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Scattered Shots: Simply enchanting
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. While compiling the master Scattered Shots Resource Guide, I spent a lot of time digging back through months (and years) of hunter columns here on WoW.com, and one of the things I realized was that some of the key guides were woefully out of date. The game keeps changing and information that was great one day becomes obsolete a few months later. So I'm going to try to fill in some of the more glaring gaps in the resource guide from time to time, starting today. I have not forgotten Survival 101 -- the specter of that column still looms over my shoulder, haunting me -- and we won't be doing dull, boring basics guides every column. We'll continue to look at hunter news, end-game raiding strats, hunter loot, pets and why healers hate them, more ways to use your hunter that Blizzard never intended, and of course Grandpappy Frostheim will make an appearance from time to time. But on the agenda today is a straightforward guide to the best level 80 hunter enchants. If your gear can have an enchant, it should have an enchant. While any single enchant doesn't make a huge difference to our total DPS, all those little things add up to the kind of DPS that has those wannabe DPS shadow priests crying in their decorative orbs.
Scattered Shots: Hunter pets in Cataclysm
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. Throughout the years of WoW, hunter pets have grown better and better with each expansion. In the beginning they were a pain to train and level, and we were rewarded for that pain with a pet that died in every boss fight. But over time, our pets have grown steadily stronger, easier and more customizable. While we still have some pet issues, those issues are no longer that our pets are too weak. Of course while we know how awesome and vital our pets have become, healers are still a few expansions behind on the learning curve. They continue to prioritize the tanks or themselves over our pets. But what are you gonna do? The healer's mind is an unfathomable thing -- after all, they rolled healers in the first place, which already establishes them as somewhat unstable. What I don't understand is why that nurturing impulse doesn't translate to adorably fluffy and cuddly minions of death. So our pets are certified mini-killing machines now, but with that improvement new problems have cropped up. While we still don't know exactly what Cataclysm has in store for our pets, the recent hunter class preview gave us a peek at the direction that Blizzard may have in mind. So join me after the cut as we take a look at the current problem with hunter pets and the possible solution that Cataclysm may present.
Scattered Shots: Grandpappy Frostheim on Cataclysm changes
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. It seems like everywhere I turn these days all I see is hunters overreacting and complaining about the small bit of Cataclysm hunter changes we've seen. "I hate focus! I hate haste! We're going to become ranged rogues! I'm quitting if they do this! I'm going to hold my breath until they take it back! Huuuumph!" Kids these days, I tell ya. Let me tell you, back in my day ... Well, back in my day hunters complained and moaned about every major change, too. I guess some things never change. While Cataclysm may be the largest change our class has seen, it is not the first major change our class -- or our stats -- have had. Some of you are just too young to know that we've gone through this all before, although to a different degree. So have a seat, make yourselves comfortable, and shut your trap for minute and maybe you'll learn a little something about the way things were back in the day. Like Brann always says, "If ye don't know yer history, yer doomed to repeat it. Then ye'll look like a great buffoon, won't ye?"
Scattered Shots Resource Guide
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. Here at Scattered Shots, we spend a lot of time talking about how to optimize your hunter -- whether for DPS or for leveling or for soloing things we were never meant to solo. We also spend some time talking about the impact of the latest hunter news, what things were like back in the good 'ol days, and making fun of lesser classes and non-dwarves. If you read Scattered Shots regularly, we like to think that you get access to a lot of information that's often useful and hopefully always interesting and entertaining. However, if you're looking for that tidbit of information from some column from a couple months back ... I'll be the first to admit that it can be hard to find. If you don't remember certain key words, the search function will probably not be your friend and you'll be reduced to scrolling through page after page of columns. Well, that's something that I can do for you! This resource guide will provide you links to all of the relevant Scattered Shots guides, with a brief description of the information you can find in each. This is not an index of every column -- this is specifically currently accurate guides with information you probably want to know. So news on the patch 1.5 changes will not be here, but how to level will. This guide will be updated regularly, adding new relevant guides and removing ones that become obsolete.
Scattered Shots: Gearing up without raids
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. For every hunter scaling Icecrown Citadel and duking it out over Saurfang's corpse, there are five more slogging their way through an unending chain of heroics. Sure, those hunters in heroics don't die nearly as often or spectacularly as the raiders -- but they have to tolerate their own pain: death knight tanks and a continuing stream of healers shamefully neglecting their pets (we're still waiting for Dawn to educate priests on this vital skill). Regardless of what content we hit, what we all have in common is the pursuit of the best gear we can get. So whether you're trying to optimize your heroic hunter or building up your gear to start dominating raids, we've got you covered today. Join me after the cut as we take a look at some of the best hunter gear available without setting foot in a raid. And you might be surprised by how quickly your hunter can become geared -- it only takes a couple of weeks to be raid ready if you're diligent and prioritizing well!
Scattered Shots: Rhok out with your Lok out
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Once upon a time, back before you could get showered in epics within a week of hitting the level cap, the most badass hunter weapon you could wield was Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers. This amazingly impressive weapon did a whopping 44 DPS (later boosted to 53 DPS), making it clearly the best hunter weapon in the game. With the same quest you also get Lok'delar, Stave of the Ancient Hunters. Two epics in one! Acquiring the weapon required embarking on the most epic hunter quest the game has seen, even all these years later. When you saw a hunter with Rhok, you could be certain she knew her stuff. Yesterday Dawn talked about the priest quest to get Benediction (and poked me about Rhok'delar in the process). And she has a really good point -- who knows what will happen to Molten Core come Cataclysm? Hunters may not have the chance to do this quest much longer. Even though you can dwarf the DPS of Rhok'delar with a quick auction house purchase these days, I still think that going through the quest chain for Rhok'delar is well worth it for all hunters. So join me after the cut as we go back in time and walk through the quest chain, both how to do it now and some reminiscence on what it was like back in my day.
Scattered Shots: Patch 3.3.3 hunter changes
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. Patch 3.3.3 has hit, bringing some surprises with it. We got the BM buffs we knew about, but we were also slipped some changes that weren't on the PTR. In addition to some truly odd things, Ghostcrawler put on his santa suit and slipped in some nice presents for all the good hunters of the world. Unfortunately some of the patch notes are a bit vague, or they're worded very poorly (in one case implying the exact opposite of what the change really was). But after a bit of legwork and testing, it looks like most of these changes are good things for us. Join me after the cut as we take a look at the more notable patch 3.3.3 hunter changes.
Scattered Shots: Hunting the Frostwing Halls
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Having dealt with the goth boys and girls in the Crimson Halls, it's time to move on to the big leagues and start playing with dragons. The Frostwing Halls of ICC bring us some fun fights uniquely suited to the hunter skill set. After all, where other classes see big scary dragons, we see potential pets. All they need is a good home and a little loving and they'll become loyal and life-long companions. Probably the best part of the Frostwing Halls is that not only do we get to show off our badass hunter skills, but we even help out on the healing end. I tell ya, there's nothing that we hunters can't do! Join me after the cut as we take a look at the hunter tips for downing the Frostwing Halls. This article assumes that you are familiar with the overall strategies for the encounters and we're just going to be looking at hunter-specific tips and tricks. As always, if your raid leader tells you to do anything differently, always do what the raid leader says. Even if she's wrong.
Scattered Shots: The right pet for the right situation
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. When you get down to the philosophical basics, every class has the same goal in a group or raid: do as much as you can to help clear the instance and kill the bosses. This of course is where the hunter obsession with DPS comes from. Most of the time the best thing we can do to help our group down bosses is to become a radiant beacon of death, to undergo an apotheosis into a DPS god and accept the adoration of the lesser DPS classes. But there are times when it helps our group or raid more to sacrifice some of our personal DPS for the good of the group. Whether it's kiting blood beasts or blistering zombies or shooting down orbs, we are always happy and willing to take the hit for the good of the team. We're just noble that way. And our noble pets can help out the team too, boosting the team's DPS as well as our own. Join me after the cut as we take a look when a different pet choice might be best thing for the team as a whole, even if it means a DPS loss for us personally.
Scattered Shots: Marksman 102: the armor pen years
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. There's a lot of things that separate hunters from the plate classes, and it's not just that we attack from a safe distance. Spreadsheet models also suggest that we hunters are smarter, more charismatic, and across the board we are an uncommonly good-looking lot. Of course there's also the difference of the armor itself. Fortunately we have the opportunity to completely strip all of that armor away with the gear that's currently available in the endgame. With the right gear choices and the right gems hunters can reach the ArP hard cap, and with comes some truly impressive DPS -- in fact the very best DPS available to the hunter class. However, going for ArP at the wrong time can easily lead to a DPS loss. Last week we discussed the standard agility MM build and today after the cut we're going to delve into the mysterious world of the ArP MM build, including when to switch specs, when to change your rotation, and when to start gemming ArP.
Scattered Shots: Marksman 101
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Marksman was the original hunter raiding spec back in vanilla. After falling out of the top spot in BC and early Wrath, MM is back with a vengeance. MM is topping meters, punting gnomes, and kicking so much ass MM hunters have to use addons to take names of all the ass they can't get to just now, but will get around to kicking at their convenience. The MM spec comes with the most versatile toolbox, the most controllable DPS cooldowns, two optimal raid specs, and the strongest AOE of the hunter specs. However, MM is also one of the trickiest hunter specs, relying more than other specs on proper use of cooldowns and good movement management. Join me after the cut as we go through the nuts and bolts of the MM hunter spec and how you too can learn to punt gnomes and top meters.
Scattered Shots: Hunter stat caps: hit, crit, haste, and armor penetration
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. I don't know whether it's from charity or curiosity, but I often spend time talking with the sad and dispossessed members of WoW, which is to say, other classes. In one conversation I thought we had found a common ground: the trials and troubles of choosing gear. Any kinship I may have felt, however, shattered when they started complaining about having five (or only four) different stats to compare. Yeah, a whole five different stats on gear that matter to you? Cry me a river. Hunters have a lot of stats to juggle -- more than most classes. On any given piece of gear our DPS could be affected by attack power, agility, intellect, hit rating, haste rating, armor penetration rating, crit rating, ranged weapon DPS, and even stamina. Not only does each stat affect our DPS differently, but many of our stats have some kind of cap after which they become much less useful -- or no longer useful at all. Today we're going to head back to hunter school and take a look at the hunter stats that have caps: hit rating, crit rating, haste rating and armor penetration rating. We'll look at the hard caps and soft caps and how these stats change as our gear improves.
Scattered Shots: Hunter set bonuses
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. For me, responding to my email is kind of like working out. As long as I do it every day, it's not so bad. It's just habit. But skip a few days and it starts to pile up and gets easier and easier to put it off. And of course the longer I put it off the worse it gets, until going through it all can seem like an insurmountable task. I've been slacking off lately and letting the email pile up. The one interesting benefit of this, however, is that it makes it a lot easier to see patterns in the questions. A huge percentage of the emails I've been getting lately are about the hunter set bonuses. Should we go for the 4-piece tier 10? Only go for two pieces and get better itemized pieces for the rest of the slots? Keep the 2-piece tier 9? So today we're going to run down the advantages of the tier 9 and tier 10 hunter set bonuses for each of the three hunter specs, and suggest which way you should gear your hunter.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for hunters
Blizzard has given us a bit more information about Cataclysm stats and exactly how they'll be changing. Reading between the lines it seems clear that the intent of the announcement was to keep the hunter community well-informed, and they then went ahead and tossed in some info about other classes while they were at it. But I think it's pretty clear they were talking to us. Here's the relevant scoop for hunters: Stamina: We'll have a lot more -- much closer to the plate amount. This will be true across the board for non-plate classes. Intellect: We won't get it on gear anymore. Since, you know, we won't be using mana. Attack Power: No longer on gear for "most items." AP will still be a part of the game, and we'll probably still have talents like Trueshot Aura that boost our AP, it's just not a number that we'll be seeing on our gear. Existing gear will have its AP converted into agility and stamina. Resilience: This stat will finally become a pure PvP stat and will only work against players, and won't reduce crit chance. Armor: The difference in armor between mail and plate will be smaller. Gem Color: It's not certain, but hit rating gems are probably going to become blue gems, implying that hit/agility will be purple. Haste: Will let us recover focus faster. Mastery: We didn't get a whole lot of new information on this new stat, other than "...will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique." Agility: Will likely now give us 2 attack power and probably a slightly lower crit chance boost than it does now. Armor Penetration: Going away entirely from gear. It'll still be in the game as talents, but not a stat that we have to pay attention to for our gear lists. Anything that currently has ArP on it will have that ArP converted into haste and crit. Keep in mind that haste is probably going to be more appealing to us when this change happens too. Join me after the cut as we contemplate what some of these changes may mean for us hunters.
Scattered Shots: Dreaming of awesome ammo
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Currently hunter ammo is nothing more than an extension of our ranged weapon DPS. Perhaps our Stakethrower does 222.7 DPS in raw damage. Well, our Shatter Rounds just boost that by 91.5 DPS. So it's as if our gun was actually doing 314.2 DPS. It's certainly easy to understand, but it's just so... boring. Really, they could just boost the DPS of our ranged weapons and it'd be the same thing. But ever since Blizzard first told us they'd be removing consumable ammo we hunters have been dreaming of how awesome our ammo could be. It might burst into flame on impact, or cut through armor, or heal us, or heck, for all we know it would serve as a mount so we could fire gnomish rogues into the face of bosses! Join me after the cut for a discussion of the state of hunter ammo, and some speculation on just how awesome it could become.
Scattered Shots: Hunter trinkets
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Trinkets fill a very special slot in our gear selection. Rather than just a collection of stats, trinkets are the one gear slot we can pretty much count on doing something special, be it crazy procs or on-use abilities. Of course because they aren't just piles of stats, trying to compare one trinket to another can sometimes be difficult. Worse yet, they are some of the most difficult slots to fill, and we don't want to waste our time (or DKP) with a subpar trinket. In the past we've looked at the ICC hunter loot, and more ICC hunter loot. Today we're going to look beyond just ICC and examine all of the top hunter trinket choices, from Greatness to Deathbringer's WIll. Furthermore, I'm going to go out on a limb and rank all the trinkets from best to worst for each hunter spec. So join me after the cut to see if that limb can hold up against some solid dwarven weight.
Scattered Shots: Hunting the Crimson Halls
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. The Crimson Halls of Icecrown Citadel contains the kind of horrors that the Plagueworks could only hint at. The Crimson Halls is where all the emo vampire RPing blood elves went to die... and then came back! True story, and a complete tangent: a friend of mine, in her 30s, mother of two, recently admitted to me that her shameful, guilty pleasure is reading the Twilight books (which, I gather, are like Anne Rice 90210 for teenagers). She says the books are awful and everything you'd fear, but she can't stop reading them. Then she saw a Twilight movie was horrified to see -- to really see with her own eyes -- that these hunky guys of literary lust were like 17 years old. Sure, they were in the books too, but apparently when reading she had unconsciously changed them to a more age-appropriate hunky mental image and suddenly felt very creepy seeing these kids on the screen. It's one vast landscape of pain, being old. Join me after the cut as we veer back on topic and take a look at the hunter tips and tricks for the Crimson Halls, from Blood Princes to Blood Queens, including how we can take a break from kiting and become tanks!
Scattered Shots: Extreme soloing
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. We hunters are basically an entire party unto ourselves. Our pet is the tank, we're the DPS, and we can split the healing duties between hunter and pet. By focusing on the right talents and gear and glyphs, hunters and pets can be a formidable soloing team, taking on content that was never meant to be done alone. We can solo our way from Molten Core straight through to even Lich King 5-mans. Soloing content meant for groups or raids comes from the same impulse behind climbing a mountain: we do it because it's there. We do it for the challenge, the excitement, for the glory for the hunter class. And if that isn't enough for you, there's also the allure of legendary items like Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, or rare mount drops like the Swift Zulian Tiger, Midnight, and the Swift White Hawkstrider. Join me after the cut as we take a look at exactly how you can topple Molen Core to Violet Hold on your own, how you can heal your pet for thousands of heals per second, and become the envy of your guild mates. There's nothing quite as satisfying as polishing off Ragnaros and hearing your friends bemoan how horribly broken you are.
Scattered Shots: Can Beast Mastery raid?
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. Beast Mastery is the beloved hunter spec with the strongest and most protective of followers. While a BM hunter was a rare thing to find back in vanilla, BM saw a terrific boost throughout Burning Crusade and the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King. For years BM enjoyed the incredibly rare status of being an excellent spec -- if not the best spec -- for soloing, leveling, pvp, and raiding. Then starting in early Wrath, the BM hunters cowered beneath the shadow of the nerf bat. But even after getting repeatedly beaten like a red-headed gnome, squashed into a wee pet-shaped crater, you still don't have to look far to find a BM hunter defending their viability in raids. Today we're going to take a hard look at the BM spec. We're going to dismiss the rhetoric of the PUG masses who say "If yer BM yer a noob" and take a look at exactly where BM really is in raid viability. Join me after the cut as we take a look at the numbers and the philosophy behind the BM raider.
Scattered Shots: Grandpappy Frostheim on death knights
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 up hill, both ways. All I hear from kids these days is whining about death knights. Whining about how bad they are at tanking in their PUGs or how they can't even do 2k DPS. You hunters these days should be grateful for death knights. You don't know how good you got it, 'cause you have no sense of history! Let me tell you, back in my day we didn't have death knights. If we saw an undead servant of the Lich King walking around, we shot it on sight. In those days a bullet to the skull was redemption, not the sissy politically correct version you got now. We had redemption piled taller than your head over in the Plaguelands, I can tell you that. So take a seat, put away your new-fangled dungeon finders and take a break from your crazy barber shop haircuts and let Grandpappy Frostheim tell you how things were back in my day, and why you should be thankful for those death knights.
