Cataclysmic Preparation Part One: Bumping Up the Grind

I’m back in the game and ready to party! Too bad, it’s the end of expansion malaise and no one is running anything like they used to. A few months ago my guildies were farming up Frost Badges on a constant for the Tier 10 gear. Now we’re about half-way through Ice Crown (we’re a casual 10-man guild atm) and everyone’s pretty well-geared for the content we’re running. So I’m working on my paladin and learning to raid tank, (it’s funner than DPS? Maybe.) while Beti farms hard. Mostly focusing on the dreaded daily quests, I’ve learned a lot about making the most of them in the past few weeks.



First of all, that ridiculous 25 dailies a day cap. I used to think it would be impossible to do 25 dailies a day. I now knock out 24 before work every day. It’s actually amazing how many daily quests there are in Northrend. I’ve been working on maximizing my return over time and come up with a pretty good system that rewards 3-400g per day. I could do a lot more if more of my alts were high rep with the Argent Tournament, but I refuse to partake in the jousting unless I’m in ToC 5-mans now.



Here’s Beti's Daily Chore List:



1- (2/25) Start in Dalaran. I do the Cooking and Fishing daily before heading out. If I’m lucky the fishing daily will be in town, if not, it’s actually on my route. Worst case scenario it’s the blood pool daily, which is really out of my way. After that, time to head for Sholozar!

2- (4/25) The Basin. I’m a big-tongue lover, so I usually do the shinies quest and whatever the “Song of X” quest is for that day. The “kill 50 puppy men in increasingly disturbing ways for the rain god” quests take too much of my precious, precious time. I assume there are equivalent puppy dog quests to these, either quick or simple or both.

3- (6/25) Death’s Rise. Once again, I’m assuming you’re like me and have done all the quests and are exalted with everyone (except the Ashen Verdict /sigh). Again, two quick quests here. Kill the gryphon riders then raise them from the dead. Takes all of five minutes depending on the rider’s pattern.

4- (8/25) Ebon Hold. Vile and the Leaper. Shoot ‘em up and burn ‘em down!

5- (14/25) The Argent Tournament. Since most of these are random, it doesn’t really matter. I avoid the group quest and the jousting quest. The main thing here that I focus on is tying them in with the other Ice Crown dailies in a pattern for maximum efficiency.

6- (19/25) The other Ice Crown dailies. There are a few dailies from the floating arsenal. I always take the Blood of the Chosen and the Saronite Slaves quests. The rest are up to you really, Drag and Drop and the Blind the Alliance quests are near each other and sometimes synch up with the random Argent daily in that area nicely. You also get to hear cultists scream like a girl before being thrown to their deaths and shoot gnomes from the sky with a bazooka /glee. I also do the Ground Support daily in Jartleheim, it works well with Blood of the Chosen and the Saronite Slaves quests. If PvP is an issue on your realm, be careful of the Alliance NPCs running around the village and the Alliance PCs too I guess.

7- (21/25) K3 and the Polar Bear mount that never drops. Overstock and then whatever the daily is from the Viking ladies. Hope you like cheese. Cheese from Yetis. If you actually have the Polar Bear mount, you suck, and can go do something else I guess /glare. If you’re having a particular bad day, find the only non-faction player doing Overstock and start dropping your mines about 10yds in front of them.

8- (24/25) Oh dear Hodir. I do the Helm, Spy Hunter and Feeding Arngrim quests as they are all in the same general area and Spy/Arngrim have a nice synergy.



Note that I don’t do 25 quests, I’ve not found that one other quest that fits my pattern or synergizes well with my current route. Plus it’s nice to have an opening in case a guildy wants help with Threat From Above or during the holidays when there are always one or two extra dailies available.



There are plenty of other dailies out there to do though. I personally have no use for Kaluak dailies now that I’m exalted, the tiny amount of gold isn’t worth it, the Grizzly Hills dailies come up short in the gold as well considering you may have to engage in ‘world pvp’ just to do a quest. If you are a meaningless-and-no-one-else-in-your-guild-bothers reward fan like me, the Pa’troll dailies may be up your alley. Be warned though, they are actually 5 dailies, 4 of which only reward 3 gold per and the final reward is based on how quickly you do the other quests. If you are in it for gold, don’t bother, but if you want to be awesome, this ones for you.



I’ve found I prefer this method of acquiring gold to farming for the auction house. Farming is okay when I’m waiting for a random dungeon or when it’s for personal reasons (oh Gundrak hatchling….how many more must die in your name?) but making a full-time job of it is boring. That’s why I prefer dailies right now, there is a built-in game mechanic that won’t allow me to keep doing them for eight hours straight on one toon.



My only must-do daily right now is the fishing daily (and the polar bear mount daily, but that’s just until I get the mount) as it has the highest possible rewards for a single daily. Fishing is important because of the possibilities in the fishing bag are awesome. I’ve gotten the strand crawler, but have yet to get one of the jeweled or bone fishing poles. The gray trash in the bag can vendor from 2-100g if you’re lucky. For the first time today I got the Tiny Titanium Lockbox. It used to be the only source in the game for epic gems! That’s right, only fishermen had access to the epic gem market at one point. The fishing bag is also the possible source of one of two quest starter items, the Poison and the Water-logged recipe. The recipe and the poison both reward gold equivalent to a regular daily, the recipe also rewards 5 Dalaran Cooking Awards, so if you haven’t gotten all your cooking recipes or that snazzy Chef’s hat, it can be helpful. But, if you're maxed on your cooking and go the hat, you are able to auction it, Wowhead says it goes for an average of 50g, maybe more depending on your server.

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A New UI for ME

A Shift in Priorities in 3.3?

There are a few upcoming changes in 3.3, but few for Hunters so far:

Hunters


Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas. (Yay! I like to switch between Fenris and Varaha for group and solo stuff)

Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect. (Yay? Is there a PvE use for this?)

Talents


Beast Mastery


Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack. (kewl)


Pets


Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. (pet management just got easier)

Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20. (This seems like a nerf...not sure as I honestly never use cower, been a long time since my pet has been able to pull aggro off of a tank, may affect BM more than other specs, it may however be awesome sauce in addition to the changes to Avoidance for certain AoE bits of fight, definitely a boon to pet survival, but will require a macro to maximize usefulness, unless the pet gets smart enough to only use it when taking damage...)

Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.(sounds good and will merit a closer look at the Ferocity tree as it exists on the PTR

Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes. (sounds good to me)

Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%. (ah, synergy)

Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%. (Yes! Moonfire, my Spirit Beast, will make it to 80 before Cata!)

Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards. (good, I'm glad)

Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards. (see above)

Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite. (this definitely sounds like a buff, but I'm not sure how often a mob dodges when the pet is behind it...)

So, generally speaking no many changes to the class as a whole, a lot of pet changes though, which I'll cover in a later post. Today I want to talk about my favorite change, an overdue change in my opinion:

Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

Nothing is more annoying to me than hitting my Misdirect macro only to be told a "More Powerful Spell is Already Active". I wish they'd at least change the wording to something that didn't insinuate that my Misdirect was a lesser spell...

Anyway, we will no longer have that issue, stacking Misdirect and sending huge amounts of threat to the Rogue....TANK! I meant tank! But a poster on the WoW forums got me thinking. His 'concern' was that he would do less damage in 4 seconds compared to the 3 shots (or really 3 damage sources) that Misdirect utilizes now. I think, and many others who posted after him, that you can do a lot more damage in 4 seconds than compared to 3 shots. Especially if we consider the possibility of adding Rapid Fire to the top of our priority list. Currently the highest DPS priority list includes RF at the top:

RF>KS>ES>BA>SrS>Multi/AiS>SS

Of course this is a theoritical shot priority and not an opening shot rotation.
RF is used at the top of the priority list as it would maximize opening DPS, but is only actually used situationally. Could the change to MD shift the paradigm? Will RF become an actual opener now?
It may become more common that not using RF at the top of the opening rotation would be based more on specific encounters, bosses with a short enrage timer for instance.

Or would opening with Volley now be an option? No, no that's just silly, but at least we will be able to pull multiple targets again, haven't been able to do that since early BC.../sigh. I remember how one hunter in Karazhan discovered the change to Volley/MD....I guess I should've mentioned something before the pull, oh well.

Gearscore? Gearscore! GEARSCORE!?!?!

Oh GearScore....how I loathe you...no, I don't loathe GearScore, I love it, no I hate it...I, I'm undecided.

As anyone who's played WoW in the past few months knows GearScore (and others of it's ilk) is a handy little mod that will, at best application, give a smart player and guilds an idea of what level of content a given character will work best in based on their current gear(score). At worstest it's a tool for tools to be elitist jerks (and not the cool spreadsheet type of EJ either). It lends weight to the myth among 'bads' that gear=quality of performance (not going to say skill per se as bads don't know what skill is, skillz? yes, skill, no). One problem with 'raw' GearScore (checking score without checking the actual gear) is it's based on ILevel and not the actual gear so much. I could put on a caster ring that's Ilevel 258 and it would give a healthy bump to my GS. As long as no one inspected me in great detail, they'd never know. I've had people in my guild joke about gettin inappropriate gear for their class just to increase their GS (at least I think they were joking...it was Punx).

Despite the abuse of GearScore, I like it for almost the same reasons. I like having an in-game mod that says, yes, you are ready for ToC raids, at least 10 man content. It does bother me that I let it affect my gear choices. When I switched from Cryptfiend's Bite to dual Rondels I was able to switch out my hit trinket to a crit trinket and my GearScore dropped. I checked the numbers on femaledwarf and the change to the daggers and crit trinket was a noticeable increase, but the slight decrease in my GearScore bothered me needlessly.

I beleive players have embraced GearScore due to Blizzard's removal of 'gating' for progression. In 'Vanilla' WoW the paths to MC, Onyxia, BWL, AQ and Naxxramas were a series of attunement quests that involved a guild working together to get at least 40 members ready to just walk through the front door to begin raiding, to say nothing of minimum gear for raiding. Gear itemization in pre-BC was horrendous and really only a consideration at endgame levels. The same was true of Burning Crusade's early raid content, a rather simplistic quest series for Karazhan, that just meant running a few instances. And a series of raids and quests for Black Temple that was so complicated an actual flow chart was needed to follow it. But all of these were removed at some point near the end of BC and there are none in Wrath content at all. So with a lack of gating imposed by the devs, players have found third-party mods and in-game tools to create their own gating. If GearScore isn't enough of an indication of preparedness, and it's not, raid leaders will demand linked Achievements that prove that the player has at least attended the raid to a full clear at least once.

Some players complain that the whole thing smacks of elitism, and it does, but in the case of a successful raid environment, some elitism is required. But the system isn't perfect, myself and other guildies have been in plenty of scenarios where a person with an 'indicative' GS (a GS that suggest that the player would do well in the current content) fails in the reality of a raid. A Naxx 10 pug raid my friend was healing on his Druid where the average GS on the DPS (mostly hunters and mages) was around 4000, high enough for Ulduar and ToC 10. The highest DPS was around 1500. They wiped on Patchwerk when he enraged with 40% health remaining, the raid quickly disbanded after that. Players with a GearScore just under 4K should be able to produce at least 2500 dps, with the proper talents and rotations (read that as knowledge and skill).

I love GearScore, I hate GearScore, I think GearScore is filling in a gap that Blizzard left when they removed gating from the raid experience, I have to stop including GearScore as a stat when I'm itemizing!

Tired of waiting for Marrowstrike to drop.....

So I decided to start duel-wielding the Black Knight's Rondel. According to femaledwarf.com it's actually an upgrade for me from the Cryptfiend's Bite.



I think it may have to do with the fact that the daggers have enough hit rating that I can afford to trade out the Grim Toll and replace it with Mirror of Truth. My hit rating is now two measly points from cap. 99.99% chance to hit...I'll live with it for now. Also I have got to get a Nightmare Tear and start converting all my AP based gems and enchants to pure agility. All in all I've pretty much discovered that my current gear configuration works for me and I'm happy. Marrowstrike is still a slight upgrade from the Rondel's, but so slight that I'm no longer going to obsess over the polearm (or obsess less).

A-whooooo!