Archive for April, 2009

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.

In my last post I talked about x-perl no being up to date till today. Well as of now it has been updated. As far as i can tell everything is working again. You can grab the updated version off curse.

Today is going to invole more testing of bear tanking in OS and maybe a VOA run, if we horde can ever get WG back. Tonight will be QB’s first night in Ulduar. Now all we need is everyone to show up and it will be a good night.

Well day one is over for me, in the new world of 3.1. I have been up since 6am patching both my computers and updating add-ons. This process was made a bit harder by the fact that both my desktop and laptop are both running the new windows 7 beta. I ended up just patching the game on my file server and then copying the game back to both computers. It seemed easy at the time ok!

The servers didn’t come up till 12am so I had plenty of time to do it. But once I did get on I was very surprised. The servers were, how would you say this, stable. Stable is not a word that I would use normally on patch day, but I didn’t have any problems.

Even my add-ons worked, which has never happened. Sure I had the odd one that didn’t like 3.1. Like chatter, but that was quickly updated. Twice in fact and was back working in no time. Now all I have to wait for is x-perl to update. The author wants to wait till testing on the live server before he releases an update. Unfortunately he plays in the UK so is a day behind. No matter I’m sure by tomorrow this will all be sorted. But if you cannot wait till then there is a quick fix for the right click problem over at wowace.

There is really only one big bug that I have seen so far and that is a little extra talent point, notice the 72 talent points there? We did see this problem very early on in the PTR, and I guess they didn’t fix it.

I went and had a look at the new boss in VOA. Emalon the Storm Watcher. This is a fun little fight and is a bit harder than what we are use to in VOA. The dps have to be awake. As I found out today one mistake and the everyone dies. Although the fight, in its self is pretty straight forward, it can be a bit tricky to learn. As you can see in the screen shot, this was our first attempt. The dps was not fast enough in killing the add that was getting the stacking debuff, and boom went the raid. If you cant tell which add has the debuff, get the off tank to mark it. Or just look at which one is getting bigger and bigger. If you look to the top left of the screen shot you can see that one add is huge.

At the moment as you can see my tanking UI is a bit of a mess. but give me a break I only just got back into tanking a few day ago. I totally could not see all the debuffs on Emalon. I really need to fix this. But that is a job for tomorrow. For now I need some sleep.

Need anymore be said??
This is what happens when only one realm comes up. Will will see 3.1 today? That is anyones guess. Realms have been down for 14 hours but I’m sure Blizzard are working hard.