Thank You Tabana!

 Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft  1 Response »
May 312013
 

Tabana, our friend and great Hunter curator is taking a break from WoW and the WoW Hunter’s Hall. You can read about it here. I wanted to thank Tabana for all of the hard work she put into making the WoW Hunter’s Hall what it is today. Compiling all of the Hunter news and events, highlighting all of the great Hunter achievements, and introducing new talent to the Hunter community is no small feat. Each week when I prepare show notes for the Hunting Party Podcast the first place I look is the WoW Hunters Hall.

Thank you Tabana for the hard work that you put into the site. You’ve earned a rest for sure.

Good Hunting, and knock back a few Darkbrew Lager’s for me.

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

WoW Reforge

 World of Warcraft  1 Response »
Apr 052013
 

There are lots of tools out there to help you reforge your gear. You can use and online tool like Female Dwarf or Ask Mr. Robot, or in-game addons such as Reforginator and Reforge Lite. My tool of preference is WoW Reforge. It’s an online resource that will import your character from the Amory and then reforge your gear.

I like the tool because it’s fairly easy to use, and it gives you multiple options to reforge your gear allowing you to base decisions on stat redistribution and even cost. One of the issues with this tool is that it doesn’t account for item upgrades when reforging your gear. Well, it doesn’t import the upgraded stats from the Armory.

I have an upgraded Fang Kung, which has expertise on it, and every time I reforge, the tool usually recommends that I reforge out of expertise on this item. If the tool isn’t taking into account the actual expertise on the item, it calculates it wrong, and I end up be blow the cap.

It turns out that you can modify the stats on any given item. To do this, just click on any item and then modify its stats. Just type in the numbers you wish to modify and click ‘Apply’. I changed the crit and expertise stats to reflect that my item was upgraded twice.

stats_after

Now when you click the ‘Optimize’ button it will reforge based on your modified stats.

postreforge

So simple, and yet it’s a feature I didn’t realize existed until very recently. Perhaps you overlooked this too?

Happy Hunting!

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!