Grats Banya!

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Apr 262013
 

Banya, a guildmate and fellow hunter, was featured on WoW Insider this week for her work on the WoW Biology 101 site. Now of course those of us in the Hunter community have know about this site for a couple of years now. I featured it in this post back in November 2011, and Frost, Euri and I talked about it on Hunting Party Podcast Episode 106.

It’s a fun site and something that Banya actively maintains. With all the new animals introduced via pet battles I’m sure she’ll have plenty to add in the coming months. I encourage you to give the article a read and to check out one of the unique works of a fellow Hunter.

wowbiology

It’s Not a Zoo, But OK

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Mar 262013
 

As you may have heard, one of the big discoveries on the PTR is that our stables are expanding to a whopping 55 slots! We’ve been asking for more slots ever since the expansion was released, and Blizzard has been pretty adamant about not giving us any. I don’t know what changed their mind, and I’m certainly not going to pry.

Keep in mind that this is still early on in the PTR cycle, so I fully expect Blizzard to announce the addition of 50 new spirit beasts before all is said and done. Until that happens, rejoice in knowing that you can have ‘em all.

Here’s a quick video from Where the Wild Things Are explaining the change.

It Came From the PTR: Tri-Spec

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Mar 252013
 

trispec

I saw this little nugget data-mined from the PTR. It looks like we’ll be able to have three talent specializations in patch 5.3. That right three! This is great news, unless of course you’re a Druid, but really, who cares about Druids. For us Hunters it simply means that we can have an MM, SV, and BM spec – all with the click of a button.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better to be a Hunter!

Just Pick ‘Em

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Feb 212013
 

By now you’ve probably read the news the Hunters are getting some last minute buffs before patch 5.2 goes live. Here they are,

  • Aimed Shot damage +10%.
  • Chimera Shot damage +50%.
  • Steady Shot damage +20%.
  • Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +15%.

Big buffs for MM and nice buffs for SV. BM remains in the “baby bear” spot, at least in the eyes of Blizzard. So the big question is what does this all mean? Are all the specs equal, is BM’s day in the sun over, did MM just make a colossal comeback? The answer of course is it’s too soon to tell. Patch 5.1 data doesn’t help us, so we’re waiting on the theorycrafters to give us an answer.

My thought is that all three specs will be very close in performance. There will always be an order of one, two, three, but the relevance of that positioning will be greatly diminished.

We may actually be at a point where players should just choose to play the spec they love. We may also be at a point where we look at the specs less in terms of overall dps and more in terms of how they deliver that dps, and how it might apply to each individual encounter.

What you could end up with is all three specs looking something like this,

  • MM – Strongest single target dps; mediocre AoE dps.
  • BM – Strong single target dps; great burst dps; mediocre AoE dps; able to fill in missing buffs with exotic pets.
  • SV – Stong single target dps (slightly behind BM); best AoE dps.

We might be on the verge of Hunters being in as good a position as they ever have been in WoW. At the very least it means we have some news to talk about the on the podcast, and that alone makes me happy.

Blizzcon 2013

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  3 Responses »
Feb 192013
 

Blizzard announced today that the next Blizzcon will be held on November 8-9th 2013. I have never attended a Blizzcon and probably won’t try to go to this one, although I love the idea of doing a live Hunting Party Podcast from the event.

As we all know, Blizzard loves to announce big things at this event and I suspect this year will be fraught with major news. I would expect an update on the Warcraft movie, information about the next WoW expansion, and plans for WoW’s 10th anniversary in 2014. The big announcement that seems long overdue is Titan. What exactly is it, and will this be the WoW killer? Something I think we all want to know. Maybe this Blizzcon will shed some light for us.

I definitely would love to hear what Titan is all about, but I also want to know about the next expansion (return of the Burning Legion?) and all the cool things they have in store for the Hunter Class.

So what do you want to see announced at Blizzcon, xpac, Titan, Hunter changes?

Powershot and Glaive Toss Fixed

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  1 Response »
Feb 132013
 

I saw the following item in the most recent PTR patch notes.

Targeting for Powershot and Glaive Toss has been improved. These abilities will now always hit the primary target and are much more responsive about which secondary targets they hit.

So it looks like the fix for these abilities will indeed be part of patch 5.2. The fix should be more noticeable among players who use Powershot in PvP.

Glaive Toss tends to be the purview of PvE, and I don’t know that there have been too many complaints from players regarding it’s functionality in raids. In other words, just know that it’s working, but don’t expect to see a huge increase in DPS or performance as a result.

Keep That Valor

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Feb 132013
 

This week Blizzard announced a nice change to Valor points in 5.2. Specifically they are letting players carry over their existing valor in 5.2. With the patch now three weeks out it will be possible to reach the valor cap by the time the patch lands.

Given the ilevels on the new LFR and normal raid gear, you’ll be better off saving your valor rather than upgrading your current gear. A heroic weapon may be worth bumping up, but for the most part you’ll want to carry over all of your valor.

Happy Hunting!

Need More Stable Slots!

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  3 Responses »
Jan 152013
 

If you tuned in to the live recording of Hunting Party Podcast #156, you would have heard us opining on the need for more stable slots; and that’s before knowing the full extent of pet changes in patch 5.2.

Kalliope over at Where the Wild Things Are posted a nice teaser video on some of the pets coming our way in the next patch. It’s chock full of cool new dino skins, Direhorns, and at last, three new porcupine spirit beasts. These red, green and blue beauties come with their own unique taming challenges similar to what we saw in patch 4.2.

The real challenge won’t be taming any of these guys, it will be finding the stable slots to hold them. It’s safe to say that whatever rationale existed to limit our stable slots no longer applies in patch 5.2. We need more, and fast.

Where the Wild Things Are: Preview of the Pets of Patch 5.2

Boom De Yada – Booyah!

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  1 Response »
Dec 072012
 

What can I say, this has just been an awesome week for Hunter Songs. It started with the release of the Hunter Open Collab, followed by ‘Til the Servers Shut Down. But as great as those two are, nothing beats the newly released Hunters are Just Awesome.

I remember when Frostheim first talked about doing this project and how cool it sounded. He asked me if I wanted to participate, and I said “absolutely!”, and then he asked me to sing. My hat is off to Balthazar who managed to turn what must of sounded like a sick cat singing “We love our podcasts” into something respectable.

Obviously a lot of time has gone by since this was started and the landscape of the Hunter community has changed. I’m sure if the project was starting today the list of participating Hunters would be much larger. Still this remains a fantastic tribute to the most awesome class in the World of Warcraft.

I’m Darkbrew, and I love my Hunter.

Updating the Blogroll

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  No Responses »
Nov 302012
 

So I finally got around to updating my blogroll. To the bloggers who visit here, but haven’t seen your blog listed in the roll, this was in no way intentional on my part. I actually do read a lot of the stuff that you guys write. I don’t always visit the sites directly or comment on the posts. This is mainly due to the fact that I subscribe to most blogs via RSS and read them in Google Reader. I also tend to check my reader while at work, and well, my work blocks access to all things “gaming”. They don’t block my reader though.

I finally had a free moment to compare my reader to my blogroll and I discovered that they were woefully out of synch. They are now one in the same. Actually the blogroll now has a few extras.

As far as what I choose to put on the blogroll, the two main requirements are the blog has to be Hunter related (mostly anyway), and it has to be active. By active I mean if you haven’t posted anything in six months, I’ll remove it from the list, but not from my reader. I just flag it as inactive and then one day if a new post should appear I flag it as active again.

With that if you have a Hunter or Hunter Pet blog that you’d like me to add to my blogroll, please leave a comment here or shoot me an e-mail at thebrewhall@gmail.com.

Cheers and thank you for your contributions to the Hunter community.

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