Honey Bunches of Rawr!

"A Honey Badger does not kill you to eat you. It tears off your testicles."

- Jeremy Clarkson, BBC's Top Gear Botswana Special

A few days ago Blizzard put out a call for pet feedback. They wanted to know what types of pets we'd like to have and what abilities they should have. Today I'm going to make a plea for what I think is the must have pet for any hunter - the Honey Badger.

When it comes to pets what I most desire is something that is small (almost critter size), furry, cute and tenacious. I want something that is the embodiment of bestial wrath - While enraged, the beast does not feel pity or remorse or fear and it cannot be stopped unless killed.

Scientific American declared the honey badger the most fearsome land mammal due to its "favorable claw to body ratio." In addition to its offensive capabilities the honey badger also emits a spray that is so putrid it makes a skunk's seem like Channel No. 5. Weighing about 30 lbs. and just over three feet long from head to tail, they are the closest thing we have in nature to a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.

There was a National Geographic special in 2002 that documented a honey badger as it stole food directly out of the mouth of a puff adder. After it finished it's meal it hunted down the snake and proceeded to eat it too. In fact the snake managed to bite the badger, paralyzing it for a short time. Once the poison wore off it finished eating the snake.

Big cats like lions and leopards avoid these animals at all costs, why? Lions and leopards like to go for the jugular and suffocate their prey, but not these guys (excuse me while I cross my legs now). Nope, they go straight for the genitals.

They're one of the only known animals to kill a cape buffalo one-on-one by castrating it. In case you didn't know the cape buffalo can weight up to 1900 lbs. and is one the "Big Five" most dangerous game animals. The other four being lion, elephant, rhino and leopard. WTF?

Now as far as an Azerothian version is concerned, they should live everywhere and be tameable at any level. For abilities there are many that are fitting; berserks, stuns, fears, roars, and interrupts all would work. I really don't care what it does. As long as it's the new wolf I'll be happy.

So, um, what pets would like to see?

Camouflage and Cobra Shot

Okay, here's the deal any cataclysm alpha or beta related posts I make will have a spoiler disclaimer and you'll need to click on the title or the "read the rest of the entry" to see the actual article.

Today's post is going to take a look at the MMO-C data mined hunter abilities, Camouflage and Cobra Shot. If you do not want to hear about any Cataclysm related information that has not been released by Blizzard then do not read any further.

Since this is all coming out of an Alpha version of the expansion everything needs to be taken with a shaker of salt as it can and most likely will change.

As it stands right now, Camouflage is a cool but mediocre ability at best and may prove to be more annoying than practical in PvE.

Camouflage is an instant cast costing 45 focus, but takes 3 sec. before we fully enter a camouflaged state. It has a one minute cool down and cannot be cast in combat.

Basically, Camouflage is an opening ability that will give us a slight dps boost to our first shot in PvE. It also allows us to sneak around and drop traps pre-combat, which is only useful if Hunters are required to do any kind of crowd control.

The fact that it cannot be cast in combat rules out incorporating this into our regular rotation. In boss encounters this will be like casting Hunter's Mark on ourselves. So for our big level 85 ability we appear to have been given a prowl ability and I'm a little underwhelmed. One final thought is that since this will consume almost half our focuse we'll want to make sure that we cast it early enough so as to start combat with a full bar. I'd hate for my opening shot to have to be a Cobra Shot.

Cobra shot has a 1.5 sec. cast time, costs no focus (as expected), generates 9 focus, does nature damage, and it appears to extend the duration of serpent sting by an obscene amount (almost 3 minutes).

I suspect that is just a place hold number and won't impact Serpent Sting by that much. If it did then all three specs (BM, MM, SV) would probably choose to use this over Steady Shot. Still though, even if the duration is reduced to something reasonable then SV and BM hunters might choose this shot over steady. Heck, even MM hunters might use it if they think Serpent will drop off before it can be refreshed by Chimera. It'll be interesting to see how this one develops.

The talents haven't been updated for hunters yet so It's not clear how this shot will be buffed for BM hunters. It does sound like you'll want to have a serpent sting applied before you cast this though.

Note that the [NYI] stand for "Not Yet Implemented" which means these abilities are not available in the current version of the Alpha, and as such are very, very much subject to change.

The Life Aquatic

After spending two marvelous days snorkeling beneath the azure blue waters of the Caribbean Sea (or is it the Atlantic?) I've come to the belief that hunters need aquatic pets in Cataclysm. With the addition of a new underwater zone it seems fitting that hunters should get pets suited to thrive in that environment.

Now WotLK gave us some good candidates in the form of orcas and sharks and now thanks to the data-mining fiends over at MMO-C it looks like there will be a few more aquatic additions to the bestiary. I'm not going to post any screenies or go into any details about what they are, other than to say a couple of them match what I'd like to see in the way of aquatic companions.

Aquatic Pets

Sharks - An obvious choice for a hunter pet. Name him Jaws, Jabberjaw, Tiburon, Smiley, Thunderball, what have you.

Now I've never actually been in the water with sharks, but my wife has been diving with Lemon and Black tips, and she was none too pleased. I once ate at a restaurant in the Bahamas where they fed all of the scraps to bunch of Bull Sharks that gathered in the waters outside the restaurant (Fun Fact: Bull Sharks are considered by many to be the most dangerous sharks in the world. Sorry whitey). God help you if you ever fell in.

Sharks would make a cool pet. Not only that, but we'd get to use cool RP taming macros like, "I think we're going to need a bigger boat." and "Smile you son of a bitch." Perhaps this post kill macro where you'd shout "This was not a boating accident!" The possibilities are endless I tell you, enldess.

Whales - Another solid choice, and I'd want them to be tenacity pets, our tanks of the sea. Maybe they could get that knockback ability Rhinos once had. Then in addition to my healing macro, "Save the Whales!" I could us my "Ramming speed!" attack macro, and of course my "There be whales here." macro when calling him.

Narwhal - The Jedi of the sea? These things are just plain awesome. I'd have to macro the lyrics of that silly narwhal song and spam it while I attacked.

Manta Rays - These would be our oceanic scorpids with their poisonous stinger tails. They'd also make cool mounts as well. Being the geek that I am, I'd probably name mine Black Manta. I actually was lucky enough to see one swimming near the shore on one of my vacations to the Bahamas. If more people knew what was in the waters just a few feet from shore, I'd bet a lot few people would ever swim in the ocean.

Frenzy Fish - This would be just a single pet, but graphically it would look like a school of 5 - 6 of them, just like we see in Zangarmarsh. Maybe they could have some sort of interrupt or cast reduction ability.  In lieu of a pet this would also work as a new trap - The Fish Trap. Fun Fact: Lee Majors, forever known to me as Steve Austin the Bionic Man, starred in the 1979 movie Kill Fish. It was about jewel thieves who had to tried to recover treasure from piranha infested waters. I'm ashamed to admit that I've seen it.

Barracuda - I usually run into a few of these whenever I go snorkeling and to this day they still scare the crap out of me. The largest one I ever saw was about 4 feet long. It was on live aboard dive boat trip I took. The boat captain said his name was "Big Ed". Apparently, he lived in this particular spot we were anchored and he liked to hide in the shadows of the boat and pick off unsuspecting prey. The should've named him "Lazy Ed".

The barracuda is an intimidating choice for a pet and goes well with this attack macro - "You yell barracuda, everybody says, 'Huh? What?'"

Eels - I saw a spotted moray eel yesterday. Again very cool, and again they scare the crap out of me. They're mostly nocturnal so I should consider myself fortunate to have seen one during the day; I do. I also consider myself fortunate that it didn't decide to bite my arm off like that guy in the movie The Deep.

Anyway, these could be the Windserpents of the sea and have some sort of electrical nature damage attack.

Naturally we'd only be able to use these pets while underwater, however, during the beta they'd need to be bugged so that we could call them anywhere. Think tameable polar bear cubs in WotLK beta. So for a brief period I'd want that ocean shark to be a land shark. Good times.

Do I think this will happen for Cataclysm? Probably not, but it would fun for sure.

Good Hunting!

Cataclysm Hunter Changes

I'm going to assume that you've seen the hunter changes, if not here's as good a link as any to what's coming our way in Cataclysm - http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/24261186675/cataclysm-class-preview-hunter/.

With that out of the way, grab a bowl of Swedish Meatballs and a pint of Raven Beer (make that two, this is going to be a long post, I  think) and join me as I dive into the bevy of hunter news that Blizzard sent our way today. Everything thing we know is about to change, and mostly for the better I think. Ammo, clunky traps, leveling without a pet, to quoth the raven, “Nevermore”.

Let's start with the easy stuff, you know the changes that we can all agree are good and a long time coming.

Moar Pets! - Bigger stables, more pets, hunter's leveling with a pet from day one; fantastic! I just leveled a hunter from 1-10 for the WHU raid and let me tell you even when you know what you're doing it still sucks. Getting a pet right out of the gate, along with range abilities is a wonderful change.

Ammo and Quivers - I know a lot people were looking forward to non-consumable ammo, but I think Blizzard made the right decision here to remove it completely. Honestly, what would they have done beside buffs, debuffs, etc. It would've overlapped with stings, traps, and pets and would've led to more "Oh crap, I had the wrong ammo equipped for that fight" moments. I'm glad to see it gone.

Quivers converted into large bags? Nothing but win here. I just hope I still have one in my bank, if not, it's time to get one.

Sting and Periodic Effects - They will crit and benefit from haste. Simply put, get four pieces of T10 before Cataclysm hits. I don't know if the T9 bonus will get updated (I presume it will), but still T10 will be the way to go. This is a great change.

New Hunter Abilities -

Cobra Shot will be available to all hunters at level 81 and it will have a cast time like Steady Shot. BM hunters will be given incentive to use this over Steady Shot, and it looks like it will become their signature shot. It will do nature damage and increase focus. BM hunters really needed a shot of their own, although I think I would've preferred Raccoon Shot over this.

Trap Launcher (level 83) - I guess freezing arrow was such a success Blizzard decided to give this ability to all traps. Sarcasm aside, this might work better for PvP then it will for PvE. It sounds like a cool ability, we'll have to see how it plays out.

Camouflage (level 85) - Does this sound familiar to anyone? Well back in Wrath of the Lick King beta this ability was actually planned for hunters. It was going to be a stealth ability and was ditched because it infringed too much on Rogue's territory. Now it's back and re-designed. Instead of stealth it'll be more like a "shimmering PREADATORy" effect. Okay, if it also comes with a "Get to da choppa" emote, then I'm in.

I'm a little on the fence with this ability. Again it sounds neat, but it also sounds like another thing we need to do right before combat starts. Hunter's Mark, Misdirect and now Camouflage. It's possible that the damage benefit will force us to work this into the normal shot rotation. We'll see, but I'm not 100% on board with this one yet.

Focus

Okay it's time to talk about the 800 lb gorilla/Elephant in the room party that's happening here. I'm on the wait and see bandwagon here, although I've seen reactions that have been both positive and negative. To me this represents a major paradigm shift in how we play our hunters. Whether it's good or bad, I don't know.

Currently we have a priority based system where we watch our cool downs and fire the highest damaging shot that's available with little or no regard to how much mana it's costing.

With focus we're moving to a resource management system whereby firing the highest damaging shot may not be the best option. We'll have to plan our shots based on how much focus we have and how much focus we'll lose. Not only that, but we'll have to take into consideration everything that might be coming up, or could happen to us in an encounter. In other words we'll want to make sure we have enough focus to do other things besides just dps.

It's going to be a big, big learning curve. We know we'll have 100 focus max, but what we don't know yet is how much focus our shots will cost, as well as what the cool downs on our abilities are going to be. For example, will Chimera and Aimed shots still have long cool downs or will they be shortened for this new resource system?

There is a lot of critical information that we don't know yet. Therefore I remain a little cautious and nervous about hunters gaining focus. A beta invite will go a long way to making feel less nervous though ;) .

Pets

It looks like pets are getting normalized in terms of the damage they do. They're now going to get abilities that are similar to the buffs and debuffs provided by other classes. If these abilities stack with their class counterparts then great, otherwise this may be less valuable in 25-man raids, but could work out okay in 10-man raids. I personally would rather see them be as good as their class counterparts and then see how it shakes out.

Talents and Mastery System

It looks like Beast Masters will have great pet damage, and great focus regen with the emphasis on haste. If their damage is comparable to the other trees this might be the way to go when this system goes live. In fact I'll probably go BM for no other reason than I'll lose less dps while trying to figure out how this all works.

Marksman will still be based around Armor Pen. and physical dps. It look like they're getting something called double-shot which looks like a type of Lock and Load. I'll be curious to see how often we get the double-shot during combat.

Survival hunters will be masters of elemental damage (fire, nature, shadow, etc.) This isn't all that different from how they are now.

All in all, I'm excited about what's coming our way. I love the "quality of life" changes, but I remain a bit skeptical about focus. While I agree that mana does not makes sense for hunters, I have no issue with how hunter's function. Focus is changing that, and not in a small way.

Echoes of Doom: A Look Back

I'm a couple of days late on this one, but oh well.  Today I'm going to take a quick trip down memory lane, for it was on October 14, 2008 that patch 3.0.2 Echoes of Doom was launched.  This of course was the pre-cursor to Wrath of the Lich King.

It's hard to believe that it's been a year already, but here we are. Some of the general highlights included,

• The Achievement system
• The Barber Shop
• 51 point talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• In-game calendar
• Mount and Pet changes
• Massive nerf of existing raid bosses

Overall hunters received one of the biggest overhauls of any class, and we've been evolving (and in some cases devolving) ever since.

Auto shot was fixed so it wasn't clipped by Steady Shot, which meant we could throw away our silly spam macros.  We got the awesome Kill Shot, and the not so awesome Freezing Arrow.

We got additional stable slots and pets got their talent trees.  That meant no more running around taming throw away pets just to learn a new rank of Bite.

The patch introduced exotic pets and Beast Masters smiled as the stomp, stomp, stomp of their Devilsaurs and Core Hounds literally shook the screens of anyone around them.

Speaking of Core Hounds who doesn't remember standing in line to tame the Kurken in the cave by Azuremyst Isle, or having a go at taming Uvuros.

Of course it was also the birth of Gorilladin and the short-lived Rhino Bowling.  I remember running down to Un'Goro and taming Lightbrew, the white gorilla who fought by my side as I leveled in the snows of Northrend.

It's been a fun and very fast moving year of this expansion, and I'm amazed at how much fun I'm continuing to have playing my hunter.  The content in Outland seemed to get old very fast, but for some reason Northrend still seems new fresh.  Maybe when I've pried Frostmourne from Artha's cold dead hands will it start to get old, but I doubt it.

Happy Hunting!

The Blizzard Wayback Machine

As I'm sure all of you know Patch 3.3 is currently on the PTR. Once again it seems that Blizzard is cranking out a steady stream of content and doing it faster than ever. After all Patch 3.2 only just arrived on August 4th.

I was curious to see if Blizzard is on a faster track for delivering content for this expansion than they were with the Burning Crusade, and if so just how fast?

Today I'm going crank up the Wayback Machine and compare Burning Crusade's patch releases with Wrath of the Lich King's.

I only focused on the major patch releases and not the minor ones.  I also know that patch 3.0 was released on the October 15, 2008, but decided not to include that.  As you can see, however, the length of time between patches for this expansion is not that dramatically different from what was done in Burning Crusade.

Now I don't think there's any argument that the amount of content Blizzard has been pushing out for the expansion pack is greater than what they did for TBC.  Every one of Wrath's patches has been similar to what we saw in 2.4.  From that perspective Blizzard has certainly improved.

The big question now is what's next after 3.3 and when will it happen?  While we can certainly expect a few 3.3.x patches, I'm pretty sure that Blizzard isn't looking to do a 3.4.

It wouldn't at all surprise me if patch 3.3 were to be released right around the holidays.  If the expansion were to be released in November 2010 (which fits in with the Blizzard time line), then we'd be at almost a whole year with just patch 3.3.  That just seems way to long an interval to go without a major content patch.

Let's speculate with some arbitrary dates.  If patch 3.3 were to drop on December 15, 2009 and Cataclysm were released on November 9, 2010 (both Tuesdays of course) then that's 329 days between major content patches which is about 98 days longer than patch 2.4 and the release of Wrath.  Now maybe Arthas will be that tough, but I doubt it.

So maybe Cataclysm beta in February 2010 with release sometime in June?  I'd be happy with that.

Happy Hunting!

P.S. - patch release dates were taken from wowwiki and not gathered through any official Blizzard source.

It's a Start

• Hunters might be able to choose the talent tree of their pet to let them pick the pet that looks best to them...
  

One of the big gripes I have with the current pet system is that it locks pets into very specific rolls with very specific abilities.  As a result certain pets are coming out ahead and falling into a "best in slot" category.  For instance, almost every raiding hunter is running with a wolf.

If Blizzard wants hunters to be able to choose pets based on what the individual hunter thinks looks best, then they also need to allow the hunter to train specific abilities, such as Furious Howl, to the pet.

Being able to turn a turtle into a ferocity pet is nice, but unless you can train the turtle in Furious Howl, the wolf will still remain the top choice.

In patch 3.1 Blizzard removed Thunderstomp from gorillas and added it to the Tenacity talent tree allowing hunters to train any tenacity pet with that ability.  I loved that change as did most hunters.

A lot of us joked about how is it possible for a worm to Thunderstomp?  Yes the idea is silly and so is the idea of a crab learning Furious Howl, but you know what, it works.  I think we all have to recognize that this is a game, and certain elements have to be treated or accepted as such in order to provide a greater functionality to the players.

After all, we are hunters, the great beast masters.  We can train our pets to do anything.  Yes we're just that good.

Now it's off to see if I can train one of my cats to use the coffee maker.

WoW: Cataclysm Confirmed

Let's face it, despite that fact that a lot of this information was leaked, it's still exciting to get the official announcement. Yes, boys and girls our addictions are safe!!

Here's a link to the official WoW Cataclysm site. You can view the trailer and more. I'm sure they'll be a ton of details forthcoming throughout the weekend. But it looks like the old is becoming new.

Some things that were mentioned in the video are,

1. Worgen for the Alliance and Goblins for the Horde (both can be hunters).
2. Many of the old world zones will undergo major changes.
3. Flying in Azeroth.
4. Old Dungeons becoming heroic (Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep were mentioned).
5. A secondary profession called Archeology (no details, but since it's secondary everyone should be able to get it).
6. A new type of leveling system.
7. Guild leveling and achievements.
   

Anyway, it's exciting news to be sure. I'm sure you'll get to here us talk about it on the next episode of the Hunting Party.

Well I'm off to see if I can free up a character slot or two (no mention if we'd get more).