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Legion is Really Quite Good

September 7, 2016 By Garwulf 13 Comments

Despite the less than welcomed hunter changes Blizzard force fed us for Legion, I am really enjoying this expansion so far. I mean…I am really, REALLY enjoying it.

Although I was up in arms over our shattered class, after some debate and soul-searching, I decided that starting this expansion on any class other than hunter would just feel…well…

wrong.

The hunter is strong in me. I still can’t bring myself to enjoy Blizzard’s melee hunter class fantasy or their Tarzan spec, but I am experiencing some satisfaction as a Marksman. While not terribly complicated to play, it is a frenetic spec with a bit of a skill cap, and when played correctly, the damage is oh-so-nice.

I do miss my traps, however.

And Master’s Call.

But I am learning to adapt.

I’m still feeling a wee bit squishy, though not as bad as before, and MM is maybe a little bit too cleave-happy, but it’ll be my spec of choice until Blizzard revisits Beast Mastery and makes it into a spec I can enjoy once again.

I love, love, love the artifact weapon system. I had my doubts at first, but wow…they did a bang-up job with this, IMO. Weapon progression has that rewarding feel that I haven’t experienced for some time, and treasure-hunting for that sweet, sweet artifact power is a blast.

And my god, is this game pretty now. The detail which was added to the environments, and the little things like the current actually moving you when you’re in a rapidly moving stream, adds a whole new layer of depth.

Also, the artwork and quest lore is far superior to anything I’ve seen from this game in some time. The questing experience has been truly immersive.

I’d say that apart their disappointing approach to “reinventing” the hunter class, Blizz knocked it out of the park with this expansion, from a leveling standpoint anyway. I have been enjoying the leveling experience so much, that I’ve been taking my time – making sure that I stop to smell the roses. So much so, in fact, that I still haven’t hit max level.

I’ve also been overhauling my UI, which has slowed me down as well, but with all of these changes, I’ve found it necessary to adapt my interface to the new and simpler, yet proc-happy play-style.

All in all, Legion has been a sheer pleasure so far and I’m hopeful that Blizzard will listen to our cries and work towards a compromise with the hunter community – introducing updates and changes that will help to fix some of what they’ve wronged. Until then, I am going to…

How are you guys enjoying Legion? Which spec have you found to be most pleasing? Let us know in the comments.

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!

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.

No flies on me

January 5, 2011 By Garwulf 16 Comments

Within 2 hours, I managed to get nearly 20% of the way through level 81. I knew leveling in Cataclysm seemed like it was going to be pretty quick, but sheesh…

I chose to hit Vashj’ir first over Mount Hyjal, mainly because of Drach’s post. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

I’m not crazy about having to be fighting constantly underwater, but Blizzard has done an incredible job of “funning” it up. The increased movement speed, underwater breathing, and especially… my trusty sea-horsey mount, make the whole experience quite enjoyable.

The quests are quite amusing as well. Being eaten by a giant great white shark was quite comical, as was the “case of crabs” I obtained after visiting the chick in the cave.

So far, I’m really enjoying the 80-85 experience. I can’t wait until I’m all leveled up and able to go after some of the new beasties – namely Sambas and Ghostcrawler. Terrorpene‘s on my list as well, but based upon what I’ve read… I may want to bolster my HPs a bit before trying to get my tame on with him.

Oh! I want that rare-green-crazy-ass-alien-looking-bug-thingy too!

As far as which pet I’m using at the moment… Ashtail! Other than the minor annoyance of his Tailspin ability pulling additional neutral mobs, he’s been quite fun and unusual. It’s not caused me to bite it yet, so I’ll leave the ability on auto-cast for the moment, but I’ll most likely cycle through my stable as I level – giving many of my pets a chance to get out and stretch their legs, wings, etc… for a bit.

As far as my spec is concerned… I’m rocking a Marksmanship build at the moment. It seemed like the best way to go due to the insane amount of focus regen, along with some of the other little perks. So far it’s working extremely well. At my gear level, mobs are going down pretty easily – sometimes within two shots. Vashj’ir is my shooting gallery.

I like how they made Trueshot Aura passive! It’s not a huge deal, but still… one less thing to activate.

Tonight was my first go with MM since 4.0, so that’s been kind of fun too. As some of you know, I’ve been largely inactive the past few months, so I didn’t bother with too much “testing” of the new builds and what not. I played mostly as a Beast Master (still my 2nd spec), and dabbled a little in SV, but that was just before I went on my brief hiatus.

I think I’ll switch to Beast Mastery next time I get on and see how that goes. I can’t imagine it being more effective than MM, but at least it’ll give me a chance to level some of my exotic beasties.

Well… it feels good to get back to some huntering, along with experiencing the 80-85 Cataclysm content. =D

Miscellaneous Cataclysm Musings

July 9, 2010 By Garwulf 6 Comments

Now that I’ve had a chance to savor and digest all of the juicy Cataclysm hunter updates that were released last week (while I was on vacation), here are a few miscellaneous thoughts and comments of mine…

Aimed Shot

I like the older style mechanic of Aimed Shot making its return in Cataclysm. While it’s definitely nice having another instant cast shot in our arsenal, having Aimed Shot be an instant just never made sense to me. I like how it’s becoming a high damage shot once again, even with the long cast time. There was something so joyfully sinister about seeing your enemy hopelessly stuck within your Freezing Trap while you slowly drew your bow or aimed your rifle, preparing to rattle them with a mammoth Aimed Shot crit. 😈

Widow Venom

Along with Aimed Shot’s 2 second cast time and increased damage, the other thing that’s changing is its mortal Strike effect is going bye-bye. Hunters in Cataclysm will now be using a shot called Widow Venom in order to apply an MS effect. [Read more…] about Miscellaneous Cataclysm Musings