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Gold Capped: How much should you undercut?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! This week's community post is the most recent recording of the weekly JMTC's meeting, and I'll be there next week answering questions. This isn't the first time I've written about undercutting, and it won't be the last. The burning question of how much to undercut is something that just keeps coming up, not unlike the question of which pet is the best for the DPS. If you ask people who don't sell on the AH, they'll give you a blank stare and make some comment about having a guildie craft it. If you ask an auctioneer with less than 100k, they'll say to never undercut more than a copper. To properly answer this question, we need to try and understand the effect that undercutting has on the market you're in.
Scattered Shots: Pet talent trees in the Wrath Beta
Welcome to another edition of Scattered Shots, the other WoW Insider weekly Hunter column. Daniel Whitcomb is your guest host again this week. So, we theorized about talented pets a bit quite a few installments of Scattered Shots ago, but now we have the actual trees live and testable on the Wrath Beta, and they seem to be firming up nicely. There's a few promised changes yet to come, such as the removal or lowering of focus costs on many major abilities and talents, and it's still very possible that Blizzard may make changes here and there before live, but I think they're solid enough at this point that we can look at each tree and make some solid predictions about how people will use them and how various talent builds might look.
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.
WWI '08 Panel: Hunters
The first WoW panel has come and gone at the Worldwide Invitational. It was focused on class abilities in WoTLK, and there was some absolutely juicy stuff, especially for Hunters. As the proud player of a 70 Hunter, I'm feeling amazingly awesome about my class right now. Two of the biggest, most universal Hunter complaints have not only been answered, but answered in a way that I think a lot of Hunter players are going to be incredibly excited about. Steady Shot ClippingFirst up, it looks like Shot Rotations as we know them will soon become a thing of the past, or at least be incredibly simplified, as Steady Shots will no longer clip Auto Shots. This is actually an issue that has gained some blue post love in the past, but it's nice to see it so directly confronted and dealt with. There may still be a shot rotation of a type for fitting in Arcane Shot and various stings, but it looks like Hunter DPS will no longer be a complicated dance of weapon speed, haste rating, macros, and server latency. That in itself is amazing news. Pet Talent Trees and Uniqueness One of the other major complaints of Hunters is the lack of pet diversity. It is generally expected that if you are min-maxing, you will go for a Cat, Ravager, or Scorpid and nothing else, because they are the only pet families that have the right combination of ability and DPS to get their jobs done. Some pet classes, like Sporebats, languished due to a complete lack of useful family skills.
Breakfast Topic: Should Blizzard support Hunter pet diversity?
While looking over the new "fake" pet skills page at Petopia earlier today, one of the biggest things that struck me is that the whole Thorns skill that the temporary Crab pets get for the lowbie Hunter taming quests would be a great thing for normal Crab pets to get. Right now, They're stuck learning nothing but Claw, placing them right near the bottom of the pet pantheon - very close to Sporebats, who can't learn any special abilities at all. My two high level Hunters tamed a Carrion Bird and a Boar, respectively, so I'm lucky enough to have a good selection of skills to use, but I think there should be more options for people who love their offbeat pets like Sporebats or Hyenas or Crocs. They can even use some of the old rumored alpha skills for pets that popped up around the time of Burning Crusade's alpha. I'm hoping that Blizzard shows more types of Hunter pets some love in WoTLK with a wide selection of new skills, be it thorny shells for Crabs, a Cannibalism-type skills for Raptors, or anything else that lets us see Hunters fighting alongside fewer Cats and Ravagers (or in the case of arenas, Scorpids). What do you think? Should Blizzard focus a bit more on a wider variety of options for Hunter pets? Or should Hunters just take what they can get and be grateful for it? If the former, what types of new pet skills would you like to see?
