Category Archives: steady shot

Hunter Kindergarten: Intro to Steady Shot

So, you’ve reached level 50 with your hunter. Congratulations! One of my hunters just hit level 50 as well! His name is Althalor, and he’s a very deliciously good looking Blood Elf who lives with Tauren. This is him:

AlthalorLevel50

See, told you he was cute!

When you are level 50, you learn Steady Shot, and because this is a very important shot to all hunters, we’re giving it its own special post. Hunter Kindergarten is in session!

History Lesson: Steady Shot was introduced in Burning Crusade and originally you got it at level 62. It had a relatively short cast time, and it had to be used at very specific intervals to avoid “clipping” your Auto Shots, which would gimp your DPS. To get around this, many people made a macro which automated this process. As for me, well, that completely defeated one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed hunters so much, so I always hand-wove my Steadies.

With Wrath of the Lich King, Steady Shot was overhauled entirely. It was removed from being linked with Auto Shot so you no longer had to worry about timing, although its cast-time was made slightly longer. Unfortunately this meant all Beast Masters had to do was spam Steady over and over, which was heinously boring to me just as using the macro was in Burning Crusade, and it almost had me switching specs.

Never fear, Blizz came along with a Steady Shot nerf and an Arcane Shot buff and here we are today!

Today’s Steady Shot: Steady Shot, in and of itself, is not a very good shot, damage-wise. In fact, it’s pretty bad. For a lot of hunters, it does less damage than Auto Shot.

I see you raising your hand there, ready to ask why we use it then. Simple: it’s there to use when you can’t use anything else. And remember, even a little extra damage is still extra damage.

Keep in mind that because Steady Shot does have a cast time, it cannot be used while moving, and in my experience, you will rarely use it in PvP.

How And When: In general, Steady Shot is for use when everything else is on cooldown. Beast Master and Survival Hunters in particular will find themselves using it more than a Marksmanship hunter would, because a Marksmanship hunter has a few more shots to use. You don’t want to use it more than is necessary, though, because it typically does not do as much damage as any of your other shots. There are of course exceptions to the rule; for example, I know of Marksmanship hunters with very high amounts of Armor Penetration who are able to drop Arcane Shot from their rotation in favor of more Steadies, since Steadies are positively affected by Armor Penetration. For the most part, though, Steady Shot should be the lowest rung on the ladder. Basically, you always want to be doing some sort of special shot to fill in your Auto Shots, and since Steady has no cooldown, it fits the bill a lot of the time.

Glyph of Steady Shot is a very good glyph that many hunters tend to use, because pretty much all specs are using Serpent Sting now for various reasons and because a 10% boost to a shot that you are using so frequently is definitely not bad. Keep an eye out for it, and snag it when you can!

Warnings!: For a low level hunter who already has mana issues, Steady Shot is really going to exacerbate them. Some leveling hunters opt to forego using Steady Shot very much at these low levels to avoid this issue. Others, like me, JUST HAVE TO USE IT NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE SHOT ROTATIONS ARE FUN AND SQUEE.

*cough*

You try it out for yourself and decide. >.>

Conclusion: Steady Shot has come a long way. It was designed to be a “filler shot”, was inadvertently turned into our main shot, and has finally been tuned into actually being a filler shot. Don’t treat him too badly, though; we may have broken up with him but he’s still a decent friend when no one else is around.

…nice guys finish last, don’t they…? *gently pats Steady Shot*

Hunter Kindergarten: Intro to Shot Rotations – The Motion Picture

As promised, here is Pike’s Official Intro to Shot Rotations Movie!

Couple things before I begin:

1.) Kill Command is a move that you can use anytime you crit. You learn it at level 66, not level 68 like I said in the movie… sorry about the oral typo there. /blush

2.) I apologize that my voice sounds somewhat congested, my allergies are pretty terrible this time of year.

3.) My Kill Command is keybound to alt-tilde, hence the sound of a frantic jamming of keys anytime I use it.

4.) I was originally going to have a quiet background music track as well (because honestly you just can’t go wrong with The Safety Dance) but I decided it was too distracting. So hopefully just my voice by its lonesome can hold your interest. =P

Enjoy and hopefully you can learn something from this, I worry that maybe it’s not the clearest video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxLGFv1skh0&hl=en]

Two Subjects, One Post

I remember when I was about to hit 70 on Tawyn. I remember frantically running around Netherstorm, doing quests and killing random things, slooooowly watching my experience bar inch towards the end of the row, knowing it wouldn’t be long before that experience bar disappeared and my game experience would all change.

I had a similar feeling today with Lunapike. Except that it wasn’t for level 70. No… it was for level 62.

I had been waiting for this moment for a while and I’d actually prepared for it in advance; knowing halfway through level 61 that my [Ironstar Repeater] would be far too fast of a weapon to have so I found another quest that I did specifically for a bow that was sort of a side-grade but had a beautiful 2.80 speed.

The second I dinged I flew to Shattrath, hopped into the portal to Thunder Bluff (Because Thunder Bluff is clearly superior to Orgrimmar) paid a visit to my old friend the Hunter Trainer, hearthstoned back to Outlands, found the first random mob that I could, and unleashed a barrage of bona-fide Shot Rotation.

It was marvelous. Marvelous. Granted, it all feels sort of vanilla right now without Kill Commands to spice things up. But Steady Shot, oh Steady Shot, how I’ve missed ya. Welcome back, buddy.

And now for something completely different…

The other day I asked several fellow WoW-bloggers via Twitter if they told a lot of people about their blog. I got a few different responses, some people didn’t tell anyone whereas some people told friends and guildies. I myself didn’t come “out of the closet” to my friends and guildies until recently for various reasons, but the reaction has been rather positive so I’m pretty happy with that.

I wonder sometimes, though, if there’s a way to “plug” your blog on WoW without it sounding showy. Perhaps I’ve just yet to hit on it. But there’s a reason why when people ask me for hunter advice, I typically do not link them to my blog. Because I sort of fear that it will come off as sounding like I’m showing off or something.

Yesterday when I was playing Lunapike, I was approached by an Orc Shamaness who was extremely well-spoken (which always garners my immediate positive attention) and told me that I should look into investing in a Ravager for maximum DPS over my other two pets on that character– a cat and a windserpent. She said she had a level 70 hunter, to which I responded that I had one too (followed by the inevitable “Yes, I know this is my second hunter.”) We had a brief discussion about pets and it didn’t take long to realize that this shaman was very knowledgeable about hunters and especially pets. I was impressed and sort of wanted to bring up my blog because she seemed like a really neat person but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. Then she brought up Mania and Petopia and asked if I knew about them, to which I responded that yes I did, and in fact, if you look at Mania’s blogroll you’ll find my own hunter blog!

And that’s about when the conversation fizzled out and the shaman had to go and used Astral Recall to get to Shatt.

It’s sort of unfortunate that the conversation ended when it did, because I didn’t mean to come off as bragging about being on somebody’s blogroll, rather I was hoping it would enable me to sort of bring up my own blog, it just didn’t happen. Anyways, Orc Shaman on The Venture Co. who knows a lot about hunters, if you happen to be out there reading, I appreciate the fact that you offered to give me advice, even if it happened to be advice that I already “knew”. =P We need more people like you who are willing to give good advice to newer hunters in a friendly and very intelligent fashion.

Next time on Pike-TV: The Official Intro-to-Steady-Shot Post, Stats for Hunters Part 2, The Initiation of a new Character Spotlight Feature, and Oh-My-Gosh-Does-Pike-Actually-Have-A-Level-29-Resto-Druid.

Same Pike-time, same Pike-channel.