Thought the first:

I am Beeesmastar! I don’t mind being dependent on my pet!

“We don’t want to buff the pet damage for BM any more for a couple of reasons. One is that it puts too much dependence on the pet.“

You guys (Blizz) spent the better part of all of BC convincing us that that was, indeed, the intent, design, and raison d’etre of the entire Beastmaster spec! Now is hardly the time to say that you didn’t really mean it.  Fer Mog’s sake, ya gave us Exotic pets on top of everything else!  This screams out dependent on the pet, don’t you think?

Yes! Yes, I do want to be dependent on my pet, a thousand and one times yes.  It’s what sets us apart from MM and SV¹.  I think I’m safe speaking for the Demon warlocks that they, too, are just dandy with the idea of coupling their DPS to the demon².

Listen, I want to improve my DPS contribution as much as the next huntard. But I don’t want to do it if that means being the same thing as MM or SV with just a different shot rotation. That’s boring.

BM I am, and BM I be, and I don’t care if I don’t see the inside of another raid dungeon because of it.  BM is the heart and soul of the class. It deserves to be treated at least equally with the others, and on its terms, not theirs³.

Thing the Second:

Patch 3.3.3:

• I dunno, sounds almost like I could toss AuctionLite completely.
• Regarding hunter changes: not much to say, but they didn’t have much to say, either.
• I wonder if the multilevel instance map thing will work for old instances. Five gold says it won’t.
• I have nothing to say about the BG changes, though I suspect the hardcore PvPers do.

1. Aside from the disparity in the contribution to any raid we may wish to attend [↩]
2. Heck, the whole talent tree was shaken up drastically in 3.0 for that very reason – e.g. the oddity of a DEMON warlock sacrificing his or her demon to get moar DPS. Remember that? Wasn’t that odd? Didn’t it make sense to couple the Demonology warlock’s abilities more tightly to the idea of having a pet that was alive? [↩]
3. Come to think of it, why is SV more or less a clone of MM with a different rotation? I tried SV prior to 3.0 and it was a blast, but with a very distinct and fun playstyle. It’s my alternate spec, now, and I have to say that I’m not impressed with the play-style, numbers be damned. [↩]

Stompy!

Yeah, man?

Our DPS is lower than usual – like, a lot!

Why is that, boss?

I don’t know! Yesterday we were doing 2200+, now we’re doing 1700. And I changed nothing!

Well why don’t you look at the logs?

I was afraid you’d say that.

OK, let’s see here … :: shuffle shuffle shuffle ::

Uh … Stompy?

Yeah, man.

You saw that other hunter in the group?

Yeah, man. Survival spec, Naxx epics. He pwnzored you.

Yeah, yeah. But did you see his pet?

Yeah, man. Wolf. The latest and greatest, the new hawtness, the sizzle fo shizzle.

Did you notice …  his DPS?

No … lemme look.

… wow.

Yeah. A Survival Hunter’s non-exotic pet out-dps’d you.  Any idea why?

I … oh, look.

You have “Bite” turned off, boss man.

What?! I didn’t turn it off!

You KNOW that this keeps happening. Why don’t you check first when you go into an instance?

Well, I was kind of hoping for a little help from my big galoot of a partner, if not at least from some engineer in Anaheim.

You work with engineers. What are the odds?

/facepalm

Oy. You’re right.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Seriously? Blizz? Fix this!

Location: 67, 77.

Time: 10:38 Server, probably spawned at 10:30

I had parked outside of Nexus because one of the DPS in the group inside was having connection problems. While Jas went off and ground SoH, I waited around in case I was needed. As soon as possible, I was back in the air headed for Zim’Torga. The time: 10:27. I thought I might be able to make it if I hearthed to Dal first.

Arrival at Zim’Torga was 10:33. Chances were slim, but the only guarantee is that if you don’t look, you don’t find it. I’m talking to my sweetie at the time, when all of a sudden words of less than one syllable came out of my mouth. There he was!

/land

/abandon pet¹

/drop freezing trap and stand on it

/tame

Several shakey seconds later, my sweety is cheering in my ear and I’m estatic

Mister SDI is only level 77 now, so I have to level him before I can take him somewhere serious. I’m looking forward to seeing how we do together.

/collapse in heap

As Rosa has pointed out, this has been a great week to be Grimmtooth. Got my green drake, got my laser kitteh, helped recruit a cracking good tank into the guild, might get to RAID again … I’ll take it. Enjoy the good times, laddies and lassies, for you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Here’s to good times.

1. A gorilla named der trihs – figure it out! [↩]

Ugh. One thing us hunter types like is hours and hours of paperwork.

Psyche.

OK, you got me. We pretty much would prefer raiding with the Onyxia Wipe Guy to paperwork. But it’s a necessary evil. There are tons of sites and tools out there that will cater to you and make helpful suggestions on gearing options so that you can plan your gear needs out. Wouldn’t you hate to miss out on a run to Heroic VH in which an actual upgrade dropped? I know I would. Well, by knowing what you need and where it comes from, you can make ready to jump on that open DPS slot before some Boomkin gets it instead.

And yet, it’s not that easy. Sites like Gear Wishlist provide you with raw information, somewhat filtered, but it’s useless without the proper context.

As an example, as a BM Hunter your primary characteristic will be Hit.  Right until you hit the Hit Cap, which is around 263. After that? RAP, Crit, and Haste. And gems? How do they play? I always give an arbitrary +30 RAP for every red, and +10 for every yellow. Blues I kinda don’t know what to do with them.

But you probably see the point here. RAWR or whatever can only address (comfortably) one particular aspect of your character, if there are more than one to consider. Since I’m well beyond hit cap, I don’t really care about +hit unless it drops me below again.  Yet most of the tools out there won’t assume you’re hit capped.

And so, I grind. Grinding of a different type.  Pop an item off the list, compare – by hand – with what I’m wearing. Score it. Move on to the next.

Now, this is paying off well, but it is tedious. And since I prefer to be in-game for this (using Rating Buster to help me zero in on preferred attributes), that means I spend a lot of time just sitting around.

So I’ve taken to camping out. Just me, my mount, and – somewhere – Gondria.  I can sit there hovering over a spawn point, mess with my numbers, and every half hour, fly the route.¹ Then it’s back to hovering.

I’ve chosen the spawn point southeast of Zim’Torga to be the ideal spot to hover. If I get called to action for a run, it’s a quick flight to safety and then either mount up or change out toons. It works out nicely since that spot is the one most likely to get ganked due to its proximity to a quest hub and three different quest areas. The others are more secluded and thus have a greater chance of survival until I get there.

It’s a zen way to kill an hour or two.

My main concern is this: it disrupts the daily routine for the clan if I use the whole session for this, but the more time spent in a contiguous block the better my chances.  On the one hand, I really need to gear up in all respects, including the raiding pet. On the other hand, I do have allotted time slots in which to do this.

In the end, I think I’ll be partially pulling rank, and partially guilting the others into letting me have the time. After all, I’ve been graciously giving my time to the team when my turn pops up, for the past few weeks.

Guilt: it’s what’s for supper.

Oh, and the choice of Gondria? Sure, Skoll is the Sleek New Hawtness, but I really like the looks of Gondria over all of them. It’s that simple.

1. My research indicates that Gondria spawns at the top and bottom of the hour, if he spawns. Know differently? Drop a comment and call me a newb! [↩]

This weekend I have been enlisted in the cause of getting greens for Jasra so she can DE them for eternal essences or something like that. Also: lots of runecloth. So I broke out Saiph, my Gorilladin, and started at Zul’Farrak.

I want to be very clear on this: BRK is right. The Gorilladin is a magical being. With him leading the way, ZF fell inside of an hour.

Sunken Temple took longer to figure out than complete.

Scholo was almost doable at 70 with a cat pet. At 80 with a 75 gorilladin, it was cake.

Tonight, Strat. Live side completed, but I couldn’t get a crack at Rivendare. Finally our GM pointed out that I needed to clear all ziggurats as well as kill the bosses.  So, tommorrow: Rivendare. “Launch all zigs! For great justice!”

Jasra’s annoyed – she’s supposed to be the center of attention now. But I want Rivendare!!!

If I need to farm more, I’ll hit DM, BRD, and LBRS in that order. Or if I need higher mats, then I’ll give Ramps a try.  BRK says it’s so, so we’ll give it a shot.

Meta took an early day to get us started on the road to Northrend – got the next to last copy of Wrath from the local Target, and headed home to install. The wife was much amused at the twitter-off between me and our GM as we both tweeted our progress. Best moment: she tweets “Not enough space on my HD to install!”  Insert the Sound of Ultimate Suffering there. That probably gave me the edge I needed, though, as I managed to log in¹ before she did. For once, I win in the geek-off between me and her².

The choice of toon was not really that difficult to make. I did ask if there was a preference from the GM. She responded “Whatever is the most fun.”³ I responded that all 4 of my 70s roxxor, so I had no preference, to which crickets responded. Choice made by default – I am my own favorite.

Since I started so early, I was able to get a good amount of work done, but only on those quests that didn’t require access to very scarce resources, such as unique mobs and the like. The first days of Quel’danas come to mind, where every Blood Elf mana-head and confused sentry drone was pounced by multiple attackers every time one spawned. As one person put it, “Imagine Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving”.

My starting area of choice was the Borean Tundra, because it has Rhinos!⁴

Some of the quests just shine with stupidity, though. One of the “infiltrators” you have to kill is also a vendor, which means that when you go for this guy, you not only have to compete against others wanting to ninja him, but also you risk cheesing some poor huntard trying to buy meat for his pet.

Pets – All of mine are up to 70 now – Rigel the stompasaurus, Random the white kitty, and Coral the orange kitty. Now I have to decide which cat to keep. I went through an awfully long training cycle with Coral, but Random has been my faithful companion ever since I was 50-ish.  One of them has to go to make room for as-yet-unnamed-gorilladin. I’m thinking Random will be retired, given the task of guarding the Grimmtooth estate from pillagers⁵ And, finally, I have a new pal, Bellatrix the Rhino.  Yes, I can haz Rhino Bowling now.  Bel is just getting her feed under her, as it were, but I look forward with great anticipation as mobs fly through the air at her behest.

Quests – We gots ‘em. I dropped almost all of my quest log as no longer relvant, though I would sincerely like to finish off my Nightbane quest line. It’s just lame not being able to start that quest myself. That aside, at this point my quest log is almost full again. I’ve found most of the quest hubs in the Borean Tundra, an done or two have been cleaned out. The Murlock one is just priceless. If it weren’t for the fierce competition I’d've gotten some screen shots, but there was no time to dilly-dally around.  Rescuing Murloc tadpoles is just about the most fun you can have with a murloc – with or without armor – that is possible, is all I’m saying.

Trade Skills – Oh my, the cost of Grand Master training is a killer! Unfortunately, one of my favorite addons – Advanced Trade Skill Window – totally locks up the game now, so I’ve had to get rid of it for now.  I’ll be watching for updates.⁶

Instances – Late in the night, our GM pulled together a final run into The Nexus (this was her third), with one warlock on a PuG who was competent enough but unable to outshine our mighty DPS (our GM of course pwned my arse). We wiped twice, once on the 2nd and once on the final boss, but now we understand the fights and may be able to deal better in the future.

Gear – So far I’ve vendored everything I’ve gotten, except for one ring⁷. Anomalus does drop a nice pair of boots that I’d like a crack at, though.

At this point I am around 2/3 of the way to 71. Sure, I’m no power-leveller. But I’m enjoying the scenery, that’s for sure.

1. And out, and back in – as recommended by Blizzard [↩]
2. Not to worry, she has me on so many fronts this is at most a form of ceremonial parity [↩]
3. Ouch. I so deserved that. [↩]
4. More on that later. [↩]
5. Surprisibus! Surprisibus! – that so slayed me the first time I saw it (around 3:08 for the relevant gag). [↩]
6. Hmmm… on the link, the author explains the issue and recommends a workaround. OK, I’ll give it a shot. [↩]
7. Is this a homage to The Scout Report? That would be cool. [↩]

I’m sure that my spec is off the wall and that I’ll need to adjust something before all is said and done, which means I blew a free respec, but hey ho, I don’t care. I just don’t.  Last night was all about getting back into the game, and having a good time. Mission accomplished in both cases.

Now I need to think it out and strategize.

Addons

First of all, it appears that Omen has undergone another rev, this time with far less fanfare, pain, indignity, weeping, or lamenting. It looks like a solid upgrade. Looks like he listened and changed the UI to something people were happier with. We shall see.

The one that upset me the most though is Talented. I had just started using it a month or so ago and was kinda getting used to it. But with the new changes to pets, this addon fell over and died. It wasn’t that it wa blowing up. No, it’s that it didn’t have a tab for pet talent trees. Hopefully that gets resolved.

Lookit him go!

Rigel is a joy to behold. We went romping around Q’D, Hellfire, and other places taking 2, 3, even 4 on at once. He leveled and didn’t go down even once.

One thing that concerns me is that there are now a huge number of pet skills, comparatively, more than the pet bar can hold. I think that the spells that are not visible are still proccing, but it’s hard to say. Just in case, I moved Growl out to the bar to make sure it was functioning.

Spec Spank

I am going to be lost on spec for a while, but I have seen what an ineptly put together spec looks like (mine) and it didn’t suck. It follows that if I make a good spec, it won’t suck … less. Whatever.

Aspect Mastery makes things really interesting … well, what they did to aspects in general. Aspect of the Viper, for example. I know a lot of people said it was nerfed. I don’t see that. I almost refilled my mana bar in 20 seconds, with a mild reduction in damage. Then I switched back to Hawk and life was groovy. Call that a nerf if you like, but the passive regen isn’t nearly as interesting to me as the in-combat, as any hunter that has lasted through a full boss battle can attest. In the past, for a boss, I would switch to Viper and stay there. Now, I’ll have to work harder, but I’ll hit harder, too. Win! Well, I need to see this in a raid.

But the whole aspect thing is really interesting for raiding. As I said, in the past I have done what I can to mitigate mana issues on bosses. Now, if Viper works the way I think it will, I can get all my mana back in 20-30 seconds, then switch back to Hawk.

So that means that Improved Aspect of the Hawk becomes interesting. It would be nice to figure out a spec where I can have that and the talents I need from Marksman. I need 14 to get everything I need from that tree, so if I can still have extra to put in IAotH, I’m game. The proc is what I am looking for here. Totally worth it.

Pet Talents

Pet Talents are a complete mystery for the moment regarding which ones are best to have. The big problem, as mentioned elsewhere, is that there is not enough room on the pet bar for all of them. However, you can mitigate this by putting a few on macros and putting those on regular spell bars, such as Growl toggle on/off.  I am going to have to play with this. Foshizzle, though, Rigel sure seems to like what he’s got.

Glyphs

Glyphs of interest. Jotted down for later. This sort of thing will have to do until a decent guide is up.

Major:

• Glyph of Hunter’s Mark
• Glyph of Arcane Shot
• Glyph of Aimed Shot
• Glyph of Deterrence
• Glyph of Freezing Trap
• Glyph of Bestial Wrath
• Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk
• Glyph of Aspect of the Viper

Minor:

• Glyph of Mend Pet
• Glyph of Scare Beast
• Glyph of Feign Death
• Glyph of the Pack

Afterglow

For hunters, this patch is an unmitigated success. We’re a bit OP now … we’re going to need to get to Northrend STAT or our heads are going to make us fall over. I hear that about a lot of classes now. The new talents are crazy! But I like them!

Say hello to my Ghost Kitty. She popped on the 3rd statue.

Take that, Bliz!

Since my Snow Saber is named after the 3rd King of Amber, I named this pretty lady after his counterpart in Rebma.

Back when patch 2.3 hit, a new critter was added that was inadvertently tamable by hunters. This was the fabulous Ghost Wolf. Blizzard didn’t intend it to be tamable, but they came out and officially said that they thought it was neato and would leave it in.

And as of patch 2.3.2, or thereabouts, that changed and the Ghost Wolf is gone.

I have read several discussions over this, but here is the best overview of my feelings on the matter.

Specifically: Blizzard lied. Not only that, but a lot of people went and blew money on things they normally would not have to prepare, and are now left with an inventory of things they probably don’t need, in preparation for something that they cannot have.

Shoddy. Very, very shoddy. And Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves.

I would like to note that I had no intention at all of taming one, but I do feel for those that did.

Because of this, I am off to tame a Ghost Saber. Why? Because they might change thier mind in 2.4, and somebody in my guild should have one.

Again: shame. on. you. bliz.