Hacked Account -- any experience?

[Ingmar]

The devilsaur is the best pve dps pet in the game, ahead of wolves. The 4 extra pet talent points are really quite nice.

That said I think both survival and marksmanship are ahead in theoretical top raid DPS terms but I doubt you care about that for now (if ever), and BM blows them away for soloability. Survival has better burst for PVP, if that is important to you.

[Nebu]

Survival has better burst for PVP, if that is important to you.

Question: Doesn't this burst depend on proximity to target?  I've found that my burst dps as a MM spec is pretty damn good from max range, but was better as Survival only when I was in close and could get added utility from traps.  In BG's being on the fringe of a battle helped me drop a lot more targets as MM spec.  Mayeb it's just a playstyle thing, but I found that survival dps was really lower when I played my hunter more like I did my mage (i.e. picking off targets from max range or kiting).

[Ingmar]

Survival has better burst for PVP, if that is important to you.

Question: Doesn't this burst depend on proximity to target?  I've found that my burst dps as a MM spec is pretty damn good from max range, but was better as Survival only when I was in close and could get added utility from traps.  In BG's being on the fringe of a battle helped me drop a lot more targets as MM spec.  Mayeb it's just a playstyle thing, but I found that survival dps was really lower when I played my hunter more like I did my mage (i.e. picking off targets from max range or kiting).

Not really distance related, although being close to get traps too doesn't hurt. Survival burst primarily comes from piling explosive shots into people from lock and load procs. With black arrow ticking away on top of that and aimed shot giving the mortal strike -heal effect (its low enough in marks that any survival hunter can pick it up), they can create a solid amount of pressure. That said I don't really know marks or have a max level hunter myself, I'm just giving the conventional wisdom.

[Nebu]

Not really distance related, although being close to get traps too doesn't hurt. Survival burst primarily comes from piling explosive shots into people from lock and load procs. With black arrow ticking away on top of that and aimed shot giving the mortal strike -heal effect (its low enough in marks that any survival hunter can pick it up), they can create a solid amount of pressure. That said I don't really know marks or have a max level hunter myself, I'm just giving the conventional wisdom.

That helps a lot.  I think I may respec survival and play a few rounds of WG to see what I think of it with my current playstyle.  I was survival spec for a few days in the past, but found myself getting in too close to try to maximize my output.  Maybe that was an unnecessary decision on my part. 

[Ingmar]

What you might not really like about it is you can't really do it on demand. You kind of have to just get your DoTs/aimed shot debuff up on someone and kite around and wait for the lock and load proc, I think. Frost trap is good for that, I suppose since it can trigger the procs, and it helps you kite.

[Nebu]

What you might not really like about it is you can't really do it on demand. You kind of have to just get your DoTs/aimed shot debuff up on someone and kite around and wait for the lock and load proc, I think. Frost trap is good for that, I suppose since it can trigger the procs, and it helps you kite.

In BG's and WG I don't have to kite.  There are so many people around that I either get zerged or the zerg kills my target.  Perhaps Survival is a preferred arena spec and I can completely see why.  In the BG's, I'm not sure the benefits are as great.  I think MM provides a higher sustained dps at the expense of survival's greater utility and spike damage.  Then again, I don't claim to be a mechanics expert. 

[Ingmar]

Thinking about it, its probably fairly easy to come by lock and load procs in a target rich environment like WG, since you can get bunches of people with frost trap or whatever.

[Morat20]

I like standing back, using my pet to keep mobs off me, and shooting them. Frequent use of intimidate helps. For PvP, I like....standing back, sending in my pet when necessary. I normally keep it close to me, and stealthed if it's a cat, to deal with rogues or other people that would like to examine my kidneys from melee range.

Mostly I just plunk away at targets of oppurtunity, although it's been so long since I PvP'ed that I sincerly doubt anything I used to know works anymore. I'm still weepy from when they stopped letting me drop Viper stings on every mana-user I could see.

I'm an engineer, and my entire PvP philosophy boils down to one thing: If I can't get them to kill me because I'm good, I'll get them to kill me because I'm annoying. Hunter's Mark rogues, lay traps, play "interrupt the spell caster", and make good use of any engineering trinkets or toys that can annoy, harass, irritate, or otherwise cause another player to stop playing smart PvP and kill the crappy-ass hunter with low skills.

I honestly think that's why my mage was frost specced. It's not about killing. It's about annoying the shit out of you, so that you focus on me instead of the people who are actually killing you.

I like Beastmastery. To me, the whole point of a hunter is to have a pet, and to kill you from far away. And to fake death if you catch on. Engineering I just kept because, dammit, it sucks but I like the toys. My world enlarger, for instance. Net guns. The death ray. God, I had so much fun with that death ray back in my 40s.....

[Nebu]

Your philosophy is so much better than mine.  I chose a hunter because it was a class that would allow me to experience the most content as a solo player.  I'd much rather play a healer, but they shine best in a group and I'm generally antisocial unless among friends.  DAoC ruined me as I always knew the people I was grouped with.  The predictability was very satisfying. 

[Ingmar]

Well good news! Engineering is really pretty good these days.

[Morat20]

Well good news! Engineering is really pretty good these days.

So I heard. I'm excited by the notion of "Tinkering" (that's the engineering sorta-like enchanting yourself, takes the enchant slot? I'm dying to work out what you can do with that). What's going to take the most time, I think, is sorting through my old schematics, grabbing the new ones I can learn, and trying to sort through what I can do now, and what I can't, and where things should go.

I've got bags full of stuff I don't use, but kept -- that dragonling, the death rays and net guns, the parachute cloak -- lots of fun toys. I keep hearing that the bag problems for hunters aren't as bad, so that'll help, and that a lot of the trinkets no longer have to be held to be used (like teleporters).

[Nebu]

I love engineering.  Between Jeeves, wormhole, and the enchant to make my cloak have featherfall I'm very satisfied with the changes.  Having an AH in Dalaran is also a huge plus. 

[Merusk]

I keep hearing that the bag problems for hunters aren't as bad,

Oh.. there's one we haven't mentioned!  Your quiver no longer gives you a haste bonus, it's been built into the hunter class itself.  Eventually they plan on doing away with ammo altogether, but some sort of back end problem prevented it.  As a partial solution they've made ammo stack to some ridiculous amount like 1,000 per stack so you can use a real bag instead of a quiver.

[Nebu]

Or do what I did.  I have an 18 slot ammo bag and fill it with mammoth cutters.  It allows me to essentially forget about ammo for weeks at a time. 

[Morat20]

Oh.. there's one we haven't mentioned!  Your quiver no longer gives you a haste bonus, it's been built into the hunter class itself.  Eventually they plan on doing away with ammo altogether, but some sort of back end problem prevented it.  As a partial solution they've made ammo stack to some ridiculous amount like 1,000 per stack so you can use a real bag instead of a quiver.

Oh thank heavens. Fucking ammo bags. Fucking slots and slots worth of fucking food for my pet. Fucking LOYALTY GRINDS. Fucking "I want this pet skin, but it's 25 levels below me". Thank god they finally fixed that stuff.

They're still, hopefully, working on the ammo problem, right?

[Merusk]

Since they said it's a back-end problem I wouldn't count on anything being 'fixed' until Cataclysm or we get our customized dancing emotes that everyone forgot about after WOTLK actually released. 

[Nebu]

You shouldn't need the stacks of pet food either beyond the stat enhancing food.  For pve I just spec into the tree that gives bonus happiness (along with bonus hate) to pets with damage/kills.  Even with frequent dismisses, my bear is always happy and I never feed it beyond str food.  

[Soulflame]

I recently tamed a bear to experiment with, after some people had mentioned bears as an alternative to gorillas.  Forgot to feed it.  I did set the "loyalty when growling" or whatever talent, and went off on my merry way.

About half an hour later, I went "oh shit, my pet's loyalty!"  I glanced up to see where it was, and it went from happy to SUPARHAPPY.

So yeah.  Loyalty isn't a problem, unless you've min/maxed your pet's talents, and avoided the loyalty ones.

[Morat20]

There's food that buffs my pets? There's talent points (is that pet or BM?) that makes it get more loyal when you use it? It's like I've died and gone to hunter heaven.

Although I think I actually remember something about the pet food buffs.

[Nebu]

I think the food is called mammoth bites and you need to do a few cooking dailies in dalaran before you get the spices & points to buy and make the recipe.  The weird thing is that you have to eat it for it to give buffs to the pet.  I must have gone through a stack of it feeding it to my pet before figuring this out.  Yes... I'm an idiot.

You also should have a tab for pet abilities next to your talent trees.  just look at it next time you have a pet up.  Pets get points a lot slower than you do for talents, so use them wisely.  Also, being 51 in BM will grant you more ability points for your pet which is a HUGE plus.  

[Vash]

Food buffs for hunter/warlock pets was introduced in TBC.  There was the stamina food from Sporelock rep and a Strength food you could randomly get from the daily cooking quest reward pouch (Kibbler's Bits?).

WoTLK has continued this and there are upgraded versions of both recipes, I'm fairly certain they are bought from the cooking recipe vendor in Dalaran via daily cooking quest tokens.

Also, all pets have their own talent tree now (with talents that vary by pet type; Cunning, Tenacity, Ferocity).  This is the system that was introduced to replace the old system of training basic pet skills from a pet trainer every few levels and then constantly getting new pets just to *learn* their special abilities and discard them.

[Soulflame]

It was a real adventure as horde getting that level 24 boar.     You know.  The only one that had Gore 4.  Then there was a huge gap, because there wasn't a single tamable mob in the game with Gore 5 or 6.  Good times.

[Fordel]

Since they said it's a back-end problem I wouldn't count on anything being 'fixed' until Cataclysm or we get our customized dancing emotes that everyone forgot about after WOTLK actually released. 

Oh, some of us remember well. 

[Morat20]

I logged on and my confusion was total. There's glyphs. I put some in. They probably suck, people will probably laugh if they could see, but they seemed "Beastmastery". I went looking for those enchants on vellum, but can't find them on the AH. My gear and new stats are ludicrous -- I can't tell if they're good or bad. :)

I trained up my cat -- wolf is next -- moved my pets and mounts to their new slots. Bought a bag to replace my ammo bag. Stacked my ammo. Tried to figure out if I had any new skills I could learn, or somehow missed. Got my UI...sorta useable. Looked at my quests and was confused. :) Earned some sort of achievement for putting together my Crumpled-Horned Snorcack pet. (They called it something else. It was a rabbit with horns that I got at brewfest).

Tried to decide if I could ditch any of my engineering tools. Laughed at that a bit. :) Sorted out my bank some.

Now, to go 'round the engineer trainers to make sure they haven't moved some schematics there. Then off to, um, Burning-Crusade-Land to do quests.

Need more ammo, can't remember where I was buying Ironbite Bullets. (I'm level 67 at the moment). Figure I'll go hang out in BC-land and grind some faction or something as I figure out if this spec and pet thing works out.

Also, my guild is gone so I need to form a guild. Do you still need 10 signatures? Do you alts count? :)

[Morfiend]

Figure I'll go hang out in BC-land and grind some faction or something as I figure out if this spec and pet thing works out.

You can head to Northrend at 68. I would try and grab a few quests in Outlands to get you to 68, then just dump all your quests and head to Northrend. Even starting Northrend at 68 you will still have plenty of quests left there after you hit 80. That and Northrend is a MUCH more fun leveling time.

[Sheepherder]

Quest greens in early Northrend are also approximately on par with Karazhan purples, so... yeah.

If you actually want some advice you could link your armory page.  Other people probably know which glyph is guaranteed to to increase your 10% of the DPS 10% of the time by 20%.  Or you might actually get pointed to something helpful, like the Glyph of Life Tap is for warlocks.

EDIT: MMO Champion and Wowhead both have nice combined glyph/talent calculators.

[Merusk]

Tried to decide if I could ditch any of my engineering tools. Laughed at that a bit. :)

You will eventually  be able to build a gnomish army knife that replaces EVERYTHING. Pick, Flint & Steel, Engineering tools, Blacksmith Hammer... everything.  It is sheer awesome and if I didn't know the joy of engineering my own damn tools I'd tell you to go buy one off the AH right now.

[Ingmar]

Sadly it doesn't count as jewelcrafting tools. 

[Merusk]

That seems like an odd oversight.  Probably so enchanters didn't bitch they were the only prof not serviced by it.

[Morat20]

Figure I'll go hang out in BC-land and grind some faction or something as I figure out if this spec and pet thing works out.

You can head to Northrend at 68. I would try and grab a few quests in Outlands to get you to 68, then just dump all your quests and head to Northrend. Even starting Northrend at 68 you will still have plenty of quests left there after you hit 80. That and Northrend is a MUCH more fun leveling time.

I'd kind of like to experience the content of TBC a bit. :) Learned a few patterns, found out that "Show only things I have materials for" is AWESOME. Picked up a flying machine schematic.

I'll like my armory profile later, and you can all laught at my "I was sorta grinding solo through TBC with bits and pieces of MC gear, crap what I found on the ground, and one thing from that dungeon I did once".

[Threash]

I keep hearing that the bag problems for hunters aren't as bad,

Oh.. there's one we haven't mentioned!  Your quiver no longer gives you a haste bonus, it's been built into the hunter class itself.  Eventually they plan on doing away with ammo altogether, but some sort of back end problem prevented it.  As a partial solution they've made ammo stack to some ridiculous amount like 1,000 per stack so you can use a real bag instead of a quiver.

That doesn't make sense, they had an ammoless bow in the previous expansion.

[Ingmar]

I keep hearing that the bag problems for hunters aren't as bad,

Oh.. there's one we haven't mentioned!  Your quiver no longer gives you a haste bonus, it's been built into the hunter class itself.  Eventually they plan on doing away with ammo altogether, but some sort of back end problem prevented it.  As a partial solution they've made ammo stack to some ridiculous amount like 1,000 per stack so you can use a real bag instead of a quiver.

That doesn't make sense, they had an ammoless bow in the previous expansion.

They're not going ammoless like that - the indication at BlizzCon was that ammo would still be an item, much like druid idols or whatever, that added a certain effect to hunter shots on top of the normal dps bonus of ammo or whatever. There wasn't much in the way of detail though.

[Morat20]

My armory profile is here, I am currently using the cat to level. The talents aren't exactly what I wanted, unfortunately I didn't notice the button marked "Explore talents" (or whatever it is that lets you assign them, play with them, and muck with them before committing them) so I didn't end up with the points exactly how I wanted.

I'm a bit confused by the pet talents. My pets can have multiple talents (my Wolf still has Furious Howl, for instance) but it appears only four can be on the pet bar? I take it whatever isn't on the pet bar doesn't auto-trigger? (So like I could put claw, dash, Heart of the Phoenix and Lick My Wounds on the bar, and only those four would ever trigger?).

[Sheepherder]

Learned a few patterns, found out that "Show only things I have materials for" is AWESOME.

You're going to climax once I tell you that the search box goes through materials as well, right?

[Ingmar]

My armory profile is here, I am currently using the cat to level. The talents aren't exactly what I wanted, unfortunately I didn't notice the button marked "Explore talents" (or whatever it is that lets you assign them, play with them, and muck with them before committing them) so I didn't end up with the points exactly how I wanted.

I'm a bit confused by the pet talents. My pets can have multiple talents (my Wolf still has Furious Howl, for instance) but it appears only four can be on the pet bar? I take it whatever isn't on the pet bar doesn't auto-trigger? (So like I could put claw, dash, Heart of the Phoenix and Lick My Wounds on the bar, and only those four would ever trigger?).

No, you can turn autocast on and off in the spellbook. What I do is put the stuff I NEVER turn off in there, like claw or bite or whatever, and just have the ones I might want to turn off or trigger manually on the bar.