I may never be prepared

I know the patch is coming, I just can not bring myself to get excited enough to be prepared for it this time.   But do I really need to worry this time?

Is that a sigh of relief or was that a meh?

As hunters there really is not a whole lot we have to do to get ready for 4.2.  There are no huge talent or ability overhauls.  There are no sweeping nerfs or balance shifting buffs.  Hunters will basically be the same class when the servers come back up as they were when they went down.  This unusual calm in the recent patch-to-patch roller coaster ride for classes is a bit of a welcome relief for some of us who have to help fix the error of our raid companion's ways.

Don’t Stockpile Valor Points

 

Unless you want a 4k Justice Points.  All Valor Points currently in possession are becoming Justice Points.  So any Valor you have when the patch goes live will not get you a head start on ilvl 378 Valor purchases.  The extra Valor isn't converting past the normal 4k cap on the PTR, so anyone whose Valor and Justice Points sum to a total over 4k will simply lose the excess points.

If previous patches are any indication this new patch will be a great time for gearing into ilvl 359 and quickly getting alts to fill in holes in raid teams.

Do Stockpile Crafting Materials

 

If you are looking to have the new agility BoEs made quickly.  The new crafting recipes for the ilvl 365 gun and the  ilvl 365 agi two-hander will require expensive materials and they will only go up in price once the patch hits.  So start gathering up any mats that you will require now.   The demand for materials will force existing crafted items up in price as well so you might be able to save some gold by buying your new leg armor pre patch as well.

The role of Chaos Orbs (the gun and polearm both require five) remains uncertain.  Blizzard has merely said that they plan to make the orbs BoE in “a future patch” and not 4.2 specifically.

Tenacity Pet Intervenes as a Viable Raid Tactic

 

In 4.2 Tenacity pets will only take up to 50% of the their health as damage resulting from the use of Intervene.  Why does this matter?  It means that tenacity pets can successfully and repeatedly be used to soak spike tank damage, such as Chimaeron’s Double Attacks.  Previously our pets would just die, but with the 50% cap, Intervenes can possibly save lives in encounters where spike melee damage on tanks is a greater concern than hunter dps.  Turtle is very excited about this change.  He never gets to raid.

Reason # 56735137 Why hunters are better than everyone else

Data mined on the 4.2 PTR

Pft with your silly little poison sticks and balls o' fire.  That's right.  Rabid critters. 

Best Race, For the DPS

When people ask "what is the best race for a " they are really asking about racials; the bonuses each race gets and how these work with the hunter class.

It's important to note that racials are not balanced, and have never been balanced. This is not a QQ entry, its just a basic listing of the racial as they exist in the game. Keep in mind that at best these racials add maybe 1% to a dps total. Play the race you like the best for whatever reason you have. Both my hunters are at the bottom of their factions for racials and I'm always one of the top dps in my raids.


Alliance racials

Worgen have two awesome racials that make them the clear winner for Alliance hunter racials:Viciousness and Darkflight.

The 1% crit gained from Viciousness is a really nice dps gain across the board for hunters, and unlike the dwarf ability, worgen gain this regardless of what weapon they're using.   Added to this killer dps gain is Darkflight, a highly handy raiding ability.

Draenei Space goats come up next on the Alliance end, with Heroic Presence and Gift of the Naaru.  The heal is nice but the extra 1% hit is almost as good as the worgen's 1% crit. Plus if you end up over on hit rating you can reforge a bunch of that away.

Dwarf Gun Specialization is starting out this xpac worse than ever with a serious lack of epic PvE guns. Stoneform has the occasional use for survival but doesn't really add too much to the bottom line.

Humans have nothing really great for hunters. Every Man for Himself can be useful at times, but meh

Gnomes cannot be hunters. Thank god for small miracles.

The Night elf racial  Shadowmeld doesn't really help your raid kill bosses, so about all elves have going for them is Wisp Spirit. Considering the number of night elf Legloas' out there in the game it seems somehow appropriate that elves' racial should only work after you kill them.

Horde racials

Orcs lead the horde pack brining both Blood Fury and Command to the table, a brutal combination of pure dps racials.

The 5% pet damage from Command is obviously amazing for BM hunters, since it applies to Kill Command, but keep in mind that even SV and MM pets are doing thousands of DPS these days. Add to that over a thousand attack power usable twice a fight (in conjunction with Rapid Fire) and the fact that none of their racials are dependent on a specific weapon, and orcs lead the Horde in hunter racials.

Troll Trolls, once the laughing stock of warcraft racials, now sport Berserking and Bow Specialization making them a strong choice for a horde hunter.


Goblin Both Time is Money and Rocket Jump are valuable and desirable PvE racial abilities.

The benefit of 1% haste is a bit variable; it's always good, but since the value of haste fluctuates heavily based on spec, gear and the Moon in Aries, sometimes it's great and sometimes it's just okay. Rocket Jump, like any movement-boosting ability, can be life-saving in a progression raid. Not to mention it's just cool.

And so ends the dps portion of our discusion on Horde racials.

Blood elf Blood elves have Arcane Torrent, which nets them an itsy bitsy bit of focus that technically adds an itsy bitsy bit of dps. That's about all they bring to the party.

Tauren The base health increase from Endurance can be far more useful then War Stomp stunning mobs for a boss fight.

Undead Will of the Forsaken and they just look cool.

T12 Armor

Circumstances beyond my control have prevented me from having too much T11 gear but the T12 set seems to be a huge step up from day-glo murloc

It does seem to continue the grand tradition of "wtf is that coming out of your head" hunter helms.  This is oddly comforting.

4.1 Hunter View

I'm a little slow getting back to the party but a new patch is a good place to start

Deterrence no longer requires a melee weapon to be equipped

Explosive Trap now has a new spell effect

Master's Call now has a new spell effect

I'm always in favor of PvP survivability and shiny particle effects.  But I'm an easily distracted female

Multi-Shot damage has been increased by 250%.

After seeing this perform in raids I am officially going back to a Marks spec.  Decent AE damage with higher single target damage, oh I'm so there.

Tame Beast now tames pets to match the hunter's level, rather than 3 levels below.

I was fine with things before.  I was also fine with how pets were when the game released so its probably best to not go by me.


Pets

The Happiness/Pet Loyalty System has been removed. Hunters will no longer have to manage Happiness for their pets, and the previous damage bonus for pets being happy will now be baseline for all tamed pets.

• Bloodthirsty no longer generates Happiness.
• Carrion Feeder no longer restores Happiness.
• The Feed Pet ability now instantly heals 50% of the pet's health. Cannot be used in combat. Requires diet-appropriate food.
• Guard Dog no longer causes Growl to generate additional Happiness

See above

Glyphs

• Glyph of Mend Pet is now Glyph of Lesser Proportion, which decreases the size of the pet slightly.

Hunter Bug Fixes

Hunters will no longer automatically acquire a new target if the current target dies in the middle of a cast.

Aimed Shot and Steady Shot should no longer start casting Auto Shot on a new target when the "Stop Auto Attack" option enabled.

Auto Shot now automatically turns off until reactivated once Freezing Trap is cast on an enemy player

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.  Oh and thank you.  I admit it I can be a bit of a button masher towards the end of some bigger trash.  I've  had to come up with all manner of ways of stopping auto shot.

• Deterrence: The area damage of the paladin ability Hammer of the Righteous will no longer hit hunters with Deterrence active.
• Distracting Shot and Multi-Shot are now properly 40-yard range.
• Intervene (Tenacity pet ability) range has been increased so that the pet will properly intercept attacks.
• Multi-Shot now properly has a 1-second global cooldown.
• The pet action bar should no longer sometimes become locked on its own.
• Scatter Shot's disorient effect should no longer sometimes be broken by the hunter's Auto Shot.
• Summoned pets now start with 100 focus, up from 0

Hunter Known Issues

• The exotic pet ability Burrow Attack does not have an animation for certain types of worm pets.
• Pets do not initially spawn in with the correct amount of health.

Last and certainly not least; the Corded Viper Belt has had a red socket added with a +10 agility socket bonus. This catapults this leatherworker crafted item to the hunter best in slot ilvl 359 item.  

Cataclysm, Tanks and You

While it’s true that healers have the toughest job in Cataclysm, tanking still ranks above DPS in terms of difficulty.  Tanks are expected to know new fights inside and out, and a lot more hangs on their actions than on a hunter’s.  They have to balance three stat goals (mitigation, damage absorption and threat) as opposed to say just "agility 4tw"  They usually coordinate CC, positioning and kill orders themselves.  They have to compensate for the abundance of facerolling and ”it’s not my fault” attitudes that will always exist in the game.  It’s not an easy job, tanking, so what can we do to help?

First,  remember the basics:

• Keep your pet under control.
• Assist the tank or your designated Main Assist
• MD to the tank at the beginning of every pull
• Feign Death before you steal agro.
• If you steal agro, it’s your fault 

Working With Tanks

Establish a basis for communication with the tank.  Unlike with healers, hunters and tanks actually have a lot to say to one-another and so it helps for us to be on the same page.   We have to know what each other’s abilities do; for example, it really helps if a tank knows that traps can be broken, that they work on almost anything, that they can be chained, that Ice Trap is actually not the same thing as Freezing Trap, etc.  Because of all this, it can be good to make sure at the start of a dungeon or raid that you and the tank understand one another.

Offer your services.   A lot of tanks don’t have a full sense of what hunters can do in terms of crowd control, kiting, threat management and dispels.  Instead of the huge asset that we can be, we’re more likely to be viewed as generic dps who hopefully won’t wipe the group due to incompetence. 

Use Misdirect is it was intended, to give tanks an opening boost on threat.  While that threat gain is nice for any pull it is particularly helpful for multi-target pulls.  The less work a tank has to do hunting down stray mobs with taunts, the more threat he generates overall and the less likely he is to lose mobs later in the fight.  A tank’s attention and time spent on taunts, Intervenes, Hand of Salv and the like cost him threat and mitigation.  The more we can do to help tanks focus on their optimal threat/mitigation rotations and positioning, the smoother things will go for the whole group or raid. 

Wait a couple seconds before you start doing damage.  It’s not going to hurt your dps and it’s going to help the tank establish a solid threat lead.   A decent threat lead for your tank lets you go all out when you do start dps and gives the tank enough breathing room to focus on mitigation.  Waiting a couple seconds also helps the tanks overcome rng.  Unlike the always hit capped hunter the tank is most likely not hitting with all their swings.  If the tank and they misses all of their opening attacks any dps who did start blasting straight away will find a boss bearing down on them.

Feign before you steal agro and stay feigned until you see your threat disappear.  Pulling a boss out of position is bad.  Getting up and resuming dps only to discover  that FD did not actually have enough time to wipe your threat is very very bad.  Omen does a nice job of displaying how much threat is buffed threat and so you can predict whether the thread fading will put you ahead of the tank. 

Once the tank has a solid threat lead they are not very likely to lose it.  You may need to watch the threat meters closely at the start of the fight you can probably stop worrying about boss threat by the middle of the fight.  This really turns out to be a big DPS boots because you no longer have to waste a precious global cool down past mid fight. 

Scrubbing Bubbles

Taking the time to work with the tanks will make you raid much more successful in the long run.  After all, Tanks work hard so we don't have to.  Yeah okay its been a while if I want to end corny I'll end corny.

Uphill, with no shoes

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since closed beta in 2004.  Many can say it but I have proof in pictures and the fact that I think it was just me and all of SoK in that push.  I've purchased all versions of the games as collectors editions because I'm that much of a geek for the game.  I've leveled many characters and played one of them at the hard core progression end game level.  I've had many a 2s team in the arena, one season gaining the Challenger title somehow.

WoW has changed over the years. Newer players have no idea what its like to raid Blackrock Depths with 40 people.  Not many remember having to to farm Scholomance over and over for that Tier 0 helm.  Even fewer remember the original Tarren Mill/Southshore PvP wars.  Sometimes we'd go kill the Alliance leaders just for something to do.  It’s stuff people love to talk about but few who were actually there remain.

Alterac Valley matches often lasted days. You could join, fight for a while, go to work or school, come home and rejoin the same match. Before cross-server dungeons and battlegrounds your server was a community. You knew people from fighting them and competing with them.   The hunter I play now was rolled to get to hang with the people I was killing in AV. 

Questing has been streamlined. There are shiny arrows, turn-ins mid-quest chain and sparkly objects. It’s easy to get in a new zone and quest everywhere.  Gone are the jokes of “Where is Mankrik’s wife?”  Now she would have had a gigantic arrow floating over her poor lifeless body. Secret quest hubs don’t exist.  When you finish a zone, you know it’s finished because the quest chains end.  There is no secret Pirate Cove any longer.

The guesswork is out of the game now. Calculations are precise and accurate. There is a mathmatical “best spec” no matter how Blizzard wishes it wasn’t so.

Ranks of spells are gone. The game has a pop-up notification when you have new spells to train and new talent points to spend. You can teleport to dungeons without ever knowing where they are actually located and the dungeons have maps!

I miss some of the magic and feel of the original game.  There's no real sense of server community, my dog can level to 85 in a week and there are no more surprises.  

I know, I know.  QQ Moar