The CATA NDA has been lifted!!!! We can now see tool tips for our new shots and abilities(we have ANOTHER aspect) we're getting. Also the info for professions are out, and theres now a new enchant to replace tuskkar's with(25 agil instead of 15 stam), and delicate chimera eye is a +84 agil gem!!
But rather then me blab on, heres the link!
This isn't going to be like my other posts, its just going to be about what I've been up to in game.
The biggest thing that has changed, is that I'm on a new server! Last week Monday, Ellesher(my own personal drood slave) and I transferred to Drenden. Why drenden and why the transfer? well simply because my old server was a PST server, and since I live in EST, all raid nights were late night raid nights, so the new guild I'm in runs earlier, which allows me to raid more.
Also, because I'm new to my guild, I'm not really on the immediate invite list, which is fine, because its only fair. But with the time I've freed up, me and Ellesher(who is a tree by trade, if you're wondering) have started our 2v2 team(something that we've though about doing for a long time) which in our first week we got to 1100 rating. 1100 isn't very high, but seeing as I'm not a very strong PVP hunter(yet), that and....well aside from wrists and pvp trinket Ellesher has no PVP gear I thought we did fairly well.
I've also been doing a ton of BGs, and I can tell that all the PVP I've done has seriously helped my PVE, and I'm also setting up/messing around with FRAPS, so I may have some videos of me actually doing something, in the near future(let me know what you think about it in the comments).
** while I was writing this post I got side tracked(big surprise) and read the latest post over at OutDps.com, which is a really good guide on hunter lvling. I thought it may be helpful to those interested in lvling a hunter.
anyways....cheers!
Choosing what gear you want to get can sometimes be tough, especially since you can't really copy the gear choices that other hunters make, because you probably don't have the same access to gear that they have. But with a little understanding, choosing your gear isn't as hard as you may think.
Most hunter gear has AP and crit, these are the two stats you'll see on your gear the most, but generally there is a 3rd stat to take into consideration. The 3rd stat will be either haste, amor pen or hit rating. When choosing your gear at lower ilvls, don't worry about taking as much gear with hit rating as you can only have a couple pieces of gear with hit, and still meet the cap with talents. But as marks with higher ilvls of gear, you'll have a lot more ARP, and will want to carefully choose, so that you don't need as many talents in focused aim and you can put them in improved steady shot.
After taking hit rating into account, you want to try and take the gear without haste. While haste does improve your DPS, it's the worst stat we have and should be avoided. However, there is course exceptions, for example: if you have a low ilvl melee weapon, and you're able to get your hands on Distant Land , then you will want to take it, because its a DPS increase.
A couple rules of thumb are:
* Take enough gear with hit that you don't need to go to the extreme of taking 3 talents in focused aim and even gem/enchant hit rating.
*After the first rule, only take gear with ARP and not haste.
Also, test out pieces of gear using the spreed sheets, it's the best way to figure out what gear is best for you.
I hope this helps clear up some of the email questions I've gotten, cheers.
Currently one of the most misused stats, that we hunters have is armor pen(ARP). Some hunters just go full out and gem it when they have very little ARP and end up losing DPS. While others just ignore ARP completely and keep gemming agil, even though they have enough ARP to see a DPS increase if they were to gem ARP.
One thing we have to keep in mind, is that at lower lvls of gear, 1 point of ARP is worth much less then 1 point of agil. But when you get more ARP, you reduce the targets armor by X% and 1 point of ARP becomes more and more dps.
So here is a guide/ some tips for ARP as Marks:
*With less then 400 passive ARP(ARP that you've gotten just from your gear) you want to pretty ignore changing anything for ARP.
*At 400-450 you should have about enough ARP, that your steady shot will be more DPS then arcane. At this point you want to remove talents from improved arcane shot and put them in inproved steady shot, and then remove arcane shot from your rotation(be sure to use it while moving and you have no other instant shots to fire. *also note,at this point you also want to be timing your auto shots with your movement, because they'll be doing a lot more dps.*
*At 750ish passive ARP, 1 point for ARP will be slightly more dps then 1 point of agility. At this point you'll want to trade your +20 agil gems in for +20 ARP gems. Also you should start using Hearty Rhino and Elixir of Armor Piercing .*do not replace your +10 agil/+10 crit gems that you have for socket bonuses at this point, the socket bonus will still probably be more dps then the +20 ARP gem.*
*At 850ish you should be able to replace all gems(not hit gems of course) with +20 ARP gems. At this point the one thing you really have to make sure to watch, is that you're not going over the ARP cap of 1400(you only want 1315 ARP if you're using Hearty Rhino and Elixir of Armor Piercing .
**Edit*** I forgot to mention, like I normally do, that you should use the spreadsheets to get a definite answer to when you can change stuff when you get the right ammount of ARP.
So that is pretty much the jist of ARP as Marks, if you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments, or shoot me an email.
So I was reading up on CATA changes and what not, and I couldn't help but want to slap blizz, since their more then likely not going to do anything much with the hunter dead zone.
If you don't know what the phamous "hunter dead zone", it's the area between melee and ranged(5 yards I believe) where you cannot use your ranged attacks.
Now a lot of other people really want it removed from the game, because for fights like marrowgar it's like a kick in the pants. But I really doubt that blizz will take it out of the game, but what would add something interesting is if we could still use our ranged attacks in the "dead zone" but with reduced power(so if your CHIM shot does 10k at ranged then it would do, say 5k if your in the "dead zone"). But this would add another "do I press this button now or wait a couple seconds" but really, seeing as we're already not the top DPS class(right now, but haste could change everything up), it would just give us another mechanic to worry about.
Looking at the dead zone from the PVP point of view, its just horrible, and I think that if they had reduced power for our dead zones it would help us a lot with pvp. But keep in mind, that we are one of the best kiting classes in the game, we have so many abilities to help us kite and keep other players at a distance, so our dead zone in PVP really should be a big deal to us.
Now, honestly I don't really mind the whole dead zone thing, it's just there and a part of how I play my hunter now, but the only thing I actually like about it is I always get to sit at the back and do my thing, and I get to see whats going on the whole fight. But other then that it's just a pain in the class's back side. Hunters are already the odd bastard child of blizz, because we have so many factors that we don't share with other classes, and while I like that we're different from other classes, this isn't a difference I like.
But ya thats my take on the hunter dead zone, let me know what you guys think in the comments.
