Patch 4.0 - Some Things to Expect

Patch 4.0 is on the PTRs and soon it will be coming to a realm near you.

• Patch 4.0 contains all of the class changes such as spells, talents, and glyphs.


• It does not have the zone changes.


• You cannot fly in Azeroth.


• You cannot be a Worgen or Goblin.


• You cannot level your character.

Things You'll Want to Do

Training

There are a variety of new abilities that are available to hunters and you'll want to go and grab them all.

• Scatter Shot is now baseline.


• There are multiple spells for call pet that allow you to call four of your five active pets (the fifth one requires level 82).


• The new Trap Launcher is available.


• We can train in Mail specialization which increase our agility by 5% if we wear nothing but mail armor.


• We also get our Mastery. Now in Cataclysm this stat will appear on lots and lots of gear. None of the Wrath gear has been updated to include Mastery so we won't see the full benefit of this until the expansion.

One thing to note is that Cobra Shot is a level 81 ability and thus not available to us right now. Beastmaster and Survival hunters will want to use Cobra over Steady because of its ability to refresh Serpent Sting. When this patch hit Beastmaster and Survival hunters will be using Steady and will need to keep a watch on their Serpent Sting as it will drop off.



Other Things

• We're focus users now. You can ditch the Honey Mint Tea and mana pots.


• Ammo is gone. Just vendor the leftover arrows and bullets that you have. Epic ammo is selling for 30 silver a stack.


• We have bigger stables. Get ready to run around tame all those new pets. Since the zone changes won't be in effect you'll want to check out Petopia and see if any of the current skins are going extinct.


• The new currency system will be in place.

Glyphs

• The new glyph system is here. We now have Prime, Major and Minor glyphs and can have three of each type.


• You only have to learn a glyph once and then you can use a reagent to swap them in and out.


• Your minor glyphs will still be in place.


• You will need to add Prime and Major glyphs.


• You won't have to learn any glyphs you were using.


• Chances are the glyphs you were using are not the ones you'll want moving forward, so you'll want to find a scribe and get some new glyphs right away.

Gear, Gems, Hit and Armor Pen

• Now that we have the Mail armor specialization, you'll want to ditch any leather items you have (*cough* Toskk's Maximized Wristguards *cough*).


• T9 gear will be obsolete. You'll want to get four pieces of T10, or at the very least replace your T9 with some form of ICC gear.


• We no longer have any talents that grant hit rating. If you plan to do any raiding you'll most likely be under the hit cap (I was 2.18% under the cap when I logged onto the PTR). That means I'll need to make up that hit through gems, enchants or gear.


• All of your Armor Pen gems will be converted to yellow Crit gems.


• Hit gem are now blue and purple instead of yellow and orange. Just keep that in mind if you have or plan to use any hit gems.


• Nightmare tear is still prismatic, but not as valuable because we don't need intellect and no longer benefit from the intellect to attack power conversion. Also, there's a good chance you'll use some form of red, blue and yellow gems and won't need a prismatic to keep your meta active.

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.

The Great Hunter Debate

Once again the hunter community finds itself embroiled in a heated debate, and it should come as no surprise that at the center of this controversy is WHU blogger, Scattered Shots columnist, and Hunting Party Podcast host, Frostheim.

You see he is organizing a sequel to the great Level 1 Dwarven Hunter Raid - the Level 10 Dwarven Hunter Raid, scheduled for Friday, April 9, 2010.

Level ten allows hunters to do two things. First is the ability to tame pets, and second, we get our first talent point. And herein lies the controversy. You see one of the rules for the level 10 raid is that you can’t go to eleven. Ten is the max. Thus the debate is where should hunters spend their one and only talent point?

Let's take a look at the talents available to us at level ten.

1. Improved Aspect of the Hawk - 10% to increase our haste by 3%.
2. Endurance Training - Increases pet's health by 2% and hunter's by 1%.
3. Improved Concussive Shot - Increases the duration of the daze effect by 1 sec.
4. Focused Aim - Increases our chance to hit by 1%.
5. Lethal Shots - Increases our critical strike chance by 1%.
6. Improved Tracking - Increases our damage by 1%.
7. Hawk Eye - Increases our range by 2 yards.
8. Savage Strikes - Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counter Attack by 10%.

Keeping in mind that the group will be killing something that is a much higher level than 10, and we'll need the best dps we can get, we can probably eliminate Endurance Training, Improved Concussive Shot, Hawk Eye, and Savage Strikes as contenders. They just aren't going to do much for our dps.

That leaves Improved Aspect of the Hawk, Focused Aim, Lethal Shots and Improved Tracking as options. So how do we decide which one? Well luckily we have this handy, dandy spreadsheet that can help guide us.

Now a few important things about the spreadsheet. It's designed for level 80's and not level 10 characters. So any information we get from the spreadsheet is speculative at best.

I chose a dwarf with no professions. Since the low level ranged weapons were not available I decided to shoot for the moon and equipped Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas (heroic of course) and epic ammo. I left all of the buffs and debuffs alone and chose a wolf for a pet (no talent points of course). I left the other settings alone and then began selecting talents. Here are my results.

As you can see Focused Aim provided the biggest dps increase at +7.09 and would appear to be the clear winner. Even if the spreadsheet could be optimized for level 10 characters I don't believe the results would be all that different.

I'm opting for, and recommending, the 0/1/0 build, and putting all of my eggs in the Focused Aim basket.

It makes sense too. I don't know what level mob the raid will be fighting, but reducing any chance to miss seems like a smart move. So what do you think? Is Focused Aim the way to go for your one and only talent point?

Good Hunting Level 10 Raiding!

Serpent Sting is it Time?

April Fool's posts usually come in a couple of varieties. There's funny/clever, and then there's cruel. I opted for funny/clever yesterday, but I was very tempted to go with this,

"In the next minor patch Serpent Sting tics will automatically be able to crit. The T9 2-set bonus will be modified to increase the damage of Serpent Sting critical tics by 5%"

See? Not real and certainly not funny. So my question is this. Is it time for Blizzard to make Serpent Sting crit without the need of a set bonus? I think so.

Right now the two-piece T9 set bonus is just awesome. This is due to the two-piece T10 bonus and the way Chimera Shot refreshes Serpent Sting. Remember it refreshes the sting with any percentage damage modifiers that were in place when the sting was cast. It also got buffed in patch 3.3.3 and the crit. damage is even higher now.

Very high-end hunters are able to reach the ArP hard cap and retain two pieces of item level 258 T9. And us mere mortals are seeing huge dividends in our item level 245 pieces. Here's a look at my Serpent Sting numbers from this week's Festergut (25). The crit damage was averaging close to 3K, well more than double the average non-crit damage.

Furthermore, I didn't even have the best possible Serpent Sting applied. As you can see my stings were only critting 60% of the the time. I've gotten that well over 80% before, and I've seen others get the crit chance as high as 90%.

When a new tier of gear is added to the game I think the intention is for players to fully upgrade to that tier. Okay, trinkets may be an exception, but certainly not the other armor pieces. Now that doesn't mean that everyone should opt for four pieces of their tier set. Depending on the spec two-pieces and off-set pieces should be a viable option. But having to dip down to a lower tier because it gains you more dps just doesn't make a lot of sense.

I doubt will see any changes for Wrath, but I'm hopeful that it will become standard fare in Cataclysm. What do you guys think, is it time for Serpent Stings tics to have the natural ability to critically strike, or should we just enjoy it while it lasts and be prepared to remember it fondly come Cataclysm?

Multi-Shot - Ruh Roh!

In episode 21 of the Hunting Party Podcast we interviewed Kruf who was one of the hunters who got the world's first Lich King (25), and heroic Lich King (25) kills. In the interview he said the most important thing for hunters is to constantly be firing something and not sitting idle. I agreed with him whole heartedly - until today.

Before I start I'm going to give some benefit of doubt here and chalk this one up to transitioning from Survival to Marksman. Even with that there are some things here that are just plain ugly.

What you're looking at is a World of Logs timeline view from a recent Festergut (25) normal encounter. For more information on using World of Logs you can check out this post at OutDPS.com.

So where to begin? See the spell labeled speed? That's a haste potion. The hunter is pre-potting so he can use another one later in the fight. Good stuff, and something I don't do enough of.

Next we see an adjustment to his tracker. This is for the 5% damage boost from the Improved Tracking talent. The problem here is that this was entirely unnecessary since he was previously tracking undead. Tracking should already be in place when you enter the instance.

We also have Misdirection and Hunter's Mark. Both fine. When the fight starts he leads off with Serpent Sting, having macro'd Silencing Shot and Kill Command. Nothing bad about that.

Next we see Chimera Shot followed by Multi-Shot. Ruh Roh! Next we get Rapid Fire and Readiness, followed by Chimera and Multi-Shot. Ruh Roh! With Rapid Fire cooking the poor bastard gets hit by Vile Gas. Things move along and then we start to see some Serpent Sting casts - lots of them. Ruh Roh!

The second image is from end of the fight. Note, the two images do not comprise the entire timeline. What's notable in this second image is that only one Kill Shot was fired once the boss was in execute range, and there were no additional Rapid Fire/Readiness combinations. All at once, Ruh-Roh!

Let's talk a little bit about what's wrong here. First, Multi-Shot is not Aimed Shot; at least not for Marksman, and to some degree Survival. The following talents all affect Aimed Shot and not Multi-Shot,

• Marked for Death - Increases your damage done by your shots and the damage done by your pet's special abilities by 5% on marked targets, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Kill Shot and Chimera Shot by 10%.
• Piercing Shots - Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
• Improves Steady Shot - Your Steady Shot hits have a 15% chance to increase the damage done by your next Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot or Chimera Shot by 15%, and reduce the mana cost of your next Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot or Chimera Shot by 20%.
• Master Marksman - Increases your critical strike chance by 5%, and reduces the Mana cost of your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, and Chimera Shot by 25%.
• Sniper Training (SV only) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 15%, and while standing still for 6 sec, you gain Sniper Training increasing the damage done by your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot by 6% for 15 sec..

This is huge, especially Piercing Shots which is a big part of Marksman damage. Aimed Shot is second only to Chimera Shot in the MM rotation. It does more damage and costs less mana than Multi-Shot. That's not to say that Multi-Shot does not have it's place, it does. Single target boss fights are not one of them though.

I'm not going to go into the whole nuance of Readiness/Rapid Fire other than to say you need to monitor these closely and use them appropriately as the length of the fight dictates. In this fight you probably should have had at least three rapid fires if not four.

As for Serpent Sting, Marksman hunters should only have to recast this if it's fallen off (which shouldn't be an issue with Festergut), or you get a buff such as Exploit Weakness and want maintain a buffed Serpent Sting on the target. If you look at the end of the fight we see Serpent Sting followed by Serpent Sting, followed by Misdirection, followed by Serpent Sting. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Finally, Kill Shot is our biggest shot. It's priority should be greater than anything else we've got. This is true for Marksman, Survival and Beast Master. Once you get into execute range there's no reason not to be watching this and getting off as many as you can. Most fights I've seen, there is usually time to get off more than one.

So at the end of the day where does all of this shoddy huntering get you? Right smack dab in the middle of the pack. Almost 8K dps. Not the worst, but not nearly as good as it could've been. If you're on a progression fight and bumping up against an enrage timer, "not the worst" probably won't be good enough.

PS: Ruh Roh - Astro or Scooby-Doo? Debate!

Swimming in the Deep End

Let me begin by saying I'm not trying to be mean spirited here. I understand that not everyone min/maxes, not everyone plans their gear, reads forums, blogs, etc., and that not everyone is willing to make changes to gear, talents, and gems every time they upgrade a piece of gear. I get that.

Here's the thing though, I want to gem for Armor Pen, and I want to go with four pieces of T10. Unfortunately, despite the fact that all I need from ICC (25) are a ring, tier tokens, and stuff from the Lich King himself, making the move to Armor Pen is still a dps loss (at the very least it's not enough of a gain to warrant the trade offs).

Still though going Marks and gemming ArP is the hip trend and all the "cool" kids are doing it. It's swimming in the deep end of the pool. Every time I see a hunter in full T10 (even if it's all item level 251) and gemming ArP, I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by waiting.

Let's take a look at one such hunter who has taken that very plunge and is swimming with all the big kids while I wade in the shallow end.

Let's start with the gear. All of the gems are +20 ArP except for the meta, Nightmare Tear, and one Deadly Ametrine (+10 agi / +10 crit). Everything is properly enchanted except for the legs which appear to be missing an enchant (not recommended). Also the neck piece is from heroic TotC (10) and not regular TotC (10).

Okay now lets take a look at the spreadsheet dps for Marksman.

Well the first thing that stands out is that this hunter way below the hit cap. I tend to over emphasize the hit cap. I'm more comfortable being nine points over the cap than I am one point under it. Let's review his talents.

This is a reasonable spec, however given the lack of hit I'm going to adjust it and put some points into Focused Aim. Here is my revised spec.

So what I did was,

1. Put three points in Focused Aim.
2. Removed a point from True Shot Aura.
3. Removed a point from Hunter's Mark.
4. Removed 2 points from Improved Steady Shot.

I decided to be a little selfish here so I based this on our 25-man raid comp and the fact that we have three MM hunters, two of whom have TSA (I don't want him eating into my dps by too much :P ). Let's add the leg enchant and crunch the numbers again.

Just to recap, we adjusted the talents to get more hit and added a leg enchant and voila! At this point all of the gems are still ArP. Let's see what happens when we change to agility gems.

Okay, +50 isn't a lot, but it's not zero either, and keep in mind that this hunter isn't a one-trick pony and sometimes runs as Survival (I know this because he logged out as Survival). Okay, let's see how this all impacts his Survival spec.

Here are the spreadsheet number for his current setup.

This is based on the following spec.

Again, this is a reasonable spec, but remember with the MM spec and zero points in Focused Aim he was 106 points below the hit cap. Here there is one point in Focused Aim, but that's still too low. I'm going to revise the spec as follows.

I chose to remove two points in Hunting Party and dump them into Focused Aim. Remember that gear and talents need to accommodate two specs, not one. Now that the spec is revised, I'll stick the enchants on the legs and crunch the numbers again.

Alright, that's a good start, but since this is Survival and those Armor Pen. gems don't do a whole lot of good, let's see what happens when I add some agility gems. Again, since this has to work with the MM spec I'm going to gem the same for both.

So by gemming for agility, enchanting all of the gear, and reaching the hit cap, the MM dps went up by 342.23 and SV dps went up by 382.15. Now most of the MM increase came from reaching the hit cap and adjusting talents. The ArP gems really weren't the killer here. I could get into a discussion about the merits T9/T10, but that's beyond the scope of this post.

Armor Pen can be very powerful, but it's not something you should just rush into. You need to evaluate if the timing is right based on your gear. When folks say you need a passive ArP number of 700, or once you can reach 900 ArP with gems you can switch, those are not hard and fast rules. They're merely thresholds where it might be a dps increase for you.

You also have to balance ArP with all of the stats. Hit rating should never be ignored. You also need to understand that Armor Pen. is a real commitment, and that you're locking yourself into a spec and play style. It just doesn't work for SV.

Swimming in the deep end of the pool is great, but if you're not a good swimmer you might find yourself drowning in your decisions. Armor Pen can be tricky, but luckily there are some great tools out there to help you out.

Good Hunting!

Instant Coffee and Beast Master

"We are here at Icecrown Citadel (a four-star raiding instance), where we've secretly replaced the fine Marksman hunter they usually serve with a Beast Master Hunter. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!"





This week I decided to throw my hat into the Beast Master ring and do some ICC (25) bosses as BM.

I'm going to cut to the chase here. If there is a minimum threshold required to dps ICC (25), Beast Master hunters easily cross it. A well geared, well played (or perhaps mediocre in this case) Beast Master hunter can be a high contributing dpser in ICC.

I did Toravon the Ice Watcher, Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper and Stinky as BM, and I did Saurfang and Festergut as MM. I really wanted to do Festergut as BM, but just couldn't bring myself to sacrifice the DPS (I've been trying to break 10K on him for some time now).

A few things worth noting. My gear is tailored more towards MM than it is BM. My reliance on the focused aim talent forces me into a BM talent spec that is not optimized for raiding. Playing around with the spreadsheet and using gear that I have in my bank (or could acquire with badges) it was possible to increase my theoretical BM dps by at least 100. In other words, if I was really making the effort I probably could've done a little better. That being said I don't know that it would have significantly changed things.

Also, this is very representative of how I do as BM compared to how I do as MM in the context of my 25-man raid team. Your results may very.

THE STIGMA OF BEAST MASTER

Let's face it, BM has come under a lot of criticism lately, and has reached a point where going into a raid as BM is like wearing a scarlet letter. Sometimes though this perception can be overblown.

I did not information anyone in my raid that I had switched and would be running as BM. I used a wolf so it was a little less obvious. But nobody said a thing. There were no whispers, and no questions in Vent as to why my dps and position on the meters was lower. And it was lower.

Nobody noticed and nobody cared. Granted these were all farm bosses that we expected to one-shot. I don't know how things would have gone had these been progression bosses we had not killed yet. Still my switch to BM and related performance flew well under the radar.

So how exactly did I do as BM compared to MM. Let's take a very unscientific look.

COMPARING APPLES TO KUMQUATS

The big thing I noticed on this night was that in most cases my positioning on the meters was much lower as BM than it was as MM. That's not to say that my dps was bad or that I was not contributing. It simply indicates that when I play MM my contribution to the raid's dps is higher.

Toravon the Icewatcher (BM)



Lord Marrowgar (BM)



Lady Deathwhisper (BM)



Deatbringer Saurfang (MM)

When I switched to MM for this fight my DPS and positioning on the meters was much higher. Only one other ranged dps did better. The top five are all melee who go to stay on the boss the entire fight (I hate these guys) while I helped with adds. Also, we added another MM hunter for this fight (he's the on the bottom with the 7177.9 dps).



Festergut (MM)

On this fight the other hunter and I were the designated collapse points, so puking was the only thing interrupting our dps (definitely nice work if you can get it).



Stinky (BM)

I've included Stink because I've done over 10K on him before, and it's the only fight where I was BM and the other hunter was MM. My dps was good, but he pretty much cleaned my clock.



All and I feel that BM can definitely put out DPS and be a major contributer to a raid's success. As far as me continuing to raid as BM, I think it can best be summed up by my beer of choice for this experiment - Brooklyn Lager.


Good BM Hunting! Fuggedaboutit!

The Hunting Party Podcast, Episode 22

In this episode Frostheim and I discuss patch 3.3.3, the Twitter Dev chat, trinkets and procs. We take questions from the chat room and read some listener e-mail.

Please not that this show was recorded lived on February 27, 2010 via Ustream. The Hunting Party Podcast will be a live show from here on out. Each episode will be made available on iTunes after it's been cut. If you wish to listen to the show live please visit the Hunting Party Podcast website where we host our shows.

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. Also, we love iTunes reviews. Every time you neglect to leave us an iTunes review, a feral druid beats a hunter on the DPS meters!

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.

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?

Hit, ArP, Square Peg Meets Round Hole

We're working towards an Armor Pen. build. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. When we get new gear we usually have a couple of options, we can put it in the bank and wait until we have all the supporting pieces (where's the fun in that?), or we can equip them and try to make them work with our current setup.

Last night we were fortunate to get both Distant Land and the Nerub'ar Stalker's Cord. They are replacing Quel'delar, Ferocity of the Scorned and Linked Scourge Vertebrae respectively.

The staff has no hit and no ArP. Quel'delar has no hit but does have +91 ArP. The belt we're replacing has no ArP, but does have +40 hit. Our new belt has no hit but does have +63 ArP. Great googly moogly!

The net affect of equipping these items is a loss of +28 ArP and a loss of +40 hit. The lovely female dwarf told us that despite these losses, she really liked our staff ;) (She dug the belt too).

At this point we're not gemming for ArP, so reaching the ArP cap isn't a priority. We always want to be hit capped though. With the old items we were five points above the cap and that's with three points in Focused Aim, and +32 hit from enchants.

As much as we love our space goat allies, we really don't feel like following them around ICC all night for their hit buff. That leaves gems as our next option. Now as long as we see our dps going up, gemming for hit is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. When we get the rest of our gear and decide to gem ArP, then gemming for hit won't be a good option. This is mainly because there are no ArP enchants, so gems and gear remain our best sources for that stat.

Eventually we'll dig ourselves out this mess, but until we get our four pieces of 264 T10 we may be forced to use more hit gems, or just bank items until we have our set. Salvation will come in the form of our T10 gloves. So if you'll excuse us, we need to go have a chat with Toravon the Ice Watcher.

P.S. - When we started our gear planning we were curious to see if there were any items with both hit and ArP.  Here's a link to what we found on wowhead.com.

http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=minle=245;si=1;ub=3;cr=114:119;crs=1:1;crv=0:0;gb=1

We found this list to be pretty underwhelming, and none of the items were things that we'd want for our pseudo "BiS" set. Oh and before you ask, we're not including ICC heroic items in any of our plans until we've actually killed the Lich King.

We Want a Tier Token

It’s raid night tonight. Not only is it raid night, but it’s Tuesday which means a fresh ICC (25) run. Tonight we will clear through Festergut, and possibly Rotface if everyone is on their game.

The number of items we need off the first four bosses is exactly two; a tier token and another tier token.

We use a DKP system and by my count there are five individuals (Warrior, Hunter, Shaman) ahead of us in points. Some are a little ahead, and some could buy two tokens and still be nipping at our heels in points.

If one drops we’re not getting it. If two drop we’re not getting it. I don't know how we're going to get out of this one.

We want a tier token.

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 Lich King Doesn't Have a Daughter

For if he did, he'd surely have a shotgun stowed somewhere in that giant citadel of his.  Loot from the Lich King can now be found on the Armory and on sites such as Wowhead.com.

Despite that fact that there is not gun in ICC (25), the Lich King does have some nice things for us.  Once again the crossbow and the polearm are king.

Lich King Hunter Goodies

25-Man

• Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas - Once again hunters will be carrying an x-bow into the next expansion.


• Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General - Two gem slots and Crit, Ap, and ArP.  Sweet, sweet weapon.

10-Man

• Windrunner's Heartseeker


• Tainted Twig of Nordrassil

It's weird, ICC (10) has a bow, gun and crossbow.  Odd that ICC (25) should not.  Too bad Arthas and Jaina didn't have a little more time together.

Good Hunting!

Three Enchants to Consider

Today I wanted to cover three enchants that you may want to consider as part of your raiding set.  These are Cat's Swiftness, Tuskarr's Vitality and the Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope.

The first two come at the expense of some DPS enchants, and the last one is so old school it may be hard to get, but they're all worth a look.

Speed Kills

Ever since we interviewed Munken from Ensidia on the Hunting Party Podcast, I've been running with Tuskarr's Vitality on my boots. Ensidia requires all of their raiders to have some type of speed boost whether it comes from talents, gems or enchants.

The concept here is simple.  Almost all raid encounters require you to move around, and the faster you can get from point A to point B, the more time you'll spend doing DPS.

Cat's Swiftness - +6 agility and minor speed increase (8%).

• Large Prismatic Shard x8
• Primal Air x8

This is a Burning Crusade enchant.  The advantage it has over Tuskarr's is the small dps gained from the +6 agility.  That and it's name just make it more Huntery anyway.

I haven't checked the AH to see what it's going for, but the mats shouldn't be that difficult to acquire.  There recipe comes in two versions, a BoE Outland drop and a BoP drop from Kael'thas Sunstrider in Magister's Terrace.  As time goes by this one may be harder to find.

Tuskarr's Vitality - +15 Stamina and minor speed increase (8%).

• Infinite Dust x10
• Greater Cosmic Essence x2
• Dream Shard x2

This is the WotLK version of the speed enchant.  Scrolls, mats, and enchanters who can make this should be readily available.  If you're looking for a speed enchant this should be easy to get.

Old School Challenge

Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope - +30 hit rating (almost 1%)

• Lava Core x2
• Essence of Earth x2
• Delicate Arcanite Converter x4
  
  • Arcanite Bar x5
  • Ironweb Spider Silk x4
• Dark Iron Bar x6
• Thorium Tube
  
  • Thorium Bar x6

If you really like to min/max and want a challenge you can try scrounging one of these up.  Depending on your gear and how you're doing on hit this scope could allow you to replace an item such as the Icecrown Ramparts Bracers with say Scourge Hunter's Vambraces (thanks to Rilgon for this tip).

My advice is check the AH first to see if there's a scope for sale.  Then check to see what mats are available to buy.  I was able to get the Lava Cores, Arcanite Bars, Essence of Earth, and Thorium Tube for around 100g.

The Dark Iron Bars can only be made in Blackrock Depths and there's a bit of an attunement required in order to smelt the ore.

The tough part is going to be finding someone who can make it.  The schematic is a drop from Molten Core, so there may not be too many Engineers around who are able to craft one.  If you're an Engineer you could try and farm the schematic, but that could take a while.

Good Hunting!

Waltzing Matilda

Okay, I recently discovered that you don't have to form a raid group and enter the Icecrown Citadel raid instance to purchase your T10 gear.  There's a cute little dwarf in Dalaran who will be happy to take your emblems and tokens and hand you your T10.

Matilda Brightlink is a mail armor merchant and she can be found in the armor shop between the fishing fountain and the South Bank in Dalaran.  This is the same shop where we purchased our other tier gear.  Why the same dwarf, who we've been going to this whole expansion, couldn't sell the T10 is beyond me, but there you go.

Have a great weekend folks!

Zod's Fixed

Blizzard released a list of in-game fixes, which included Zod's.  You may once again kneel before Zod.  You can read the official link here.

"The proc on Zod’s Repeating Longbow should no longer reset auto shots."

Zod's Bugged

"Zod's should not reset your autoshot. This is a bug."

This is what Ghostcrawer posted in response to reports that the proc on Zod's Repeating Longbow is resetting our auto-shot timer.

Essentially what this means is you'll be losing out on the number of auto-shots that you should be getting during the course of a fight.  Enough in fact, to negate the benefit you get from the proc.

Given the lack of stats on this weapon the heroic TotC ranged weapons will probably get you more dps until this is fixed.  I'm not sure how the dps compares to other ranged weapons.

If you have this fine weapon, just know you aren't getting all of the dps out of it that you should.

I wouldn't kneel just yet.

Engineering = Death From Above

Today I'm going to write about one of the joys of being an Engineer. You see the other day I was doing the Dangerously Delicious fishing quest in Wintergrasp.

I'm minding my own business when all of the sudden a hunter's mark appear above my head and then bang, bang, I'm dead :( . I'm not the only one he's doing this too, and before you know it we're all rezzed and he's hopelessly outnumbered.  He's also way up in the air safe on his flying mount; or so he thought :) .

With revenge on my mind, I grab my flying mount and fly into the air going above him, but staying in max range.  I dismount, fire off a Black Arrow (a nice 15 second DoT he can't do anything about).  I continue to drop, and am still in range after the GCD is up.  I fire off an explosive shot (another two second DoT he can do nothing about).

I then pop my parachute just in time to see his health drop to zero as I float safely to the ground.  It was a good day to be an Engineer indeed.

My apologies in advance for the lack of screenshots or video for this one.  I'll try to be better prepared next time, as this was so much fun, I'm sure there will be a next time. :)

Good Aerial Hunting!

Caveat Emptor

Euripides over at OutDPS.com has a nice post about some shady dealings with epic ammo happening on auction houses across Azeroth.  Just make sure you look before you buy.

http://outdps.com/2009/12/21/ammo-one-for-the-price-of-ten/

The Hunting Party Podcast, Episode 17

This week we bring you another round table edition where we continue to discuss patch 3.3, and some hunter strategies for Icecrown Citadel.  We also answer a whole inbox of your e-mail.  Please, please continue to send us your questions.  We promise to answer we'll answer them soon (tm).

[audio http://www.badiator.com/huntingpartypodcast/huntingparty_017.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. Also, we love iTunes reviews. Every time you neglect to leave us an iTunes review, a feral druid beats a hunter on the DPS meters!

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.