Today is another installment of Huntering 101. I have not done a piece on this in quite some time as there has not really been a need, but today I think there is a need. Today’s is entitled:

Omen and You.

For this discussion I am going to use a single target boss fight such as Void Reaver because there are agro drops and things change. Anyone can stand and shoot, and avoid pulling agro on a fight such as Gruul, mainly because it’s 1 target, 1 tank, let them get way out ahead and go to town. Hence the term Tank and Spank.

Rule #1: Trust your omen at all costs. If your omen says you are over the tank, you Feign Death, and you are still over the tank, you are.

Void Reaver is a little trickier than Gruul due to the agro dumps. Every time a tank gets punted across the room, VR does an agro dump on that tank allowing you, single target high DPS, to climb the agro chain. This is where your omen comes into play. You should use FD every 30 seconds, but then again if you are anything like me, if you don’t have to FD, you don’t … instead you save it for when you might really need it to save your skin.

There are several methods to the VR fight, ours it not the most common but it works. As a hunter you head in, throw up your Mis-Direct, and start DPSing. You watch Omen like a hawk and you see that you are right up with the tank. You FD. Omen still says you are up with the tank. There are addon’s that tell you if your FD was resisted, it doesn’t say that it was …. So you keep DPSing. STOP!!! WAIT!!!

We are going to pause right here.

Rule #2: Don’t always trust your add-ons. Omen included.

I have found that omen is the most reliable add-on for telling threat that there is. It is the only threat add-on that I use. People are welcome to use as many add-ons as they may, but when it comes to threat, you should probably only use one, and trust that one. Your add-on that tells you if your FD was resisted does not always match omen and vice versa, therefore you are at an impass. I have NEVER pulled agro when omen said that I wouldn’t. NEVER.

If omen doesn’t show your agro go away when you FD, just ASSUME that it didn’t and stop DPSing, until the tank has lead again. Don’t just say, “Omen is screwed up” and wipe the raid.

At this point in raiding you should also have a feel for your agro … you should know how fast you build it … every time there is a major change or upgrade to WoW the add-on’s are messed up for a few days … you should be able to go without OMEN if need be … if you can’t you need to pay closer attention and learn to fight without it … loss of it should not be raid stopping.

Rule #3: During an AOE fight, there is nothing that says you must stay on the same target until its dead.

On an AOE fight such as Hyjal this is even easier. You should probably never have to FD here. You should never pull agro either. When you have multiple tanks all with different targets, (generally 3 in the case of Hyjal), that gives you easy access to 3 different targets assuming you are using some type of raid assist … if you aren’t you fail but that’s another discussion. If you see your agro approaching a tank … oh wait, you are following a tank target right? Anyway if you see your agro getting to the point where you are about to pull agro, switch to another tank’s target … it’s really that simple.

In conclusion, trust your omen at all costs … 99% of the time it is correct ahead of other add-ons. If you didn’t know this, my omen talks to yours so yours knows what my threat on that target really is … therefore it’s as accurate as it can get.

Basically if you pull agro and the only person you kill is you ... and then we wipe at 1% while you and your 1kDPS, (give or take), died at 65%, we would have downed them ... so it is possible that the wipe is your fault ... in the end you still killed us all.

Last night was great. I have not been that excited about dropping a boss in ages. I honestly didn’t think we were going to get Anetheron down until we were further into the T5 content. It would appear that none of the raiders, the officers, the GM, or the raid leader thought we would either.

If you have ever been to Mt. Hyjal, the trip to the third boss is like changing zones. It’s about a 6 min ride. So … The instance is large enough that you mount up and ride around in it. It might as well be another zone. Yep, you guessed it. We got lost. We turned right when we should have turned left. So we are standing out side these gates staring at these big uglies going, “I don’t think this is right.” Next you hear, so does anyone know what this boss does? “It has something to do with the mana users in the raid exploding.” “What?? Were all F’in mana users??”

Needless to say we found our way over to the horde base, and did some wiping, kiting, and generally having fun with the trash.

As you can see from the picture Benedykt is starting to become quit the respectable looking priest. Those shoulders I stole on the AH for 260g. [Pattern: Swiftheal Mantle] drops out of BT and generally goes for 700g on Greymane. My stable of toons with new shoulders 1 … Moron who miss listed on the AH 0.

Knurd got his new trinket this weekend. I have been hunting for the Ace of Storms for weeks without seeing it. The ace generally goes for 350g or so on the server. As most of you know, the Darkmoon Faire is nestled outside Goldshire right now, and so everyone is listing their cards and what not. I check the AH and low and behold, Ace of Storms! I picked that up for 180g. My stable of toons with new shoulders and a new trinket, [Darkmoon Card: Wrath] 2 … Moron who miss listed on the AH 0.

In conclusion it was a great weekend, probably one of the better ones in wow I have had in a couple of weeks.

This morning I was looking through some of the screen shots I have saved over the last year or so. (Yes, I am a Post BC player who has been playing since the end of last summer so less than a year). Looking through your screen shot folder is like looking through a picture album. I found myself looking at who the players were that are with me, and remembering what we did and was good and in some cases bad about it.

What it really made me look at is some of the armor graphics that blizzard uses. Some of the armor sets that Knurd has worn during his life make me cringe, but it’s fun to take a walk down memory lane none the less.



BRD and the first time Knurd every really saw a boss!



The Fang Armor out of The Barrens really is not a bad set of armor.



I am going to jump forward now, and this is right after he turned 40 wearing the turtle scale armor. Again not a bad set.



The helm is the worst piece of this one. Well and the tabbard.



This isn't too bad if you are planning on making money on the side as a clown doing children's birthday parties.



I put this one in mainly because it will make some people smile, you can't really see his gear here. :o)



My first trip into Kara wearing that helm of second sight. Ug. Then we down gruul for the first time and that thing comes back to haunt me again. Why does bliz have to reuse the ugly graphics?



Akil’zon in Zul’Aman - note the gear is getting better.



Last night in Hyjal in Knurd's T4 / T5 epicness. Now the gear is really starting to look good!

The first picture is in gear at a low level, which looked pretty decient, then you to the picture of him coming into Kara for the first time and wonder what blizzard was thinking with hunter gear. I full understand why they call it a clown suit. I am missing en entire screen shot folder that has some of the great ones in them .. like the "Towering Mantle of the Hunt." That is the most obserd set of shoulders in the game. Oh well, I hope you enjoy the pictures! At least he now rests firmly in his T4/T5/Badge gear.

One of the fun aspects of the game is to figure out how to go faster. Never mind the fact that you still have to wait on everyone else, so really you have not gotten anything done any faster; you are just the first to arrive. That is part of the fun of being a BM hunter; we are talented to make our pet hit more. SURE, that’s the reason we did it. The mounted speed increase is just a bonus. Combine that with your riding crop and you are winning the races every time … except for the damn Pallys. That pursuit of Justice is crap. What justice are they doing anyway? Fighting the terrible crime of ugly monsters that always come back? Oh well, I guess that’s called job security.

There are several people in my guild, (including me), that have been using Be IMBA to find out what they are and are not geared for. I put faith in this right up until today. I logged last night wearing my Riding Crop because I was mounted. Thanks to outfitter, I no longer forget to take it off! Well unless I am mounted when I log (nub). I made some gemming changes to Knurd, mainly having to do with his hit so I could wear [Ring of the Recalcitrant] instead of [Violet Signet of the Master Assassin]. I finally removed the intel and stam gems and replaced them with +hit gems, so I gained a little DPS through the conversion and luckily my friendly neighborhood gem dealer had some on hand making it very cheap. I am told it's always good to have your dealer owing you favors.

Knurd has maintained a gear rating of 219.8, according to Be IMBA, this was also before I scoped his bow, so I was expecting to see at least a little upgrade. This put me geared for Hyjl/BT which is good because we have rage on farm, but are working our way through TK/SSC so I am a little ahead of the game where I like to be. I ran him through this morning and it came up 203.83?? This puts him bearly at SSC/TK. The only negative thing that has changed is he is wearing his [Riding Crop] instead of [Hourglass of the Unraveller].

This makes me question just how reliable sites such as this are. I know that our GM and leads have been using the site to help decide who gets to go on some raids and who still needs some work. These sites generally tell you important information, such as mis-enchanted items, missing gems, low quality gems, things of the kind, but I don’t think they can be relied upon to decide if you are ready. I know that I will not be using them for this any longer.

The moral of the story here is this … if your guild has been having trouble getting through Hyjal it’s probably your fault. Due to your complete obsession with going faster, instead of doing more damage, you have failed Warcraft and Life in epic proportions. You should forever be kicked from your guild because you set them back from downing Rage to wiping on Lurker trash just because you left your riding crop equipped.

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend! For those in the US anyway. What this weekend meant to me is a much needed 3 day vacation, and lots of wow time.

I would like to say a big FU to blizzard this morning. I understand the need to make encounters more challenging as to keep everyone engaged. I recently changed Benedykt over to Holy from the Dark side, so his gear is less than great, but not bad. He is mid Kara geared, but is getting there quickly. I have not even enchanted his gear as I want to make sure I have everything where I want it before I go wasting mats. With that said, he is still 1389 +heal buffed, so not too hateful.

Friday evening, I off healed in Kara. Saturday we finished Kara and I went a second time on Knurd. I went Sunday morning and healed the daily heroic, Botanica. Left there and healed Mech; both heroic. I was feeling pretty good about myself. I have never done MgT with Benedykt and was asked if I wanted to heal a normal group so several alts could get attuned for heroic. I said sure not a problem.

Our group was comprised of a Frost Mage named Remie, (Tallarin) a Bear Tank named DeadlyHeals, (he is normally a healer but has a full tanking set), a warlock named Babnet, (Alent) a Frost Mage named Englishfire, (Deadly’s Wife), and Benedykt. All of us are Kara geared, and ran in with my Kara group this weekend; except Babnet, Alent took his druid Neravan instead. This should have been no problem.

We zoned in, checked the 3rd boss group to make sure we got a group we could handle, and started our run. We had a couple of wipes mainly due to bad pulls, accidental pulls, and all of us playing classes we are not completely used to. For the most part the run went very smooth however. Right up until Kael'Thas Sunstrider. We wiped on him a total of 11 times, and never did get him down. I have run that place many times on my hunter, and so am very experienced on how that fight should go. It’s the same with everyone else. We tried it several different ways, even found a couple of different strats and tried those too. We finally gave up.

This is my FU to blizzard. I understand the need to make things a challenge for everyone, but I would think that an encounter should at least be possible for everyone … on normal anyway. I would expect a group such as ours to wipe on it doing heroic. THAT’S WHY THERE IS A HEROIC SETTING!

This is the second time I have encountered this situation in there … The first being the 3rd boss, we choose not to check and pulled a group that had both rogues in it … That was on my hunter and heroic. We changed the group out for other people 4 different times trying different class combos to see if we could get it, and couldn’t do it then either. That was with a T4/T5 group of SSC/TK raiders.

Blizzard went overboard with that instance in my personal, not so humble opinion. /FlexTheEgo

Last night we ran Kara because we are still chasing badges for loot. I am still two badges short from the new badge loot chest. We cleared 6/10 in Kara, and the group was starting to fade so we stopped at Curator. We generally kill Nightbane on our way up to save time later.

After leaving Kara I was still two badges short so I roped my Tank/Healer/DPS into running Slave Pens for a quick two badges. We pugged a random hunter out of the guild which brings me to the point of today’s piece. Trapping 101.

I don’t believe in the term Huntard, I instead believe in un-educated hunters. The only problem is 12:30am when I have to work in the morning is not the time I intend to teach someone. Let’s get started:

First things first, make sure you know which target is yours. Double Check this if you have to. If you have a tank that keeps changing your mark, don’t run with them anymore as they are making you look bad.

Once we have established which mark is yours, (I prefer either the blue square or the orange circle), back up to a safe distance where your trap is not going to be interfered with by anyone else and lay your trap. You should also ensure that you are not behind the second hunter on the rare occasion when there is one. Remember that your target is going to make a straight line to where you are and you don’t want it running across someone else’s trap.

Things about your trapping skill, and chain trapping in general:

Your trap can lie on the ground for 60 seconds before it disappears
Your trap cool down time is 30 seconds, (unless talented and or geared)
Your target will stay trapped up to 20 seconds, but this is not a guarantee
If you or someone else damages your trap after it’s trapped, it will break.

There are several addons that can help you with keeping track of your trap cooldown, I recommend using quartz.

When pulling your mark, make sure the tank pulls first; you will generate more than enough threat with your first shot to pull your target off of the tank. When you pull, you should use an instant, for today we are going to work with arcane shot. As you have noticed when you fire off your arcane shot, your auto shot starts. Therefore I use the following macro to pull:

/cast Arcane Shot
/stopcasting

This will allow you to only shoot the arcane shot and nothing else.

If you have done this correctly, your trap timer should only have about 10 seconds left on the cooldown and your target is now coming towards you. You should continue to pay attention to your target to ensure that it does not resist your trap, if it does it’s time for kiting but that is another post. Once you are sure your trap is now a big block of ice, move away from your target, drop your next trap and start DPSing the tanks target. Keep your trap in your view.

The next thing that is going to happen is your target is going to come free from the CC and head towards you and into your next trap. (In theory, I have had them come out of the trap and head for the priest several times so pay close attention … if this happens; it’s your job to bring it back.) You can repeat this process until the tank is ready to kill your target. If you run into trouble, don’t be afraid to call out for help.

This brings me to the next part of this. You are a team whether it is 5/10/25 people. This means that you have to trust everyone else on the team to do their part. If you see another CC’d target come free, that is not your worry unless you are asked to help with it.

The first normal impulse is to send your cat after it to protect your priest, but you have to trust the other person to do their part. For instance, if there are two hunters and you start DPSing their target because it came free for a second, they pull it back to them and into the trap … you then shoot it on accident because your auto shot is still going off, and you have now either killed yourself, the other person, or the party in some cases.

You had enough faith in your team mates to walk into the instance with them, so trust them to do their job and you stick to yours, unless the situation warrants or asked. This can be rough to judge, but comes with time.

I used to practice this skill by putting the cat away and heading out into Terrokar Forest and trapping the humanoids. I used these because they are low enough that it will take a while for them to kill you. I would generally chain trap one, and kite another to practice chain trapping and kiting … This can get hectic, but will make you better at it. If you try this, I highly recommend going and getting some cheap gear off the AH and not in your epics.

Gear that can help with this:

The D4 Beastlord Set:

[Beast Lord Cuirass]

[Beast Lord Handguards]

[Beast Lord Helm]

[Beast Lord Leggings]

[Beast Lord Mantle]

When trapping in 5 mans I still remove my epics for two pieces of this for the set bonus that reduces your trap cooldown time by 4 seconds.

With a little practice you will be chain trapping like a pro in no time, and you will find that people want you on runs with them. It can be hard for a hunter to find a group, but a hunter that has a rep as a good hunter is always welcome in a group.

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!

With the number of hunters on raid teams, what makes one stand out from the next? A damage meter may possibly be the best tool any raid leader can use to distinguish who plays their class better than the next. There are those that believe that gear makes all the difference in the world for the amount of damage a hunter can do at any given time. There is something to this, but it’s more than just gear. One hunter who is in T4 or equivalent gear out damages a T5 or equivalent hunter. How is this even possible? I get asked this question on a reg basis by other hunters who raid with me. Generally in tells, which makes the most sense. It all comes down to shot rotation.

There are some hunters that purists and hand weave all of their shots. Some even just do it by feel. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it is impossible to make up for latency and the other factors that come with playing an online game. Some of those hunters will even tell you how boring it is to just spam one button. I don’t know about anyone else, but I press a lot more than one button during a 25 man raid. Once you start doing 1k+ DPS, you being to have to pay attention to your threat, add into that the BM aspect of keeping Sapphire alive as not to gimp your DPS, (The pet just being alive adds to your DPS), and suddenly you have all kinds of things to keep track of.

There are a number of different theories on shot rotation; the most accepted one for a BM hunter is the 1:1 rotation. This is very mana efficient, and will allow a hunter go never go out of mana even during a long fight. The rotation that I generally use is a 3:2 rotation, which clips, (doesn’t allow it to fire), every third auto shot. which normally is a very bad thing. In this case however the two steady shots make up for it. A hunter has to be very prepared when heading into raid and using this shot rotation. During our Mag fight last night, I went through 8 mana pots, (it was an unusually long fight), just to keep myself from going out of mana.

I use a macro to obtain this, and there are a number of sites where these macros can be obtained along with several other useful ones. If a hunter can keep a high level of DPS without using a macro, I still believe if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, but at some point you are going to make a mistake in your rotation lowering your DPS where as with the macro it does the same thing every time without any mistakes and gives you one less thing to worry about during the fight.

The two main macros that I use are:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !Auto shot
/cast Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

And

#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Rapid Fire
/use Bloodlust Broach

The second one allows me to pop all of my cool downs at the same time, however I recommend using this part way through the fight after the tank has enough agro as you will build it quick, (Esp with 4 BM hunters and a shaman in the group … FI x 4 and heroism are a thing of beauty!).

I hope this helps some of the other hunters out there top their damage meters, just don’t forget to FD every thirty seconds as not to wipe your raid. You might also want to become friends with your local alchemist so don't go broke chugging Fel Mana Pots.

EDIT:

Upon skimming over some of the blogs, it would appear that many of us have the same thoughts at the same time. I could not, did not say this better myself, so I am going to quote the post from another blog today:

"I really think that players who enjoy the hunter class, actually thrive on difficulty. After all, it takes no skill to be a huntard. A hunter on the other hand, is a work of art in action. To accomplish our ballet of traps, crowd control, chaos management and MQoSRDPS, we need to constantly think outside the box. When we are wearing mail, with our pets to pwn face, we employ a multitude of different features to accomplish our goal. "

**Direct quote from http://gunlovingdwarfchick.com/ Post from 4/17/08 entitled We Haz Mail!

Yesterday was my day off work so I have some catching up to do.

I will start with two nights ago. It was what appeared to be a depressing day in Knurd’s life as I clicked the portal from Shat and headed to Ironforge for the respec. For anyone who doesn’t play the game, doing this changes your toon completely. All their abilities change, as does the play style it takes to keep them at the top of their game. There is a learning curve involved, and at times can feel like you have re-rolled at level 1. I walked up to the trainer and saw that 45g to respect windows pop up; I am rather used to seeing it now, and clicked for respec. I started slowly putting his talents into the spots where they go when I realized that I made a mistake. That 1 click cost me 50 gold as I had to clear it and start again. During this process, even more carefully than the first, I mis-clicked again because I was looking a possible build rather than the one that I wanted. DOH! I decided that this was just meant to be and would leave it be as is and do it again another day.

The first thing I did, after I reconfigured my buttons to what I thought I might use, and switched out my macros, was summon Sapphire and pushed the BW button. Big Red Kitty Go! Grr baby grr! I have to admit it was kinda neat to see. I hearthed back to shat as it was time to go to down Mag.

I was having a problem with wow matrix as it would not update any of the addons on my computer stating that the folders were read only, which means I had no agro meter for the entire trip. I will come back to that later.

Our trip in was un-eventful, other than my pulling agro twice … I guess it’s a bad idea to pop both trinkets ( [Hourglass of the Unraveller] and [Bloodlust Brooch]), BW, and Rapid Fire all at the same time. One of the two times it caused my untimely death, which I had coming I suppose. Once we entered the room with Mag, everyone buffed up and spread out. There is a reason why we don’t click on anything in the room … and it’s to prevent our first wipe. 15 seconds before we are to start, someone clicks one of the cubes and starts the event … we tried to save the attempt, but it takes such coordination that there was no saving it … first party wipe. Then we had DC issues again so it took us a few mins to get going. The second attempt at him went without issue and we downed him with only few a deaths … well right up until the end. At about 1.5% every started cheering over vent … and stopped paying attention to what they were doing … At this point our tank goes down for what ever reason and Mag starts running around and killing people. The last raid team I was a part of was named “1% to wipe” for a reason. Either way, with 14 people dead Mag went down. No love for hunters on gear that night, but that’s ok because a lot of people got some very good upgrades and we will do it again.

We headed off to see Gruul next. After one wipe, we took HKM down. It was just not our night for good luck … We pushed through to Gruul himself and started our first attempt. We got him to 18% and had an unlucky shattered that killed most of the group … wipe again. Our second attempt the unlucky shatter came earlier, at about 52% I believe … then the third one same thing again. I wasn’t sure we were going to get him down that night as we were fast approaching time for everyone to log. On our last attempt everything we perfectly and he lay dead in the middle of the cave. Still no love for hunters that night, oh well, we still downed him yet again.

Yesterday I started messing with wow matrix to figure out what was going on … and as it turns out, (I was blaming vista), there was a glitch with wow matrix and reloading it solved the problem.

I also hit a milestone in my wow career as I bought my first epic flying mount; [Swift Blue Gryphon]; boy does that make a difference. It’s one of those things that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal until you have one yourself.

So we made our first attempt at lurker last night. As a group we have the DPS to down him, we just need to get the coordination portion of the fight down. Every time he would spout we would lose a couple of people. We also had massive DC issues which slowed things way down. We made 4 attempts at him in 3 hours then called it a night.

There were several really nice epics that dropped from the trash on the way in that made the run worth while. It was also neat to see SSC for the first time. Although I was un-impressed with the layout of the dungeon as blizzard doesn’t appear to have gotten very creative with it at all. If you have run Bot you have seen SSC. Either way it was fun.

I did finally come to a realization last night. I have had a druid in group which allowed for Improved Leader of the Pack and therefore I have maintained a steady 900+ DPS with no issues. Last night I could not use multi-shot as there was crowd control present, and no druid. Those two things alone dropped my DPS to a measly 733 DPS. Both are personal DPS as I do not count the cat in these numbers. With this being said I pulled out the old Cheekys this morning and started running the numbers. Currently I am spec’d 7/48/6 and according to the spreadsheet, (in a perfect world), I do 850.33 DPS (1013.45 with cat). If I respect to the cookie cutter 41/20/0 I will do 881.91 (1182.83 with cat). Both of those calculations were done using LoTP.

I have shied away from the BM build ever since I started the game because I prefer MM. I was told a while back that there could come a time when I would have to choose whether I wanted to have a toon spec’d the way I want, or I would have to do what is best for the raid as a whole. That day is finally upon me, and however I do pay my $15 a month like everyone else, but there are 24 other people standing there expecting me to do my part to make their $15 worthwhile.

I guess it’s time to respec.

Monday nights are generally un-eventful, I either farm gold or farm mats to stay at the top of my game during raids. Like every other hunter I have been having agro issues with Sapphire, since 2.4. After doing a lot of reading yesterday, I discovered a lot of hunters stating that they were not having agro issues with their birds while the rest of us were having a rough time doing anything solo because I spend more time kiting and melee which slows the kill process down. To be honest, it made the game less fun to solo with Knurd.

Before we went and did our sunwell dailies last night, I decided to head to Skettis and tame a Skettis Kaliri and try that out. I hated putting Sapphire away in the stable as I have spent almost all of my time with her. After putting Sapphire in the bank, I headed out for my new pet. I tamed Shimmer and headed towards the Sunwell for dailies.

I started with autoshot and saw no difference, although chalked it up to it being a new pet. Then Shimmer couldn't pull agro off our priest, (Holy), and she asked, as her main is a hunter if I had remembered to teach her growl. Doh! So I did that. I went back to the auto shot rotation and didn't pull agro again. The next mob I worked my arcane shot in and still didn't pull agro. Then our tank, Prot warrior in DPS gear, couldn't pull agro off Shimmer. Yes, we do dailies with a standard 5 main raid crew lol. I went off by myself and sent Shimmer in, let her gain about 3k of agro ahead of me, which took no time at all, and went into a full raid mana burn rotation and didn't pull agro until I critted. I think I have found my new solo pet.

Looks like everything is now peachy in my world. I just hate that I had to stop using my cat in order to be able to solo. So it appears that as other hunters find out what I have, Skettis is going to be short of birds for a while lol.

I would also like to mention that the one thing that I never wanted to see gruul drop as I knew it was an upgrade but is ugly as all get out dropped from Gruul the other night ... I will be gemming and enchanting my [Gauntlets of the Dragonslayer] and dawning them for the first time during the raid tonight. Why do those have to be better than my T4?