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.

I’m not sure if it is a bug, an undocumented change, or just a fluke in general, but Lock and Load was proccing for me like crazy last night. And I don’t mean once or twice a fight, it was triggering on every other Black Arrow. Hell, some fights it was even more often than that. The Heigan encounter was when i really noticed it. At one point it was proccing on every Black Arrow I fired.

The 22 second internal cooldown put in in 3.2 is definitely there, but I am wondering if the 6% chance listed on the tooltip is wrong. I would have to do further testing to verify, so right now I’m just saying that it feels like more than 6%.

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?

Real life had me slammed last week, so I was unable to get this post out when I wanted to. But fear not, I am back to my regular posting schedule now.

So far we have covered both Beast Master and Marksmanship shot rotations. That leaves us with (arguably) the most complex rotation of all: Survival. Why, you might ask, do I consider Survival the most complex of the three? Simple, the Lock and Load mechanic. But before we go there lets go over the basic Survival rotation.

The basic rotation follows the same principles of priority as the other specs. It uses the following six shots, which should be fired in the priority listed:

1. Kill Shot
2. Explosive Shot
3. Black Arrow
4. Serpent Sting
5. Aimed Shot / Multi-Shot
6. Steady Shot

Some people would put Black Arrow and Serpent Sting above Explosive Shot in priority, but I don’t recommend it. Explosive Shot is Survival’s biggest hitting shot after Kill Shot. You want to fire it as often as possible and as much as possible. While Black Arrow and Serpent Sting both buff the damage, they are not worth delaying Explosive Shot. You can also omit Aimed Shot / Multi-Shot. Some people have reported a DPS boost including it, while others have reported a DPS drop. You will have to play with it to see which works for you.

Now the complex part of the rotation: Lock and Load. L&L is triggered by the periodic damage of Black Arrow (or alternately a freezing or frost trap). What it does is let you fire two Explosive Shots, neither of which cost any mana or triggers any cooldown, other than the global. So when L&L procs you will maintain your normal rotation until Explosive Shot is off cooldown. Then fire the following sequence of shots:

1. Explosive Shot
2. *any other shot*
3. Explosive Shot
4. *any other shot*
5. Explosive Shot

The third Explosive shot will trigger a cooldown, and you will resume your normal rotation. On steps 2 and 4 you will want to fire your highest priority shot (other than Explosive Shot) that is not on cooldown. The reason for this seperating shot is so that you don’t overwrite the last tick of damage from the previous Explosive Shot. Some people simply pause a second between Explosive Shots (which would lead to an increase in DPS), but in my experience the DOT gets clipped to often without the separating shot.

And as with the other specs, stay flexible. Don’t develop tunnel vision. Misdirect and Feign Death when needed. You know the drill.

While we endure another round of maintenance, here are a few of my insights to get you through.

• I’m home from vacation at last. Florida was nice, but I missed the (relative) peace and quit of my own home. And my bed. I missed my bed the most. I hate sleeping on someone else’s bed. Even if it is comfortable. Yes, it is all in my head.
• More maintenance today. I don’t have a clue whether another patch is coming or not. I really need to catch up on things.
• I am so close to 80 on my Shaman. This has prompted me to start researching gear for him. If anyone knows a good guide for gearing a fresh 80 Resto Shaman leave a link in the comments. I want to get him in heroics as fast as possible.
• Now that I am back at work, Tuesday morning downtime doesn’t bother me as much.
• The Survival shot rotation got a little more complex in 3.1, more on that later.
• I’m trying to decide what alt to level next. My Death Knight is sitting at 60, but I really suck at playing him. But all my other alts are in their 20s. I’m leaning towards working on my Paladin, since he just got to where he is fun to play. Plus I already bought the heirloom shoulders for him.
• Of course those shoulders could just as easily be used on my Death Knight. Decisions…..

Well, that’s all I got on my mind today.