Hi dead blog! *pokes with stick*
I figured I should write something. So here I am. Hooray! And as a bit of a double bonus, I figured I’d return to my roots and actually write something huntery. Double Hooray! So intense!
So, here’s the deal. As of now, I sort of consider myself to be a… triple-spec’d hunter. As we probably all know by now, I have two level 80 hunters. Well, Tawyn‘s been rocking her Beast Mastery main spec and her Marskmanship Fun spec. And for a while, poor neglected Lunapike was rocking the Beast Mastery spec as well. But of course, right?
Well, recently I blew the dust off of the latter and decided to start playing her again. At that point, I hadn’t seriously played her in months, so she was decked out in a bunch of super-old-school stuff like dungeon blues, heroic purples, and Nesingwary. Spec’d Beast Mastery she was getting maybe 3k in heroics, which is like… half of what Tawyn does on a lazy day. Beast Mastery is a fickle, gear-dependent creature.
Anyways I sort of missed big numbers and I was feeling ambitious and I knew I didn’t have the gear for Marksmanship so I went Survival. Yup. Now for those of you just tuning in, my grumblings about Survival are pretty well-known. I’ve ranted about it many-a-time in this blog: how much I dislike the rotation and basically find it un-fun in every way. It’s why Tawyn’s dual spec is Marskmanship.
…so I’m not sure what I was smoking when I decided to go Survival, but go Survival I did, and you know what? This time around I really enjoy it. I’m not even sure why. I think it finally “clicked”. I mean, in essence it’s a very similar rotation to Beast Mastery, except that stuff is on lower cooldowns, so you have to be a bit quicker on your feet… and you get Lock and Load. By the way, Lock and Load is super fun. It’s tied to Black Arrow, so once you figure out how best to use that one, you’re good to go.
I can also see why SV is the recommended “Freshly Minted 80 Hunter” spec. Upon spec’ing it and heading into dungeons, it was basically like… Go Directly to 50% more DPS, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. It was very plug-and-play.
Anyways, I have also rediscovered my love of level 80 PvP. I love pre-50 BGs to death, but the endgame stuff with all the resilience and everything was never really my bag. But I did so many BGs on Lunapike this last weekend, and had a blast. It feels like I have a ton of toys to play with as Survival.
But yeah. Sorry for the massive TLDR. I’d break this up with pictures but WoW is down and I’m too lazy to go hunting through my screenshot folder.
If you want me to write about something in specific, lemme know, because I’m having a terrible time coming up with stuff to put in this blog lately. Just keep in mind that I’m still pretty much retired-from-raiding so super intense strategy guides are probably out, but most everything else is open game.
I tried SV for a few weeks before finally giving in to MM and never looked back. Of course, that was until the Beta hit. 🙂
I still miss the BM days and long for its return. Bonding with my pet was wonderful. Under SV/MM, my sidekick is only one more thing to watch with no great impact to DPS. Shame.
It’s probably the case for most fresh 80 hunters, was the same for me. Not wanting to leave that confy BM-specc that you have lived and breathed for so long.
But when you finaly make the jump it’s a whole new world of fun and gnomes exploding from inside 🙂
Welcome back, Pike! /waves
Nice to see you back, kinda, almost.
The WoW Hunter world has been so “Windozy” without you.
On the Linux front, Intel can’t play WoW/wine anymore. Yep. Graphics are too much for the chip now, because of bad opengl and WoW getting too graphics intensive.
I’ve semi-retired myself from WoW/wine,. Money seems to be neeeded elsewhere. So I’ve thought about starting a wine/WoW Blog and Forum. So many things to help with…sigh… But I’m sure I’ll be back before Cata comes out. I love torturing myself…
Have fun, and keep you pet happy
I just had the same experience myself yesterday! I play a lot of battlegrounds, and my main 80 hunter has been Marksmanship for a while now. I had grown pretty tired of 80 PvP though, so I’ve spent time recently leveling a druid and a rogue through battlegrounds (the 30s and 40s brackets are my favorite I believe).
But I had been toying with the idea of Survival recently on my main, for the increase in stats it would bring. Because I don’t raid or play arena, all of my gear is Wintergrasp or honor bought. Not bad, but not quite enough burst to match better geared players. Anyway, I’ve been playing a hunter for nearly 3 years now, but have NEVER touched Survival. I was always BM before Wrath, and everything I watched and read after Wrath came out just made Survival seem… clunky. Maybe it was the whole trapdancing thing.
Anyway, I finally made the plunge last night, and immediately saw a big difference in my burst damage. My agility and stamina jumped right up, thanks to SV talents. And Lock and Load is so FUN! Who doesn’t like a couple of free Explosive shots! The fact that it’s a 100% proc from freezing/frost traps, which I use constatly in PvP, is great. I think I have small understanding of how a fire mage must feel…
Plus, Wyvern Sting is so very useful!
Hehe. I just spec’d out of SV because I was tired of the challenge of keeping MM and SV gear sets. MM is /yawn/ in comparison to SV LnL procs.
So for my secondary, I temporarily am trying out a MM/SV PvP spec. I really want to keep up my BM pet-tanking, but I PvP a heckuva lot more than pet tank. It’s actually quite fun taking PvP talents I never took before. And on the plus side, I wedged in SV’s LnL for a surprise-Arcane-Shot-x3.
Write about Outland!
BTW, welcome back Pike!
😀
Hey Pike 🙂 I would like to read another post like https://www.aspectofthehare.net/2008/09/with-all-due-respect-to-alamo.html from you!!!
Yeah- I feel ya about how SV originally felt wrong to me as well- I first tried BM then MM, but eventually went to SV because for the gear I had it was better. I hated it- it felt so random and scatterbrained compared to what I was used to, but in then end I learned to love it and even to this day I can still push out more dps with SV in some fights then equally geared (we’re all in full T10) MM hunters- people don’t understand each spec’s strengths and weaknesses. As to your post on Ghostcrawler saying that Blizz failed on BM earlier- I’d say they felt that way for 2 reasons: 1 the spec for the majority of the expansion had a seriously hard time keeping up in dps (assuming everyone involved was of average skill- yes we all know that BM could keep up FAR better when played by someone that really cared what they were doing) and 2. because SV and MM “seem” to have a more dynamic rotation then BM (although at higher gear levels with MM taking out arcane shot from the rotation, it is pretty much the same difficulty level).
I never really cared for Survival, it’s too proc dependent for my liking, the entire spec is largely built around a “if this happens then you get this”. Basically, it’s too random. At least, that’s how I see it and thought it was in the month that I tried it way back when (pre Black Arrow).
But I am seriously looking at Survival for Cataclysm. Markmanship looks dull and static while Survival looks to be more dynamic and with better scaling, and both specs are featuring a “when this happens shoot this” via Master Marksman and Lock and Load, so why not try Survival methinks.
Pike, you said “Lock and Load is super fun. It’s tied to Black Arrow, so once you figure out how best to use that one, you’re good to go.”. Could you elaborate please? What is, in your opinion, the best way to use these? Since I’m thinking of Survival in Cataclysm, I thought I may give it a go in the current form.
+5000 to awesome for a long overdue huntery post.
+5000 more to awesome for a double rainbow reference thrown in.
Well, hello. I first found this site after you had quit WoW, and missed your return until recently.
It’s interesting, I’ve never once specced into Survival on Cialbi, my hunter. Started out with Beast Mastery, and tacked on a Marksmanship offspec when the option became available. Maybe I ought to try changing my offspec. Maybe I’ll like it.