OMG I've Got Wings.

Okay, lets step away from the grumpiness for a moment and speak about the bestest thing I have ever seen.

My priest now has wings.  How totally awesome is that?

I was in ICC the other night and looked at my shiny new Archangel spell and was wondering why it is never lighting up, I mean I was doing what I am supposed to do as a disc priest so why was nothing triggering it.  Then it clicked.  I need to do damage to make it trigger.  So I had the time, everyone was healed and shielded so I threw out a smite and my Archangel lit up.

So what is a priest to do?  I hit the damn thing just to see what it was like.

I have wings.  I could not restrain myself as I said on vent.  Look, I have wings.  I started dancing around with my wings and spamming shields, can't stop doing my job of course.

She looks so cute running around with her wings.  I am going to make sure I pop my wings every given chance I can when doing dungeons or raids or even soloing.  I love them.  Sure, they will help with mana regen but who the hell cares.... I have wings.  I love it.

Greatest.  Update.  Ever.

Blizzard Spewing More Hunter Hate

At every turn lately it seems the Hunters have been getting hit with one thing or another from Blizzard that adversely effects the class.  We are survivors, so we plug along and work with what we have.  It keeps getting harder to do so when everything is stacked against us.

Looking forward to Cataclysm which gets closer by the day we look at released information with hope and continuously get let down.

Lets take a look at some of the new trinkets that where announced yesterday over at MMO-Champion.

Essence of the Cyclone - +321 Agility Proc: 1926 Critical on Melee or Ranged
Unheeded Warning - +321 Agility Proc: Melee auto attack damage increased by 25%

Two new trinkets from the new raids announced.  Melee get to have two new trinkets and Hunters can only use one.  There is no reason for an agility trinket to not work for ranged and melee, unless of course you are blizzard and seem to want to try and phase Hunters out of the game by pissing them all off hoping they quit.

Okay, that does not seem like Blizzard spewing Hunter hate all that much even if there is no reasonable explanation why an agility trinket would have a melee only proc on it when there are no trinkets that have a ranged only proc on it.

Lets take a look at the new enchantments.

Enchant Weapon - Landslide - Proc: 1000 Attack Power
Enchant Weapon - Hurricane - Proc: 450 Haste
Enchant Weapon - Elemental Slayer - Proc: Arcane Damage and Silence to Elementals
Enchant Weapon - Avalanche - Proc: Often deal Nature Damage

All of these enchants had read when "struck by a Melee or Ranged attack" and they all have been changed to read "struck by a Melee attack".  There is more then ample proof that Blizzard does not want Hunters having anything that might actually be useful.  There are enchants that proc on melee attacks only, magical damage only and magical healing only but there are none now that will proc on ranged attacks only.

Why does Blizzard continuously keep throwing around Hunter hate?  First they screw the crap out of the class by making them rather lackluster.  Our signature shots no longer hit for much more then our standard shots.  Our killing blow big shot no longer hits for much at all, only 5%-10% more then a standard special shot.  We can not get on proc enchants, we can not use agility based trinkets and who knows what is next down the line.

I imagine the talk at Blizzard headquarters went something like this.

[Tech 1] - Hunters doing melee damage from ranged is making it hard for me to standardize the code.
[Ghostcrawler] - How so?
[Tech 1] - White damage is coded for melee and magic damage is coded for ranged.  Having to add white damage from ranged makes me have to add another line to all damage code and that is a lot or work and I don't want to do the work.
[Ghostcrawler] - Do you have a solution to propose?
[Tech 1] - Lets just screw them over a little here and a little there until most of them quit or changes classes and then we can use the fact that no one plays them as a reason to take them out of the game.
[Ghostcrawler] - I like that idea, good thinking.  Now I know why we hired you.

Two weeks later

[Ghostcrawler] - What is with these new enchants?
[Tech 1] - What do you mean?
[Ghostcrawler] - Aren't we trying to make hunters quit? If you give them good things like those they might be happy, we can not allow that.
[Tech 1] - But won't they complain if I do something obvious like that, there is no justification for removing ranged from the enchants.
[Ghostcrawler] - Screw them, they are hunters.  Take a page out of the trinket design teams playbook.  They made an agility trinket with a melee only proc.
[Tech 1] - Oh, that is so mean.  I love it.
[Ghostcrawler] - I love it too.  Keep thinking out of the box and we can get those hunters to quit so we can remove the class.  I hate hunters.
[Tech 1] - So do I, they were such a mistake to add to begin with.
[Ghostcrawler] - Don't worry, they will not last another cycle in this game.  Just remember, game balance is second in design, screwing hunters is first.  Once we get rid of the Hunters, balance will come easy afterward.

Sure, it did not go like that but I would love to see the logic behind moves like those.  Making enchants that do not proc on ranged and agility trinkets that do not proc on ranged are things that there can be no excuse for.

Remember fellow Hunters, it was Ghostcrawler that wanted to remove Volley because he did not like the magical feel to it when they added a mastery in the survival tree that increases their magical (elemental) damage.


Oh, and in case you have not noticed, our best shot for a focus dump is arcane shot.  Magic. 

Nice job removing volley because you did not want magical damage Ghostcrawler.  Next time you decide to spew shit out of your mouth at least have the balls to back it up.  Removing one magical thing while leaving the rest and increasing it in survival kind of proves the fact you are full of shit and a complete idiot.  I am not complaining about volley being removed, I've already adjusted, I am just saying that the reasoning behind its removal is the most full of shit reason I have ever heard from any game ever.

Keep screwing Hunters, I don't care.  I'll keep playing one just because you do not want us too.  Screw you.

Hunters in Motion in the 4.0.1 World

While the fact remains that Hutners, as a whole, are basically worse off over all it is not all doom and gloom or at least not as much as everyone would lead you to believe.

Ran a few different things over the weekend and tried my hand at some soloing just to see how that worked as well.  Nothing crazy, just some BC instances for rep purposes.

The biggest losses of volley where the usefulness in PvP and soloing.  Sure, it was nice to inflate trash damage but there are enough other classes that can flex their epeen for that, let them have their moment in the sun we have been owning the DPS charts for as long as I have been playing.  While I have not even attempted to PvP yet and do not think I will because this change made me lose all interest I ever had in PvP as a Hunter, at least until we get aspect of the fox.  Sad really, I was liking it for the most part.  I did try to get some soloing done.

First up, the Mechanar.  Normal to start out with.  I do not know what to expect just yet.  I also did something that some might find rather interesting.  I went for the soloing as marksman.  I grabbed my trusty turtle and laughed to myself at his ungodly 42K hit points, unbuffed of course.

The reason I went for Marks over any other spec is that none of this would be considered extreme soloing so I would have no need for intimidation or added stamina that other specs might offer and it did give me a little boost to my multi shot.  As multi shot is our only shot that can hit multiple targets now and MM is the only spec that makes that one shot a little more useful focus wise by reducing the cost. Add to that the new glyph of misdirection and we have a steady flow of aggro transferring goodness.

I was routinely grabbing 5-9 mobs casting MD and hitting multi three time before casting MD again and throwing a few more multi's in for good measure.  Everything went down nice and smoothly.  The turtle held his own very well, rarely needed more then a patch up mend pet here and there and all was beautiful in the world of soloing.

After seeing how easy it was on normal I tried it on heroic and it went just the same really.  In truth, it seems as if for this level of content that soloing has gotten even easier and marks is the way to go for the multi/md combo to help the pet out.

Doing my little soloing and the steady flow of multi shots I was firing gave me a better understanding of MM's mastery.  First off, it can fire off from a multi shot.  Secondly it is for a full damage and not based off of the crap damage that multi does.  Third, and surely not least, it can proc piercing shots as well it seems.  It turned out that wild quiver was doing near 35% of my damage while soloing and that is not only there (more on that later).

Side rant:
Lets be honest, multi shot sucks big time for a raiding tool or for anything where you need some actual damage on more then one target.  It really needs to be tuned up some. 700-900 per target?  Who are you kidding?  I was doing 8K-10K per hit with it before they changed it.  I understand it can not be that high any more but lowering 8K-10K down to 700-900 is really an insult to a class that got nothing but abused this patch to begin with.  Here's to hoping they change it to some more reasonable.  1500-2000 would at least be acceptable if not over powered.

Back on target:
So for soloing it seems the Hunters are in good shape at the moment.  There was never a moment where I was ever in trouble and the few times where the mobs got away from my turtle multi shot is a huge kiting tool for multiple mobs.  This was not the first time I ran into that one however.  Doing Naxx for fun this week I noticed the pure power of multi shot for kiting large groups of mobs on Gluth.  Sure we over gear it now but being able to pick up lots of packs and keep them on you all at once is awesome.  Multi being an instant is a huge asset to us. 

This Would Be Fun:
Makes me want to go find a huge group of mobs that I will not kill right away and kite them somewhere.  Could you imagine bringing 200+ mobs on the march to a city?  It would be awesome beyond words.  Time to start thinking of what I can kite that will not die.  Even if they are easy to beat once they get there it would be fun to see a trail of mobs like that running into a city.

Now on to raiding and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good:
I do not know what they are talking about with tanks not being able to hold aggro now.  At least from my perspective it doesn't seem to be an issue at all.  I never even came close to grabbing aggro with the exception of one or two times.  Before I was always dancing the line, now I am never close to grabbing aggro on most things.  Maybe it is because I suck at multi target damage now.  Maybe the talk of tanks having aggro issues is over exaggerated.  Maybe both. 

Big Tips and Tricks Time:
If you had not noticed before, wild quiver can proc on multi as well, each shot from multi shot I should say.  So set your main burn target as your target and mutli away.  When a raid leader screams out that he does not want any AoE he wants the main target focused down explain to him that is exactly what you are doing.  If there are 10 mobs and you get 4 procs from wild quiver then all 4 will hit your main target.  Not to mention the mutli that hits it and the auto shot that hits it.  So basically you are hitting the main target for 1 auto shot, 4 wild quivers at 115% damage and your 700-900 multi shot ever 1 second, yes, every 1 second.  That is way more damage then if you had just dropped arcane, chimera and steady on the main target alone.

The DPS Good:
Well, it seems single target has not been nerfed as badly as I was lead to believe.  Sure, my DPS was off a tad bit.  Was hitting 11K, 10K on average when I am used to doing 13K and 12K, so it is a 2K drop that I happen to think I will make up on just as I get more used to the new way our rotation goes.  So single target is not dead.

The DPS Good:
Target switching is easier.  The only fights I ever had gotten myself into mana troubles are fights where there was a lot of target switching and a lot of movement like PP and DBS. I would occasionally throw myself into viper whenever I was on saurfang so I had mana for the blood beasts.  Now I just steady (with keeping chimera up) on saurfang and fire the aimed whenever it pops and when beasts come I switch to them and can instant away enough to burn them down.  This bought about the highest DPS I ever saw on Saurfang from myself.  Was number 5 over all in a 25 man.  It is rare that I am ever that high on a fight like that.  So there is the first advantage of focus so far from what I have seen.  The steadys proc wild quiver and piercing shots so spamming them on the boss so I have full focus actually worked out to be a good thing.  If you notice, I did not mention arcane on the boss, only the shots that can proc the bleed.  DoTs on the boss for when I am kiting beasts.  Nothing wrong with that.

The Bad:
Our trash DPS is exactly that, trash.  My suggestion is play the smart Hunter.  You are not going to compete with 18K DPS from locks and mages and if you tried to AoE you might be able to get to 8K-9K so why not pick a target and do what Hunters do best. Burn the mofo down.  Like I said, be smart, pick out the target that posses the biggest threat to your group or had the highest life total and burn that down first using the multi technique I mentioned before.  If aggro is an issue, just play follow the tank and burn whatever the tank is working on.  You can easily get to 10K-12K DPS doing that and you are actually doing things the way blizzard wants us to do things which means when cataclysm hits we will be way ahead of the curve.

The Other Bad:
Burst damage.  Not a hell of a lot we can do that I have figured out so far to pour it on.  I did hit rapid fire just before a shammy hit heroism and my steady shot was down to 0.65 seconds which was sick but can you really call that burst?  Being our extremely limited resources our ability to do burst damage is almost nothing compared to what it was before.  Popping readiness when everything was on cooldown to reset for another Chimera, Aimed, Kill, Silence, Kill Command, was always nice for huge burst but now it is rather useless for the most part being we need to have to focus to make anything work.  Silence no longer does damage, aimed is all but useless and kill command is not cost effective leaving us with Chimera and Kill Shot as the only thing it refreshes that we can use and Chimera's cost is way to high for it's use and Kill Shot is free but so underpowered it is laughable.  Which leads to the next point.

The Biggest Bad:
I had arcane and chimera hit for more then my kill shots. Not joking either.  I am sure other Hunters that actually look into this will notice it.  On average kill shot only does 1K more then chimera or arcane.  The only thing that makes kill shot even an option is that it costs a beautiful 0 focus.  Otherwise it is useless as a damage bonus thing, 1K is not much of a bonus.  Gone are the days of 22K-25K standard KS hits and 45K-50K crits.  50K was a regular occurrence even outside of ICC and now I have not seen one over 13K.

The Ugly:
What have they done to our pets?  Every time we port somewhere, our pet has 10% life.  Every time we enter an instance, our pet has 10% life.  Every time we dismount, our pets have 10% life.  You would think someone would have noticed this and fixed it already.  It can't be that hard and it is not really game changing but it is rather annoying.

The Ugly Pt 2:
I know locks and mages are a little over tuned at the moment so I will forget about that for now but come the fuck on.  There is no reason that Priests, Druids and DKs should be beating Hunters in DPS.  They are hybrid classes and do not give me that shit they they are not hybrid, they are only in one spec.  Sure they are in their DPS spec but they still have the option to be more then a DPS spec.  Hunters do not.  Hunters, rogues, mages and lock should always be top DPS classes being they are not hybrid, they are DPS and they have no choice but to be DPS.  Down with Hybrids beating pure DPS classes.  If they do not like it then they can go heal or tank, we need more healers and tanks anyway.

The Ugly Pt 3 or The Good Pt 2?:
Looking at the end of run breakdown I was number 7 in DPS for the 25 man run.  Now DPS does not mean anything but it is a shock to the system when you are used to being top 3 in DPS and usually number 1.  Looking over to damage done I was number 4 over all.  It has been around a year since I was not number 1 over all for damage done.  That was a complete shock to the system.  So that was pretty ugly, 7 for DPS and 4 damage done.  Very ugly for a Hunter.  But there is some good there.  The damage done I was number 4 but I was behind the mage, the warlock and the DK. 

All three where doing sick 20K+ DPS on trash pulls.  If you want to do the math of things here and look at the total damage done and minus the trash that Hunters are now useless on then I was #1 over all on boss damage.  Now that is where I belong.  That information can not be seen from the recount unless the raid leader has a brain and knows what all classes are capable of but when you look at it this way, my first real raid with a totally new character so to speak my damage against the mobs that mattered, bosses, I was over all #1, that bodes really well for Hunters. 

Once I get used to my reactions to the new system, the new resources and for all intent purposes new skills and how they function I should be able to improve on that a great deal.  Remember fellow Hunters, we are the only class that has the learn everything over again.  Others have changed functions or new functions but how they work remains mostly the same, if anything they have just one new mechanic to work with.  Hunters have nothing left of what we where once, except our trusty pet.  For me, that is enough to make it worth learning it all over again.  At least our pets got some love from this update.

The Problem with Aimed Shot (The New Ability Query System)

Actually there is not really a problem with Aimed Shot, there is a problem with the way I use it.  It is not just Aimed Shot either.  It is Mutilate.  It is Devastate.  It is anything I am used to spamming.  That is why I put this in general as well as Hunter.  To explain I will use the Hunter ability of Aimed Shot being that is where I first noticed the issue.

A few posts back when I was talking about my feelings for the new system I mentioned that I was having issues with Aimed Shot and getting used to it.  See, I am a button masher.  Whether it is mouse click or keyboard click does not make a difference.  I hit what I want to do until it comes up.  I am not alone in this, many people do it. 

So when Aimed Shot basically removed itself from the MM Hunter's rotation because it is all but useless now unless you get the proc for an instant free one I had to adjust.  Easy enough right?  Not really.  See, my button mashing tendencies turned out to be a problem.  I would be doing my rotation so to speak and I would see Aimed Shot light up to be free so I would jump to press 3 and as it is my habit, I would hit it until the skill fired and then go back to what I was doing before. 

This is the problem with Aimed Shot that the title is named for.  When I did that I would fire my instant aimed shot and then another one would start to fire.  Damn it I do not want another one.  That is a waste of focus (which, is a valuable resource compared to before with mana I would have dealt with it) and it is a waste of time because lets face it the cast time on Aimed Shot is for the birds for such a low damage ability.

I immediately called this my problem, an error in the way I was doing things, something I needed to adjust to being Aimed Shot changed.  But get this, it is not my problem, it is not the way I am doing things, it is the way they changed the game and apparently I missed something talking about it.

There is now an ability query system.  I am sure many of you have noticed this and some of you, mashers like myself, have had problems with it.  Your abilities seem clunky.  Non responsive. Unpredictable.  Yeap, that is not you trying to get used to the new system, that is the ability query system.

I've looked on the forums a bit but can not seem to find a quote on this new ability query system so I will try and sum it up to the best of my ability.

When you are in the middle of an ability if you press/click another ability it is sent to a query so when it is ready it will automatically be done. Once an ability is in the query system it cannot be removed.

Okay, that can be good sometimes.  However I do not like it, not because of the theory of it but because of the implementation of it.

Here is what I was originally saying my problem was when I posted about my Aimed Shot problem a few posts ago.  When Aimed Shot lit up I would hit it, usually a couple of times being I am used to hitting something until it goes off and then moving the the next thing.  I complained that I needed to adjust because I was always getting a second Aimed Shot that I did not want.  I thought this was my problem and it is not, it is the games problem.

Before this change if this situation happened I would fire the aimed and then as soon as it went off I would switch to steady so only the one aimed would be fired.  The query does not allow this now.  Sure, I can adjust the way I do things but I should not have to.  Hitting that second aimed because I was spamming the key should not matter being before the GCD was done I was now spamming the steady.  Being the steady is what I was hitting when the GCD was over the steady is what should have been fired.  That is how it should work.

Basically what this new ability query system does is rewards bad players for being bad.  They can now query their rotation.  2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, for example.  Bad players do not react to changes in a situation.  Bad players do not adjust to things on the fly.  Bad players do not take advantage of procs.  Bad players will most likely never even notice the change because they are only doing 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4 over and over again and this query system fits them well.

A bad player is not going to jump to shoot that Aimed Shot (or maybe they will now that blizzard made it impossible to miss the proc, you would need to be blind or stupid to not notice it).  A bad player will keep with their rotation so this does not hurt them.

I like to consider myself a good player.  I change what I am doing based on the vast amount of variables around me. 

Some examples. 

I just started my steady spam to rebuild focus and after one shot I get the Aimed proc, so I go to fire Aimed but now I am locked into another steady because I was spamming it and because of that I hit Aimed so many times while waiting for it, now Aimed is doubled up as well giving me not only 1 but 2 unwanted shots on 1 proc only.  No good, where is my ability to respond?

Adds just popped up and it is time to switch targets.  I switch instantly, but not any more, now I have to wait for the shot I previously fired to fire off before I can.  No good, where is my ability to switch targets?

I am spamming my keys and the target dies but being I have another shot in query it automatically find another target in range and shoots that one bringing an unexpected mob into the battle.  No good, where is my ability to choose my target?

Yes, I know what many of you will say and you are right.  I need to adjust and not spam my keys.  I will try to do that but I should not have to do that.  I am normally a good player.  I hit all my procs in a timely manner, I switch targets instantly, I do not allow stray shots to bring adds into the battle.  This makes me miss procs, be slow at target switching and makes me have shots go stray.

For a bad hunter this will mean nothing, they will still be bad because they never reacted, they never target switched and they always fire off stray shots anyway.  Why are you making good Hunters into bad Hunters or at least trying to?

I will adjust but I will not like it.  There is no reason to lock me into my next shot before the shot is even up.  When the GCD is up then do what I am currently clicking not what I might have double clicked a split second earlier.

For me, as a Hunter and as DPS it is easy enough for me to adjust and I will but for me as a Tank and a Healer this is no good what so ever.

Whereas with DPS my DPS might fall a bit if I accidental fire to many steadys because of this it will not be game breaking but as a Tank or a Healer it can be deadly.

Imagine this situation.
Warrior tank.  Three mobs.  Stupid DPS that does not single target.  Me dropping a devastate pile on the main target and one of the DPS pulls one of the mobs off.  Now I am stuck in a devastate query and have to wait a split second for the taunt and can not do it as a reaction instantly.  The stupid DPS is a hunter that happens to FD and now the mobs attention is on the healer it just ran past on the way to get the hunter.  Healer is down in one shot.  Wipe follows instantly because the healer is down and I was not able to taunt because of some stupid query system.

Or maybe this one.
You are spam healing the tank and the rogue gets off a series of lucky crits grabbing aggro for a second.  You are now stuck in a query heal on the tank and can not switch fast enough so the rogue gets two shot.  Dead player all because of some stupid query system. 

All three cases, as DPS, Tank and Healer, we can learn to adjust and be slower with how we do things but there is no reason we should have to do that.  If someone is quick with reaction this penalizes them for that.  The only people that this ends up hurting are the people that are actually good at what they do.  The ones that spam want they do because they think ahead and then are fast enough to change their plan based on the every changing situation around them or with procs.  Those are the ones that are going to suffer.  Bad players will just remain bad players. 

The new ability query system needs to be taken out.  There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.  It is not good for the game and it is not good for game play.

The only thing I heard that made any sense in explaining why they did this is something that was being abused in arena by a select few.  I say how you fix the problem is warn the offenders that where doing whatever it was to stop doing it and if they continue to do it ban them from the game for system abuse.  Why penalize the other 99% of the players because 1% of the players found a way to abuse the system somehow.

Maybe if I knew how they where abusing it I might be more supportive of a change like this but being we are not being told how they where abusing it and just told that they where I am sorry to say that I do not believe them.

One good note is that ghostcrawler said they are working on a fix, lets hope it does not take forever.

We had to change the ability queue system you are describing to fix an exploit that was threatening to become pretty widespread. It is unfortunately one of those cases where a few bad apples ruin things for everyone. :(

We are working on an improvement where the most recent command will override the previous one. If for example you are spamming Hamstring, and then succeed in snaring someone, you can switch to Mortal Strike which will clear out the Hamstring queue instead of wasting more GCDs on Hamstring.

Link

Specing the Alts

I took care of my main, the Hunter, my secondary character, the Priest and my utility character that I use mostly to help others with, my Druid, all the day 4.0.1 came out.  Being these are my three most played characters I read the most on them so I was ready to go basically.  I knew what I was doing.  All the other classes I read on but not as much and as it seems (I will explain) there is one class I totally over looked when reading about things.

Last night I raided for the first time since the change and I speced out my Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Paladin and Shaman.  The following is just personal observations from my journey through that.  Only two more classes for me to finish up tonight, my Warrior and my Death Knight and then my return to ICC to see how things work.

New Raid Frames:
Wow, that is all I can say.  I love it.  The pull out markers, ready check, role check.  The size adjustments, the ability to move the frame, the display of the frame.  I can use this for healing if I wanted to.  I mean in truth I only use my instants on healbot, everything else is a mouse over.  I am just more comfortable with mouse overs.  I use healbot for the instants so it is easier to cast while moving.  I might try using the raid frames to heal from and learn how to make a right click, left click and middle click mouse over for my instants.  It is the best part of this update so far in my opinion.

Raid DPS:
We went to do a few bosses in Naxx instead of just the weekly boss.  It was a good way for us to test out how our new set ups work.  I did 8300 DPS on Patchwork.  Not as much as I usually do but doing it surely helped me work on my rotation some.  Hard to get things like that working right with heroics.  Nothing lasts long enough to do a rotation on.  Over all I was happy with 8300 DPS on Patch.  Not awesome but not horrible either by any measure. 

Raiding with my Cat:
I also loved that I could bring my cat back out.  Poor little kitty cat has been sitting in the stables since I hit 80.  He was my first pet ever and I leveled with him from the moment I got him to 80.  I never used any other pets until I hit 80.  I can not speak for any other Hunters out there but from my own perspective I got attached to my cat.  He was more then just my pet, he was my buddy while leveling and it was really fun to run with him again and you can tell he was happy to be back out, it looked like he had a bounce in his step.  He still had growl on from way back when.  I even forgot to turn it off.  Oops.  We all have huntard moments.

Rogues:
Okay, I'll admit it.  While I read on every spec at least some so I had a basic knowledge of what was happening I paid the least attention to the Rogue.  Mostly because I hate Rogues.  How I got to level 72 is beyond me. As long as I get to 75 I can probably forget about him until the next expansion.  75 is all you need to get your professions up to 525 so that is all that matters to me at the moment. 

Well, when respecing him I noticed something that I had not before, because I didn't pay much attention to the changes it seems, they now have a heal.  Rogues have a heal?  How the hell did I miss that one.  The best part of it is that even if your target dies with combo points on it your combo points are not wasted, you can still get the heal off it.  That is insane and I love it.  Will make leveling a lot easier.

Oh well, I knew hunger for blood and some other abilities were leaving and while I will miss it because I had gotten used to it I knew it was coming so it was nothing to be upset with.  The replacement does the same thing basically but I do not need to have a bleed on a target and it has a 2 minute cooldown.  I'll adjust to that easily enough, if anything, with the exception of the 2 minute cooldown, I consider this a nice upgrade.  Nothing worse then working your way up to a target in stealth and an AoE knocks me out so I never get the chance to apply my opening shot and hunger off the bat.

Another two things happened that I did not notice.  Poisons are no longer different levels.  You buy a base poison and it levels with you.  So the levels on poison now are the levels in which you are allowed to use them and no longer will you need to get a new poison all the time.  If you want to use deadly poisons just stock up on them, they will level with you.  You will not have to worry about buying the next level up and selling off all the excess ones.  I like that change.  Small, but nice.

Now for the surprise change that really surprised me.  I've been at 320 lockpicking for a while and been looking for some boxes to get it to 325.  I had a few 325 boxes waiting to be opened, a few 350s and a few 375s.  When looking through my bags I noticed I had 3 boxes that were yellow, so I opened them, I mean, that is what I do.  Then it occurred to me that those where 325 boxes.  I was thinking maybe I remembered wrong and it was 350 I was close to and not 325.  I also did not get any skill ups on the three yellows which bugged me. 

I went to my bank to get 2 more 325s I had sitting in there out to open being I can open them now and noticed that I could open the 350s now as well.  What was this?  I popped them out, opened the 6 of them and did not get even one skill point again.  So I hovered over my lockpick skill and noticed it said 360 which just happens to be 72 x 5.  Holy crap.  Our lockpick skill now levels with our level.  No more busting my ass trying to level it.  Cool, that makes life so much easier.  Sucks I spent so many hours farming boxes now however, but worse for those that did it before me.  Sorry about that guys, but I love this change for Rogues for sure.

Warlock:
Three of my four demons seem to have left me and been replaced by impostors with different names.  I do like my new name for my Fel Hunter but the other two are a bit lackluster.  I am only level 37 so there where not a ton of new things for me to worry about changing.  I like that there is no longer demon skin and demon armor.  Never made sense to me to have two of the same exact thing with one so inferior, it is now just one thing.  The freeing up of soul stone spaces in my bag is a nice thing as well.  I always kept about 8-10 on me so that means 8-10 free bag spots now.  Same as on my Hunter who always carried 9 stacks of arrow.  More bag space is always a good update.  Not much for my level has really changed.  I have a feeling my rotation will not change much either with the exception of one thing maybe at this level.  So adjusting to this will be easy.

Paladin:
Okay, I am retribution so what is with all these freaking healing spells I am learning.  I lost might and wisdom but kings is a nice adjustment.  I'll get might later on which is combined with wisdom now.  Only 47 now.  Lost a lot of other goodies, but nothing that really upsets me even in the slightest. 

I am a bit confused with the new seals, will have to visit a few pally sites and get some more reading done.  While the fact remains that I read some awesome, and I do mean awesome, articles over at Paladin Schmaladin a few times each I still seem a bit at a loss so I will read them again today. 

I like playing my pally because it is stupid easy while leveling.  I was always above 90% health and 90% mana.  From what some of my guildies are saying it will not be like that any more but I have no issues with that.  Always thought it was too easy to begin with.  I did notice while resetting my bars there are actually three new things I can use in my standard attack rotation even at my low level.  I love that.  So much nicer then just auto attacking waiting for judgement or my hammer to light up at 20%.  While it was easy leveling it sometimes got boring as sin.

Shaman:
Okay, I need to do some reading here because I have to be missing something.  I notice basically nothing big.  Where are the changes?  If there were huge changes then they where something I overlooked.  I see no real change to my rotation as Enhancement with the exception of a totem change.  Nothing much to see here.  Maybe I missed something but even after reading a few guides, outside of the totem thing and fire nova, everything else seem the same.

Mage:
Okay, someone at Blizzard on the head design team must play a Mage.  The Mage is so over powered it is unfair to everyone, even the Mage itself.  What fun is there really when everything dies in 1 shot sometimes, 2 mostly and 3 at the worst.  I am level 63 and doing 4K and 6K crits nearly every 6th or 7th hit.  6K crits!!!  At level 63!!!  Why the hell? 

I decided to join the query for a dungeon and see what was up with this.  Single target, let me repeat, single target and not AoE spam, I was pulling 2300 DPS at level 63.  I averaged around 1400 DPS over all but on boss fights over 2K at 63 was stupid easy.  There is usually at least one DPS, sometimes two, in my level 80 random heroics that can not even do 2300 and here is a Mage at level 63, not 80, being played by someone that is not a Mage expert by any means doing more then level 80s with a 5K gear score. 

Where is the fun in this?  I am going to be doing some PvP just for the sake of easy HKs before they fix this because you know they are going to have to.  Oh BTW, I always also always at 100% mana, so mana is not an issue any more for Mages which is a good thing because the changes to food suck majorly.  The drop down ports are awesome however.  So much toolbar space has been saved now.

As far as skills, I miss having my Mage Armor, it is later in the tree now at level 68 and I am not there yet, even if I do not need the mana.  It was still something I had gotten used to using.  Habits are hard to break.  Not much that I noticed over all otherwise.  Some things changed slightly but nothing hugely.  Even if there were something to complain about being able to do more then most 80s can do in heroics while only at level 63 takes away all my rights to complain about anything.

Dual Spec:
There is no reason any one has to not have dual spec any more.  As a raid leader I was always willing to except people saying thing like "I really only like this spec so the extra money is not worth it.".  While 1000 gold is not a lot for many for some it is so I can accept that.  Now that it is 100 gold there is no reason for anyone to not have dual spec on their characters.  Even if it is for a spec they will never use or rarely use, why not have it.  I still need to Dual Spec a few of my characters but I am deciding on them now.

Hunter: I've been BM/MM forever, still am now.
Priest: I was only Disc but now that Disc and Holy use the same gear I am now Disc/Holy but might go to Disc/Disc PvP.
Druid: Started Bear/Cat, did not like Cat and Chicken never interested me so I've been and still am Bear/Tree forever now.
Death Knight: Leveled Blood, Dual Speced Blood Tank/DPS at 80.  Of course will still be Blood Tank but not sure on what I am going to do for a DPS spec yet.  Still undecided.
Rogue: Started Combat and switched to Assassination.  Speced Assassination last night, will Dual Spec Combat later when I read up more on it.
Warrior: Prot Prot Baby.  It's like Ice Ice Baby, only cool.  There were never any other options for me and I doubt there ever will be even if Prot is pretty much screwed.  Not sure what I will Dual Spec, I'll decide later.
Warlock: I am only level 37 so can't do it yet but I am Aff now and will add Demo when the time comes.
Shaman: Enhancement is the way for me.  I hate melee but love Shammy melee for some reason.  Will Dual Spec Resto most likely being healers are always needed but want to try Elemental for earthquake fun first then I will go back.
Mage: Frost is for Questing, Arcane is for Dungeons. Rather simple even if everyone is loving on Fire lately.
Paladin: Ret without a doubt.  I made this character to be my gatherer and that is a good gathering spec.  Secondary is still undecided.  Do I want to Holy heal?  I already have 2 healers, possibly 3 with my Shaman.  Do I want to tank?  I already have 3, do I need all 4?  I might just level to 80 at Ret and then flip a coin.

Either way, even if I was just starting now and made all 10 classes then Dual Speced at 100 gold each it would only equal the price of what 1 Dual Spec had cost before.  There is no reason anyone should not be Dual Speced ever again.

Hunter DPS Tip: Kill Shot

The new Glyph of Kill Shot reads:

If the damage from your Kill Shot fails to kill a target at or below 20% health, your Kill Shot's cooldown is instantly reset. This effect has a 6 second cooldown.

When I first saw this glyph I was in love instantly. However I started to think of how I should use this new gift we have been given to its maximum ability.

Fire 2 kill shots in a row or time it to drop one every 6 seconds.  After some napkin math I figured that timing it would be best.  Here is my napkin math for your perusal.

We are going to use some blanket numbers just for the sake of argument and figure that once the mob gets to 20% where we can use kill shot it will only live for 20 seconds more.  Figure Chimera at 7K, Steady at 6K, Arcane at 8K and Kill Shot at 12K.  Going to ignore Aimed procs, rapid fire and readiness for simplicity sake.

Here is what it would look like if you weave KS every 6 seconds with the glyph.

Second 1: Fire Kill Shot.  It resets with a 6 second timer.
Second 2: Chimera Shot. 5 seconds left.
Second 3: Steady Shot. 4 Seconds left.
Second 4: Steady Shot: 3 Seconds left.
Second 5: Arcane Shot. 2 Seconds left.
Second 6: Steady Shot. 1 Second left.
Second 7: Fire Kill Shot.  It resets with a 6 second timer.
Second 8: Steady Shot. 5 Second left.
Second 9: Chimera Shot. 4 seconds left.
Second 10: Steady Shot. 3 Seconds left.
Second 11: Steady Shot: 2 Seconds left.
Second 12: Arcane Shot. 1 Seconds left.
Second 13: Fire Kill Shot.  It resets with a 6 second timer.
Second 14: Steady Shot. 5 Seconds left.
Second 15: Steady Shot: 4 Seconds left.
Second 16: Chimera Shot. 3 seconds left.
Second 17: Steady Shot. 2 Seconds left.
Second 18: Steady Shot: 1 Seconds left.
Second 19: Fire Kill Shot.  It resets with a 6 second timer.
Second 20: Fire Kill Shot.  Because it is a killing blow now, no more reason to weave.

= 157K DPS (not counting sting damage)

Now with doubling up KS instantly.
Second 1: Fire Kill Shot.  Instantly available.
Second 2: Fire Kill Shot.  Now it is on a natural 10 second cooldown.
Second 3: Chimera Shot. 9 seconds left.
Second 4: Steady Shot: 8 Seconds left.
Second 5: Steady Shot. 7 Seconds left.
Second 6: Arcane Shot. 6 Second left.
Second 7: Steady Shot. 5 Seconds left.
Second 8: Steady Shot. 4 Second left.
Second 9: Chimera Shot. 3 seconds left.
Second 10: Steady Shot. 2 Seconds left.
Second 11: Steady Shot: 1 Seconds left.
Second 12: Fire Kill Shot.  Instantly available.
Second 13: Fire Kill Shot.  Now it is on a natural 10 second cooldown.
Second 14: Arcane Shot: 9 Seconds left.
Second 15: Steady Shot. 8 seconds left.
Second 16: Steady Shot. 7 Seconds left.
Second 17: Chimera Shot: 6 Seconds left.
Second 18: Steady Shot: 5 Seconds left.
Second 19: Steady Shot 4 Seconds left.
Second 20: Arcane Shot: 3 Seconds left.

=  153 DPS (not counting sting damage)

From this napkin math it seems that weaving kill shot for every 6 seconds and using that cooldown will result in a more kill shots for the time available and a small DPS increase not to mention a tighter rotation to keep steady rolling for procs.

I am going to have to find a place where I can test this out in a long term sense.  I am thinking those guys in the blasted lands that you can not kill.  I will have to bring an assistant to kill any adds that might respawn so they do no interrupt my rotation but it seems, on paper and even in logic, that weaving the kill shots at 6 seconds and then doubling up when you know it will be the kill shot is the way to go on this one.

Doing the double KS and waiting the 10 seconds will remain the easier way for people that to not want to monitor such things as an internal cooldown but weaving at 6 seconds will most likely be the maximum DPS for kill shot. Weaving will also result in double the kill shots when using readiness near the end if timed correctly.

This is going to be a fun one to run some numbers on but I will wait for the true theroycrafters to do some of the work.  Now where do I go to tell them my idea?

Better Then Expected

Everything was up a little after 8PM EST so it was a little earlier then the 10PM I expected but a lot later then the 3PM they originally said it would be.  Even if it was 5 hours later then their original time I consider it a job well done.  For a patch this huge with as many changes as there were 5 extra hours is not really a long time.

My over all impressions on Hunter things so far.

First thing I did was log on to my main, my Hunter.  I speced him for BM and MM, just like he used to be.  Having to check around for specs was not needed.  With each spec there really are not enough options for anyone to really be different.  Everyone will have the same exact spec even if they never looked at anything online.  Hunters do not have a great deal of option, nor does any other class really.

After I speced out my Hunter I went and redesigned my tool bars.  Missing where some lost talents like freezing arrow, volley, aspect of the viper, etc.  Funny thing is, freezing arrow was not actually missing.  It was still on my bar, just not clickable.  Having a new aspect bar cleared up a little space for me.  Trueshot Aura always being on automatically also freed up a space.  Kill Command having a cooldown now frees up a ton of keybind combos for me and Aimed Shot being all but useless unless you get the proc freed up a prime spot for my keybinds (used to be my 3, now my arcane will take that spot).  It seems I have some free space now.  That is a nice change.

Beastmaster Spec 31/2/3
Marksman Spec 2/31/3

Like I said, not really much different you can do with specs there.  I bet everyone is using the same one or damn near close to it.  Odd how they said they changed things to make it so people did not all have the same spec and yet there is no way anyone would have a different spec (by much) being there really are no other decent options in either tree.

I went to to get some items reforged after my bars and specs where all done.  I basically turned every little bit of critical I could into Mastery.  Got myself 12.5% extra mastery while still having 50% critical.

After that I hit the dummies in Darn, have to love Darn, it was me and a mage, both with our own target, for quite some time.  People forget that Darn even has dummies.

My first impression on our new rotation.

Apply Hunters Mark while waiting on the tank before battle.
1) Serpent Sting
2) Chimera Shot
3) Steady Shot
4) Steady Shot
5) Aimed Shot (only if free from proc)
6) Rapid Fire (if you did not just do an Aimed)
7) Arcane Shot
8) Arcane Shot (if over 60 focus and you did not just do an Aimed or Rapid)
9) Steady Shot
10) Steady Shot
11) Kill Shot (if under 20%)
12) Kill Shot (if you are glyphed for it)
13) Back to 2 and repeat unless Serpent Sting somehow fell off, if so, back to 1.

Yeap, that is what it looks like for now as far as I see it.  Welcome to to world of a Mage.  Just a few buttons to manage.  No macros needed.  Boring, we are now mages without burst damage. 

Readiness seems to have lost its huge power for burst being we are limited by focus now.  Before I would burn a Rapid Fire, Kill Shot, Aimed macro with Kill Command and Silence Shot in it and Chimera then drop my Readiness to refresh them all and do them all again except for Rapid Fire, which I would do again when it expired.

Now without KC being off the GCD and not as much an option due to focus concerns and Silence having no damaging aspect to it any more those two shots are useless to refresh faster and add to that the fact that Aimed is now completely useless unless it is proced all readiness is good for is Rapid/Chimera/Kill Shot.  Still useful but not as useful as it used to be and basically useless for burst damage toward the end of the battle.

The initial impression I get is that Hutners DPS will drop, possibly drastically, and we no longer have any serious burst capabilities but we will be steady damage the whole way through. What we start at is what we will end at.  I guess there is something good about that.  Converting my Critical into Mastery seemed to be a good thing.  My Wild Quiver ended up being 16.1% of my total damage because of my high mastery for the level do to the conversion.  Not bad over all.

I noticed a few things that I am a bit concerned with.  My piercing shots where way below what they normally are but maybe that is because I am using arcane and not aimed.  Time will tell.  Another thing was my deathbringers will.  In 15 minutes of dummy time it never proced even once.  Is it broken or did it proc and it just did not shape shift me?  I can't say I noticed the proc being I always noticed it by the shape shift but I didn't even think about it until just now while writing this.

One good thing you will notice there is that I said 15 minutes.  There is no way with the old mana system that I would have been able to pound away for 15 minutes without any problems.  I am just concerned that I was only running 5800-6200 DPS unbuffed when I hear other people telling me they are doing 12000-14000 DPS unbuffed in similar gear.  I can't see how my rotation could be much different then what I mentioned above.  With focus restraints and the limited options we have now there is not much else that can be done. There is no way I am that bad compared to everyone else is there? I'm going to guess they are either 1) lying or 2) buffed or have the target debuffed.

I can't wait to get it into practice.  If we have enough people in the guild that did their homework and are ready to roll we will test out our new specs on the weekly tonight.  I can't wait to see what it is like in practice.

I also speced out my Druid (bear/tree) and my Priest (disc/holy) and fixed up their bars as well.  I did not do much testing on either of them so I do not have a great deal to say on them at the moment.  I did do power word barrier a few times because it was fun and tested the tree form for the few seconds you stay in tree but that is about it.

I also made a metric buttload of glyphs and even with my huge stash of inks I am out of some now and have not even come close to making all the ones I need.  Looks like I will have to do some serious flower picking this weekend.

All in all the uptime and the changes all seem to be better then expected and a lot smoother then they were on PTR.