MoP Talents

Now that Mists of Pandaria is on the horizon, it's very tempting to start musing about what talents to choose once it comes out.

Layout of the new talent system with 6 tiers

How it works: In the new system, you have a choice of one talent per tier. Each tier has a mixture of abilties useful for PvE or PvP, or in some cases both. As talents are no longer part of a spec, everyone gets to choose from the same talents, no matter what spec they are.

Every 15 levels, another tier opens up. Each tier seems to be centered around a theme: moving around, cc-ing, self-heal and survivability, burst damage, finishing moves and AoE. Here is an overview of the new talents:

At level 15, The talents seem to focus on three forms of Disengage:

• Posthaste: Your Disengage frees you from all movement impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 8 sec.
• Narrow Escape: When you Disengage, you also activate a web trap which encases all targets within 8 yards in sticky webs, preventing movement for 8 sec.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera: Reduces the cooldown of Disengage by 10 sec, and the cooldown of Deterrence by 60 sec.

At level 30, the theme is ccing:

• Silencing Shot: A shot that silences the target and interrupts spellcasting for 3 sec.
• Wyvern Sting: A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 30 secs. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the sting causes 2,730 Nature Damage over 6 sec.
•  Binding Shot: You fire a magical projectile, tethering the enemy and any other enemies within 5 yards of the landing arrow for 10 sec. If targets move 5 yards from the arrow they are stunned for 5 sec sec (3 sec PvP) and will be immune to the effects of Binding Shot for 10 sec.

At level 45, it's all about self-heal and survivability:

• Exhilaration: Two minute cooldown. Instantly heals you for 30% and your pet for 100% of total health.
• Aspect of the Iron Hawk: The Hunter takes on the aspects of an iron hawk, increasing ranged attack power by 10%, and reducing all damage taken by 15%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. Replaces Aspect of the Hawk.
• Spirit Bond: While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 2% of total health every 2 sec.

At level 60, all about burst and bonus damage:

• Fervor: Instantly restores 50 Focus to you and your pet and an additional 50 Focus over 10 sec.
• Readiness: When activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown on all Hunter abilities with a base cooldown less than 6 minutes. Previously the domain of MM hunters, now BM and SV hunters get to have a second burst as well. 
• Thrill of the Hunt: You have a 15% chance when you fire a ranged attack that costs Focus and Kill Command to cause your next ranged attack that costs Focus or Kill Command to be free. 

At level 75, the common theme seems to be finishing moves:

• A Murder of Crows Summons a flock of crows to attack your target over the next 30 sec. If used on a target below 20% health, the cooldown is reduced to 60 seconds.
• Dire Beast. Summons a powerful wild animal to assist you in combat for 15 sec. Each time the animal deals damage, you will gain 5 focus. 
• Lynx Rush Instant, 100 yard range, 1.5 min cooldown. Your pet rapidly charges from target to target, attacking 9 times over 4 sec, dealing its normal attack damage to each target. The pet must be within 10 yards of the target to Lynx Rush. 

At level 90 has new powerful AoE abilities:

• Glaive Toss 20 Focus. You hurl two glaives toward a target, each dealing 110 to 327 damage to each enemy struck and reducing movement speed by 30% for 3 sec. The primary target will take 8 times as much damage from each strike. The Glaives will return back to you, damaging and snaring targets again as they return. 
• Powershot: You wind up a powerful shot, which deals 400% weapon damage to the target and 100% weapon damage to all enemies in between you and the target. Enemies hit by Powershot are also knocked back.
• Barrage: Rapidly fire a spray of shots forward for 3 sec, dealing a total of 320% weapon damage to the enemy target and an average of 80% weapon damage to each other enemy target in front of you.

I like how every tier is sort of centered around an important aspect/ facet of being a hunter, and it is nice that you can decide out of three in what way you want to do it. This makes it easy to really customize your talents according to your own play style and needs. It's very tempting to start theorycrafting about what talents are the most viable and which ones are not very useful, but as we are still in the Beta phase, everything can still be changed.

Are you excited about the new talents? Which ones are "no-brainers" for you?

June's Uber Basic Beginner's Guide To Huntering Part 2

This is part 2 in the Uber Basic Beginner's Guide To Huntering series. In this post,I'll cover levels 15-30, and we'll look at PvP / PvE, spells, where to quest and keybinds. For part 1, click here.

While levels 15-30 are often considered unmemorable rookie levels, I think they're great. You finally get to do battlegrounds, dungeons open up and after having to run everywhere you finally get a mount. So what's in store for first time hunters?

PvP
At level ten, you're able to go into battlegrounds. Not only do battlegrounds give you great XP, they also give you pretty good practice to think fast and mess with your spells to see well, what they do against an opponent slightly stronger than Hogger. As a hunter, you'll do pretty good damage. At the same time, you're pretty squishy too. The trick is to always try to keep your distance, but as warriors and the like have nasty charges, you can't always prevent them from getting all up in your grill. Luckily, hunters get a few spells/abilities for greater survivability rather early in the game, which compensates for your squishy-ness a little:

- Disengage. Available at level 14, this spell makes you leap away from your oponent. It has a cooldown however, and you need to be in combat in order to use it.
- Scatter Shot. Available at level 16. Scatter Shot will be one of your favorites in the battleground. Your opponent loses control of him/herself for a few seconds, giving you time to get away.
- Wing Clip. I'm not suggesting you should run up to the enemy just to Wing Clip them, but when they get all close, at least you get to slow them for 50%. Available at level 12.
- Concussive Shot. Like Wing Clip, it slows the target for 50%.
- Immolation Trap. Traps are your best friend in battlegrounds. This trap burns the first enemy that approaches you. You can put it on capping flags like the ones in Arathi Basin for example, or just throw it under someone's feet. Available at level 22.
- Freezing Trap. This trap becomes available a little later, at level 28, but will probably be one of your go-to traps in PvP. Any oponent that runs into this traps gets stuck in a block of ice, unable to move for a few seconds. One of the tricks I've learned to lure someone into walking into your icey trap, is to Scatter Shot them and then throwing a Freezing Trap right under their feet. Since they lose control over themselves, they can't really dodge your trap that easily.

When it comes to moving around, it is generally suggested that you shouldn't do any "keyboard turning", meaning, that you dont use the arrows to turn left or right. When moving, try to turn with your mouse, while running forward by either keeping the two buttons on your mouse pressed in, or by using the "W" key (the standard key for moving forwards). Another important part of moving through a battlefield in aan easy way is by doing something called strafing. These are keys on your keyboard that make your character move left or right with turning being done by mouse. This is great for running and shooting at the same time - which you will be able to do at a later stage when you have Aspect of the Fox - but is also great for lower level battlegrounds as it gives you a bit more control over your character's movement.

With every oponent that you kill or battlegrounds you win, you get awarded honor points. You can trade these points for gear or other supplies like flasks and gems. Some people like to trade them in as soon as they have the right amount together for a piece of gear - others like to save them up for when they reach 85 - since you'll be doing so much levelling anyway, you'll grow out of your low level PvP gear pretty soon - unless you will want to level through PvP only, I'd say you're better to save them up until you've reached level 85.

PvE
If PvP isn't really your thing, you can try your hand at dungeons at level 15. In PvE, your role as a hunter is simple. You are there for ranged damage and for ccing whatever enemies need to be cced to keep some of the pressure off your tank

June's Uber Basic Beginner's Guide To Huntering Part 1

I have been toying with the idea of writing a very basic hunter guide for those who have just started playing the hunter class, and as I am in the process of levelling my second hunter, I figured it's a nice oppurtunity to pen down some tips and tricks for those who are completely new to this wonderful class!

This guide will be extremely basic, without much of the number-crunching stuff since my theorycrafting skills aren't that great - some things are much better left to the experts. ;-)

In this part, I'll try to cover some of the basics from levels 1-15: we'll take a look at what a hunter does, a basic hunter's rotation, talent specs, pets and hunter stats. So let's get started!

What does a hunter do besides shooting at things from a distance?
Hunters are primarily ranged DPS. We are also pretty good at crowd controlling, setting traps and snaring or silencing enemies.

Next to that, hunters provide awesome buffs for parties and raids from our spec and pets which we can easily switch around, depending on the situation. Also, hunters are naturally handsome and badass. It is general knowledge that:

"Hunters have smoldering good looks by nature, that reduces the opposite gender to a quivering pile of desire. Sometimes the same gender too. We just look that good. It’s a blessing and a curse, except not actually at all curse-like"

For more basic info on hunter stats, focus, hunter races and pets, this page covers a lot of the basics.

Shots and abilities in the first few levels

At level 1, you start out with Arcane Shot and your trusty pet. Arcane Shot will, for most of your levelling career, be one of the more hard hitting spells, but, as it costs 25 focus just to fire one - that's a quarter of your total focus - it is not an ability you will want to use endlessly. That's where Steady Shot, available at level 3, comes in. The shot doesn't do as much damage as Arcane Shot, and it has a cast time of  2 seconds, but each Steady Shot you cast restores 9 focus, making it an awesome "filler-shot" you'll want to use inbetween high damaging shots.

At a later stage, from level 15 upwards or so, you will want to mix up your Arcane Shots (and specialization-signature shots, depending on what spec you choose to play) with your Steadies, to keep your damage up while regenerating enough focus to cast your more fancy shots.

This is where we can see the beginning of a basic hunter rotation!

While there isn't really a strict shot-rotation every hunter should abide to - in the end, your rotation really depends on your spec, playstyle, whether you PvE or PvP, any fight mechanics and so on - a simple, basic PvE hunter rotation goes something like this:

Hunter's Mark: you only have to apply it once (available at level 14)
Serpent Sting (available at level 10)
Signature Shot
If  you have enough focus, Arcane Shot
Steady Shot
Steady Shot
Signature Shot

Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

You will always want to have Hunter's Mark up on your target, as it lasts pretty long (5 minutes) and increases your attack power (= more dps). The second shot you'll always want to use in your rotation is Serpent Sting. Serpent Sting is a DoT, a spell that ticks damage over time while you are firing off other shots. After that, your shooting priority are the spells that deal the most damage, usually followed by an Arcane Shot - if you have focus to spare. To restore focus, throw in a couple of Steady Shots - especially if you are Markmanship and have Improved Steady Shot talented, as it makes you shoot faster.

Talent Specializations
At level ten, you will get to choose to play either as Markmanship (MM), Survival (SV) or Beast Mastery (BM) - each with its own signature shot and special abilties.

June goes back to school

Just listened to the Hunter Podcast from WHU and I got inspired by an idea to feature tips and info for new - or freshly-dinged lvl 85 hunters.

Being reasonably new to the hunter class and raiding, I think this is an awesome idea. The gap from doing hc dungeons to end game raids is pretty significant. A lot of the hunter guides out there are invaluable and awesome but can be quite tricky to get into as a newbie. It certainly took me a while to understand all the terms, the theorycrafting, rotations...

I am thinking of setting up some sort of hunter beginners guide, not fancy, just a simple guide for people who have just started levelling a hunter - and later a guide for freshly dinged 85 hunters. Any suggestions what to put in there? Let me know in the comment section!