Category Archives: hunter kindergarten

beast mastery, guides, hunter kindergarten, talents, Uncategorized

Improved Mend Pet vs. Spirit Bond

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If you are a Beast Mastery hunter, chances are good you have at least one or two talent points floating around in one of these two talents. In fact, if you are doing a fairly common 53/x/x build, then you really only have one point to spare.

So, where do you put that one point? Some people choose Endurance Training, but for me, I prefer to keep the choice between our good friends Spirit Bond and Improved Mend Pet. Let’s take a look at what they do:

1/2 Improved Mend Pet: “Reduces the mana cost of your Mend Pet spell by 10% and gives the Mend Pet spell a 25% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the pet each tick.”

The mana cost reduction is relatively minute (though I suppose it would add up if you were using it a lot), so the big benefit here is mostly the shot IMP has at cleansing things off of your pet. This can be handy when solo’ing/questing to get rid of those nasty debuffs things will occasionally chuck onto your pet, and it can also be handy in a select few raid encounters. *coughHeigancough* Final verdict: Only has a very situational use, but very helpful in said situations.

1/2 Spirit Bond: “While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 1% of total health every 10 sec., and increases healing done to you and your pet by 5%.”

I’ve had people debate me on this before, but I see the regeneration part of this talent as being, well… lackluster and ignorable. =P What we like this talent for is the flat increase on healing done to you and your pet. This could help a little on pet unfriendly fights, and also on player-unfriendly fights. May or may not be enough of a healing boost to save your/your pet’s life when crap hits the fan, though. Final verdict: Goes to waste on stuff like Patchwerk, but may make the life of your healers a tiny tad easier on stuff where there’s lots of AoE damage going around. Also makes your life a tiny tad easier on pet unfriendly fights.

And the Oscar goes to… Look at your situation and decide which one you’d rather have. Currently I am using Improved Mend Pet because I find it to be invaluable on Heigan; I am in Naxx more than most other raids combined at the moment and I pride myself on being able to keep my pet alive through the encounter. If I ever move on from Naxx I may very well move the point over to Spirit Bond. Both talents have their uses and I wouldn’t knock you for using either.

Bonus History Lesson:

Check out the final Beast Mastery talent back in World of Warcraft Beta:

BeastMasteryBeta

Survival’s final talent back then…? We shall not speak of it… >.>

guides, hunter kindergarten, Uncategorized

Doctor Pike Is In: Fixing Your Hunter DPS

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mario_house I get a pretty decent number of comments and e-mails from people asking for advice to help “fix” their DPS. The truth is, there is no giant Band-Aid that is gonna fix your DPS. However, there are a lot of symptoms we can look for to help diagnose the problem and see if we can solve it from there. Doctor Pike is in!

1. Spec: As of right now in Patch 3.1, Beast Mastery produces the lowest DPS of all the hunter specs. That’s not to say it can’t do good numbers, or isn’t viable. However, it’s quite possible that you will see an increase in DPS if you switch to Marksmanship, and then possibly a further DPS increase if you continue on to Survival (at least until you start getting into Ulduar gear). If you aren’t averse to a spec switch, you may want to experiment. If you really like your spec a lot, then that’s great too, and you can read on to see ways to optimize your chosen spec.

Make sure your talents work well together. I love the idea of a hybrid hunter in theory but in the end, there is really no particularly good hybrid build right now. Furthermore, don’t put points in things you don’t need. If you are a Survival hunter, then you don’t need Improved Arcane Shot. Why? Because you don’t use Arcane Shot!

Still, take a look at your situation and see what works for you. For example, I know my hunter DPS tends to idle at about 85-90% while leveling because I take all the talents like Endurance Training, Thick Hide, Spirit Bond, etc. in lieu of a more typical raid spec. But hey, that’s cause I’m leveling! =P And PvP is of course an entirely whole different creature. But you get the gist.

2. Pet Spec: Take a look at the screenshots on this post to see examples of a Ferocity pet build for both 16- and 20- pet talent points. As far as I am aware those are pretty much the max-DPS builds you can get: Charge will get you a tiny DPS increase but myself I don’t think it’s worth it to sacrifice stuff to pick it up since it’s a mid-tier talent. Dash/Dive does the same thing for a fraction less DPS and with the added bonus of being able to let your pet run quickly back to you if needed… Flame Walls on Sarth, for example, or other nasties! (That said, going 1/2 Bloodthirsty and then picking up Charge, if you are a Beast Master, might be worth looking into– I just haven’t tried it yet.)

Some people have asked me questions about Cobra Reflexes; last I checked those are in fact a net DPS gain.

If you can only take one point of Shark Attack or Wild Hunt, take Wild Hunt once you get somewhere above the range of 2500 attack power which just about every hunter should be at if they are level 80 or close to it. The stamina boost is nice too!

My thoughts on Heart of the Phoenix/Lick Your Wounds/etc are as follows: a.) you will have to sacrifice DPS talents to pick them up, and b.) The only time my pet dies is if it’s a wipe or if it’s a pet unfriendly fight and my pet will be dying every ten seconds anyway. So, they are not worth it to me. But as always, your mileage may vary!

3. Glyphs: In WotLK, glyphs can really make or break a spec. I find it kind of ironic because Blizzard introduced them as a way to further customize your character but often your choice of glyphs is rather cut’n’dry.

For example, if you are a Beast Master you pretty much NEED Glyph of Steady Shot and Glyph of Bestial Wrath. All Beast Master PvE specs should have at least those two glyphs. You have slightly more wiggle room with your third glyph; Kill Shot and Hawk are good options, myself, I use Serpent Sting.

I am not quite as knowledgeable with the other specs yet but as far as I’m aware, Glyph of Explosive Shot is pretty much a given for Survival, and Glyphs of Chimera Shot and Serpent Sting (to boost your Chimera Shot damage) are what you want for Marksmanship.

4. Gear/Gems: Most people are geared and gem’d fine so I don’t see this as something we need to go into in too much depth. Remember: The hit cap is important, especially now that it transfers to your pet. If you don’t have enough hit on your gear, gem for it. You want to be at 263 unless you are a draenei or have a draenei twin who follows you everywhere (or if you are Alliance and only ever do 25mans).

…or if you have points in Focused Aim. *almost forgot all about that* >.>

Intellect is a good stat for everybody now because pretty much all specs have 3/3 Careful Aim, and this is why I usually skip over leather gear, even if it is packed with other yummies.

Remember, you don’t need expertise, defense, etc. In the next patch your pets’ expertise will scale from your hit; this means you won’t need expertise in the next patch either, despite some rumors that are going around.

Gem-wise you will probably want to stick to Hit (if not capped), Agi and AP. AP is more of a Beast Master gem, although “when in down, gem Agi… uh… this doesn’t rhyme *cough*” You don’t want to overload on one stat, though. If you have a bunch of AP but your crit is in the toilet, or vice versa, it can often end up being a DPS loss. Which isn’t what you want! =P

and lastly 5. Rotation! This is a good first place to look if you are having DPS issues. I’d advise you to check out my Shot Rotation Compendium for a quick rundown of what you should be doing rotation-wise for each spec, and read the comments too, because said guide isn’t 100% conclusive.

Now there are some things that may be adversely affecting your DPS which you can’t do much about. Stinky internet connections and lag, poor computer performance, or even simply a lack of familiarity with a certain spec will put you at a disadvantage. Hopefully, though, I’ve covered the basics well enough to help a few of you out.

Now go take two pills and call me in the morning. And remember, don’t get discouraged if it takes you a while to “fix” your DPS… afterall, we all know what happens when the doctors on TV think the case is solved and it’s only halfway through the episode, riiiight? =P

beast mastery, guides, hunter kindergarten, specs, Uncategorized

Go Forth, Young Beast Master, And Level

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I get a lot of Google hits from people looking for a good Beast Master leveling spec. Probably because it’s a topic I’ve written about a lot. The reason I’ve written about it so much? Because for the past six months or so, every time a new patch has come out, I’ve had to come up with a new leveling spec. Yeah. (Oh, and let’s not forget the part where I’m leveling a million hunters. /cough)

I’m relatively certain things are at least… decently set in place now though, and it’s not like leveling specs are a super big deal anyways, so here‘s what I currently recommend:

hunterlevelingspec

Now remember, the best leveling spec is the one that works best for you. This isn’t really something that you min/max. Also, this spec isn’t designed to make your pet a supercrazy tank. If you’re looking for that, then I heartily recommend checking out Big Red Rhino!

However, when I level my hunters, I like to take a basic Beast Master DPS spec and tweak it a bit to add some extra pet survivability and talents that decrease downtime, while still maintaining enough DPS talents to allow me to perform reasonably well in an instance situation. When I level a hunter, I usually do a lot of solo quests and then sprinkle some instances into the mix… so my leveling spec is designed for that. We focus on pet survivability: Endurance Training, Thick Hide, 2/2 Improved Mend Pet– I have recently discovered that my pet can survive on Heigan with 1/2 Imp Mend Pet, but I’d still go 2/2 for leveling– and Spirit Bond at the cost of some DPS-oriented talents that we can do without while solo’ing. I have also opted for Invigoration over Cobra Strikes: I figure you won’t be critting all that much when you’re still leveling, but your pet will because his crit is based off of talents instead of gear, so Invigoration will help to decrease your overall downtime. (Not like we have a whole lot of downtime with Aspect of the Viper, but hey. Low-level hunters are the biggest mana hogs I’ve ever seen. x_x) Oh, and 2/2 Go for the Throat rather than 1/2. While 1/2 may be more than enough in an end-game situation (especially combined with Bestial Discipline), but as previously mentioned your crit probably isn’t all that hot while leveling, so go for 2/2.

Remember: You can level pretty much however you want to. I say this as someone who has leveled a druid to 70 as pure-resto. >.> Hunters obviously have it a little easier than that. When I leveled Tawyn from 70 to 80, I stayed with a purely DPS-oriented spec because I was in instances a lot (and because I’m a stubborn huntard) and I did just fine when I was out solo’ing. But I almost always give my lowbie hunters some variation of the above “leveling spec” and it’s worked out well.

So go ye forth and level!

guides, hunter kindergarten, pets

Pet Specs: 3.1 Beast Master Edition

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Pet specs have been shaken up a bit with the advent of 3.1, so let’s talk about how you will ideally spec your three types of pets. First up, pet specs for us Beast Masters (I’ll cover you non-extra-talent-points folks in a later post!)

Ferocity:

ferocitypetspec20points

You will probably want your Ferocity pet’s talent tree to look like this. This scoops up everything you need to ensure your pet is the instrument of your vengeance in your average raid or heroic. Of course, there are adjustments you can make if you are solo’ing or leveling and would rather pick up, say, the stamina or healy-type talents. But honestly, Heart of the Phoenix never once worked for me anyway, so I didn’t really have a problem with ditching it… >.>

Cunning:

cunningpetspec20points

Your cunning pet is a very versatile creature who can be used in a variety of situations, and as such I consider his talent tree to be the most flexible in terms of talents that you do/don’t want to take. I have found that this works very well from a solo’ing or questing standpoint. I know Cunning pets are often overlooked these days but honestly, equipped with things like Owl’s Focus, Feeding Frenzy, Wolverine Bite and Roar of Recovery (now with a shorter cooldown), they are not to be underestimated. Try one out and see what you think.

Tenacity:

tenacitypetspec20points

With Thunderstomp no longer Gorilla-exclusive and some great new tanky–talents, the Tenacity changes were really great. I have found this to be a very good pet-tanking build. You purposefully bypass some of the typical “DPS” talents in favor of making your pet able to take it, if not dish it out. There is some flexibility here if you’re not a big fan of Last Stand and would rather put the Avoidance+Last Stand points somewhere else, although I’ve found it to be quite a lifesaver in multiple tricky situations, myself… I wouldn’t go without it.

Welp, there ya have it. Toss me your questions and comments, and the “non-Beast Master edition” is coming up soon!

guides, hunter kindergarten, screenshots, Uncategorized

My Viper Sting Brings All the Mana to the Yard

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ability_hunter_viperstingAh, Viper Sting. Up until this latest patch I used it for two reasons, and two reasons only: to extinguish mage-type mobs who had nasty fireball attacks that hit like a truck on my pet, and to tick off casters in Alterac Valley. Well, the first is rather situational, and the latter hasn’t gotten much use since I decided I don’t feel like doing the PvP gear grind again anytime soon so I’m on extended hiatus from battlegrounds… not to mention the drain itself has been rather distressingly nerfed. Anyways, the point is, when Serpent Sting finally became a bread’n’butter hunter ability, there was really little use for Viper anymore.

Recently, though, Viper Sting has changed entirely. Namely, that mana it drains from a mob? It now also gives mana to you.

There are two reasons why this is awesome.

First, it makes solo’ing easier. My current preferred solo/leveling talent build scoops up 2/2 Invigoration, and if you combine that with the new Viper Sting, and then finally Aspect of the Viper, your downtime is pretty much zero.

Now, you should be aware that the mana you gain back from Viper Sting from most mobs in the field, while certainly not nothing, also isn’t exactly earth-shattering. You’ll still find yourself switching to Aspect of the Viper a lot. So this brings us to our second point…

There are a lot of instance and raid mobs or even bosses who have metric tons of mana. Guess who can drain it? And guess who gets a lot of mana back for it?

lunapikeflex

That’s right, you. While I’ve actually yet to test this in a raid situation (all the raids I wanted to test this in this past week either failed to ignite or conflicted with my schedule), I’ve tested it in a few heroics and it’s quite amazing how much mana you can get. Now, Serpent is still preferred in most situations from an instance/raid standpoint. But if you need the mana, well, now you’ve got a great backup. And my Marksman friends out there get a nifty bonus when they combine it with Chimera Shot.

In short? Say hello to your new little friend, Viper Sting. It’s an ability that I think will come in handy whether you’re a lackadaisical hunter (thanks Mania for the term!) or one who likes to go swimming in the raiding pool.

Caveat lector: Not every mob or raid boss has mana. A good many don’t, in fact. In those situations, you’re back to your old tricks. =P

guides, hunter kindergarten, pets, screenshots, Uncategorized

Bon Appetit: Pet Snacks!

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Buff food for us hunters is pretty self-explanitory. We like food that gives us Attack Power or Crit or Agility, or possibly even Hit or Haste, depending on our gear, spec, and circumstance. Don’t forget, though, that our pets can get buff food too:

lockenom

Currently, as far as I am aware, there are three foods in the game that will buff your pet. These are they:

Sporeling Snacks: An Outlands recipe available from Sporeggar rep, this food will give your pet 20 stamina and 20 spirit for 30 minutes. Requires level 55 to use.

Kibler’s Bits: An Outlands recipe from the Shattrath cooking daily, this food used to give your pet 20 strength and 20 spirit for 30 minutes– now it has been revamped and gives your pet 30 strength and 30 stamina for one hour. Requires level 55 to use.

Spiced Mammoth Treats: A Northrend recipe from the Dalaran cooking daily, this food has the exact same effect as Kibler’s Bits: gives your pet 30 strength and 30 stamina for one hour. Requires level 70 to use.

Now by looking at these three foods, it’s pretty clear that our poor old Sporeling Snacks have been outclassed. It doesn’t last nearly as long as the others and the stats are subpar. Still useful for leveling through Outlands if you happen to snag the recipe and mats, but even then, not really worth reaching for.

The other two, though, are your pets’ new best friends in raids or heroics!

Most cooks find that the Kibler’s Bits are much easier to make due to the easier-to-obtain ingredients. Me, I don’t have the recipe for either so I stalk the AH for both of them. They tend to be pricey when they pop up (though I can occasionally find Kibler’s Bits for quite a steal– I’ve bought a full stack of 20 for 3 gold) but the benefits they provide are pretty nice: a DPS boost and a survivability boost for your pet.

Plus, c’mon, he’s just so happy when you give him a treat!

So don’t forget to bring some with you alongside your hunter buff food: your pet will thank you. Oh, and also remember that the food doesn’t work like normal “pet food”… you don’t use the Feed Pet command to feed him. Rather, you “use” it like you would a food for yourself.

And no, I don’t know why an Outlands recipe and Northrend recipe with a usable-level discrepency are exactly the same either. I sort of suspect this may randomly change in a future patch, but hey, who knows?

In closing, I was a “caster tank” on Four Horsemen today. It was really fun, and I got a shiny new sword. *swings it around and hums contentedly as her pets dash for cover*

guides, hunter kindergarten, screenshots, Uncategorized

Aspect of the Viper and You

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Welcome, friends, to Hunter Kindergarten! Today’s topic: Aspect of the Viper.

First a little history lesson for your newer hunter types: You used to learn Aspect of the Viper at level 64, and it was a passive mana-regen that didn’t reduce your damage the way it does now– well, other than the fact that if you were in AotV, you certainly weren’t getting the RAP bonus from Aspect of the Hawk. Despite this, there were a lot of fights in Burning Crusade that were pretty mana-intensive and you’d see a lot of endgame hunters running around in AotV 99% of the time. Me? I was always a purist so I only used it in emergencies; staying in Hawk and living on mana pots, Elixirs of Major Mageblood and Mana Oil (RIP, my beloved Mana Oil *sniff*). But the point remains that Blizzard realized that hunters were pretty mana-inefficient, spending all their time in AotV, and missing out on the yummy RAP bonus from Hawk.

Enter Wrath of the Lich King and we have an all new Aspect of the Viper, and what’s more, we can learn it at Level 20:

wow_aspectofthevipertrain

^ Pike’s fourth hunter to hit the big two-oh. Back in the day Aspect of the Cheetah was the big thing you learned at 20, now I’m much more excited about Viper. Cause hunter gear with Intellect on it sorta doesn’t exist in the old world. /cough

So what’s the new Aspect of the Viper do? Simple. It slices the damage you deal roughly in half but gives you mana back at a pretty solid rate. Some of this mana you gain passively, but a lot of it you gain back per shot… as in, every time you shoot something, with either Auto Shot or a special shot, you get mana back. The damage penalty does not apply to your pet, but it does apply to things like Serpent Sting that you apply while under the effects of AotV.

When to use it:

–When you’re out of mana/nearly out of mana. This one’s a given. Happens a lot when you’re out leveling or solo’ing (no downtime!) or sometimes mid-fights in instances/raids with little or no mana replenishment from other classes/specs. Not a lot you can do about it in that case!

–Between pulls. Say you’re in a five-man. You pop into Hawk/Dragonhawk, do a pull, and oh look, you’re almost out of mana! Hop into Viper. Right as the next pull starts, go back into Dragonhawk. Now sometimes if you’re in a really good group the tank is just gonna be chain-pulling stuff left and right and you’ll still find yourself having to either stop and drink, or Viper during the fight, but overall I’ve still found Viper-between-pulls to be a good strategy and a very good habit to get into.

–When you’re briefly out-of-the-fight. When Gothik ports to the other side of the gate, Viper until he comes back. When you get the Grobbulus debuff and you have to run to the wall and you’re much too far away to do any shooting, Viper until you can get back (alternative strategy on this fight for Beast Masters in particular: if you’re pretty full on mana when this happens, use Aspect of the Beast instead, to maximize pet damage while you’re away.) When you’ve killed all the adds and are sitting around waiting for Noth to port back, use Viper. …yeah so those were all Naxx examples, but you get the picture. >.> Ah, here’s a non-Naxx one: In Utgarde Keep when the final boss dies for the first time before whats-her-name comes down and pulls an arise-my-champion on him, yeah, use Viper.

When not to use it:

–When you’re full on mana. This is a given, you don’t want that damage reduction to be on you. I know it’s easy to forget about it (I forgot alllll the time the first couple of weeks of 3.0.2) but once you’ve been playing with it for a while you start to remember it. There are addons out there that you can search for that will help remind you too.

–When you really really need to kill something fast. I’ve been in fights (usually five/ten-mans where there are less people to pick up the slack) where the DPS is really important and the Viper damage reduction gets really noticeable. In that case, if you run out of mana, it might be a good idea to use a mana pot rather than Viper. Remember now that you can only use one mana pot per fight so time it wisely. (Have I mentioned lately that I love being an Alchemist?)

Viper Bonuses:

There are a few things that can improve the performance you squeeze out of Aspect of the Viper. There is a talent in the Beast Master tree, Aspect Mastery, that reduces the damage penalty by 10%. This talent is a given for Beast Masters and several Marksman hunters choose to take it too. There is also a glyph, Glyph of Aspect of the Viper, that increases the amount of mana gained on attack by 10%. Finally, the four-piece hunter tier 7 set bonus will increase your ranged attack speed by 20% while you are in Viper. I can imagine all of these little bonuses combined would be quite delicious (although I no longer use the Viper glyph, myself).

In conclusion, Aspect of the Viper has definitely become an important part of playing a hunter. It’s something you’ll be juggling frequently with Hawk/Dragonhawk and it’s good to practice using it and learn when best to use it. I also really like the imagery; I visualize a viper storing up energy before it strikes at its prey. Fun times.

As always, if I made some horrible mistake or you have further ideas/thoughts on Aspect of the Viper, lemme know! I don’t work today so I’ll be sitting around in LFG looking for Heroics or OS25 I’m sure (so did I mention that I can totally survive Sarth now? Wash can too! More on that later, perhaps!)

guides, hunter kindergarten, shot rotation, Uncategorized

Booster Shots

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Cause they boost your damage. Eh? Eh?

Okay, cutting to the chase because I just had this blog post almost finished when Firefox decided to eat it for breakfast so I’m starting from scratch. Let’s take a look at some of the shots available in your Beast Master repertoire:

Steady Shot: Once exulted on high as your best friend, now your filler shot that you press when nothing else is available. You’ll still be using it a lot, though, and you’ll want to boost its damage up from “abysmal” to “mediocre” as much as possible, so keep a Glyph of Steady Shot on you. For great justice. And yes, this means you’ll be keeping Serpent Sting up. Anyways, when you can, you’ll be wanting to stick to Shots That Aren’t Steady Shot™ as much as possible…

Arcane Shot: Your new bestest buddy, you’re going to want to use Arcane Shot as soon as the cooldown is up. Ferocious Inspiration and Improved Arcane Shot are both mandatory talents– as if FI’s super-buff wasn’t awesome before, this talent now also increases your damage with Arcane Shot. Combine that with IAS and get ready to /giggle at your Arcane Shot crits, especially after Mirror of Truth procs.

Multi-Shot: I’ve had good luck with this one on the Training Dummies, it’s a reasonable damage boost that isn’t Steady Shot. This is one of those situational ones, though. You may not want to use it if you’re having mana issues (are solo or in a group without Replenishment); and you don’t want to use it when there’s CC about or there’s a chance you might hit (and aggro) another mob with it. I know CC and aggro and all that is kind of a non-issue right now but I feel that this is a piece of hunter lore that we should remember in case it becomes important in the future. Don’t Multi-Shot CC.

Aimed Shot: Most Beast Masters don’t take this unless they dabble heavily in PvP, and I don’t blame them– the damage increase is small these days and the mana cost is pretty prohibitive. Still, it’s a Shot That Isn’t Steady Shot™, and I find myself wondering if it would be worth it on a DPS dump fight (like Patchwerk) with lotsa mana Replenishment going on. I haven’t tested this one myself but I’d be curious to know if anyone else has and what they think.

Kill Shot: Use it when you can! Now that the cooldown is a lot shorter than it was before, you’ll probably be able to use this more than once on most boss fights. Take advantage of that fact!

And moving on…

What is my Shot Rotation, Pike?: At this point I don’t know if it’s a true shot rotation as much as a shot priority.

1.) Is Serpent Sting up? If yes, go to the next step. If no or it is about to run out, apply Serpent Sting and go to the next step.

2.) Is Arcane Shot’s cooldown up and ready to go? If yes, use Arcane Shot. If no, go to the next step.

3.) Use Steady Shot.

Basically every time you are ready to fire a shot you are going to mentally ask yourself those three questions and go from there. If you’re going to be using Multi-Shot and/or Aimed Shot, insert them appropriately between Arcane Shot and Steady Shot. Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it looks– you’ll be watching cooldowns and managing your pet, yes, and it can be a little difficult at times if you stink at multitasking like I do, but you’ll get it. Oh, and when I say mentally asking yourself those three questions– you don’t have to, uh, literally do that. But you get the picture, right?

In closing this might be sorta semi-offtopic but I’ve been seeing a lot of comments left lately on some blogs I read that involve people of various specs talking about how their shot rotation/cooldown-watching/whatever is bigger and as such their spec is “harder” and hence, superior. May or may not be followed by quoting Ghostcrawler. And it all kind of bugs me because it’s twisting the complexity of hunters down into one oversimplification and assumption.

Here’s my own take on this, and you’re free to (respecfully!) disagree if you wish of course, but this is my opinion– shot rotation alone does not equal skill. Pressng more buttons does not make you a better hunter. Having more cooldowns does not make you a better hunter.

Being able to trap indefinitely, kite indefinitely, spec your pet best for whatever job he is doing, not break crowd control, know what shots to use and when, know what gems/enchants/stats you want, know when to bend those gems/enchants/stats rules, popping your “big” cooldowns at the right times, know to listen to the raid leader when he or she says “melee do this” cause you have to apply that to your pet… all of this combined with being able to pull off your shot rotation, regardless of spec, is what defines a skilled hunter to me. You can’t base skill or difficulty level off of one aspect of the class alone, especially when said definition of “difficulty level” is so dependent on opinion and an individual’s strengths and weaknesses.

And while we’re on the subject, let me also point out that you don’t have to be a traditionally “skilled” raiding hunter to earn my respect; if you’re having fun with the class you’ve got my respect. Period. Hunters are for fun!

That’s all for today, and remember:

i_question

Test everything and come to your own conclusions! Don’t take my word for it (or any other blogger’s)– we’re a guide, not a rulebook. ^_^

(P.S. I promise this ramble wasn’t directed at any blogs that I read. Much <3 to you all)

guides, hunter kindergarten, pets, Uncategorized

Pet Specs Mega Post

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I’ve had a lot of people requesting guides on pet specs. I am more than happy to share my thoughts on them with you guys! Pet specs are typically pretty straightforward because there are only so many talents that will increase DPS, etc. However, they are also pretty situational, depending on what you want out of your pets. If you are doing solo’ing and leveling with your kitty then you may opt to go for something different. And that is 100% okay. But here are Pike’s recommendations:

Ferocity Pet:

ferocity11

This basic 16-point build scoops up Cobra Reflexes, Dash, Bloodthirsty, Spider’s Bite, and finally, Call of the Wild and Rabid. Basically all your essential DPS talents. However, you may also opt for something like this which replaces Avoidance/Rapid with Heart of the Phoenix (currently bugged, though) and Lick Your Wounds. Don’t underestimate the power of Lick Your Wounds, I shied away from it for a while because I figured I used Mend Pet enough. Well maybe I’m just unlucky but my pets seem to have been taking massive amounts of damage in the heroics and raids I’ve done so far, and it’s saved his furry butt several times. So I’ve been sold on it. Really that choice with what you do with those remaining points is up to you.

And once you’ve got the four extra points, you don’t have to worry about choosing, and you can also nab Charge and then one point in Great Resistance– that is your filler point and I think it’s the best place to put it, it gives your pet a nice boost on resistances. So you’d end up with this:

ferocity2

Cunning Pet:

These guys are a little tricky because there are many different routes you can take with them: PvP, utility, leveling, and though I’ve yet to try a heroic or raid with a Cunning Pet it’s something I’ll be looking into because I think they’ve got some nice DPS talents too. So I definitely don’t see a talent path for these guys to be nearly as straight-forward. That said, this what I’ve done with Tux and Eltanin:

cunning1

This is an all-purpose killing-stuff/utility build that also works decently for PvP (though I’d probably spec a bit differently for that). You pick up Cobra Reflexes, Dive, Owl’s Focus and Spiked Collar as your must-haves. After that things get a little hazy, I typically opt for Avoidance, Cornered, and just one point in Feeding Frenzy so I can nab both Wolverine Bite and Roar of Recovery with 16 points. Roar of Recovery is super awesome by the way, it makes me wish I had a Cunning pet out when I’m not using one. I <3 my Cunning pets. *clings to them* Really, I think that bottom portion of the tree is pretty customizable for your own needs. You may want to switch out Wolverine Bite for that extra point in Feeding Frenzy. Or for Carrion Feeder so you don't have to carry food around. It's a very flexible build, really. Once you get the four extra talent points you can stop worrying about it and do this:

cunning2

You can snatch up the extra Feeding Frenzy point, Carrion Feeder, Bullheaded (remember, this is a utility build more than a DPS build) , and then drop the final filler point in Great Resistance. Overall I have found this build to be very nice build for leveling/grinding and it’s also pretty effective in the occasional PvP skirmish if you, say, play on a PvP server or do the world PvP events sometimes. I’d probably opt for slightly different, but similar, pet spec for dedicated PvP but this one certainly isn’t bad.

Tenacity Pet:

There are a couple different ways to do Tenacity Pets and for me, what you want it to make your Tenacity Pet a pure tanking machine. That means you’ll be skipping a lot of the DPS talents in favor of longevity ones. This would be my 16-point build:

tenacity1

Charge, Great Stamina, and Natural Armor from the first tier. Blood of the Rhino (very important talent!! Makes your Mend Pet epic) and Pet Barding from the second. Guard Dog is your other “must-have” in this tree. After that you have a couple of options, myself I like Avoidance and Last Stand. Last Stand is just like the warrior move and it’s gotten me through a few elite group quests and I <3 it very much. You do have to manually activate it, though, so make sure it's on your pet bar. Picking up the four extra talent points, I'd go for something like this:

tenacity2

You can pick up Grace of the Mantis as well as your two remaining last-tier talents, Roar of Sacrifice and Taunt. I have some problems getting Roar of Sacrifice to work well, but I think I probably just have to sit down and figure it out. Now as you can see, we skipped out on Cobra Reflexes and Spiked Collar, the two must-have DPS talents from the previous trees, in favor of pure survivability. I’ve tried doing difficult quests with both methods– a more DPS-spec’d tank, and a more never-gonna-die-spec’d tank– and I have had much more success with the latter. Remember, your Tenacity pet isn’t there to DPS, he’s there to be a meatshield on those tough group quests!

Well, you asked for it, so you got it: Pike’s thoughts on pet-spec’ing. As I said, pet specs are oftentimes really very situational, but pet respecs are very cheap, so it works out.

I don’t work today and most of my guild doesn’t seem to have anything major planned either, so we were thinking about having going on a wild badge-fest heroics-a-thon. So I’m off to do the IRL stuff and then log on. As always, I love your comments and corrections!

guides, hunter kindergarten

Glyphs for the Discerning Beast Master: Part Two

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Continued from Part One:

Part Two: Minor Glyphs

Hunter Minor Glyphs are a tricky subject because there aren’t too many that are going to help you out in a PvE situation– it’s the PvPers who get luckier with them this time I think. Let’s take a look at all of them:

Glyph of Feign Death:
What it Does: Decreases the cooldown on your Feign Death by 5 seconds
Why it’s good: More Feign Death is never a bad thing. Even though I find myself using it less these days because WotLK tanks are monsters (in a very good way, of course!) I’m sure there are going to be situations in the future in raids where it gets resisted 99.9% of the time like it did for me in Burning Crusade *mutters*

Overall, a very nice little glyph.

Glyph of Mend Pet:
What it Does: Every time you use Mend Pet your pet gains 20 happiness. It’s a one-time thing (i.e., your pet does not gain happiness per tick.)
Why it’s good: Even though pet feeding is less and less needed these days what with pet talents available that almost make it a moot point, that doesn’t chase away certain scary memories in my head. Scary memories of starting a long boss fight and then watching my pet go from “Happy” to “Content” about ten seconds later cause I forgot to feed him before hand. That’s a big DPS loss and you can’t feed him until you’re out of combat.

Another scenario: a hard fight and your pet dies mid-action. You rez him and send him back. Previously you’d have had to send him in “Content” (and possibly even “Unhappy”). Now you just pop your Mend Pet a couple times and he’ll be good to go.

A hugely helpful glyph and an absolute Must-Have for Beast Masters.

Those are the two glyphs that I currently have in my spellbook. Let’s take a look at the others.

Glyph of Possessed Strength:
What it Does: Increases the damage done by your pet while in Eyes of the Beast by 50%
What it’s For: When I first heard about this glyph I think my reaction was akin to “… … … *blink*” But I’ve actually heard of hunters who are really into the whole gorilla-tanking-instances thing who this to generate threat. So I’m going to toss this one into the “Unconventional Solo Uses” category.

Glyph of Revive Pet:
What it Does: Removes pushback when you’re casting this spell
What it’s For: My pet rarely dies when I’m out solo’ing and chances are good that if you’re reviving your pet in an instance or raid, you’re not being attacked, because either you’re still mid-fight and the tank is taking the damage, or you’re recouping after a wipe. So this strikes me as being almost purely a PvP glyph. Especially seeing as pets seem to be everyone’s new favorite target in AV (they were the last time I was there, at least >.>)

Glyph of Scare Beast:
What it Does: Removes most of the pushback when you’re casting this spell
What it’s For: This would be really handy at low-levels when you’re cruising through the Barrens/Ashenvale pre-Freezing Trap. After that, though, this glyph seems to be basically for one thing, and one thing only: druids and hunter pets in PvP. And let me tell ya, this would be a pretty nice glyph for that purpose.

Glyph of the Pack:
What it Does: Slightly increases the range of your Aspect of the Pack.
What it’s For: Running back after a wipe… realliy I can’t think of any other circumstances where I use Aspect of the Pack, I’m afraid.

The Verdict:

So for a lot of us, we are left wondering what our third glyph should be. I don’t think there is really a wrong or right answer here and you should go with what you think will fit better for your own playstyle. If you PvP a lot, Glyph of Scare Beast has a lot going for it. Myself, I think I will probably wind up with Glyph of Revive Pet. I don’t feel like I need it, but I don’t see myself as having many more good options and I don’t PvP enough these days to warrant Glyph of Scare Beast.

And that’ll do it for my little dissertation on hunter glyphs. Hopefully it answered some questions for you. As always, lemme know if you have questions or if I’ve made a mistake or error. (And if you had a question for me on my last guide and I haven’t answered it yet, I will answer it when I get home from work. >.>)