Christmas Comes Early

This week's buffs to Survival and Beast Mastery mean all three specs are close enough in DPS to allow player choice. Obviously, certain specs will still shine on certain fights, which has and always will be the case. The important thing here is play the spec you want (and hopefully excel at). If people give you crap for playing with a pet (or without one depending on their level of hunter ignorance) they are wrong-not you. Get good at your two favorite specs, grab some pets, and go be a hunter again.

And there was much rejoicing from the hunters.

For about 5 minutes.

I have already seen a TON of comments and tweets about Survival needing more. Some mention the rotation's feel, the lack of on demand burst damage, and no execute ability. These are all valid points. I've said myself (before the buffs) that there is plenty of room for Kill Shot in Survival's toolbox. So I share the feelings of these other hunters. But now that we have decent spec parity, CAN WE JUST NOT FUCK WITH IT FOR A WHILE PLEASE? Clearly balancing hunter specs is pretty hard. Blizzard couldn't get it done before releasing WoD, even with months of beta evidence to guide them. Now that we're in a decent place, adding Kill Shot back into SV is just going to lead to more months of adjustments.

Ok, that said SV does need something. As much as love the spec's flavor and utility ability pruning has left it feeling just a little empty, especially compared to BM. I would propose giving SV better interrupt options than the other two hunter specs. SV seems to be the utility/PvP flavor of hunters these days. On top of that, Counter Shot's cooldown feels long a lot of the time. I mean looooong. I would love to trade Enhanced Entrapment for a perk that gives us a 12 or 15 second Counter Shot. Even an SV only glyph that reduces the CD would work. Or hell, give SV Scatter Shot back and remove the damage part of it.. When you have those fights where you can be the interrupt person, throw on the glyph and go. Managing your dots and procs AND interrupting every 12 seconds or so would certainly add some complexity to SV that so many hunters are asking for. I dare say it would be much more interesting than just adding Kill Shot back into the last 20% of the fight. And it wouldn't effect DPS balance at all.

Final thoughts: Personally, after the last month I'm happier about hunters than I have been in a while. I'm willing to just sit tight until we have to do this all over again due to set bonuses and gear scaling. But if you really want to muck around more with Survival, maybe damage dealing isn't the place to do it. Obviously Blizzard isn't as good at balance as they used to be.

I want to acknowledge the work that Bendak and Delirium are doing these days. Bendak has been really vocal on his blog and the Hunting Party Podcast about this ridiculous spec situation. And Delirium supports the community with amazing theorycrafting I could never hope to accomplish. I owe both of these guys a beer or five.

My last thing: A lot of hunters will be picking up Beast Mastery this week. There is a ton of conflicting information out there about secondary stats and when to use Focus Fire. This post by Delirium convinced me of when to use it, but my point is be a critical consumer of information. Know WHY you believe one side or the other. Also know that we as a community have a lot more testing to do, especially with all these adjustments over that last few months.

Hey Blizzard, I predicted this bullshit months ago.

It's Time To Fix The Stable

Having to go to town to switch hunter pets has annoyed me for a while. Now that I'm playing Beast Mastery as my main spec, it seems downright out of date. I'm going to stop you before you tell me how bad it used to be, and how I shouldn't be complaining at all. I was there for 3 total slots and having to learn pet abilities. And at this point in WoWs life, going to a stable master located only in major cities is just as outdated as seeking out a pet just to learn Growl (level 3). Or having only one spec.

The hunter stable hasn't been updated in any meaningful way since October of 1010. 49 months. That's almost as long as SoO has been out! Sure, we have gotten more slots. That is great. Personally, I would rather have a smaller stable work better than one where I can put all 600 pet skins in a window. The way our stable works now is inconvenient, outdated, and seemingly arbitrary.

What is the thinking behind being able to "carry around" five pets? Why five? There are 10 buffs/debuffs in the game, and there used to be more.  OK, so it's not about buffs. Special abilities (Ancient Hysteria, etc.)? Maybe. There will be at least five of those in WoD depending on what you count. But the limit has been five since before Direhorns were in the game so..Frankly, there is no good reason I can think of to limit us to five pets out in the wild. It is just an arbitrary limit that will be forcing many, many hunters back to town in the next expansion. And it will force the rest of our group to wait while we do it.

Personally, I think we need a way to summon at least 25 pets these days. Why 25? I think a way for hunters to distinguish themselves is by having a complete stable of pet buffs and special abilities. I really enjoy checking the composition of a 5-man group, seeing what we need, and bringing that buff. Even if nobody notices, I get some small satisfaction out of "min/maxing" my pet. And if it makes the run a little quicker, all the better. So, to cover all the buffs, debuffs, and most special pet abilities we would need 15 slots. I say we need 25 because of a different quality of life change that we have had for years now: Dual Specs.

Remember, this whole idea of fixing the stable came out of my preparing to play BM for the first time since Burning Crusade. I'm actually pretty excited about it. That said, I know there will be times I will want or need to play another spec. Under the current stable, I'm going to have a strange mix of exotic and non-exotic pets, or go to the stable master every time I swap specs. When I'm BM, I'm going to want exotics. If I carry around 5 exotics, any time I switch specs I have no pet! Factor in not knowing which buffs I'm going to need until I zone into the group finder, and the whole thing becomes a mess. All the convenience of a second spec is negated if I still have to hit the stable master in town to use it. Some of the convenience of a flexible raid size is also lost if hunters need to keep porting in and out to get specific pets.

The hunter stable system is a relic of a game we don't play anymore. Regular trips to town used to be part of the WoW experience. All classes had to go there for reagents, repairs, to change talents, and of course good old ammunition. The only one of those systems that even still exists is repairs, and they remain more for economic reasons than anything else. Thanks to pets and expensive mounts, we don't need a town to repair, get and send mail, or even transmogrify.  Hell, we don't even need to go to the bank anymore to use crafting materials that are stored there. But we still need a stable master? I don't think any other class still needs to go to town for basic game play.

There are lots of potential solutions to this situation. I want the stable fixed so desperately as I move forward as a BM hunter that I would be thrilled to get any of them. We could:

• Simply be able to access the whole stable anywhere. OK, maybe not inside arenas.
• Gain a slot every 10 levels, which would at least get us to 10. 5 for each of your two chosen specs.
• Sacrifice a garrison spot to get some kind of "magical" stable.
• A huge quest. This is hunters' green fire.
• Rare companion pet who can access the stable remotely, kind of like the Argent Squire.
• A crafted (expensive) item that can access the stable. Engineering, perhaps?
• A stupid expensive mount that has a stable master on it. I'd pay 200k for that convenience.

Playing my hunter in Warlords gets me really excited. Constantly going back to town to switch pets does not.

Pets, Pets, Pets!

The long, LONG, sunset of an expansion is my favorite time to revisit my stable and do some pet collecting. We get announcements that may make you want to pick up a pet you don't have for the next expansion, and if you're into collecting rares your competiton will almost certainly already have what they want. Some tames might even be a bit easier now before we lose some of our abilities. If you recently boosted a hunter, you probably have quite a bit of pet collecting to do in order to get all the various buffs. If nothing else, it's something to do during a content drought. And if you want to try for the MoP challenges, you can spend waste a LOT of time looking for those damn tracks. (Side note, why make a taming challenge and then use the same skin later for a regular tame? They did it in Cata and again in MoP. Pretty silly in my opinion.) I spent some time the other night dropping some unused pets (Why did I have 5 cats in there?) and taming the serpent pictured above to grab a buff I didn't have.  I couldn't resist naming him Whitesnake.

The biggest pet news we have gotten recently is that Heroism and Battle Res will no longer be exclusive to Beast Mastery in WoD. If you never play BM or just want to cover all your bases, get yourself a Nether Ray for Hero and either a Crane or Moth for B Res. As sombody who likes to play Survival whenever possible I couldn't be happier about this change. No longer will I be pressured to go BM just for Heroism!

While it's been well documented already, a pet post would be incomplete without running down which pets will bring which buffs and debuffs in WoD. If you run in a smaller sized raid, or like me just want to have the whole hunter arsenal in your stable, you'll want to have one pet from each group. The groups right now aren't distributed very well, and this is the development process so I anticipate some changes. Note that I am including BM only exotic pets here. I'll do my best to keep the list updated.

The Pet List as of September 9, 2014 (Beta):

Buffs: Any group size bigger than 10 will almost certainly have these covered already, but weird things can happen with group composition. You'll definately be able to use them in the new 5-mans and scenarios. And if you go petless, the current thinking is you can bring one of these as an aura. See my note below about the importance of a Multistrike pet for Survival Hunters.

• Stats
• Gorilla (One of my all-time favorites. Happy he is going to be useful!)
• Dogs
• Shale Spider
• Worm
• Stamina
• Bear
• Goat
• Hook Wasp
• Silithid
• Rylak
• Spell Power
• Serpent
• Silithid
• Water Strider
• Haste
• Sporebat (Nice to see we have some choice here. Lots of sporebats lately.)
• Wasp
• Hyena
• Hook Wasp
• Rylak
• Crit
• Wolf
• Raptor
• Devilsaur
• Quilen
• Shale Spider
• Water Strider
• Mastery
• Cat
• Tallstrider
• Hydra (You'll want to wait for WoD and get this one because Hydra!) 
• Spirit Beast
• Multistrike
• Basilisk
• Chimaera
• Clefthoof (Formerly called Rhinos)
• Core Hound
• Dragonhawk
• Fox
• Wind Serpent
• Versatility
• Bird of Prey
• Boar
• Porcupine
• Ravager
• Stag
• Clefthoof
• Worm

Debuffs: Not a lot to say here since so many debuffs have been removed. Make sure you have a Mortal Wounds pet at the very least.

• Mortal Wounds
• Devilsaur
• Scorpion
• Carrion Bird
• Riverbeast (WoD pet)
• Slow Movement
• Spider
• Warp Stalker
• Silithid
• Crocolisk
• Chimaera

The most important pet buff every SV hunter will need to have is Multistrike. Multistrike will proc Lock and Load after 6.0. It is going to be imperative for SV hunters to have the highest Multistrike possible. Make sure you have a Dragonhawk, Fox, or Wind Serpent before 6.0 drops if you're going to go Survival. As of this update, Lock and Load has been reverted to an older version.

 As always Petopia is your best resource for "shopping" for cool and rare pets. I also want to mention that Raid Checklist is my favorite add-on for figuring out which buff or debuff I should bring to the group. If you raid lead or don't know every class inside and out, I highly recommend it. What pets are you collecting right now? What's your favorite pet? Mine is Karkin.

Lone Wolf is a Terrible Idea

I'm getting old. There is grey in my beard. Depending on where you live and which data you trust I've already hit middle age. And I'm catching myself thinking and saying the things older people do when they are struggling to understand changes in the world. Lately I’ve been saying crazy shit like, “There hasn’t been a really good Hip Hop album since 2000” and “Yeah, we sagged our pants. But not like the kids do today.” Yep, I’m getting to be a close-minded old fart. And I wonder if that is why I feel the way I do about the Lone Wolf talent.

I’ve been playing a hunter since Vanilla. I’ve actually been playing the same hunter since then (with quite a few race changes mixed-in). I’ve seen a lot of changes: mana to focus, ammo, the dead zone, pet happiness. While I can’t say I’ve embraced every major change to our class, I’ve never had a reaction as strong as how I feel about the idea of Lone Wolf. I hate it. I’m just praying it was a placeholder. I think it’s contrary to what it means to be a hunter, and it has serious potential to be a balance nightmare.

Hunters are the pet class. Pets are one of the most important aspects of our class’ identity. Some of us collect them. Some of us use them to tank current raid content. Some of us (me) forget to dismiss them, jump off a ledge, and pull all of UBRS to our group. A big part of being a decent hunter is having the right pet for your situation and properly controlling it. The fact that Blizzard is considering allowing hunters to bypass that part of the hunter experience is just baffling to me. I don’t get it. We’re not the only ranged DPS class in the game. If someone wants to play ranged but can’t handle a pet they have at least three other options. But there is more going on here than me being an old curmudgeon.

There are two prevalent arguments in favor of Lone Wolf. The first is simply, “A lot of hunters want to play without their pets.” I don’t think it’s really that many. I don’t think someone would roll a hunter if they don’t like pets. I don’t like melee, so I know better than to roll a DK. Furthermore, a lot of hunters want quite a few different things. They haven’t given us pistols or a dedicated tanking spec yet.  The second argument for it is more interesting, but it still falls short. There are a number of situations where our pets struggle. Some fights just don’t play well with pet pathing, etc. My pet despawns all the time during Immersius, for example. Don't get me started on the Hagara encounter. There is one of these fights pretty much every tier. Some say Lone Wolf is an option for fights where pets don’t function as they should. The problem with that argument is our pets not working is simply unacceptable. Frankly, we hunters have been too forgiving when it comes to these situations. I mean really, can you imagine Blizzard releasing a fight where pally tanks’ shields didn’t work? Or telling rogues that stealth doesn’t work as intended in the new BG? That just wouldn’t happen. It should be just as unacceptable for hunter pets to be borked. Lone Wolf could create a fairly dangerous situation where Blizzard can justify even more of these fights and we are required to get rid of our pets for them. All of a sudden for some fights we are essentially required to ditch a defining aspect of our class. That would be a fucking debacle.

I also worry about balance. Spec balance for hunters has been relatively good as of late. Such a fundamental change, especially one intended to be optional, could really screw things up. If Blizzard goes ahead with this experiment, they are going to have to be spot on with the balancing. I’d actually go a step further. Choosing Lone Wolf should cost a hunter a little dps. We should be rewarded for the added complexity of managing a pet. If I feel compelled to get rid of my pet, even for one fight each tier, I’ll be pissed. Beware the wrath of the angry old man.

A Hunter Raid Cooldown Idea

Many hunters including myself have been asking for some kind of raid cooldown. I've been pondering this for a while, trying to think of what our CD should look like. I want it to be different and obviously useful. The other night an idea finally hit me. While it's (hopefully) too late in the Warlords development cycle to get a new ability implemented, I really like this idea and want to share it.

Lots of classes get really useful raid cooldowns and enhancements these days. You've got your Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp, Rallying Cry, Lock cookies and portals and summons. Seriously, why so much Lock love? We need hunters to get something along these lines. I want other raid members to feel grateful we're aound, like the way I feel about a Warlock when a cookie saves my ass.

Some of you are probably thinking, "We get lots of those CDs! Our exotic pets can bring hero, a battle res.." Let me stop you right there. For starters, you have to be BM to bring those. Next, bringing them can mean giving up a different buff your raid needs. Most importantly, those are other class' abilities that we borrow. What I want is a new hunter raid cooldown. Something no other class brings, and is helpful for the whole group. As I was trying to figure-out what it should be I knew it needed to be pet based. We are the pet class. It's our thing. I was having a hard time thinking of something cool until a flex run I did recently.

It was a situation every raider has experienced. Earlyish in the encounter something tanky or healy want awry (I won't pretend I really understand what those guys do. I should, but I don't.) and both our tanks were dead. It takes a few precious seconds to get a tank targeted and ressed, not to mention buffed-up. As this process was happening and the boss was running around clobbering characters that aren't tanks I thought, "Man I wish my pet could tank. Just for 15 or 20 seconds while we regroup." Eureka.

Hunters and huntress' I present to you what should become the new hunter raid cooldown: The Oh Shit Let My Pet Tank For A Bit button (name TBD). It's useful. It's different. It's pet based. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not pretty proud of this idea.

What I'm envisioning is a single button that gives a short time (for some reason 20 seconds seems good to me) where our pet takes no damage and sits on the top of it's target's threat table. During this time maybe the pet's threat could be magnified so a skilled hunter could MD other mobs to it, for adds or council fights. And when the ability is over the pet dies and can't be immediately ressed. Maybe it can't be ressed for a minute or two, or possibly until combat ends. I'm not calling this an 'Oh Shit" button for nothing. This isn't Heroism. You don't normally plan to use this. You just thank Elune that you have it when you need it.

Speaking of Heroism, the same rules apply. You get this ability exactly once per fight, regardless of how many hunters are in your raid. No stacking hunters and rotating pet tanks to replace a real player tank or to cheese some fight mechanic. But even with these restrictions, this ability could come up huge in at least a few raiding situations. We have the aforementioned dead tanks scenario. The ability might also help before or during a high damage phase to give healers a chance to top-off real tanks. I think the coolest application of this ability would be the last stand. I'm talking about that all too familiar situation where 1 or 2 DPS are trying to finish off a 98% dead boss. This ability could be the difference between a kill and the super frustrating 0.5% wipe. It just might buy us an extra 10 seconds of DPS to get the boss down. Imagine the heroes we would be every time a hunter and their pet take down the boss with everyone else watching from their corpses! Their children and grandchildren will sing songs that tell the Tale of The Sporebat that Killed Hellscream.

What do you think of this idea? Got your own hunter Raid CD idea? Let me know. We won't get anything until there is a conversation taking place in the hunter community.

Forcing my hand!

I may have to make my second spec Marksman.  That's right, the guy who made a blog dedicated to SV and hasn't had a non-SV spec in almost three years is thinking of going MM.  Why?  It seems Blizz is forcing me, at least in order to do the content I'm interested in.

The first reason I may have to go MM actually isn't that big a deal.  I want a few of the taming challenge pets.  Really I want Karkin, the bad ass crab.  I wouldn't mind the cat that shares a spawn with him either, but how many rare cat skins does one need?  I just got Shadowclaw a few weeks ago!  Anyway, every successful tame I've read of Karkin involves interrupting his cast, either with Silencing Shot or another player's help.  My guild is awesome, and I bet I could get help with the tame, but I'd rather do it myself.  That seems to be the real challenge.  I may still try to find a way to tame him as SV, cuz that would really be something to brag/blog about.

The main reason I feel forced to have an MM spec is Shannox.  We finally downed the giant melee hunter, and I was SV for it, but I wasn't able to be very helpful on Rageface.  I was damaging him plenty, but until he got to 20% and Kill Shot activated I couldn't get a single 30k shot on him (since Explosive Shot is a really short dot).  So now I feel compelled to go MM for my raid team.  I love my Nagas and I want to get that Kujo off of their grills as fast as possible.  But I don't want to play MM and I worry my DPS will drop in the short run while I'm learning the crazy MM rotation.  What to do?

SV seems to lack a bit of the identity the other specs have.  BM has exotic pets and is probably still the best for solo stuff, especially during leveling.  MM seems to be where Blizzard wants raiders to be.  They have our only interrupt and the highest boss DPS.  They also benefit the most from ranged weapon damage.  What is SV?  Many would say AoE.  That seems weak to me.  A skilled and geared MM hunter can come close enough to us in AoE DPS.  We do some nice AoE, but we're not mages.  Even if we were, is that enough of an identity for an entire spec?  It's not as if the other specs don't have Multi Shot or Explosive Trap!  Some may say SV's identity is that we do magical damage.  Relative to the other two hunter specs, we do a lot of magical damage.  But roughly 40% (I should actually check some parses on this) of my DPS is still physical.  Auto Shot is a lot of damage!  And even if 100% of our damage were magical, that is not an identity.

The other specs have things they can do that Survival hunters just cannot do at all.  I can't think of anything we can do that the other specs can't.  Between interrupts, other boss mechanics, and taming challenges, I have come to two conclusions:  Blizzard, for some reason, wants raiders to all be MM.  Second, our class is out of balance.  Not in terms of DPS, but in terms of skills.  Either SV should be able to do some of what the other kids can do, or we need an exclusive skill ourselves.  I'd prefer to just be able to raid any boss in SV.

Pet Control

I struggle with pet control.  It's hard for me to keep out of the fire, maintain my rotation, and control an NPC all at once.  I'm getting better, and it is due in part to the pet control series at Hunters Rhok.  The series has been updated for Cataclysim and I consider it a must-read, especially if you've been out of the hunter game for a while.

http://huntersrhok.blogspot.com/2011/03/cataclysm-pet-control-part-four-species.html

Feeding Your Stable

After all the quality of life improvements hunters have gotten lately, one thing that still bugs me is pet food. Even with the Mend Pet glyph, I like to carry food for my pets.  It's a quicker way to make them happy after a wipe, and I like the newish Feed Pet animation.
Pet food was a pain in the ass before patch 4.0, and it's worse now.  With four pets with us at all times, we can wind-up with a lot of different kinds of food for them.  It really mitigates some of the bag slots we gained when we got rid of our arrows!  I decided to spend a little time at Petopia and see how I could streamline this food situation while still having everything I need for my suite of buff pets.  I'm talking about the essential SV pets (no exotics):  cat, wolf, raptor, bear, hyena, sporebat, tallstrider, ravager, and wind serpent.  Of these nine families, six of them will eat meat so that's your #1 pet food.  You can feed the remaining three with bread or cheese, so pick one of those.  If you have another pet, like your favorite tanking pet, see if it will eat either of those.  For example, Murdoc, the gorilla I have had since 2005, eats bread, so that will be my second stack of pet food.  Food for 10 different pets fit into only 2 slots!  Not too shabby.