Lethal Shots

Maintainence today, possibly even a patch even (conflicting sources, unable to verify either). Either way, another week has gone by. My thoughts on it:

• Not much raiding over the last week. Just the weekly three times and one venture into ICC as a healer, which did not end well. Two of the three healers on the run were alts (mine and another Hunter) and neither of us were really prepared for how healing intensive the Marrowgar encounter is.
• Randoms every day. Honestly I’m getting a little tired of them. It has gotten a little better since I cut back to one random a day per 80 (unless a guildie needs help of course).
• I jumped back into leveling my Paladin over the weekend. Decided to re-spec him to Prot, picked up a shield and one-hander off the AH, and jumped into the queue for low level randoms. So far it’s going pretty well. The XP is nice and I’ve already picked up several blues that are more suited to tanking.
• While my gear says I can heal in ICC, the above mentioned experience tells me otherwise. I need to work on my technique and maybe rework some gems and enchants. Some research will help with itemization problems, but the technique is going to be more difficult. Outside of raids, the best practice is going to be Heroic Halls of Reflection.
• I’ve been tanking heroics for about a month now and feel I have developed a pretty solid grasp on it. Now I want to move on to raids. I know it will be much more difficult, but I need to do it for the challenge.
• Back in real life, the wife and I took the kids out on a local Geocaching adventure yesterday. While the baby didn’t get much out of it (he slept the whole time), my four year old had the time of his life. It is definitely something we are going to have to do more often.
• Been playing with specs on my Hunter lately. Been specced Survival so long I can play it in my sleep. Now I’m trying to wrap my head around Marks.

That’s all I got, now give me yours.

Patch 3.2 is on the PTR, which means it is probably a little over a month from going live. Hunters are getting a handful of changes this patch, though not near as many as we saw in 3.1. Luckily there are no huge nerfs, but at the same time not much to get excited about. Below are the portions of the patch notes that pertain to Hunters along with my two cents on them. The complete patch notes can be found here.

Classes: General

• All pets now receive 40% of their master’s resilience and 100% of their master’s spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.

This is huge! How long have Hunters been asking for this? Now our PvP oriented brethren will be able to hold their own better.

• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

The way I read this, replenishment is taking a 20% hit in mana returned. While this only directly affects those of us that roll Survival, it indirectly affects everyone. I’m hoping that mana doesn’t start to become even more of an issue in 10-mans.

• Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3-second interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.

So the Marksman among us get a spell interrupt for boss fights. I can only see this as a good thing.

Hunters

• Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

Part of an across the board change for all travel forms. Will be great for new players and those leveling alts.

• Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.

Meh, I really could care less.

• The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.

Ok, a lot of people are up in arms over this one. Here’s some advice: Get Over It. This does not make chain trapping impossible, it simply makes it slightly more difficult. Less breathing room, but still easy enough to do with practice.

• Traps now have separate 30-second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

This is even HUGER!!!! I can finally CC again without gimping my DPS by not using Black Arrow. I can honestly see myself using traps a lot more once this goes into effect. And I can see the masochistic arena Hunters drooling over this one.

• Beast Mastery
  • Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.

Does anyone even take this talent? I mean maybe a PvP player, but I don’t know any Hunter that PvPs as a BM. Well, maybe those crazy guys that are out tanking with their pets take it, so yeah, they get a buff.

• Survival
  • Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.

A slight nerf to a PvP talent if anything at all. Nothing worth crying over.

• • Lock and Load: Now has a 22-second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.

We all knew that chain L&L procs were too good to last. At least it isn’t a full 30 second cooldown like last time, and maybe now they will up the proc rate slightly.

• Pets
  • Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.

Um, pretty much useless. No one uses a tenacity pet when they are in an instance. (Well, they shouldn’t be at the very least.) I don’t know, this might be another PvP thing, but I don’t see myself ever using it.

• Bug Fixes
  • All ranks of Sonic Blast now properly have an 80 Focus cost.
  • Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.
  • Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
  • The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.
  • T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.

Yay for bug fixes! Nothing too exciting though. Mostly just wording changes.

Most of the changes aren’t anything special. I am excited about the changes to pet resilience and the splitting up of trap cooldowns, and I’m not too happy about them adding a cooldown to L&L again. Of course everything is still on the PTR and subject to change, so I’m not going to get too worked up yet. But what about you. Anything in the notes that has you excited or upset?

Last week we talked about we talked about shot rotations for the Beast Master tree. The Marksmanship rotation follows the same basic principles of priority but involves more shots, making it slightly more complex.

The basic Marks rotation involves the following seven shots. They should be used in the priority listed:

1. Hunter’s Mark
2. Kill Shot
3. Serpent Sting
4. Chimera Shot
5. Aimed Shot / Multi-Shot
6. Arcane Shot
7. Steady Shot

You should only have to fire Serpent Sting once per fight. After that Chimera Shot will keep it refreshed. Aimed and Multi-Shot share a cooldown, so you will want to use Aimed in a single target situation. Only use Multi-Shot when you have at least 2 targets or you waste mana. You will also want to mix in long cooldown abilities such trinkets, Rapid Fire, and Readiness at your own discretion.

Remember, don’t develop tunnel vision. Stay flexible. Move out of AOE, Misdirect, Feign Death, and drop traps when needed.

Ah Marksmanship, our friendly mail-wearing Mages (sorry Rilgon, I’m still not convinced otherwise). For their Trueshot Aura I love them. They got some changes in 3.1, definitely for the better. Below is a quick summary of my recommended build and glyphs. Click here to see it in WowHead for mouse-over pop-up goodness.

• Beast Mastery (7 points)
  • 5/5 Improved Aspect of the Hawk
  • 2/2 Focused Fire
• Marksmanship (57 points)
  • 5/5 Lethal Shots
  • 3/3 Careful Aim
  • 5/5 Mortal Shots
  • 1/2 Go for the Throat
  • 3/3 Improved Arcane Shot
  • 1/1 Aimed Shot
  • 2/2 Rapid Killing
  • 3/3 Improved Stings
  • 1/1 Readiness
  • 3/3 Barrage
  • 2/2 Combat Experience
  • 3/3 Ranged Weapon Specialization
  • 3/3 Piercing Shots
  • 1/1 Trueshot Aura
  • 2/3 Improved Barrage
  • 5/5 Master Marksman
  • 2/2 Rapid Recuperation
  • 3/3 Wild Quiver
  • 3/3 Improved Steady Shot
  • 5/5 Marked for Death
  • 1/1 Chimera Shot
• Survival (7 points)
  • 5/5 Improved Tracking
  • 2/2 Survival Instincts

Glyphs:

• Major
  • Chimera Shot
  • Serpent Sting
  • Arcane Shot
• Minor
  • Feign Death
  • Revive Pet
  • Mend Pet

For a pet spec, you have two basic options. You can either spec for Shark Attack or Wild Hunt. Regretfully, you can only take one point in either. I’ve yet to test which option is the best in terms of DPS, but once I have I will be sure to let you know.

There is very little flexibility in the spec. You could take the two points out of Improved Barrage and one point out of Barrage if you need to take Focused Aim or want to take Silencing Shot. If you need more points than that you would want to take them out of the Survival tree. The Chimera Shot and Serpent Sting glyphs no-brainers. Your third major glyph slot is open to debate. I chose Arcane Shot, though there are several other viable options. It really boils down to personal preference.

As always, the spec above is merely my recommendation. Feel free to play with it, adjust it, or completely redesign it. Leave a link in the comments to the spec you decided on for everyone to look at.