guide-to-hunters
Latest
Scattered Shots: Hunter enchants
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. While we hunters are normally a well-grounded class that doesn't hold with them demon summoners and the other freaks who mess with the arcane energies of the universe, we've been known to make an occasional exception. We'll take warlock cookies, and we'll accept the dangers of enchanting when it makes our gear even more badass. Walking around without enchants on your gear is like being naked, only without the sense of freedom. While it's certainly true that the difference of any given enchant is a relatively minor thing compared to our overall DPS, the difference of all of our enchants is a major improvement to our DPS. Join me after the cut for a slot-by-slot breakdown of which Cataclysm enchants to use for your hunter and where to get them.
Scattered Shots: Understanding the PTR process
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. The patch 4.0.6 PTR process has been a volatile one for us hunters. We went from gentle nerfs and buffs to OMG HORROR nerfs and WHEE BUFFAGE buffs, then had those scaled back a bit. And I have to tell you, I don't think the ride is over yet. Any time Blizzard announces changes, there's always a very reactionary response, and I suppose that's just part of the game. But lately I've been getting more and more emails and comments from hunters complaining about how the PTR is run or clearly not understanding the purpose of the PTR. Why does Blizzard release clearly buggy abilities? How can the designers not see that this is OP/useless now? Don't they even play the game? Well, I'm going to suggest that these are not problems with the PTR or the designers but instead a problem with expectations. Join me after the cut for some clarity on the PTR process and why hunters have had such a crazy ride recently.
Scattered Shots: Why hunters are better than every other class
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Patch 4.0.6 is looking grim for the hunter class. I'm not just talking about the original SV nerfs we discussed earlier, either. They unveiled another round of SV nerfs that disables SV's ability to AoE effectively in raids and further nerfs its single-target DPS with a butchering of Explosive Shot. [Update: this was written right after the giant SV nerf, and before the other buffs and un-nerf.] But I'm not talking about that today. I'm sure what goes live after the PTR process will not be as bad as things look from the patch notes right now. It's the PTR, things will change, there will be a bright side. So today, we will not dwell on the bad news. We will not be brought down by the nerf bat. We will not relinquish our spots on the charts or our places in the raid. Today, we will focus instead on how awesome hunters are, an awesomeness that transcends nerfs and feeble attempts at balance. An awesomeness that places our class firmly ahead of all of the support classes in the game. An awesomeness that is the hunter. Today, we will glory in great list of 50 reasons why hunters are better than every other class!
Scattered Shots: A look at patch 4.0.6 PTR hunter changes
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. The latest news from the PTR is that patch 4.0.6 has been deployed, bringing with it a bunch of anticipated changes to the hunter class. We recently talked about the likely hunter changes, and just about all of that is being tested in the new patch (though at present, it appears that some of it has been implemented incorrectly). At first glance, it certainly appears that Blizzard is being very conservative in its adjustments. SV got its gentle nerf in the form of dropping the Into the Wilderness agility bonus down from 15% to 10%. Meanwhile, MM and BM both received buffs -- but again, very gentle buffs. While they'll bring these specs closer to SV, they'll still be behind. But of course, that's what the PTR process is for -- to test out the changes and make adjustments. Join me after the cut for the full rundown of what's changing, unlisted bug fixes, and some of the odd implementations of the changes.
Scattered Shots: Survival and haste for hunters
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Today, we're going to talk about one of the most difficult stats to pin down with the needles of math: haste. Nowadays, haste does all sorts of different little things for hunters, and even in our best mathematical models, its behavior is tricksy and elusive, making big leaps up and down the stat weighting seemingly on a whim. Haste is like wizards or cats: subtle, and quick to anger. Are there really all kinds of haste plateaus, where just adding 2 haste increases your DPS by large amounts? But then adding another 2 haste actually drops your DPS? Well, no, there aren't. When you see that kind of behavior on the spreadsheets, it's an artifact of the modeling process and not something that you'll actually see in game. Join me after the cut for a rundown of what haste is actually doing for you and why significant haste plateaus aren't currently attainable. Since survival is currently so far ahead of the other specs that it can actually see its backside (and a fine view that is), we'll talk about haste specifically in the scope of the SV spec.
Scattered Shots: Hunter spec and class balance
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Last week, Ghostcrawler, WoW's lead systems designer, stepped in with a post to let the players know what Blizzard was looking at in terms of class balance. Hunters had the privilege of being the only class that had all three specs being mentioned in the post. He acknowledged that BM and MM DPS was too low and were in need of buffs. He also pointed out that SV single-target damage looked too high (along with DKs) and that AoE damage might be too high, as well. Responses from the hunter community have been pretty divided. A lot of hunters are saying no, SV is not too strong, while a lot of others agree that they are a bit too high. Still others argue that hey, someone has to be on top -- why not us? And then there's the crowd that says it's too soon to tell. But everyone agrees that BM and MM need the buffing. Today, we're going to take a look a hunter balance. We'll delve into raid parse data to see if we can find out just what Blizzard is seeing, we'll talk about hunter spec balance, and finally, we'll talk a bit about how current bugs in the game are affecting our DPS. Join me after the cut for an in-depth rundown of hunter class balance at the beginning of Cataclysm. Oh, and even if you're not a hunter, you're gonna want to see this.
Scattered Shots: Hunter year in review and predictions for next year
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. At the end of December 2009, I took over the Scattered Shots column from the esteemed Brigwyn at what was then WoW.com. Now one year and over 230 thousand words later ... a lot has happened with the hunter class. It has been a year of massive changes, first with the non-stop information flow coming out of the beta (and alpha before that), then seeing those changes implemented in 4.0.1, and then, of course, the launch of a new expansion. Hunters changed their core resource mechanics, gave up the antiquated idea of consumable ammo, and shuffled around which spec was on top. You could try to argue that another class has seen as much change as the hunter class has in the last year, but you'd be arguing that in the wrong place. We're hunters here -- as if the beauteous radiance of the crowd didn't alert you -- and we don't waste our valuable discussion space talking about support classes. But of course, one year ago there weren't any big changes happening. We were blissfully ignorant of the coming storm and all eagerly awaiting the unlocking of The Plagueworks hall of Icecrown Citadel -- and oooh, Festergut looked hard! Join me after the cut for a look at the year in review for hunters, as well as my predictions for the coming year.
Scattered Shots: Survival hunter 101
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Survival saw its first brief moment of raiding glory early in Wrath, just after the great BM nerf dethroned BM from the top position it had held for over two years. Now again at the start of Cataclysm, SV is the frontrunner of hunter raid DPS, in the lead by quite a large margin at the moment. In addition to the highest DPS, survival also provides the best mobile DPS and the best CC. SV has long ago left behind its roots as a spec built around survivability and instead is the magical damage hunter spec, with only auto-shot, Kill Shot, and the pet contributing any physical damage at all. The SV rotation is very reactionary, rather than planned, but many players love the spec because of that reactionary feel. Join me after the cut as we dig down into the details of the SV spec in Cataclysm, from talents to glyphs to rotations to stat weights.
Scattered Shots: Moar heroics for hunters
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. We're going to take a break today from the spec 101 articles to talk a bit more about what everyone is doing right now: heroics. I know that SV 101 was next and that it's the top spec at the moment, and we will get to it. But if you can't wait, the SV raid spec is darned similar to the SV heroic spec. But I'm guessing most of you are like me and can use the break from those. I've already gone over everything you need to know about optimizing for heroics, but my email box is still flooded daily with heroic-related questions. Most of these are things I've already covered, but a good number of them are not. How much DPS should you be doing? Why is your character auto-targeting and shooting random mob packs? When will Dawn Moore be made a tamable hunter pet? Join me after the cut as we dig through the most common hunter questions I'm seeing. We'll drill home the point on things that all hunters should already know and shed some light on the more pressing conundrums of the class.
Scattered Shots: Marksman hunter 101
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. The marksman spec has had a tumultuous history, starting off the game in vanilla as the raiding spec, back when our specs were split into a raid spec, a solo spec, and a PvP spec. Then MM fell into obscurity for the entirety of The Burning Crusade and the first part of Wrath, before exponential stat scaling launched it back on top for the latter end of Wrath of the Lich King. Cataclysm is starting with SV clearly on top of the DPS charts and without the non-linear armor pen scaling stat to let it gain ground. However, with specializations and mastery in the game (along with promises of using those to tune and tweak DPS), MM devotees can hope for quick adjustments to bring their spec back in line with SV. Where BM hunters claim that the pet is what defines a hunter, the MM hunter takes the stance that it's our ranged weapon the defines us. The MM hunter is the ranged physical DPS class, and damned if they don't look good doing it! Join me after the cut for the breakdown of optimal MM hunter talents, rotation, glyphs, gems, and stat weights for raiding.
Scattered Shots: Beast mastery hunter 101
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Over and above everything else, hunters are known as the pet class. No one loves their pets the way hunters do, no one has the pet selection that we do, and no one's pets bring as much to the raid as our pets do. Other classes have tried to emulate the bond between hunter and pet, starting with the warlocks -- who, between their goth makeup and Twilight posters, have completely failed to grasp the true meaning of a lifelong companion. Mages, death knights, shaman -- they've all tried to be more like us hunters, and they have all failed. Of all hunter specs, beast mastery hunters are closest to their pets, and in Cataclysm, they even rely on their pet to deliver the signature shot of their rotation. They are rewarded for this trust with an even wider selection of pets and raid buffs, making them irresistible to the opposite sex -- or indeed, any sex. Join me after the cut for another massive collection of hunter information as we take a look at the Cataclysm BM hunter and cover the BM raid spec, glyphs, rotation, gems, and stats.
Scattered Shots: Optimizing your hunter for heroics
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Cataclysm has been out for nearly a week now. Hordes of hunters have proven their valor by uncovering the Twilight Cult's plot, rebuilding the World Pillar, and fetching a drunken dwarf his pants. A hero's work is never done. While many hunters are still proceeding steadily through the levels, a lot of them are now pushing their way into heroics. No more for us mindlessly AoEing our way through trash and bursting down bosses with no thought to strategy -- now it's time to pay attention to fight mechanics and dust off those rusty trapping skills. Our diligence will be rewarded with shiny blues that will help us hold our own in raids and loads of reputation via our tabards. But like my Grandpappy Frostheim used to say, "Anything worth doing, is worth doing at the top of the damage meters!" Join me after the cut as we talk about optimizing your hunter for heroics, how to spec, how to glyph, and how to look good while you do it.
Scattered Shots: Pre-raid gear for Cataclysm hunters
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Last week we covered our pre-heroic gear lists, bringing us up to at least ilvl 329 gear. A bit of grinding, a bit of questions, a sprinkling of gold and a few good drops and we're ready to graduate from normal-mode dungeons to the new, harder-hitting Cataclysm heroics. We want to be a lot more careful about selecting our ilvl 349 gear than we were with pre-heroic gear. This is the gear that is going to enable us to start killing raid bosses, and in raiding, the small nuances of optimization really start to add up. You absolutely want to enchant and gem this gear with the best possible gems and enchants. You may also want to evaluate your own stat weights using a tool like Zeherah's DPS Analyzer combined with a hefty dose of logic and common sense. That said, the difference between gear of the same ilvl is smaller than ever, thanks to reforging. So join me after the cut for the complete list of the best gear we can get outside of raids.
Scattered Shots: Leveling a Cataclysm hunter, part 1
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. It's common knowledge that hunters are not just the best-looking players in WoW, but they are also the best class in the game. In the words of Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer), "Hunters are just awesome." Thus, it comes as no surprise that Cataclysm is bringing with it a host of new hunters, taking advantage of the new class combos (everyone but gnomes can be hunters now) to start a brand, spanking new hunter from level 1. We've already covered leveling your hunter from 80 to 85 for those of you already at the level cap, so today we're going to talk about that haul from level 1 on up. Ah, the joys of the fresh young hunter -- I remember them well! Taming your very first pet that will stay with you for the rest of your days. The moment you first truly understand that nothing in the game should ever hit you. The funny falls and failures of first learning to kite. I am almost envious of all you new hunters out there, getting to explore the greatest class for the first time. Join me after the cut for the rundown of what you need to know to grow into the good-looking, radiant beacon of death that you deserve to be.
Scattered Shots: Pre-heroic hunter gear in Cataclysm
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Cataclysm is just around the corner, and it's time to put away the shiny new pets and start planning for level 85. We've already discussed optimizing our 80 to 85 leveling, so now we'll focus on our level 85 gear. To that end, we have a massive info dump for you today. We are going to start by looking at our pre-heroic gear options and save the pre-raid gear for a next Thursday. Unlike Wrath, Cataclysm heroics promise to be actually challenging. When we first step into the new heroics after reaching level 85, they'll be much harder than Wrath heroics were when we first hit 80. Heroics will absolutely be wiping groups and giggling madly while doing so, so you don't want to go into them with just whatever gear you happened to end up with when you finished leveling. In fact, the dungeon finder will have a minimum gear requirement to queue for the heroics (in the beta, it was ilvl 329), so even if you want to be an underperforming anchor to your group, the game won't let you. (Well, it will -- there's still no cure for idiocy -- but it won't let you in without at least being geared for it.) So join me after the cut for the massive list of all the gear you're going to be aiming to collect to start slaughtering heroics. This should help you plan which instances you want to run while leveling and which reputations to pursue.
Scattered Shots: Grandpappy Frostheim on the end of Wrath
Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways ... back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless -- but they were also men. You can ask him questions on Google+. OK, kids, have a seat. I've got something very important to tell you today. You've all heard me talking about what things were like back in my day, how they were so much harder back then and how you kids go on complaining without realizing how much better things are now. Well, I've got news for you: You're about to find out what it's like to be in my seat. You see, back when The Burning Crusade came out is when us old-timers first became old-timers. We were surrounded by the BC babies who had no idea how much better things were for their class. Then a couple of years later, we had the Wrath babies, who had things better than ever and what those BC babies had. Well, those BC hunters had to grow up and start talking about back in their day. It's your turn now. Pretty soon, we're going to have the Cataclysm babies, the hunters who just started with the Cataclysm expansion, and when they start complaining about how hard they have it -- well, then you'll be sitting right where I am now, trying to get them to understand how much better things are. Let me tell you the kinds of things you'll be saying about about the olden days of Wrath of the Lich King.
Scattered Shots: Hunter changes for 4.0.3a
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. It's been coming for a long, long time: Deathwing has finally shattered old Azeroth. It was kind of a jerk move on Deathwing's part, and frankly, he's just asking to be punched in the face. Along with the visual changes and host of sparkly new pets available to tame, hunters are also seeing all those beta changes finally brought over to live with patch 4.0.3a. If my poor, overworked email box is any indication, a lot of hunters out there have not been following the constant beta changes and are confused about many of the changes -- and while our abilities are basically the same, there have been a lot of meaningful changes to the way our DPS works. Join me after the cut for a rundown of the hunters view of patch 4.0.3a, including pet changes, ability changes, and just what Blizzard means by our shots being normalized.
Scattered Shots: Pets for leveling from 80 to 85
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. On Thursday, we talked about the optimum hunter spec for leveling 80 to 85 in Cataclysm. But no discussion of hunter optimization is entirely complete without also talking about those beloved boon companions that join us in leaving a swath of death and destruction in our wakes. As always, hunters got the soloing and leveling gig easy. It is not hard for us to level, and it doesn't require crazy optimization. You can absolutely use whatever pet you want to to level. If you love your pink tallstrider with all your heart and can't bear to be parted from him, then that's fine. It won't hurt you that much. Though, in the words of BRK, "I would do anything for love, but I won't sporebat ... no, I won't sporebat." Join me after the cut as we look at leveling pets, pet specs for leveling, and what kind of pet roster you want to have on hand for those 5-mans.
Scattered Shots: Leveling your hunter from 80 to 85
Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. The Twilight Cult is on the move, the elementals are invading, and it's only a matter of time until the elven lands start burning while the dwarves giggle from their mountain strongholds. Cataclysm is coming. It's time to start looking forward and planning our leveling experience. I want to stress as strongly as possible right at the outset that hunters are very easy to level. With our trusty pets at our sides, we're an unstoppable tanking/DPS/healer combo. Every hunter spec can level through solo content very easily. That said, we're going to be focusing on the absolute most efficient way of leveling from 80 to 85. Join me after the cut as we dig into the talent spec, glyphs, pets, and what you need to know about gear to optimize your Cataclysm leveling.
Scattered Shots: Grandpappy Frostheim on Ghostcrawler
Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways ... back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless -- but they were also men. You can ask him questions on Google+. All right, sit down lassies -- aye, and you lads, too -- and get yerself something warm to drink. Or maybe do that the other way around. It's time you had some more learning about what life was like back in my day. I've been hearing a lot of talk about Ghostcrawler lately. For those who don't know who Ghostcrawler is -- or the big GC, as we call him -- he's the man behind every blue post that you care about. He's one of nine grand masters in a secret cabal of masterminds exerting global influence over developed populations in an attempt to uncover ancient artifacts that could lead to the apotheosis of mankind. But for his day job, he's the lead systems designer for WoW; it's kind of like being God, but without the good press. Now back in my day, we didn't have any Ghostcrawler. Oh sure, we knew in a vague sort of way that there was someone behind the curtain, pulling the strings, dishing out the nerfs and continually striving to make us hunters so darned good-looking; that much was obvious. But for us, it was just a vague faceless form, shadowy and ominous. We didn't have any GC chatting us up with blue posts, explaining the process and cracking jokes. You hunters today, you don't know how good you got it. Let me tell you exactly what patches used to be like, back in my day.
