Loot system in cross-real dungeons March 7, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Uncategorized.add a comment
My level 44 rogue encountered a hunter the other day in a random Marudon instance, who rolled need on two pieces of plate gear. There are a few issues with this:
Being that the loot system was on need/greed, the hunter in question shouldn’t have been able to need plate pieces. That’s the point of need/greed.
We couldn’t kick him after the first time he did this, and so he then ninja’d a second piece of gear (that he couldn’t even use) before the timer let us vote to kick him.
Of course, I submitted an in-game ticket about this, since the loot system shouldn’t have allowed this. The responding GM gave no information on why he could loot this, or why we were not allowed to kick him, but rather suggested that perhaps his behavior was acceptable – something about the loot system allowing that. He said to use the suggestions forum to make changes to the loot system – I’ll cross-post this to the blizzard forums later – even though I am not suggesting that the loot system be changed. He didn’t seem to understand that ‘need before greed’ shouldn’t allow mail-wearers to loot plate.
Anyway, if anyone else has seen something like this, either poor behavior or a bug in the loot system, feel free to share your experiences.
Rotface Down March 2, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Raid Reports.add a comment
So I finally took down Rotface last night. Not a guild first, but a personal first for a few members of the raid, including myself. It was far from a clean kill, but no one died but the boss, so it was a success. I seem to have lost the combat log from this, though.
We also had our best Festergut kill, down in 4:31 with 34654 total raid DPS. There were a few times over our two attempts on Festergut that I lost a lot of DPS due to, presumably, either moving or being made to vomit. I’ll need to continue to work on that, but I think I can finally say that we have him on farm. It has always taken a few attempts, but I think that this time we could have taken him down without heroism or speed pots.
I finally got Exalted with the Ashed Verdict, with the title and updated ring that goes with it. The biggest part of that ring is the socket, and it sims as a 30 DPS upgrade for me. A few other people got ring upgrades as well.
I also got a new staff, the Shaft of Glacial Ice. That’s a major upgrade for me, simming as 70 DPS, which I can believe – it’s better in every way than the polearm I got out of heroic HoR. I still need to go and gem it.
The priest got Lockjaw, which seems nice, someone got Abracadaver, which is fun to play with, and the tank got some new hands, which I guess are nice. I don’t know about tanks, but stamina and strength sound helpful :) It actually might have been given to him as offspec, which makes sense because I don’t think hit is a very tankish stat.
We got a few attempts in on dreamwalker, and everyone’s getting used to the fight. We’ll probably take Wednesday to get these 6 down, and maybe some time on Friday, and then make some attempts on blood princes and dreamwalker. We got a guild first down of jarraxxus in TotGC10 this week, and might go and try to kill faction champions as well. We aren’t extending raid lockouts though – still a lot of people who can benefit from loot and badges from the first 6.
Hunting ICC: Hunter Gear from Trash March 2, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Hunter's Guide, Hunting ICC.add a comment
So, one of the ‘top searches’ that WordPress is showing me is ‘hunter icc trash loots’. What I figure is that that means people want to know if there’s any neat hunter loot that drops off ICC trash. Most of this loot is BoE, meaning if you have a ton of money, you can probably find it on the auction house or in the trade channel, if you look hard enough. But what’s out there?
Well, you can use a Wowhead filter for this have a look at:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=4;minle=254;maxle=300;cr=3:16;crs=1:4812;crv=0:0
There’s some silly stuff in there, that isn’t really a zone drop. In all, I see 15 zone drops in ICC, though some aren’t really zone drops – Carapace of Forgotten Kings, for example. Silly Wowhead. Only one of these is any good for hunters.
Wodin’s Lucky Necklace is a pretty popular hunter necklace. I’ve seen this selling for a lot, and with good reason – apart from the necklace that drops off of heroic 25 Sindragosa, it’s best in slot for SV hunters, though perhaps the normal mode Sindragosa necklaces which come with Armor Penetration would be better for MM hunters that are going for the ArPen build.
I’m afraid that’s all you get in terms of trash drops. As for loot from bosses, there are a few other great posts out there, Wowhead and the official armory have all this information, and you can always use Rawr or Simulationcraft to check to see if something is an upgrade for you.
Hunter Addons – Ammo-Matique March 2, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Uncategorized.add a comment
I know. I didn’t think I needed it either. I mean, really, I’m a hunter. Ammo is my thing. I think I can manage to equip the epic ammo for raids, and then the regular ammo afterwards.
But after one too many random heroic wasting epic ammo, or one too many raid where I realized I had the cheapo ammo equipped, I remembered reading an old blog post that recommended this very addon, fired up the curse client, and downloaded the addon.
The first thing I liked is that it popped up and politely asked me to configure my settings. You can configure dungeons, outside, and each raid individually, and raids can be configured separately for 10 and 25 man, heroic and non heroic, and trash and bosses. The first time you enter each raid, you configure that raid to use either premium or standard ammo. You can then select which ammo is premium and which is standard, and tell it how much you want to keep on hand, and then when you talk to an ammo seller, it will automatically stock up. You can even have it store all your ammo in one bag.
The one issue is that, due to limitations put in place by Blizzard, no addon can change your gear, ammo included, while in combat. For ToC, for example, when you can’t target the boss before you enter combat, you’ll receive a warning to change ammo. This warning simply says wrong ammo used, it doesn’t say which ammo is equipped or which it thinks should be equipped – I wish it did, just to streamline it all while you’re pressed for time in a boss fight.
In all though, this is a great addon that I strongly recommend to any hunter who is using multiple types of ammo on a regular basis. This makes it trivially easy. The UI is well-designed, you never need to go looking for configuration, the addon tells you when you need to give it information. Highly recommended. Hopefully the author, Anyia, will keep it updated through Cataclysm if we still wind up with more than one kind of non-consumable ammo.
Hello Hunting Lodge March 1, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Uncategorized.add a comment
I just finally listened to the THL podcast episode 25 (I really have been gone all week) and saw that I was mentioned. So now, you’ve all came, seen that I haven’t posted anything for a week, and thought I wasn’t a good person.
While you’d be right, I do fully intend to follow through with this whole blog thing. Just have way too much real life going on. Thanks for the free press, and keep reading :) – you’re always welcome to drop an email or a comment if there’s anything you want to hear about.
Oh, and it’s pronounced like Maav-rand. The a is soft and the e is silent.
This isn’t a real post. Nothing to see here, move along.
In other administrivia, I’ve changed the theme of the blog because I needed it to be a two-column theme, so that the links section would show up over there, so I could advertise the blogs and podcasts that you should all be reading. I’ll make it look pretty sometime.
Patch 3.3.3 February 28, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Uncategorized.add a comment
Hi folks!
So, turns out, I’m going to be posting VERY SPORADICALLY. Real Life turns out to be important. Who’d have thought?
Patch 3.3.3 is coming out soon! We’re all very excited, but not as excited as we are for cataclysm. What’s actually new? Turns out, not a whole lot for hunters, but there are a few exciting things coming out:
You’ve all read about the PvP changes. I don’t do a ton of PvP, but this random battleground finder will be a nice way to get bonus honor and arena points. I don’t think I’ve ever spent (or earned) an arena point in my whole life. But I imagine that there are a lot of nice things you can get. It’s also nice that now honor is replacing the marks of honor from battlegrounds – I’m definitely going to try out the random tool and look at the rewards offered, but I don’t PvP, and never found much use out of it. I’ll wind up burning my honor on epic gems.
It looks like there will be a ‘random’ BG option, the first of which gives you 30 honorable kills and 25 arena points, and then also a ‘daily’ call to arms BG, giving the same rewards the first time you to it. This means that I’ll be stuck with a JC daily, two fishing dailies, a cooking daily, two random heroics, and /four/ battlegrounds every day. And then raids, and getting ready for raids, and leveling my rogue…I might just go insane.
Culling of Stratholme is being changed to skip the long wait. Thank the fates.
There’s only one change to hunters. A buff to Ferocious Inspiration. Good for Beast Masters. No, I still don’t want to raid with you.
The Titansteel cooldown is being removed. That’s a pity, I always enjoyed the 20-30 gold I could make every day for doing nothing.
That’s all that affects me. Not a whole lot, but I’m excited about the next raid instance that’s coming out under wyrmrest temple.
I’ll be putting a few more posts up that I was working on this weekend, but I need to read over everything. Should be out by Tuesday.
Miscellany: Raiding Alts February 16, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Uncategorized.add a comment
So, we all have alts. We don’t all play on our hunters 24/7, do we? I myself have a level 80 death knight, and will be leveling up my rogue in the coming weeks. I’ll also be making a priest come cataclysm. My death knight, Gylnael, is currently about halfway heroic geared, and is getting some emblem gear as he finishes his dailies. I have been doing the weekly raid on both characters, but that’s the only raid experience my death knight has. For me, once I hit level 80, my goal is to get my characters raiding – running heroics is fun, but honestly I’d rather raid. I also happen to have a real life, including school and work, and don’t have time for raiding every night of the week. I can think of a few possible policies regarding having multiple geared alts:
- Always raid with your main, preventing your alts from getting non-badge gear. Not ideal in my opinion.
- Raid with your main in guild raids, PUG raids with your alts. This eats a lot of time very quickly, and we all know how fun PUG raids are…this does have the benefit of not committing to a second regularly scheduled raid time, which is good – because of work and school, there are weeks where I can get on every night, and weeks where I have very little time online.
- Gear your alt as much as possible on your own, and then ask to bring him on guild raids – my guild will often go back and run Ulduar if we don’t have enough bodies for two 10man teams. Bringing Gylnael along to Ulduar would gear him very quickly – but is this OK? I suppose that as long as I’m not being carried I don’t have any problems with being less geared than my guildmates, but if we’re not downing the bosses, I’d switch to my main. What do you thing about this approach? You wouldn’t gear very quickly, for certain, and it would still be a while before your alts are ready for ICC – though once they’re in ICC, you have two geared characters going into the next expansion.
- Find a less hardcore raiding guild that raids on your offnights for your alt. This would quickly gear your alt, but this doesn’t scale very well, I personally couldn’t commit this kind of time for more than a few weeks, and wouldn’t be able to do this.
I know a ton of people with two or three equally geared characters. How do you do it? PUGs or guild raids or badge gear from heroics?
I suppose it depends a lot on what kind of guild you’re in – a hardcore raiding guild might not be OK with you raiding with another guild, even though it’s your alt on offnights. Some people might freak out about that, but I’m really not sure. People freak out about silly things. Even if it was OK, I don’t have time for that. I’ll probably start PUGs with my death knight in the coming week, now that my major production at work is over and I have some free time.
Can Beast Mastery Raid, Part 2 February 14, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Around the Internet.3 comments
This seems to be the most interesting thing anyone can talk about this week!
Brigwyn has made a followup post, arguing that raiding BM “doesn’t result in DPS loss”.
I’ve made my response there, and I encourage you to read his post, and everyone else’s responses in detail. In short, I argue that Brigwyn is wrong because he is considering “maximum potential” of a raider to be spec-dependent, and I’m considering “maximum potential” of a raider to be dependent only on class and gear. He has included a thought-provoking analogy, which I won’t respond to because analogies have a way of getting out of hand.
In a comment, Hesson argures that MM and SV hunters have a greater potential to ‘lose’ DPS due to user error. Well, yes. User error happens, and that’s why we like to have a nice safety margin over the minimum required DPS. He goes on to argue that due to the fact that hunters have a potential for failing at their class, the less chance for error, the better off we are. He fails to remember that one of the assumptions is that a raiding hunter is somewhat more serious and more learned than your average casual. If we expected it to be easy, we’d go buy a ton of gold and powerleveling from gold farmers. But if you’re raiding, you should know enough about your class to not be losing 30% of your DPS due to user error. He’s right that a BM hunter has to do more than respec to be effective in SV or MM. He might need to regem some gear to ArPen for MM. More importantly, he needs to learn his new spec. And right off the bat, before getting used to MM, he might even see a DPS decrease.
To make this argument at all productive, we need to consider maximum potential DPS. You can’t factor in “most hunters are idiots, and MM is too hard for them”. You can’t factor in “I haven’t got used to MM yet”. Learning your spec is not only free, but should be considered mandatory.
Let me apply some of what I said. I raid as SV. That is because I reach my maximum potential raiding as SV. I don’t have enough ArPen to raid as MM, so by combining my class and gear, I get my most DPS from a SV spec. I lose a lot of DPS in movement intensive fights like Rotface. Now, a BM hunter wouldn’t see as much DPS loss – a BM hunter would do better when compared to a BM hunter standing still than I would when compared to myself standing still – but I’d still perform better than a BM hunter when our DPS is compared to the best possible hunter DPS with each of our gear while standing still.
I’d like to move on from this to something more interesting, and there are a few posts in the pipeline, somewhere. Oh, and there’s a new about me page up, but it isn’t completely finished. Or even proofread. Seriously, it’s 1 in the morning, I’m just going to post it and look at it in the morning. I hope it makes sense >.>
Hunter’s Guide: Heroics February 13, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Hunter's Guide.add a comment
So, I’m jumping from the hardest raid in the game back to some of the easiest level 80 content. What’s with that? While it’s been a good while since I’ve seen a level 80 melee hunter, there are a few things that hunters – and other classes – need to keep in mind, whether it’s your daily to get frost badges, or you’re gearing up a fresh level 80.
- Please don’t obsess over your DPS. You’ll drive yourself crazy. The fights in heroics are too short for DPS to be relevant. Your DPS will fluctuate due not only to random factors, but also to the dungeon you’re in, and the behavior of your groupmates.
- If you find yourself at the top of the meters, please don’t link it. In fact, don’t link meters ever, unless asked to – if someone asks for themself, whisper it to them, if a raid leader asks you can send it to the raid, but don’t let one party member ask you to. I’ve seen people ask just to bring everyone else’s attention to it. Not cool. In general, remember that if anyone wanted to know what the meters said, they’d install one.
- Remember that you have feign death, and should use it to prevent pulling aggro. That means don’t wait until you already pulled aggro, cast it well before you’re going to pull off the tank, and if it fails, then you can stop DPS, or use misdirect, or use shadowmeld. If you wait to cast it until you already have aggro and FD fails, then you’re pretty screwed. And it’s your fault.
- If you pull aggro off a tank, it’s your fault. Even if the tank is in blues, and you’re in iLevel 245 gear. ESPECIALLY if that happens. Cast MD whenever you can, keep an eye on your threat meter and be ready to FD. There is no situation where it’s the tank’s fault that you pulled aggro, ever, because you always have the option to stop DPS before you accidentally pull. If you pull aggro, it is because you either weren’t paying attention, or you didn’t care.
- You’re a utility class. Get used to it. That means be prepared to use CC – freezing arrow or wyvern sting – and if you see a scary guy running at your clothies, do it. A CC and a misdirect-volley will turn a bad pull into an easy kill.
- It’s a waste to cast serpent sting on a target that’s going to die in 5 seconds. So don’t – explosive shot is your best single-target shot against trash, except for kill shot of course. Black arrow isn’t bad, aimed shot isn’t bad, and I’d prefer steady shot over serpent sting – if you’re survival. If you’re marksman, serpent sting is (obviously) not optional.
- Snake trap and explosive trap can help your DPS in here, as long as you get out of range. Preferably using disengage.
- Be careful about clipping your auto shot. Don’t move for too long at a time (longer than your weapon speed) or you’ll miss a free shot. Also, if you’re survival, stop for 6 seconds to keep Sniper Training up.
- You have a shot priority, not a rotation. You won’t press exactly the same buttons in exactly the same order every pull, and if you do, your performance will suffer.
- Use your cooldowns. Rapid Fire every boss fight that it’s up. Kill Command whenever it’s off cooldown, as long as the fight will last long enough for it to be useful and it will be off cooldown by the next time you get to a boss. If you’re BM, Bestial Wrath I think it is. If you’re MM, Readiness every time – use it right after Rapid Fire, then once Rapid Fire expires you can cast it again. On longer raid fights, you might be able to use this to get four Rapid Fires off.
Hunters get a lot of bad rep – mostly for pulling aggro and blaming the tank, sometimes for caring about nothing but DPS. If you want to be treated fairly rather than thought of by your PUGmates as “just another ‘tard”, you need to show some competence. That also means apologizing when you screw up a pull, and using MD and FD correctly, and dropping a freezing trap if there’s a loose mob, even if you’ll lose a little DPS. The important thing is that the bad things die, and if you wipe the group, the bad things don’t die.
Of course there’s much more. Don’t clip the last tick of explosive shot under lock and load, don’t waste black arrow on an add that’s going to die, use rapid fire when you won’t be moving for a while. But all of this is stuff you can do without in heroics. I’d argue that heroics exist to teach you basics of being a level 80 hunter, and raids then teach you how to maximize your DPS and train you to combat specific mechanics.
What annoys you about other players in heroics? What did you find challenging when you started heroics? See, I jumped right into heroics with no group experience – I hit 80 before the LFG tool came out, and only rarely did the daily heroic. I kind of learned as I went along, with talents picked mostly out of a hat and gear from quests. Somehow, I managed to survive.
Can Beast Mastery Raid? February 12, 2010
Posted by mavrande in Around the Internet.7 comments
Conventional wisdom is that BM is not a viable raiding spec. But what’s that all mean anyway? 500 less DPS? Enough for top raiding guilds to care, and the min-maxers to go MM with an ArPen build, but does it really affect the average hunter?
Frostheim of WoW.com crunches the numbers and finds that raiding as BM can give you, at top gear, a 30% damage reduction. That’s like being in Aspect of the Viper for more than half the fight. That’s worse than a non-BM hunter forgetting to bring a pet. In fact, that’s worse than a MM hunter wearing all green gems, not bringing flasks or food, AND refusing to wear pants. I’m not sure what insanity brought Frostheim to try that last one out, but I for one am not surprised. He also goes on to add some commentary, and apparently thought it’d be a good day to offend most of the BM population.
Click on the link for all the details.
Of course a few hunters have weighed in on this debate:
Lassirra from The Hunter’s Mark supports player’s “personal freedom” to play whatever spec they please, with the caveat that your “level of involvement” with another player impacts their right to criticize your spec – if you’re raiding with a guild every night, they have more right to say you can’t be BM than a PUG heroic. It’s your $15, and you can do whatever you want – just don’t expect people to put up with you if you ignore their criticism.
I’m going to have to disagree on merely where the line stands. Your performance needs to be as good in a PUG raid as it does in a nightly guild raid. If you want to get into endgame raiding content, whether you do it once a month or four hours a night, other players have the right to expect you to take steps to help the raid succeed. If you’re not willing to improve your DPS by 50% (and yes, a 30% reduction is the opposite of a 50% increase) by getting a raiding offspec – you can still PvE solo or in heroics in BM with your fancy spirit beast – then you have no business bringing a team of 10-25 players down. ICC, TotGC, are genuinely challenging for PUGs, and that DPS that you’re wasting could be significant.
Brigwyn of The Hunting Lodge (and the podcast of the same name which really ought to be on my blogroll box) argues much the same thing as Frostheim addresses in his post – Brigwyn argues that BM is raid viable, but not raid optimum. There are obviously two sides to this, there’s the “make the boss dead” crowd, which is just fine and dandy as long as you’ll never be in a raid with a few undergeared people, and you can succeed by doing less than your maximum, and there’s the “do the best you can do, within reason” crowd, which is where I (and Frostheim, it seems) fall. I would argue that you need to be prepared to make up for mistakes and for people not pulling their weight. I’ll admit that on easy fights, I’ll use the flask of endless rage instead of the elixirs of thoughts and agility. On non-progression nights, I’ll go with a fish feast instead of blackened dragonfin. But I’m still prepared to step up my game if the fight demands it – it just costs me a bit more. The same way, I have a MM and an SV spec. I usually raid in the SV spec, but there are fights where my MM spec will just wind up better, and I can switch to that if we’re having trouble. Come Cataclysm, I’ll set up two new specs, and get used to them, and use them. I don’t see any reason to bust the bank to get through Ulduar when your group is more than competent, but why just give up 30% of your DPS?
Brigwyn goes on to get offended on behalf on BM hunters everywhere at the thought of being compared to the melee hunter or “Bob” who raids in green gems and no pants. I don’t really see the distinction between raiding in no pants and raiding in BM. If you really want to, if you really get that extra kick out of having an empty slot on your character screen, or that kick out of having a different set of talents purchased and pressing buttons with different pictures on them, then fine. But getting a pair of pants is simple – it’s a one-time thing, unlike the examples of flasks and food. Flasks can be expensive, rightclicking a pair of pants is free. And respeccing is pretty close to free – there’s no special ‘maintenance cost’ to having the extra DPS of a MM or SV spec, like there is for a flask, or the repair costs on those nice pants. If your goal is to beat the content, why wouldn’t you take that respec?
This isn’t me saying that “MaxDPS…defines what is valuable or not”. You don’t need to have the best in slot gear to get into a raid. You don’t need the absolute best spec, and one point off means you get the kick. You just need to do the best that you can with the time you have to invest in the game and with the resources you have. If you don’t want to do that, then I don’t want to raid with you, because my goal is to kill the boss, and yours is (clearly) to run around showing off your spirit beast (and your underpants), at the cost of being able to down some of the content, or get some of the achievements.
But one of the comments on Lassirra’s post is important. While we do all have a little bit of hunter pride, and pride that we’re doing the best we can to help our raid, Will notes that our choice of spec is just another playstyle decision. People posting on blogs and trolling /trade and running pugs need to remember that BM hunters are not inferior human beings. They bring much of the same utility to the table, and a good BM hunter can easily hold their own against many of their PUGmates in most content. The bosses would die. Not as fast as possible, and you might not be able to do hardmodes, but the bosses would probably die.
