Hunters
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Beast Mastery: Bats
My very first pet was a bat. As soon as my white-haired Troll turned Level 11, I hied off to Tirisfal Glades and sought out Ressan the Needler, one of only two tameable all-white bats in the game. Of course, some people mistook him for those semi-albino bats found in the Eastern Plaguelands, but true pet connoisseurs knew better. Even when Hunters started turning to those 1.0 speed bats from Zul'Gurub, I stuck to my white bat. All pets were eventually normalized but now in the Echoes of Doom, each pet has its own ability, making our choices of pets even more special and important.In Patch 3.0.2, all bats now have Sonic Blast as their unique, bat-exclusive ability. It's a 2 second stun with negligible damage on a one-minute cooldown. As far as Hunter pet abilities go, Sonic Blast is pretty run-of-the-mill and isn't significantly great to merit taming a bat for. It pales in comparison to the Ravage skill of Ravagers, for example, which is on a 40-second cooldown. Ravage is melee range ability while Sonic Blast has 20 yards -- an irrelevant bonus considering our pets are almost always at melee range. It's only a little better for chasing and stunning, but otherwise, I would much rather have it available every 40 seconds than have some extra range.
Getting a moth pet as a low-level Hordie
As you'll know if you read my post about Petopia being updated, I'm extremely excited about being able to tame moths now. However, my hunter is Horde-side and merely level 18 (well, the one I'm playing recently anyway), and the only trainable moths pre-Outland are on Azuremyst Isle. Combine that with the fact that the boat crews are back in the game, and it becomes very tricky to get such a pet at a low level. But not impossible - here's how I did it. Get yourself to Auberdine (Darkshore). If you're like me, this means running from Orgrimmar, but at least I got to pick up some flight paths along the way. Swim out to the very end of Auberdine's dock, where the boat to Azuremyst docks. Position yourself right under the tip of the dock, and then drown (as close to the surface as you can). Run your ghost out on the dock, stand at the end of it, and wait for the boat to show up. Do not resurrect yet. When the boat arrives, run onto it (still in ghost form), quickly climb the back stairs, and carefully walk out onto the rope that stretches towards the front of the ship (see screenshot above). Now resurrect. You will be in combat, but nobody will run up to the rope to attack you. Now just don't move until the boat gets to Azuremyst. When you get to Azuremyst you should be able to jump straight into the water, thereby avoiding combat. Now would be a good time to turn on your Track Humanoids if you're interested in finding a Blood Elf Bandit for the coveted mask. Make your way east towards Ammen Vale, where new Draenei start, being careful to avoid Azure Watch. Unfortunately, you're going to have to die some more. There are high-level guards in the pass into Ammen Vale; I couldn't think of any way to get through besides corpse-running. But it only took two deaths, so I wasn't too bothered. Just past the guards, you should find what you came for: Vale Moths. They're level 1, so you should have absolutely no trouble training one, and then you can simply hearth out. Enjoy your awesome new pet! Three deaths in all (probably more if you're on a PvP server); not too bad, considering. The family skill for moths is Serenity Dust. I was initially worried about putting it on auto-cast, but it looks like the pet AI is smart enough to not use it until the moth is down by enough health that the HoT is actually useful. With Dust once a minute, I may never cast Mend Pet again in the course of normal questing.
Petopia updated for 3.0.2
Some people are excited about new talents and skills today. Some are excited about barber shops, or inscription. Me, I'm most excited about training a moth on my lowbie hunter. Think about it: moths! Ferocious, flappy beasts of terror and majesty - what could be better? I will be heading straight over to Azuremyst Isle as soon as the servers come back online, though it make take a death or two as a level 18 blood elf. That's a price that must be paid, since the only pre-Outlands trainable moths are the level 1 Vale Moths in the Draenei starting area. And how do I know this? Mania has fully updated her simply amazing Petopia for the patch. You will now find information there on every pet family available now or in Wrath, with all the details on skills and stats. There is also an insanely detailed FAQ, so if there's anything you want to know on the new pet training system, for instance, you can find it out there. I'm continually impressed with the quality of the site; there's nothing I want to know about hunter pets that isn't there (except why the pretty blue moths on Bloodmyst Isle can't be tamed). So thank you, Mania, for an excellent site and a very thorough update.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a night elf
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the seventh in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.The night elves are probably the most difficult race to roleplay well in all the World of Warcraft, which is particularly ironic considering how very popular they are. Many a roleplayer has been disappointed by seeing player character night elves who are 21 years old, who were born in Darnassus or Teldrassil, or whose mother or father is human -- all of which would be next to impossible according to the actual lore of the game. The only way to make things like this is to change the lore to suit your own preferences, or to rely on cliche devices such as time travel and special magics which really go too far into the realm of the abominably self-centered Mary Sue.Night elves can also be difficult to understand, and full of contradictions: they can be over 10,000 years old, and yet they often do not possess the vast wisdom that would seem to come with such an age; they are deeply connected to nature, and yet they sometimes act without the blessings of nature; their women are supposed to be very fierce warriors, and yet their animation in the game has them bouncing up and down like teenage girls at their favorite boy-band concert.And yet much of this is just the sort of thing that draws people to the night elves. There's a youthful passion combined with ancient grace and sadness that many roleplayers just love to get into. Also, for those who love to develop long and complex background stories for their characters, there is a great deal of history about the night elves' ancient past which can serve as good inspiration for many of your own character's life events. We won't go into every detail of ancient history today, however; instead we'll cover the basics that you'll need to know in order to start out with a night elf that fits in the Warcraft story, and direct you to some more resources if you'd like to make one with a really deep and complicated background.
Spirit beast pet family on Wowhead (Updated)
Over on Mania's Arcania, sharp-eyed commenter Goofball Jones noted an interesting tidbit: there's a new family of pets on Wowhead's WotLK site. Spirit Beasts. What do they look like? No clue yet, but one commenter noted the new skins for cats in Zul'Drak and posted a tantalizing screenshot from Wotlkwiki.info.Now, I'm not a hunter nor do I play one on TV, but I do note, looking at their abilities, that they appear to have cat family abilities save for replacing Rake with Spirit Strike, an arcane damage ability. While that makes poster Mattias's theory make sense to me that it's one of the cats from Zul'Drak, it's hardly conclusive.That's pretty much all I know to date. The family exists on Wowhead and has a very similar ability spread to cats. I now await hundreds of hunters running around taming everything that might even remotely be in this family for feedback. Keep an eye on Mania's Arcania as I'm sure news will break there first.(And thanks to my lovely wife for the tip and encouragement... we'll go with encouragement... to post.)Updated: Yes, that is a spirit beast. Kudos to Mania and her readers for solving the issue.
The Colosseum: Erratic of Thunderlord
The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.By popular request, the Colosseum tracked down one of the top Hunters in today's Arena. Erratic, a member of the guild LiveToPug on the Thunderlord server, was happy to share his thoughts about the Arena today.Erratic is a team member of Mostly Duelists. At the time of this writing, Mostly Duelists is the #1 ranked 5v5 team on the Vindication battlegroup. Erratic is also a member of the 3v3 Tardaphant, who has a 2000 rating.Check out behind the cut to see what Erratic had to say.
77 Hunter solos Onyxia
Chalk up another piece of evidence for just how trivial the old world stuff will be when Wrath releases -- here's a video of a Hunter at level 77 (on the beta servers, obviously) soloing the original raid boss herself, Onyxia. There's a little more info about how it was done over on the WarcraftMovies page -- the only way to deal with all the whelps was to max out AoE, so he used a special talent blend just to do this. And it looks like he just dodged or ate the Deep Breaths, as I doubt even a 77 Hunter would be able to put up enough "dots" to down her before she can do too many. Roar of Sacrifice also got a lot of usage -- it's a pet talent that lets a Hunter avoid half of his pet's health in damage. And he says the two-piece set bonus from Hunter T5 helped a lot, too -- over the fight it added up to quite a bit of healing.Not too shabby. And at 77, this means there's still three levels (not to mention all the endgame gear) to grow. Maybe the fact that Blizzard is revamping/replacing the old endgame isn't so bad after all -- when it's this easy for the highest level players, it's time to move on. Unless, of course, they make soloing Ony an achievement.[via BRK]
Build Shop: Hunter 41/20/0 Leveling Spec
Periodically WoW Insider presents Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players. This week, Matthew Porter examines a beast master Hunter talent specialization built around leveling.Welcome readers to this week's Build Shop. I know you haven't seen this feature since the middle of last June, and that's because most viable talent specs have been covered for each class. Not a lot of additions or enhancements have been added since then but that will surely change when Wraith of the Lich King arrives. So this week I thought I would try a "theme" talent spec, one designed for a particular task, leveling a Hunter. Many people agree that the Hunter is one of the easier classes to level, but for fellow WoW Insider blogger Matthew Rossi and others, it's taking longer than expected. Let's see if this beast mastery spec can give him a boost!
Scattered Shots: New and improved abilities
Scattered Shots: noun. 1. (Scatter Shot, singular) An ability used by Marksmanship hunters, especially to annoy other players in PvP. 2. (Scattered Shots, plural) A column at WoW Insider about anything even loosely related to hunters, except for high-level raiding and completely improper, sometimes libelous personal commentary.Hunters are getting quite a few changes in Wrath of the Lich King, but so far haven't covered them all. Today I'd like to go through the newest abilities and discuss them in greater detail.New Baseline Hunter Abilities:Nope, no Camouflage. We talked about this before, but it looks like the devs read our article, "Do hunters need Camouflage?" and decided the answer was no. So, instead we have a couple other new abilities to look forward to:Kill Shot: This is the new level 80 hunter ability, and it provides us with a bit of utility that help us to stand out and perform better in various situations:
Clarification on pet talents
In the comments thread on the post yesterday regarding Wowhead's new pet talent calculators, many of you seemed somewhat misinformed and accused the calculator of being buggy. To set the record straight, here are some fun facts about pets and pet talents in the current Wrath beta: The +damage/+health/+armor modifiers have been removed from pet families. Instead, a pet's modifiers depend on which of the three pet talent trees it has: Ferocity, Cunning, or Tenacity. However, Blizzard will be implementing pet-family-specific abilities. Hunters get one pet talent point at level 20, and one every four levels thereafter. The total number of pet talent points available at level 80 is 16, unless you are a Beast Mastery Hunter with the 51-point talent Beast Mastery, in which case you get an additional five points, for 21 total. Each successive tier requires three points per previous tier to unlock (compare to five points for player talents). The exception is single-point talents such as Charge or any of the tier 5 talents, which require five points per previous tier, according to their tooltips; the exception to this exception is Boar's Speed. This means that the tier 5 talents are only available to BM hunters, since they require 20 points to unlock (again according to their tooltips), and any given pet can have at most one of them at a time. The last two points are based on how the tooltips read. However, this is not how they're currently implemented in-game; in the beta right now, All talents require three points per previous tier to unlock, which means non-BM hunters can get them as well. So there is a discrepancy between how the tooltips read and how it actually works when you go to spend the points. I'm guessing the tooltips are correct, since that would keep the tier 5 talents BM-only, and prevent hunters from getting more than one tier 5 talent. Update: The tooltips are incorrect. Ghostclaw confirms that all tiers require three points per previous tier, which means non-BM hunters can get the tier 5 talents. All of these facts are confirmed by sources in the beta. Of course, it is beta, and any of this is very subject to change, but that's the way things stand right now. By the way, how amusing is it that moths will be Ferocity pets? Ahhh, run! Ferocious moth!
BigRedKitty: "Exotic" declassified
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Once upon a time, there was a comedian who did a bit about Troy Aikman. Mr. Aikman is a famous, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who was forced to retire due to receiving multiple concussions over his career. The joke went like this: "Troy, you've been a Super Bowl MVP and are one of the greatest quarterbacks of the 20th century. How do you feel having to retire after receiving your 10th concussion, and how has that incredible series of blows affected your brain?" "Ummmm... I like... pudding!" How is this pertinent to WotLK and hunters? Well, the new 51st talent point in the beta of the Beastmaster tree is named Beast Mastery. As written, it's kind of obscure, a little open-ended, and the programmers don't seem to have a clue what it could really mean: "We're still working on implementing this particular talent. The talent will allow you to train a different "class" of pets which we're calling "exotic" right now. Only hunters with this talent will be able to train those pets. They won't necessarily be "stronger" (though will all have unique abilities that you can only get from exotic pets), the extra power you should get from the talent will be from the additional pet skill points (pet talent points). "Devilsaur anyone?" So when pressed for an answer on the WotLK beta forums for what "exotic" entails, the blue-poster basically said, "Pudding!" But did you ever have a doubt that BigRedKitty wouldn't know what "exotic" is? We sure hope not! We're totally on the case, ready to spill the beans on "exotic" pets, and announce what you 51/15/5 Beastmaster hunters can expect to find come expansion-time. Devilsaur, indeed.
Pet talent trees unleashed
Thanks to Mania (creator of the indispensable Petopia), we now have information on the new pet talent trees for Wrath. This excellent information was brought to us by Nimizar, a hunter lucky enough to get into the beta today. Mania hasn't had time to code any talent calculators up, but I'm more than happy to look at the text of this stuff. Each pet family has access to one of three talent trees, named Tenacity, Cunning, and Ferocity; however, the trees have a large amount of overlap. There are 17 talents per tree, nine of which are shared with the other two trees and eight of which are only found in that tree. The talents are arranged in five tiers. Each tier requires you to put three points into it to move on to the next tier (compare to five for character talents). The full description of the talents is too lengthy to put here, so I'll just give the highlights. There are some very appealing skills.
Hunter, Paladin, and DK info from the alpha forums
With new talents and spells for all the other classes having come to light by now, it would be easy to understand if Paladins and Hunters were feeling a little bit left out. I don't have talent trees or anything to share with you right now, but I do at least have a few tidbits that appeared in the official Wrath of the Lich King Alpha forums yesterday: Hunters: Loyalty is being removed for pets, though you will still have to feed them to keep them happy. They're looking at pet stat scaling, especially in PvP, and particularly resilience; they want pets to be killable if that's what other players want to do. The idea is to make you, the Hunter, strike a balance between damage and mitigation for your pet. There will be new abilities in the pet talents, including "some that will make it less painful when your pet dies just a few moments into a fight." They want all pet families to be viable (Wryxian mentioned specifically turtles; they should have more DPS now while still having powerful defensive abilities). Update: New pets will only need to gain a maximum of five levels, implying that if you're level 80 and tame a level 17, it instantly becomes level 75 [thanks, Wabbajack]. Paladins: The devs recognize that Holy is at a bit of a weak point right now relative to the other healing classes. The goal is for Holy Paladins to be powerful single target healers: they should be tank healers, or be able to spot-heal a low-health target "super fast." They're working on building "mechanics that don't make running fights so punishing," as well as new talents and skills. There's also a note for Death Knights: Death and Decay and Army of the Dead are feeling too similar, both being long-cooldown AoE abilities. To remedy this, Army of the Dead is going to become an emergency button (Wryxian compares it to Retaliation or Recklessness), while Death and Decay is having its cooldown lowered to let it become more part of your normal spell rotation. [via DeathKnight.info]
Wowhead shows Hunters some love
It seems like just a couple of days ago Wowhead made a major addition to their site in the form of Wrath of the Lich King alpha talent calculators. Oh, that's right, it was just a couple of days ago. Well, today they've added some more new features, and these ones are all for Hunters. That should take some of the sting out of your talents not being released yet. A training calculator for pet skills (though this will all be completely overhauled for Wrath, it should prove very useful until then) A comparison table of all pet types, listing their modifiers to damage, health, and armor, abilities they can learn, levels at which they can be tamed, and diet. All columns are filterable and sortable, in case you really need to see a listing of the highest-armor pets that can Bite and eat cheese (it's boars, by the way). A frankly amazing gallery of all the different skins for all the different pet types, with 3D models and links to tamable pets that use those skins. Great stuff. And now I know that I have two ways to get this awesome spider: a common, but low level mob on Bloodmyst Isle, or a level 64 elite. At that rate, actually, I'll probably just stick with my boar – I doubt my level 55 hunter is up to taming a 64 elite, and bringing a pet up 40 levels doesn't sound too fun either. Oink!
DS Daily: FPS
The latest footage of Renegade Kid's Moon convinced us (and IGN's Matt Casamassina) that the game could be something special, though a few of you evidently still need some encouragement. In the comments, reader John B. argued that no matter how much impressive technology Renegade Kid throws at Moon, it wouldn't be enough, because first-person shooters just don't work as well on the DS.We're of the opinion that the handheld currently lacks a great FPS, but do you think the DS will ever see a triple-A game in this genre, given its obvious technical limitations?
Scattered Shots: Talented animals
Scattered Shots is a bit short today, on account of its author currently visiting the Holy Land. Still on time though, and still specially for hunters!Now that pets are finally getting the attention they deserve, they will, in their own way, become even more like a second class all their own. Big Red Kitty was only partially joking today when he told you that these pets would be able to replace certain other classes. The new and improved Wrath-of-the-Lich-King pet talents will make hunters feel quite literally like a class and half, the closest thing in the game you can get to multiboxing with only one account. We don't really know for sure what these pet talent trees will look like, but there are a number of implications and speculations we can imagine at this point, which can help give some shape to this new element of the hunter experience, including some mysterious pet abilities lurking in the murky bowels of the Wrath alpha client.
Phat Loot Phriday: Crux of the Apocalypse
Been a long time since we did a dagger, so let's break out this badass stabby stick, just recently seen in the Sunwell Plateau.Name: Crux of the Apocalypse (Wowhead, Thottbot, Wowdb)Type: Epic One-hand DaggerDamage/Speed: 164-247/1.80 (114.2 DPS)Abilities: +18 Agility, +15 Stamina, which makes this a nice weapon for either Hunters or Rogues. Hunters will probably say it's best for them, and Rogues will probably say they deserve it, but no matter who's getting this weapon, it's top of the line period. Just look where it drops from. Red socket (perfect for a Subtle or Bright Crimson Spinel), +4 attack power bonus Improves haste rating by 27 and attack power by 56. No matter how you look at it, this is a very, very nice dagger. Just in case you're not up on your Latin, crux means cross, though it's also picked up another meaning in English as central or critical point. Either way, whenever you're stabbing someone with a central symbol of the Apocalypse, they're going to feel it. How to Get It: Oh, nothing too hard -- it just drops from Kil'jaeden, the current endgame boss of World of Warcraft. So just, you know, beat the game, and then win the roll against that greedy Hunter or the grabby Rogue in your raiding group, and the knife is yours. Oh, and you'll probably want to do it again -- if you think one of these things is great, just think how awesome dual wielding them would be.Getting Rid of It: You won't -- at least not until most of the way through Wrath of the Lich King. But when do you sell it, a vendor will give you 15g 52s 99c for it, or you can disenchant it into a Void Crystal.
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.
Mages and Rogues jump in Arena stats, while Hunters fall behind
Vhiari, keeper of the Armory stats, has updated once again, this time taking a look at Arena performance across all three rankings and all of the classes contained within. The 2v2 comparison (showing Arena rankings, across the bottom, with the percentage of players in each class at that ranking) tells the overall story: Mages are seeing major gains in the Arena, as are Rogues, which Vhiari speculates may be at the cost of Warlocks (who took a small tumble). And just as last time, Hunters continue to struggle in all three brackets -- 5v5 has the same situation as above, but in less extreme amounts.Of course, these are stats, and what these stats actually mean is up to you (and more importantly, up to Blizzard -- this is just a sign of who's getting which rankings at which levels, and this could be the result of many different things, so there's no reason to expect buffs or nerfs based on just this information). Still, it's a pretty clear look at just who's winning out there, for whatever reason -- the stats say Mages have done well the past few months, while Hunters continue to struggle inside the Arenas.[via WoR]
WoW Insider Weekly
Every week here at WoW Insider, our columnists cover all aspects of the World of Warcraft, from professions to Paladins, and everywhere in between. Here's ten of the most popular weekly columns from the past seven days. If you missed them the first time, don't miss them again. Officers' Quarters: Jerk message of the dayWhat do you do when someone you trust betrays your guild? Guildwatch: "Makes it sound like Teapot Dome up in here"Just in case you didn't get the reference, go learn about the Teapot Dome scandal, then come back and read about some corrupt guild drama. Hybrid Theory: Death Knight distressIt's great that we've got another tank and all, but has anyone thought about what this will do to the bears? Ready Check: Death and raid guildsThis was a week of guild breakups. Find out how to keep yours together. Answers from a lore nerd, part 1You got us -- this isn't really a weekly column, but it's so popular (and such a good read) that we might just make it one. Five more after the break.
