NEW FRIEND!

Nexultor: They need more spirit beasts…like a boar or something…

Davlin: That’d be cool…

ONE WEEK LATER:

Its not a boar, but its a new skin, I’ll stick with Frejya, but I’m excited about hearing stories of this hunt. Plus…its just the first notice…their might be more…

I’ll bet Nexultor sends Kateff out for a boar hunt soon…

Also, I totally have a “What just happened…?” rant about my Second ever 25 man raid experience.

This is just more important, expect rant this afternoon.

–Davlin

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Beast Master is promised to get fixed.

You read the headline correct! Ghostcrawler of the Dev team over at Blizzard announced today that they had all come to the conclusion that they “Over-nerfed BM.” They’ve planned to buff BM before the opening of Ulduar by making changes to Kindred Spirits and Serpent Swiftness.

What does this mean?

It means that, yes, while our shots have been nerfed, Blizz recognizes that the hardest punch to the BM gut was the nerfing of Pet DPS. Thus the improvement of Kindred Spirits will make pet damage better and Serpent Swiftness will give us a bit more haste, which is awesome, since if we shoot faster, we do more damage over time.

They won’t return us to anything near pre-3.0.8, AND I DON’T WANT THEM TO. Our pets were the problem and our current shot rotation as BM, while weaker than what it was, is more efficient. A boost to pet damage and haste is just what the doctor ordered.

We’ll still see a lot…and I mean a lot of QQ, but heck, I’m pretty sure that this pardigm shift that we call 3.0.8 was just shifted in our favor, so maybe the QQ will quiet down a little.

You’ll hear me rant more about this in next week’s podcast, I promise.

I’m so excited I could cry.

Eresin, I do hope that you haven’t respecced Survival yet.

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New Belt! and Yay Tenacity!

Ok, You can finally subscribe to the podcast over at iTunes. They never tell you that after you submit it that it could take days to actually be available to subscribe to. But all that aside, you can now, and I suggest you do, its wonderful. Or you can just listen to it on the side there.

Davlin got a new belt!!! Rejoice and praise and all that jazz. Check it out!

Who needs a gem bonus when you can add that much awesome attack power in just gems alone. mmmm…./drool.

I also got the Incisor off of King Dred finally, special thanks to the guys and gal who ran me through it (Mustafah, Zaralin, Dezaras, and Nexultor).

Tonight I spent a large amount of time ignoring Jaffa my wind serpent and Frejya my spirit beast in order to level up Bubba my big butted Gorilla. He’s jumped from 76 to 78 tonight and I figure he’ll be 80 by Thursday.

In other news, I’ve decided to start fishing, as I think getting fish and selling them on the AH might be profitable and doesn’t really cost me anything other than my downtime between stuff…so yeah…it might not make me much money…but I’ve started to care a little about it.

So tonight we ran Drak’Tharon….incase you didn’t pick that up with the King Dred comment….and I took Bubba…incase you hadn’t pieced that together either. And I must say, we’re getting either super well geared, or just becoming an incredibly well oiled machine (I had previously already thought we were a well oiled machine, so I’m gonna say “Wow, we’re pretty durned well geared! *yeah, I know I used durned, I went all dwarf there…) because we walked through that place WAY easier than ever before.

And another thing, if you want to make sure that none of the adds in either boss fight, the one with Big Ugly Troll face dude who’s corpse buddies explode, or the one with big glowy angry person who calls for reinforcements while immune, then it helps to have an AOE pet like a gorilla. I don’t normally bring a tenacity pet into a heroic, but with Bubba up there hitting adds, it was a lot easier for me to yank aggro. Of course, Nexultor and Mustafah were throwing down their AOE’s and other attacks, but in comparing between Bubba versus my other pets, Bubba comes out on top at being able to hold adds and make them do what I want them too. That’s what a tank pet’s for, I know, but its awesome to be reminded in an actual scenario. Normally, as awesome as Frejya is, she’s no good at tanking multiple adds. And Jaffa’s just big into burning nice round holes into them. But Bubba likes to grab them by the scruff of their undead flesh and say STAND HERE.

Yay Tenacity pets. Oh how I fall in love with you all over again.

The entire run was easy, I think I was the only one who screwed up. I hit my arcane/steady macro too many times as we were fighting and pulled an extra big mob. We handled it well…but that’s one of those, hide your head and pretend you don’t know what they are talking about moments. Promise guys, it’ll never happen again.

/hangs head in shame.

That’s right up there with the time I disengaged right off of one of the high spots in Karazhan. I freaked out so bad I couldn’t find my parachute button. /facepalm

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Hunter Macro Help

A guild recently got himself a cat pet. So I thought I’d share some macros I use, this post is for all of you, and especially Manbarepig, of my guild Heroes of the Alliance.

Ok, these are the macros.

Ok, “On/Off” is the my Cower/Growl macro. When you’re soloing, click that macro and it’ll turn off cower (threat reduction). This’ll allow your pet to tank for you using growl (threat generation) and allow you to shoot as much as you want. That’s hunter soloing 101. When you’re in a group, click this button and it’ll turn off growl, which will stop your pet from trying to take aggro at every mob you come across and will also leave it so that your pet casts cower at every fight.

The second macro, “Prowl,” I use for controlling my pet’s autocast on prowl ability (Stealths the pet, reducing movement speed and allowing for the first hit while stealthed to proc for 50% more damage). Currently Prowl is bugged. Cat’s love running around with it and never are willing to just leave it turned off. Everytime you summon your pet cat, he/she will have prowl on autocast. Yay bugs. This macro is the fix. Left clicking this macro allows you to turn prowl on and off at your heart’s content, freeing up action bar space for other awesome abilities, like spirit strike for the spirit beast (yeah…I brought her up…she’s so pretty). The magic of this macro is the right click. If you right click this macro it’ll turn autocast for prowl off. So everytime you summon your pet, right click this, and bam! no autocast. You can save your concentration for other awesome things….like spirit strike.

I hope hunters everywhere love these with their hearts content. If anyone reading this has any modifier suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment. I love to fiddle faddle with macros.

–Davlin

Ps! I got the Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood today! After that mess up from before where I accidently passed on it “Woot Me!”

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The Best?

Recently, I’ve found that there a lot of folks out there asking for the “best.” And I don’t mean they are asking for me….although they should be. What I mean is that they are going around asking what class is the best {Insert Group Role}.

Ie: A guildy recently asked me “What’s the best class for a healer?”
And of course, one of our resident shamans felt it necessary to boast his class pride. Sadly, before I could voice my lengthy and rather well-informed opinion about the subject, the curious guildy felt compelled to take his new information of “Shammy haz healz” to his Horde alt.

As to properly answer this, I feel as though I’m forced to instead address my belief in the term “the Best.”

Simply put, the Best is a myth. I think that there have been reports of it being sighted in Sholozar Basin, every six hours, and only for ten minutes…

Seriously though, the Best is relative. In all honesty, I can’t even say I’ve ever met anything I would say is the Best in terms of “all of Warcraft.” There are just too many variables and with the way the Blizzard has been revamping classes over the last year or more the classes for each group role all have the capacity to be just as good at the group role as any other class.

So here’s Davlin’s short list of the Best’s.

Healer: Anyone that can keep me alive through almost everything.
Tank: Anyone who can hold aggro through most situations and earned the title of “Dav’s Meat Shield.”
DPS: Anyone who knows how to properly ride an aggro wave without pulling aggro and causing a wipe.
Hunter: Me.
Pet: Any pet that’s special abilities and armor/health fits well with your play style.
Profession for making money: Any profession….period.
Northrend Starting Zone: Howling Fjord, don’t take my darned Cobalt Nodes and Steam Clouds in Borean Tundra!

This is, of course, all from my point of view. Over here in Hunter land, where I’m putting out DPS and trying to keep my mana up and pet alive, what matters to me is making it through a mob. As long as I’m watching the Aggro Wave, I’m the happiest little Hunter when I see that my tank is holding aggro, my healer is healing through the pain, and my other dps isn’t trying to steal aggro. If your choices for your group can carry you through every mob, then they’re the Best.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is:
What’s the Best? The Best is that small group of players that knows their class and their role in a group. The Best are also always courteous “good” players.  There is no best class for anything. You want the Best? Run with PUG’s until you find the Best. You want the Best? Run with Guildmates until you find the Best. You want the Best? Take me with you, cause it doesn’t get any better than this baby!

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HUNTER HUNTER HUNTER

You’ve been warned, this is a hunter post, you can read and learn more about hunters or you can ignore this. Its information, ignoring it is your choice….your horrible choice.

 

A guy on the WoW forums asked “What’s the best hunter pet?” The age old question. Which had a very defined answer before WOTLK. There were some pets that were great, and there were some pets that sucked. That’s changed. Now every pet has something to bring to the table. I answered him thusly and now share it with you so that you too can learn a little hunter knowledge. Hunters: The Awesomest Class in Azeroth.

“”Best” is a relative term. It completely depends on your playing style. Mostly each pet has great stats when measured up against the other pets. I think the only pet that has been nerfed or doesn’t quite measure up to the others is probably the boar, which is a complete flip from before patch 3.0.2 when the boar was the only viable leveling pet until 60.
That being said, it completely depends on how you plan on using your pet, and because of this, Blizz has even given you more pet slots, so you can mix and match.
Personally, I’m fond of the ever-neglected wind serpent. A wind serpent can give out some very nice burst nature damage. This “burst” damage can change to almost being considered sustained DPS if you spec your beast mastery tree with longevity and bestial discipline.
As for grinding for cash, I find the gorilla is the easiest pet for that. He manages an AOE threat generation ability,and being tenacity he tanks very well.
If you’re PVP then I’d suggest a netherray with his anti warlock ability or a Rhino, just so you can sit down on the bridge at AV and use his knockback to throw people off.
If you like to raid a lot, a wolf would be pretty nice to have. They have furious howl which is a raid wide attack power increase.
Tallstriders cause enemies to miss the next several hits.
Birds of Prey can disarm.
Worms can sunder armor and DOT nature Damage.
Moths can self heal and give themselves an attack power bump.
Its all about how you want to play.
So what pet’s the best?”

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