Monthly Archives: July 2009

classes, thoughts

Where In The World Is…

30 Comments

(The correct continuation of the title, by the way, is “Carmen Sandiego” said in a deep Rockapella voice. This shall not be disputed.)

One of the things that has been on the ol’ mind lately is the popularity or lack thereof of various specs and classes. Not so much in a QQ sense even, but in a “Man, where did all those [insert spec] here go? I kinda miss having one in my raid” sense.

These mysterious endangered species specs vary from server to server and even from personal experience to personal experience but here, I’ll tell you mine, class by class…

Death Knight:
I actually see all three DK specs fairly evenly represented. Unholy is probably ahead by a smidge. It’s the pet, I tell ya, people love ’em (more on this later).

Druid:
This is what inspired me to write this post. Where the heck are all the feral druids? I can’t even remember when the last time I had a bear tank was. The other druid specs are doing quite well. Trees are arguably the healer I see most these days (though not by a large margin… but I would put them in front), and I probably group with more boomkin than mages. Cats are seen frequently in lower level dungeons, and by the same token, bears are seen relatively frequently at low levels too because it’s easy for a leveling kitty to just step in.

But at endgame? Where are all you lovely fuzzy teddybears with a yummy 5% crit bonus hiding? My hunters miss you dearly. Seriously, let’s say I get into a VoA. “We need one more tank,” someone says. “Invite [so-and-so]”, says someone else. /who So-and-so. 40% chance it’s a paladin, 40% chance it’s a death knight, 15% chance it’s a warrior, and 5% chance it’s a bear. Why? I dunno. Ghostcrawler keeps saying they’re OP, how does he know if no one is playing them? =P

It is my hope that with the next patch and the improved forms, more people will be inspired to take Feral for a spin. I miss bear tanks.

Hunter:
I’m sure most of the readers of my blog know this one goes without saying. Survival is currently eating the biggest piece of the cake by far in my groups. Interestingly there seem to be roughly similar (though much smaller) numbers of Marksmanship and Beast Master. I sorta think it’s cause I’m on an RP server. We’re more likely to get the people who think about their character when they think about their spec, hence, more people staying BM. On the same token, I swear I am the only hunter on the dang server without a Spirit Beast in the stable.

Mage:
Okay. What I am about to tell you is going to blow your mind.

…

…

I raid with Frost mages more than both of the other specs combined.

It’s actually gotten to the point where I wonder what it’s like to raid with a non-Frost mage.

I think it’s the water elemental. Like I said, people love them pets.

Or maybe it’s because the poor frost mages are in the same boat with me, the Beast Mastery hunter, so all we do is PuG stuff. Who knows!

Paladin:
Paladins are living the high life right now, I swear. They’re so ubiquitous that being in a group without at least one is a surreal experience. “…where’s Might? Where’s Kings? Didn’t they come default with Heroics? Is this a bad dream?”

I see paladins of all three specs quite frequently, although I see Prot and Ret slightly more than Holy. Probably because they synergize together better so everyone dualspecs to those. Although, the Prot/Holy types who are good with both specs? They are to be feared. For being the most useful person in the world. Seriously.

Priest:
I see priests pretty evenly represented. Shadow priests are in vogue right now mostly because the good ones are Gods of Recount. Disc is still sorta that crazy spec that no one understands so they’re lagging behind Holy a bit, but I’ve seen them in my groups too.

My priest knowledge is roughly comparable to my knowledge of higher mathematics (“Oooh look guys, I can make my caluclator say “Hello”), so moving on…

Rogue:
I know nothing about the rogue specs. Like, Subtlety is for sneaking around I guess? I couldn’t tell ya who is what by playstyle though. Fortunately I’ve configured my XPerl to show me someone’s spec when I target them. As such, I have cleverly deduced that Assassination was all the rage at the beginning of WotLK, but since then the pendulum has largely swung back around to Combat, at least from what I’ve seen. Subtlety is pretty much extinct although you still see the random Sub rogue while leveling.

Did I mention I know nothing about rogues? I know nothing about rogues. The class is a completely foreign concept to me.

Shaman:
I have no idea where all the resto shamans are hiding, because I know they’re there.. I sorta think they all got scooped up by raid guilds the second they materialized in the game world because I never see any in PuGs, but I always see them standing around in Ironforge (never Stormwind) with super fancy gear and usually an Amani War Bear and a Hand of A’dal title. Hence my hypothesis.

Anyways, Elemental/Enhancement representation seems to be pretty even, with Enhancement gaining the edge in lower levels and Elemental gaining it at higher ones. I like shamans. I could never get into playing them, but I like having them in my group. *pets them*

Warlocks:
You’d think I’d know more about warlocks seeing as my boyfriend plays one and writes about them on WoW Insider. But I really don’t. All I know is that there are approximately 1395802462 times as many Demonology warlocks as any other spec, and I blame the Felguard. (See? It’s that pet thing again like I was telling you about.)

Sometimes I’m in a group with an Affliction or Destruction warlock that isn’t my boyfriend. It freaks me out. “Wait, you mean warlocks that aren’t my boyfriend use their imp/felpuppy? /boggle”

Warlocks in general are kind of an endangered species, which saddens me, because the world could always use more in-instance summoning stones, don’t you think? >.>

Warriors:
I am convinced that 99% of the world’s prot warriors either rerolled Death Knight, or respec’d to DPS. Yes, I have no idea where our tanky warrior friends went. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for prot warriors, they just looked like they were working so hard in Burning Crusade– no idea if they still have to work hard or not, but the soft spot remains. I’d like to see more of them just for that.

This one time I saw a Fury warrior dual-wielding Legacy and something else. I was kinda jealous. The End.

And that, as they say… is that.

This has been a Pike Incorporated Presentation. One’s experiences with various classes and specs may vary. Some restrictions may apply.

Uncategorized

Return of the Avatar Contest

9 Comments

Just a friendly reminder that the Sitemeter hits counter on my site is a few days shy of hitting 300,000 and, as in the past, a custom cartoony avatar of your character is up for grabs for anyone who can send me a screenshot of it reading the number on the nose (or the closest number in the event that no one snags the actual one).

The winners’ avatars will be free of charge and will be added to the queue behind a couple of commissioned ones I am working on at the moment.

Speaking of commissioned avatars, if you have “ordered” an avatar through me, be sure to check your e-mail frequently– occasionally I’ll send someone an e-mail alerting them that their avatar is ready and then not hear back from them for quite some time! Not that it’s particularly urgent or anything, and of course I understand that you are busy, heck, we all know how bad I am with keeping up with my e-mail. But, I figured I’d mention it. /nod

Uncategorized

Shandara's Hunter DPS Spreadsheet – Online!

16 Comments

Something longtime readers have probably figured out by now is that I am kiiiind of a big Free/Open Source Software fangirl. I make every attempt to use said software when I can, and this affects everything from my browser to my image editor to my IM program to my word processor to my entire operating system. In fact, the reason why I am on Linux is not so much that I’m some sort of computer wizard, because I’m really not– it’s that it’s one of the best ways I can think of to support an ideology that I love.

Because of this, a lot of things that many people take for granted are off-limits to me, and it’s something I am okay with. Shandara’s Hunter DPS Spreadsheet and its predeccesor Cheeky’s have always been some of those things. I’d have to jump through hoops to get Excel installed on my system– too many hoops, in my opinion– and the Open Office versions (when there have actually been Open Office versions) lack a lot of functionality. And so yours truly has always been Spreadsheet-less. And it always made me feel a bit awkward when I would get requests to “Make a blog post about ‘The Spreadsheet’!” … since I didn’t use it.

However, it has been brought to my attention by both Lethal Shots and Improved Tracking that a version of said Spreadsheet is now available online… no Excel required.

I immediately hopped over to test it and was quite pleased with it. You can import your character from the Armory and then do things like tweak your spec or your pet’s spec or your shot rotation and see what the resulting theoretical DPS is. It even includes some fun options such as “Test your DPS with the current 3.2 PTR changes”.

So far I’ve learned that whether or not you are raid-buffed makes a big difference in determining whether you want 1/2 or 2/2 Go for the Throat (At my gear level, 1/2 is sufficient in a raid, but not for mostly solo or small group stuff), and I have also learned that Mortal Shots really isn’t worth a lot as a Beast Master. I’ve always felt awkward only putting 2 or 3 points in there rather than the full five, but anyway I put it, going 5/5 Mortal Shots as opposed to putting those points elsewhere (like in Survival) was a DPS loss… assuming you’re fighting something trackable, of course. So that made me feel a lot better about that.

I also learned that wearing my shiny new Conqueror’s Scourgestalker pants over my old Valorous Cryptstalker is also a slight DPS loss because I lose the +5% pet damage set bonus. I wonder if it would still be a DPS loss if fully raid-buffed. I didn’t check that. /ponder

ANYWAYS! I’ll stop yakking about it and encourage anyone to go check it out and play around with it! The great thing about it is that its results are customized for you and your gear. But remember: it’s not the bible, just a guide!

And a great big THANK YOU and /hugs to whoever made it, enabling us non-Microsoft folks to finally enjoy Spreadsheety goodness! <3 (P.S. the site seems relatively self-explanatory to me, but if I get a lot of requests for a more in-depth "how to" regarding it, I'll provide one. So leave a comment if you're interested in that!)

alts, screenshots

Memory… all alone in the moonlight…

24 Comments

…I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Alright, I’ve got a couple secrets to announce here today.

The first secret is that my memory is horrid. I’m not exaggerating this. I often can’t remember things I said five minutes earlier. Just ask Mr. Pike if you want to hear all the gritty details on my lack of anything resembling a decent memory, other than my odd penchant to remember random and often useless facts.

The second secret is that I have two level eighty characters and one level seventyfive character and I haven’t been playing them. No, I’ve been playing a level 44 hunter and a level 31 resto druid and a level 21 hunter (Yes, my two 80s are a hunter and a resto druid. THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. /admits it), running merrily around in the old world and in general having a grand ol’ time.

The first real reason for this is simply that it feels more productive somehow. I can log onto my level 80 hunter and sit around in LFG for a super long time and wind up not running anything… or I can log into my level 80 druid who is in this awkward position between heroics and raids and try to talk myself into trying a ten-man, and then inevitably chickening out… or I can log into my level 75 hunter and spend two hours doing quests and then look down at my experience bar and notice that it rather suspiciously looks like it’s hardly moved…

…or, I can log onto one of my lowbies and gain a level or two and make little fangirly squees everytime I unlock a new talent point that is going to make a tangible difference. See? Feels more productive.

The second reason, though, is simply that while I’ve done most of these quests before, I honestly can’t remember them, thanks to aforementioned crappy memory. Like, I can sorta remember the general idea of some of them… but they don’t feel old. They don’t feel like redo-ing territory I’ve already done a million times, even if I have. Every time I go through a zone, even one I’ve done fiftybazillion times before like Feralas, or Thousand Needles, or Tanaris… I feel like I’m discovering something entirely new.

And when you’re level 44, it doesn’t matter what spec you are or how much DPS you’re doing (though the number of people demanding Recount charts in Scarlet Monastery or ZF never fails to amuse me), or if you have the gold for raid consumables. What matters is… where in this crazy ol’ zone is this water well I’m supposed to find, and why did these random bugs I’ve never seen before spawn on top of me? What an unusual questline!

…and how far can I make the quest robot walk before he despawns? (I almost got him to the Dire Maul instance portal once, and my latest attempt got him to Razorfen Kraul.)

…and where should I put my next talent point, there’s so many good choices and I want them all!

…and maybe I can snag myself an Icy enchant because I want a super glowy weapon and I don’t have to worry about functional enchants yet!

…and ohmahgawsh! Rarespawns I’ve never seen before or even knew existed!

…and ooooh what rep should I grind on this character so I can continue with my tradition of mixing and matching mounts?

So yeah. Takes a special person to like the questing and the leveling best. Guess I’m one of those special people.

WoW_Young_Althalor

WoW_YoungSonglark

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

rp

The Amazing Races! (Semi-RPishness inside)

35 Comments

I sometimes think about all the races (and genders) in WoW and how I have a difficult time getting into playing some of them and a much easier time filling the shoes of others. And because I’m feeling verbose, you get to read all about it! Exciting, huh? …maybe, at least? Hello? Bueller?

Anyways, let’s take it from the top…

/hops onto the RP Box

Humans:
I’m not gonna lie. I have a hard time playing humans. And the main reason, to me, is because hey– I’m playing a fantasy game, I don’t wanna have to play something I already play IRL. Ya know?

Though to be fair, it’s very easy to come up with just about any personality role that a human can fill. And I’m biased and love the stereotype of the brave human paladin smashing your face in with a hammer. It fits really well. Still, other options just seem more exciting to me, so I lean more towards the other options. I do like human lore and I love Stormwind, so it balances out.

Night Elves:
Weird love hate relationship with this race. Overplayed? Check. Difficult to RP well (in my opinion)? If you are going for default-night-elf, then check. But on the other hand, smexy long ears? (My fetishes are weird. Deal with it. >.>) Check. Oh, and fun to RP when you come up with something more unconventional? Yeeees. I love Tawyn’s character. Love it a lot. When I first made her she was more reserved, a Neutral Good character who was still rather Night Elfy, and she was okaaaay… but then I went “Aww what the heck” and turned her into a Chaotic Neutral misanthrope and now she’s an absolute blast to RP and write stories about. Tamaryn the Tree is very shy and reserved and I sort of think of her as having some sort of stuttering problem or something; though I really haven’t put as much thought into her as I’d like.

Conclusion: Taking a Night Elf character and going in the opposite direction that most people take them (i.e., giving them some sort of unappealing or repelling characteristic) is a lot of fun. But at the same time, there are so many Night Elves out there that I only make them very rarely.

Gnomes:
I LOVE GNOMES. Oh my gosh. They’re so fun and steampunky. Love ’em, love ’em, love ’em. I only wish they had more class options. As it stands they are unable to be either of my two favorite classes (hunters and druids) and it saddens me immensely. WTB gnome healer or hunter. Lemme rephrase that. WTS my soul for a gnome healer or hunter.

Dwarves:
I like dwarves in theory but I have a difficult time playing them. The number of female dwarf hunters I have stagnating between levels 8 and 12 is depressing. I love the female dwarf voice, too. I think I just have a hard time coming up with good personality ideas for them because their personalities always seem so… set already. If that makes sense at all. Someday I really want a high level dwarf, though.

Draenei:
Awkward thing about me and draenei, it took me forever to get one past level six. Eventually I realized it was because I kept making female draenei and female draenei come off to me as already coming prepackaged with a personality. I think it’s the voice. Because of that I had a hard time coming up with a good female draenei character that wasn’t super cliche.

So when I rolled my baby paladin, I made him a male draenei, and it’s worked out quite nicely! Male draenei seem more malleable to me. They can be heroic and stoic or more bumbling. Mine is absolutely horrible at speaking Common so everything that comes out of his mouth is some sort of innuendo that he’d never dream of saying in his native tongue, and he doesn’t realize it. (“The Light’s hands roam and touch you in a special way!” /Hand of Freedom) I lurve it. <3 Orcs:
The number of times I’ve made female orcs and then given up is similar to the number of times I’ve made female dwarves and then given up: A lot. And it’s not that I don’t like orcs, it’s just that I have a difficult time coming up with non-cliche character ideas for them.

Though, I have this really deep-seated longing to make an old, gray-haired, grumpy, male orc warlock. That would rock. Someday, I will. When I can get into playing warlocks. (You guys have no idea how many times I’ve tried. >.>)

Trolls:
I LOVE TROLLS! Love them all. Though I’ve never actually made a male troll for some reason, but I love them too.

…well, that was an easy one to write…

Tauren:
If there is anything I love more than trolls and gnomes, it’s tauren. The best race in the game. Love their culture, love their models, love their home city. <333 I mostly make female tauren because I think they're so cute and pretty (yes, pretty, deal with it), but I've made a couple male tauren too. Seriously though, female tauren need more love, so I support them (and make more of them) anytime I have the excuse to do so. *nods* Undead:
It took me a long time to warm up to the idea of undead. I was never really one of those people who was into creepy/Halloweeny/gothic stuff, I mean, I don’t dislike that genre, and there are aspects of it that I do appreciate… but it’s not really a favorite either.

Plus, I was always making female undead, and female undead have the same problem that female draenei do to me: I have a hard time giving them an original personality because their voice and look is so very convincingly default that you kind of have to stick with that. I do, anyway.

I have since figured out that I really like male undead though. They’re so cute when they do their little froggy-hop run, and I love the male undead voices. Seriously, some of the male undead vendors sound absolutely lovely; that smooth little “Heeellllooo”. Om nom nom. I have a baby male undead mage with a backstory I love; a magically-inclined farmer boy from the Lordaeron area who was studying to become a mage when tragedy struck! And now he’s undead and he thinks it’s wickedly awesome because he has the mind of a scientist. He likes blowing stuff up. I like that character a lot. I should play him more often.

Someday I am going to make an undead priest because I love the dichotomy of an undead character wearing shiny glowy robes. XD

Blood Elves:
I have long ago given up trying to play female blood elves. Like the female undead and draenei, female blood elves seem so personality-infused right from the start that I can’t RP them as anything but a haughty jerk, and I was never good at RPing haughty jerks, so it doesn’t work very well. x_x No offense to you female blood elf players out there of course.

Male blood elves would have the same problem except for two things: a.) they’re hot (why yes, I am shallow), and b.) I had to give my male blood elf a rather complicated backstory which essentially gives him the excuse to be A Nice Guy. Which, I have come to learn, is kind of a faux pas among more serious roleplayers because it’s so commonly done with blood elves, but ya know what, nobody roleplays with me anyway, so there! /cough

Anyways, now that my male blood elf is A Nice Guy and also very kind to the eyes and ears (even if it is just Liquid Snake /cough), I’ve played him a lot. He’s currently level 42 and a half and I’ll probably play him some more after I finish this post. I actually briefly played with the idea of him and Tawyn meeting up in some story and potentially “hitting it off” but it didn’t take long for me to realize that they’d probably hate each others’ guts, so I’m sure that‘ll never happen. Might be fun to chronicle a story of the hatred, though. /muses

And there you have it. Why I play what I play!

/bow

/hops off of the RP Box

battlegrounds, beast mastery, patches, pvp, talents

Good news everyone!

12 Comments

goodnews At some point between the last time I seriously PvP’d (’bout a year ago) and now, Bloodlust Alliance figured out how to win Alterac Valley!

=D

…okay, so, while that is good news, it’s probably not the good news you came here to read. Fortunately, I have other good news. The latest rumblings on the PTR are the impending change to Animal Handler. This talent has changed much through the years. Initially it gave your pet some extra Hit, which was rendered obsolete with hit scaling. Then it gave your pet expertise, and that, too, is about to be made obsolete. So now what’s it gonna do? Increase your pet’s Attack Power by 5%/10%.

For the record, that is awesome. And though I have no hard numbers, if Blizz delivers that plus expands on pet scaling like they said they wanted to in time for 3.2, combined with the impending weird Kill Command reduction on Catlike Reflexes and the Wild Hunt buff… I’m guessing that Beast Mastery is pretty much “fixed”.

Gotta say I am a bit worried, though. Remember why Blizz nerfed us last time? A lot of it was because pets were doing over 50% of our damage and they said that was too much. To which I actually agree– I love having a pet doing, oh… 35, 40% of my damage, but anything over 50% makes me too uncomfortable. Anyways, Blizz nerfed the pets, while forgetting to, well, really buff the hunter to counterbalance it.

Anyways, with all these new changes I don’t see any way that a Beast Master pet won’t be back up to 50% or more of a Beast Master hunter’s total DPS, and I worry that Blizz will have their nerfbat at the ready again. But who can say, really? It’s one of those things where we’ll just have to wait and see. At least the Blues know we could use some love, and that’s always a good sign.

fun

Why Pike Is A Bad Example for Gems: Confession Time

22 Comments

I got a comment on one of my recent posts regarding some of the gem choices I made on my Armory and why they did not necessarily match up with what I recommend.

So I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.

Ready?

…

…

…

I am super OCD for set bonuses. I don’t care what the set bonus is, I will get it. I only made one exception once, it was when I needed to stick a +16 hit in there and I was crying inwardly the whole time and I replaced it as soon as I could. The little grayed out +4 stamina or whatever was killing me.

Is this smart? No. Does this mean I end up with wonky “+agi and +mp5” gems, despite the fact that mp5 is a bad stat to gem for? (Seriously, do not gem for mp5) Yes. Is this gimping my DPS? Probably a bit, yeah. Does this mean I tend to get a lot of comments and e-mails regarding my “special” gem choices? Yeah, and it’s kinda embarrassing.

But ya know what, tough. =P Besides, it’s better that my OCDness manifests itself in a video game than in a real life. (As someone who went through and somehow conquered the “write down every number I hear on some scrap of paper” phase… trust me on this).

This is why I squirm a little bit when people ask me if they should go for socket bonuses or not. Because I want to say “No, you shouldn’t,” but I always always do, personally.

I am a special case guys. Don’t be like me. Really. >.> Hey, we all have our little quirks, and that’s mine.

I’m Pike, and I go for socket bonuses. I also tend to go for what’s cheap because I’m cheapskate.

There, I said it.

/sits down

beast mastery, guides, hunter kindergarten, talents, Uncategorized

Improved Mend Pet vs. Spirit Bond

9 Comments

If you are a Beast Mastery hunter, chances are good you have at least one or two talent points floating around in one of these two talents. In fact, if you are doing a fairly common 53/x/x build, then you really only have one point to spare.

So, where do you put that one point? Some people choose Endurance Training, but for me, I prefer to keep the choice between our good friends Spirit Bond and Improved Mend Pet. Let’s take a look at what they do:

1/2 Improved Mend Pet: “Reduces the mana cost of your Mend Pet spell by 10% and gives the Mend Pet spell a 25% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the pet each tick.”

The mana cost reduction is relatively minute (though I suppose it would add up if you were using it a lot), so the big benefit here is mostly the shot IMP has at cleansing things off of your pet. This can be handy when solo’ing/questing to get rid of those nasty debuffs things will occasionally chuck onto your pet, and it can also be handy in a select few raid encounters. *coughHeigancough* Final verdict: Only has a very situational use, but very helpful in said situations.

1/2 Spirit Bond: “While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 1% of total health every 10 sec., and increases healing done to you and your pet by 5%.”

I’ve had people debate me on this before, but I see the regeneration part of this talent as being, well… lackluster and ignorable. =P What we like this talent for is the flat increase on healing done to you and your pet. This could help a little on pet unfriendly fights, and also on player-unfriendly fights. May or may not be enough of a healing boost to save your/your pet’s life when crap hits the fan, though. Final verdict: Goes to waste on stuff like Patchwerk, but may make the life of your healers a tiny tad easier on stuff where there’s lots of AoE damage going around. Also makes your life a tiny tad easier on pet unfriendly fights.

And the Oscar goes to… Look at your situation and decide which one you’d rather have. Currently I am using Improved Mend Pet because I find it to be invaluable on Heigan; I am in Naxx more than most other raids combined at the moment and I pride myself on being able to keep my pet alive through the encounter. If I ever move on from Naxx I may very well move the point over to Spirit Bond. Both talents have their uses and I wouldn’t knock you for using either.

Bonus History Lesson:

Check out the final Beast Mastery talent back in World of Warcraft Beta:

BeastMasteryBeta

Survival’s final talent back then…? We shall not speak of it… >.>

guides, hunter kindergarten, Uncategorized

Doctor Pike Is In: Fixing Your Hunter DPS

19 Comments

mario_house I get a pretty decent number of comments and e-mails from people asking for advice to help “fix” their DPS. The truth is, there is no giant Band-Aid that is gonna fix your DPS. However, there are a lot of symptoms we can look for to help diagnose the problem and see if we can solve it from there. Doctor Pike is in!

1. Spec: As of right now in Patch 3.1, Beast Mastery produces the lowest DPS of all the hunter specs. That’s not to say it can’t do good numbers, or isn’t viable. However, it’s quite possible that you will see an increase in DPS if you switch to Marksmanship, and then possibly a further DPS increase if you continue on to Survival (at least until you start getting into Ulduar gear). If you aren’t averse to a spec switch, you may want to experiment. If you really like your spec a lot, then that’s great too, and you can read on to see ways to optimize your chosen spec.

Make sure your talents work well together. I love the idea of a hybrid hunter in theory but in the end, there is really no particularly good hybrid build right now. Furthermore, don’t put points in things you don’t need. If you are a Survival hunter, then you don’t need Improved Arcane Shot. Why? Because you don’t use Arcane Shot!

Still, take a look at your situation and see what works for you. For example, I know my hunter DPS tends to idle at about 85-90% while leveling because I take all the talents like Endurance Training, Thick Hide, Spirit Bond, etc. in lieu of a more typical raid spec. But hey, that’s cause I’m leveling! =P And PvP is of course an entirely whole different creature. But you get the gist.

2. Pet Spec: Take a look at the screenshots on this post to see examples of a Ferocity pet build for both 16- and 20- pet talent points. As far as I am aware those are pretty much the max-DPS builds you can get: Charge will get you a tiny DPS increase but myself I don’t think it’s worth it to sacrifice stuff to pick it up since it’s a mid-tier talent. Dash/Dive does the same thing for a fraction less DPS and with the added bonus of being able to let your pet run quickly back to you if needed… Flame Walls on Sarth, for example, or other nasties! (That said, going 1/2 Bloodthirsty and then picking up Charge, if you are a Beast Master, might be worth looking into– I just haven’t tried it yet.)

Some people have asked me questions about Cobra Reflexes; last I checked those are in fact a net DPS gain.

If you can only take one point of Shark Attack or Wild Hunt, take Wild Hunt once you get somewhere above the range of 2500 attack power which just about every hunter should be at if they are level 80 or close to it. The stamina boost is nice too!

My thoughts on Heart of the Phoenix/Lick Your Wounds/etc are as follows: a.) you will have to sacrifice DPS talents to pick them up, and b.) The only time my pet dies is if it’s a wipe or if it’s a pet unfriendly fight and my pet will be dying every ten seconds anyway. So, they are not worth it to me. But as always, your mileage may vary!

3. Glyphs: In WotLK, glyphs can really make or break a spec. I find it kind of ironic because Blizzard introduced them as a way to further customize your character but often your choice of glyphs is rather cut’n’dry.

For example, if you are a Beast Master you pretty much NEED Glyph of Steady Shot and Glyph of Bestial Wrath. All Beast Master PvE specs should have at least those two glyphs. You have slightly more wiggle room with your third glyph; Kill Shot and Hawk are good options, myself, I use Serpent Sting.

I am not quite as knowledgeable with the other specs yet but as far as I’m aware, Glyph of Explosive Shot is pretty much a given for Survival, and Glyphs of Chimera Shot and Serpent Sting (to boost your Chimera Shot damage) are what you want for Marksmanship.

4. Gear/Gems: Most people are geared and gem’d fine so I don’t see this as something we need to go into in too much depth. Remember: The hit cap is important, especially now that it transfers to your pet. If you don’t have enough hit on your gear, gem for it. You want to be at 263 unless you are a draenei or have a draenei twin who follows you everywhere (or if you are Alliance and only ever do 25mans).

…or if you have points in Focused Aim. *almost forgot all about that* >.>

Intellect is a good stat for everybody now because pretty much all specs have 3/3 Careful Aim, and this is why I usually skip over leather gear, even if it is packed with other yummies.

Remember, you don’t need expertise, defense, etc. In the next patch your pets’ expertise will scale from your hit; this means you won’t need expertise in the next patch either, despite some rumors that are going around.

Gem-wise you will probably want to stick to Hit (if not capped), Agi and AP. AP is more of a Beast Master gem, although “when in down, gem Agi… uh… this doesn’t rhyme *cough*” You don’t want to overload on one stat, though. If you have a bunch of AP but your crit is in the toilet, or vice versa, it can often end up being a DPS loss. Which isn’t what you want! =P

and lastly 5. Rotation! This is a good first place to look if you are having DPS issues. I’d advise you to check out my Shot Rotation Compendium for a quick rundown of what you should be doing rotation-wise for each spec, and read the comments too, because said guide isn’t 100% conclusive.

Now there are some things that may be adversely affecting your DPS which you can’t do much about. Stinky internet connections and lag, poor computer performance, or even simply a lack of familiarity with a certain spec will put you at a disadvantage. Hopefully, though, I’ve covered the basics well enough to help a few of you out.

Now go take two pills and call me in the morning. And remember, don’t get discouraged if it takes you a while to “fix” your DPS… afterall, we all know what happens when the doctors on TV think the case is solved and it’s only halfway through the episode, riiiight? =P