I want to tame one. I don’t know how I missed this… I must have been too focused on playing not to notice these tall slim beauties.
Category: Hunter Specs
Hey everyone,
I write posts for myself. Just kidding? I did start the blog on WordPress so I could keep track of all the hunter resources I would find on the web. Now that baby is here(He is about 2 months old) and I have a full time job, my game time has whittled down to only Saturdays and Sundays. This is a more of a exaggeration. I still play occasionally on the weekday. My raid days are over. My gaming high is limited to one or two 5 mans, which I usually do on my rogue, maybe some dailies on my main, and tiding up some achievements until MoP comes out.
The blog is more like a forth priority after the wife, the baby, and my game time. There wasn’t really much to report. No gear lists to make, no interesting tames, and for whatever reason the beta client did not like me. It’s okay. I didn’t have time to play on the beta and I didn’t feel like doing things twice. So here we are:
Hunter Glyphs and their changes
Frostheims preparation guide for Patch 5.0.4
I do recommend getting any glyphs that you are missing in your spell book. For your hunter, Vendor your melee weapon if it is soulbound. For any melee class who could hold a relic, or whatever else those lesser classes, like rouges would use, vendor that shit too. I will miss seeing a staff or stick on my back but range weapons just look cooler. What else was on my list? Oh, really start to decide which hunter pets you might want to let go, I take it back, release all but your spirit beasts. BM is supposedly the best spec out there. I would also make one spirit beast a cunning pet for PVP, another tenacity for tanking and solo-fun, and the third one for PVE.
BTW, my brother just told me that the patch is going to take about 6 hours to download. Go figure.
Baby is doing fine. He is about 12 lbs now. I couldn’t have asked for a more loving and caring wife. For a girl who did not want to have kids, she is doing a great job.
I’ll report more later(about the game changes). If you look at my trend of blog posts, I usually report things when they go live.
‘Til next time… (which is hopefully tomorrow, or sometime sooner than 2 months)
! Guntitan
14Oct
It looks like BM and SV are getting buffs. Tempted to go on the PTR to try it out.
Hunter
Beast Mastery
Survival
Pet
It even looks like my tenacity pets are getting a buff. Maybe they will be the AOE kings again. Imagine a gorilla solo tanking with a ass stomp animation?
Blizzard give me more. Fix Kill Command’s range, Bestial Wrath’s cool down timer needs to be shorter, increase the damage that the hunter does during The Beast Within, and maybe increase the speed our pet runs by 30% by default.
That should fix our DPS being on the bottom. The frog pic is just some random pic from my phone.
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan
08Oct
The pics are up. The quote says it all about this set and its look.
“we limited the use of dragon heads to the helm and chained leathery wings around the shoulders which gives the impression of a skeletal dragon crouching over the Hunter’s upper body. “
Reminds me of the Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition Frosty pet and it resting on your upper body. This is actually a set I’m looking forward to collecting. The look is amazing! I do like the tier sets that do make you look like you hunted for it. So how does the Murloc set fit in? Did we go to Elwynn Forest just to hunt Murlocs? I’m pretty sure someone made a comic about that.
The bonuses so far are:
- 2P — Steady Shot and Cobra Shot generate double the amount of focus.
- 4P — Your Arcane Shot ability has a chance to grant 30% haste to you and your pet for 15 sec.
This set bonus just screams BM to me. Since when after patch 4.1 did our pets get buffs? I do feel this is more of a way for Blizzard to test a increase in focus regeneration and haste on Hunters and their pets. Why does the set bonuses scream BM to me? First of all my strongest attack, *cough* Kill Command, as BM is highly dependent on having enough focus required to cast it. The set bonuses will also allow me to reforge away from haste and more in to Mastery or Crit.
In the BM tree there are several abilities, besides Kill Command, dependent on Crit:
- Killing Streak – 20% damage increase and 10 focus reduction to next Kill Command.
- Invigoration – Self focus regeneration based on Pet critical hits.
- Go for the Throat – Pet focus regeneration based on Your critical hits.
- Sic ‘Em! – After Arcane shot critically hits, next pet’s ability costs 0 focus.
Mastery gets:
- Kill Command – Especially useful for breaking Rageface’s rage.
- Pet Auto Attack – Constant damage increased by Mastery.
- Claw, Bite, and Smack – Constant damage increased by Mastery.
Basically you can build your hunter 3 ways(Crit, Mastery, or Haste) without the bonuses. If you manage to get your 4 set bonus for Tier 13, I would focus on reforging into Crit or Mastery. Dropping haste will be good but we still need people to test on the PTR. When the Theory crafters figure it out, I will post.
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan
I just did a few target dummy test with a Synapse Springs and Ricket’s Magnetic Fireball macro’d into my shots and without.
#showtooltip Arcane Shot
/use 10
/use 13
/cast Arcane Shot
#showtooltip Cobra Shot
/use 10
/use 13
/cast Cobra Shot
#showtooltip Kill Command
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Charge
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Rabid
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Bestial Wrath
/use 10
/use 13
/cast Kill Command
I did 16k dps in about 2 mins with them macro’d to Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot and Kill Command.
Then did 17.5-18k dps in about 2 mins with them only macro’d to Kill Command. So I got about a 2k increase in DPS by changing my macros. I need to run more tests but I thought my initial test results were astounding. I think we need to do more testing and brain storming on how to improve our DPS. Especially BM since I tested this as BM.
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan
Today’s topid: Blizzard has released patch 4.0.6!
Why?: Because there are so many classes that got buffed up the kester when Cata came out.
Many people will not agree with what Blizzard did because it was there class that got nerfed. What they do not realize is that they are a minority! The entire WoW community has been screaming for these changes. Here are the finalized patch 4.0.6 notes.
Hunters
- Aimed Shot weapon damage has been increased to 200%, up from 150%. In addition, the base cast time has been reduced to 2.4 seconds, down from 3.
- Arcane Shot damage has been increased by 15%.
- Aspect of the Wild, Aspect of the Hawk, and Aspect of the Fox can now be cast while mounted.
- Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.
- Casting Trap Launcher, Distracting Shot, and Scare Beast now cancel Auto Shot when cast. This is to make it easier to crowd control creatures with Auto Shot while moving enabled.
- Concussive Shot duration has been increased to 6 seconds, up from 4.
- Deterrence now provides 100% chance for melee attacks to miss instead of 100% parry chance. This means that attacks that cannot be parried, notably some rogue abilities, can now be prevented by Deterrence, and the hunter will gain the benefit of Deterrence even if disarmed.
- Dust Cloud’s cooldown and duration have been modified to make it closer aligned with Tailspin (same effect, different pet).
- Freezing Trap now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
- Kill Command’s damage has been increased by 20%.
- Kill Shot’s attack power scaling has been increased by 50%.
- Master’s Call now has a 35-second cooldown, down from 1 minute, and its range has been increased to 40 yards, up from 25. In addition, the visual effect is more obvious.
- Wing Clip now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
- Talent Specializations
- Beast Mastery
- Animal Handler now provides a passive 25% bonus to attack power, up from 15%.
- Marksmanship
- Chimera Shot’s overall damage has been increased by roughly 50%.
- Wild Quiver (Mastery): Chance for this to trigger per mastery has been increased by approximately 17%.
- Survival
- Black Arrow damage has been reduced by 15%.
- Explosive Shot damage has been reduced by 15%.
- Hunter vs. Wild has been increased to 5/10/15% Stamina, up from 4/8/12%.
- Into the Wilderness (passive) has been reduced to a 10% Agility increase, down from 15%.
- Beast Mastery
- Pets
- Pets now have 70% of the master’s armor, rather than a different value based on which type of pet they are.
- Shale Spiders now correctly have a special ability (Web Wrap).
- Bad Manner (monkey) now properly breaks from damage.
- Glyphs
- Glyph of Concussive Shot redesigned. It now limits the maximum run speed of the target while Concussive Shot is active.
- Hunter Bug Fixes
- Aimed Shot no longer ignores the Fire! buff when cast by macro.
- Camouflage is now breaking when the hunter’s traps deal damage to a target.
- Chimera Shot’s particle effect animations should now display correctly.
- Cobra Shot now properly increases the duration of the Serpent Spread Serpent Sting.
- The Focus Fire spell effect is now cooler than your best collection of green rectangles.
- Wild Quiver’s effect per point of mastery value should now be consistent.
- Before shooting, male undead hunters will no longer look away from their targets.
- Pet Fixes
- Pet families added in Cataclysm should not be missing talents.
- Pets should fight all underwater creatures, even if the hunter is out of melee range.
- Ancient Hysteria should not able to affect low-level characters.
- Ancient Hysteria now correctly affects pets.
- Embrace of the Shale Spider now provides resistances so that those resistances are not lost if this buff overwrites Blessing of Forgotten Kings.
- Ferocity-category pets in the dog and fox families now have access to the pet talent Charge.
- Mobility can correctly be learned by land-based hunter pets.
- Ravage no longer counts toward stun diminishing returns.
- Undead hunters now start with Revive Pet on the action bar.
- The pet Spellbook entry for Serpent Swiftness now shows its rank.
- Shale Spiders are no longer missing a special ability.
- The Shell Shield (Terrorpene) visual has been enlarged and should now be seen when cast.
- The tooltip for the armor value in the Character pane should now be showing the correct amount of armor granted to pets.
SHOUT OUTS: This shout out goes to all other hunters! BM is back baby! Wooters!
Thank you very much and happy hunting.
UPDATED FOR 4.0.1: Added in new abilities and buffs. Got rid of the abilities that no longer exist. Sorry the shots I set up on the middle bar is for my BM spec. I might update this post later to include the other 2 hunter specs.
TellMeWhen is a great AddOn. You set it up so that when certain buffs are active, it displays big icons on your screen. If you are using the SpartanUI it also shrinks your action bars which makes them hard to see your shot cool downs. With TellMeWhen you can even display your shots and their cool down timers as big icons.
It lets you pull off your shots with easier timing and reapply your serpent sting when the proc from your tier 10 2-piece or 4-piece set bonus.
How to set up?
TellMeWhen uses the names of the shots, stings, or buffs you want to keep track of when they proc. For the names of the buffs you can get them from Wowhead. Remember the spell that is proc’d by the gear is different from the actual description on the item’s tooltip or name of the buff.
Look up the buff you want to keep track off on Wowhead.
Here is our tier 10 set. Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter’s Battlegear
Then click on the 2 procs.
We are not typing “Item – Hunter T10 2P Bonus” into TellMeWhen. If you scroll down you will see the name of the buff and a link to its description.
We can even set up our procs from our trinkets like Needle-Encrusted Scropion or Darkmoon Card: Greatnesss.
When you are done figuring out which buffs/shots you want to set up you can configure each buffs/shots to display in its own way. My shots and buffs are set up in the following way:
Buff or Procs
Turn on “Enable Icon”
Icon type > Buff/Debuff
Buff or Debuff > Buff
Unit to watch > Player
Show when buff/debuff > Present
Turn on “Show Timer”
Debuff aka Stings
Turn on “Enable Icon”
Icon type > Buff/Debuff
Buff or Debuff > Debuff
Unit to watch > Target
Show when buff/debuff > Absent
Turn on “Show Timer”
Turn on “Only show if cast by self”
Shots
Turn on “Enable Icon”
Icon type > Reactive spell or ability
Show icon when > Usable
Here are the Procs and Shots I have set up for my Beast Mastery spec with the configuration exceptions:
Top Row – Tier 10 Buffs/Hunter Buffs/Pet Buffs
Rabid Power – Buff from Rabid. Unit to watch > Pet
Terrifying Roar – Any pet ability in this spot will be suffice.
Middle Row – Serpent Sting/Shots
Serpent Sting – remember this is a debuff.
Kill Command – Icon type > Cooldown, Show icon when > Always
Kill Shot – Cooldown type > Reactive spell or ability, Turn on “Show Timer”, Cooldown type > Spell or ability
Focus Fire – Icon type > Buff/Debuff
Bottom Row – Equipment Buffs/Talent Tree Buff/Pet Buff
Set up bars however you like. Rows or columns.
I set up mine going horizontally across covering my toon but in the center of the screen. You could probably set them up horizontally at the top of the screen or even vertically on the right side. It is entirely up to you and it might take some experimentation. When I focus on DPS’ing my tunnel vision sets in so I don’t like haveing stuff like that on the side.
If they are taking up too much space and are just an eyesore configure the bars so they only show when you are in combat.
TellMeWhen is a great addon to keep track of buffs and shots. It is one of the few I recommend. I even took the time to write this blog post. It means something to me. It has helped increase my dps and watch for buffs that are important. I hope it does the same to all you, Young Guns, out there.
Don’t forget to test your procs and shots on the test dummies before you head back into ICC. If the icons don’t pop up on TellMeWhen’s action bar they could be broken because of a misspelled spell or buff, could be the wrong name for the buff, or wrong configuration(Cooldown, Buff/debuff, or Reactive spell or ability).
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan
Resources
Elitist Jerks Hunter FAQ for 4.0.1
OutDPS!
Warcraft Hunters Union
Petopia
Wowhead Hunter Talent Calculator
Wowhead Pet Talent Calculator
Notes
A few reminders:
- Dash is broken don’t spec into it. In order for our Hunter to use Kill Command our pet has to be 5 yards from the mob. Spec by adding a talent point into Natural Armor and sacrificing a talent point in Bloodthirsty for Charge. Our pets talent trees should look like this spec.
- Hit cap has change and its now capped at 246 Hit. It looks like its at 30 hit per 1% of hit rating.
- Everyone is still theory crafting. All specs have about the same DPS. I am not even worried about the other specs. If you want to play MM or SV go for it.
- I spec like Frost.
- For stat priority its Hit > Agi > Crit > Haste. For gemming its a little different. For blue gem slots use Hit and Agi/Hit gems, you might only need 1 depending on your socket bonus. I like to match socket bonuses so I have 3 Glinting Dreadstone on Guntitan right now. Here are the blue gems you could use depending on what your hit is at without gems: Rigid Stormjewel, Rigid Majestic Zircon, Glinting Dreadstone. When it comes to gem slots always gem Agility and use Reforging to get the hit you need. It is cheaper that way. For red gem slots Delicate Stormjewel and Delicate Cardinal Ruby. For Yellow sockets you can use Deadly Ametrine.
- For Reforging reforge into Mastery. Its fun and not expensive at all. Reforge Haste into Mastery. Reforge Crit into Mastery if there is no Haste. I reforged some of my crit into Mastery and only lost about 3% crit.
- Engineering tinkering is stacking with regular enchants. For head slot put in both Mind Amplification Dish + Arcanum of Torment. You can’t use the mind control if your pet is out. For the hand slot use Hyperspeed Accelerators or Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket + Enchant Gloves – Superior Agility. For the boot slot use Enchant Boots – Superior Agility + Nitro Boosts. For your back slot use Enchant Cloak – Superior Agility + Flexweave Underlay.
- Our AOE is not broken. Use Multi-Shot with Snake Trap, either fire trap and a Worm’s Burrow Attack.
- Add Killing Streak to your TellMeWhen buff bar.
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan
Evil…
No seriously…
Evil…
What does this patch mean for Hunters?
- You probably want to buy all the glyphs you possibly you can for your Hunter. We have 3 tiers of glyphs we can use and we will be using them. They no longer get destroyed, too.
- We need to figure out the best possible dps spec all over again. Even though the Hunter’s Union said that all 3 specs’ dps is really close. Frost is covering all the changes and what he thinks are the best dps glyphs and talents to use per spec. So please head over there since I have not spent the time testing out the changes. As you can see I’m still updating.
- BM hunters are back for raiding.
- Put Tame Beast back on your action bar. We are a utility class and now our pets bring all if not most buffs we use for raiding. Boo yah! Go tame 1 pet of every family. Maybe not that many here is short list. We have 25 stable slots and it’s time to fill it.
- More health, more armor, and better pet scaling. We are tougher than ever and more than likely still a priority target for PVP. Sad.
I’m glad the patch is live. There is a guild raid tonight so we’ll see how it goes.
There is a new resource for all classes at WoWTal.com.
I would like to say, “Thanks!” to MMO-Champion.com for creating the site and for keeping us up to date on all the changes. To Frost too and the guys at the OutDPS! podcast for testing these changes and for also keeping us up to date.
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan
Don’t tell me how to spec or gem. Don’t send a in game whisper and tell me that something about my hunter is wrong. Don’t tell me to replace my trinkets because I know that already. I don’t care if you have a leet hunter in your guild. With my current gear and spec and gems, I know what works for me. Before I go out to raid with my changes, I test them out on the target dummies. I ask other hunters who have similar gear with better dps for advice and I frequent the Wowhead Hunter Forums.
Unbuffed
MM Spec with current gear is displayed below.
If I switched out my spec to SV this is the results.
MM Spec with current gear and with switched out ArP gems.
Buffed
MM Spec with current gear is displayed below.
If I switched out my spec to SV this is the results.
MM Spec with current gear and with switched out ArP gems.
As you can see there is about a 800 DPS difference between SV and MM. There is about a 50 – 100 DPS difference between the MM ArP and non Agi specs.
There must be a reason why you are whispering me on your non-leet-non-hunter alt. When I need help I’ll ask. I know my class and my hairy feet should be a testament to that.
‘Til next time…
! Guntitan