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Scattered Shots: ViperNotify and aspect swapping
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be talking about how to effectively swap between aspects to improve your performance. Pike from Aspect of the Hare published a post recently, "Aspect of the Viper and You", in which she describes what Aspect of the Viper is and when to use it. For raiding and leveling Hunters alike, Aspect of the Viper is a powerful tool to reduce downtime when mana is running low. Stopping to drink or popping mana potions is almost obsolete thanks to this great aspect, and Pike's article goes a long way in teaching newbies and veterans alike when it's time to put that aspect to use. Today, I'd like to take that idea further and discuss more ways to help put Aspect of the Viper to work for you. For raiding Hunters, it's extremely easy to switch to Aspect of the Viper during a fight to regen mana and then forget to swap back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk once your mana bar is full again. I know in the past I've had less than stellar numbers on the meters simply because I forgot to switch aspects! Sure, swapping aspects should be a no-brainer, but simple mistakes are easy to make when you're dodging slimes, fire and big ol' dragons. For that reason, I started using ViperNotify. This add-on is very simple and light weight. All it does is notify you via pretty blue alert text that appears on your screen (similar to a raid alert) that your mana bar is full but Aspect of the Viper is still active. It also plays a quick little ding sound (which is, amazingly, not the slightest bit annoying) to catch your attention in case you missed the warning text. There are, of course, several other mods that behave similarly, but ViperNotify is the one I use. This one simple add-on makes it much easier to ensure the best possible performance from your two primary aspects.
Aspects, auras, Survival Instinct off GCD; new aspect
Yes, it's true. The following will now be off the global cooldown in Wrath of the Lich King, but will have a 1-second cooldown of their own to switch between them: Hunter aspects (source) Paladin auras (source) The new Druid talent Survival Instincts is also being taken off the GCD, which I can really appreciate - tanking gets quite frenetic. But that's not all! After putting aspects off the GCD, the devs decided they weren't happy about how it made you feel like you had to "stance-dance" to Monkey every time someone came into melee range. So they're introducing a whole new aspect: Aspect of the Dragonhawk, which combines the benefits Monkey and Hawk into one aspect. This spell will be learned at level 75 and 80, instead of learning new ranks of Hawk. The idea, says Ghostcrawler, is that you'll never cast Hawk or Monkey again after 75; you'll just use Dragonhawk for fighting and Viper when you need some mana back. I have mixed reactions to this change. It'll be nice for hunters, who already have enough spells to deal with between shots, melee, traps, pet skills, etc. However, it seems like they might as well just make +AP and +dodge built in to Hunters, remove Monkey, Hawk, and Dragonhawk, and put a penalty on Viper corresponding to the now-innate +AP/+dodge. The whole Aspects system has always felt a bit half-baked to me, to be honest. Also, I'm not quite sold on the Dragonhawk name, but I guess it's better than "Monkeyhawk."
Things don't look pretty for PvP Hunters in 8926
The best thing you can say about Hunters in Wrath in this Beta build is that we still have the new Disengage, at least for now. In this build, most of our new PvP tools have had much of their new functionality removed or greatly scaled back in this build.
Scattered Shots: Suggestion Box
Scattered Shots is here for you. As long as you're a hunter, you get to tell us what to write about, and we get to ignore you do whatever you say. I love these months just before the next expansion is released. There's such a sense of anticipation, where the whole game, including your own class, is in fluid motion, constantly changing. This is the time when the developers actually want you to give them your feedback, to tell them what they're doing wrong; and -- strange as it may seem -- there is actually a chance they will listen to you, take your advice, and actually implement whatever change you suggest!That's why the last few days I've had my eye on the beta hunter forums, looking for the latest ideas about my favorite class. Lots of the player suggestions they have there are really neat, but unfortunately there's also some of what we call "QQ" (which stands for whining because it looks like two little eyes with tears coming down). It's hard to get good suggestions on the forums without also getting bad QQ. Sometimes when forum-goers clash, they get into an annoying argument and the whole thing devolves into boring name-calling.So let's weed out all the muck and jumble, shall we? Let's just cut to the prime-rib-beef of what really good ideas are out there and skip all the blah blah blah about who's stupid, who's an idiot, and who's just dumb.
Scattered Shots: Beastmastery in Wrath of the Lich King
Scattered Shots is for Hunters. Your host this week will be Daniel Whitcomb, who will continue his foray into the wide world of Wrath of the Lich King talents. Beastmastery has pretty much dominated the world of Hunters in Burning Crusade, with Serpent's Swiftness alone nearly singlehandedly allowing for the most efficient damaging shot rotations possible -- With a little bit of wrangling between haste and ranged weapon speed, of course. While the changes to Auto Shot clipping in Wrath will likely make shot rotations as we know them a thing of the past, Beastmastery is still looking to be a very viable tree in Wrath of the Lich King, thanks to some clever synergies and some amazing pet buffs.
Wrath Beta Patch Notes: Hunter
By now, I am sure you've heard that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is going live and the patch notes are up. There's a rather extensive section devoted to Hunters on this iteration. We have a few more insights into the pet talent trees that were announced at the Worldwide Invitational, as well as a few changes to existing talents and a nice Steady Shot buff.
Scattered Shots: A talent for leveling in Beast Mastery
The Scattered Shots hunter bears his or her teeth and says "RAAAWR!" to the mirror every morning in an uncouth, beastly manner -- thus affirming the beast within, which yearns for a way out to express itself.Which talents you should get as you level up is a tricky question with many different answers, many of which can turn out just fine or absolutely horrible, depending on how you play. Today I'll be taking you along on a journey through the first 40 levels of talent spending, and explaining why I think certain talent choices are better than others.One of the most important things to remember about talents is that, in spite of all their mathematical precision, they are open to poetic interpretation. Some talents give clearly superior advantages, while in other cases it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which one fits your play-style best. Sometimes the talents that look best on paper aren't the ones that will really help you the most when the going gets rough. Likewise, some talents are designed more for endgame use at level 70, even though they appear early on in the talent tree, while others are better for leveling up, and you may wish to drop them later on once you finish leveling.Most of my talent choices today are going to be in the Beast Mastery tree, for instance. Some people may say that they like Marksmanship or Survival best, and certainly that's their right. But from most of the people I've talked to, the general consensus is that Beast Mastery is best for both leveling and early endgame raiding, too. While talking about these talents, I'll list your level and the number of talent points you have at each stage, so that it's easier to keep track of your talent resources.
Scattered Shots: Levels 10-20 and the art of staying smart
Scatered Shots is for da inteligent peepul who knows what hunters is good at.We started off this column talking about the very first levels you go through as a hunter, from one to ten, and from there we got off onto other topics, such as getting your first pet, controlling it well, managing your threat, using crowd control, and other things all hunters must learn as we level up. But we talked about all these things in the abstract, not in the context of actually leveling up, the specific abilities you'll get, and how that'll change the way you play.So today I'll start up the leveling train again, from levels 10 to 20, and we'll have a closer look at how these general ideas fit in to that period of your hunting career. Except for the sheer time investment involved, the hardest part of hunter leveling is already over once you reach level 10 and get your pet, and that makes this the most dangerous time for a hunter, when we are most likely to fall into lazy hunting habits and neglect the opportunity for complexity that shows up later on. Whereas before you had to work hard to stay out of your enemy's melee range, now it's a simple three-step process: Send in your pet for the attack. Shoot. Profit. It is so incredibly simple that idiots can do it. In fact, idiots do do it, and therein lies the problem. We have to do something while leveling to keep our complex hunter brain synapses firing fast don't we? Just what can you do with all the abilities you get at this stage?
2.4 leaves hunters low on mana
Since patch 2.4, hunters have been having some problems. Aside from the outrage over the fact that our traps are now announced, we seem to be having issues with mana. On the forums, hunters are not seeing much love from the non-hunter crowd, but I suppose that is to be expected. It is important to note however, that our mana efficiency is an intended attribute of our class. We are useful, not solely, but arguably primarily, because we can provide sustainable, long-term DPS. No, we don't crit like mages. In a boss fight though, we can keep going after mages short out.Why are hunters all of a sudden having issues with mana? There are a few theories floating around, but we have yet to be graced with a blue response. Take the jump to learn more about why this might be happening.
