The Big Nine-O!

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  3 Responses »
Oct 012012
 

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to Horde and Alliance alike, that Darkbrew the Brewmaster has reached level 90!

At about 10:30 on Saturday evening I turned in a quest and — ding, I hit the big nine-O. And then I just sat there, because I had not clue about what to do next. This list of options and to-dos was instantly overwhelming. Learning to fly, leveling professions, gearing for heroics and raiding, planting a garden, and getting a cloud serpent of my very own.

To the folks in Niuzao Temple, please accept my sincere apologies for leaving you to defend yourselves against whatever horrible creatures were ravaging your beautiful temple. I ask you to please understand that Cloud Serpents are beautiful creatures and they don’t grow up overnight, and every self-respecting hero of the land needs to have one. Don’t worry, I shall return. Maybe.

Knowing that the temple could fall and all of its inhabitants killed, and being okay with this, I immediately opened up the group find to queue for a heroic. In case you were wondering, you need an average ilevel of 440 to queue. This is something I did not know.

The good news is you can get some decent ilevel 450 gear from questing in the Dread Wastes. Guess who turned 90 without having set foot in that zone? If you’re anxious to get into heroics, head to the Dread Wastes at 89 and use this zone to reach 90. I spent a good chunk of the day on Sunday plowing through this zone.

Another thing I recommend at 90 is that you go to Temple of the White Tiger and pick up the quest for the arena scenario. Once you get the quest you can just queue for it. Scenarios are designed for three players of any class and role so you shouldn’t have any issues in a pug.

You should also start queuing for Coren Direbrew at 89. Keep in mind that at current gear levels this is actually a tough fight. Don’t be surprised if you wipe.

Some of the other things I did upon hitting 90 were,

  • Made my way to the new capital city. It has city portals, bank, AH, transmog, reforge and void storage.
  • Trained in flying. The cost was around 2700g. Very reasonable.
  • Leveled up First Aid. You should have more than enough cloth to do this.
  • Leveled up Engineering and made my epic googles. I bought all of the mats and it cost about 10K to level and make the goggles.
  • Reforged my gear to be hit and expertised capped.
  • Made Engineering cogs for the goggles and trinket. I put hit and expertise in both for a total 1200 rating in each. This made reforging other pieces easier.
  • Began doing the crazy amount of dailies to work on rep and earn back the 10K.
  • Ran a couple of heroics. Much easier than Cata heroics, but a bad pug group is still a bad pug group.
  • I’ve been running as BM with a Quilen. Yes I’ve had to use his battle res.
  • I took Glaive Toss at 90. Not that impressed with it, and not sure where to fit this into the rotation.
  • I’m learning to adjust to life without Tier 13. It’s a lot of lost focus regen.
  • I still have Blink Strike but am considering changing to Crows for heroics.
  • I loved Thrill of the Hunt for leveling, but may switch to Dire Beast now.

It’s been less than a week since MoP was released and I’m having an absolute blast. This expansion is some of Blizzard’s finest work, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes the mantle of best WoW expansion period.

Have you hit 90 yet, and what sorts of things are you doing?

Mistakes Were Made, Bosses Were Killed

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  10 Responses »
Sep 072012
 

I have two weeks of patch 5.04 Dragon Soul heroics under my belt; most of it as Survival. Mistakes were made, bosses were killed, and so were we.

If I hadn’t been in such shock at the time, I might have had the wherewithal to take a screen shot of our raid tumbling off the back of Deathwing with less than 10% health remaining on the final tendon. The plate rose, the tendon was exposed, everyone was alive, and then epic fail ensued. It was a kill, or at least it should have been.

If ever there was a justification for a nerd rage moment, it was this. Surprisingly everyone remained calm, because we all got it. Even though we didn’t defeat Spine we effectively beat the encounter. There are two lockout lefts, so we’ll be extending ours and hope to finish off Spine and Madness next week.

The break will give me time to evaluate logs and make adjustments to my UI. I’m primarily running as Survival, and while the core rotation remains intact there are a lot more buttons to press and a lot more things to track than ever before.

Raiding right now feels a bit like it did back in ICC when you had Deathbringer’s Will and we’re waiting for the Crit. proc so you could line it up with a Crit. potion, Rapid Fire and other things. There’s a lot of watching and waiting happening with Hunters right now. If you feel like you’re suffering from information overload, rest assured, you’re not alone.

Going in I need to know how long is the encounter going to be. Once the pull the starts I need track if Dire Beast and A Murder of Crows are attacking the target. Am I under the effects of the Rapid Fire buff? How long before Serpent Sting falls off? Has Serpent Sting fallen off? Is the Black Arrow debuff on the target? And then I need to know what’s on CD and for how long.

In short, I need to know what the hell is going on out there, because there’s a hell of lot going on out there. The driving force behind all of this monitoring is Readiness and DoTs. Readiness is on a five minute cooldown so knowing the length of the fight is crucial to determining how many times it will be available to use.

Likewise Readiness will reset the cooldown on most Hunter abilities including Dire Beast and A Murder of Crows. You don’t want to activate these abilities if they’re already up and attacking a target. For example if you cast A Murder of Crows and then pop Readiness, you want to wait until the first set of crows finishes before you use the ability again, and the crows last for 30 seconds. Same for Dire Beast (see comments) and Rapid Fire. You don’t want to pop a second Rapid Fire while you’re under the effects of the first one.

Right now we’re just talking about monitoring some basic things. If you really want to go pro then you should pay attention to other things like you internal CDs, weapon proc CDs, and then try your best to line up as many these as you can.

It’s challenging and there are tools like Kneed to Know and Tell Me When to assist you, but it takes work to master. Those who do of course will be rewarded by big numbers and phat lootz.

So far I’m just trying to keep track of the basics and get DS Heroic cleared without my head exploding. Elune willing it will happen on Tuesday.

Patch 5.04 – Buffs and Debuffs

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  7 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

It’s patch day. If you’re looking for a guide on what to expect, I recommend you listen to our latest podcast filled with all of the information you need to know to survive patch 5.04. In the meantime, I’d like to focus on one specific area of the game that’s changing and will have an impact on our stables – buffs and debuffs.

The good news is the buffs and debuffs have been streamlined for MoP. The even better news is that Hunter pets will continue to bring buffs and debuffs through their special abilities. In fact, the only buff that Hunters cannot provide is Spell Haste.

Just like in Cataclysm, you will need a BM spec if you want the complete arsenal of buffs and debuffs at your disposal. Due the changes to buffs and debuffs you may have to reevaluate your stable and make room for some new additions.

For example, Water Striders are one of the new pet families that will be available for taming in this patch. In addition to the cool water walking ability, they provide the Crit and Spell Power buff, and are on the list of mandatory pets. Water Striders can be found in Zangarmarsh in Outland.

If you wish to have all the raid buffs and debuffs covered then at a minimum you will need the following for your stable (E = exotic pet).

  • Crit Chance – Quilen (E), Devilsaur (E), Water Strider (E) or Wolf
  • Mastery – Cat or Spirit Beast (E)
  • Melee/Ranged Attack Speed – Hyena or Serpent.
  • Raid-Haset Cooldown (i.e., Heroism) – Core Hound (E)
  • Stamina – Silithid (E)
  • Spellpower – Water Strider (E)
  • Stats – Shale Spider (E)
  • Magic Vulnerability – Dragonhawk or Wind Serpent
  • Mortal Wounds – Hunter, Devilsaur (E)
  • Physical Vulnerability – Boar, Ravager, Rhino (E) or Worm (E)
  • Slow Casting Speed – Core Hound (E), Fox, Goat or Sporebat
  • Weakened Armor – Raptor or Tallstrider
  • Weakened Blows – Bear or Carrion Bird
  • Combat Res – Quilen (E)

If you don’t plan on raiding as BM then the list looks like this,

  • Crit Chance – Wolf
  • Mastery – Cat
  • Melee/Ranged Attack Speed – Hyena or Serpent.
  • Magic Vulnerability – Dragonhawk or Wind Serpent
  • Mortal Wounds – Hunter (Widow Venom)
  • Physical Vulnerability – Boar, Ravager
  • Slow Casting Speed – Fox, Goat or Sporebat
  • Weakened Armor – Raptor or Tallstrider
  • Weakened Blows – Bear or Carrion Bird

Non-BM raiders will not be able to bring Spellpower, Stamina, Stats, and Combat Res.

Also, you might want to consider adding a Wolf and Cat to your stable for those times when the Crit and Mastery buff are needed but you aren’t using a BM spec.

For reference, I’ve put together a little chart that shows the buffs and debuffs and which Hunter pets and support classes bring them.

The Nerf Storm Has Arrived

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  1 Response »
Aug 102012
 

And so it happened. The long awaited nerfs that we were promised, the changes we were told to brace ourselves for have finally arrived. Ghostcrawler raised his mighty nerf-bat to the sky and called forth his storm. This wasn’t thunder and lightning followed a sweeping flood.

No, he summoned a tornado that moved across the Hunter landscape, wreaking destruction with targeted and calculated precision. Signature shots, rotation abilities, talents, pet damage – few were able to escape the path of the destruction. When the skies cleared and the winds died down this is what they found.

Nerfs

  • Arcane Shot - now causes 75% weapon damage plus 1,309 Arcane Damage (was 110% and 2,742).
  • Serpent Sting - now causes 8,100 nature damage (was 10,150).
  • Serpent Sting - now causes 50% weapon damage plus 997 damage (was 70% and 4,013).
  • Aimed Shot - now deals 280% weapon damage plus 19,541 damage (was 400% and 39,880)
  • Kill Command - Cryptic formula changed to was is believed to be a nerf.
  • Explosive Shot - Cryptic formula changed to was is believed to be a nerf.
  • Chimera Shot - now causes 210% weapon damage plus 2,617 damage (was 300% and [73.2% of RAP+5,385].
  • Wild Quiver  - now fires a shot that does 85% weapon damage (was 100%).
  • Black Arrow - AP scaling is now 16% plus 1,990 damage over 20 seconds. (was 20% and 2,490 damage over 20 sec).
  • Bite, Claw, Smack - damage reduced by 20%.
  • Frenzy - proc now grants 8% increased attack speed (down from 10%).

Hunter damage is complicated though and our dps is not just the measure of any single ability, but it is the sum of all things working together. To achieve the proper results one cannot just nerf. Buffs need to happen as well, and there were a smattering of those too.

Buffs

  • Barrage - focus cost reduced to 30 from 40. Now deals 640% weapon damage to the target and 320% (up from 160%) damage to each enemy in front of you.
  • Blink Strike - now inflicts 600% damage (was 200%).
  • Glaive Toss - focus cost reduced to 15 from 20. Each glaive now deals 872 damage to each enemy struck (up from 436). The primary target will take 4 times as much damage from each strike (down from 8 times).
  • Lynx Rush - Now deals 200% damage to each target (up from 100%).
  • Powershot - focus cost reduced to 20 from 40. Now deals 800% weapon damage to the target and 400% weapon damage to all enemies between you and the target (up from 200%).
  • Thrill of the Hunt - Now has a 30% to reduce the focus cost cost of your next 3 Arcane Shots or Multi-Shots by 20 (was 20%).
  • Beast Cleave - Now does 30% damage, up from (20%).
  • Focus Fire - Now grants 8% ranged haste for each Frenzy stack consumed (was 6%).

So what exactly does this all mean? This mess of math is purview of the theory crafters and they are hard at work sifting through the rubble. This week’s Scattered Shots estimates about a 15% loss in overall Hunter dps. Where this places Hunters relative to the other dps classes remains to be seen, but we shall find out soon enough.

Hungry Like the Wolf

 World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King  3 Responses »
Apr 102009
 

If you’re a raiding hunter then when patch 3.1 comes out you’re going to want to get yourself a wolf. Euripides over at OutDPS has a nice explanation of why wolves will be the DPS companion for Ulduar.

I myself alluded to this earlier week (see We Had Permission). At any rate if you don’t have a wolf, now is a good time to tame one and get him leveled up before the patch hits.

The good new is that wolves are one of the few high-level pets you can find in the game. You can find wolves ranging in level from 77 – 80 (yes 80!)

The Sentry Worgs found in Icecrown range from level 77 – 78, and the Cave Dweller Worgs found in Stormpeaks range from level 78 – 80.

You can head over to Petopia to view a full list of wolves from level 74 -80. And remember once you start looking at pets below level 76 it doesn’t matter what level they start at, because they will become level 75 once you tame them.

Good Hunting!

(I apologize for any painful 80′s flashbacks this post may have caused).