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Out with the Old: Stings

March 25, 2015 By Drackmire 8 Comments

I have been playing WoW (off and on) since its release in November 2004. Hunters have seen a lot of changes to their playstyle, and have had many of their core mechanics changed or completely removed along the way. One of these unique features that has been changed are Hunter stings.

Stings are a type of shot that puts an effect on the target, in order to help the Hunter in combat or hinder the opponent in some way. The one sting that has stuck around through every change, and the one I’ll talk about first is Serpent Sting. Serpent sting puts a damage over time (DOT) effect on the enemy which causes nature damage. It used to be a separate ability that you would cast on the target, and would contribute to the Hunter’s overall DPS. In its current form, it is linked to Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot and only usable by Survival Spec hunters as a secondary effect when you use Arcane or Multi on your target.

Serpent sting used to be vital to the raiding Marksman Hunter’s DPS, and you can read more about it in an article I posted many moons ago here. If you take a second to read that dusty old post, you can see it was very intricate and there were a lot of things you had to take into consideration to maximize it, and be effective with it.

The second sting I will mention is Scorpid Sting. Scorpid sting lowered the targets strength and agility, and was great for PvP mostly, but was effective on certain boss fights where tank survival was more important than putting out as much DPS as you could. It was later changed to reduce the chance to be hit by attacks from the target, which made it slightly better but not by much, and you would still use it mostly in PvP. The only exception to this is that Scorpid Sting was used to fight one of the four demon mobs involved in the Hunter Epic bow Questline to get Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers.

The third sting we acquired through progression and leveling was Viper Sting. Oh man, this sting was so good against healers and casters in PvP (if you enjoy that sort of thing), especially when a lot of fights came down to who ran out of mana first. In its first iteration, it simply drained the opponents mana. Later it was changed to not only drain mana, but silence the target as well, and regenerate the Hunter’s mana all at once. Talk about your value ability!

Another sting was added about a year after WoW came out in order to buff up survival, and it replaced their useless 31 point talent Lacerate. Wyvern sting caused the target to fall asleep, essentially acting as another silence and cc to the survival arsenal. It now exists as a talent, rather than a spec-specific ability.

The downside to stings was that you could only have one on a target at any time, so you couldn’t stack them. Secondly, in the early days of raiding we weren’t even allowed to use stings on bosses because they took up one of the debuff slots that could be on the boss (originally a boss could only be affected by 8 debuffs at one time). It almost seems like now they are an afterthought for the developers, and I won’t be surprised if they go by the wayside completely. For me though, they were something that was at the core of the Hunter abilities, much like traps. It’s sad that they are so limited now, and not even available to every spec.

Another thing to keep in mind is that stings count as a poison, so anything that can dispel poisons will dispel them.

Nostalgia is starting to set in now. Blizzard, if you are reading this, bring stings back to the core arsenal of Hunter abilities!

What do you all think, should stings return to being more of a prominent aspect of every Hunter’s shot rotation and become a core ability once again, rather than an afterthought?

Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With: hunter stings, serpent stings, wow nostalgia

The Switch

February 4, 2015 By Drackmire 6 Comments

Join the Army, they said. See the world, they said! I’d rather be sailing!

So my faithful guildies convinced me to learn a second specialization this week. Up until now I have been Marks for 95% of my Wow experience. I tinkered with BM during the BRK era for a while, but then they made Chimera/Serpent Sting the god mode, and I went back to Marksmanship. That was until 2 days ago when we were discussing the Ko’ragh fight in Highmaul. As a guild we don’t have a lot of magic DPS who like to join us in raids, which leads us to a few alternatives. We can PUG in folks which is always a crapshoot. We can level alts, which personally isn’t too fun for me, although my DK is getting there:). Lastly, we can actually look at our other specs and see what benefits they have…

Lo and behold, Survival is pretty much exclusively magic damage. It does all elements to boot. Additionally, the Mastery increases all magic damage you deal. So I did what any good member of the guild does for other members of his guild. I switched, and by switch, I mean learned a second spec.

Up until now I only ever had one spec. Even when they first introduced dual specialization, I didn’t even bother. Marks has always been really appealing to me, and I’ve never been super min/max. I make sure to learn and research gear, rotations, talents, glyphs, etc… but switch just for a bit of extra DPS? Pfft. That’s all well and good until we can’t progress as a guild because we don’t have the necessary tools. So I don’t mind stepping out of my comfort zone in this case.

So I decided to spend the whole raid as survival last night to get used to it, work out my rotations, and get used to pressing a few more hot keys throughout the fight. Survival does have a few extra abilities it uses over Marks. The first fight I didn’t really feel like I was doing a whole lot more since I pulled less DPS than I was used to. We had a clean easy fight though and moved on to fight 2: The Butcher. I was admittedly a bit more comfortable during this fight and there was less movement, but I ended up pulling almost 19K DPS, which was 3K over the first fight.

For the rest of the night there was a significant spike in my overall DPS (21.5K on Ko’ragh), and needless to say, we downed Ko’ragh for the first time (with a little help from some PUGs). He also dropped me some new pants as well.

Ko'ragh Down

I’ll likely still use Marks for a lot of my personal PvE content since it has more healing and has higher damage output on trash, but for raiding I may stick to Survival for awhile. Until Marksmanship gets some love, at which time I’m switching back!

Filed Under: General Tagged With: highmaul, marksmanship, survival

Returning Hunter Ruminating on Secondary Stats

February 2, 2015 By Drackmire Leave a Comment

The value of Multistrike through the eyes of a Marksman

As I started researching secondary stats for Hunters, I kept seeing Multistrike pop up as the number one secondary stat on various websites. At first glance, it doesn’t appear to really do a whole lot more in terms of DPS based on the tooltip. I decided to do some research and see what exactly all the fuss was about, and try to determine for myself what its effect was on my DPS and damage.

Hunters have a soft crit cap at 43% for Warlords of Draenor bosses, which means our Aimed Shots (as Marksmanship) will have a 100% crit chance on raid bosses (through Careful Aim) during the first part of fights while they are above 80% health. After you get 43%, there is no reason to stack any more crit. You can consult your paper doll to see where you are at. It helps to look when you are fully buffed (not including random procs) to see exactly where you stand when you enter a raid.

Initially I liked Mastery as a secondary stat, until I saw that we needed 220 mastery rating per percentage, which is just too much to justify front-loading (BM only needs 55 rating per percentage though, which is crazy). Additionally, versatility requiring 130 per damage increase percentage is also too much to justify front-loading. Again, just too much per point to really make me want to put a lot of it into my gear choices.

Your Multistrike percentage will increase by 1% for every 66 Multi-strike rating you have at level 100, which seems very reasonable in terms of being able to actually acquire a few percentage points early on after hitting level 100, and likely you’ll already have 5% or more  as soon as you reach level 100.

The tooltip in game reads “Grants two XX% chances to deliver extra attacks or heals for 30.00% of normal value on each target.” It doesn’t specify what the damage is based on, or how exactly it works, so you can see why I was initially confused. I also had no easy way of seeing when my attacks were actually multi-striking in the middle of fights to tell what was actually happening (I also wasn’t really trying to watch for it until very recently).

After a bit of combat log reading, and just kind of watching for it, it turns out that Multistrike works on every source of damage you put out. It was even proccing on the ticks from Murder of Crows, which I wasn’t expecting. So for a bit of quick math, if my basic shot hits for 6,000 damage (with no other considerations), my Multistrike procs will hit for 1800. If both chances happen to hit on one hit, my total damage for that shot will be 9600, which is effectively a 60% damage increase for that one shot. Not too shabby.

In Conclusion…

As with any theory-crafting, you have to weigh the ups and downs of prioritizing any secondary stat, and in Warlords of Draenor it’s no different. Marksmanship has always been a crit-heavy specialization, relying on heavy hits from the Hunter and less from the pet, so prioritizing crit until you reach the soft cap is still priority number one in my opinion. Double damage from an attack outweighs two extra chances to do 30% more damage from your attacks. With the Lone Wolf talent, this puts the Hunter’s damage at the forefront completely since you will not have a pet out at all in raids.

For those that are just hitting 100 and are wondering where to get some Multistrike for your gear choices or upgrades, here are some easy to access options without having to delve into end game content.

  • Engineering: Oglethorpe’s Missile Splitter as a crafted scope
  • Jewelcrafting: Green Multistrike Gems are very cheap on AH
  • Enchanting: Rings, Cloak, and Neck can all be enchanted with Multistrike
  • Any crafted gear with “of the Savage”, “of the Deft”, “of the Merciless”, or “of the Strategist” will have Multistrike on it.

Filed Under: Hunter Guides Tagged With: marksmanship, multistrike

Getting back into the raiding groove

December 17, 2014 By Drackmire Leave a Comment

After only a few short weeks, I’m back into end-game content, running through Heroics and dabbling a little in Highmaul. The road to get there is more challenging than it has ever been in the past, from what I can remember. Getting there was a good refresher on playing as a hunter, and it helped me in getting back on my feet after my long hiatus from WoW. Raiding has always been my favorite aspect of the game, and I really am glad to be getting back into that aspect so quickly.

Now, if you are running with a premade group, a lot of this will not apply, but from a LFG perspective it will provide what you can expect to have to do before being able to run into heroics, and ultimately into the end-game raids that are currently available.

First off, your primary objective should be getting to level 100 so you have your final abilities, level 100 talent, and everything available to you class-wise. It’s worthwhile to run dungeons and instances while leveling up, but know that the gear you get will quickly be replaced by quest gear or crafted gear.

There is something to be said about knowing the boss fights before you hit 100 and start doing heroics, so you might consider searching for some instance guides or checking out some YouTube videos so that you can familiarize yourself with the fight mechanics.

If you take a look at the LFG panel, you can see what the Gear Score requirement is for Heroics. With a modest 610 requirement, it feels like it’s in the right place, though 615 or 620 might have been better for pacing in the long run, and would have given folks more reason to run the non-heroic dungeons first. Keep in mind that your gear score is based on what you are wearing AND what you have in your inventory. While I don’t feel this makes a lot of sense, it allows you to do things to get around the requirement without actually being geared appropriately.

As it stands, I was able to reach 608 personally by crafting my engineering Gun and Helm, and including what I had acquired via quests.

epic_wow_engineering_goggles_wod
epic_wow_engineering_gun_wod

Finally, with the completion of the first part of the Legendary quest to get my iLVL 640 ring, I was able to push it over 610 and unlock the heroics. That being said, I did run normal Skyreach before hopping into heroics in order to finish the quest.

So having finally reached the gear requirement, I went to hop into a heroic and get the fun started, only I still wasn’t able to queue for them. So I rechecked everything, and went back to the LFG panel and noticed that there were still locks on the Heroic dungeons. Much to my chagrin, there was yet another requirement to get into Heroics. I had to complete one of the silver proving grounds tests.

In an interesting twist from Blizzard, they actually expect you to go through something that might make you a better player at your class! 😉

[Read more…] about Getting back into the raiding groove

Filed Under: General Tagged With: lfr, raiding in warlords of draenor

A Return to Huntering in WoD

November 30, 2014 By Drackmire 6 Comments

Drackmire is a pal and fellow hunter who had been absent from the game for some time, but he’s recently returned to WoW to experience the sensation that is Warlords of Draenor. He’s enjoyed sharing his experience and wisdom in the past, so I thought it’d be fun to have him write a post about what it was like returning to WoW after a long huntering hiatus. If you’ve recently come back to WoW, or are thinking of coming back, and you’ve been away for 3 to 4 years or more, then you’ll probably relate to Drack’s post. Enjoy! -Gar

As a Hunter who started playing WoW since vanilla, back in November 2004, I have many fond memories of the game. I have made numerous online friends, who I still keep in touch with. I have seen the game progress and get better, and worse, and better again, etc… Despite all the changes, nerfs, buffs, and other miscellaneous intricacies of WoW, I still get a deep sense of enjoyment when I play the game.

That being said, I have not played WoW the entire 10 years it has been out. In fact, I just started playing again in Warlords of Draenor. I stopped playing shortly after the release of Cataclysm, and did not play at all during Mists of Pandaria. This was purely for personal reasons, and had nothing to do with the direction of the game. Real life just took its toll, and sometimes you have to put down your hobbies for awhile. However, through much peer pressure (looks at Garwulf), and finding a time in my life where I feel I can take on the time required to play it again, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my subscription (digital deluxe version of course) and dive right back in.

Talk about a giant belly flop. The first thing I encountered was a free character boost for any character I had, to get them directly to level 90. I didn’t want to spend time in the Mists of Pandaria content right away, so I just put it on my hunter (who was already 85), though in hindsight I probably should have used it with another much lower character.

Anyway, I selected my hunter, and I was presented with a verification, followed by asking me to select a specialization…

Come on Blizzard, don’t you know I’ve been Marksman for like 90% of my WoW time (I’m fond of Marksman, in case you didn’t know…)?! Anyway, I selected Marksman and then logged in to the game.

When I logged in, I was in front of the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands with 2 abilities on my hot bar, and 3 items in my inventory; wait what?! I had my Hearthstone, some food, and a random quest item from Northrend.

I had all my gold, but wondered where my items had gone… Now, chances are nothing in my inventory was worth anything at this point, but I did have several engineering items I didn’t want to have to craft again.

First things first, let’s find my abilities and get my hot bars loaded so I can start shooting stuff…except I don’t have any abilities!? Not one to be easily dismayed, I started opening all the panels I could – looking for abilities and found out that the specializations now only have 4 core abilities each. Marksman now has Aimed Shot, Chimaera Shot (which hits two targets now), Steady Shot, and Kill Shot. I tried dragging abilities from various panels and was not able to add anything to my panels except for pet abilities and my racial ability Stoneform.

marksman_hunter_core_abilities

At this point I was kind of frustrated, so I went to use my Hearthstone, but it was attuned to the Dark Portal… :/ I hopped on a mount and rode along the ground to get to the nearest flight master. That’s right, you heard me, rode along the ground. Turns out you are grounded immediately after logging in from a boost.

[Read more…] about A Return to Huntering in WoD

Filed Under: General Tagged With: warlords of draenor

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