1914 in 2v2 as Hunter / Rogue

Another week of solid 2's performance gets us up to 1914.  The huge buff to Aspect of the Hawk definitely increased BM's damage, maybe gave us an extra game out of the 13 we played.  We went 10 and 3 this week.  Not quite as good as 10 and 0, but we'll take another 100 point increase.

I do not enjoy vs'ing Priest / Feral.  I hate Feral Druids without a healer.  I think we went 2 and 1 vs this comp but it was super scary.

I enjoy vs'ing Mages.  They are predictable and squishy.  I feel like I control the fight since I can chunk their health.

I enjoy any team that thinks they can outlast us without doing much damage since we can both heal ourselves decently.

Well, I think we can hit 2k, perhaps even by next week.
   

Removing the Sound of Aspect Switching

Hunter

• Aimed Shot damage has been decreased to approximately 160% weapon damage (at level 80+), down from 200%.
• Aspect of the Hawk now provides around an additional 2000 attack power at level 85.

Hunter

• The changes to Aimed Shot and Aspect of the Hawk announced yesterday have not yet been applied to live realms and should not go into effect until after the holiday weekend.

Macro'ing Aspects to your shots (the ! before the Aspect makes it so you never remove your aspect, since it will keep casting it over and over):

/cast !Aspect of the Fox
/cast Cobra Shot or Steady Shot

/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast all other shots


The ! before the Aspect makes it so you never remove your aspect, since it will keep casting it over and over... which brings me to how annoying that sound is.

This is a great post on the forums detailing how to remove the sound of aspect switching:

Arånann        
Hello everyone, I've been playing around with macros to put me in hawk and fox depending on the shot I want and like the rest of you that tried it I found the constant CAW CAW CAW sound to be horrible.  So I started googling and playing around and figured out how to remove the Aspect Sounds from the game.  It's not against the ToS, we're not modifying MPQ files here, just substituting our own sound files just like fonts.  This functionality is built into wow, that's why we can just make a folder and the game picks up the substitions on it's own.  No addons or hacking needed.

With the latest batch of blunders (i.e. hotfixes) from Blizzard, imo it will be beneficial to switch to AotH for certain shots since AotH will give either 2k+ AP.  You should know that aspects share their own weird cooldown system and when spammed can have strange effects on your shots and may delay them slightly.  Enough rambling here's what I did:

Downloaded this addon to get a proper blank .wav file, Blizz is picky about .wav files and they have to be saved with certain attributes.  Not all blank .wav files are equal, don't ask me why, I'm no sound engineer

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/humbuzz-b-gone.aspx

Create the following directory:

YOUR WOW INSTALL\Data\Sound\Spells

Copy the blank .wav file from the addon you downloaded to this folder.

Make two copies of this file

Name the first copy AspectofTheHawk.wav

I'm pretty sure upper and lower case would matter here, but I have not tested it.  Make sure you name it exactly as I typed above.

Name the second copy Pathfinding.wav

I think that should do it, I personally went one step further and made more copies of the blank file and named them the following.  This was mostly done in my troubleshooting phase trying to find which file was creating the second sound.  Renaming AspectofTheHawk.wav removes the CAW CAW CAW, but there's still a whoosh sound every time you change aspects.  That whoosh sound is Pathfinding.wav,  so here's the whole list just in case you want it.  Pay attention to case and spelling:

_HU_AspectofTheFox_01
_HU_AspectofTheFox_02
_HU_AspectofTheFox_03
_HU_AspectofTheFox_04
_HU_AspectofTheFox_05
AspectofTheBeast
AspectofTheCheeta
AspectofTheMonkey
AspectofThePack
AspectofTheSnake
AspectofTheWolf

You'll find it interesting that there are aspects we've never heard of in there!  I, only renamed them trying to find the whoosh sound.

Have fun!

EDIT - Shot Macros

I've been using the following to change aspects automatically -

#showtooltip SHOT NAME
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast SHOT NAME

Substitute the aspect name as needed for steady and cobra macros, I'm playing with castsequence macros too to see if I can make it any more elegant.  Thought some folks might want to see the macro, when you spam it, that's when the Aspect sounds become annoying.
                                

1817 in 2v2 as Hunter / Rogue

Siphter and I have finally got back into playing some 2v2 now that Hunter's have been buffed a little bit and made a little bit more viable.  Last week we went 6 and 4 but developed some very good general strategies against most teams.  This week we went 10 and 0, and the last game was freaking epic.

So this week during our 10 and 0 streak this was how our games played out:

• Mage / Healer or DPS: Always on mage, blow mage up, take almost no damage from the mage and he can't cc very well.  He goes down almost instantly every game as Subtlety Rogue and Beast Mastery Hunter can just chunk his health.
• Holy Pally / DPS: Always on the dps.  Surprisingly this comp used to be our toughest but now its one of our easiest.  We lock down the dps target and cc the paladin.
• Ret Pally / Disc Priest: This was our last fight to go undefeated this week.  The first minute of this fight looked like a big time loss.  We focused on the Ret Paladin but he was laying into Siphter (my rogue) pretty heavily and Siphter couldn't heal the damage.  I told Siphter to run and kite and kite he did.  With concussive helping Siphter out he was able to kite the Ret Pally around the entire Sewer Arena for a couple minutes to get back to 50% health with recuperate.  Then we switched to Priest and downed him after a good 10 second burst on him.  After that we were able to finish off the Ret Pally.

The major strategy we use is that if a target is on me (hunter) Siphter will help me out by being on that target.  So I can kite that target and heal through my Spirit Beast.  We can outlast a lot of healer / dps comps because of Spirit Mend and because of Recuperation (rogue heal).

Being able to have a slight heal as double dps in arena really opens up the possibilities and allows longer games which is a lot more fun than just zerging and winning or losing in the first 30 seconds of every battle. 

After this weeks games Siphter and I both have renewed energy in playing WoW and trying to see where we can eventually be at in 2's.  We have been playing a lot of Rated Battlegrounds with our guild, but it hasn't infused us with the same energy that this weeks 2's did.  The road to 2000 has been laid, will we make it?
  

Patch 4.0.6 Hunter Changes

The 1st patch of Cataclysm comes out and it looks like Hunters are going to be getting some decent buffs to help them out in PvP.  This is very much needed as the latest statistics have the Top Arena Representation of Hunters at about 1% (the average is 10%).


Hunter

• Aimed Shot! weapon damage has been increased to 200%.
• Aspect of the Wild, Aspect of the Hawk, and Aspect of the Fox can now be cast while mounted.
• Deterrence now provides 100% chance for melee attacks to miss instead of 100% parry chance. This means that attacks that cannot be parried, notably some rogue abilities, can now be prevented by Deterrence, and the hunter will gain the benefit of Deterrence even if disarmed.
• Dust Cloud's cooldown and duration have been modified to make it closer aligned with Tailspin (same effect, different pet).
• Kill Command's damage has been increased by 20%.
• Kill Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 50%.
• Master's Call now has a 35-second cooldown, down from 1 minute. In addition, the visual effect is more obvious.

Talent Specializations
Marksmanship

• Chimera Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 20%.

Survival

• Into the Wilderness (passive) has been reduced to a 10% Agility increase, down from 15%.

Pets

• Pets now have 70% of the master's armor, rather than a different value based on which type of pet they are.
• Shale Spiders now correctly have a special ability (Web Wrap).
• Bad Manner (monkey) now properly breaks from damage.

 
My Analysis:
The Deterrence and Master's Call changes are the most important. 

Deterrence will go from having many holes to only a few. Being able to cast it while disarmed is a much needed change and makes having 1 handers not required for serious PvP.

Master's Call cooldown almost being halved is huge from a mobility standpoint.  It seems like Blizzard is really sticking to Hunters having a minimum range and will just buff the mobility of Hunters as needed to compensate (which will either leave us underpowered or overpowered but unlikely ever perfect).  With the warrior nerfs to Charge / Intercept (Juggernaut) I believe Hunters will be able to kite melee very effectively after this patch.

My Wish List:

• Deterrence clears debuffs and is on a 1 minute or at most 90 second cooldown
• Steady Shot buffed vs. high armored targets
• Kill Command should have a minor range of 10 or 20 yards to account for pet not always being able to get to target easily

 

4.0 & Cataclysm Hunter Abilities that Need Change

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile.  The changes that 4.0 brought got me down.  Right now things look pretty grim for Hunters from a mechanical / game play standpoint.

My list of Hunter Changes that would make the mechanics / game play better:

• All focus damaging shots lowered by about 50%
• This change would enable a larger window of choice in the first few seconds of a fight instead of shooting off two abilities and being out of focus.
• Trap Launcher should be an innate ability of all traps and could be toggled on or off depending on players preference (or something similar)
• Remove Freezing Trap or change it into Freezing Shot that has the same cast time as Fear, Polymorph, etc. and rebalance Hunters accordingly
• Pet Resurrection time needs to be reduced to 3 or 4 seconds or Hunters need an instant rez ability that has a few minute cooldown that is available for all pet types (not just Ferocity)
• Spell Penetration should not be required for Marks / Survival or Traps
• Hunter pets should have the Hunters full resilience again, they die way too quickly again
• Tranquilizing Shot should not cost any focus or should dispel 2 buffs
• Black Arrow should heal the Hunter so Survival Hunters have a way to heal themselves similar to Spirit Beasts for BM and Chimera Shot for Marks

Pet Scaling in Cataclysm

 
I was unable to get into the Cataclysm Beta which meant that I couldn't really post anything interesting for the last few months.

However, I am now on the PTR testing shiz out.

Hunter pets scale in Cataclysm baby!

Here is the current basic scaling:

Ferocity (damage) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 50% armor
Tenacity (tanking) -- 50% of master's AP, 50% health, 70% armor
Cunning (utility) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 60% armor


Now the real interesting stuff that I found out on the PTR:

We all know that Hunter pets have scaled fully with the Hunters Hit and Resilience stats.

Hunter CRIT is now fully scaling with Hunter pets!!! This is what it means with a 5 minute test for each pet:
 

Now, my Cunning Serpent pet did the least damage because it only received 40% of my AP and did not have the Ferocity talents that boost crit chance and the Rabid talent.

The Devilsaur did so well because it scales better with attack power (50%) and it receives the 9% crit in Ferocity along with Rabid.  But the reason why a Devilsaur is better than a Core Hound in solo play is because it now bring along a 5% crit buff like the Feral Druid buff.  The thing is it buffs itself with the 5% extra crit and then buffs me with the 5% extra crit which in turn fully scales with my pet.  So my pet actually receives 10% crit buff from the Devilsaur buff!

Now this pet double scaling was the reason why pets were under performing in solo play but were extremely good when the Hunter had full buffs in Wrath.  In Cataclysm pets cannot be buffed by others but since the Devilsaur buff is not from others it bypasses that restriction.  I'm guessing this will eventually change, as I only have 45% crit and my Devilsaur has 65% crit (45% from me, 10% from its 5% crit buff, 9% from Ferocity talent tree).

But dang, I will not miss the days of 5% base pet crit chance, 10% pet crit chance from BM talents and 9% crit chance from Ferocity pet talents in a world with resilience negating 15% of the 24% (9% crit chance against Resilience targets).  And that left the Cunning tree out of the equation in PvP as BM, since your pet being unable to crit would make the Frenzy and Ferocious Inspiration talents worthless.

But I digress...  Cataclysm will finally fix the pet scaling issue for good.  Full scaling with the Hunter Crit %.  Amazing.

Testing Live Streaming this Week

Can't Keep Up

Since I am not currently in the Beta I can't keep up with other Hunter bloggers who are in the Beta.
  
So instead I will give you links to the best blogs that are giving good info in the Beta:
  
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/
Frostheim even does a podcast with other Hunters and its pretty entertaining.
  
http://www.bigredkitty.net/
BigRedKitty is back to doing Beta Video Blogs which have always been very entertaining.
 
  
That is all I got for now.  I'll try to keep on top of significant changes, but since everything is changing and changing again its almost pointless to try to keep up until things start getting nailed down.
  
  

Cataclysm Hunter Changes

Cataclysm Beta Hunter Talent Tree
 
Cataclysm Beta Hunter Skill Drilldown
  
 

7/2/10

 

Blue Posts about Hunters:

 

Hunter 

Aimed Shot Cast Time / Dead Zone in Cataclysm
It's not a "dead zone." It's a minimum range. I say that because many hunters use "dead zone" to refer to an old design quirk where there was a range at which neither range nor melee attacks would work. We haven't had a dead zone for some time.

If a melee is up in your stuff, you have a couple of choices. Choice one is to use your melee abilities. Choice two, which will probably work out better, is to get away from them and resume using ranged attacks. You have several defensive cooldowns you can use to gain distance or survive long enough to gain distance. Your third choice is to keep shooting even with someone attacking you in melee. By design that is supposed to be quite ineffectual.

In Cataclysm, hunters have some capacity to do damage while moving, but again that's not going to be a super effective way of dealing damage. It's a last resort.

[...] I meant trying to shoot while someone is in melee with you isn't going to work out well. We don't want a model where the hunter goes about his merry way while melee dudes are trying to melee him. (Source)

Hunters GCD being Lowered? Arena PvP: 1800 and 1950 team, TR & MLG Columbus

Hunter GCD Reduction:
Ghostcrawler mentioned on the forums that a Hunter GCD reduction could happen because of the incoming resource change (mana to focus). 

If Hunters actually receive a 1 second Global Cooldown (like Rogues) instead of a 1.5 second Global Cooldown the difference between good Hunters and bad Hunters should be more evident.  Faster reaction times and faster thinking would play more of a role in the best Hunters.  With our burst reduction in Cataclysm this change seems needed, but time will tell.
 

Arena Team: 1950 and 1800
My Hunter / Druid team hit 1950 and my Warlock / Rogue team hit 1800 this week.

Hunter Druid 2v2, BRK Returns

Over the past month or so I have been playing both my Warlock and my Hunter.  My Warlock joined Siphter's arena team to play as Warlock Rogue.  I definitely can feel a much better synergy than what my Hunter had with his Rogue.  We are already 1700 and my warlock still has horrible weapons and Furious arena gear.

My friend also has a Druid.  My Hunter joined up with his Druid and now we are 1800 with him in mostly Furious arena gear, and he's attaining his arena weapons over the next week or so which will help immensely.  After always playing double dps with my Hunter it's a bit odd to get used to dps with a healer.  Games are much longer, but almost every game is winnable.

Best and Worst BG for Arena (Easiest vs. Toughest), Lag free WoW, Cataclysm Hunter info April 9th

 
Easiest vs. Toughest BattleGroups

If your like me and glaze over the forums and read blogs about WoW PvP you might stumble across discussion on the easiest or toughest BG's to play arena in.  Bloodlust (BG 9) is usually considered the toughest BG and Retaliation and Emberstorm are usually considered the easiest BG's.

I have actually played on three different BG's (Bloodlust, Nightfall and Retaliation) with the same comp and same players in 2's.  As far as 1800-2000 rating in 2's is concerned, Bloodlust did seem to be the toughest to get a high rating, but the other two were very similar.  Our 2's team was rated about 1750'ish on Bloodlust and after we moved to Nightfall are rating seemed to be about 1850'ish.  Our rating didn't change when moving from Nightfall to Retaliation.

Patch 3.3.3 Hunter Changes

Ferocious Inspiration (BM Talent) - Now gives a 1/2/3% damage aura (100 yards) instead of on pet crit and increases steady shot damage by 9% and still gives arcane shot a 9% damage boost.

The change to an aura coincides with other class skill procs that are expected to be always up changing to auras as well.  For PvE it is a convenience change, for PvP it is a slight buff (as your pet won't always be able to easily crit currently to always have the buff up).

The addition of steady shot 9% buff to the talent makes it a significant PvE buff that helps bring BM PvE damage almost in line with Survival (Marksmanship is still easily tops with good gear).  This steady shot buff for PvP is a slight buff, since steady shot can easily be LoS'ed by competent players (or just ignored if the target has high armor).

From Blackrock to Kel'Thuzad

 
Blackrock, my home sweet home for about two years, is home no longer (at least for Shaedon).  Blackrock has had the most unplayable lag this past week and Siphter and I were getting tired of BG 9.  After investigating all the Boston hosted servers we felt Kel'Thuzad was the best fit (best population with least imbalance).  We've been on Kel'Thuzad for the past week and it has been a roaring success.

BG 10 is a bit more pleasant, Siphter and I are already around 1850-1900 (with me playing Beast Mastery).  I'm going to try to switch to Marksmanship and see if we can get any higher (the best Hunter / Rogue right now is 2200 as Marks).  I can definitely see the opportunity for Marksmanship to dominate though as it does in 3's.
 

Infrequent Posts until Cataclysm

 
I have not posted in awhile and don't plan to post much until Cataclysm.  I will most likely update all of the main pages when Cataclysm begins. 

Until then I plan to play my 3rd Hunter and try to get her to 80.  My first Hunter was my Night Elf which I played all of the normal game and part of Burning Crusade.  My Orc Hunter took over halfway through the Burning Crusade and through Wrath of the Lich King.  My Tauren Hunter started in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King and is currently level 66. 

Whenever I try to get into a new class I end up lamenting on how uninteresting their abilities are compared to Hunters.  Hunters have so many options, with all the different pets to choose from, that I can keep leveling Hunters and still enjoy myself more so than if I try to level other classes I have yet to truly play.
  
On another note, HuntsmansLodge had a good write up about BM PvP in 2's and BG's that I suggest you read if your interested in Beast Mastery PvP.
 

Analysis of the Hunter 3.3 Changes

  
Patch 3.3 comes out tomorrow.


Hunter 3.3 Changes:

• Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
  
• Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
  
• Misdirection: Redesigned. 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.
  
• Talents
  
  
  
  • 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.
      
    
    
    
    

MLG Anaheim: Go CheckSix!

  
MLG Anaheim takes place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Starting times are 6:30 PM PST on Friday, 9:30 AM PST on Saturday and 9:30 AM PST on Sunday.  Watch it live at http://www.mmo-champion.com/.

The only Hunter in attendance is Twixz with CheckSix Gaming (formerly known as eMg).  Checksix will be running the BeastCleave comp, BM Hunter, Enhancement Shaman and a Paladin.

I am hoping for some good matches and a 2nd MLG 1st place finish for CheckSix.  It is very pleasing to have a Hunter in tournaments for a change (and actually doing well).  Here is Twixz's MLG armory page for the tournament.


There has been a big lack of content to talk about this summer as the game has had no major changes in awhile.  I am starting to get extremely frustrated that the talked about 3.3 changes involving pet scaling have not shown up yet in 3.3 notes (this makes me think they are postponing it until Cataclysm).  When Cataclysm begins to draw near hopefully there will be some interesting changes to take note of.
  

Patch 3.3 Hunter Changes

Oct. 16th Changes


Hunter

• Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.

The most annoying part about being a Hunter might just be fixed with this.  I like the idea of still having to level a pet (up to five levels), but the time it took was way too much.  This should help out a ton.


 

Oct. 13th Changes
  
Pets

• 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.

WoW Racial Poll

  
The question was: Which race will your hunter be after Cataclysm is released and race changes are made available?  

Poll Results:
965 Votes

Worgen  -  254 Votes (26%)
Night elf  - 113 Votes (11%)

Updated Gold Guide

  
Updated my very old gold guide.

Currently have 74k in gold.

Hope I can help other people not have to farm or do dailies.

Short post, off to softball.