Somehow I missed the memo that Blizzard was changing the minimap to include an upfront clock, alarm, and stopwatch.It's a pretty neat idea.My favorite part is that you can switch the clock to read local time.This adds to time management tools located in the account setting to limit play time.
As I've mentioned before, I live in Las Vegas.It's a strange place, with time dimensions similar to World of Warcraft.You have to look pretty hard to find a clock or a window in one of the casinos and the floors are like mazes that are designed to disorient you.Why?They want you to stay there and spend your money.As far as I know, WoW has always had a clock, but until yesterday, you had to hover your mouse over it to see the time.You can always look around the room.I don't know how many times I've checked the time and wondered where the time went.I found it nice tonight to have it right in front of me.
Drysc gave a little insight into how the Arena seasons are scheduled over on the forums -- I had always thought that the Arenas were running on their own schedule (with the spaces in between augmented by when patches got released). But apparently the timing of Arena seasons has more to do with PvE content than anything else.
Strange, no? But true -- Drysc said that they want Sunwell Plateau gear to "circulate" a bit more before introducing a new Arena season. That means that the players running PvE content are actually calling the shots for when the Arena season ends -- if guilds take their time getting through the Sunwell raid, it may be a long time before we see any signs of Arena season 4.
That's interesting -- obviously a lot of players consider PvE and PvP to be completely different parts of the game, but not so with Blizzard. Apparently they consider them very much two sides of the same player base, so much so that even something as arbitrary as PvE gear distribution determines timing of the Arena seasons.
One of the most confusing things about a hunter's repertoire of spells is the exact use of Auto Shot. This ability is unlike the abilities of any other class, quite different from a warrior's swing timer, or a caster's wand shooting. Auto Shot is like a metronome, and the music of hunter DPS requires that we play according to its beat.
We've discussed Auto Shot a little bit in last week's introduction to Shot Rotation, but Auto Shot is much more complex than is first apparent from simply reading the ability's tooltip. First of all, there is a discrepancy between what the interface shows you of Auto Shot and what is actually going on. If you don't use any hunter addons, you may have great difficulty getting a feeling for any of what this article is about, because Auto Shot doesn't have any representation in the default UI. If you use an addon like Quartz or ZHunterMod, however, you'll be presented with a timer that looks something like a regular casting bar -- and while this Auto Shot bar will help a great deal, it is still not complete. No matter what, your imagination and inner sense of timing are going to have to do a good bit of work in getting your shots timed right.
Once you reach level 62 and learn Steady Shot, it's time to start getting a firm grip on this thing hunters must learn called "shot rotation." If you don't - just casting your shots willy-nilly, as soon as they come off of cooldown -- you'll end up wasting a lot more mana and doing a lot less damage than a hunter who has his or her shot rotations timed right.
The video embedded above is a handy example of two basic shot rotations which we'll look at in more depth here, and it can give you a basic sense for how the timing of all this is supposed to work. But if it still looks a bit confusing, fear not: today's Scattered Shots will help you to make your shots less scattered and more organized, with helpful charts and fundamental knowledge about how to do this rotation thing. It really ain't that hard -- just a bit of info can get you pointed in the right direction, determining the rotation which is best for you.
A user interface is an ever-evolving work of art. You can use it one way for a long time and then suddenly find one simple addon that lets you change everything and make it much better. Especially with all the problems that show up every patch, I've begun to look at my interface as a constant work in progress. As such, I'm usually in a constant state of getting rid of old addons, enjoying the ones I use now, and looking for new ones that might help me even more in the future. Every choice of what to put in or what to take out is a conscious decision about what will help make my game play smoother, more successful, and more visually interesting.
As hunters, there are a number of needs that we have which other classes don't have - and special hunter addons are there to help in many of those cases, while in other situations, one of the more generalized addons might fit our needs best.
Today I'll cover three of the most glaring interface problems for hunters and show you how I deal with them at the moment. In the comments section, feel free to share your own different interface issues, as well as your own solutions, for the benefit of our readers. Keep in mind that a user interface is an extremely subjective thing, and one solution may not work for everyone. Nonetheless, often times just sharing your idea will inspire someone else to vary it a little and make their own thing out of it, which is even better.
As usual, Drysc provides a disclaimer that Blizzard may change those plans. And of course we have no idea yet when Season 4 will drop, although the usual Arena Season timing tells us that it will likely be sometime in March of this year (possibly with the release of patch 2.4, although as usual, we have no idea if the patch will come sooner or later).
But if you spent all your honor on Season 1 gear when Season 3 started, time to start saving again. Merciless Gladiator is going on sale.
Somehow I missed the memo that Blizzard was changing the minimap to include an upfront clock, alarm, and stopwatch. It's a pretty neat idea. My favorite part is that you can switch the clock to read local time. This adds to time management tools located in the account setting to limit play time.
Drysc gave a little insight into how the Arena seasons are scheduled over on the forums -- I had always thought that the Arenas were running on their own schedule (with the spaces in between augmented by when patches got released). But apparently the timing of Arena seasons has more to do with PvE content than anything else.
This wasn't exactly unexpected (Blizzard has, after all, already put Season 1 gear up for purchase), but Drysc has confirmed that Season 2 Arena gear-- that's the Merciless Gladiator gear-- will be available for purchase with regular honor as of Season 4.
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