Archive for the ‘Talents’ Category

Yes thats right some of us are still BM. The big move to SV was warrented, thats if you want to actually put out some good dps numbers. But there are a few that just cant stand to not be BM. Those few that cant bear to tear apart that relationship they share with their faithful companion. But over the last few patches we have been brought back into line, and are able to compete with all those lesser SV hunters. 

Well this week has seen me able to once again Raid on my hunter. I have dusted his bow off, for some well deserved action. QB has picked up a third healer, so I no longer have to fill that roll on Lyshonar. Also in QB news, we welcomed back one our long time members Damah, who was taking a break from the game. 

Even though I have no been able to test my numbers in a raid setting, we were suck on Flame Levaithan for two nights. I have taken to the Hunter dps spread sheet and the testing dummies, to see how things are shaping up. There has also been some great developments and discussion happening over on the Elitist Jerk forums. 

Today I spent a lot of time looking at my spec and what was coming out of the elitist jerks discussion . The new recommended spec is 53/11/7. But inside this spec there is a little bit of room to play with some of the talent points. As you can see this is how I am running the build. The first post has a run down on how you can adjust the talents to suit you, and also has the standard build that they run. So be sure to go take a look. In spread sheet testing it showed that I would get a net gain with this new spec. The thing is although it showed I would be doing slightly more dps, we can not test for one of the Talents. Why? Well for the simple reason that new little talent I picked up in the SV tree. Improved Tracking. I can not test at the training dummies becasue they are mechanical and of course Improved Tracking does not work on mechanical mobs. Also as far as I know this can not be done in the spread sheet. So I am going to have to wait till Monday night, on QB’s next expedition into Ulduar to find out what things are really like.

Now of course this is still down on our SV brothers, but we are now much more inline than we ever have been. Still on non-pet friendly fights BM hunters are going to lose out, because our pets are now doing more than 40% of our DPS. A well speced Devilsaur will be doing over 2000 dps.

I highly recommend you check out the Hunter Spread sheet. This way you can play around with the build, and also the one you are currently using. This will help you work out what is going to be best for you. Although the numbers are only theory they do tend to come out to pretty close to what happens in game. But before you jump in to playing around with the spread sheet read this guide, to help you get started.

Why can I not help feeling like a Rogue?

Thats becasue Hunters now have Expertise. “You didn’t just say that did you?”

“Yes I did, you got it?” 

Animal Handler now increases your pet’s expertise by 5/10. It no longer increases your pet’s chance to hit.

“Blizzard I’m not a Rogue, Ok?”

“What does a hunter need expertise for?”

“Hang on what is expertise?”

Well here goes.
With enough of the stuff it is possible to prevent your target from dodging your attacks (you can not gain enough expertises to prevent parries).

For the math below we will assume you are behind your target like all good Rogues do it.

“For the last time I’m not a Rogue!” 

How much do you need? Well every 3.92 expertise rating you have you gain 1 expertise at level 70. This in turn reduces the chance of being dodged by 0.25%. 

Still with us? Good.

So a raid boss has around 6.5% chance to dodge (no one knows for certain but the Rogues seem to like this number). This would mean you would need 26 expertise (101.92 expertise raiting) to reduce that 6.5% to 0%. 

What does that mean for us hunters? Well with Animal Handler our pet has now got 10 Expertise. This mean our pets attacks have a 2.5% less chance of being dodged. So on a Raid Boss fight that would mean the chance for the boss to dodge our pets attacks would be 4% instead of 6.5%.

But do we need this over hit? As it turns out yes. In testing our Devilsuar only missed 1.3% of attacks but 6.0% of his attacks were dodged. So yes the change was needed. 

This leads us to our next question do we take it?

Well at the moment I’m unsure. I’m not raiding in Wrath yet so I can’t say if the higher dps you would get from this would be better than say Spirit Bound for its awesome extra 10% healing.

So the jury is still out on this one. It was a good change and it is far better in its current form, but we will have to wait and see if it makes it into our lvl 80 raiding build.

Well last night I took my shiny new talents, the awesomeness that is Orthus, and we went into Kara for a bit of fun. We didn’t really know what to expect. I was pretty sure my build was going to work, and provide a lot of DPS – but this was the first real good look at how the other classes were shaping up.

I knew Orthus was going to piss some people off, but man did he do such a good job of it. For those who haven’t heard yet the orange core hounds from MC are a little bit different from the green or white ones. These ones BURN. So not only is the whole room shaking, but you also have the sounds of a good fire burning the whole time. I can’t wait for a 25 man

The only problem was the raid nerf. Everything was so damn easy, we were not able to really put anything to the test. Every boss fight only lasted 2 minutes. I could not get any good gauge on Aspect of the Viper and mana regen, as the fight was over before I got below 80%. At one point, I was doing 2200 DPS on Illhoof, but that was only because of his debuff when Kil’rek dies. Maiden took a grand total of 51 seconds. Everything was just crazy.

What I did find out was how awesome raid buffs are now. Shaman totems actually help us Hunters out. Pally buffs are very different – no salvation might make you worry – but our warrior tank was getting 1500 TPS while the rest of us were getting around 700-900 TPS. Threat is no longer a problem. Pallys have crazy DPS, which is good to see, and their CC works just like a Priests shackle. The calls from BlizzCon of “don’t nerf me bro” are understandable, but as I write this they have already been hot fixed, with more changes to come.

In terms of numbers, raid buffs and the new talents had a huge impact on things. I was getting 5% extra crit from raid buffs, and I went from 1987 AP to 2770 AP at one stage. My DPS before the patch was around 900 on trash and on boss fights just over 1k. Now I am doing 1100 DPS on trash and 1500 DPS on boss fights.

Tonight we are hoping to get into ZA to give something a bit harder a go. Hopefully this will give me a better understanding of how the Hunter class is shaping up. But so far I am very happy with everything to do with a Hunter.

Thats right. It’s 1am (New Zealand time) in the morning and I can’t sleep. Nine more hours till the servers come online with patch 3.02 (it has just been confirmed finally over on the EU forums). 

I thought I would treat you to a run down on what the highlights are, for us BM Hunters. Blizz have given us some real love. Lets get into it.

We’ll start with pets:

• They are getting their own talent tree, and depending on what spec you are, you will either get 13 or 17 points to spend. 
• Starting from lvl 20 your pets will get 1 talent point every 4 lvls
• A new pet, when tamed, if more than 5 lvls below you, will lvl up to become 5 lvls below you. (i.e If you’re 70 and tame a lvl 25, it will become lvl 65 when you tame it)
• Loyalty, and beast training are now gone (YAY!!). No more searching and taming a random pet for a new skill, your pet will automatically learn new skills as it lvls up.
• XP your pet gets is now 1/10th of what you get (not including quest XP). This is up from 1/16th. 

Well today I spent a bit of time in the PTR. What I wanted to do was look at some of the new pets and also decide on a build for 3.02, so I didn’t have to spend gold on re-specing every few days.  I also got around to testing out volley not clipping auto shot that BRK had reported.

Well First off I decide on my talent build. What i did notice in testing was the lack of focus regen for my pet. This is becasue of no Go for the Throat. But overall I am happy with the build. Now the only question is what pet to use? The Core Hound is what I’m going to start with because it looks so dam awesome. But I found while testing that the Devilsaur had a higher dps.

As for what BRK reported. I was a bit let down becasue I was really looking forward to this. But what i found in the PTR, is this was not the case. What happens is while channeling Volley you still see the auto shot animation but you dont actually shot or hit anything with your autoshot.

The way I tested this was with recount live dps meter. I headed over to the test dummies and let rip with my auto shot. Then I cast Volley so it was not hitting anything. What happen? My dps droped to 0 on the live graph. I did this a number of times and got the same result. I also found this was happening when I was beatin up on stuff with my Gorilladin. 

I have to do a bit more testing but i am pretty sure this is the case that you can NOT auto shot while channeling volley.

2 MORE DAYS TO GO.