Readiness and Rapid Fire

We're Marks now. We've been so for a while and we're loving it. Once of the great things Marks has to offer is the Readiness ability. Readiness will reset the cooldown on all hunter abilities except for Bestial Wrath. That means abilities like Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Feign Death, Misdirection, and more importantly - Rapid Fire!

The most common use of Readiness is to reset our Rapid Fire ability and allow us to use it multiple times during a boss fight. That's right we can use our Readiness ability to get anywhere from four to six depending on the length of the encounter.

There are two schools of thought on how best to use Readiness and Rapid Fire in a raid encounter. The first method has us synchronize the cooldowns of these abilities by performing the following sequence.

RF > Rotation and Wait for RF to end > Readiness > RF

The second method method focuses more and getting additional Chimera and Aimed shots off sooner, but you're Readiness and Rapid Fire cooldowns will not be in synch.

RF > Rotation > Readiness > Rotation and Wait for RF to end > RF

Some general thoughts. Don't just focus on Rapid Fire. If Rapid Fire has fallen off, but Chimera and Aimed are not on cooldown, you'll want to wait until you can get both those abilities on cooldown before using Readiness.

Also, you want to try and stack Rapid Fire with as many procs and abilities as you can. Using Rapid Fire at the start of a fight ensures that the majority of your procs will be cooking in conjunction with Rapid Fire.

After Readiness and Rapid Fire come off their three minute cooldowns, you'll want to assess things before repeating the process. Maybe it makes sense to pop Rapid Fire right then and there or maybe you've got some things coming off cooldown and it's worth waiting a few seconds. Whatever the situation, it's certainly not worth having one fewer Rapid Fires for the sake of stacking buffs.

There is a lot of nuance that comes with the Readiness ability, but we love it and we use it early and often. How about you guys, when and how are you using Readiness?

Shiny Happy Trinkets Proccing

For whatever reason, Blizzard has decided to go proc happy in patch 3.3. Normally procs are the domain of trinkets, armor set bonuses and weapons, but now Blizzard has expanded that to other items, and they've even given us trinkets with multiple procs.

Hunters have a lot more cooking now than ever before. If you're someone who likes to stack your buffs then it's helpful to know exactly what is going off and when. There are lots of addOns that can help track things.

Today's article is not about any specific addOn but rather about providing you with the information needed to configure those addOns.

My UI is always a work in progress.  I'm constantly rearranging things and trying new addOns.  Currently I'm using three separate addOns to track various buffs, procs, etc.

• Auracle (De)Buff Monitor - Icons with cooldown timers.
• ForteXcorsist - Allows me to track serpent stings on multiple targets.
• Power Auras Classic - Slowly being relegated to sound alerts, and placing auras around my toon that alert me that I'm doing something stupid.

All of these addons allow you to track spells by name, but they also let you do it by spell ID.  As a database guy, I'm very fond of the ID concept since it guarantees uniqueness and ensures that your mod will track the exact ability you want.

The best way I've found to get spell ids is to go to wowhead.com, locate the ability and then look at the number in the url.  For example, here is the url for the Aim of the Iron Dwarves proc from Deathbringer's Will. http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=71491.  The 71491 at the end of the address is the spell ID.

Here is a list of some of the procs and abilities that you might want to track in whatever addOns you're using.  Please note that this is not a comprehensive list.  I've included most of the trinkets, haste, and damage abilities that hunters may wish to track.

When configuring your addOn you'll want to reference either the Spell/Proc Name or the Spell ID. Again using the spell ID might yield better results as spell names are not always unique.

Good Hunting Tracking!

Item	Spell/Proc Name	Spell ID
Deathbringer's Will	Aim of the Iron Dwarves	71491 (N), 71559 (H)
Deathbringer's Will	Agility of the Vrykul	71485 (N), 71556 (H)
Deathbringer's Will	Power of the Taunka	71486 (N), 71558 (H)
Whispering Fanged Skull	Icy Rage	71401 (N), 71541 (H)
T10 2-set Bonus	Exploit Weakness	70728
T10 4-set Bonus	Stinger	71007
Ashen Verdict Ring	Frostforged Champion	72412
Death's Verdict	Paragon	67703 (N), 67772 (H)
Needle Encrusted Scorpion	Fatal Flaws	71403
Grim Toll	Grim Toll	60437
Herkuml War Token	Rage of the Fallen	71396
Mark of Supremacy	Rage	67695
Comet's Trail	Comet's Trail	64772
Blood of the Old God	Blood of the Old God	64790
Dark Matter	Implosion	65024
Mjolnir Runestone	Mjolnir Runestone	65019
Wrathstone	Wrathstone	64800
Pyrite Infuser	Pyrite Infusion	65014
Fury of the Five Flights	Fury of the Five Flights	60314
Loatheb's Shadow	Loatheb's Shadow	60439
Mirror of Truth	Reflection of Torment	60065
Darkmoon Card: Greatness	Greatness	60233
Rapid Fire	Rapid Fire	3045
Quick Shots (Hawk buff)	Quick Shots	6150
Heroism	Heroism	32182
Bloodlust	Bloodlust	2825
Culling the Herd	Culling the Herd	52858 (R3), 61681 (R2), 61680 (R1)
Ferocious Inspiration	Ferocious Inspiration	34460
Sanctified Retribution	Sanctified Retribution	31869
Call of the Wild	Call of the Wild	53434
N = Normal, H = Heroic

The Hunting Party Podcast, Episode 15

This week, the show is a round table with Frostheim, Euripides and discussing the finer points of hit rating and cooldown timing, while I try to get in a last minute raid before vacation. I finish up just in time to help answer some reader email.

Apparently there was a bet as to whether or not I was successful in downing Anub in TotC (25).  At least one of them wasn't familiar with the the Darkbrew effect.

[audio http://www.badiator.com/huntingpartypodcast/huntingparty_015.mp3]

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.