The Warcraft Hunter

I like to learn and experience new things, but at the same time I am a cautious and conservative person. So it’s handy to have someone around who will cajole me into doing something I never thought I was ready for. We have a player in our guild who claims to be able to get lost in a straight hallway, but by following her we are guaranteed to either come to a tragic death or find something amazing. It is the latter that we have dubbed the “omgwtfawesome!” place.

That’s what we found last night. After a quick run through Heroic Culling of Stratholme, I went to make dinner, and a few of my guildies went to Wintergrasp to try to win it for the Horde. When I logged back on I was immediately jumped on by two of them to join them for 25-man Vault of Archavon, which I had never dreamed I was ready for.

Not only was I ready, I somehow managed to top the DPS chart (actually, on my own Recount I had myself in 3rd, but two others had me at the top, so I choose to believe them :)). As it turns out, Vault of Archavon is pretty much just a DPS race between the Raid and the boss, and with only three trash pulls before getting to him. To be honest, the two tanks have to be good at what they do, and the healers have to be on top of their game since there can be some pretty heavy spike damage, but there really aren’t any tricks to this fight. If you don’t have him down in 5 minutes you’re going to wipe, so this is always a fast fight one way or the other.

Unfortunately, I lost out on the gear drops (2 items that would have been good), but I got my first Emblem of Valor…and that ain’t nothing!

Erik Raids and Instances Hunter, Instances, Raids, Warcraft

the first time I played a Hunter, I really had no idea what I was doing. I had no one to teach me how to play, and I did not know which sites to go to in order to learn. I had no clue about training, repairing, gear, ammo, you name it. For several kills I was even unaware that I had a gun, for crying out loud! I only found it by accident by hitting the “3″ key!

My point is, that you don’t know what you don’t know. And this applies at all levels of the game, and all levels of Hunter. So, I am going to make a level-by-level series of posts about the things that change at each level, as seen from the perspective of a Beast Master Hunter who is trying to level to 80. Why Beast Master? Because it has long been the best Talent Spec for leveling, and should remain so through the 3.1 patch.

My hope is to make players of Hunters aware of the things that can add to their character at various levels, and new strategies to use to level faster.

At Level 1 you have very few things you can do, so play style is really simple. All the mobs in the area where you character is “born” are neutral, so you have no fears about being attacked by mobs. This makes it easy to set up your attack and finish off one mob at a time. The simplest method of attack is to get to the max distance of whichever mob you want to attack, and then let loose with the Auto Shot, which should be “3″ on your main Action Bar. This will start the Auto Shot, which will keep firing automatically until the mob dies, goes out of range, goes into melee range, or you run out of ammo.

Of course, the mob will be coming after you after you shoot it, so you have two choices on how to react. Presuming the mob does not die on the way (and it will sometimes), you can either get ready to do a Raptor Strike on the mob to finish it off, or you can try to back up and get more shots in. I recommend the Raptor Strike method for a couple of reasons: 1) you will get skill-ups on your hand weapon; 2) Auto Shot does not work on the run, so you won’t get many more shots in, if you get any at all. I will introduce a new variant on the second method in an upcoming post, one that will prevent you from having to melee much at all.

There are a few important things to mention that are not Hunter-specific, and that will apply for most or all of your leveling, so I will mention them here:

• Check your loot for upgrades to your armor and weapons. At this level it happens frequently, and you may as well take advantage of it.
• Sell your gray items (except for upgrades, of course). Use the AutoProfit add-on or some other variant to do this quickly.
• Get more bags as soon as you can afford them. When you are questing, you don’t want to have to start dumping items that might sell for a bit of cash at the vendor.
• When questing, try to pick the lower level mobs if they have different levels. This applies only if the mobs are neutral to you, or if they can be picked off one at a time without fear of getting “adds”. You want to do this because you have a greater chance of killing the mob before it gets into melee range. You will kill faster, and take less damage.
• Make sure to finish the quests in the area before moving on. Many players will race to the next zone as soon as they can, but I think this is a mistake. “Wasting” quests means that you will have fewer quests done, leaving you to have to grind to get levels later on. Use one of the leveling guides listed to the right to help you plan your questing; they really help you get to 80 much, much faster than by trying to find them by yourself.
• Use the QuestHelper add-on, or some other reasonable substitute, to help you complete quests faster. It will show you exactly on the map where to go, and will tell you your next objective and how to get there faster. If used in conjunction with the leveling guide mentioned above, you will blaze through levels faster than you would believe.

That’s it for Level 1. My next several posts will be on even-numbered Levels, as that is when you get new spells (at least until the later levels).

Erik Basics, Leveling Basics, Leveling, Warcraft

Now that Blizzard has some new digs, it was time to do a little decorating. And for lawn ornaments, instead of plastic flamingos they decided to go with a 12-foot statue of an Orc on a Wolf. (Okay, I think when you ride them, they are actually Wargs, but I am not sure.)

So, what I would like to know is just who is this Orc? Is it Thrall? Simply a generic Orc? Also, is it proof positive that Blizzard likes Horde better?

Or is it simply that they hired the best home decorators ever?

Erik Amusing funny, Warcraft

And this time it is useful! Very useful, indeed!

Monday morning I snuck into Elwynn Forest to see the vendors at Darkmoon Faire in order to turn in my Nobles Deck and receive my Darkmoon Card: Greatness. This lovely little trinket boosts my Agility by 90 on equip, with a chance any time I do damage of boosting it another 300!

This card comes in three other “flavors”, boosting Strength, Agility or Stamina on Equip, but all will boost your top stat of these four by 300 when it procs.

So, how do you get one of these, I hear you asking. Well, you can purchase a Nobles Deck from players, or put together one of them yourself. The deck is assembled by collecting the Ace through Eight of Nobles, and then using one of the cards to form the deck. The cards themselves can be dropped by world mobs or bosses, and can also be created by Inscriptionists (Inscriptors? Scribes?), but they are random when created so it is not wise to trust this method (plus the mats are expensive).

The deck sells for about 9 to 12k on my realm, and the individual cards for a little over 1k each, with some being more expensive than others. I bought mine a card at a time as the deck was expensive compared to the cards.

Next up: Mirror of Truth, as soon as I have enough Emblems!

Erik items Hunter, trinkets, Warcraft

Depending on which kind of cat you tame, you might find that it automatically wants to go into stealth mode. This can be annoying, especially since it slows down the cat, and it will lag behind whenever you are running. In addition, it takes a lot longer for it to attack mobs. Granted, it will do more damage at least initially, but this small advantage is outweighed by the inconvenience.

This is often seen as a bug, much like the Cower and Growl bugs that are well known to hunters. However, the stealth issue is easily resolved, or at least it always has been for me. All you need to do is open your pet’s spell screen, right-click on the Prowl button, which should turn off the auto cast for prowl. This is what stops the pet from automatically going into stealth mode.

Now, to remove the pet from stealth mode, all you need to do is click on the Prowl button one more time — a simple left click this time. This is a one time cast, and with the auto cast turned off it is a simple toggle between stealth and normal mode.

My experience has been that this fix does not switch back, even when switching pets in and out of the stable. The only time I have seen Prowl turned on by itself is when I have tamed a new pet. If anyone else has seen it differently, please let us know in comments.

Erik Pets Hunter, Pets, Warcraft

Or is that amusing?

While I was doing my daily quests in onslaught harbor, I happened to get a very interesting drop from one of the Gryphon riders. It was the first time I had ever gotten an epic world drop. However, it turned out to be more amusing than useful. Then again, amusing can be useful.

What I got was the Super Simian Sphere. This is a trinket that when used turns you into a gorilla inside a pink bubble! While there are no increases to any stats while this occurs, the reactions from the people around you are worth far more than any stats could possibly give you.

This effect lasts for five minutes, and has a one hour cooldown. I cast it once while I was still in onslaught harbor just to see what it looked like. The next day I ran an instance with my Guild (Utgarde Pinnacle), and I kept it in my bags but did not wear it. Once we killed the final boss, I quickly switched out my trinket and used my Super Simian Sphere. The reaction was well worth it!

One of my Guild mates got a screenshot of me as a monkey on the throne of King Ymiron, with my trusty cat at my side. Once I talk him into forwarding the picture, I will post it for all to see.

One day, I hope to have a large gathering of people in some major city all casting this trinket at the same time. If you happen to have this trinket, please comment and let us know your faction and realm. Let us amaze and amuse our fellow players with this awesome ticket

Erik Amusing funny, items, trinkets, Warcraft

One of the coolest pieces of software I have ever seen in a long time is a program called Wow Matrix. It helps you manage your Warcraft add-ons, removing the necessity of searching the Internet for the various add-ons that you might want to use, get updates for, or even search for. Not only that, it will install them for you as well as update regularly.

When you open the program, you have two tabs that you can look at. One shows you the add-ons that you currently have installed and whether they are up to date. The second tab shows a long list of add-ons that are available to be installed. On both tabs they give a short description of what the add-on does. This makes it really easy to pick which add-ons that you want to add.

I would be careful about adding too many add-ons at once though. All add-ons affect the user interface in some way, and too many changes at once could be quite confusing. Until you get used to using an add-on, you don’t always know how to manage the configuration. If you have more than one new add-on, it might be confusing as to which of them is affecting your user interface in a negative way. I currently limit myself to one new add-on per day, so I can get used to what ever an add-on is doing for me. Then once I have the configuration exactly the way I want, I can add a new one without fear of getting too confused. And at my age that’s an important thing!

Wow Matrix is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux… but I have only used it for Windows, so I cannot speak to how it works on the other operating systems.

Erik Add Ons, Basics Add Ons, Basics, Hunter, Resources, software, Warcraft

How do you get to Level 80 fast in Warcraft?

This is the question that most beginning players want to know. For that matter, most intermediate players don’t know very much about this either. That’s not surprising, given that there is so much in this game to know. So I have come up with a list of things that every player who is leveling a character should try to do:

1. Get bags. If you only have one bag, then you will quickly fill up and find yourself running back to town in order to sell things to the vendor or turning quests, rather than staying out and finishing more quests the same area. Besides, the money that is spent on bags is easily made up with the extra vendor trash or other items that you will pick up while farming, grinding, or questing.

2. Get plenty of rest. And by rest, I mean that when you logout you should do so in a major city or an inn. When you do this, your rest bonus doubles. When your character is rested, it earns twice the XP that it normally would when killing mobs. Every time you kill something it eats away at this rest bonus, so the more rest bonus you have the faster you will gain XP.

3. Use good add-ons. There are many add-ons that help with questing, either directly or indirectly. Some will simply show you your current coordinates, and others will pinpoint exactly where you need to go in order to finish certain quests. I will be making more posts about add-ons in the future.

4. Use potions and scrolls. Potions and scrolls that increase your stats temporarily can help speed up the process of killing mobs, as well as preventing you from dying. Dying unnecessarily is one of the biggest wastes of time when leveling, so it makes a lot of sense to prevent this. If you have gathering professions, they will more than pay for the potions and scrolls.

5. Use a guide. There are many good guides available to help you choose which quests to do in which order. This saves a massive amount of time in leveling, for so many reasons. First, they help you save time by chaining quests together. This means you are picking up quests at the same place as you are dropping off others, and picking up items and quests in the same place that you were killing mobs for others. This increase in efficiency can easily triple the speed at which you level. Check the list of guides available on the right side of this page. My current favorite is Joana’s Horde Guide, but there are many others that work well. They are usually constantly updated so they stay accurate.

6. Don’t get hung up on finishing every single quest. In many areas there are group quests at the end of chains that are pretty much impossible to solo. While hunters have a much easier time soloing group quests, not all of them are possible to do by yourself. Remember that you can always come back and finish these later, especially if you see people advertising for others to help them with this quest. This is a lot more efficient than spending a bunch of time looking for people to join you. You may as well spend that time doing other quests instead of hanging around waiting for someone.

7. Make sure to repair and restock whenever you get the chance. When you are near a vendor check to see what they sell and whether you need it. This can be food or ammo or healing potions or anything that you need while questing. The last thing you want to do is spend a bunch of time getting to a remote area to finish a quest only to find that you need to go back for something that you could have gotten while you were in town.

8. Get a bank alt. This is a character that does nothing but hang around an Auction House and bank. You can mail items to and from this bank alt to your main character. This is another massive savings in time, because you don’t need to spend time flying back and forth to major cities. Later on, you can switch roles between your main character and bank alt should you want to.

As you can see, all of these tips are intended to help you prevent yourself from wasting time. Wasted time is the enemy of fast leveling. More than anything else, time is the most valuable resource in the World of Warcraft.

Erik Basics, Leveling Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Warcraft

A friend of mine told me about a great website that objectively rates your gear and shows you which instances and raids that you can expect to do well on currently. It also shows you which instances and raids you can expect to get upgrades from.

When you enter your character name and realm, it looks up your current gear based on what is in the wow Armory, and compares it to what you ought to have.

When I checked out my main character on this site, it listed three issues for me to look at. The first was one low-level item, the second was upgradeable enchants, and the third was one unenchanted item. This gives me a really good idea about what I should go for in terms of my gearing.

For instance, I know that the next thing I need to do in terms of reputation is to get myself revered with Knights of the Ebon Blade. They have an enchantment for the head slot that will give me extra attack power. This is the one unenchanted item that I have, and thus it is the most important thing that I can do to improve my enchantments.

Second, my worst item is a trinket that I am already working to replace. Only after both of these items are done will I actively seek to improve other gear. Of course, if I end up getting better gear I will accept the upgrades, but it won’t be what I am actively working towards.

The assessment also takes a look at sockets and gems, and looks at hit rating. In my case, my gems are fine but my hit rating still needs 92 more to cap.

There is an area on the report where it says that talent builds and talent checks are under development, so presumably it will also at some point begin to check your talents to determine whether you have chosen correctly. I am not sure how this will be implemented, but I am looking forward to seeing it.

At the very bottom there is a summary of your gear given in both numeric and graphical form. The numeric is simply displayed as a PVE gear score, which in my case is 318.29. The graphical display is in two parts: the top part shows you which raids and instances you should expect to get gear upgrades from, and the bottom part shows you which raids and instances you should perform well in based on your current gear. In my case it shows me that I should be ready for the first three 10 man raids, and that I should also expect to get upgrades from here.

What I really like about this site is that it gives us an objective rating that we can show to Guild mates to explain why we think they are ready for something or not. More than this, it also shows us precisely what they can improve giving them clear objective goals.

The only thing that I would like to see different on this site, is for the grass to begin with the lower five man instances. Perhaps it does so for lower-level characters, meaning below 80, but I have some Guild mates at level 80 who simply aren’t ready for most of the instances below this. It would be nice to pinpoint exactly where they ought to be, but at least we can see which slots they most desperately need to improve. And the truth of the matter is, they really don’t need to be doing five man instances in order to get upgrades. They can do so by grinding reputation like the rest of us have.

We are looking at implementing this site as the means of a objectively rating whether or not people are ready to run instances with us at this level. Of course, what this site cannot do is objectively determine how well the player can actually play the game. You can be geared to the nines, and still play stupidly and cause a wipe in even the lowest instances. There is no website that can possibly check that — at least not now.

Erik Resources Hunter, Resources, Warcraft

Pets in the Cunning Tree are a sort of hybrid between tenacity and ferocity. In addition to this they have a couple of effects that might actually come in handy during some prolonged fights. Most of these pets are of the winged type such as bats and birds of prey, but also include serpents and ravagers.

I have not used any of these types of pets, so my comments must be taken with a grain of salt. I am only going to give you my impression of what these talents would be useful for, but it is possible that I may be way off base. In addition, since so many of the talents on this tree are the same as on Ferocity and Tenacity, I will only list the talents that are unique to this tree.

I welcome any comments from anyone who has used these pets, or has any insight on how well they operate under various conditions.

Tier 2

Mobility, 2 ranks. This talent simply reduces the cooldown on Dash or Dive by 8 seconds and 16 seconds. Not a huge bonus in my opinion, but might make grinding or farming a little faster.

Owl’s Focus, 2 ranks. There is a 15 and 30% chance that there will be no focus cost the next time your pet uses an ability within 8 seconds of the previous one. Maintaining focus for your pet is a lot like maintaining Mana for yourself. This could come in handy.

Tier 3

Carrion Feeder, 1 rank. Your pet can feed on corpses in order to generate health and happiness. This will save on the necessity to carry food for your pet, or at least reduce it. This seems pretty minor to me, especially as there are options in that beast master tree for hunters that pretty much reduce the necessity to feed your pet to zero.

Tier 4

Cornered, 2 ranks. Your pet does 25% and 50% more damage and is 25% and 50% less likely to be critically hit when it is at less than 35% health itself. This sounds like an excellent talent, but I would expect it to be ineffective in PVP or raid. In PVP, other players are less likely to focus on your pet then on you, and he made you want to be careful how much threat you generate. I may be wrong about this though, and I would be glad to hear about anyone’s experience with this.

Feeding Frenzy, 2 ranks. Your pet does 6% and 12% more damage to targets when they are below 35% health. I like this a little more than the previous talent, especially since it helps bring down mobs faster. If I were to get a pet in this tree, I am pretty sure I would grab this talent.

Tier 5

Bullheaded, 1 rank. This talent helps keep control of your pet by removing all movement impairing effects, such as freezing or rooting. I can imagine this being quite useful, but I don’t know how important this is compared to other talents. There are times when I wish that my pet was not stunned, but it is relatively rare and does not last for very long.

Roar of Recovery, 1 rank. When your pet rulers it restores 30% of your Mana over 9 seconds. Since there is a cooldown of six minutes on this I am not sure how useful it turns out to be. Since aspect of the Viper pretty much restores mana over a few seconds anyway, this might be less useful than it appears.

Wolverine Bite, 1 rank. A special attack that does extra damage and cannot be dodged block or parried.

None of these talents is a standout for me. Even as a group they do not impress me that much, but it may be that I am underestimating their combined effectiveness. I might try out one of these pets as a mere curiosity, but as I don’t expect it would be that effective I cannot imagine that I will spend a lot of time leveling it to the point where I can give it a fair comparison. Therefore, I am asking for anyone who has experience with these to please comment.

Erik Basics, Pets Basics, Hunter, Pets, Warcraft