I’ve finally cleared Naxx! Much thanks to my guild for making room for me to squeeze in to their weekly run when I actually requested time off of work for this (I’m a dork.)

I have to admit, I was getting antsy about my lack of having done it when it felt like everyone else had. Partially because it felt like I was missing out, but also partially because I’ve been really wanting to make a “Hunter’s Guide to Naxxramas” as a sort of a spiritual sequel to my “Hunter’s Guide to Karazhan” that I made a while back. Now that I have done all the bosses at least once (and most of them, many more times than once), I feel qualified to do so. Look for that in the near future. ^_^

As for the new spec I tried out that I detailed in the last post: overall I think it worked well. I was definitely consistently somewhere near the top of DPS on the occasions where I remembered to pull out Recount (I forgot a lot >.>), and I ended Patchwerk with 3548, which beats my previous 10man Patchwerk high score of 3300ish, and is in fact a perfect tie of what I got pre-BM Nerf as a blue-clad fresh 80… yeeeah, we probably needed the nerf. /cough

I’ve been pretty solidly sold on the virtues of Improved Tracking over Improved Arcane Shot at this point; I’m a little iffy on Survival Instincts though. I think I’ll probably end up moving those two points back into Mortal Shots, or one into Mortal Shots and one into Beast Mastery cause I feel naked without that talent. >.>

And now it’s onward to countless Malygos wipes with the guild as we try to do it for the first time… oh, and trying to PuG my way through 25man Naxx. Yeah that last one’s gonna be… interesting. x_x

It may seem a bit silly to be focusing on tweaking my spec and DPS now that we are probably only a few weeks away from 3.1 and the potential spec changes… especially as someone like me who generally takes a rather laidback approach to her own personal theorycrafting.

But I’m going to Naxx tomorrow with my guild for the first time in a while– yes, I’m actually going to be able to go with my guild this time and not have to PuG– and I want to make sure I make a good impression and am pulling my weight!

Which leads us to the spec experimentation that I’m currently in the midst of. I did opt to stay with Beast Mastery. I do want to make clear that I enjoy Marksmanship enough that I have offered, in the past, to gladly respec to it on particularly pet-unfriendly fights, such as a guild Sarth1D run I did the other week, but we’ve always managed to end up eventually clearing it without me having to do so. (Sarth Dancing For Your Pet movie in the future, perhaps?) But Naxx, I know, is pretty pet friendly overall which leans itself towards BM, which works out fine for me!

My experimentation comes from this post over at the WoW_Ladies community on LJ, which referenced this thread on Elitist Jerks, which is devoted to hammering out various max-DPS hunter specs on paper. Their suggested Beast Mastery build? 52/12/7.

Which is kind of, well, a lot different than the 53/18/0 I’ve been running with.

What this spec primarily does is swap out 15% extra damage on your Arcane Shot for 5% extra damage on all your shots– a reasonable trade, I figure– and some of the bonus crit damage for an increased chance to crit with your specials, which should in turn boost the number of Cobra Strikes procs you get. Oh, and you’ve gotta give up the Beast Mastery talent. Which I opted to do for now. Just… don’t let me go into Sholazar until I get it back, because knowing my luck, I will find Loque while not able to tame him and I will cry.

Anyways, I took that suggested spec, made one minor tweak to it (I can’t live without 2/2 Improved Mend Pet… I just can’t. >.>) aaand went and did a couple of heroics and a normal Archavon. Unfortunately I don’t feel like I got very satisfactory Recount results. Heroic Drak’theron does not seem to lend itself well to many tests other than a couple of the bosses, and this Archavon was a rather ragtag group with only one tank rather than the usual two, and as such wasn’t a “typical” battle like I was hoping for. Still, on the occasions where I was able to simply stand and pewpew, the results were promising.

Overall I think that this spec might in fact be able to squeak out a little more DPS than what I was running with before, but I’m still not entirely sure. A DPS test on paper is different than one in the field, taking your own personal gear and buffs and group composition into consideration. And the training dummies aren’t gonna work this time due to the nature of Improved Tracking and the fact that the dummies are mechanical. Anyways, I’m working for most of the rest of the afternoon but I’m hoping I might be able to do at least one more Heroic late tonight before I drag this spec into Naxx tomorrow.

…can ya tell I’m nervous? Yeah, I’m not really sure why, to be honest. >.> Maybe because it’s been a long time since I was in a raid group with people I know are really good and who I really respect. I don’t want to disappoint anyone.

Oh, and one last thing! My WoW Insider profile has caused a large influx of new traffic and, with it, several e-mails. I apologize if it takes me a while to return your e-mail. I sometimes have a hard time telling which ones I’ve replied to yet. *nods*

“Go, and sin no more.”

One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is embrace all of the hunter specs and learn about them. That’s because while Beast Mastery is my favorite tree, one thing that is important to me more than the love of a certain talent tree, is my love for the class as a whole. So since “respec” seems to be on a lot of peoples’ minds lately, I went to Darnassus (less traffic!) and put some serious practice into a couple of specs.

The first was the much touted Survival spec that is all the rage now; I can’t remember exactly what I put for talent placement but it was essentially very close to the one that a lot of people are using now. I pounded on those training dummies as Survival for a very long time. The first thing I noticed was that the rotation has a similar overall feel to the new Beast Master one, except it’s Steady/Explosive Shot instead of Steady/Arcane. The second thing I noticed is that when Lock and Load procs you have to switch to another rotation. The third thing I noticed was that I personally did not like this playstyle, and the fourth thing I noticed is that I am horrific at this Survival thing because I was consistently winding up a couple of hundred DPS below what I do as post-nerf Beast Master on the same training dummy.

Okay. So clearly I’m either doing something super wrong, or the new magic Survival spec involves gear scaling or buff scaling. Fair enough. I could have sat down and figured out what I was doing to mess up but I really didn’t like the weird spur-of-the-moment rotation and I wanted to get out of the spec as soon as possible. (I 100% swear, no offense to you Survival types. I have a lot of respect for you guys.)

So then I respec’d again. To 11/53/7 Marksmanship.

I’m pretty sure the first word out of my mouth was something along the lines of “ZOMGWHENDIDCHIMERAGETTHISFUNOMG”

A rough transcript, anyway.

It also resulted in a slight DPS increase over what I was getting as BM but to be honest at that point I couldn’t have cared less if I was doing less DPS than a squirrel, this Marksman thing is really frackin’ fun. The shot rotation is based off of priority so my eyes were basically glued to my action bars, but regardless! Fun.

I was invited to a Heroic Gundrak and I took my new spec along. Wound up performing very well. My main gripe was that I missed the hunter/pet synergy from BM so much. I couldn’t even look Locke in the eyes without feeling bad. =( But if there’s one thing I love almost as much as pets, it’s shot rotations, and on that count, MM delivers. We’ll have to see where things go from here!

I’m glad I have so many hunters. At this rate, I can always have one hunter for each spec that I like! =D

(P.S. Don’t worry, BM is still my favorite.)

Okay, now that I have talked about my “emotional” investment into Beast Mastery in my last post, let us talk about another awesome component of the spec: Dee Pee Ess. Most people know that the Holy Church of Fortyone Twenty was the way to Hunter DPS Heaven in Burning Crusade; but by the looks of things the Reformation is happening in Wrath of the Lich King and we will see a lot more specs running around in raids. This strikes me as a Very Good Thing because I don’t like to see people spec something that they do not like. That was sort of one of the points I was trying to make (and I think I didn’t do a very good job at it, so sorry <3 ) in my last post. I want people to spec the way they enjoy the most.

But I know there are at least a few of you crazy nutcases out there who love BM for its playstyle, like I do, who are maybe curious about new shot rotations in the like. Never fear, Pike is here!

Tawyn has spent probably close to a hundred gold on respecs since the patch hit; she started with a very deep BM build and slowly has been drifting to a lighter one, moving to 51/10/0 and now sitting at 48/13/0. The reason for the talent shakeup was threefold: firstly, I wanted to pick up Animal Handler now that it’s going to be useful again in the next patch (I am so down for extra pet expertise). Secondly, Deep BM at 70 was feeling very… top-heavy, for lack of a better term. Too much in BM, too fast. And Invigoration and Cobra Strikes are both kinda “iffy” to me right now in terms of the proc rate and “worth it” value– which saddens me, cause I love their synthesis concept, but sometimes the truth hurts. Thirdly, I have come to the conclusion that Go for the Throat is a Super Vital Talent™ and it is worth it to sacrifice the Exotic Pet and four extra pet talent points to pick it up. You can always go back and pick up the Exotic Pet talent later on once you get closer to 80.

Lunapike is still 46/15/0, which is very similar, but a little different. Points in Focused Aim, for example, because she is not hit-capped, and she is testing Invigoration at the moment whereas Tawyn is testing Cobra Strikes, so those talents are switched.

ANYWAYS, I was getting really curious about the performance of these specs so I downloaded Recount, spent approximately four seconds deciding that I liked it better than SW Stats, and headed off to visit our friends the Training Dummies.

With some 1900 AP and 25.29% crit and unbuffed (Except for stuff like Aspect of the Hawk/Ferocious Inspiration), and having popped all her cooldowns and trinkets over the duration of the test, which lasted until I was out of mana, Tawyn hit about 1180 DPS at her peak and consistently maintained 1050+ DPS using Steady Shot and keeping Serpent Sting refreshed (because Serpent Sting is supposed to be viable now =P). Not too shabby. I’m satisfied. I’d like to make a comparison to pre-patch DPS but I honestly never paid attention to anything beyond where I sat on the chart (does that make me a good or bad hunter?)

This is not an entirely 100% accurate breakdown because I took this screenshot after a Viper cycle to replenish my mana. Still, it can give you a general idea of what the DPS will look like after one full round of DPS and the full round of Viper, and it also gives you an idea of what Locke is doing in terms of damage. And looking back, I’m thinking I was a little slow on the uptake with Serpent Sting once or twice. Derp.

My testing was not finished though, oh no!

Now Lunapike is obviously at a disadvantage here and I wasn’t out to make a real comparison exactly for this reason. She only has roughly 1450 AP (with Aspect of the Hawk) and 22.35% crit. However, I mostly wanted to see the wasp stats, and also see if Invigoration was going to be making a big difference. The verdict? …it procs often enough, but… I dunno, it lets me do what, get maybe three more Steadys in before I switch to Viper? Dunno if it’s worth it for the two points or not. More testing will have to be done.

This screenshot was actually taken right before switching to Aspect of the Viper so I wound up with 884 DPS as an unbuffed hunter in semi-enchanted blues. Again, I am satisfied. Now, let’s discuss the pets; Serenity the wasp and Locke the Kitty are almost identical in terms of the stat breakdown (Roughly 60% regular melee, 30% focus dump, and 10% DoT/special ability.) The big difference I see is that Serenity brings a big whoppin’ armor debuff with him whereas Locke doesn’t. I think that this is gonna be one of the things that makes a difference when it comes to which pets you will see more often in raids. And of course, things will get all the more interesting when we throw Exotic Pets into the picture, with their intended upcoming buff and their extra talent points.

And the moral of the story is: Beast Masters, Steady Shot and Serpent Sting is looking like your rotation for the time being, unless I totally botched up somewhere (in which case, please tell me ^_^). Although I would still call Serpent Sting situational; depending on if Scorpid Sting might be preferred or if there might be emergency trapping in the forseeable future.

The second moral of the story is… next time, remind me to do my testing on Beta where respecs only cost 1 copper. Cause next up I think I wanna do the Go for the Throat vs. Exotic Pet/extra points Showdown. But I’m not willing to throw more gold into it. I’m just a poor Pike from a poor family.

With all the hype about the exotic pets, I sort of feel the need to post something about choosing the spec that is right for you. There are a lot of Big Red Devilsaurs running around right now and while it is 100% understandable that people want to have fun and try them out in this lull before the expansion, I also worry that some people may wind up Beast Master for the wrong reasons.

Beast Master Hunters are a special breed. We don’t get our kicks from putting up super big numbers or ridiculously high agility scores, or doing really in-depth shot rotations. We are the hunters who love having a strong pet to fight beside us as a partner, not just as an extra DoT. We are the hunters who love when we do something that procs an ability for our pet, or when our pet does something that procs an ability for us. We are the hunters who relish the fact that we’re shooting so fast that sometimes we feel like we’re about to spin out of control. We love watching those Scrolling Combat Text numbers fly by– they may not be big, they may not always be crits– but they are fast and furious. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we love big crits and big agility numbers and shot rotations too– but when it comes down to it, we are all about the frenzied machine-gun mentality. Other hunters may be calculating and precise as they weave their shots with immense care or design a perfect plan of attack and survival. But we Beast Masters throw such precision to the wind and toss ourselves whole-heartedly into the fight, the same way our pet would. We go nuts. We really, truly do unleash the beast within.

If that is how you feel, too, and you accept the fact that that means you will not have a particularly complex shot rotation or put up very big numbers yourself (because your pet will be doing a lot of the work himself)– then welcome to the family.

If that doesn’t sound as appealing to you as you like– if you really like using your other shots besides Steady Shot, if you really like big crits, if you like traps that last forever– then please, spec something else. It’s okay. Sure, you may not get the exotic pet, but there are so many great non-exotic pets out there just waiting to be your companion. Similarly, you don’t have to spec Beast Master just to show that you love your pet– Marksman and Survival hunters love their pets too. And I’m certainly not going to stop appreciating you and your comments here. I am an unabashed Beast Master fangirl, it’s true, but hunters of all specs and stripes are welcome here and there are many, many Marksman and Survival hunter blogs out there that I read and that are written by very talented hunters that I have a lot of respect for.

With the advent of 3.0 and the way that Marksman and Survival have really been brought up to par, now is a great time to take a deep look at your little definition of “hunter” and spec the way you really feel and experiment with different things. Then, read about your class– and spec– learn about it, test it out, and put it into action. As a wise man once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The road to hunter enlightenment isn’t always easy and it has already cost Tawyn several gold in respecs and several minutes of relearning, but Auntie Pike promises it will be worth it.

Well, that’ll do it for now. Be sure to tune in to our next episode of Aspect of the Hare: Tawyn’s Talent Tree Tweaking! May or may not include abundant amounts of alliteration. You’ve been warned.

Edit: Reading some of the comments I am getting, I fear my point may have come out the wrong way =/ I’m very sorry if it did. I am not discrediting any reason to spec Beast Master. If you just want to have a devilsaur, that is a perfectly valid reason as well. Toque, I agree 100% with your comment. “Remember Who You Are: A person who is playing a game. Spec how you want for your greatest enjoyment of the game, for whatever reason”, as you commented, is exactly what I was trying to get at. I was also trying to encourage trying out all the specs, so you can decide exactly where that greatest enjoyment of the game will come from, because the answer may surprise you. My deepest apologies if it did not come out correctly. This post was sort of a cut-n-paste from some stuff I had laying around in drafts so it probably wasn’t very smooth. I also want to clarify that when I am talking about “Beast Master Hunters” in this post, I am generally talking about BM Hunters as in those who love the spec, and not as in those who spec it simply for DPS. Once again, apologies for any confusion.

I recently had somebody ask in one of my comments what the new “leveling spec” will be for non-max-level Beast Master hunters.

Specs are currently a bit of a tricky question. People are still playing around with them and trying to determine what works best. I’m not even entirely sure on specs yet myself; I was having doubts about the usefulness of Invigoration but re-watching my Onyxia movie (which I am currently uploading to a couple different video hosting services– I have yet to find one that I am happy with, so toss me your suggestions) it actually seems to proc quite a bit so I think it’s staying for the time being anyway.

So for the most part, I am going to tell you to take my “old” preferred leveling spec and tack the new talents onto it. My old leveling spec was “Cookie-cutter 41/20/0″ except two major tweaks in the form of Endurance Training and Thick Hide. So the new one is gonna look roughly like this:

Just like the “Old” Leveling Spec, you are foregoing Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Improved Revive Pet for Endurance Training and Thick Hide.

Just like the “Old” Leveling Spec, I’m going to suggest putting five points in Lethal Shots first, though I certainly wouldn’t dock you Pike Points if you jumped straight into BM.

Just like the “Old” Leveling Spec, it is adjustable for your current situation. If you never do instances or battlegrounds ever and are a pure grinding machine then Catlike Reflexes will make your pet a better tank at the cost of Ferocious Inspiraiton. You may also opt for Animal Handler here since your hit rating will be low or nil at lower levels.

This is not a 100%-best-leveling-spec ever, it is just what I would aim for right now as a lowbie hunter. I have already respec’d my level 33 hunter to follow something along these lines. Most important though, is to figure out what works for you. Don’t be afraid to test things!

Expect this post to be revisited in a few weeks or months when all the hunter community theorycrafting comes rolling in. Until then, go ye forth and level!

I’m really wavering on what spec I want to go to with my hunters for the remaining month that we are level 70. I’m actually pretty certain that both will be different specs– both Beast Mastery, of course, but different talent point placement. Whether they will be largely different or only slightly different remains to be seen.

I’ve been playing around with the WoWHead talent calculator and I’ve narrowed down my choices to a few options. Before I present them, I’d like to get a couple things out of the way:

Lack of Animal Handler: This was a must-have talent for 2.0 Beast Masters because pet hit did not scale with hunter hit, but now it DOES scale, so I don’t really see a need for this talent at this point so long as you are hit-capped. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, though, so I am certainly going to be keeping the possibility in mind of keeping this talent around, but for now, it’s out.

One-point in Spirit Bond: A filler talent to allow me to progress to the higher tiers of talents. I don’t really care about the health regen so much as the added +heal to pet and the subsequent boost it will give Mend Pet which may help out in tough encounters. If it turns out to not make much of a difference I will probably toss that filler point in Endurance Training instead.

Lack of the 51-point BM talent in a few cases: As much fun as the exotic pets and four extra talent points are, I… really like my current pets, a lot. Plus, I don’t know if the DPS increase from that last talent will be worth it when you can put the points elsewhere. So while it may sound like Beast Master Blasphemy, I’m actually really torn on this talent. I’m sure it will be theorycrafted out before long but until then, I’m not too sure.

Focused Aim vs. Go for the Throat: Considering that the level 80 gear I have seen seems to have a disturbing lack of Hit Rating on it, Focused Aim is sort of looking like a mandatory talent. But in many deep-BM talent builds that would mean forgoing Go for the Throat, and in my experience and testing on the Beta server, Go for the Throat is just… ridiculously better than Bestial Discipline in terms of pet focus regen. I figure for now I will probably opt for GftT on Tawyn (who is hit-capped) and Focused Aim on Lunapike (who is far from hit-capped. The stat just seems to avoid her. It’s depressing.) We will have to see how things go at 80.

Okay, now on to the specs! Remember, these are all designed for level 70 (not 80) and general Burning Crusade PvE.

Full-on Deep Beast Master: 55/6/0. This is pretty straightforward and nabs you all the deep Beast Master goodies including the Exotic Pets and then starts you down the Marksman path. Its biggest perk is being able to go right out and get your devilsaur or core hound today, but its drawbacks include the fact that honestly I don’t know if you’d be better off DPS-wise with the Marksman talents first. Which leads me to…

Getting Your MM Talents Out of the Way First: 45/16/0. Gets you all that lovely stuff in Marksman including Go for the Throat, at the cost of the top-tier BM talents. Once WotLK hits and you start leveling you will have just enough points to snag all the deep-BM talents and you will eventually end up with 55/16/0 as you would above… you’re just doing it in a different order. I would also be up for variations on this theme (46/15/0, to nab 2/2 Invigoration, perhaps).

Double the Fun: 40/21/0. This was my latest test build on Beta and you guys, The Readiness/Bestial Wrath kung-pow-combo is pretty hard to top in the Fun Department. The way I see it, with this build, you’d have two options once Wrath arrives: you can either get The Beast Within for even MORE epicness and then continue down the BM tree (sans the Beast Mastery talent, though), or you can continue down MM and wind up with Trueshot. No idea, without doing the testing, if either of these builds would be considered truly-top-level viable at 80, but they are fun to think about. The biggest downside of this build is that you are missing the fun new BM stuff. But… double Big Red Tux!

Well, those are my ponderings this morning. Just to provide some interesting comparison (and also cause I can’t make up my mind) I think Tawyn will pick something similar to one of those specs, and Lunapike something similar to another one of those specs. When was the last time I mentioned that I love having two 70 hunters, again? /grin

My work shift today happens to be all evening (/sob!), so I can’t guarantee any updates tonight, but the rest of this week is looking pretty open for me (yay managers randomly encouraging me to use up my vacation hours!) so I will be there bringin’ you all the news and stories as they come. Your own thoughts on Beast Master specs? Want to (gently) point out any big errors I made or make some suggestions or sway me one way or the other? Lemme know!

And tell you a little story to make a point.

With all my spec testing lately and my latest entry on how my “relationship” to my pet, playstyle-wise, varied according to spec, I fear I may have accidentally given off some false impressions. So, I’m gonna clarify.

There are hunters of all specs who love their pets.

There are also hunters of all specs who really don’t care very much either way. This includes some BM hunters who are BM only for the numbers, for example.

The point that I was trying to make in my last post, is that I missed the feeling of splitting my damage with my pet. I missed knowing he was doing 35% of my DPS. It felt awkward knowing that the damage responsibility was basically squarely on my shoulders. It felt lonely to me.

When I say that, I am not at all trying to discredit the relationship you lovely MM and SV hunters have with your pets, or say that they aren’t important.

Tawyn was my first ever character and she was Marksmanship until level 55-ish.

The reason is because I had no idea what I was doing or what a spec was. So I asked my friends what to do with these newfangled talent points. At this point I’d actually started putting points into BM already but two different people completely mocked the idea of me spec’ing BM and told me Marksman was the way to go, so I promptly changed course and followed their advice.

Up I went through that talent tree and my owl Tux was there the entire way. He was my feathery little pocket tank. He was my leveling buddy. He didn’t dish out a lot of damage but he held aggro like a champ. I loved him dearly. I loved him just as much then, as a Marksman hunter, as I do now as a Beast Master hunter.

Really though, I was hungrily eyeing the Beast Mastery tree the entire time I was leveling. Heck, I went off and made Lunapike so I could have a BM hunter that my friends didn’t have to know about. There is a reason why I gave her a red kitty pet, aside from the fact that I think they’re cute. It was a conscious, symbolic choice because Lunapike was going to be my BM hunter.

That Little Red Kitty is level 70 now, by the way.

Anyways, back to Tawyn. I finally said “Ya know what, screw everybody else. I don’t care if they’re going to call me a noob now. I’m respec’ing.” So I did, and I’d like to say that I didn’t look back.

…except I did look back, once. Because it sort of scared me at first. Tux went from being my pocket tank to being this Big Red Owl of Doom. He was doing as much DPS as I was at the time, if not more. “I’ve created a monster!” I thought. I spent about a level as BM and then spec’d back to my Marksman safety zone. Tux went back to being my mild-mannered companion. All was well.

Then I started to miss the whole “fast and furious” playstyle of BM and the idea that Tux could be more than just my tanky friend. We could fight alongside each other, each doing equal damage. We could be unstoppable, together.

Together we went through the Dark Portal and stepped into Outlands and that is when I spec’d to Beast Mastery for good and since then I haven’t looked back. I wouldn’t have it any other way at this point. We fight together. He isn’t just there to keep the mobs away from me. He is there to buff me with his Ferocious Inspiration so I can in turn buff him with Kill Commands and tons of Focus, and we both act as an elegant killing machine, as One.

I have a special relationship with my pets as a Beast Master hunter. But that doesn’t mean I love them any more than I did when I was Marksman. That doesn’t mean I don’t value them any more than I did when I was Marksman (although in a gameplay sense, obviously you do have to value them somewhat more =P)

When I was experimenting with non-BM specs in Beta, I felt a certain detachment to my pets in terms of there not being nearly so much hunter/pet synthesis (one procs something for the other) and the reason I was forgetting Mend Pet is probably largely because I was busy trying to work out new rotations. Anyways, that is what I missed about being BM. I missed the hunter/pet synthesis. I didn’t love the pets any less just because I shuffled talent points around. That would be silly.

So! That is your Pike-story for the day. Hunters everywhere love their pets, and that is the way it should be. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, as always, for your comments and support and I will see you all next time.

So now all the BoP alchemy recipes start dropping for me. Now that I’m in Beta and can’t keep them. /sob

Anyways!

Today I spec’d 0/9/52 — Full Survival. Once again, I do not claim to be an expert on non-BM spec’ing, but it seemed like a decent set-up to me. Really the interesting thing that I noticed with Survival is that all the things I really liked about this spec also seemed to have an opposite and equal downside to them. So while the “wow” factor seemed to be there more than it was in Marksman, at the same time, the letdown factor was also here more than it was in Marksman.

Here, I’ll show you…

Things I Liked:
Expose Weakness
So many crits!! <3
Hunting Party
Explosive Shot, because it’s superfun
Knowing I have awesome traps

Things I Did Not Like:
Knowing Expose Weakness now only affects myself
So many crits… so much pulling aggro from my pet after a string of them.
Hunting Party is a nifty idea and not bad, but… really, it does so little, in the long run. I’m still a mana monster.
Explosive Shot is only superfun for so long, and when the novelty wears off it’s not a particularly exciting 51-pointer in my humble opinion.
Awesome traps either are not implemented currently, or I’m going crazy

Really, the hardest part of both this and the Marksman tree, was getting used to the idea that my pet is no longer important, other than as a meatshield to keep the enemy at range. I feel like I’m doing all the damage, which feels “off” to me. I even surprised myself when, more than once, I forgot to use Mend Pet and my Tenacity– tanking!– pet wound up dying. You’ve got to understand, I never forget Mend Pet. My pet rarely dies unless Shade of Aran has a vendetta against him or something. And yet once I get into a mindset of a non-BM hunter, I… forget to use it. Because I get focused entirely on myself. And I don’t like that. I miss being “us”.

I promise, this isn’t supposed to be some sort of “BM Power” rant or anything. Survival was a fun tree to explore, it had a lot of perks, and I wouldn’t mind exploring it further. I would also like to give the Marksman tree another (deeper) look, and also test all the specs on the training dummies. Because all my testing thus far has just been running around the world pewpew’ing mobs. I like to test in a sort of “open field” environment because that is where I will be spending a lot of my time when leveling.

But really, I can’t envision myself spec’ing away permanently. My tests have confirmed that, I think. Before, I was sort of wavering. Because some of the stuff in the other trees was finally starting to look really appealing to me. And they still do. But I can’t do it, I’ve gotta fight with my pet. It’s like, you know that Digimon Tamers episode where Takato was like “I really really want to fight together with Guilmon!” and then they bio-merged into that super awesome mecha thing?

…

…okay, never mind >.>