Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
Basically... hunters have just been dubbed the Most Loved Class in WoW. If the ultimate goal in this game is to have fun, then hunters own the place and the rest of you lesser-classes just live here.
The Hunter mana regeneration tool, Aspect of the Viper, has been revised again. Currently, in live, it provides passive mana regen. It was recently announced that it was going to be changed to provide 100% of your damage as mana regen, but cut your damage output by 50% (less with talents). This lets the hunter switch it on when they need mana, fill up their mana pool, and switch back to Hawk to DPS some more, as opposed to being in Viper all the time as many hunters do these days.
Apparently, though, it was just a bit too powerful, as many users have commented. Hunters with good gear were filling up their mana bar way too fast. So it's going to be changed again, this time to restore a percentage of your base mana each time you hit. While this does do away with some scaling issues, it seems to introduce others. For instance, this makes a fast weapon vastly more desirable for mana regen. But (say it with me) it's still beta, so I'm confident that they'll work out any game-breaking flaws there may be in this new incarnation.
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
The one hunter-pet that hadn't had his special spell revealed already in the Wrath of the Lich King beta was our beloved, delicate, diminutive Rhino. Say no more! The 8885 WotLK beta-build has fixed that, and with a vengeance.
Stampede! /flop-faint from joy
You are invited to download the YouTube version (29MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (116MB) here.
As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!
Scattered Shots is here for you. As long as you're a hunter, you get to tell us what to write about, and we get to ignore you do whatever you say.
I love these months just before the next expansion is released. There's such a sense of anticipation, where the whole game, including your own class, is in fluid motion, constantly changing. This is the time when the developers actually want you to give them your feedback, to tell them what they're doing wrong; and -- strange as it may seem -- there is actually a chance they will listen to you, take your advice, and actually implement whatever change you suggest!
That's why the last few days I've had my eye on the beta hunter forums, looking for the latest ideas about my favorite class. Lots of the player suggestions they have there are really neat, but unfortunately there's also some of what we call "QQ" (which stands for whining because it looks like two little eyes with tears coming down). It's hard to get good suggestions on the forums without also getting bad QQ. Sometimes when forum-goers clash, they get into an annoying argument and the whole thing devolves into boring name-calling.
So let's weed out all the muck and jumble, shall we? Let's just cut to the prime-rib-beef of what really good ideas are out there and skip all the blah blah blah about who's stupid, who's an idiot, and who's just dumb.
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
Yes, Silithids are Exotic pets and Marksman and Survivalists need not apply. Silithids are classified as Cunning pets, so you get a really nice selection of spells you're not going to have seen elsewhere. They're not PvE or PvP-specific, but can be build to focus more on one of these aspects than the other.
Honestly, any pet that looks more like Scourge than a Beast isn't going to find a place in our stable. But if you thought Ravagers just weren't freaky enough, then you're in for a treat.
You are invited to download the YouTube version (44MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (169MB) here.
As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!
There is a surprising amount of new and interesting things in the latest beta version, build 8885, for the Hunter class. Let's start things off with a bang:
Aspect of the Viper changed to: The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, instantly regenerating mana equal to 100% of the damage done by any ranged attack or ability, but reduces your total damage done by 50%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
That's a total reworking of the skill. Now it's sort of a cross between Evocation and Shamanistic Rage, but with no cooldown. If you need some mana back, just turn it on and go crazy for a little while. Your DPS will suffer a bit, but you'll have full mana by the end of it. I like the idea.
This week's comic I have decided to do by hand while waiting around for various people and events to catch up to my time line. In other words, the only thing I used my computer for this week was some minor touch ups, framing, straightening, and of course sticking it up here for all of you to razz.
I don't know how common a problem this is for other people, but when I'm actually playing World of Warcraft in the same room as my significant other, he tends to use me as his hotkeys. I'm the "M" key when he wants to know where we are on the map, for instance. I don't know if this is something that happens with everyone who plays in the same room as another person, or if it is just a singular case. Do any of you have instances like this one where you end up being the macro, hotkey, or info guide for someone else?
For the record, I'll go back to doing things with photoshop next week. Small drawings are evil.
See you next week!
Gallery: Barrens Chat
Barrens Chat is a weekly comic strip that has gone back in time to the good old days of markers and pencils. Although the emo oozes were shiny, and the water elemental looked like a fun time, nothing beats some retro action. Don't worry, everything should be back to normal next week!
David B covered the PetEmote addon way back in the beginning of this year, and now the Great Green Hunter has posted some really great ideas for custom pet emotes, for a few different families of Hunter pets. PetEmote lets your pet automatically show up in your emote text randomly, and is really good for giving your pets a little more personality of their own -- instead of just doing what you say all the time (and eating all of the food you've got to buy), PetEmote can make it seem like your pets are doing their own thing: chasing a stray bug that passes by, flicking their tails, or "giving you a sly look."
GGH's descriptions are really great, but of course whatever goes in the "Localization LUA file" in the PetEmote addon folder is what shows up in the game, so you can customize it as necessary. If you want to say your cat "waggles his butt, ready to pounce," you can do it.
Of course, if you think of your pet as just a DoT you have to feed, you might not be so interested. But having a pet and keeping track of where it is is such a huge part of the Hunter class (though PetEmote works for Warlocks as well) that giving your pets a little more personality goes a long way in game.
BRK can have his gigantic Rhinos (OK, fine, I'm getting one of those, too), but I'll take this beast -- a slavering, rampaging, murdering... baby polar bear as a Hunter pet. Seriously? How does this thing even attack? The graphics, cute as they are, don't really look like they're done -- kind of just seems like a bear with a baby mask on. But sure enough, the pet is called an Arctic Grizzly Cub, and can be found as early as 69 in Dragonblight. This may not stay tameable on the live realms, of course, but if it does, it could be the cutest thing ever to tear apart the Alliance in Eye of the Storm.
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
Do you understand that? Are you paying attention? Big. B.I.G. Huge. Massive. A whole lot of air-displacement. You may need to buy a bigger monitor.
Taurens, your dream of have a pet bigger than you is totally realized.
And if there was ever a pet that deserved to be a mount and one's pet, this guy is the best reason ever to start email-bombing Blizzard to develop that capability.
The Rhino is a Tenacity pet; it's a bad-@ss tank, baby. It doesn't do the DPS of a Ferocity or Cunning pet, but it has one of the best new pet-talents there is, Blood of the Rhino. That 40% bonus to healing includes everything from direct heals, to the hunter two-piece tier-five bonus, and even bandages.
As of this writing, Blizz hasn't released the Rhino's unique spell - every pet-class will have a unique spell in Wrath of the Lich King - but when they do, we'll be sure to let you know what it is.
Rhinos... commence freaking out; all social-nicety rules have been suspended.
You are invited to download the YouTube version (30MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (97MB) here.
As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
It's like Hunter Paradise in the land of hunter pets, lately, no? You need a tanking-pet? Gotcha covered. DPS? Yeah. Stealthy, tricky, neat-o, and maybe even make your lunch for you? No sweat, we're loaded with potential heart-warming killers for you hunters now.
"But what about fluorescent, BRK?"
Ooo. That's a new one... let's check the menagerie...
Yes! Wasps! And check out Sting! Still breathing? Yeah!
You are invited to download the YouTube version (44MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (153MB) here.
As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!
I didn't realize until right now that that was Radiohead's National Anthem sneaking into the WoW Insider Show's theme song -- shows how much I listen to the cool mix of Warcraft sounds that Duncor put into our intro. But yes, if you listen to this week's WoW Insider Show, now available on WoW Radio's website and over in iTunes, not only do you get the dulcet tons of my voice, Turpster's accented vocalizations, and the stylings of WoW Insider's Amanda Dean, but you also get to hear a little bit of Thom Yorke's band as well. And, you'll hear us talking about:
How the downranking changes might affect both PvE and PvP, among a number of other changes coming in the beta
And lots of other stuff, including Turpster's appearance on How I WoW, and all kinds of emails from listeners, including a tip about a mobile Armory app, and whether I'm still a Shaman fan or not (I am, but frankly I'm slipping a bit -- Hunters are just so much more fun).
If you'd like to email us about something you hear on the show, please do: the address is theshow@wowinsider.com. Enjoy the show this week, and we'll see you next Saturday as always over on WoW Radio for the WoW Insider Show.
About a month ago, we posted in anticipation of a pet name generator that Petaholics Anonymous was working on (especially of interest to me, since I've been playing my Hunter like crazy lately), and now the Pet-o-licious Namerator is now up and running. Right now, I've got a raptor that I've named Jumpy, but I very well could have named it "Bahir" or "Claws," both good names out of the Namerator. As was decided back on the poll, PA has apparently put the names into Silly and Serious categories, so you choose your pet's family and whether you want a silly or serious name, and you can choose from the ones that pop out (and if you don't like any of them, you can click Generate again and you'll get more).
If you've got a great pet name that's not in there, you can submit some more, as well, and apparently Bats are the most needed category (though I really love "Guano" as a silly Bat name, and "Vlad" as serious -- why would you need anything else?). Definitely some fun ideas in there for Hunters to choose from. Unfortunately, we'll probably still see Hunters going around with their pet "Cat" following them (so boring!), but maybe this will help.
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
Ki-MEER-Uh.
Seriously, we honked up the pronunciation of this one, and big time. But it's much too late to remaster the silly movie, so just bear with us as we say it improperly. Again and again and again. Please?
The other thing we flubbed is the "or" part of our macro:
/use [pet:cat/chimaera] roast clefthoof
Not a comma, but a slash. Tell ya something about making movies... post-production is a PITA.
Chimaeras are next in our look at the Wrath of the Lich King hunter-pets. This is the first Cunning pet we've tried, and we like this tree a bunch. The Chimaera may not be as pretty or as big or as exotic as the other pets we've reviewed, but it has something special in the form of its Froststorm Breath spell. It's a doozie!
And because we haven't talked about the best way to tame a new hunter-pet, or the best macros to use to feed your pets, we're gonna throw that bit in as a bonus. Just for you!
You are invited to download the YouTube version (44MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (170MB) here.
As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!
Chalk up another piece of evidence for just how trivial the old world stuff will be when Wrath releases -- here's a video of a Hunter at level 77 (on the beta servers, obviously) soloing the original raid boss herself, Onyxia. There's a little more info about how it was done over on the WarcraftMovies page -- the only way to deal with all the whelps was to max out AoE, so he used a special talent blend just to do this. And it looks like he just dodged or ate the Deep Breaths, as I doubt even a 77 Hunter would be able to put up enough "dots" to down her before she can do too many. Roar of Sacrifice also got a lot of usage -- it's a pet talent that lets a Hunter avoid half of his pet's health in damage. And he says the two-piece set bonus from Hunter T5 helped a lot, too -- over the fight it added up to quite a bit of healing.
Not too shabby. And at 77, this means there's still three levels (not to mention all the endgame gear) to grow. Maybe the fact that Blizzard is revamping/replacing the old endgame isn't so bad after all -- when it's this easy for the highest level players, it's time to move on. Unless, of course, they make soloing Ony an achievement.
The Hunter mana regeneration tool, Aspect of the Viper, has been revised again. Currently, in live, it provides passive mana regen. It was recently announced that it was going to be changed to provide 100% of your damage as mana regen, but cut your damage output by 50% (less with talents). This lets the hunter switch it on when they need mana, fill up their mana pool, and switch back to Hawk to DPS some more, as opposed to being in Viper all the time as many hunters do these days.
From his video guides to Karazhan For Hunter Dummies, nobody covers raid Hunters like BRK. Looking for more Hunter goodness? Check out our non-raid Hunter column, Scattered Shots or the WoW Insider Directory of Hunter Guides.
There is a surprising amount of new and interesting things in the latest beta version, build 8885, for the Hunter class. Let's start things off with a bang:
Barrens Chat is a weekly comic strip that has gone back in time to the good old days of markers and pencils. Although the emo oozes were shiny, and the water elemental looked like a fun time, nothing beats some retro action. Don't worry, everything should be back to normal next week!
David B covered the PetEmote addon way back in the beginning of this year, and now the Great Green Hunter has posted some really great ideas for custom pet emotes, for a few different families of Hunter pets. PetEmote lets your pet automatically show up in your emote text randomly, and is really good for giving your pets a little more personality of their own -- instead of just doing what you say all the time (and eating all of the food you've got to buy), PetEmote can make it seem like your pets are doing their own thing: chasing a stray bug that passes by, flicking their tails, or "giving you a sly look."
I didn't realize until right now that that was Radiohead's National Anthem sneaking into the WoW Insider Show's theme song -- shows how much I listen to the cool mix of Warcraft sounds that Duncor put into our intro. But yes, if you listen to this week's WoW Insider Show, now available on WoW Radio's website and over in iTunes, not only do you get the dulcet tons of my voice, Turpster's accented vocalizations, and the stylings of WoW Insider's Amanda Dean, but you also get to hear a little bit of Thom Yorke's band as well. And, you'll hear us talking about:
About a month ago, we posted in anticipation of a pet name generator that Petaholics Anonymous was working on (especially of interest to me, since I've been playing my Hunter like crazy lately), and now the Pet-o-licious Namerator is now up and running. Right now, I've got a raptor that I've named Jumpy, but I very well could have named it "Bahir" or "Claws," both good names out of the Namerator. As was decided back on the poll, PA has apparently put the names into Silly and Serious categories, so you choose your pet's family and whether you want a silly or serious name, and you can choose from the ones that pop out (and if you don't like any of them, you can click Generate again and you'll get more).
Subscribe
