has to be removed from the original macro. However, this has made things somewhat better. The macro I use for all builds as it is generic.

#showtooltip
/console sound_enablesfx0
/cast Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/console sound_enablesfx1
Use this when all other shots are on CD and mash it so kill command is used when it’s available. You will still hear the roar when it’s used.

3rd macro
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Arcane shot, Multi-Shot

The shot macro from Marksmanship yes, just adapted from the Marksmanship one to accommodate Multi-Shot not Aimed Shot. I keep it as 6 seconds, as haste is soft capped for Beast Mastery this duration shouldn’t be a problem. If you do have timing issues depending on how much additional haste you currently have, just change the reset timing accordingly.

Kill Shot
Now kill shot is on the GCD we can no longer add this too macros (it’s a pain but simple enough to remedy. Either put it on its own or you can make another macro easy enough to use
/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot

Armour Penetration
This still is the best of stats for a hunter and to be honest you don’t need to worry about how much you have. Gear comes with it and you can’t do much about it. Grim Toll does help with DPS but that’s more a Hit issue than Armour Penetration issue. Although Armour Penetration has changed since 3.1 it’s still not a stat to stack on directly. For a Beast Mastery build, it is more important than it is for the other specs as Beast Mastery is a more physical build so keep an eye out for it, but don’t be overly worried.

Pet Talents
Go for the old build with the additional point in both new talents this works out well for DPS. Use addons to regulate pet abilities: KHT, Zhunter, Omni CC to name a few.

3.1 Marksmanship Build

Since 3.1 came out I’ve been trying a few builds, tweaking them here and there trying new pets and new talents. thats why my posts have been rare of late. I’ve come up with what I think are good builds for you to try or base your own builds on.

I have tried all 3 builds now from Beast Mastery to Survival and I’m currently Marksmanship at the moment and loving it. All three specs are viable in all raids and I can still top damage and DPS meters with all of them, so there is no excuse and no opportunity to whine about any spec not pulling its weight. True the hunter builds do need to be balanced more and some builds will do better than others numbers wise, But they all do well and above 3k dps in 10 man Ulduar. Seen as I am using Marksmanship now here is the build and macros I am using:

Here is the Marksmanship spec I’m using at the moment.

Just remember I am hit capped. If you are not; you NEED Focused Aim and therefore will have to pull 3 talents out of the build to complensate for this to put in this Hit increasing talent.

Macros

I use quite a few macros with this spec all of which I have adapted for the other specs I use.

1^st macro is my Chimera/ Pet abilities macro

#showtooltip
/cast Chimera Shot
/cast Call of the wild
/cast Rabid

I tried with chimera of this macro and to be honest, its just too many things to keep track of. Chimera works well on the macro as you hit serpent sting just before your first opener of chimera this means your pet is already in combat so you don’t waste any uptime of call of the wild and rabid in the time your pet gets to your mob.

2^nd macro is my main/spammy macro. Not used to extent, it used to be and now Kill Shot is on the GCD (Global Cool Down) it has to be removed from the original macro. However, this has made things somewhat better. The macro I use for all builds as it is generic.

#showtooltip
/console sound_enablesfx0
/cast Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/console sound_enablesfx1

Use this when all other shots are on CD and mash it so kill command is used when it’s available. You will still hear the roar when its used.

3^rd macro

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=4 Arcane shot, Aimed shot

I tweaked this about according to how much haste I have to 4 seconds before it reverts to back Arcane Shot so you dont miss the Aimed shot timer. I tried 6 secs and 3 secs (reset=3) etc and found I had very little chance to hit Aimed before it went back to arcane and I tried reset=6 and found that was far too long Arcane shot was coming back faster and I was waiting for it to swap back Arcane for me to hit it. So try reset=4 and see how it goes. I found this to be the optimal time between macro rotation.

Kill Shot

Now kill shot is on the GCD we can no longer add this too macros (tis a pain but simple enough to remedy. Either put it on its own or you can make another macro easy enough to use

/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot

This simple macro should stop whatever you are doing (usually Steady Shot) to fire Kill Shot meaning you don’t miss any time waiting for the cast time of Steady Shot to end.

Oh another macro I created to look after Readiness and Rapid Fire is:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Rapid Fire, Readiness, Rapid Fire

This cycles through these two abilities to you can Rapid Fire, changes to Readiness, to you can refresh Rapid Fire to use again.

Shot rotation.

With Marksmanship you have a lot of shots to look after, different timers and more abilities than you can shake a stick at. Use the addons to their best extent. OmniCC, Power Auras, MSBT, KHT will all help you look after timers and shots. If you go do the addons page on the blog, you can see how to configure MSBT and Power Auras and how to set up various other timer notifies and aura reminders.
The best rotation I’ve found is this:
Hunters Mark/send pet -> Serpent Sting -> Chimera Shot macro -> Arcane shot -> Aimed Shot -> Steady Shot macro spam. Now just manages you CD’s as and when they come back. Keep hitting Chimera Shot when its ready and you won’t have to worry about Serpent sting the whole fight on the one mob. Just remember when swapping mobs to fire an opener of Serpent sting-> Chimera shot first.

Pets

I, like every hunter did, went and got and trained a wolf to 80. I took it into heroics and raids and I was very disappointed in its damage, shocked even. My level 79 Moth did more damage on the training dummy than the 80 wolf. So after a lot of research, trying various other pets, lots of recount data and time in IF and heroics levelling pets and trying new builds, I finally decided that for Marksmanship and Survival specs the Raptor and cat where they better pets to go for. After a lot more time and recount data, the raptor won out. Exceptional DPS from that pet over a 10 min time trial on the training dummy with the cat just behind. This is the pet talents I chose and I did try wild hunt too but found with the spec I was using and the 2 points in Unleashed Fury in the Beast Mastery tree the Shark attack worked out much better on DPS.

Marksmanship isn’t for everyone, there is lots to remember, lots of CD and timers to watch and of course Trueshot Aura to remember :D For me though I am loving Marksmanship and will stay this spec. I was Dual specked Beast Mastery/Survival, now I am Beast Mastery/Marksmanship and will stick with this for some time to come. The new workings of Survival where not for me and I will look at Survival in 3.1 in a later post.

Ulduar

Forgot to post this. This was last nights Ulduar run wws report. Things didn't go quite to plan and we are still struggling to pull members into raids, so there was some swapping people in and out due to unstable connections and time constraints.For those who still think Beast Mastery is not a viable raid spec, it really is and still worth speccing. 2nd on over all dmg and I'm a Beast Master with Devilsaur is damn good in my opinion. The Survival hunter didn't have anything on me. Though he isn't as well geared as me which is a factor I know. But still!

I've revised some macros due to 3.1 (kill shot on GCD now so can't be added to the normal macro

Also tweaked my Survival pet macro for a better pet managment macro that includes Black Arrow, just so i dont have too many key binding cluttering up my bars.

#showtooltip
/cast Black Arrow
/cast rabid
/cast call of the wild
(you can add another line such as)/cast Serenity Dust for moths or other pet abilities.

This works well and means you can make sure Black Arrow is up when its ready as well as casting and pet abilitys that maybe available too as rabid is 30 sec CD and so is Black Arrow.

macro for Kill shot
/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot

This stops casting steady shot if you are in the middle of casting it when Kill Shot becomes available.

Noble Garden - The art of patience

Well, at least this world event was easy. Laborious and RNG driven but easy and relatively quick to do compared to some of the other events.

I hate the RNG (Random Number generator) which assigns a reward to each drop, be that the mundane 90% chocolate drops or the other less common or rare drops of pets, outfits or other goodies.

I’m pretty sure the RNG hates me with a vengeance as after 200 eggs (100 for the chocoholic achievement) and no drops of the rare variety. 100 or so eggs later and I ended up buying all the achievement items from the noble garden vendor. After that, the achievements came thick and fast with the exception of finding a cow and dwarf for “shake that money maker”. Though even that only took a few goes of wandering round Dalaran waiting for one to appear that didn’t already have “bunny ears”. All in all, fun and another pet to add to my collection which makes 68 in total.

Good tip I sat in Azuremyst Isle (Azure Watch) Round the back to the south, in between a bulkhead and a tree a good spot to camp, you are in good range of 4 eggs that spawn fairly regularly and most of the time the people that come sprinting past miss them more often than not.

I look good in my Easter, oops I mean Noble Garden outfit

Looking forward to Children’s’ Week I’ve been told you can get 3 pets during this event. These come from Stormwind Orphanage, Shattrath Orphanage and if you are in good reputation with Oracles in Sholazar Basin, another one from there too. This is all-good and will bring me that much closer to 75 pets for my Fawn.

Post wise things are a bit slow at the moment with lots of raiding going on trying to get bosses down in Ulduar and the tournament, which I have to confess I’m bored of the daily quests already with.

I am however doing a level 1-58 basics guide for new hunters and will follow this up with an outlands one. Should see this hopefully soon.

Happy egg hunting

Saphirestar

Well hello there fellow blogger

Today was as ordinary a day as any other; I was browsing the forums as I usually do looking for posts I can help on. Scrolling down the page 1 at a time reading the various QQ threads; we suck threads, please help threads. When i came across a thread called PVE pets, a thread i'd posted on before to say what pets I currently use. Scrolling down the replies I see a post which I read as usual and as I normally down looked at the signature (which are eitther funny, lame or quite witty).
This one was different
Each day is a gift, not a right.
The signature read. Nothing differnet here? Nope i'd seen the signature before. What did catch my eye was what was underneath the first line

Inspired by Saphirestar;
my blog - http://thehunterspeak.blogspot.com/

OMG OMG OMG !

Then my thoughts tured dark is this a blog to parody me or to QQ me (dont flatter yourselfself I thought), so quite anxious I copied and pasted the blog address and indeed it's a great blog done very well by one Dothias of Regiment of Stormwind on the Darkmoon Faire server.

Kudos to you Dothias for starting your own blog I will be reading with interest :D

Thanks you so much for your signature. Love you loads Dothias and well done again.

Go on over to The Hunters Peak and have a look.

Happy Hunting
Saphirestar

The 3.1 Wait

Now I know we all complain about 3.1 taking ages, and I can understand that Blizzard want to make sure pretty much everything works ok before it becomes live. Well enough so that they don’t have too much to fix when 3.1 breaks. Which it inevitably will as patches always do

Missing in Action
It seems to me though that guilds are really struggling with the wait for 3.1. I’m seeing a lot of people leaving wow for other games or just not logging on because they are bored with the content we have at the moment. Are other guilds having this issue too?.. yes they are. It’s sad to say that Wrath seems to be far to easy. TBC lasted for 7-12 months before most guilds had end game content on farm, how long has Wrath been out, 5 months or so and the guild I’m in has had 25 man Naxx on farm for months already.
For hunters and probably a few other classes have found that heroics and dungeons are just not challenging anymore. Gone are the times that traps are necessary, tactics are required, strategy and timing of chain traps, saps pulls and the satisfaction of pulling it all off and living to get the phat loot.
Remember the days of Moroes in Kara, god damn fight that was :P and having a good hunter to chain trap or even 2 hunters chain trapping 2 adds was hard to come by, and those that could pull it off were Hunters to hold onto. Or even Magister’s Terrace and the amount of cc, timing and strategy it took to live through that. Where has all the satisfaction gone? We nuke aoe tank, aoe damage and move on.
I miss the challenge as I’m sure the rest of you do too.
I’m hoping so very hard that Ulduar brings some of this challenge back for Hunters and raids in general. I’ve not been watching the PTR closely so I don’t know much about the raid to come and at the moment its so up in the air still things are still changing day on day, so who knows what it’ll end up like, or how long the new patch will entertain us for.

WTB Guildies
Have we all noticed the lack of guildies lately? Players sitting back waiting on new content. Fusion has been trying hard and kudos to Hopegiver and Manusdei for trying to keep our guild raiding every week, when we are seeing fewer and fewer members logging on. From what we can gather it’s the same apathetic thinking that we saw in the months before Wrath. People have all the gear they require and cba to keep raiding until 3.1 comes or feel that logging on to a game they’ve pretty much completed is just boring. It’s frustrating to see this happen yet again and I would have hoped that Blizzard would have learned something from the last time and kept the content challenging, but alas no.
With games like ROM, Spellborn and Darkfall, people are looking for other games to play and either leave WoW altogether or leave until new content is released making it that much more difficult for those few left behind to carry on raiding and enjoying the game or getting the gear they are still missing. Now I’m now Qqing here, I can understand people getting bored and burnt out by the gear grind World of Warcraft has become. My partner this month the invincible Hangman quit World of Warcraft this month because he has become indifferent to gaming and really struggles to get any enthusiasm for the game any more and I’m sure this is the same for a lot of people who have stopped playing wow or drifted away from it to another game. And here is where the cracks start to appear. As we try to keep on raiding we are taking on more members to pad out the raids and then when the older members come on they find themselves left out for the newer members that we have recruited. Causing stress and tension, bad feelings and feelings of being left out even though guilds try to rotate members. It’s a sad thing but its happening and guilds are breaking down because of it. It’s a real shame. Aerie Peak EU have seen quite a few big guilds go the last few weeks


Feel the love
It’s a hard balance this game is supposed to be fun for all if you find it boring its no longer fun and for those members left behind wanting raid it is no longer fun because they don’t have enough members to do so. I think what I’m trying to get at here, for those still playing but unable to raid due to dwindling numbers is be kind to your raid / guild leader. They have and probably still are trying to get members to get you all raiding again or continuing to raid. Give them some slack if you can’t go one raid then it’s not the end of the world, or if you are not taken to a raid but a new member is, don’t feel left out. Raid leaders and guild leader’s realms over are struggling to keep the balance and momentum going. Trying to gear up new members for the content available and raids to come is especially hard at the moment because those who have drifted away or don’t log on are now unknowns. Will they come back? will they start to play actively again? Have they gone for good? Who knows, and that what guild/ raid leaders are having to think about when getting raids together at the moment.
Love your guild leaders and raid leaders they have a hard enough task as it is. I say this as an ex guild leader and ex raid leader. Its a lot harder than it look. There is a lot of stress involved and they don’t leave people out of raids out of spite. If they could take everyone online they would if they could. You must also understand their frustration when there isn’t enough online and the feelings that they are letting you down as you rely on them for setting up raids.




I know 3.1 will be here.. Eventually.
Hang in there it’ll be here soon