Tamarlane, Author at HuntsmansLodge.com

Gear Score vs. Skill

December 18, 2009 By Tamarlane 30 Comments

Night Elf Hunter Names have been obliterated to protect the innocent. The subject we’re about to tackle is fraught with misconceptions, half-formed opinion and occasionally a self-satisfied, self-serving attitude that’s both completely unjustified and (in the worst cases) completely silly.

We’re talking gear score vs. skill. Here’s the typical trade post: “LFM 25 ONY MUST HAS MIN 2500 GEAR SCORE OR DON’T PST KTHXBAI”. Practitioners of the gear score philosophy know only numbers, and believe that given enough gear, any scrub can handle any sort of content. Much to the chagrin of the evident multitude of acolytes to this laughingly false idea, they’re wrong, and I’m going to use a couple of methods to illustrate this fact.

What we can learn from the NFL Draft.

I may lose some of you here, so I’ll keep this brief, but I’ve learned that using multiple types of examples to illustrate a point can be helpful.

Let’s quickly discuss 3 quarterbacks: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Ryan Leaf. You most likely have heard of the first 2, even if you’re not a big football fan, the last guy, maybe not so much.

Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are two of the better (if not the best) quarterbacks in the game today. Peyton Manning was drafted #1 in his draft class, no one else was picked ahead of him, he had the highest “gear score”. Tom Brady was picked #199 in his draft class, so 198 guys were picked ahead of him, his “gear score” was terribad. Ryan Leaf was picked #2, right after Peyton Manning, same draft class, they went 1 and 2. Ryan had an unbelievable gear score, and was almost picked ahead of Peyton.

Here’s where I make my (now lengthier than I would have liked) point: Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are two of the best, Ryan Leaf is out of football fighting addiction to painkillers, has been indicted for burglary and is basically of very little use to anyone. These guys were picked based strictly on their “gear score” coming out of college, and it shows that just because it looks like you have all the tools on paper, real world application of said tools can be a little more difficult to pull off.

Okay, let’s move on quickly, that may have been a stretch for some of you, but think of it as broadening your horizons a bit, it builds character.

Let’s discuss an example from the last VoA 25 I PuG’d. [Read more…]

Why Alchemy is better than you think

December 16, 2009 By Tamarlane 20 Comments

Alchemy is a great (and possibly the best) DPS profession because of one thing: versatility.

Night Elf Mohawk Alchemy offers opportunities to tailor your DPS output on the fly, fight to fight, even phase to phase, that no other profession can compete with, for example:

You’re fighting the Northrend Beasts, you blew your cooldowns on Gormokk right from the jump, Rapid Fire, Call of the Wild, all popped immediately as your trinkets got their first proc off. You know Heroism/Bloodlust is going to go off when the worms come out, and you’ll pop your RF and CotW again when Icehowl smashes his face into the wall in phase 3, yes? Alchemy shines here, while you’ve downed a Flask of Endless Rage, which gives you (because of your Mixology talent) 244 attack power for 2 hours, you also have options:

There are at LEAST 4 potions that may prove useful for this fight: Wild Magic, Potion of Speed, Runic Healing and Runic Mana (real quick, what’s an anagram for potions? OPTIONS! Thank you, yes, I’m here all week). But possibly none are more valuable than the Crazy Alchemist’s Potion (which, of course, is only available to an alchemist). Say you’re running low on mana and/or health in this fight, pop one of these babies, and you get the base 3100-3500 health and 4200-4400 mana, but it can also proc, doubling either of the first two effects, or giving you Speed, Wild Magic, or one of a few assorted OTHER buffs, as well. Of course, if your health and mana are fine, you can also pop a potion of Speed or Wild Magic to assure yourself of the buffs, secure in the knowledge that popping that potion cost you less than someone with a (lesser) profession.

Want more versatility? Okay, instead of popping a flask of endless rage, how about elixirs of agility and intellect? Using the spreadsheet on femaledwarf.com, you can see that (mana dependent), it can be a DPS BOOST (by possibly keeping you out of Viper entirely) to use these instead of a flask of endless rage. Obviously these are available to anyone, but again, no other non-alchemist is going to be able to create them as cheaply as you can, and mixology is not a talent to be underestimated, as it will buff these elixirs, as well.

If you’re of the PvP bent, Alchemy shines here as well. Flask of the North (another alchemist only item) provides 80AP, 40 STR or 47 Spell Power, depending on what’s best for your class, and it works in arenas! It lasts for an hour, and has no cooldown, so you can refresh it whenever you like. While not as convenient as a perpetual buff like the extra sockets from BS, it’s a nice addition to a profession already packed with bonuses, and again, the utility offered incomparable, but let’s make a quick comparison anyway:

Alchemy vs. Jewelcrafting (my other profession), fight to fight versatility:

Okay, you’re a Jewelcrafter, gratz, and you need extra hit for a boss since the only Draenei in your raid is DC’d and had to be replaced (tell me this never happens, more spacegoats, please!). What can you do? Well, you can cut yourself a couple of replacement gems super fast, pop them in the best possible sockets, and off you go. But what happened here? You’ve replaced a gem or two with hit rating gems, and when you raid next time, you’ll have your spacegoat back, and want agility gems back in those spots. Cost effective? Hardly. How would an alchemist handle this sitch-e-ation? Pop a hit elixir and keep on truckin’. What? Raid wiped and the Draenei is back? You don’t need that crappy hit anymore, hooray! Pop another flask of endless rage and commence to crush the hopes and dreams of that boss, fo sho. Is this an extreme example? Sure. Is it a possibilty? Absolutely.

(I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of being hit capped in this article, but stay tuned, gentle reader, I may get around to it eventually!).

Pre-potting is another way to make use of the economy alchemy offers. Pre-potting, is, in short, quaffing a potion right before a pull, allowing you to get most of the buff of the first potion, and still allowing you the flexibility of drinking the appropriate potion later in the fight.

I hope I’ve convinced you to immediately switch to Alchemy instead of whichever lesser profession you favored prior to this little bolt of enlightenment, err article (or at least, failing that, given you a slight appreciation for it).

Tamarlane, Night Elf Hunter

December 16, 2009 By Tamarlane Leave a Comment

Night Elf Hunter with Worg

Hey there, I’m Tamarlane of the guild Omen, from the Lightninghoof server, and I’m going to be writing the occasional article on end game raiding, with a specific focus on hunter DPS optimization. While not all of my articles will focus on this specific topic, this is my general area of interest within the game, and thus, what I’ll predominantly be writing about.

I have been playing a hunter for about a year, I started playing WoW at the beginning of WoTLK, and am a complete addict, as evidenced by the fact that I’m now (attempting) to write articles about the massive sleep drain that is, in fact, this game.

I plan to write articles from primarily a Survival spec perspective, tho I reserve my right to occasionally dabble in MM and BM, as I enjoy those specs as well. 😉 I do plan an article (possibly a series of them) about attempting to use the methods I’ve seen from Kripparrian in his videos to maximize MM DPS, specifically things like rolling Serpent Sting on multiple targets. In the meantime, I have 2 and sometimes 3 MM hunters in my typical guild 25 man, and find that using their TSA with my SV talents is a bigger buff to my DPS than going MM myself, at this point in time.

I am not writing to preach about the right and wrong ways to hunter, nor am I holding myself forth as an expert on theorycrafting beyond using common sense and practical understanding of specific encounters. I’m not going to “maths” you to death, simply because I lack the interest (and frankly, education) to do so. I will express opinions you may or may not agree with, and I’ll be thrilled to receive feedback that’s constructive and to the point.

Beyond that, I’m happy to to be working with Garwulf, and look forward to churning out some (hopefullly) interesting and timely “stuffs” for you to consider.

– Tamarlane