WTF?

I'm sure every other hunter blog will have their say on the patch 3.1 preview notes, and I don't plan to be any different - they're just way too bewildering to ignore.

Let's go over the ones that confuse me:

Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game.

This, I equate to: "Hey, starving child, I know you're hungry and will fix that soon." "Good news! I can't tell you what food we have, but you'll be happy to know it will come in your favourite colour!"

What on earth is the point of removing the ammo system at this point in time? It's a gold sink, it keeps engineers in business, and changing it won't have an effect on our DPS one way or another (unless Blizz somehow change the 15% quiver bonus to something different for each spec). I think it's great that they're removing it (I hate having to keep track of ammo as much as the next hunter), but I really don't get the timing.

Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.

Blizzard has said that they're happy with MM DPS. Why are they buffing this talent in particular? I'm not begrudging you MM hunters a buff; I just don't get why (or at least, why now).

Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6
sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.

Unless Ulduar consists of a whole raid zone's worth of Patchwerk, who would take this talent? Every time you moved, you would lose the bonus. A fight like Sartharion, for example, involves moving walls of fire and void circles; exactly why would this talent be worth taking, especially that far down in the Survival tree? Not to mention, it's absolutely useless as a PvP talent.


Overall, I suppose it's good we're getting at least a couple of definite buffs, and no nerfs except for Sniper Training (although the talent was pretty mediocre to start with, especially for trap-dancing Survivalists... so maybe it isn't a nerf but just different).

I'm still not convinced the huge overhaul hunters are supposed to get in 3.1 will improve our situation, but I suppose I'll have to reserve my judgement for when we see the rest of the changes.

When a hunter weapon isn't a hunter weapon

Every class has a primary weapon slot(s) in terms of usage.

In terms of loot, it's usual for each class to get priority for rolling on weapons in their primary slot, and those weapons can be called "theirs" - bows are definitely a hunter weapon, for instance, even though rogues and warriors can equip them.

However, it's slightly different for the secondary weapon slot: There's no specific melee weapon type (and indeed, no particular melee weapon) in WotLK I can think of at the moment that is considered a "hunter" weapon.

One-handers bring up visions of rogues. Staves are at home sitting on the backs of druids. Two-hand swords and axes belong to the DPS plate wearers, and while we *used* to have a bit of a claim on polearms - Shivering Felspine for instance - druids now own these too.

Every "hunter" weapon is shared by some other class, and because they're only "stat sticks" for us, they're actually viewed as theirs: Journey's End? Druid staff. Black Ice? Druid polearm. Betrayer of Humanity? Warrior, DK, or even Ret pally axe.... and those are our three best-in-slot.

I realize it's rare that people will tell you off for using a certain weapon, but if hunters used to get abused for taking a staff over some poor caster when they were actually wearing Lok'delar, I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing is happening with the weapons I listed above.

Should we get our own melee weapon? Maybe, maybe not. I can see why Blizzard is moving away from having items that are only usable by one class; it's a waste if you don't have that class in your raid. But... I always thought it was nice to walk through town and immediately tag someone as a hunter from their Sonic Spear; a melee weapon that everyone recognizes as something for hunters and not for a druid or rogue.

Where's my hunter weapon, Blizzard?

If I'd known it was worth 83g....

....I'd have vendored it earlier.

Clean out your bank, people! Even if you don't get as much gold back as I did, you can at least free a few bank slots of your Mara/MC/ZG keys/gongs etc.

Uses of Deterrence

Today's forum browsing brought me to a thread entitled, "Deterrence is pretty cool".

Initially I thought it was another hunter trying to say how great it is in Arenas (it's really not, although I've managed to use it to my advantage on some rare occasions), but to my surprise, the content was actually useful to me:

Deterrence deflects Sartharion's Flame Wall.

As a later post points out, your pet will still get hit and probably won't survive, so you shouldn't make a habit of doing it.... but I still think it's great for those emergencies when you realize you've either left it too late to move, or somehow moved the wrong way (or maybe your latency just sucks).

After more forum browsing, I've also found the following bits of info:

• Deterrence is unconfirmed to work on Sapphiron's Frost Breath
• Deterrence does NOT stop physical ranged attacks (no wonder I died to a Survival hunter last night with Deterrence up...)
• Deterrence deflects Grobbulus's poison cloud (not sure if it works if you're right in the middle of it, since it's only supposed to work from front-on)

Not too bad.... maybe I should try using it more often in raids, in spite of the fact that you can't DPS in the 5sec it's up. Would be interesting to see what else it can deflect!

Lunar Madness

Repair bill from Nexus: 0g

Repair bill from UK: 10g

Repair bill from DK: 20g

Repair bill from HoS: 80g

Getting to the Elders in each of those dungeons solo: Priceless

I don't recommend it though, HoS probably would have been quicker and easier with a group.... not to mention cheaper. Oh well - twas epic fun!

Fishing dailies fixed

I picked up Crocolisks in the City yesterday (I've been doing that one to try and get the other 3 croc mini-pets I still don't have), and discovered that you no longer automatically get the quest item on your first cast.

I guess Blizz finally fixed the fishing quests, so if you were hoping to use the bug to catch Old Crafty, you may have missed your chance.

I haz new banner!

What to do when the servers are down? Make a new blog banner!

I've always meant the banner to look something like the above (ie. with at least the first arrow being shot from Rhok across the title), but I don't usually have time to spare for artistic projects. I'm glad I finally got around to doing it though, it looks a little better now!

Maybe if I can somehow get some kind of recording program to work with my computer (at the moment it lags me out in WoW if I run FRAPS or WeGame), that can be my next project for a rainy day....

Patch 3.0.8 summation?

Harsh.


I'd predicted at least a 500dps drop for my personal DPS when fully raid buffed. Last night's WWS logs showed ~700DPS less than Monday, so even if you take a couple of hundred DPS for a different raid makeup and getting used to using Arcane Shot again, I can still consider my predictions correct.

Oh well - if my guild can still down Patchwerk, I'll be fine. If not.... it'll depend whether I feel guilty enough to change my glyphs and/or spec (/gasp!) to compete with our top DPSers again (damn you, DKs.... soloing 60 raids and pwning people in Arena isn't enough for you that you have to be top raid PvE DPS too?!).

Meanwhile, I'm still undecided on my new spec:

50/16/5 is what I have now, but really the 2 points in Improved Tracking (and possibly the 1 point in Frenzy) are floaters - I could maybe move them to Improved Arcane Shot (which BRK professes to be the new "must have" talent), or I could pick up Rapid Killing again, or I could pick up Improved Stings, or I could even try Exotic. The jury is still out at this point.... I'll wait until more BM hunters (if there are any left that aren't going MM or Surv!) start discussing talents, and maybe I'll respec again.

As for other random observations of Patch 3.0.8:

• Level 60 raids (Onyxia, ZG, AQ20 etc) drop less gold. Boo.
• Wintergrasp has been stuffed (boo), although it may be fixed now (hooray).
• Arenas are stuffed (boo).
• Deterrence is amusing, but still pretty useless in PvP - I did a couple of Arena games before they got shut down, and I spent the entire duration of Deterrence turning in circles to avoid incoming damage - basically like an Ice Block that you have to work at to keep up. In one 2v2 match, the rogue/mage team just had 1 stand in front and 1 behind - I still died.

All in all, Patch 3.0.8 was pretty average for me... I could have done without it, even if hunters *hadn't* had the epic nerf. I guess one good thing is that I can now work on my old-world reputations (Timbermaw, Hydraxian Waterlords, Cenarion Circle, Brood of Nozdormu) and get the full benefit of killing grey mobs.

They weren't critter bites

I have no idea how this bug happened, but it was interesting while it lasted - almost everyone who went past stopped in their tracks to /boggle when they saw me.

All I know is: I had Slimer (my crocoslime) out and tried to summon my Disgusting Oozeling to match. It disappeared for a second after I summoned it (even though I still got the debuff that comes with it), so I summoned a different minipet. This one disappeared too, so I summoned another... and another... Finally I decided to give up, and mounted my Black War Bear, intending to do some banking. When I dismounted, however, all the pets I had summoned suddenly reappeared!

I tried to reproduce the bug but couldn't do it - maybe someone else can figure it out. It stays when you mount up (although I'm not sure if it will stay when you zone), so you can get plenty of amusement out of it!

I had a spare stable slot

Because I'm not currently using my 5th stable slot, I decided to tame a "Crocoslime" when the appropriate Oracles daily (A Cleansing Song) came up.

I probably will end up letting Slimer go at some point; Quickblade (my ravager) just doesn't seem to last long enough in Arenas for my taste and I might end up getting a crab.

However, since this is the last chance for hunters to tame this pet (the next patch will make it untameable), I thought I should at least get a screenshot of it!