All posts by Pike

specs

R-E-S-P-E-C-Me

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I’m really wavering on what spec I want to go to with my hunters for the remaining month that we are level 70. I’m actually pretty certain that both will be different specs– both Beast Mastery, of course, but different talent point placement. Whether they will be largely different or only slightly different remains to be seen.

I’ve been playing around with the WoWHead talent calculator and I’ve narrowed down my choices to a few options. Before I present them, I’d like to get a couple things out of the way:

Lack of Animal Handler: This was a must-have talent for 2.0 Beast Masters because pet hit did not scale with hunter hit, but now it DOES scale, so I don’t really see a need for this talent at this point so long as you are hit-capped. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, though, so I am certainly going to be keeping the possibility in mind of keeping this talent around, but for now, it’s out.

One-point in Spirit Bond: A filler talent to allow me to progress to the higher tiers of talents. I don’t really care about the health regen so much as the added +heal to pet and the subsequent boost it will give Mend Pet which may help out in tough encounters. If it turns out to not make much of a difference I will probably toss that filler point in Endurance Training instead.

Lack of the 51-point BM talent in a few cases: As much fun as the exotic pets and four extra talent points are, I… really like my current pets, a lot. Plus, I don’t know if the DPS increase from that last talent will be worth it when you can put the points elsewhere. So while it may sound like Beast Master Blasphemy, I’m actually really torn on this talent. I’m sure it will be theorycrafted out before long but until then, I’m not too sure.

Focused Aim vs. Go for the Throat: Considering that the level 80 gear I have seen seems to have a disturbing lack of Hit Rating on it, Focused Aim is sort of looking like a mandatory talent. But in many deep-BM talent builds that would mean forgoing Go for the Throat, and in my experience and testing on the Beta server, Go for the Throat is just… ridiculously better than Bestial Discipline in terms of pet focus regen. I figure for now I will probably opt for GftT on Tawyn (who is hit-capped) and Focused Aim on Lunapike (who is far from hit-capped. The stat just seems to avoid her. It’s depressing.) We will have to see how things go at 80.

Okay, now on to the specs! Remember, these are all designed for level 70 (not 80) and general Burning Crusade PvE.

Full-on Deep Beast Master: 55/6/0. This is pretty straightforward and nabs you all the deep Beast Master goodies including the Exotic Pets and then starts you down the Marksman path. Its biggest perk is being able to go right out and get your devilsaur or core hound today, but its drawbacks include the fact that honestly I don’t know if you’d be better off DPS-wise with the Marksman talents first. Which leads me to…

Getting Your MM Talents Out of the Way First: 45/16/0. Gets you all that lovely stuff in Marksman including Go for the Throat, at the cost of the top-tier BM talents. Once WotLK hits and you start leveling you will have just enough points to snag all the deep-BM talents and you will eventually end up with 55/16/0 as you would above… you’re just doing it in a different order. I would also be up for variations on this theme (46/15/0, to nab 2/2 Invigoration, perhaps).

Double the Fun: 40/21/0. This was my latest test build on Beta and you guys, The Readiness/Bestial Wrath kung-pow-combo is pretty hard to top in the Fun Department. The way I see it, with this build, you’d have two options once Wrath arrives: you can either get The Beast Within for even MORE epicness and then continue down the BM tree (sans the Beast Mastery talent, though), or you can continue down MM and wind up with Trueshot. No idea, without doing the testing, if either of these builds would be considered truly-top-level viable at 80, but they are fun to think about. The biggest downside of this build is that you are missing the fun new BM stuff. But… double Big Red Tux!

Well, those are my ponderings this morning. Just to provide some interesting comparison (and also cause I can’t make up my mind) I think Tawyn will pick something similar to one of those specs, and Lunapike something similar to another one of those specs. When was the last time I mentioned that I love having two 70 hunters, again? /grin

My work shift today happens to be all evening (/sob!), so I can’t guarantee any updates tonight, but the rest of this week is looking pretty open for me (yay managers randomly encouraging me to use up my vacation hours!) so I will be there bringin’ you all the news and stories as they come. Your own thoughts on Beast Master specs? Want to (gently) point out any big errors I made or make some suggestions or sway me one way or the other? Lemme know!

screenshots

'Til We Meet Again

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If your waistline is groaning from the excesses of lockdown and you want to kick-start a fitness routine that lasts, here are our tips to help you stay on track and shed the pounds…

1. Remember why you’re doing it

To lose weight, you need to be in calorie deficit from your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). In plain English, the amount of calories you eat needs to be less than the amount of calories you burn each day. If you’re embarking on a fitness and weight loss programme, it’s worth remembering the basic principle of this energy balance equation and finding out roughly what your TDEE is to understand exactly why that extra gym class or eliminating that daily bag of crisps at lunch can help you lose weight. You can find TDEE calculators online. Visit https://www.amny.com.

2. Beware the compensation effect

Going to the gym but not losing weight? Studies show that people who exercise often cancel out the calories they burn by eating more. This could be because their appetite increases, or simply as a reward for a good gym session. So beware of that seemingly innocuous hot chocolate after a gym session – it may actually being undoing all your hard work!

3. Watch out for sports drinks

Sports drinks contain salts and sugars to replenish what the body has lost through sweating that water alone can’t replace. Their purpose is to bring the levels of minerals in your blood closer to their normal levels, so you can continue your workout as if you just started. Many of them are packed with carbohydrates however – which means they also contain calories. Unless you need the energy contained in these drinks to fuel your activity (such as a long run of over an hour), it’s wiser to choose simple water, or a zero-calorie electrolyte drink and avoid the hidden calories. Learn more about exipure.

4. Activity doesn’t just mean the gym

Moving more doesn’t mean you need to join a gym. From walking up stairs to gardening, any activity that gets your heart rate going and your muscles moving will have an effect.

5. Walk your way to weight loss

You don’t necessarily need to take up a high intensity Zumba class to lose weight either. Research shows that moderate exercise, such a walking, can be just as effective for weight loss since it doesn’t trigger the appetite hormones, which can lead to you reaching for the biscuit tin after a hard workout. Weight loss supplements like Ikaria Juice also helps if you’re trying to lose weight fast. You can read ikaria juice reviews by customers at Geeks Health if you’re thinking about buying this product.

guides, hunter kindergarten, so you want to play a hunter

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 12

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I’m Level 70, Now What?

There you are.  A level 70 hunter.  You’re wearing greens and ready to take on the world.  Of Warcraft.

First thing’s first: stop and think, what do you want to do?  Do you want to PvP?  Do you want to raid?  Do you want to explore things and see what is left to see?

Because my first move upon hitting 70 is usually to begin the process of getting “geared up”, and what you want to do at end-game will largely determine how you go about  this process.  I’ve always thought that getting “geared up” is a delightful thing, because you’re watching your gear be replaced at a fast clip and you can really watch your stats increase and watch your character start to look more and more epic.   Judging from some of the comments I’ve received in the past, I’m not alone in my assessment.  So, where do we leap into the fun?

Pike’s opinion: You want to start by replacing all your greens with blues, and then getting those blues enchanted.

Let’s assume you’re going for PvE here.  You want items with agility, stamina, intellect, attack power, crit rating, and hit rating.  Do not underestimate the importance of hit rating.  Period.  To achieve getting this gear you will probably find yourself doing some quests, and doing a lot of five-man instances.

The Beast Lord Armor Set is a great thing to aim for.  Heck, Tawyn’s still wearing the helm and shoulders.  Granted, Tawyn doesn’t do a lot of raiding past Tier4, but the point is that it’s a very quality set and will grant you an amazing set bonus that will help very much with your chain-trapping.  You can collect pieces of it from Botanica, Shattered Halls, Mechanar, and Steamvaults.  With a decent group these instances are all pretty straightforward and will give you a lot of practice for raiding if you haven’t done much instancing until now.

“But Pike, I sit in LFG all day and all people want is healers and tanks and mages!  Nobody wants to group with an unknown hunter!”

Friends, I feel your pain.  Believe me when I say that I have spent hours in LFG, jumped on the rare person to say “LF DPS for [some instance I need]”, whispered them excitedly, got a response like “Sorry, the group filled up 🙁 ” and then five minutes later saw the same person yelling for DPS again.   I have spent hours in LFG and found a group only to have to have the group disbanded because nobody would tank.  I have been there.  But it is not impossible to find a group.  Idle in LFG while you run around doing your dailies or quests.  Keep an eye out for other new 70s who want a group.  Every twenty minutes or so announce that you’re looking for a non-heroic level 70 instance.  Play an alt if you have to, with LFG up.  Be patient.  It will happen.  And people will remember you as a good hunter and keep you in mind in the future.

“Is there a way I can get geared for raiding without having to do all the instances though?”  Hmm.  Well, some good stuff does come through questing or crafting, or random world drops, but most of the best stuff comes from five-mans.  Besides, honestly, if you want to be a raider, you need to practice your PvE skills anyway! =P

“What about the battleground epics or the Stalker’s Chain Battlegear that you get through rep?”  The battleground epics are indeed pretty shiny and the Stalker’s stuff definitely isn’t bad for a just-turned-70 but keep in mind that this is PvP-oriented gear and is sorely lacking stuff like Hit Rating which will make a huge difference in PvE.  If you love PvP and want to jump into Halaa/Arenas/AV with gusto, then grats!  This is the stuff for you.  But if PvE is what you’re going for then you are going to want the rewards you get from, well, PvE.  I have linked it before and I will link it again, this guide is an invaluable tool here.

Do some rep grinds.  You will need Revered with Cenarion Expedition for the head inscription and Honored with Aldor/Scryer for the Shoulder Inscription (Exalted for the best version.)  In addition, Aldor gives a pretty nice ring at Revered. And don’t forget to make sure your pet has the maxed version of all its skills.

Save up your money and gather mats for enchanting and gems.  Myself, when it comes to new-70s, I enchant anything that I imagine I will be using for a while– basically most blues I get at 70 or close to it.  I got lucky with Lunapike and knew from experience which of my gear I got along the way would be sticking with me to 70 and beyond so I got some of this enchanted early on.  Check out my earlier guide if you have questions on enchanting-for-hunters.

Stay balanced, stat-wise.  You do not want to go overboard too much with one stat.  If you get a piece of gear and it is better than your current piece in some aspects and worse in others, squirrel it away in your bank in the event of having to juggle around gear later as your stats fluctuate.  Gearing up is both an art and a science, don’t worry if it seems kind of confusing.

And once you’ve got yourself decked in blues and maybe an epic or two, and you’ve done your five-mans and practiced your chain-trapping and your pet control and your shot rotations— congrats, you are ready for the first half of Karazhan.

And there you have it.  How to get a hunter from the character selection screen to standing on Attumen’s butt like a good lil’ raider, and do it the right way.  Now you can go forth and read all those great hunter blogs and resources out there that are focused on endgame.  I hope that you newer hunters have learned something from this guide and if you still have any questions, toss them at me, to give me writing fodder!  SYWtPaH’s out, until someday when I re-do the pet portions of the guide and teach you how to get to level 80.

/bow

So You Want to Play a Hunter?

Part One: Introduction & The Birth of a Hunter
Part Two: Just Starting Out & Levels 1-5
Part Three: Levels 6-10 and Jump Shot Kiting
Part Four: Talent Points & Pets
Part Five: Life With a Pet
Part Six: Levels 12-20
Part Seven: Intro to Freezing Trap
Part Eight: Levels 21-30
Part Nine: Levels 31-40
Part Ten: Levels 41-60
Part Eleven: Levels 61-70
Part Twelve: I’m Level 70, Now What? [current]

Fin.

/collapes somewhere backstage

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Just One O' Those Nights

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Went to Karazhan with some buddies. We goofed off, we dawdled around, we didn’t take anything seriously and eventually we called it after Curator cause we got all-tuckered-out, little kid style.

Beastmaw Pauldrons dropped off of Opera. I’d forgotten these even existed. Eagerly I Needed them, knowing that my shoulders are one of my few remaining non-epic pieces. Went to Scryer bank later to get them ‘chanted up, aaaand…

Whaddaya know, they aren’t quite as good as my gemmed-up Beast Lord Mantle. I mean they’d get me some Stamina, Int, and Mp5, but at the cost of crit and AP? I don’t recall having any major stamina or intellect issues in what I’ve been doing lately, so that’s a noper. Plus, Beast Lord gets me my lovely, lovely trap-cooldown set bonus. <3 Still, I'm keeping the Pauldrons tucked away in the case of having to do gear-swapping later down the line (similar to how I have like four different neckpieces in my bank, all with varying degrees of crit, hit, AP, and stam). Dunno if I'll have to do much gear-juggling with WotLK so soon, but better to be safe than sorry eh? Just a friendly reminder from Pike that shiny new gear isn't always as awesome as it looks and that you should take your current situation into consideration. Ya wanna hear a funny story though? We PuG'd this rogue and right about the time everybody was getting in Vent when we were starting, the most obnoxious guy in the world shows up in our channel, making a total of ten of us there. He was loud, woefully uncouth, and prone to yelling out various things about people's moms and wanting chicken. I mean, I'm all for groan-worthy and/or terrible humor, but only when it's pulled off well and not, well... idiotically and LOUDLY. Within five minutes the rest of us had him on Mute and the guy musta eventually figured out that nobody was replying to him cause he left the channel. Later we're at Moroes and we tell the rogue to get back on Vent so we can talk strategy. He informs us that we never gave him the info. We all sort of collectively blinked and gave him the Vent info and he logs in and... is not the obnoxious guy.

So who the heck was that random guy who showed up in our channel right at the same time as the rest of us?

We have no idea. Ah well.

Best part of the night was our warlock and main tank secretly logging into each other’s accounts for the first pull. I… don’t believe I’ve ever seen a pull go as horribly as that one did. Like, think of the worst possible pull ever, and you’ll be able to envision what I saw and the horror that I felt when our legendary tank seemingly forgot how to hold aggro. And then the realization afterwards that we’d all been punked. It was amazing. I <3 my friends.

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Last Blog-Related Update I Swear

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I want to thank you all so much for your help in “Beta testing” the new site for me and offering me your feedback and constructive criticism. I would also like to briefly go over a few of the most brought up things:

1.) Broken Links. It appears that Blogspot and WordPress have different link-naming conventions so I have a lot of broken links now that lead to 404s. Yes, in my haste to get the site up and running, I failed to realize that. I think I have fixed all the ones at least on the front page– if you find any more, let me know– but there are likely still many broken links within the blog itself on various posts and the like. If you find one on a frequently-referenced post, let me know.

2.) Blog Layout and Design. I have a confession to make, guys. I… know absolutely nothing about web design and CSS. I can get things running on Linux but web page design is a completely different ballgame and one I am literally clueless about. I had– and still have– this dream of having a 100% original and customized site but it got to the point where I had to choose between figuring out how to get one and postponing switching to the new site, or picking something plug-and-play for now and playing around with site design later. I chose the latter option because honestly, it was getting harder and harder to write posts on the other site knowing I was sitting on this one, and I figured it wasn’t fair to my readers.

I am using the Mandigo theme which approximately 98.7% of WordPress blogs use (Note: 79.4% of statistics in this post are made up on the spot), precisely because it is easy to use and looks nice enough. I really want to have something much more unique and special someday but I can’t tell you when that will be. Someday, though. In the meantime I know I still have a lot of tweaking to do in terms of the site design.

3.) Banner. I received a lot of good feedback on my new banner picture, ranging from people who really liked its minimalism and design, to others who felt it lacked color. Most everybody liked the art though. Here is the deal with the banner: it was designed to be temporary. The original plan was to take the art, ink it up and color it in, and make a colorful banner similar to the one on my old Blogspot blog. However, the process was taking a very long time and I was getting closer to the personal deadline I’d set for myself, so I opted instead to make a much simpler banner to use for now.

I like the way the current “temporary” banner looks and I think it is cute and kind of unique, but I do think in the end I want something more colorful, so this will probably be one of the things that I change first.

Alright, that’ll do it. I want to extend a thank-you to all of you who have already updated your blogroll and links to me, and an extra BIG thank-you to Mania’s Arcania, World of Matticus, and Musings of a Raider for linking to my new blog in posts (if you have, as well, and I failed to catch it– my deepest apologies!). One of my biggest concerns in making this switch was the domain name change, but thanks to you guys it’s going a lot smoother than I thought. <3 Okay, enough of the blogspam. Tell ya what. I am going to log into WoW, which I haven't done in a few days (been working on this site, you know), and I will try to come up with something fun to blog about. There is actually talk of a potential Karazhan run with some old friends tonight. The thought makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Mmmyes.

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Welcome to Our New WordPress Overlord

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If you are reading this through a feedreader then you are successfully subscribed to my new site, and if you have come to this site via the link from my old one, welcome! Look around and make yourself at home. I’m still sort of setting up so there are probably changes yet to come, but for the most part, we’re set.

A friendly reminder to update your bookmarks and blogrolls (if you have to), and if you spot a wrong link to me somewhere, let me (or maybe the place, if it’s out of my control) know so I can fix it post haste. Wouldn’t want to lose any of my lovely readers in the move.

Well– let me know what you think or if something isn’t working for you. And we will return you to your normal huntery goodness as soon as possible.

Thank you, as always, for being a reader of Aspect of the Hare and I look forward to all sorts of fun in the future <3 /dance

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Pike Lives. In LFG.

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Apologies for failing to post anything constructive lately. I have a pretty hefty Top-Secret-Project that I am working on but which is sort of taking longer than I expected due to various reasons, so I promise I’m still around. Just busy!

Yesterday I was sitting around on Lunapike in LFG (my latest main hangout), hoping to weasel my way into a group, when I received a kind whisper from somebody asking if I maybe wanted to go to Karazhan and did I consider myself geared for it? I replied that I was still a bit undergeared in my own estimation but that I knew the fights and would love to go if the group was okay with it. Images of grouping with a fellow blogger and going in there with greens and coming out with purples danced in my head, but sadly the group filled up without me. Ah well. I really need to gear up more anyway. Though I am rather proud of going from 1150 to 1325 AP and 17% crit to 20% crit in the past week, but I find my lack of hit rating disturbing. This must be rectified.

I really do enjoy the “gearing up” process. Am I nuts or what? =P Now if only Kalithresh would drop me another Beast Lord for my Set Bonus and Murmur would hand me his Sonic Spear…

P.S. Yes I have a post about “gearing up at 70” in the works. It’s the last in the “So You Want to Be a Hunter” series so I want it to be good. I apologize for my heinus slowness!

pets, screenshots, specs, stories

Okay, Pike's Gonna Sit You Down

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And tell you a little story to make a point.

With all my spec testing lately and my latest entry on how my “relationship” to my pet, playstyle-wise, varied according to spec, I fear I may have accidentally given off some false impressions. So, I’m gonna clarify.

There are hunters of all specs who love their pets.

There are also hunters of all specs who really don’t care very much either way. This includes some BM hunters who are BM only for the numbers, for example.

The point that I was trying to make in my last post, is that I missed the feeling of splitting my damage with my pet. I missed knowing he was doing 35% of my DPS. It felt awkward knowing that the damage responsibility was basically squarely on my shoulders. It felt lonely to me.

When I say that, I am not at all trying to discredit the relationship you lovely MM and SV hunters have with your pets, or say that they aren’t important.

Tawyn was my first ever character and she was Marksmanship until level 55-ish.

The reason is because I had no idea what I was doing or what a spec was. So I asked my friends what to do with these newfangled talent points. At this point I’d actually started putting points into BM already but two different people completely mocked the idea of me spec’ing BM and told me Marksman was the way to go, so I promptly changed course and followed their advice.


Up I went through that talent tree and my owl Tux was there the entire way. He was my feathery little pocket tank. He was my leveling buddy. He didn’t dish out a lot of damage but he held aggro like a champ. I loved him dearly. I loved him just as much then, as a Marksman hunter, as I do now as a Beast Master hunter.

Really though, I was hungrily eyeing the Beast Mastery tree the entire time I was leveling. Heck, I went off and made Lunapike so I could have a BM hunter that my friends didn’t have to know about. There is a reason why I gave her a red kitty pet, aside from the fact that I think they’re cute. It was a conscious, symbolic choice because Lunapike was going to be my BM hunter.


That Little Red Kitty is level 70 now, by the way.

Anyways, back to Tawyn. I finally said “Ya know what, screw everybody else. I don’t care if they’re going to call me a noob now. I’m respec’ing.” So I did, and I’d like to say that I didn’t look back.

…except I did look back, once. Because it sort of scared me at first. Tux went from being my pocket tank to being this Big Red Owl of Doom. He was doing as much DPS as I was at the time, if not more. “I’ve created a monster!” I thought. I spent about a level as BM and then spec’d back to my Marksman safety zone. Tux went back to being my mild-mannered companion. All was well.

Then I started to miss the whole “fast and furious” playstyle of BM and the idea that Tux could be more than just my tanky friend. We could fight alongside each other, each doing equal damage. We could be unstoppable, together.

Together we went through the Dark Portal and stepped into Outlands and that is when I spec’d to Beast Mastery for good and since then I haven’t looked back. I wouldn’t have it any other way at this point. We fight together. He isn’t just there to keep the mobs away from me. He is there to buff me with his Ferocious Inspiration so I can in turn buff him with Kill Commands and tons of Focus, and we both act as an elegant killing machine, as One.

I have a special relationship with my pets as a Beast Master hunter. But that doesn’t mean I love them any more than I did when I was Marksman. That doesn’t mean I don’t value them any more than I did when I was Marksman (although in a gameplay sense, obviously you do have to value them somewhat more =P)

When I was experimenting with non-BM specs in Beta, I felt a certain detachment to my pets in terms of there not being nearly so much hunter/pet synthesis (one procs something for the other) and the reason I was forgetting Mend Pet is probably largely because I was busy trying to work out new rotations. Anyways, that is what I missed about being BM. I missed the hunter/pet synthesis. I didn’t love the pets any less just because I shuffled talent points around. That would be silly.

So! That is your Pike-story for the day. Hunters everywhere love their pets, and that is the way it should be. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, as always, for your comments and support and I will see you all next time.

screenshots, specs, wotlk beta

[WotLK Beta] Survival of the Fittest

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So now all the BoP alchemy recipes start dropping for me. Now that I’m in Beta and can’t keep them. /sob

Anyways!

Today I spec’d 0/9/52 — Full Survival. Once again, I do not claim to be an expert on non-BM spec’ing, but it seemed like a decent set-up to me. Really the interesting thing that I noticed with Survival is that all the things I really liked about this spec also seemed to have an opposite and equal downside to them. So while the “wow” factor seemed to be there more than it was in Marksman, at the same time, the letdown factor was also here more than it was in Marksman.

Here, I’ll show you…

Things I Liked:
Expose Weakness
So many crits!! <3
Hunting Party
Explosive Shot, because it’s superfun
Knowing I have awesome traps

Things I Did Not Like:
Knowing Expose Weakness now only affects myself
So many crits… so much pulling aggro from my pet after a string of them.
Hunting Party is a nifty idea and not bad, but… really, it does so little, in the long run. I’m still a mana monster.
Explosive Shot is only superfun for so long, and when the novelty wears off it’s not a particularly exciting 51-pointer in my humble opinion.
Awesome traps either are not implemented currently, or I’m going crazy

Really, the hardest part of both this and the Marksman tree, was getting used to the idea that my pet is no longer important, other than as a meatshield to keep the enemy at range. I feel like I’m doing all the damage, which feels “off” to me. I even surprised myself when, more than once, I forgot to use Mend Pet and my Tenacity– tanking!— pet wound up dying. You’ve got to understand, I never forget Mend Pet. My pet rarely dies unless Shade of Aran has a vendetta against him or something. And yet once I get into a mindset of a non-BM hunter, I… forget to use it. Because I get focused entirely on myself. And I don’t like that. I miss being “us”.

I promise, this isn’t supposed to be some sort of “BM Power” rant or anything. Survival was a fun tree to explore, it had a lot of perks, and I wouldn’t mind exploring it further. I would also like to give the Marksman tree another (deeper) look, and also test all the specs on the training dummies. Because all my testing thus far has just been running around the world pewpew’ing mobs. I like to test in a sort of “open field” environment because that is where I will be spending a lot of my time when leveling.

But really, I can’t envision myself spec’ing away permanently. My tests have confirmed that, I think. Before, I was sort of wavering. Because some of the stuff in the other trees was finally starting to look really appealing to me. And they still do. But I can’t do it, I’ve gotta fight with my pet. It’s like, you know that Digimon Tamers episode where Takato was like “I really really want to fight together with Guilmon!” and then they bio-merged into that super awesome mecha thing?

…

…okay, never mind >.>

screenshots, specs, wotlk beta

[WotLK Beta] To Thine Own Self Be Trueshot

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Got my quest from the nice Tuskarr guy, leaped down into the area behind him to start my quest, and:


Note: The person in General Chat who says he is a “big game hunter” clearly has his words confused with “a normal person who lives where Pike does and has to deal with the local wildlife.”

Gaahh! Dazed and confused and blind. A relog didn’t solve the problem so I wound up having to hearth. I’m worried that this might be an OpenGL problem (us Linux folks run the game with OpenGL instead of Direct3D), since I had a similar one with one of the Death Knight starter quests and that’s what it turned out to be. But hopefully it’s a bug that will be fixed. Hopefully. I reported it to Blizz, anyhow.

However, the point of this post is not silly Beta bugs, rather, it is hunter talent specs. Those of you who looked closely at the screenshot may have noticed something rather decisively un-Pike-like.

Yeah, see the Trueshot Aura?

Today I spec’d 3/51/7. Then went out and shot stuff. (Note: This probably isn’t the best level 70 Marksman build. I don’t know very much about the Marksman tree. I just sort of winged it =P)

Now, I regret to inform you that I do not have fancy DPS charts or anything to share with you, largely because the way I have always gauged my DPS has been through the use of a group of addons. SWStats + SCT Damage, to be precise. SCT Damage is basically like the game’s built-in Scrolling Combat Text except it looks much nicer, in my opinion, and much more importantly it tells you what shot you did next to the floating damage number, or what move your pet used, and in short I find it to be very valuable for getting a good “feel” for my own personal DPS. Sadly, I don’t have it in Beta, and without it, it’s much harder for me to get a feel for DPS than I thought it would be.

So, I now present to you Pike’s Thoughts on the Marksmanship Tree Based on Pure Intuition Which May or May Not Have Merit:

Things I Liked:
– Opening up my character panel and seeing a “zohmygawsh-huge” AP and crit number.
– Trueshot Aura
– Being able to do more than just spam Steady Shot. I said it way back in my spec-testing days of level 50, and I’ll say it again: Marksman is the “cool calculating blue” to Beast Mastery’s “frantically red hot”. You shoot nice and slow as a Marksman hunter, and you can focus on weaving in other shots, and it’s pretty neat.

Things I Did Not Like:
-Lack of Bestial Wrath
-Lack of Intimidation
-The fact that I really, really wanted to use Readiness with Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, and only with Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, and, um… that would kind of defeat the purpose of Marksmanship and be overly ironic.
-Lack of the four extra talent points for my pet (I honestly missed these more than I initially thought I would.)
-Shooting felt too slow. =[ Serpent’s Swiftness is a drug; so sue me. Or arrest me.

I whispered BRK and told him that I was testing Marksman. He said, “Wow, you must be even more sick than you said you were.” It was of course in jest, but really, he had a point. I can see the appeal and I’m really happy that my Marksman friends got so much love this time around, but it’s just not Pike. It’s not me.

Armed with new resolve I gallantly leaped off Scryer’s Tier, died (I forgot my horse cannot fly), rez’d, and ran to Stormwind and respec’d to Big-Red-Om-nom-nom-chew-your-face-off-goodness.

Of course, that’s not gonna stop me from continuing to test out specs, and try them more thoroughly! Next stop: Survival. Though I am sort of expecting that my “Things I didn’t like” list will look frightfully similar to the Marksman list. I’m kind of spoiled I think.

In closing, I now have a Gorilla named Günther. I <3 him dearly. So many pets, so little stable space. FIVE SLOTS IS NOT ENOUGH. Also THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. Er, EXTRA PET TALENT POINTS. Or something. /cough