Category Archives: Hunter Stuff

Hunter Cheat Sheet

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This post has been on the backburner for quite a while now, I figured it’s time I got it out there. I want to use this to give a few tips to other Hunters, whether they’re just starting out, struggling a little, or not. Hopefully this is going to help a few people. You’ll be able to find most of this information on my Hunter Guide pages, but I’ve condensed the information into one post for ease. Disclaimer: I am not claiming to be the best Hunter out there, or that I know everything. This guide is aimed at those who can get something out of it.

Speccing

To start, you’ll want to decide which spec you want to play with. It’s important to note that in high end gear, MM will come out on top.

The 3 specs, according to Elitist Jerks, would be something like this: Beast Mastery, Survival, Marksman.

I’m currently rocking a Marksman spec more like this, because I have quite a lot of hit on my gear. I also like using Trueshot Aura as I’ve often found myself to be the only one in a raid with the 10% attack power increase, if you raid regularly with somebody else who has this buff then you don’t need it in your spec. Focused Aim is an awesome talent which you should use, not only does it give you the chance to grab items with little to no hit, but it reduces the pushback received from damaging attacks for Steady Shot, I remember this being nice on phase 3 Anub’erak. When I can, I will probably drop 1 point in Rapid Recuperation and 1 in Improved Barrage to gain more in Focused Aim. If you’re just starting out and don’t have much ArmorPen, then you’ll want to be using Arcane Shot and as a result, your spec will look more like this one.

Survival is a great spec to start with and can be pretty decent at later gear levels too, although it doesn’t scale as well with ArmorPen as MM does. This is the Survival spec I was using before I specced into MM. If you’re using the 2pc Tier9 bonus, then you can remove 2 points from Resourcefulness, and 1 from Exposed Weakness to max out Improved Stings. If your raid doesn’t need you to take replenishment and you’re using the 2pc Tier9, then you could switch to something more like this, switching Improved Stings for Improved Aspect of the Hawk if you’re not using the 2pc Tier9 bonus.

Beast Mastery is a spec which has come under much scrutiny, however, if you play it right it can be a viable raid spec. In fact, according to Elitist Jerks, at high gear levels, it’s about on par with Survival. I haven’t played as a BM Hunter since the Naxx days, but some people have stuck by the spec quite loyally.

Glyphing

It’s safe to say that Glyph of Serpent Sting is a required glyph for every spec, though the rest depends on your spec, gear, and situation, i.e. are you raiding or heroicing? Glyph of Kill Shot can be a decent glyph for all raiding Hunters too, though this depends how long the boss is alive. If the boss is at 20% health or below for long enough for this glyph to be affective, then it may be a worthwhile glyph, otherwise don’t even bother.

Survival Hunters will be looking at the Glyph of Explosive Shot and Glyph of Steady Shot for their other choices, Steady Shot perhaps being a second choice to Kill Shot.

Beast Mastery Hunters will be looking at Glyph of Steady Shot and Glyph of the Hawk, although Glyph of Bestial Wrath is another choice that could be considered.

Marksman Hunters will be looking at Glyph of Steady Shot, and as a third choice, Glyph of the Hawk, Glyph of Trueshot Aura, or Glyph of Chimera Shot.

Gearing

If you’re just starting out, then take a look at my Pre Raid Gear List. I’ve done my best to list every item available to you before raids, including craftables and Frost Emblem gear, and marking which pieces have hit. To check how much hit you need, have a look at the Hit Calculator.

The ArmorPen cap is 1400, so with a trinket with an ArmorPen proc you will need roughly 700 armor pen from your gear if you’re Marksman. If you’re not, don’t aim for it, but it will be on a lot of your gear anyway, that’s unavoidable. Haste keeps Steady Shot at roughly a 1.5 second cast time, without haste, it’s a 2 second cast time, and 523 haste rating is the soft cap needed to lower Steady Shot down to the 1.5 second cast time. Also remember that there is no crit cap for hunters.

Note from EJ, posted by Echo:

“Haste is considered to be a poor stat for all hunter specs. The only shots affected by haste are autoshot and steady shot, and as MM you take Improved Aspect of the Hawk which means your Steady Shot speed will be capped whenever it procs. Additionally since all the shots affected by haste are adversely affected by movement, the value of haste will be decreased beyond what is predicted by the spreadsheet. Some haste on gear doesn’t hurt but don’t value it highly compared to other stats and never gem it.”

When choosing a ranged weapon, you should look primarily at its dps, and the high end damage. If there isn’t a huge difference, you’ll be looking for a slower weapon, with decent stats for your spec or an awesome proc like the one on Zod’s Repeating Longbow.

When you start thinking about set bonuses, first of all, don’t bother with the 4pc tier9 if you’re Marksman, it’s a bit crap. I don’t really know how good it is for Survival and BM, I assume not very, but have a look for yourself. Do get the 2pc bonus, ideally you’ll be looking at getting the legs and helm, though I’ve known people to go for the shoulders and grab the Helm of the Brooding Dragon instead of the tier helm if they needed a bit of extra hit. The 4pc tier10 is quite nice, but keep the tier9 2pc bonus until you have 4 parts of Sanctified (tier 10 + tokens) and the Leggings of Northern Lights from Lady Deathwhisper preferably. That’s the rule if you’re MM, at least.

Gemming

In trade chat, I have seen new Hunters asking, “What should a Marksman Hunter gem?” And trade replied, “ArmorPen.” The fact is that this isn’t always the case. If you’re just started out, you won’t have good enough gear for ArmorPen gemming to really be all that beneficial, and if you’re using an ArmorPen proc trinket, Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone, Scorpion, then you won’t need to gem for ArmorPen anyway, although bear in mind that the Scorpion has terrible uptime because it’s based on your ranged crits, not attacks like the other 2. It cant be decent if you have about 700 on your gear and no trinket to fill the gap to capped. If you’re Survival, don’t even consider gemming ArmorPen.

If gemming Agility, you should use Deadly gems (agi/crit) in yellow sockets with a high agility bonus, 4 or more. Ignore blue slots for the most part, however you should use a Nightmare Tear to activate your Relentless Earthsiege Diamond meta. This Tear should go in a blue socket with a decent bonus, preferably your highest agility bonus, the same as the yellow slots. It doesn’t have to go in a ‘prismatic socket’ (aka, the belt buckle), as I have seen many people do, in fact I’d outright avoid doing that, as I would with a red socket with a decent socket bonus too. This would be a waste.

Another thing I will advise you to avoid is using any gems aside from the ones I have mentioned and perhaps hit if desperate, though preferably agi/hit if you feel you have to. I’ve seen a lot of Hunters gemming for pure haste/crit/stam. Please, please avoid doing this, you will gain dps by gemming agility instead, or ArmorPen if you choose to. My last word, if you’re a Jewelcrafter, only use your Dragon’s Eyes for your main red gem choice (agi/arp/attack power).

Enchanting

Enchanting your gear would be more or less what you expect, if it has agility or attack power it’s probably the best one to use. Of course, there are exceptions of sorts. If you have profession only enchants, such as wrist enchants for Leatherworkers, cloak and glove enchants for Engineers, shoulder enchants for Inscriptors, use them. Boot enchants are often overlooked, so I’ll be very clear: Use run speed on boots unless you’re an Engineer with rocket boots. The best boot enchant is Cat’s Swiftness, but as this is a rare drop TBC enchant it can be expensive and difficult to find an enchanter who can do it. In this case, Tuskarr’s Vitality will be your boot enchant.

Using Cooldowns

It is best to save your trinket cooldowns for Bloodlust (Heroism /sigh), however, it may be best to use haste cooldowns outside of Bloodlust to avoid having too much haste simultaneously. I usually use Rapid Fire at the beginning of the fight, and use Readiness when it is finished and my shots are all on cooldown to reuse it again before Bloodlust is popped. I tend to use a haste potion after the second Rapid Fire, or after Bloodlust. If BM, personally, I’d keep using Bestial Wrath throughout the fight, especially if you’re using the glyph.

Rotations and Macros

See my Rotations & Macros page.

Using Female Dwarf

Everything I’ve said is situational, and I urge you to use this excellent tool, the online dps analyzer, to check that you have made the best choices for you personally. First of all, register your account so that you’re able to save things and come back to them later. Second of all, import your armory settings and fiddle with options such as raid buffs that an armory import would miss, update dps and save your character. Now you’re able to change things such as items, gems, enchants, to see what is better or worse for your specific character, update dps and see how big a gain or loss it would potentially be. Check Rilgon’s post on this, he says it much better than I can.

Cataclysm: Hunter Preview

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(See, I’m doing my bit to make this blog spoiler friendly!)

I’ll be honest, this preview has left me a little worried about the Hunter class. The change from mana to focus is going to cause the class to change a lot, and I’m currently trying out Rogue, the energy mechanic frustrates me somewhat. I’m a little bit scared that I’ll go into Cataclysm and find that I dislike the Hunter class, and what then? Would I just quit after seeing the new content, or reroll? Anyway, that’s me getting a little ahead of myself because this is, after all, just a preview and things are subject to change. Though from what we’ve seen already, Beast Mastery looks to be a strong contender for most interesting talent tree.

For starters: Cobra Shot: “A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.” This could either make or break Beast Mastery, giving them an entirely new shot to use instead of Steady Shot. My prediction is that it will hit like a train for a while, but I’m definitely interested in this one. One thing I wonder is how the nature damage aspect will work. Does this mean that Hunters will scale with spell power (or.. intellect I guess now) the same way that Unholy DKs don’t exactly suffer from it? What of hit and resistances?

Trap Launcher: “When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.” Nice. Freezing Arrow has been a pretty useful tool, this means that we can plonk down an Explosive/Frost/Snake trap in a bundle of enemies in PvP without dragging ourselves into the thick of it at all.

Camouflage: “The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).” At first glance, I thought, “what the hell?” and I looked again and I suppose this could be a nice tool for the start of a rotation, especially when used with the new BM talent, Careful Aim which “increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities.” I can live with that, it’s a nice boost for BM.

The new focus mechanic worries me. I get frustrated at Rogue energy which regenerates at roughly 10per second. Focus will regenerate at around 6 per second. Eep. BM has always seemed to me to be the spec which focuses the most on Steady Shot. Steady Shot and Cobra Shot will be the focus regenning shot, thus I can see BM being much better for focus regen. Not to mention BM will receive mastery (which I still haven’t worked out /blush) talents for Haste, which will increase focus regeneration rates.

The pet changes could be just the thing I’ve been asking for! For starters, the mention of active and stabled pets, enabling us to keep pets that we may have certain attachments to but only carrying around the pets we plan to use, has been further confirmed. The amount of active pets allowed to us will probably be 3, though BM hunters may be getting 5 active slots. To switch a pet from passive to active and vice versa we will need to visit a Stable Master, which makes sense. The other pet changes I am particularly fond of? “Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:

  • Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
  • Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy’s Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Rampage).
  • Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).“

Yes, yes, yes! This could be just the thing to bring back a bit of variety in pet choices, and enforcing Hunters as a ranged class as early as the 1-10 bracket. Good. Those of us who’ve played for a while can manage okay with kiting mostly, though some players struggle with it, and even more so for newer players who may get used to meleeing as normality. Not to mention this is exactly what Razorstorm commented about in my last post ranting about pet mechanics. Nice call :P

TL;DR Conclusion: I like a lot of these ideas. I think I’m drawn more towards Beast Mastery as my Cataclysm spec from the sounds of a lot of the changes (and I don’t tend to enjoy BM as much as MM or Surv as it stands now). The pet changes might well be just what the doctor ordered, and if these go through I’ll be happy with it. I’m terrified of where focus will lead the Hunter class, as I struggle with energy classes, I’m worried it might lead to me rerolling if I really don’t like it (probably Shadow Priest or Warlock if it came down to it), though of course I will give it a try because I will probably be completely wrong and it will make the Hunter class just a little bit cooler. Of course, if you want to read the full changes, MMO Champion has them up, this post is purely a recap.

You might notice I haven’t kept up on Cataclysm changes too much, but I’d like to have a rough idea on how to play my class when it does come around.

My Thoughts on Hunter Pets

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Pets are possibly one of the biggest selling points of the Hunter class to new players. When I first started playing WoW, I was told that Hunters were “kinda like Rogues but they use bows and have pets that you can tame.” My slightly girly, non gamer head went ‘oooh, pets’ and then chose Warlock because they were magic users.. but Hunter was my first alt! I just ended up deleting her because I wasn’t a fan of the female Orc model (this was pre-TBC, no Blood Elves, and I was Horde). Some people like pet classes because you get yourself a little companion that you can fight with, some because of the variety, and some just because they like cute animals.

Stable Slots

Whatever your reason for liking Hunters, you probably like to have several pets in your stable. First pets, flavour pets, useful pets.

My first pet was the polar bear from Dun Morogh when I was level 11. Dan ran me there from the Undercity on his Mage, and on my first attempt I died. I called it Gwynarth (white bear in Welsh, okay, Dan named it, I wanted to call it Pokey) and I loved it, levelled most of the way with it. My next pet was a white stripey cat from Winterspring called Sashi, who was my raiding pet at 70. When WotLK was released, I tamed a Rhino, first thing I did, I loved them to bits, and I called it Steve. Later on, I decided to tame Pitch in Scholazar Basin as my raiding pet, and called him ChairmanMeow. My point? I’ve had to delete every one of those pets to get others. I had to close my eyes when I found Skoll and the only pet left that I could release was Gwynarth, I still feel a little horrid for that! My stable currently has: Wolf, Turtle, Spirit Beast (Skoll), and a pink Dragonhawk. I’m running around with NomNom, the blue rare cat from Winterspring. I wouldn’t have had to if Hunters had more stable slots, which I think would improve the Hunter class without making them overpowered.

Dev Chat

So, the developer chat pops up on Twitter, I’m around so I asked “Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.” and I was answered!

“Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.“

You know, I think I’d be okay with that if it happened. That would mean we could keep the sentimental pets, and just carry around the pets we’re most likely to use.

Variety (or Lack of)

Another thing I think Hunter pets could use is a little rehaul of their abilities perhaps. As it stands, there is a pretty large variety of tameable beasts, and a heck of a lot of those tend to go unused. I like the talents, Cunning/Ferocity/Tenacity, that gives a little choice depending on what you’re doing, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of each beast having a different ability when that leads to there being a clear choice for ‘best raid pet’, ‘best pvp pet’ and so on.

You join a raid or instance or even just wander around a city and any Hunter you see with their pet out will 9 times out of 10 be using the same boring Northrend wolf model, occasionally the demon style wolf from Zul’Drak, which originally was really cool, but these days it’s BLAND. When I raid, I try to min-max a bit, I try to do the best I can do. I like to compete with the other DPS and if I turned around and said “screw this, I’m using a moth tonight” I wouldn’t be able to compete. I would, but I wouldn’t be as successful at it as if I used the ‘best’ raiding pet. I use a wolf when I have to, but I don’t like it. I’d use a cat.

I really think it would be nice to have a little more variety. Yes, make the choice cosmetic, that’s what makes us different. Especially after the Trial patch.. who wouldn’t like that? There would still be some limitations in terms of the spec of your pet for the min-maxers, for example, a bear wouldn’t be a brilliant pve pet, but this would still give a lot more choice! That’s the only thing I can think of that could work, and I’d like it a little more, personally. Can you guys think of any other ideas to give Hunters more pet choice aside from ‘sod the math, use the cat’?

Lowbie Huntering

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Especially now with the influx of lowbie alting SAN members, I thought a little guide to levelling a hunter might be a help. :)

One to Ten

The first thing you will encounter as a lowbie hunter is the pain of having no pet for 10 levels. You can spend 10 levels meleeing everything to death and perhaps mix in a few corpse runs, but if you watch where you’re going you can effectively kite and still be a ranged hunter. In my opinion, the second option is the most effective though of course it’s not exactly important at that level. Either way, shoot the mob, when it gets close to you run a bit, jump around shoot a little more, keep running, shoot a bit more and so on. You may like to check out Pike’s jump shot video.

Taming Pets

Okay, so usually I will rush through to level 10 so there is no danger of me abandoning the character, I won’t lie, 1 to 10 hunter isn’t the most fun in the world. Once you reach level 10 you won’t immediately be able to tame a pet, first you will have to do a quest. Whichever race you choose, this will be: tame a particular beast, bring it back to me, 3 times, 3 different beasts. At level 10, sadly, you don’t have Freezing Trap, which makes taming a pet 10 times easier. You do get this ability at level 20 though, so remember to use it when taming any pets after that level. At level 10, perhaps pop a health potion if you need to.

When you’ve completed the quest you can choose a pet. My favourite for levelling is a bear. They are excellent tank pets, with not too terrible AoE threat and plenty of armour. Crocolisks are also not too bad for the same reasons. A lot of people go for crabs, which are tanking pets too, though they have a nice ability for PvP. Another decent pet for PvP is the spider, and if you’re looking to abuse the dungeon finder tool a fair bit you might even consider getting yourself a wolf. Though of course, if you want to tame something else, go for it. It won’t be as efficient but at the end of the day, this hunter is your character and you can play it how you want to. For a full list of tameable beasts, their skins, and where to find them, check out Petopia.

Talent Points

Another thing you will be getting at level 10 is talent points. I cannot stress enough that the best spec for levelling is by far Beast Mastery. Survival and Marksman are both fun, decent specs, and honestly you won’t beat them for PvP or instancing, but if you plan to quest, you can’t beat Beast Mastery. It is the fastest levelling spec. This is the spec I would go with for levelling, though of course there are many variations to this. If you would prefer to make some changes to it, or choose another spec entirely, feel free.

Glyphs

At level 15, your first glyph slots open up, giving space for 1 major and 1 minor glyph. Hunter glyphs in my opinion are not brilliant for levelling, a lot are based upon increasing the amount of time something lasts, which is great for mobs which last a long time but that’s not what you want to do. If you have trouble pet your pet a live and find yourself using Mend Pet a lot, I recommend the Glyph of Mending, which is also great for soloing. There is Glyph of the Hawk if you switched the 5 points in Endurance Training for Improved Aspect of the Hawk BUT if you didn’t, it’s useless. Glyph of Bestial Wrath might be worthwhile later on when you get the talent though only if you have a reason to reduce its cooldown. The only other option really is Glyph of Steady Shot, but this relies upon Serpent Sting being up on the target and you won’t get Steady Shout until your 50s. Can you see why my last hunter ended up using Glyph of Aspect of the Viper?

For your minors, I’d suggest taking Glyph of Mend Pet at 15, and Glyph of Feign Death at 50. The last one at 70 is entirely optional.

Spells & Shots

Ideally, you will be avoiding the need to melee. You will get Serpent Sting at level 4, you will need to determine whether or not it is worth the mana. Often it isn’t, but you might like the extra bit of damage. At level 6 you will get Arcane Shot which you will be using whenever it’s off cooldown. You will also get Hunter’s Mark at level 6, this increases your ranged attack power so it might be nice to type /m and create a new macro for your first spell slot:

#showtooltip;
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack

This saves having to click on your pet bar, in fact, for your second spell slot, make another macro:

/petfollow

1. Pet in. 2. Pet out. Concussive Shot at level 8, I feel I need to say this as I have heard of a few people thinking this is necessary, does not need to be used in conjunction with Steady Shot. Yes the tooltip might say the damage is increased if the target is dazed, but shooting a Concussive Shot will lose you more damage than you gain, it is unnecessary mana used. However, it is nice to slow targets who happen to be moving towards you, especially in PvP. Aspect of the Hawk is going to be your primary used aspect (next to Viper which should only be used for manaing up as it reduces your damage dealt by 50%) until you get Aspect of the Dragonhawk in your 70s. Multi Shot is also useful though be careful around large groups of mobs you are trying not to pull and crowd controlled mobs.

It’s A Trap!

Traps are another aspect of the hunter class which seem to scare and confuse people. There are 3 classes of trap: fire, frost, and poison. You can have 1 of each up at the same time, and Explosive Trap can be used for AoE pulls if you wish before you get Volley, which is similar to Blizzard or Rain of Fire. If you decide to spec Survival, it is important to remember that Black Arrow shares a cooldown with Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap.

Basically, Frost Trap and Freezing Trap are both very nice for controlling situations. Slowing people down in PvP, calming down “Oh shit!” moments, and crowd controlling. Immolate Trap and Explosive Trap deal a little extra damage. Snake Trap, well, obviously unleashing an army of snakes unto your foes. They have a chance to proc various poisons such as Mind Numbing, Crippling, which both slow the target (physically or their spellcasting).

Finally

A few notes based on the low level PuGs I have been in. First of all, you want a lot of agility on your gear. Stamina is also an okay stat, and a little intellect I guess won’t hurt.. (though that’s a little better once you get Careful Aim) but please, please, remember that strength, spirit, and spell power are terrible stats for a hunter. If you’re rolling on melee weapons, remember that they are stat sticks, so any ‘on proc’ abilities are going to be useless. Stockpile agility, let the tank do the pulling (and the tanking), and when you get Feign Death it is your friend. Make sure you have at least 4,000 ammo in your bags at all times, this way you shouldn’t run the risk of running out and having to go melee.

As a wise (well, I guess) man once said: “Go forth and pew..”

11 Reasons Why Hunters Are Better Than Warlocks

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So Aphroditi claims that Warlocks are the best class in WoW. I’m here to prove you wrong!

  1. Our community is better. Have you seen the amount of forums and blogs around for hunters? There are some amazing hunter based blogs, with some brilliant guides. Somebody even made FemaleDwarf.com for those hunters who can’t access the spreadsheet, it’s basically a web based spreadsheet. Not to mention Petopia, an awesome resource for hunters wanting to find unique and interesting pets. The hunter community is definitely the best I’ve come across.
  2. Our pets do the tanking so we don’t get a scratch. Throw up a Misdirect, keep up Mend Pet, and our pets are excellent tanks. Why should we need dedicated healers when we can have bears?!
  3. We will own your face in PvP. No, really. Warlocks are possibly my favourite target in a battleground, next to mages. I tend to leave priests alone, from my days PvPing as shadow, but gnomes are especially fun to kill. Cloth armour? Really?
  4. We don’t need class mounts, we can run faster inside! Aspect of the Cheetah, and Aspect of the Pack are 2 abilities which I would never trade for a cool mount. Being able to catch up much faster if you had to pop afk in an instance is a huge bonus, as well as being able to choose whether you want the rest of your raid to run fast too ;) Heck, you can even get your tank dazed if they’re particularly annoying!
  5. Better armour than you. We don’t have to look like silly giant garden gnomes in our Tier 10. Or the guys who caused the death of Bolvar in our Tier 8! Think about it.
  6. Better mana regen abilities. Popping Aspect of the Viper to mana up between packs so that you don’t have to lose DPS time OR health is much better than worrying over whether your healer is willing to heal you through your Life Taps. Trust me, I’ve seen both sides!
  7. Decent aggro dumps. Feign Death and Misdirect are by far better moves than any silly transformations! Soulshatter? Please. 50% aggro drop and the use of a soul shard, and a 3 minute cooldown. I wouldn’t give up Feign Death or Misdirect for ‘Illidan form’ and lolshatter.
  8. Choosing and naming your pets. Yes, that’s right, we have a better raport with our pets. Who wants minions when you can have a cuddly kitty? A cuddly kitty that kicks butt, might I add, and is nowhere near as emo as a Voidwalker.
  9. Evil? Pfft, who cares! Hunters have the ability to make use of nature, to fool their enemies into traps, tame wild creatures. Besides, warlocks are hardly evil. Pesky Twisting Nether thieves.
  10. TRAPS. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t kill to be able to use Frost Trap, Freezing Trap, Snake Trap? Hunters can slow my enemies and send after them an army of angry poisonous snakes!
  11. Hunters are the best class in the game. Need I say more?

Changes and Decisions

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I’ve been running around hoping to get a Death’s Choice or Deathbringer’s Will for so long (not gonna happen if I’m not doing 25 mans, I know!) that I didn’t stop to think that perhaps the Whispering Fanged Skull could possibly be an upgrade on my Greatness Card. I ran the numbers through Female Dwarf (I don’t have access to Excel, and I don’t like Open Office, this is why I can’t use the spreadsheet) and found it to be a roughly 100 dps upgrade if I replaced Greatness with the Skull. I actually took this trinket for Survival, as the Runestone isn’t going to be much use as a Survival hunter, so it’s been sat in my bank for a couple of weeks, I felt a little stupid!

While I was there, I checked a few more things. Would it be worth switching my Chimera Shot glyph to the Steady Shot glyph? I’d seen a few Marksman hunters doing this. If I need to use the hit talent as Marksman, why was I using Improved Barrage instead of Improved Steady Shot in an Arcane Shotless spec? Little things like that I’d neglected to check before, as it turns out, I had a few changes to make. Sometimes on a boss fight my fps will drop to about 4, mostly just high AoE fights, Razorscale is one with all the fires on the floor. Currently, our internet is lagging, has been since Monday afternoon. My latency ranges from 120ms to 4,000ms, with people teleporting around, my shots having to be queued while the game freezes for 10 seconds at a time, it actually makes me glad I’m not currently raiding.

So, I’ve hopefully upped Fae’s dps by a little, though there lies another question, another decision.. Do I transfer my hunter? When the latency is better, I’d love to be able to raid 25 man instances again, and I quite miss Terenas Alliance, but I don’t want to reroll again, Fae is my main. So, it would have to be a transfer – faction change deal, and I want to do it because I want to move over, NOT because some smelly druid is pestering me to /glares at Elsen. The decision might possibly be the right one, but I have to choose the right guild for me too. I’ve already decided what race she would be, come on, female Draenei are too awesome.

Ideal Marksman Hunter Heroic Gear List

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I’ve been helping a couple of friends with gearing and gemming their characters recently and so I thought, “What if I just do a list, of gear which I’d aim for, if I levelled another hunter and had access only to heroics, excluding Frost Emblems?” So here is a list, aimed at Marksman hunters. I’ll also dedicate this post to Zal.

If you want to see other options: Pre-Raid Gear List.

Helm:

*Windrunner’s Headpiece of Conquest – I’ve linked to the Horde version, but it’s the same for alliance. 50 Emblem of Triumph.
Enchant – Arcanum of Torment, Ebon Blade revered.
Gems – Meta: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. Socket 1: Deadly Ametrine.

Shoulder:

*Pauldrons of the Devourer/Epaulets of the Devourer – 1st Horde, 2nd Alliance. 45 Emblem of Triumph.
Enchant – Greater Inscription of the Axe, with helm and shoulder enchants being made BoA, I’ll assume you have a character who is exalted with Sons of Hodir. If not, the Lesser version is fine until exalted.
Gems – Deadly Ametrine.

Chest:

*Crusader’s Dragonscale Breastplate – The same available for Alliance. Made by Leatherworkers, requires: 40 Icy Dragonscale, 8 Eternal Water, 8 Eternal Life, 8 Arctic Fur, and 8 Crusader Orbs.
Enchant – 10 Stats.
Gems – Red Socket: Delicate Cardinal Ruby. Blue Socket: Nightmare Tear. Yellow Socket: Deadly Ametrine.

Wrist:

*Crusader’s Dragonscale Bracers – The same available for Alliance. Made by Leatherworkers, requires: 40 Icy Dragonscale, 8 Eternal Water, 6 Arctic Fur, 4 Crusader Orbs.
Enchant – 50 Attack Power
Gems – Delicate Cardinal Ruby

Gloves:

*Gloves of the Dark Exile – Dropped by the Black Knight in Heroic Trial of the Champion, the 5 man.
Enchant – 20 Agility
Gems – Delicate Cardinal Ruby

Belt:

*Belt of Dragons – Crafted by Leatherworkers. Requires: 18 Heavy Borean Leather, 8 Arctic Fur, 40 Icy Dragonscale, 6 Runed Orbs
Enchant – Eternal Belt Buckle
Gems – 3x Delicate Cardinal Ruby

Legs:

*Windrunner’s Legguards of Conquest – The same for Alliance. 50 Emblem of Triumph.
Enchant – Icescale Leg Armor
Gems – 2x Delicate Cardinal Ruby. (If you decide not to get the crafted chest, this blue slot is another good place for a Nightmare Tear)

Feet:

*Spiked Toestompers – The Icecrown crafted boots are better, but very expensive at the moment. These drop from Falric in Heroic Halls of Reflection.
Enchant – Cat’s Swiftness, hard to find, another alternative is Tuskarr’s Vitality. If you need the hit however, Icewalker.

Cloak:

*Accursed Crawling Cape – Drops from Devourer of Souls in normal Forge of Souls.
Enchant – 22 Agility.

Neck:

*Broach of the Wailing Night – 19 Emblem of Conquest.

Rings:

*Dexterous Brightstone Ring – 35 Emblem of Triumph.

*Band of Stained Souls – Drops from Scourgelord Tyrannus in Heroic Pit of Saron.

Main Hand Weapon:

*Quel’Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned – Rewarded from the Battered Hilt quest, Battered Hilt drops from certain trahs mobs in Heroic Frozen Halls instances, however, can be very difficult to get hold of one, another option is:
*Orca-Hunter’s Harpoon – Which drops from Marwyn in Heroic Halls of Reflection.
Enchant – Massacre, 110 Attack Power.
Gems – Delicate Cardinal Ruby.

Ranged Weapon:

*Felglacier Bolter – Drops from Ick in Heroic Pit of Saron.
Enchant – If you can get hold of one and need the hit, Hit Scope, however not only hard to get hold of, but they will be expensive, so otherwise use a Crit Scope.

Trinkets:

*Needle-Encrusted Scorpion – Drops from Devourer of Souls in Heroic Forge of Souls.

*Darkmoon Card: Greatness – Reward from Nobles Deck. The agility version of course.

If you’re low on hit, there is a hit trinket which I personally am not fond of but for 50 Emblem of Triumph there is the Mark of Supremacy. There is a 20 hit enchant for gloves. There are also gems.

Tips on Heroicing as a Hunter

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I think everybody at some point will venture into heroics, whether casual or not so casual. I have had a few people ask me advice about heroicing as a hunter and I have picked up a few tips on making heroics go faster. Of course, I assume the majority of you reading this already know this stuff, and bear in mind this is how I do heroics. However, there are alts and new 80s whom this will benefit. I play as Marksman, though I know not everybody does. For anything I’ve missed, check my hunter guides.

Gear

The first thing you want to know about, I guess as a newcomer at least, is gear. Well, as of patch 3.3 you can now get Emblems of Triumph from any heroic or raid (excluding Icecrown Citadel, which gives Emblems of Frost). These give you Trial of the Crusader level gear, the raid just below Icecrown, including the 4 parts of Tier 9. Although, don’t get 4 pieces, just two, preferably the helm and legs. The 4 set is not worth it. The non-set shoulders from Triumph are decent, as is the agility ring. To check what else you can get and from where, I have spent a lot of time creating and updating a hunter pre-raid gear list, please feel free to use it.

Damage

I also assume some of you may want to know how best to deal the most damage. I tend to volley trash of 3 or more mobs, less than that I’ll stick to my shot priority, which will also be used on bosses. After Misdirecting the tank, pop any CDs and nuke the boss down as much as you can using the same ‘rotations’. Another factor that may affect your damage is your gemming, enchants, spec and the type of ammo you are using. The best ammo you can get at the moment is Iceblade Arrows/Shatter Rounds. These can be made by engineers with honoured Ashen Verdict rep, the mats to make them may not be very much, but they will charge you a little bit because it’s still a little rare to find a crafter. I think a stack of 1,000 on my server sells for about 10g.

Threat

I recommend when you join a heroic setting the tank as your focus (target them and /focus). If you find they can’t keep up with your threat, you can use Misdirect on every pull/when it’s needed and off cooldown. Using the following macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus, help] Misdirection
/cast [target=focustarget, help] Misdirection
/cast [target=target, help] Misdirection
/cast [target=targettarget, help] Misdirection
/cast [target=pet, nodead, exists] Misdirection

If all else fails USE FEIGN DEATH. I’ve seen so many hunters who won’t feign when they gain aggro, and other classes would kill to have that ability. It’s an instant and complete aggro drop for a hunter and one of my favourite abilities in PuGs.

Pet Control

I use 2 macros to control my pet properly, which saves a lot of clicking. The first is to send my pet in and cast Hunter’s Mark at the same time (which I also have on my bars with a separate macro excluding it for times when I’m grouped with a hunter using Improved Hunter’s Mark).

#showtooltip;
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack

The second is very important. There are times your pet will have a mind of its’ own and run off into packs and all sorts.. and so I also use a macro to pull my pet back to me whenever I need to.

/petfollow

Mana

Another thing you may notice while heroicing is mana issues. You can’t sit down and drink all of the time, but you also don’t want to use Aspect of the Viper while damaging too much. So the moment the boss/mob dies, pop Aspect of the Viper. When you reach full mana or the next mob/boss, pop Aspect of the Dragonhawk (Aspect of the Hawk for lower levels). If you’re a blood elf, also make good use of Arcane Torrent. It’s only a small amount of mana back, but it’s still a small amount of time you don’t have to spend in Viper. If really necessary, you can use Viper while dpsing but the idea is to reduce dps time in Viper by as much as possible, one idea is to just use it while using Steady Shot, then pop back to Dragonhawk for your other shots, if you need to Viper at all. To make a little space on your bars for switching, I have yet another macro. It will cast Dragonhawk first if not already up, if it is, it will cast Viper, and then back to Dragonhawk when you use it again.

/cast Aspect of the Dragonhawk
/cast Aspect of the Viper

Different Kind of Pet

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Syrana has decided to join in the syphilis fun and share a few topics too, I personally find thinking of a topic to write about the biggest challenge in blogging, and as such I love the shared topic idea, and the spreading topics like syphilis idea is also one I can get behind ;)
So, Syrana asks:

“@Jaedia – If you could tame any animal (in game or IRL) what would it be, why, and what special ability would it have?”

Actually, I’ve mentioned this one on twitter before I think. If I could tame any pet ingame (that I currently can’t) it would have to be a giraffe. They’re so cool looking. I would include the Longneck Grazers in Scholazar Basin as being giraffes as well as the Barrens Giraffes. I think this really stems down to my vague boredom flying around Scholazar looking for Loque’nahak, trying to complete Frostbitten (which I still haven’t found, he remains the last rare I need to complete it) and possibly my prancing around the Barrens.

My inner voice just decided, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could tame a giraffe?” This is the same inner voice that wants a Baby Yoggy vanity pet, and a badger mount. In fact, I think I made Dan ask a GM for a badger mount for me back in TBC, they came up with some elaborate plot to buy Tigul a poodle, let him get attached to it, and then kidnap it and hold it ransom until he designed a badger mount.

Its special ability would be to headbutt its opponents dealing X amount of damage, and knocking them down for 3 seconds. Also, it would have to have an idling animation. This would consist of a duck walking past and the giraffe pointing at it.

lookduck

And also a sleeping animation, purely because I just found an awesome picture of a sleeping giraffe.

sleepinggiraffe

Icecrown Raiding Gear List

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Note: Not updated since the first ICC wing.

After a little thought and some chats with a lovely hunter in my guild, I started thinking about a gear list. Not wanting to take items off another player that I probably won’t use so I gave it a go and I’ve been slowly editing it and will continue to do so. It’s important to remember that the T9 2 set, which grants your Serpent Sting the ability to crit, remains better than the T10 4 set, and even some item drops in Icecrown Citadel with awesome starts (I thank Rilgon for finding this out). Some items are still not in the game, so I may update this post at a later date if I find something new to add.

Assuming you have 3 points in Focused Aim, you’ll need to get about 165 hit rating (5%, though correct me if I’m wrong) from gear. Of course, if you don’t and want to find more hit items, you can check the MMO Champion Icecrown gear list. The set below should put you at about 5.24% hit and 68.7% armor pen, with the Scorpion proc giving 48.44% armor pen.

The armor pen cap is 1400, as as such with the Scorpion, you need about 722 armor pen on your gear. Haste may not be an ideal stat but it’s worth keeping Steady Shot at roughly a 1.5 second cast time (the tooltip is bugged, it’s a 2 second cast time without haste), and remember that 523 haste rating is the soft cap needed to lower Steady Shot down to the 1.5 second cast time. Also remember that there is no crit cap for hunters.

Please remember this is my personal preference on gear, some options may not be optimal for everybody, this is purely my opinion, for my own marksman spec, survival may and probably will be different entirely due to not needing to reach the armor pen cap anywhere near as much as marksman hunters. Though feel free to look through and use it or take ideas from it. That is why I posted it :) It is a post I intend to keep up-to-date over the coming months. Also, some items here you may not recognise as I’ve added the horde versions, if you click the wowhead link I’ve added you can see the alliance versions.

Last updated: 18th December 2009