Tag Archives: talents

Real Talk. Beast Mastery in 6.2…

…is basically the same as it was before.  Let’s take a closer look.

hunter notesAspect of the Fox is gone.  I used it on occasion but usually forgot it existed.  So /shrug

Tranquilizing Shot is now on a cooldown, unless you are glyphed.  Whether you prefer to use the glyph or not probably comes down to your own personal preference and the encounter.

And that’s it!  That’s it for Beast Mastery, unless you PvP, in which case you will notice that A Murder of Crows and Barrage now do less damage to player characters.  Not very fun, no, but whatcha gonna do.  We’re hunters, so we’re just gonna keep moseying along.

Now remember, things haven’t changed for us, really, but things may have changed for other classes and specs.  Marksmanship got a buff to Aimed Shot and a lot of the other classes were tweaked, so Beast Masters may not see themselves in the same spot on Recount.  We’ll just have to see how things shuffle out.

AS AN ASIDE, I’m seeing a few theorycrafting places report that Steady Focus is now preferable over Dire Beast.  I may have to test this and then report back.  Either way it should be close, so personally I wouldn’t fault you for using either talent.

**EDIT**: I have been informed in the comments that Focus Fire appears to be bugged.  My own quick testing seems to be confirming that it’s not acting right.  So stay tuned for that and be aware!

Shaking the Ol’ Talent Tree

You already know that a healthy diet is important overall, but it’s especially important when you’re trying to lose weight. There are a lot of diet trends out there and it may be unclear what a real nutritious diet looks like. This is how exipure works.

Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. Policy

Whether you’re simply looking to form good diet habits or specifically looking for a healthy diet for weight loss, dietitian Anna Kippen, MS, RDN, LD, offers some basic tips to keep in mind the next time you shop for groceries or order a meal at your favorite restaurant.

1. Don’t go for deprivation over smarter eating

“Just as overeating can spoil your weight loss efforts, so can starving yourself with a rice-cake-and-diet-soda diet,” Kippen says.

Deprivation or yo-yo dieting can in fact eventually slow down your metabolism and increase your risk of chronic disease. Check out the latest exipure real reviews.

Repeatedly gaining and losing weight — called weight cycling — is a common outcome of yo-yo dieting. Weight cycling may be linked to chronic inflammation and can increase your risk of chronic disease.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or maintain it, don’t deprive yourself of food. You can reduce the amount of food you eat a little if if you choose quality over quantity and follow these next tips. Visit https://www.amny.com/sponsored/exipure-reviews/.

2. Look beyond the number of calories

Eating for a healthy, vigorous life involves more than merely adding up daily calories or points.

“Food is so much more than numbers,” Kippen says. “Your body needs to maintain a certain calorie balance over time to achieve a healthy weight, but that adequate number of calories doesn’t guarantee your body is also getting an adequate amount of nutrition.”

Choose foods based on their nutrient density — meaning foods with valuable calories, packed with plenty of vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein and healthy fats.

Nutrient-rich foods provide the information your cells need to function and may help prevent disease. Best of all, they also make you feel more satisfied!

3. Don’t substitute veggie-based foods for veggies

Don’t fall for the veggie chips, crackers or pasta gaining a presence outside the produce section of your grocery store. At the end of the day, most veggie chips, for example, are a blend of vegetable powder (also called “flour”) with added starch and are comparable to tortilla chips.

If every so often you’re craving veggie chips that will satiate your need for a crunchy snack without regret, check the ingredients first. Try good quality veggie chips made from one or two ingredients only. The actual vegetable and a little salt listed is best, and there are great dehydrated options that don’t have the extra calories or starch of other chips out there. Read more about nucentix keto x3.

“I personally love carrot chips and beet chips because they’re full of flavor and are very satisfying” Kippen says.

Now head to the produce section — and buy real veggies. They provide a rich source of vitamins A, C, potassium, magnesium and fiber (which helps you feel full!) that you won’t find in processed chips. Eating fresh vegetables doesn’t have to be a pain, either.

“Load up on mini vegetables to save on time and effort — baby carrots or mini peppers are great options,” Kippen says. “Just rinse and they’re ready to go. And unlike chips, they’ll keep you full and contribute little to no calories.”

For optimal health, you should incorporate non-starchy vegetables into every meal of your day. Add spinach to a breakfast smoothie or salads to your lunch. For dinner, try cauliflower rice, spaghetti squash or zucchini pasta.

4. Choose whole fruit instead of juice

Fruit drinks are one of the major sources of added sugar in the American diet. They’re higher in sugar than whole fruit, cause a spike in blood sugar and trigger secretion of insulin, the fat-storing hormone. This blood sugar spike is shortly followed by a crash that can lead to exhaustion, brain fog, hunger and sugar cravings. These are the best Exipure reviews.

Fruit juice is also stripped of the fiber found in whole fruits. Fiber is one of four “shortfall nutrients” inadequately consumed in the standard American diet (SAD) and is crucial for a healthy gut and heart.

Instead of fruit juice focus on eating whole fruits such as berries, kiwis and apples.

“A note of caution though, just make sure you don’t overdo your fruit intake,” Kippen says. “While fruit has healthy vitamins, minerals and fiber it does also contain carbs that can spike your blood sugar if you overdo it. Eating a few big slices of watermelon in the summer may end up having more of an impact on your blood sugar than that small piece of chocolate you wanted in the first place,” she says.

5. Limit sugar consumption

Excess sugar intake is a major driver of obesity, type II diabetes and other chronic diseases. One study has linked excess added sugar to an increased risk for death from heart disease.

Wot I Think: The New Talent Tree

So I’m gonna steal a page from the wonderful RockPaperShotgun‘s book here and tell you, well… what I think about a certain something.  Today’s topic?  The New Talent Tree which everyone loves to hate!

You are staring into the abyss-like eyes of the worst thing to happen to videogaming since Pac-Man on the Atari 2600.

Okay, okay, let’s cut the theatrics.  I’m going to tell you what Blizz was going for with this.  What they were going for was as follows: “Oh hey, EVERYBODY who uses this spec takes this talent.  So since EVERYBODY takes it, we’ll just give it to that spec by default.”  That’s really it.  They didn’t sit around and have an evil laugh and make nefarious plans about how to homogenize the specs.  The specs are still intact; you just get the stuff you were going to get anyway without having to click on it.  That’s all.

That said, there is certainly something to be said for, well… the excitement of getting a new talent point at every level and getting to click on it.  Heck, there’s even something to be said for those old talents from back in the day that increased your crit chance by 1/2/3/4/5%.  Blizzard cut that stuff out because they thought it was boring, but those incremental number changes were exciting to me and to a lot of other people.  They made you feel like you were progressing.  Why do you think people get all excited for gear that stands a mere incremental number change above other gear?

The Long and Short of It (That’s What She Said): I miss the old talent trees but I’m certainly not sitting around crying as though someone just shot my dog.  And it’s definitely not the end of the world.  Also, A Murder of Crows is smurfing awesome. Do you remember the movie “We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story”, and how at the end a bunch of crows came and landed on the bad guy and then he disappeared? Yeah. That is this. Awesome.

Straight for the Jugular! Go for the Throat and Company

The discerning blog reader who has clicked around on my links and Armory profiles lately may have noticed something interesting; namely, my two level eighty hunters, while both Beast Masters, are currently sporting (slightly) different specs:

TawynTalentSpecAug09

LunapikeTalentSpecAug09

Tawyn is using a 53/11/7 build, and Lunapike a 52/12/7. It may look like a difference of one talent point on the surface, but it’s actually three. Let’s dig deeper and take a look.

Tawyn has: 3/3 Cobra Strikes, 1/2 Go for the Throat, and 0/2 Invigoration.

Lunapike has: 2/2 Invigoration, 2/2 Go for the Throat, and 0/3 Cobra Strikes.

First, we’ll take a look at Invigoration vs. Cobra Strikes.

Why the difference?

Short answer
: Lunapike just hit 80, while Tawyn has been 80 for a while and has thus amassed a relatively decent set of gear.

Long answer: Cobra Strikes is a solid DPS boost. However, Invigoration should theoretically keep you out of Viper for longer and thus could also be construed as a DPS boost. Which one you want to take is situational.

Lunapike just hit 80, as I mentioned. At the moment she is mostly doing dailies, and five-mans and heroics where Replenishment may or may not happen. She also is still mostly in leveling duds and thus has a very small mana pool.

Tawyn has a larger mana pool and is mostly in raids these days, where there’s often a lot of mana regen being thrown around.

Guess who is going to want Invigoration, and guess who’s going to want Cobra Strikes?

Both are, in my mind, acceptable, though in general, I feel a level 80 hunter is going to eventually migrate from Invigoration to Cobra Strikes. Your mileage may vary, as always, so play around with it… but I sorta think this is a common sense one. /nod

Now, let’s move on to Go for the Throat, that lovely, lovely talent that all hunters everywhere of every spec should have at least one point in, because it’s such a DPS boost.

Lunapike has this talent maxed out. Tawyn only has one point in there… the “other” point is going to max out Cobra Strikes.

Why the difference?

Short answer: Lunapike just hit 80, while Tawyn has been 80 for a while and has thus amassed a relatively decent set of gear. (Why yes, I did just copy paste this from above.)

Long answer: Go for the Throat works off of critical strikes. The more you crit, the more focus you feed to your pet. Let’s compare the critical strike chance of our two examples, unbuffed:

Here’s Tawyn:

TawynStatsUnbuffedAug09

And here’s Lunapike:

LunapikeStatsUnbuffedAug09

Big difference in stats, huh? Especially in crit rating! Tawyn crits almost twice as much as Lunapike!

This, my friends, is why Tawyn can get away with only one point in Go for the Throat. Because she crits enough that she only needs one point in there. Actually, even Tawyn is barely squeaking by. The online hunter spreadsheet tells me that unbuffed, I could use another point in GftT, if I had one to spare. Fully raid-buffed, though, I’m good to go, so I feel fine with not having the extra point… it’s hard enough to find places to pull talent points from as it is; there are so many goodies out there for us to nab.

But can you imagine if Lunapike, with her mere 17% crit, only had one point in Go for the Throat? If the online hunter spreadsheet could have a stroke, it would. Of this I have no doubt. All the hunter theorycrafters of yesteryear would collectively roll in their virtual graves. It’d be a disaster, I tell ya!

Conclusion? Well, when it comes to Beast Mastery, there really is no set-in-stone spec. 41/20/0 and its rigidness has been nailed tightly in its coffin for some time now and in its place we have a little bit of flexibility. Having mana issues? Invigoration is the way to go. Not so much? Go for Cobra Strikes and scoop up the extra pet crits. Below about 30%ish crit? Two points in Go for the Throat. Otherwise, you can get away with just one.

But above all, remember to try things out, and see what gets you the best results. Heck, you may have the best results by dropping some of the points in Survival all together and distributing them among the talents we talked about today. Research: it does a hunter good.

And with that… hunterbots, roll out!

Good news everyone!

goodnews At some point between the last time I seriously PvP’d (’bout a year ago) and now, Bloodlust Alliance figured out how to win Alterac Valley!

=D

…okay, so, while that is good news, it’s probably not the good news you came here to read. Fortunately, I have other good news. The latest rumblings on the PTR are the impending change to Animal Handler. This talent has changed much through the years. Initially it gave your pet some extra Hit, which was rendered obsolete with hit scaling. Then it gave your pet expertise, and that, too, is about to be made obsolete. So now what’s it gonna do? Increase your pet’s Attack Power by 5%/10%.

For the record, that is awesome. And though I have no hard numbers, if Blizz delivers that plus expands on pet scaling like they said they wanted to in time for 3.2, combined with the impending weird Kill Command reduction on Catlike Reflexes and the Wild Hunt buff… I’m guessing that Beast Mastery is pretty much “fixed”.

Gotta say I am a bit worried, though. Remember why Blizz nerfed us last time? A lot of it was because pets were doing over 50% of our damage and they said that was too much. To which I actually agree– I love having a pet doing, oh… 35, 40% of my damage, but anything over 50% makes me too uncomfortable. Anyways, Blizz nerfed the pets, while forgetting to, well, really buff the hunter to counterbalance it.

Anyways, with all these new changes I don’t see any way that a Beast Master pet won’t be back up to 50% or more of a Beast Master hunter’s total DPS, and I worry that Blizz will have their nerfbat at the ready again. But who can say, really? It’s one of those things where we’ll just have to wait and see. At least the Blues know we could use some love, and that’s always a good sign.

Improved Mend Pet vs. Spirit Bond

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… >.>