I origionally wasn’t going to include this, but it’s just too damn funny to leave out.

We enter SSC last night as usual and start clearing trash. The first several pulls go without issue and are completely flawless. We are approaching Tidewalker, and are facing down the last pull before the Murlocs. We have been chain pulling all night so there isn’t much time between pulls.

I am on mis-direct duty for the off tank so I am out in front of the group. Now we have 3 druid trees with us … Picture this, 4 hunters out in front of the raid getting ready to make a pull. Suddenly a tree appears on the left hand side of your screen. YEAH! Extra healing for the hunters if we happen to get smacked … no wait, where the hell is he going?

Let me ask a question? Has your auto-run ever gotten stuck? I would like to say no, but I am not sure ... I have always just chalked it up to my own stupidity … but I suppose it could have.

So the tree proceeds past the hunters, through the 6 mobs in front of us and off the end of the platform into the water … dying. Mobs come flying at us, completely unprepared .. despite our attempts at saving the pull, we were laughing WAY too hard to be able to do anything other than wipe.

I salute this druid tree for making an unannounced pull that is generally reserved for hunters and their pets, you sir are now an honorary hunter.

In response to a comment left on my last entry, I have done some research and can not find anything confirming that the auto shot no longer clips. I read through the patch notes, (again), scoured over the Elitist Jerks forum, and BRK can not confirm this. If that is the case, it would appear, (if there is a link to this please post it), that it was something that was done in the back ground. I have noticed from my own testing using the addon Little Trouble, that I do still clip auto shots, but with the 3:2 macro DPS is up rather than down for doing it … I know there was an exploit right after the patch came out that would allow you to fire two auto shots off at the same time, but Bliz has fixed this.

On 4/23 Nitehawk wrote:

One point of clarification about clipping. Since 2.3, the mechanics now apparently allow for the autoshot gcd timer to start during a steady. Normally, an autoshot cannot fire for 0.5 seconds after a special. However, as long as you don't cast a steady shot less than 0.5 seconds before the autoshot fires, that 0.5 gets embedded in the steady cast time. This is the genius of the 3:2 rotation. It delays the autoshot, but not by much, and doesn't actually delete it. Of course, if you cut it too close to the autoshot, you are losing a mana-free 1000+point hit (on average). Which hurts. My understanding is that the !cast command helps to prevent this...

I would be interested in any official writing about this as I would think that the GCD would not allow this to occur. This is not to say that it is not correct, I am unsure if it is correct. Enough people read this blog that I am hoping that someone out there can clear this up once and for all, even if just for me. I have also been unable to find clarification on the ! command before the shots other than it's supposed to be there now. I did for the sake of testing remove this from my macro last night, (kept the origional on the bar right next to it just in case), and used that one without it during our SSC run. I saw no difference in my DPS or rotation while using the two macros. They clipped just the same, and gave the same DPS curve.

I did read something that made me smile though …

“Fixed a bug in which Hunters were able to disengage from combat using Feign Death during boss encounters”

Why couldn't this have been "working as intended" like so many things we hate?

On a completely seperate note , I finally buckled down and did two things yesterday ... I am one of the only hunters who didn't fish or cook, but I broke down yesterday and got my fishing to 245, that fishing quest for the skill at 225 is probably the dumbest thing I have done in game to date, and got my cooking skill to 375. This should make my life a little cheaper as I can now cook my own cat food. I am sure that Tygre is relieved as she no longer has to cook for me to make sure Sapphire doesn't starve!