Level 31-40

Armor

Branded Leather Bracers – These bracers drop from High Inquisitor Fairbanks in the Scarlet Monastery (Cathedral).

Shadowskin Gloves – These gloves are crafted by Leatherworkers and while the materials are a bit uncommon, the price shouldn’t be too high. (If it is, try finding or purchasing the materials yourself and have them crafted for you as sometimes these gloves can be priced somewhat high.) The extra 2% crit is a very nice bonus.

Gauntlets of Divinity – Drop from Scarlet Commander Mograine in the Scarlet Monastery (Cathedral).

Oilskin Leggings – These legs drop from Grimlok in Uldaman.

Jangdor’s Handcrafted Boots/Pratt’s Handcrafted Boots – These boots are quest rewards from The Mark of Quality (Horde/Alliance).

The Nightscape Set – If you’re having trouble with drops, I’d definitely suggest checking the Auction House for pieces of the Nightscape set. The pieces are crafted by Leatherworkers, and can often be found for relatively cheap because they’re commonly used by Leatherworkers for leveling up their skill. There are no set bonuses for collecting pieces of the set, but they are very decent pieces:

• Nightscape Tunic
• Nightscape Headband
• Nightscape Shoulders
• Nightscape Pants
• Nightscape Boots

Comfortable Leather Hat – This hat is crafted by Leatherworkers using relatively common materials, so the price shouldn’t be too high. The extra 3.5% Hit is extremely helpful at lower levels.

Mark of Kern – This ring is a zone drop in Scarlet Monastery. Because it’s bind-on-equip, you should be able to pick it up from the Auction House if you’re not lucky enough to see it drop.

Raptor Eye Ring – This ring is a quest reward from Wanted: Goreclaw the Ravenous in Dustwallow Marsh.

Medal of Courage – This necklace is a quest reward from Saving Yenniku (Horde) or The Lost Tablets of Will (Alliance).

Weapons

Loksey’s Training Stick – Drops from Houndmaster Loksey in the Scarlet Monastery (Library).

Vanquisher’s Sword – Quest reward from Bring the End (Horde) or Bring the Light (Alliance).

Grimlok’s Charge – Drops from Grimlok in Uldaman.

Baelog’s Shortbow – Drops from Baelog in Uldaman.

Monolithic Bow – This bind-on-equip bow is a zone drop in Uldaman.

Manslayer – This bind-on-equip two-hander is a zone drop in Razorfen Downs.

Steelclaw Reaver – This bind-on-equip one-handed axe is a zone drop in Scarlet Monastery.

Happy Hunting!

In This Series

• Hunter Gear for Leveling (10-20)
• Hunter Gear for Leveling (21-30)
• Hunter Gear for Leveling (31-40)

Level 21 – 30

Armor

Barbaric Bracers – These are made by Leatherworkers and can easily be picked up on the Auction House if you can’t craft them yourself. The materials are relatively easy to pick up as farmers level, so they should be moderately priced.

Moss Cinch – One thing I would note about this belt is that it’s really only appealing to Hunters with Careful Aim, because the Intellect will translate into Attack Power. If you’re not specced into Careful Aim, don’t worry about getting this belt.

Petrolspill Leggings – These leggings are a zone drop in Gnomeregan. Because they’re bind-on-equip, you should be able to pick them up from the Auction House if you can’t get them to drop, but keep in mind that they may be fairly high priced since they’re an attractive item for twinks.

Toughened Leather Gloves – These are another Leatherworking item. Again, the materials to make these aren’t too difficult to come by so they should be reasonably priced.

Mantle of Thieves – These shoulders are a zone drop in Razorfen Kraul and because they’re bind-on-equip, you should be able to pick them up from the Auction House. While the Spirit on these shoulders is useless to us, the other stats are definitely nice to have.

Weapons

Reef Axe – This two-handed axe drops from Gelihast in Blackfathom Deeps. While the Stamina on this axe is nice, it’s really the Attack Power on it that makes it truly desirable.

Armor Piercer – This polearm drops from a rare spawn in Razorfen Kraul, Razorfen Spearhide.

Thornspike – This dagger drops from Aggem Thorncurse in Razorfen Kraul.

Vendetta – This dagger is a zone drop in Razorfen Kraul.

Take either of the two-handed weapons or both of the one-handers and they’re roughly equivalent, so go after whichever is easiest for you to get.

Naga Heartpiercer – This bow drops from Lady Sarevess in Blackfathom Deeps.

Nightstalker Bow – This bow drops from a rare spawn in Razorfen Kraul, Blind Hunter.

Glass Shooter – This gun drops from a rare spawn in Gnomeregan, Dark Iron Ambassador.

These last two ranged weapons are bind-on-pick-up, so you won’t be able to pick them up from the Auction House if you’re not lucky enough to get the mobs to spawn.

A Note on Farming Drops

One thing to keep in mind while leveling is that farming items in instances as you level is vastly different from farming drops at the level cap. When players farm drops at the level cap, it’s for a reason: because they won’t be able to get better items any other way. (Either because the item they’re after is a best-in-slot item, or because they don’t have access to content that has better drops.)

However, farming for drops as you level is a waste of time. You have plenty more levels to go, and sooner or later even standard quest rewards will be better than what you’re farming for. Only run instances because you want to or because you have multiple objectives to complete within a given instance. If you have quests to do, multiple drops you’re hoping for or you just enjoy a particular instance–run it to your heart’s content. But don’t run an instance because you’re hell bent on getting one particular item. It’s a waste of your time. Better items will come along with little effort on your part as you go.

Happy Hunting!

In This Series

• Hunter Gear for Leveling (10-20)
• Hunter Gear for Leveling (21-30)
• Hunter Gear for Leveling (31-40)

Level 10-20

Armor

Black Wolf Bracers – These bracers drop from Fenrus the Devourer in Shadowfang Keep. While they don’t have any Agility or Attack Power on them, the added Stamina will increase the survivability of you and your pet.

Girdle of the Blindwatcher – This belt drops from Odo the Blindwatcher, also found in Shadowfang Keep. The extra Intellect on this belt will give you a bigger mana pool, meaning more shots before you have to stop to drink. Also, if you spec into Careful Aim, the Intellect will also give you some added Attack Power.

Deviate Scale Belt – This is another Leatherworking piece that you should be able to pick up from the Auction House. Because the materials used to make the belt are a bit more rare than others, it may be a bit pricey, but it’s worth it. The extra 1.5% hit on this belt is invaluable at this level, since hit rating is very difficult to come by until later levels.

Blackened Defias Belt – As an alternative to the belt from Shadowfang Keep or the Deviate Scale Belt, this belt drops in the Deadmines in Westfall. While it doesn’t provide a boost to any stats, it does have a respectable boost to Attack Power on it.

Fletcher’s Gloves – These gloves are crafted via Leatherworking, and if you’re not a Leatherworker you can probably pick them up from the Auction House with relative ease. The extra 4% crit at level 20 is an amazing boost.

Tunic of Westfall – This chest piece is a reward for the last quest in the Defias Brotherhood chain in Westfall. The stats on this chest piece are more Hunter-appropriate than the Blackened Defias Armor, so you’re better off with the quest reward than the dungeon drop in this case.

Serpent’s Shoulders – These drop from Lady Anacondra in the Wailing Caverns. Shoulder-slot items seem to be somewhat difficult to come by in this level range, and these provide a nice boost to Agility so making the trip over to the Barrens is definitely worth it if you can find a group (for you Alliance folks, that is).

Rugged Spaulders – Alternatively, if you find getting into Shadowfang Keep much easier, you may want to go after these instead. (Particularly if you’re already going for the bracers and belt.)

Footpads of the Fang – These boots drop from Lord Serpentis in the Wailing Caverns. One thing I would mention regarding the Fang set: given the set bonuses, these pieces are clearly designed for Druids so it’s not particularly beneficial to complete the set just for any set bonuses. However, most of the individual pieces do have stats on them that are good for Hunters, so don’t be afraid to roll on a couple if you have the chance.

Cape of the Brotherhood – This cape drops from Edwin VanCleef in the Deadmines. Alternatively, you could go with the Glowing Lizardscale Cloak from Wailing Caverns, but this one is slightly better.

Weapons

One thing worth noting here is that Hunters cannot dual-wield until Level 20. With that in mind, particularly when you’re running instances, if you come across any one-handed weapons–particularly swords and daggers–you may want to defer to any Rogues in your group. While the stats on those one-handers are great for both Rogues and Hunters, the difference here is that Rogues can dual-wield at Level 10 which means they’ll be able to use them immediately to the greatest effect. After Level 20, anything is fair game, but for now, let the Rogues have the one-handers if they want them.

Haunting Blade – This sword drops from a rare spawn in Shadowfang Keep, the Deathsworn Captain. The boost to Attack Power is more than you’ll likely find on any one-handed weapons and since you can’t dual-wield yet, this is a great choice.

Impaling Harpoon – If you don’t have any luck getting the Deathsworn Captain to spawn (let alone drop the sword), you might try for this polearm from the Deadmines. While the stats aren’t quite as good, it makes an acceptable substitute if your luck isn’t what you’d like it to be.

Venomstrike – If you didn’t have a reason to go to Wailing Caverns before, you do now. This bow is one of very few ranged upgrades in this level range. It drops off Lord Serpentis in the Wailing Caverns.

A Note on Stats

This is definitely something I’ve mentioned in numerous other guides here on the site, but I feel like it bears repeating here. As Hunters, there are certain stats you’ll specifically want to seek out on pieces of gear and others you can ignore. A good rule of thumb is that if an item has either Strength or Spirit on it, it’s probably not meant for you. Particularly at lower levels, other classes will make much better use of items with those stats on them, so look for items with only Agility, Stamina, Intellect, Hit, Crit or Attack Power on them.

Pass on anything with Spell Power, Defense or Expertise.

I’ll be posting similar gear guides for subsequent levels shortly, so keep an eye out for those in the coming days.

Happy Hunting!

In This Series

• Hunter Gear for Leveling (10-20)
• Hunter Gear for Leveling (21-30)
• Hunter Gear for Leveling (31-40)

It took me a couple hours of circling around Scholazar Basin to find him, but find him I did. And then I tamed him. Oh yes, I tamed him. Which gives me every right to actually wear the shirt I designed. I named him Khaan, and took him for a test drive on the mammoths in Scholazar (figured it wouldn’t hurt to see how he did while farming for buff food–big fan of two birds with one stone and all that).

Let me just say, watching him BOOMBOOMLAZERZ mobs is just… freaking awesome. It’s poetry in motion.

I’ve never been big on Beast Mastery (even when it was providing the highest DPS) or on pets. I’ve always mostly seen pets as a means to an end, a meat shield if you will. Boredom and curiosity got the better of me last night, and now that I have Loque, I kind of don’t want to spec back out of Beast Mastery. He’s that cool.

I’ve started a Spirit Beast gallery on our Facebook page, so if you’ve got your own snazzy screenshots to share, you can email them to us and I’ll add them to the pile. (Don’t forget to include your character’s name.)

For those of you who have faithfully been Beast Mastery all along and for those that have been camping this sucker for months… you may lynch me now.

Choosing a Tree

Before you choose which talent tree you’d like to specialize in, you should spend some time thinking about what kind of gamer you are. Are you looking for the fastest, most efficient leveling experience so you can get to the level cap as quickly as possible? Are you planning on role-playing as you level and want a talent spec that will mesh well with your character’s story? Do you intend to PvP a lot? Do you plan to take your time leveling and want a spec that’s just really fun to play? These are all things you should think about before you start deciding where to spend your first talent points.

At Level 40, you’ll have the option of purchasing an additional talent build so that you can conveniently swap between two favored specs without having to pay respec costs. Dual specs allow you to keep two different specs on-tap to aid you in particular pursuits. For example, if you enjoy both PvP and PvE you can have separate talent builds for both. Another example is one that’s common even among Level 80 players: having a separate spec for soloing and one for instances and raids. This is particularly common among Hunters who want Spirit Beast pets for soloing.

Beast Mastery

Beast Mastery is a particularly popular spec for leveling and soloing for a number of reasons. As mentioned, the ability to use exotic pets while soloing is something many players enjoy and they can only be used by Hunters speced into the 51-point talent, Beast Mastery. The draw-back is that the Beast Mastery talent isn’t available until later levels.

Exotic pets aren’t the only attractive aspect of the Beast Mastery tree, though. Pet survivability is a corner stone of soloing, and the Beast Mastery tree will really make a difference in your pet’s performance. Talents such as Endurance Training, Thick Hide, Improved Mend Pet and Catlike Reflexes will prove highly beneficial in helping keep your pet up and active which in turn keeps your own fat out of the fire.

Marksmanship

As the name implies, this tree helps increase your personal (as opposed to pet) damage via your various shots and stings. The Marksmanship tree has long been considered the “glass cannon” Hunter spec, sacrificing some of the survivability provided by the other two trees for increased damage output.

Many Hunters who choose to spec primarily into the other two trees, even at the level cap, spend their remaining points in the Marksmanship tree for the boosts to personal damage that are invaluable. Of particular note is the Focused Aim talent which increases your chance to hit. This talent can be particularly helpful at lower levels when Hit Rating is distinctly lacking on most of the gear you encounter.

Survival

The Survival tree can provide a mixed-bag of functionality depending on which talents within the tree you choose to utilize. There are talents within the Survival tree that are effective for either PvP or PvE game-play. This tree specializes in utility, giving you numerous options for more control over your character’s capabilities and survivability.

Talents such as Trap Mastery, Entrapment and Resourcefulness will increase your survivability and efficiency, while other talents such as Scatter Shot, Wyvern Sting, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot will add new shots to your arsenal to help increase your damage output and crowd control capabilities.

Sample Builds

With a basic idea of what each tree can be used for, let’s take a look at some sample builds you can use for different styles of play.

Beast Mastery — 56/15/0

This build includes talents geared towards increasing your pet’s survivability and damage output which is ideal for solo play. I’ve also included some glyph choices to help further enhance your pet.

Marksmanship –7/53/11

This talent build features talents specifically designed to give you the best personal DPS possible for leveling.

Survival — 0/20/51

This build focuses primarily on utility and survivability, giving your traps and stings reduced cooldowns and added effects.

These builds are just examples to give you a point of reference to start from. Remember to think critically about the talents you choose as you level. Just because a talent performs well at the level cap doesn’t necessarily mean it’s effective or useful while you’re still in the process of leveling. Also remember to evaluate talents based on your style of play. For example, talents that sound great for PvP or pure personal survivability are useless to players that don’t PvP and never get aggro from their pets.

There is no “perfect” spec for leveling. The best spec is the one you’re happiest playing. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different builds and make use of the dual spec feature to find what works best for you. You can worry about min/maxing once you’re at the level cap, if that’s something you intend to do.

Happy Hunting!

More often than not, at level 80 you’ll find that two-handers will generally provide the best stats for us (just make sure to avoid two-handers with Strength on them!), but that’s not always the case. Sometimes you just won’t be able to get your hands on a decent two-hander and you may have to settle for dual-wielding for a time. The important part is to be cognizant of your options and how the weapons you’re looking at stack up. If you have to settle for something less than optimal to tide yourself over until something better drops, that’s okay, just be aware that what you’re working with isn’t the best and why.

Let’s look at a few examples of one-handed and two-handed weapons.

Now, say you’re looking at Anarchy and Webbed Death. Combined, these two weapons provide:

• 72 Agility
• 83 Stamina
• 49 Hit Rating
• 152 Attack Power
• 25 Armor Penetration Rating
• 31 Critical Strike Rating

Let’s compare that to a two-hander of similar item level, The Undeath Carrier:

• 100 Agility
• 151 Stamina
• 51 Critical Strike Rating
• 153 Attack Power

You’ll notice that dual-wielding would give you a broader range of stats in this case, but the two-hander has more of two of our key stats: Agility and Attack Power. In this case, if you’re below the Hit cap, you would be better of dual-wielding but otherwise the two-hander would be a better choice.

When deciding whether you should dual-wield or choose a two-handed weapon, this is how you would want to compare items to make the best choice. When it comes to melee weapons, it’s all about the stats they carry. Compare them just as you would any other piece of gear to determine the right choice for you.

Thanks to Felinin for this question! If you’ve got a question for The Hunter’s Mark, feel free to send us an email or visit the forums.

Happy Hunting!

Now available in The Hunter’s Mark T-Shirt Shop: Women’s “Love My Loque” Loque’nahak Kitten Tee and Spaghetti Tank. Show your Spirit Beast-camping pride with these unique graphic shirts, only available at The Hunter’s Mark.

The Hunter’s Mark will be hosting a chat session in our chat room this Friday, October 16th at 9:00pm Eastern (6:00pm Pacific, 1:00am October 17th GMT) to discuss all things pet-related. We’ll be having two special guests present to help field questions and participate in the discussion: Pike from Aspect of the Hare and Mania from Mania’s Arcania and Petopia.

Hopefully you’ll all come and join us in the chat room. We’ll be posting reminders right before the event on Facebook and Twitter, so follow us there to make sure you don’t miss it! If this chat session goes well, we intend to hold similar events in the future, so if you have suggestions for chat topics or guests you’d like to see in the future feel free to let us know!

Resilience

One of the first ideas you’ll encounter when you start to delve into the world of PvP combat is the concept of resilience. While it’s not a stat that you’ll encounter much in PvE combat, resilience is a key stat for survivability in PvP and the short answer is: you’ll need a lot of it.

What does resilience do?

Resilience reduces your chance of being the target of critical strikes, reduces the effect of mana draining spells, reduces the amount of damage taken from critical strikes and reduces the amount of damage you take overall.

To clarify, that means that it will be less likely for players to crit against you and when they do, they’ll crit for less damage. Resilience also reduces the amount of damage you take in general. Additionally, (and this is of greater importance to casters and healers than it is to us) any mana draining spells you’re targeted with will not drain as much mana.

In short, resilience increases your survivability via a number of factors and the more you have, the better off you’ll be.

How much is enough?

The current damage reduction cap is 33%. The conversion for resilience rating to percent is 82:1, which means you need 82 points of resilience rating to reach 1% of resilience. For each percent of resilience, you reduce your chance to be critically hit by 1%, damage taken from crits by 2% and overall damage taken by 1%.

The current resilience cap is 1,230 at level 80. However, there isn’t enough resilience gear available to reach that cap, so the simple answer is: as much as you can get your hands on. There really is no “magic number” for resilience that you must reach before you start to PvP. The difference is really just a matter of how painful the experience will be for you. Even just a little resilience will make a noticeable difference in your survival rate.

Where can I get resilience?

I’ll get to actual pieces of gear in a minute, but right now I’d like to talk about where you can get some added resilience through item enhancements to help get you started.

Enchants

• Earthen Leg Armor – Legs, 40 resilience rating and 28 stamina
• Arcanum of the Savage Gladiator – Head, 25 resilience rating and 30 stamina
• Arcanum of Triumph – Head, 20 resilience rating and 50 attack power
• Greater Inscription of the Gladiator – Shoulder, 15 resilience rating and 30 stamina
• Inscription of Triumph – Shoulder, 15 resilience rating and 40 attack power
• Exceptional Resilience – Chest, 20 resilience rating

Gems

• Mystic Dragon’s Eye – Yellow, Jewelcrafters-only, 34 resilience rating
• Kharmaa’s Grace – Yellow, 20 resilience rating
• Mystic King’s Amber – Yellow, 20 resilience rating
• Mystic Autumn’s Glow – Yellow, 16 resilience rating
• Empowered Ametrine – Orange, 10 resilience rating and 20 attack power
• Lucent Ametrine – Orange, 10 resilience rating and 10 agility
• Empowered Monarch Topaz – Orange, 8 resilience rating and 16 attack power
• Lucent Monarch Topaz – Orange, 8 resilience rating and 8 agility
• Steady Eye of Zul – Green, 10 resilience rating and 15 stamina
• Steady Forest Emerald – Green, 8 resilience rating and 12 stamina

You can also pick up some additional resilience with the Lesser Flask of Toughness, which provides 50 resilience rating for an hour.

PvP Gear

Now that you’re familiar with the cornerstone stat of PvP, resilience, let’s talk about some of the PvP gear that’s available in the game. You can get PvP gear from a number of sources: emblem purchases, Wintergrasp bosses, honor point purchases, arena point purchases and even some crafted items.

Purchasable Sets

In patch 2.4, Blizzard introduced the capability of exchanging not only honor points for PvP items but also PvE badges as well which allowed primarily PvE players to segue neatly into PvP combat. Currently, all three Hunter PvP armor sets are available for purchase through both honor points and emblems.

Emblems of Heroism: Savage Gladiator’s Pursuit

Emblems of Heroism were the first emblems introduced in the current expansion and dropped from Heroic 5-man instances and 10-man raids. For 195 Emblems of Heroism, you can purchase all five pieces of the introductory Hunter PvP armor set: Savage Gladiator’s Pursuit.

This rare set provides a total of 234 agility, 402 stamina, 111 intellect, 4925 armor, 222 resilience rating, 336 attack power, 209 critical strike rating and 1 meta socket, 3 red sockets, 2 yellow sockets and 2 blue sockets.

The two-piece set bonus provides an additional 50 resilience rating and the four-piece set bonus reduces the cooldown of your traps by 2 seconds. The set is comprised of:

• Savage Gladiator’s Chain Armor
• Savage Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets
• Savage Gladiator’s Chain Helm
• Savage Gladiator’s Chain Leggings
• Savage Gladiator’s Chain Spaulders

Emblems of Valor: Hateful Gladiator’s Pursuit

Emblems of Valor were introduced along side Emblems of Heroism as the second “tier” of emblems, which dropped in 25-man raid instances or could be obtained by completing heroic instance daily quests. For 195 Emblems of Valor or 212,000 honor points, you can purchase the second Hunter PvP armor set: Hateful Gladiator’s Pursuit.

This epic set provides a total of 268 agility, 460 stamina, 137 intellect, 5095 armor, 256 resilience rating, 408 attack power, 243 critical strike rating and 1 meta socket, 3 red sockets, 2 yellow sockets and 2 blue sockets.

Like the previous set, the two-piece set bonus provides an additional 50 resilience rating and the four-piece set bonus reduces the cooldown of your traps by 2 seconds. This set includes:

• Hateful Gladiator’s Chain Armor
• Hateful Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets
• Hateful Gladiator’s Chain Helm
• Hateful Gladiator’s Chain Leggings
• Hateful Gladiator’s Chain Spaulders

It’s typically recommended that players forgo the Savage Gladiator’s Pursuit set and instead pursue the Hateful set instead because pieces of this set can be obtained through honor points or emblem turn-ins and offers superior stats. Additionally, the leg, chest and hand pieces of this set also drop off Archavon the Stone Watcher on normal mode in the Vault of Archavon, giving players a PvE-style method for obtaining pieces of this set.

Emblems of Conquest: Deadly Gladiator’s Pursuit

Emblems of Conquest were introduced in the same patch as the Ulduar raid instance, and has essentially replaced the Emblems of Heroism. These emblems now drop from all 5-man heroic instances as well as 10-man raids. The third Hunter PvP armor set currently available, which can be purchased for 266 Emblems of Conquest or 52,800 honor points, is the Deadly Gladiator’s Pursuit.

This epic set provides a total of 304 agility, 515 stamina, 162 intellect, 5224 armor, 287 resilience rating, 474 attack power, 274 critical strike rating and 1 meta socket, 3 red sockets, 2 yellow sockets and 2 blue sockets.

Like the other sets before it, the two-piece bonus for this set provides an additional 50 resilience rating and the four-piece bonus reduces the cooldown of your traps by 2 seconds. This set includes:

• Deadly Gladiator’s Chain Armor
• Deadly Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets
• Deadly Gladiator’s Chain Helm
• Deadly Gladiator’s Chain Leggings
• Deadly Gladiator’s Chain Spaulders

Because this set requires arena points to purchase if you intend to purchase it through honor points, you may find the Hateful set easier to come by. However, because this set can be purchased through emblems that are still available in Heroics and raids, it will be easier to purchase than the previous sets via that method. So, which currency you intend to use to purchase your PvP items (honor points vs emblems) will determine which set will be easiest for you to acquire. Additionally, the leg and hand pieces of this set can also be obtained from Emalon the Storm Watcher on normal mode while the chest piece can be obtained from Archavon the Stone Watcher on heroic mode in the Vault of Archavon.

Emblems of Triumph: Furious Gladiator’s Pursuit

Emblems of Triumph, which can be obtained through heroic daily quest turn-ins and 25-man raids and hard modes, can be used to purchase the fourth Hunter PvP set, Furious Gladiator’s Pursuit, and were introduced in the same patch as Emblems of Conquest to replace the Emblems of Valor. You can purchase the set for 325 Emblems of Triumph or 52,800 honor points and 3,050 arena points.

This set differs from the previous PvP armor sets in that two of the pieces require a specific arena rating in order to use them: the chest requires a personal and team rating of 1,000 or higher and the shoulders require a personal and team rating of 1,350 or higher, making it impossible to complete the set through PvE or battlegrounds alone.

The set boasts a total of 361 agility, 618 stamina, 270 intellect, 5384 armor, 331 resilience rating, 594 attack power, 282 critical strike rating and 1 meta socket, 3 red sockets, 2 yellow sockets and 2 blue sockets.

Like the previous sets, the two-piece bonus gives you an additional 50 resilience rating and the four-piece bonus reduces the cooldowns of your traps by 2 seconds. The set includes:

• Furious Gladiator’s Chain Armor
• Furious Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets
• Furious Gladiator’s Chain Helm
• Furious Gladiator’s Chain Leggings
• Furious Gladiator’s Chain Spaulders

Additionally, the gloves and leggings can also be obtained as drops from either Emalon the Storm Watcher or Koralon the Flame Watcher in the Vault of Archavon.

Non-Set Pieces

There are a number of non-set PvP pieces available as well to augment your sets and fill in gaps. These pieces drop from either Emalon the Storm Watcher or Koralon the Flame Watcher in the Vault of Archavon or can be purchased for honor points.

• Furious Gladiator’s Pendant of Triumph – 38,000 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Pendant of Victory – 38,000 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Band of Triumph – 38,000 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Cloak of Triumph – 38,000 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Cloak of Victory – 38,000 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Sabatons of Triumph – 49,600 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Waistguard of Triumph – 49,600 honor points
• Furious Gladiator’s Wristguards of Triumph – 31,600 honor points

To get all the non-set pieces, you’re looking at spending a total of 244,800 honor points.

Putting it Together

Hopefully this will get you pointed in the right direction. If you’re short on gold, don’t gem your pieces until you’ve got the best you plan to have. The pieces you choose to go after first are up to you: you can go after the cheapest pieces first to get yourself as many pieces as possible, or you can save up for more expensive pieces first for a bigger boost right off the bat.

The pieces with the most resilience are:

• Chest pieces
• Leg pieces
• Boots
• Belt

So you may want to go for those items first to give yourself the best chance of survival, which will in turn make getting subsequent pieces that much easier.

Happy Hunting!

Masks and Make-Up

Looking for the perfect masks or make-up to proudly show your Horde or Alliance pride? Amazon has a number of possibilities, including:

• Orc Male Overhead Latex Mask
• Orc Bearded Male Mask
• Tauren Male Overhead Latex Mask
• Forsaken Male Mask
• Troll Male Mask
• Blood Elf Ears and Make-Up Kit
• Blood Elf Latex Prosthetic Kit
• Forsaken Mandible and Make-Up Kit
• Undead Prosthetic Kit
• Night Elf Prosthetic Kit
• Night Elf Latex Prosthetic Kit

Props

Of course, to go with the fancy masks and make-up, you’ll need some impressive props to really make an impression:

• Lionheart Executioner Weapon
• Double Edged Axe
• Gray Double Axe
• Skele Hand Axe
• Gothic Shield
• Knights Sword
• Wicked Spear
• Deaths Dagger
• Lions Shield
• Sorcerers Staff
• Sorcerer’s Orb Staff
• War Hammer
• Dagger

Costumes

And of course you need snazzy clothes to go with the weapons and make-up!

• Men’s Wizard Robe
• Women’s Robe
• White Magician Cloak Cape
• Adult Knight Armor

There are tons of other options out there, but these should be enough to get you started and give you a few ideas. With any luck, Blizzard will release more officially licensed costumes soon to give us even more options. We need some tier armor for Halloween! If you’re planning on dressing up this year, let us know what you’re planning on going as in the comments!

The Hunter Rite of Passage

Every Hunter I’ve known in the four years I’ve been playing the game has tried to tame a rare at least once, myself included. Some have been more determined than others, others have only made halfhearted attempts, but all of them have at least tried. I began to wonder if perhaps I’ve stumbled upon another Hunter Rite of Passage without even realizing it.

The Old

For years, kiting General Drakkisath to The Beast’s room and accidentally falling off the bridge in between on your first attempt was considered a Hunter Rite of Passage. It was a mistake you only made once, but it seemed like every Hunter did it at least once. This was particularly memorable for the mayhem and embarrassment that resulted. Of course, this isn’t really a Rite of Passage anymore, since many Hunters (and players in general) don’t even make it into Upper Blackrock Spire anymore, but remembering that, in the context of today’s discussion, I got to thinking that perhaps the Rare Tame is another Hunter Rite of Passage that just hasn’t been publicly acknowledged yet.

The New

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. In fact, I think the Rare Tame may even be a better Rite of Passage than good ol’ Drak, because it’s timeless. It doesn’t matter when you started playing or how long you’ve been playing for. There will always be rare spawns in the world, and there will always be Hunters to tame them. Furthermore, what player, regardless of class or level, doesn’t get excited when they encounter a rare spawn? Even if they’ve encountered rares countless times in their playing career, I think everyone has an internal “Squee!” moment when they see that silver dragon on their screen. And Hunters have the added benefit of possibly claiming that rare for themselves (depending on the type of mob we’re talking about).

I wonder if our observation is in fact true: Does every Hunter attempt to tame a rare at least once in their career? It doesn’t matter if you stumble on the rare accidentally or actually make a conscious effort to go out and get one or even if you’re successful or not, the important aspect is that you’ve made an attempt at least once.

Cast your vote in the poll (either in this post or in the sidebar of the site) to let us know!

Do you think attempting to tame a rare is a Hunter Rite of Passage?

Hunter Archetypes

Assuming that we’re correct in thinking that every Hunter attempts a Rare Tame at least once in their career, it seems that Hunters can then be broken down into two archetypes which appear to be rather evenly distributed across the Hunter community: Hunters who actively seek out rares to tame and Hunters who simply seize the day and tame a rare they stumbled across accidentally.

The Seeker

The first type of Hunter, those that actively seek out rares to tame, are often more casual players that spec into Beast Mastery (either as a primary or secondary spec) in order to tame exotic pets such as Spirit Beasts. These Hunters often browse Petopia seeking unique pet skins or rare spawns, researching locations and respawn timers, and have been known to camp spawn points for days or even weeks hoping to find a specific rare they hope to tame. These Hunters tend to be extremely persistent and determined in their quest for the Rare Tame and have a high success rate.

The Opportunist

The second type of Hunter, those that answer when opportunity knocks and tame rares they just happen to stumble across, tend to run the gamut of specs and play styles, though they tend to be somewhat less casual than the previous type for the most part. These Hunters are typically either Marksmanship or Survival Hunters. The reason these Hunters tend to be less casual and specced into Marksmanship or Survival isn’t necessarily because they’re “better” players (one has nothing to do with the other), but because those tendencies just match up better with their overall attitudes toward the game (the pet as a means to an end). These Hunters tend to snag “any old pet” that meets their basic requirements (such as pet type or family) and keep that pet for long periods of time, often using that same pet almost exclusively until they just happen to stumble upon a rare that “looks cool”. These Hunters typically have a low success rate with Rare Tames, because they often lack the persistence and determination that marks the previous type of Hunter. These Hunters will attempt the tame once or twice and then give up and move on if the tame was unsuccessful.

Certainly there are bound to be shades of gray and some overlap between the two, but overall my experience has suggested that these two archetypes are fairly accurate. So, we’ve got a few questions for all of you today:

• Do you feel like these archetypes are fairly accurate?
• Which archetype do you most identify with?
• Do you think the Rare Tame is a Hunter Rite of Passage?
• What Rare Tame stories do you have?

Share your ideas with us in the comments!

Types of Hunters

In role-play, the type of Hunter you play isn’t limited to the three talent specs available to the class, and even working within those three specs offers a lot of potential for different spins on the overlying theme.

Inspiration from Lore

Of course, there are tons of amazing hunters in Warcraft lore that you can draw from for inspiration. Now keep in mind, there’s a difference between inspiration and plagiarism. Avoid god-moding (making your character unreasonably strong) or copying your back story from established NPCs in lore.

Rangers

Rangers can vary in style and focus, but they’re primarily known as deadly foes with keen tracking abilities. Rangers can excel at either ranged or melee combat, and may or may not use pets. Rangers will often utilize their tracking and trapping abilities to devastating affect. Elves are the most common racial choice for rangers, since the elven races are known for grace, speed and subtlety–all key traits for rangers. Rangers also make excellent scouts for larger war parties. A good talent spec for a ranger would be Survival.

Notable rangers in lore include: The Windrunner sisters: Sylvanas, Alleria and Vereesa, Lor’themar Theron, Raene Wolfrunner, Thalressar, Rellian and Nathanos Blightcaller.

Beast Masters

When most people think of hunters, they think of beast masters: hunters whose connection with their pet is so strong that the two make an extremely deadly combination in battle. Like rangers, beast masters can excel at either melee or ranged combat, but unlike rangers, beast masters would be nothing without their pets. The beast master and his pet are two halves of the same whole. The two commune with one another and communicate on a level outsiders cannot understand. The two are fiercely loyal to one another, one ever willing to die for the other’s well-being. Any race with a natural affinity for nature and inherent ferocity would make an excellent beast master, though Orcs are the most common. As you might expect, a good talent spec for a beast master would be Beast Mastery.

Notable beast masters in lore include: Rexxar, Tagar Bearclaw and Leoroxx.

Marksmen/Archers

Marksmen differ from rangers in that they specialize in one particular aspect rather than being jacks of all trades, and typically will forgo the use of pets. Marksmen are precisely what the name would imply: foes with keen eye sight and deadly accuracy with ranged weapons. Marksmen will shun melee combat, always seeking to stay a good distance from their foes. Marksmen see their bows, guns or crossbows as extensions of themselves, similar to how beast masters view their pets. Most commonly, elves, dwarves or humans have the physiology and temperaments most suitable to marksmanship, though any race which can foster keen eyes and a steady hand could be adequate marksmen. Again, as you might expect, a good talent spec for a marksman would be Marksmanship.

Notable marksmen or archers in lore include: Galamav the Marksman.

Demon Hunters

Demon hunters have embraced the darker arts to turn those shadowy powers against those who would use them for evil, sacrificing their own purity for the good of society. While demon hunters are shunned by the majority of elven society, their effectiveness due to their selfless sacrifice cannot be ignored. Typically demon hunters will favor either melee or magical combat, using their war glaives or dark powers to vanquish foes. Ritually blinded, demon hunters develop what they call “spectral sight” which enables them to track and identify demons and undead with greater ease. While any race may become a demon hunter, they are most commonly elves. A good talent spec for a demon hunter would be Survival.

Notable demon hunters in lore include: Illidan Stormrage, Loramus Thalipedes, Theras, Netharel, Alandien, Altruis the Sufferer and Leotheras the Blind.

These are but a few examples for possible types of hunters you could choose to role-play. You may identify with one, all or none of them, and you can choose to mix and match as you feel is appropriate for your character and his or her story.

Creating a Back Story

In order to really get into character, you need to know who your character is. To do that, you need to know their history, their likes, their dislikes, their personality. These things are always a work in progress as you role-play–your character will be ever growing, learning and experiencing the world, and this will change them just as real life experiences change us, so don’t feel like you need to develop your character’s memoirs right off the bat. Start slow, think about basic personality traits and personal history and go from there.

Racial Traits

Remember, your character’s race matters. Whether that means your character will go against the grain in regards to stereotypical social norms for their race, fit the stereotype to a tee, or somewhere in between is entirely up to you. But race means something to all of us and it should mean something to your character as well.

Individuality

While it’s important to set your character apart from the millions of Drizzt knock-offs out there, it’s also important to know when enough is enough to avoid going overboard. We all have personality traits that set us apart from others, but we also have lots of things in common with the people around us. This is no less true for your character.

Don’t Forget Your Furry Friend

We’re Hunters! Don’t forget to include your pet in your back story and character concept! Even if you don’t plan on using a pet in your role-play or your pet won’t play a pivotal role in your character’s story, you should at least have some explanation of how your pet and character relate to one another. If you’re running sans pet, explain why. Did your pet die in battle and you haven’t the heart to replace it? Or perhaps your character never had a pet–either you never learned how to tame one, were never interested in taming one, or tried to tame one with tragic results. The options are endless, but make sure you give it some thought.

Social Interaction

Many feel that Hunters are a “loner” class. Will your character fit that mold, preferring the quiet of the wilds, or will you attempt to be more social and accessible to other players (or NPCs)?

Getting Started

Once you’ve put some thought into the type of character you’ll be playing and have a handle on your back story, it’s time to log in and start role-playing!

Realm Choices

If you’re rolling a new character, before you jump right in you’ll want to research the different RP realms out there to find a good fit. It can be extremely discouraging to come up with an awesome character only to find the realm you’re on is a place you just don’t enjoy being.

If you have friends that are already established role-players, it’s a no-brainer to go where they are. If you’re out to sea all by yourself, look around for online communities that have cropped up around RP realms. The Earthen Ring community site is a great example. Additionally, think about whether a standard RP or RP-PvP server is right for your character.

First Interactions

Once you’ve found a server and created your character, it’s time to start role-playing! If you’re new to role-play, your first few sessions may feel a bit stilted and awkward. Don’t be discouraged! It won’t be long until you find your stride. Until you do, there are a few bits of “RP etiquette” you’ll want to be aware of to help ease your way into your new community.

1. Pay attention to IC and OOC norms on your server

Most servers have their own sets of “rules” on IC (in-character) and OOC (out-of-character) behavior and communication. If you’re not sure what those “rules” might be, check your realm forums to see if there’s a thread explaining them. If there isn’t–ask! Once you’re aware of these conventions–follow them!

2. Know the lore you’re working with

If you plan to work bits of WoW lore into your character’s story, make sure you’re familiar with the lore you’re referencing! There’s a lot of lore in the game, and no one expects you to know everything, but at least know the bits that are relevant to your character.

3. Avoid meta-gaming

Simply put, meta-gaming is using your own knowledge of the game and world to react to events that your character would be ignorant of. For example, you may know that the Argent Tournament is going on, but if your character has never been to Northrend or communicated with anyone who has, they wouldn’t know much (if anything) about it.

4. Initiate contact with other players with care

Arrens has covered this topic much better than I ever could, and with much more detail. Go read more about initiating contact!

Getting Help

If you’re stuck for ideas for your next role-play session, there are tons of great resources out there to help you. The great thing about role-play is that inspiration can come from anywhere. Don’t be afraid to talk OOC with other role-players in your community who may have some words of wisdom to share with you. (Just make sure you check to make sure they’re open to OOC communication first!)

RP Information Sites

Here are a few sites to get you started (if you know of more that I’ve missed, link them in the comments!):

• Through the Eyes of Death
• Too Many Annas
• Loregy
• LoreCrafted
• RP Made Simple
• Warpriestess
• WTT: [RP]
• Know Your Lore

Additionally, the folks on Cenarion Circle hold weekly RP clinics to help new and veteran RPers alike share their knowledge. Level 1 alts are welcome (if Cenarion Circle isn’t your home realm), and you can find more information about these clinics on the Cenarion Circle forums.

RP Communities

If you’d like to get involved in some role-playing forum communities, either for practice or additional RP out of game, here are a few good places to check out:

• The Official WoW RP Forum
• The WoWHead RP Forum
• Scrolls of Lore

Role-Playing Addons

Just like every other aspect of the game, role-playing has a ton of addons to help you out as well. Here are a few common ones that you might like to start out with.

flagRSP (WotLK) – This addon will allow you to enter background information about you and your character that’s viewable to other players with the addon. This is an extremely common addon on many RP realms to help players initiate contact with one another.

AddEmote – This addon allows you to create custom emotes for use in-game, to give your actions a bit more personal flavor and makes reusing common personal emotes much easier.

These two addons are a good start, but RP Made Simple has a much more comprehensive list of RP-related addons that will really help you customize your experience.

Get Your Feet Wet

We could talk about RP all day and still not adequately cover the myriad of sub-topics out there. It can easily take years to fully grasp most aspects of role-play. But don’t let that discourage or intimidate you. “The longest journey starts with a single step.” And role-play is no different. Reading will only get you so far, and don’t forget–the time you spend reading about role-play is time not spent role-playing! Hopefully this very basic overview will serve as an adequate introduction to role-playing to get you interested and out there.

Happy Hunting!

Patience is a Virtue

If PuGing is your only option, you would do well to resign yourself early on to the fact that it’s going to take time. Sometimes there won’t be PuGs forming for the content you want to do. Sometimes there may be groups, but it takes a long time to fill necessary roles (like tanks or healers). Other times there will be groups ready and raring to go, but they’re so strict about their invite policies that you’re afraid you don’t have a snowball’s chance in Florida of making it into the group. These things are going to happen, but don’t let that discourage you.

If you’re looking to get into raid PuGs, get yourself into LFG early and often. As soon as you log in, whether you’re actually ready to go or not, put yourself into LFG for the raid(s) you want to do. Chances are very good you’ll have plenty of time to get things done before you get a nibble.

While you languish in LFG, take time to get the essentials done. Do any necessary farming, such as farming up buff food. Visit the Auction House to refill your ammo and potions, flasks or elixirs. Once you’ve got the raiding necessities, move on to other daily chores such as your daily quests. Use the time you spend in LFG effectively. Don’t just sit in Dalaran all night waiting for someone to whisper you, that will only lead to disappointment and resentment at having wasted your entire night.

Know What You’re Getting Yourself Into

Whether you’ve actually been to the raids you want to do already or not, it’s important to know what you’re walking into. PuGs are a touchy thing already, and no one wants to be that guy standing in the poop because they didn’t know any better. Players who lead or run PuGs frequently communicate with each other, and a reputation for fail will put a swift end to your PuGing career. As such, you need to do everything you can to prepare for the encounters you’ll be seeing.

That means you need to research the bosses, thoroughly. Read the strategies, watch videos, participate in discussions and ask for tips or clarification from other players of your class that have seen the fight and know how it works.

StratFu is a good place to start if you’re looking to read up on basic fight strategies. BossKillers is another. As I mentioned in the comments of our previous post, if it’s videos you’re after (and you should be watching videos of the fights), TankSpot’s Project Marmot is a great place to go. Of course, those videos are designed with tanks in mind; however, they give great explanations of the overall fight mechanics and a good view of the landscape of each fight. Another place to check for fight videos is Warcraft Movies. Set the proper filters when browsing their site, and you’ll find plenty of Hunter-centric raid videos. (You’ll want the  All Time, Hunter, and Dungeon/PvE filters.)

You also need to know what kind of DPS you’re capable of, because often times that information is asked for in LFG. If you’re untested in a raid environment, give people an educated guess. Use the online DPS spreadsheet to get a vague idea of how you’d perform (have the spreadsheet automate your shot priority and raid buffs, and make sure you’re giving it an accurate number for your latency, etc). Keep in mind, the DPS figures on the spreadsheet tend to be higher than you’d actually see in combat because they assume a lot of perfection and don’t account for human error. For example, you may forget to refresh a debuff, use your trinkets, or you may just be in a fight that doesn’t allow you to stand still for very long. So, if you’re using the DPS spreadsheet to gauge your DPS, take off anywhere from 200-500 DPS from the figure they provide and you’re a lot closer to the number you’d actually see on Recount in a raid.

If you don’t want to fudge your numbers (and I don’t blame you–it’s hard to feel confident about guestimates), cozy up to a target dummie and get a feel for your solo DPS. Fully raid buffed, your solo DPS can skyrocket by anywhere from 500 to 1000 DPS. If you’re asked how much DPS you do before receiving an invite, be honest. Even if it means you might not get an invite. It’s better to be honest and not get an invite, than overestimate your performance and get booted mid-raid. It’s a waste of everyone’s time, and won’t endear you to anyone. If you only know your solo DPS, say so. If you’re giving a rough estimate of your raid DPS based on spreadsheet data, say so.

PuG Loot

When you do finally make it into a PuG, make sure to ask about loot rules before you even set foot inside the instance. Some groups may have unique rules that you need to be aware of. Sometimes certain pieces of loot will be reserved. Sometimes groups will have restrictions on the number of times you can Need roll during an instance. Sometimes certain items will be a “free” roll that anyone can roll on regardless of whether or not they’ve already gotten an item. Some groups Master Loot. Some groups prefer to /roll over using the built-in rolling functionality. These are all things you need to be aware of before the fighting starts, so there aren’t any fights of a different kind later on.

Additionally, you need to be aware of what loot drops in the instances you want to run. You need to know which bosses drop the items you want, so you can be prepared to make a quick decision: whether you want to roll or not. No one wants to stand around a corpse for twenty minutes while you figure out if those gloves are actually an upgrade or not. Know these things ahead of time.

Remember the Good and the Bad

Once you’ve made it into a few PuGs, keep a list of the players you’ve had a good time raiding with and the ones that you just didn’t jive with. Chances are good that those players PuG as a habit, and you’ll want to keep an eye out for them.

If you make it into a really good group and have a lot of fun, ask those players if they PuG on a regular basis and if you might join them again some time. Write down their names or add them to your friends list for future reference.

Likewise, groups that you just have a miserable time with or don’t accomplish much are probably in the same boat. They PuG frequently, and you’ll want to remember them so you don’t make the same mistake twice.

Be Polite

Whether the group you’re in is awesome or made entirely of fail in a tube, be polite. Remember, each time you enter a PuG, it’s your one chance to make a good first impression on people. Behave like you would if you were going over to someone’s house for a visit. Don’t yell at people for making mistakes. Often times, it’s their first time in the instance (just like it may be for you) and they just need time to get a feel for things. If things continue to go badly, let someone know before you leave, thank them for the opportunity to run with them, and quietly leave. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t yell and storm off in a huff.

If the group you’re in does well, thank them for letting you tag along. If you have any questions about the run–for example, if anyone has any tips for you, or if they’re going to be running again, ask them. More often than not, PuGs tend to disband fairly quickly once the job’s done, so you may not have an opportunity to chit-chat. If that’s the case, send a whisper to the group leader asking if they have a spare moment to answer questions you have. If they’re busy, respect that and leave them be. Simply thank them, ask them to keep you in mind next time they form a group, and leave it at that. If they do have time for a pow-wow, don’t flood them with questions. Keep it brief and to the point, and let them dictate the pace of the conversation.

Accept Reality

Even though there are more raid PuGs going now than there has ever been in the past, you need to accept that you may not get into a PuG every night. Have back-up activities planned so that you’re not feeling like your time was wasted. If you don’t get into a raid within an hour or so of joining LFG, think about doing some Heroics instead.

While the majority of raid PuGs these days have a fairly high success rate, not all of them will. Sometimes you’ll find groups of under geared folks that, like yourself, are still working and learning. Other times you’ll hit the jackpot and ToC-geared groups will blast their way through the raids you’re looking to do, raining loot down from the heavens while you scramble to loot your emblems. It’s a mixed bag, and that’s the price you pay to PuG. Know that going in, and you’ll find the experience a lot less frustrating. Keep an open mind.

Communicate With Your Guild

If you’re in a guild, whether they raid or not, you need to find out how they feel about your spending a lot of time PuGing. Some guilds may not care, while others may make a big stink about it–especially if you’re successful. Find out ahead of time how your guild will react to your new found independence. If your guild’s against the idea, find out why and explain how you feel. If there are other members of your guild hoping to do the same thing, try to coordinate with them and get them involved in the process.

PuGing can be fun and rewarding, or it can make you want to tear your hair out. Today, we’ve talked about some of the things you can do to help ease your way into the world of PuGs. Not every story will have a happy ending, but each will provide you with valuable experience you can use to make you an even more valuable asset to any group you join. If you’ve got more advice for folks looking to join raid PuGs, share it in the comments! If you’ve got any grand success or horror stories about raid PuGs, we wanna hear about that too!

Happy Hunting!

For fresh 80s, or those that took a break without ever setting foot inside a raid, even Heroics may seem a bit daunting. Most groups doing Heroics already have some pimpin’ gear and exacting expectations for performance, and you’re worried your quest gear just won’t cut it. During the initial push into Heroics months ago, when Naxx, OS and EoE were the only raids available, 1500 DPS was considered the “starting point” for getting into Heroics. The Heroics themselves haven’t changed, even though the gear most people are sporting has, and so that benchmark still holds true. You may not top the meters in your PuGs, but 1500 will still get the job done. Get yourself a few nice blues from regular instances and perhaps a couple crafted pieces to round out your set, and you’re ready to rock and roll.

Emblems of Conquest

Emblems of Conquest can be used to purchase a number of great epic pieces to get you started before ever setting foot in a raid instance. These emblems drop off all bosses in Heroic 5-man instances, as well as raid bosses that used to drop Emblems of Heroism or Emblems of Valor and bosses in Ulduar. In other words: these things are everywhere. Here are some pieces of Hunter loot you can purchase with Emblems of Conquest:

• Belt of the Ardent Marksman — 28 Emblems
• Gloves of Unerring Aim — 28 Emblems
• Leggings of the Tireless Sentry — 39 Emblems
• Broach of the Wailing Night — 19 Emblems
• Conqueror’s Scourgestalker Tunic — 58 Emblems
• Conqueror’s Scourgestalker Headpiece — 58 Emblems

Total, that’s 230 emblems for all six pieces. Now, that may seem like a lot of emblems, but if you run even just a couple of Heroics per day, that’s about 10 emblems per day, giving you a new piece of epic gear every three to five days. Of course, if you can manage to run more Heroics per day, you’ll find the loot piling up even quicker.

Heroic Drops

While you’re running Heroics for emblems, you may also want to keep an eye out for these pieces from bosses to help round out your gear:

• Drake-Mounted Crossbow — Ingvar the Plunderer, Heroic Utgarde Keep
• Handgrips of the Savage Emissary — Cyanigosa, Heroic Violet Hold
• Interwoven Scale Bracers — Keristrasza, Heroic Nexus
• Leggings of the Stone Halls — Sjonnir the Ironshaper, Heroic Halls of Stone
• Ancient Pendant of Arathor — Zone Drop, Heroic Trial of the Champion
• Chestguard of the Ravenous Fiend — Champion’s Cache, Heroic Trial of the Champion
• Gloves of the Dark Exile — The Black Knight, Heroic Trial of the Champion
• Marrowstrike — Confessor’s Cache, Heroic Trial of the Champion
• Pauldrons of Concealed Loathing — Confessor’s Cache, Heroic Trial of the Champion

One thing I would point out before I go any further: typically, items purchased with Emblems of Conquest will be better than items from the original Heroics. Also, items from Trial of the Champion will also typically be of higher quality than items from the original Heroics. The fundamental reason why this is the case is because the item levels (or iLvl) of the items from Trial of the Champion and the Emblem of Conquest vendor are sometimes higher than those from the original Heroics, and therefore the items have a bigger item “budget”, meaning the stats will generally be higher or there will be more stats in on the item.

Item Priority

Because you’ve got a lot of slots to fill in what you hope will be a short amount of time, it’s important to prioritize your item purchases or farming efforts. There are a couple ways you can go about this.

First, you can choose to purchase upgrades based on how big an upgrade each item will be. For example, if you have a really crappy necklace equipped, you may decide you want to replace that first. This approach can easily become very involved, and you may find it necessary to get out your calculator or visit the WoWHead Profiler or Item Comparison tools. It can also be as simple as “Well, I have green gloves and blue everything else, so I’ll get the gloves first.” The choice is up to you.

Second, you can choose to purchase upgrades based on the price of the items. You may want to purchase the cheaper items first so you can get a greater quantity of items, or you may want to save up and purchase the most expensive items first so you can have a solid core of pieces to build the rest of your set around. Another benefit to saving up and buying the big-ticket items is that those pieces are tier armor pieces. Chances are you won’t replace them with other upgrades soon, so you won’t feel like you’ve wasted emblems.

Any of these approaches will work fine, the end result will largely be the same.

What Your Work Will Get You

One thing I would like to make clear before we wrap things up here is: just getting a bunch of epics will not get you into Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader right away. What these upgrades will get you, however, is an opportunity to get into content that will give you better items that will eventually get you into the higher-end raids.

You need to keep in mind that these items are really just “hold-over” epics. These will get you into the introductory raids so you can start picking up Emblems of Triumph and have access to new bosses for better pieces that you can then use to leverage your way into the more challenging raids. I know that seems like a lot of work for items you’re just going to replace anyway, but unfortunately, that’s what it takes and there’s no way around it.

Raid progression is precisely that: progression. You work your way through levels of content and tiers of items so that you can move on to bigger and better things. The good news is, this process has gotten much quicker than it has ever been, and between Emblems, farming Heroics, and getting some pieces crafted as necessary, you’ll be playing with the big kids in no time. Most servers have plenty of PuGs for Vault of Archavon, Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum by now, so working your way through the introductory raids shouldn’t take you long at all, even if the guild you’re in may not be running them anymore.

If you’ve recently returned to playing your Hunter after a hiatus, share your triumphant (or not so triumphant) return stories in the comments! What aspects of returning to the class (or the game) were the most challenging for you?

So, today, I’d like to hear from all of you. What were your favorite zones to Hunter around in? What made those places special to you?

For me, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for all the elven lands. Now, those that have known me for a while know that in any role playing game, I’ve always favored elven races and play them almost exclusively. WoW has been no exception. All but a couple of my characters are Night Elves, and those only because those classes weren’t available to Night Elves. As a result, I had a natural affinity for elven lands and architecture right from the beginning. I love the mystique, the agelessness, the beauty and attention to detail inherent in these places, and the reverence for nature that the elven races portray struck a chord with my Hunter.

My favorite places are always the deep, dark and secluded forests of the world or the peaceful, grassy plains where life can thrive. Barren deserts, mountains and sheer cliff faces, while beautiful in their own right, have never appealed to me. The places that I return to again and again with a feeling of awe and a sense of coming home are:

Teldrassil

Ashenvale

Azshara

As well as Feralas, The Hinterlands, Darkshore, and even Winterspring. In Outland, Nagrand is by far my favorite zone and I often spent hours just flying around looking for peaceful places to land and just relax and watch the scenery around me. As you might expect, in Northrend, Sholazar Basin provides the same respite.

So what are your favorite zones to explore and just spend time relaxing in, getting in touch with your inner Hunter?

This brings to mind a few different questions. First, while it’s widely accepted that Marksmanship and Survival are superior raiding specs in terms of total DPS output (one being better than the other depending on the level of content you’re at), why is there still a perception among many players that Beast Mastery has been almost completely supplanted by these two specs? Surely there must be at least a few die-hard Beast Mastery players out there, just as there have always been spec loyalists in the past. Second, if Marksmanship provides superior DPS output at the Ulduar and beyond level of play, how is it that there are still more level 80 hunters sporting a Beast Mastery spec than those running a Marksmanship build?

Now, don’t let the topic of discussion fool you. This isn’t a theorycrafting post. (So leave your WWS reports and Recount numbers at the door, people.) Today, we’re simply going to discuss various trends within our community and try to understand them. Let’s get started!

Perception

First, we’ll start with the (apparently false) assumption that Beast Mastery is dead as a primary spec for most level-capped Hunters. Why does it seem to most people that Beast Mastery Hunters just don’t exist anymore? Particularly when there’s evidence to the contrary right here in our own WoW blogosphere. Pike, for example, has long been a Beast Mastery loyalist, making no secret of it and no bones about it. Sure, she’s forayed into other specs, but consistently returns to her Beast Mastery roots.

To understand where this perception came from, we first have to look at those voicing it.

Many who participate actively in class discussions on the official forums are semi-hardcore players of one sort or another. Either they take PvP very seriously, or they take PvE very seriously. Few casual players (though there are some) take the time to engage in weighty discussions of the merits or pitfalls of their class in a theorycrafting sense. As a result, the pool of opinion you’re drawing from is already drastically skewed. You’re already discounting the majority of players from your assumptions. (Yes, casual players–those that only occasionally raid or only participate in 5-mans, farming or questing–still make up the majority of the player base.) As a result, the majority of specs you’ll encounter on the official forums or in other theorycraft-heavy communities will be specs designed specifically for the best performance not necessarily for the most fun, making it easy to assume that the vocal minority are actually the majority.

The Census

Ghostcrawler has specifically refuted the claim that Beast Mastery Hunters no longer exist, stating in no uncertain terms that quite the contrary is true: Beast Mastery Hunters are actually more common than Marksmanship Hunters at level 80, which may come as a shock to many players since Marksmanship is touted as the “top dog” for raid performance at the most advanced levels of progression. But, taking a moment to think about that will illuminate why this statement should not actually come as a surprise to anyone.

First, Marksmanship is only the “top dog” performance spec at the most advanced levels of raid progression currently available in the game. Now, consider the total number of level 80 Hunters in the world and compare that to the number of level 80 Hunters currently running the most challenging raid instances in the game right now. Even assuming that every top-end raiding Hunter is specced into Marksmanship (which is not likely the case), they’re still vastly outnumbered by those that are not. Given that alone, it’s not hard to understand why another spec might be more popular.

Second, you have to take into account the number of level 80 Hunter alts running around. Hunters have long been one of the most populace classes in the game, mostly as a result of the ease with which players can level the class. Ask any player with multiple characters what classes they have, and nine times out of ten that player will admit to having a Hunter alt. Now, not all of those alts will make it to the level cap, but a good many of them do. Now, with the large number of Hunter mains in the game, how many Hunter alts do you suppose make it into raids? Not many, I would guess. As a result, these Hunter alts have no need for a performance spec. They can spec their characters into whatever tree they find the most fun, and many Hunters–particularly casual ones–feel that Beast Mastery is by far the “most fun” spec to play of the three. Taking that into consideration, you can then see yet another reason why Beast Mastery would be more popular than Marksmanship.

Gotta Catch ‘Em All

As Ghostcrawler also pointed out, Beast Mastery is also the most popular secondary spec among level 80 Hunters, and he provided a very good reason why that might be the case: Spirit Beasts. Many players, even the most hardcore among us, like to take a break from the monotony of raiding to enjoy the more casual aspects of the game. Achievements and collections are very popular activities during raiding down-time. To take that a step further, we’re Hunters. We hunt things. It’s no surprise then that many players enjoy the thrill of looking for rare and exotic pets to tame. And what talent tree allows you access to those pets? Beast Mastery.

Our pets are what set us apart from other classes in the game, and the rarity of our pets are what set us apart from each other. Speccing into Beast Mastery allows us to tame pets that the majority of our peers can’t, lending us an air of individuality. Additionally, being able to tame exotic pets allows for more versatility among the role-playing crowd.

A Time to Shine

So, while other specs may be more popular among the raiding crowd currently, Beast Mastery is still alive and well throughout the Hunter community. And just because Beast Mastery is no longer the primary raiding spec doesn’t necessarily mean that the spec is broken.

What many players fail to understand is that in each incarnation of the game, one spec has been allowed to shine in a raid environment. In vanilla, Marksmanship was the most popular raiding spec. In The Burning Crusade, Beast Mastery got it’s time in the spotlight. In the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, Survival got it’s shot at stardom and is still largely popular in early raid instances, while later raids in Wrath have brought us full circle, giving Marksmanship back the lime light.

This does not indicate that one spec is the best while others are broken. What this means, fundamentally, is that Blizzard has attempted to give each spec an opportunity to shine. Just because you may not have been present for each rotation does not mean they didn’t occur. The reason why this is actually a good thing is simple: it gives loyalists a chance to play the spec they love while also dominating in raids. Additionally, it also encourages people to branch out and try different specs that they might, under different circumstances, never have tried. I’m a perfect example of this. I would never have specced into Beast Mastery had it not been the top raiding spec in The Burning Crusade. Of course, my stint as a Beast Mastery Hunter was extremely short-lived, but I did at least try it. I wouldn’t have if the numbers hadn’t been so encouraging.

Let’s try to keep in mind that, just because a particular spec isn’t excelling at precisely what you want it to excel at doesn’t mean it’s a broken spec. Sure, there are a few imbalances and bugs here and there, but by and large, specs tend to rotate what style of play they’re intended for. And that means, they’re “working as intended“.

I Hope You Die

Honestly, I really do. If you’re a Recount spammer, you should be strapped to a gurney and beaten with hammers. Allow me to explain why.

First, you need to understand a very basic premise here. Recount is not a new add-on. To the best of my recollection, it’s been around since at least the start of The Burning Crusade, if not before that. (At least, this specific add-on. Other damage meters existed prior to the release of Recount, so the concept itself is surely not new. They’ve probably existed in-game longer than you have.) Because Recount and other similar damage meters have been around for so long, chances are very good that everyone already has it. In other words: they can see the meters themselves.

Second, people who don’t already have Recount probably don’t have it for a reason. Either they don’t care or just don’t want to see it. Either way, they’ve made a conscious decision not to watch meters like a hawk, and don’t need you spamming them.

Third, you’re an irritant to everyone around you. Having taken a quick poll on Twitter the other day, it was unanimously agreed upon that Recount spammers are agents of the underworld and should be eradicated on sight at the molecular level. (Okay, so it wasn’t an official poll and I paraphrased slightly, but you get the gist. It’s frowned upon.)

What You Need to Understand

You’re annoying. Truly. People view you in the same light as they do gold spammers: something to be at best ignored or at worst wiped from the face of the earth for all eternity. You’ve probably made your way onto countless ignore lists via your Recount reporting antics and don’t even know it.

You’re filling people’s chatboxes with information they don’t need and don’t want. If someone were spamming giant “LOL!” macros at you, would you be thrilled to have that person around? Probably not. Your group mates view your Recount spam with the same amount of enthusiasm. You could be clearing someone’s chat window of really important, vital information like Deadly Boss Mods boss instructions or ERP whispers from their eSweetie. No one appreciates that, buddy.

How Not to Be a Douchebag

It’s true. Sometimes, people who don’t have Recount will ask you to post the information. This is not a “get out of jail free” card to go back to doing as you please.

If people don’t have Recount and want to know how they’re doing on the meters, they will ask.

Reread that last sentence. Internalize it. Be one with it, in a zen-like fashion.

Now, to take that notion a step further: someone asking for Recount information is not an invitation to spam it whenever you feel like it.

Reread that too, just for good measure.

If someone asks for Recount information, rather than spam your entire group, send it as a whisper to the individual who requested the information. ONE TIME. If they want an update, they’ll ask you again later and you can whisper it to them again.

Fight the Urge

I know you want to rub it in that Ret Pally’s face that your DPS is vastly superior. I know. We all feel that way. However, you need to fight the urge so that you can avoid looking like a window-licker to all and sundry. Spamming Recount will alienate you from your peers and you’ll have all the popularity of a leper gnome. Trust me.

• Don’t post Recount numbers in group or raid chat.
• Don’t post Recount numbers ever, unless someone specifically asks you to.
• If someone asks you to post Recount numbers, whisper them to the individual.

If you can follow those three simple rules, your groupmates won’t hate you. At least not for that. They may hate you for some other reason, but at least it won’t be for spamming Recount. I can’t be held accountable for any of the other weird stuff you decide to do.

Happy Hunting!

System Performance

Performance was my number one priority when I began looking at new systems. I stopped raiding and enjoying the game the way I wanted to because the system I had just couldn’t hack it, and I didn’t want to fall into the same trap all over again. I needed a system that would hold up in even the most hardware-taxing situations I could get myself into even at maximum video settings in-game. The Armor ES 4850c delivers.

One of the first things I did once I got my new system up and running was hop in game, head to Dalaran, and check out my frame rate. Because Dalaran is notorious for lagging frame rates, I felt this would be the perfect first test for my shiny new toy.

Standing in the most populace part of town I could find at the time, I was seeing roughly 80 frames per second with my in-game video settings maxed and multiple background programs running (such as TweetDeck and Firefox, among others). To further push the envelop, I alternately ran Fraps and Stickam while standing in the middle of Dalaran and the lowest I saw my frame rate drop to was 40 frames per second. That’s more than triple the frame rate I was used to seeing under the best of circumstances on my old system.

Of course, Dalaran wasn’t enough to really seal the deal. I needed to see how this puppy performed in combat. Because I wasn’t having much luck getting into a raid PuG at the time, I hit up Alterac Valley instead thinking that heavy PvP combat on a large scale should also prove demanding of system resources.

Throughout most matches, I didn’t see my frame rate drop below 140 frames per second even in dense combat. I loaded up Stickam again to test my frame rates while streaming video and wasn’t disappointed. My frame rate hovered between 50 and 70 frames per second with Stickam streaming (and again, multiple background programs running). This was bliss.

Now, let me mention a couple things before I continue. First, the Armor ES 4850c is by no means DogHouse Systems’ “best” (read: super swag, high end) model. They have a number of other systems with higher end specs, as well as a couple lower end models as well. The Armor ES 4850c could be considered their “middle of the road” system. But don’t let that fool you. From what I’ve seen so far, nothing about the ES 4850c could possibly be considered mundane. Of course, my opinion of the system is probably colored somewhat by the fact that my previous system performed so terribly, and I’m certainly no expert when it comes to reviewing computers but even by the most demanding of expectations, the ES 4850c performs. It’s more than enough computer for even the hardcore gaming crowd.

Customer Service

Now, this next part has nothing to do with system performance, but I was so impressed that I had to mention it just the same.

Throughout the entire process of choosing a system, getting it built and shipping it out, the DogHouse team was in constant contact with me. I explained to them exactly the kind of system I needed, what I wanted to do with it and the kind of performance I wanted, and they helped me pick out the perfect system to fit my needs without trying to up-sell a pricier system. They provided frequent email updates on their progress with my system as it was being built, and paid very close attention to my individual needs.

For example, as I was explaining to them what I wanted so they could recommend the best system for me, I explained that a primary concern of mine was that I wanted to be able to stream or record video during raids without dropping below 40 frames per second. (I was very specific about this.) Reason being, I wanted to be able to record and share in-game videos here on the site without seeing a loss of system performance (and subsequently, raid performance) in-game. They paid special attention to this (relatively) unique need and made sure to keep this in mind as they worked on my system, testing thoroughly throughout the process.

Additionally, every DogHouse employee that contacted me from the time I started shopping for a system to the time it arrived at my front door (and even after that!), was extremely friendly, understanding and professional. I never felt like I was talking to a salesperson or technician, I felt like I was talking to friends and fellow gamers who just wanted to make sure I had the best experience I could throughout the entire process. That’s what really stood out to me: these weren’t people trying to sell me something, they were my friends trying to help me. Having worked in retail myself, I can tell you: that’s what really sets an experience apart in a customer’s mind. That’s what gets you a customer for life.

DogHouse Systems also has a twitter account, and they’ve been following my updates there, sharing my enthusiasm and checking in with me to make sure I was happy with the system and that everything was working as it should. They’ve gone the extra mile throughout the entire process to make sure I was satisfied, and that’s really made a huge difference. I haven’t felt like just another customer, I’ve felt like I was important to them as an individual.

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve been unhappy with a retail purchase we’ve made and had to fight with companies to make sure our needs were being met. You can see why I would want to write such glowing praise of the DogHouse team, then. They really show you that you’re important to them, and that counts for a lot if you ask me.

Final Thoughts

I’m no expert. Sure, I’ve worked with and built computers before, but I don’t bother staying current with what’s the “best” or anything like that. And I don’t usually write reviews, either. I’m flying by the seat of my pants here, people. But one thing I can say with absolute certainty: from start to finish, I’ve been absolutely thrilled with DogHouse Systems. My new system meets and surpasses my expectations for in-game performance, and the interactions I’ve had with the DogHouse team have been extremely positive.

I am an extremely happy customer, all around. If you’re in the market for a new system, definitely pay DogHouse Systems a visit and see what they’ve got for you. If you’re not sure which system will meet your needs, definitely send them an email and see if they can recommend something for you. The DogHouse Blog and Podcast also offer a lot of great news, and if you check them out on Twitter, they frequently have contests and prize giveaways.

I can get back to playing the game the way I want to now, not the way my computer will let me play, thanks to DogHouse Systems. And you know what that means? More content for all of you! I’ll be working on some videos as I have time and as I can get into raids soon, so keep an eye out!

Happy Lass is Happy.

Marksmanship Hunters

Marksmanship hunters are unlike any of the other two hunter talent trees. Beast Mastery hunters rely on their attack power and agility to boost up the stats of their pets and Survival hunters are rather versatile stat-wise. If they spec just a tiny bit into the Marksmanship tree, a Survival hunter can gain attack power bonuses from Intellect, Stamina and Agility. Marksmanship hunters, however, primarily rely on just intellect for their talent-based stat bonuses and then boost their stats through primarily agility and attack power.

Since 3.0.1, Marksmanship hunters began discovering the power of Armor Penetration. The more a hunter had, the more damage was done by Steady Shot and Auto Shot. Once a hunter hit a certain amount of Ar.Pen, roughly 50% without a trinket, they could stop using Arcane Shot in their rotation because it would actually cause a loss of overall DPS. The incredible power of Ar.Pen made it so that it was virtually mandatory if a marksmanship hunter wanted to be decent in any PvE situation, and as such caused hunters to stack it with their gear and their gem slots.

Ghostcrawler Says

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Hunters, including myself, were passing up some of the best gear in the game in order to keep Ar.Pen at ‘acceptable’ levels. To me, a 3-5% increase in Ar.Pen would be considered to be worth more than 20agility. I was even willing to go under hit cap for the DPS boost that came from stacking Ar.Pen.

As a Marksmanship hunter, my Auto Shot did about 30% of my damage in any given fight, so the Ar.Pen boosted that damage to incredible amounts. When I was around 20% Ar.Pen, I was able to pull 7-8k DPS on Hodir hard mode without trying. I had never done the hard mode for Hodir, so I was learning some new things (like not moving as much) and I was able to top charts. Even in newer fights like the Coliseum I was doing incredibly well against people who were far better geared than I was. Holding one of the top 3 positions wasn’t a challenge because of the Ar.Pen that I was stacking.

The amount of damage that a Marksmanship hunter became capable of was barely rivaled by the damage of Survival hunters, and Beast Mastery hunters fell far behind. It was a noticeable change to anyone who played any of the three hunter talent trees, and it was obviously noticeable to the WoW dev team as well. When one spec can do 2-3x more DPS and damage than another DPS spec, there’s definitely something wrong. The game has always been about having fun, and when you have to change your spec to keep up with others and be viable in a PvE setting, it isn’t fun at all. That’s why the devs try to balance everything. It keeps everyone happy more or less and then it keeps people playing because they enjoy the game.

We’re not trying to prevent having a “best stat for me.” To some extent, that’s unavoidable. But if the best stat isn’t far above the second best stat, then gearing is a decision beyond just “take the thing with the best stat.” While there may still be a best in slot item, those are rarely trivial to obtain and in the meantime you might have to actually consider the drops you do get.

Again, Ghostcrawler has an amazing way with words. What happened to hunters was that we were given a “best stat” that we had to focus on to be considered any good. If the devs can increase the number of decent stats that we can use for our characters, then we can actually begin having a true decision on what gear is best. It wont be based on a single stat so we will actually have more accessible gear. Instead of having to go to specific instances and instance modes for specific bosses, a hunter will be able to have some diversity in instances and gear choices. It’s actually a good thing in my mind. Being stuck in the same instance week after week has never appealed to me, and now it’s possible to vary your choices and experience more content on a regular basis. Definitely worth it.

Final Thoughts

There will always be changes in any game, especially one as large as WoW. Considering how much classes have changed in general, and how much hunters are going to change in the future, the Ar.Pen change really isn’t all that bad. It’s a rather large change, yes, but it wont make or break hunters at all. As a hunter you should adjust and take control of the situation. Make it work for you, don’t just rely on some QQ posts to get Ar.Pen buffed back up. It’s not even worth the effort. If you can’t adjust, then you are destined to fail as a hunter. I know it’s a bit harsh, but it’s true. It’s just like the theory behind evolution. Only the strongest survive and they do so by adjusting to fit any situation that threatens a species. Considering that hunters will be changed drastically in Cataclysm, if you can’t adjust to smaller scale changes such as these, then you will never be able to adjust to a change that affects the class as a whole.

Here’s How it Works

Because I’ve never worked on a project of this nature before, I’m flying by the seat of my pants at the moment, but here’s the basic run down:

The introduction post to the project can be found here: Scrapbooking Azeroth.
This post contains a list of all the zones in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, and I’ll be working my way down that list as I go collecting screenshots. This post is being updated as I publish posts for each zone to add links, so this post serves as a “Table of Contents” of sorts. This post also includes links to the WoWWiki pages for each zone for those looking for more detailed information about each zone.

Every day, I publish a new post for a specific zone.
Within each zone post, I’ve included some basic lore and information about the zone, cinematic videos where applicable, the screenshot gallery for that zone (so far consisting of no less than 30 images per zone) and a custom wallpaper for that zone featuring a selection of the screenshots found in the gallery. Posts already published are:

• Elwynn Forest
• Dun Morogh
• Teldrassil
• Tirisfal Glades
• Darkshore
• Azshara

With more already scheduled for posting in the coming days. I’ve deliberately limited myself to one post per day to avoid flooding people’s feed readers and to allow myself time to finish up the custom graphics for each zone.

Sneak Peeks can be found in the Gallery section of the site, under Screenshots.
If you’re impatient and wondering which zones are being scheduled for posting, I’ve been uploading screenshots to the Gallery section of the site prior to posting. As I mentioned above, I’ve got 12 galleries up, but I’ve only published 6 posts so far. Do the math, and you’ll see that zones that haven’t been posted yet can already be found in the galleries, so you can get a sneak peek at upcoming posts before they go live. The drawback, of course, is that I won’t have wallpapers finished for those zones yet, but they’ll be along shortly when the real post goes live on the site.

This is Where You Come In

Because I’ve never worked on a project of this nature before, I’m looking for a little feedback.

In order to streamline the upload and gallery development process, I installed a WordPress plug-in to help automate much of the process for me. Live on the site, each gallery looks very clean and neat. However, when viewing zone posts via RSS, the galleries inserted in the single post look a bit wonky. So, here’s my question:

Should I continue to include the galleries within each post as I’ve been doing and just accept that the images will look a bit odd when viewed in a feed reader?

OR

Should I simply insert a link to the static gallery page within the post and allow readers to just visit the site itself to view the screenshots?

If I decide to go with the latter, I plan to continue with the rest of the posting format I’ve already been using: basic info/lore introduction, video where appropriate, (gallery link), and wallpaper.

What do you think?

This is a guest post by Phillamber.

There are huge and exciting changes coming for the Hunter class in the next expansion, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.  For the first time, Blizzard will rebuild a class–our class–from the ground up and entirely change the way it is played, from the shots to the talents to the resources we use for those abilities in combat.  So why have I felt annoyed ever since I read the announcements?  Well, let’s take a look at the announced Hunter changes and see if you are annoyed too.

According to the Hunter slide shown at Blizzcon, we are going to see the following in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm…

• No more mana bar, focus bar (like a rogue energy bar) instead
• Focus bar will regenerate continuously, with Steady Shot improving the regeneration rate
• Shots will cost between 30 and 60 percent of the Focus bar
• Fewer ability cooldowns
• Intellect will not be useful to Hunters (I am assuming we also can say goodbye to Careful Aim)
• Ammo will become an item, not a consumable (where have I heard that one before?)

In addition, Blizzard is planning on globally removing Attack Power and Armor Penetration from items.  Talent trees are going to change, but given the change from a mana bar to a focus bar, you probably had already figured that out.

These are gigantic changes.

This is not the first, nor fifth (nor fiftieth), time Blizzard has changed the way a class works. However, previous changes have been incremental tweaks, and these incremental changes by Blizzard haven’t led to fundamental changes in the way a class is played.  But the changes proposed above are not a few small repairs:  Blizzard is blowing up the Hunter class and starting from scratch.  Mechanically, we are going from being mages with bows (or guns, as is your preference) to rogues with bows (well, bows they actually use).

I will be the first to admit that getting rid of the Hunter mana bar makes sense.  We are a physical–not  magical–damage class.  We shoot missiles that could possibly be magical, not magic missiles.  Given the choice of an energy bar like a rogue’s or a rage bar like warriors, clearly the energy bar makes more sense.  Could you imagine the amount of Huntard activity that would occur with a rage-like bar?  Constant Misdirects of new mob onto tanks to keep power up, for example.

I also love the way that Blizzard invariably finds a way to make our class new and interesting. Laying traps in combat (care of Patch 2.0, pre-Burning Crusade) let Hunters do crowd control and fulfill a different function from the normal DPS role.  I enjoyed being a Beast Master, but frankly how much fun was casting Serpent Sting followed by my “I Win” macro (Arcane Shot, Steady Shot) over and over?  Survival and Marksmanship changes allowed for interesting decisions and shot priorities during fights.  Certainly, changing Hunters to a focus bar will make things new all over again.

So why am I annoyed?

Clearly I am a believer in change; from the above you would think I was ready to jump up on the bandwagon and start playing the tuba or something.  Given the enormity of the changes and the lack of concrete additional information about our shots and talents, it is impossible to comment on whether this change will be good or bad, fun or not.

Please Hold for the Expansion

What annoys me is that the Hunter class is officially on hold, from both the standpoints of the non-expansion developers and the players until the next expansion, and that is at least 9 and maybe as many as 16 months away.  From the developers’ standpoint, why worry about fixing anything in the present Hunter mechanic when you are going to scrap it in the next expansion?

Sure, if somehow Kill Shot started critting for 100k, I am sure they would fix it.  But why worry about tweaking Beast Mastery to be more in line with the other specs, or do any real thinking about the Hunter’s place in the DPS ladder?  Its all going out the window soon, so why not work on something that may have more of a lasting effect.

From the player’s standpoint, we are on hold because it is now impossible to progress as a player of a Hunter until the next expansion.  OK, sure, there are bosses to kill and loot to be won, and your Hunter can get more gear and achievements.  Yet all that loot will be mis-itemized for the changes to come in Cataclysm (lots of Intellect, Attack Power and Armor Penetration).  But we cannot become better Hunters than we already are because of the drastic changes to come.  Any improvements to my play style until the next expansion are wasted, since they will be thrown out the window by the changes in the next expansion.

Rogue is the New Hunter?

I am also annoyed that not playing a Hunter might be the best way to prepare to play a Hunter in the new expansion.  It seems like the best way to get used to dealing with a focus bar, is to use an energy bar.  Perhaps playing a Rogue or Feral DPS Druid for the next year might be the best way to learn to play a Hunter in the new expansion.  Will we have combo points? Who knows?

All in all, my annoyance comes down to timing.  I look forward to the challenges presented by the radical new direction the Hunter class will take in the new expansion.  I just do not want to wait a year for it to happen. I would be much less annoyed if these changes were slated to happen with 3.3, as our wait would be much shorter and I would not feel the need to play a different class to learn my own class.  For those with alts, which is probably everyone else but me, this is a minor concern.  If you feel like you are on hold, play a different character.  But, if you play a Hunter exclusively as I do, it is going to be a long year.

Cataclysm Discussion

• /AFK Auto Shot – Cataclysm, Me and Casual Play
• Aspect of the Hare – Hi, I’m Pike, and I Have Nothing to Say About Cataclysm
• Casual Huntering – Rambling on Cataclysm
• The Huntsmans Lodge – Goodbye Mana. Hello Focus. (And several subsequent posts.)
• Mania’s Arcania – BlizzCon 2009: Day 2 Round-Up
• The Troll Hunter – BlizzCon Part 1

That about sums up the Hunter-related articles I’ve seen within the past few days. If you’ve posted something I missed, leave it in the comments! Now, on to other, non-Cataclysmic posts.

The Angry Butterfly – How to be a Good Raiding Grunt (as told by a former Raid Leader)

This post covers the qualities every raid leader looks for in a good recruit: preparedness, communication, Ventrilo etiquette, knowing when and where to express disagreements, situational awareness and role performance. If you’ve considered taking up the raiding banner, or even if you’re an old hand at beating down bosses, this article is a must-read.

The Angry Butterfly – The Kalimdor of My Heart

This post is related to Cataclysm, but I felt deserved it’s own separate mention. It talks about the impending redesign of Azeroth as we know it for the release of Cataclysm, and addresses something I think many veteran players are struggling with over this announcement: the concern about not being able to revisit zones and locations we love in the old world. The article, more like a personal scrapbook, takes us through the parts of Azeroth that Negathle has enjoyed the most. It serves as a poignant reminder to go back and visit all the places in Azeroth you’re fond of now, while you still can.

If you’ve read any great Hunter articles this week that I’ve missed, leave ‘em in the comments! To follow these and other great blogs, feel free to download the Hunting Party OPML file to import these and other great sites directly into your favorite RSS reader!

The Basics

The first thing to remember is that dead DPS is no DPS. What I mean is stay alive. Don’t die unless you absolutely have to. As soon as you die, your DPS stops and you no longer contribute to the raid, it’s that simple. A few “tricks” that I’ve picked up are listed below:

• If it’s not the floor, don’t stand in/on it unless told otherwise
• If you get targeted by a skill, it is usually best to run out of the raid
• Spread out at least 10 yards from everyone unless asked to stack
• Don’t bug the healers, they know

You should also be constantly researching your class. When someone does more DPS than you in similar, or even worse, gear, you should be trying to find out why it happened. Check their spec, ask about their rotation, do they use the same type of pet? What kind of build do they have for their pets? These are all things you should be looking into. Once you’ve inspected the person who has outdone you, look up the top hunters on WoW-Heroes and see what they do. And don’t just stop there, use the class forums, google, or even a site like Elitist Jerks. A whole wealth of knowledge is available to you in just a few clicks and keystrokes. You have absolutely no excuse to not be at your best at all times.

Now, that being said, you may not always want a cookie-cutter spec. You may want to try something new, or just modify a point here and there. Fine, have fun with it. Try it, do some math behind it, do some testing on training dummies, etc. Just remember, if you ever try something new and it doesn’t work out, you’re not just hurting yourself, but also those you are grouping with. You should be able to make adjustments on the fly, or at least as soon as you return to town. If your changes work for you and you become that much better, more power to you. Share the information. Let some people do theorycrafting based on your spec, and make sure to always back your data up.

What to Do

So you’ve mastered the whole “don’t die” thing and you’re at your best now. Now what? Simple. Go play. This is where you learn your class. Yes, hunters can put out some amazing DPS, but it’s a combination of DPS and survival at all times. As a hunter, you have a lot of control over the raid. You can do ranged pulls if your tanks don’t want to or can’t, and you can also manipulate mobs as needed. Kiting? Got it. CC? Got it. Misdirect? Got that too. What you can do as a hunter is almost limitless and sometimes what you do can make or break a boss fight or raid. Think of it this way, what if your tank dies? You’ve got a druid with a battle ressurrection up, so Distracting Shot to pull aggro and kite the boss until that tank is back up. Of course, that’s a rare situations because most groups will have multiple tanks, but you get the idea. What you do is entirely up to you and your play style, but you always have all kinds of game mechanics at your fingertips.

One thing to think of is that you as a hunter can also be somewhat of a support class. If your tank is having trouble with aggro, assist them with a nice Misdirection and some of your heavy-hitting and high threat skills. That little push of threat to the tank will not only lower your threat, but also help boost them above anyone else who is about to pull. You can also MD, use your skills and Feign Death to help drop yourself further down the list and make things a little easier on any tank as well. If there’s anything I’ve learned as a hunter, it’s that we can pull threat like there’s no tomorrow, so help out the other people and drop it so that none of you have to worry about what might happen next.

Always remember that DPS is not the most important factor in the game. Survivability, reliability, consistency and performance are all key factors in WoW. If you’re in a raiding guild, even if your DPS blows one week, eventually you will get geared if you can show the initiative and the drive to perform well. Essentially what I’m getting at is that what you need to do is just play, and play to the best of your ability.

Perform

No, I don’t mean you need to toss juggling torches or spam /dance in a random city, what I mean is that you need to take what I mentioned in the last two sections and use it. You need to be the best you can be both as a player and a character. You need to show that even if your DPS is low or you don’t have the best gear, that you can keep up with some of the more seasoned players you know. You need to be able to prove that you have common sense and you can obey simple orders. Do that for a little bit and you’ll get your gear over time, and then with your gear will come the better positioning on the DPS charts. If you’re already geared then you need to prove that you have earned the gear, especially after 3.2 made it so easy to get Ulduar level gear. You need to be able to perform in such a way that says that you may have bought the gear, but you can use it to its full potential as well. Nobody wants to be tossed onto a list of scrubs with decent gear and no skill whatsoever. Just keep up with the basics of surviving and then learn how to manipulate game mechanics and you can be a top player in no time at all. You could even be one of those people who actually figures out the newer class changes before others and then you can be a leading example. Always give your best.