I've been listening to the Wrath soundtrack in my car. You know, the one that came in the Collector's Edition. I got the CE specifically to get the soundtrack. >.> Yes, yes, skeletal whelp pet, blah, blah, blah... I had heard great things about the soundtrack, and... well, they're all true.
The cinematic trailer's music is on there, and the Wrath main title (I have no idea if or where it's in the game) is basically one part Star Wars, one part Lord of the Rings, and one part Pirates of the Caribbean. All that adds up to auditory awesome.
Now I just need to get my hands on Echoes of War. The music from Tristram (Diablo series) that I get stuck in my head is on there. Alas, I have no iTunes, nor a desire to have iTunes, so I have to wait until it's back in stock. Or until they start selling it as digital download on Amazon. (Dear Blizzard: I bought Wrath at Amazon, and I want to buy your music there too. kkthxbai, Duskhawk)
12/15/08
12/11/08
Patch notes! Mmmm, patch notes.
The PTR notes are up, and although they say nothing about the female Tauren problems in Wintergrasp (if you take the portal from Dalaran, you can't get out of the room you port into - the doorway just acts as if it's too small), there's some hunter stuff (from the PTR notes page):
I will confess, I'm itching to get S5 gloves, even though I've taken Multi out of my normal rotation since Aimed got added to Barrage/Imp. Barrage. The season starts on the 16th, though, and I don't think my husband is going to be ready for 2v2 - I may have to see if I can put something else together in the interim.
Hunters
- All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.
- Aspect of the Wild - This aspect is now raid-wide.
- Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.
- Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to "deflect" spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.
- Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.
- Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
- The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered.
- Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
- Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
- Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
- Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
- Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
- Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).
- Taking things like Taunt (3 min. cooldown) and such off the global cooldown - heck, taking anything off the global cooldown is nice.
- Aspect of the Wild becoming raid-wide means your shaman don't have to give up their water totem for NR to the raid - and the rest of a hunter's aspects are a self-buff, whereas water totems may be something like poison cleansing. And you don't have to worry about the boss's crazy aggro mechanics killing the totem. :P (Netherspite had a strange affinity for Searing Totems.)
- Call of the Wild: Hopefully this means that Battle shout doesn't negate its utility anymore? I spec'd puppy out of it because there didn't seem to be a point to it, as it didn't stack with Battle shout.
- Deterrence: Now a frontal "bubble"? o.O
- Improved tracking change: Yay. For pulls with mixed mob types, or instances with multiple mob types (example: Sunken Temple has 4 - humanoid, undead, beast, and dragonkin), you don't have to micromanage your tracking. (Sunken Temple was the first time I realized just how useless tracking in an instance sometimes was - first for the multiple mob types, and secondly because of the layers. Karazhan was even worse for layers, even though pretty much everything was undead, with a few demons (and we never bothered with the beast wing).)
- Kill Shot - yay! The reduced cooldown means I maybe get to use it more than once on a boss, and it will be much better for both soloing and PVP.
- Kindred Spirits: BM, I don't care. :P
- Rake seems to have been nerfed a little, but that's okay - kitty has been having aggro issues in groups, even if I consistently pull aggro off him while solo.
- Readiness/Bestial Wrath: affects BM, not me.
- Steady Shot nerf: anticipated. I stack for agi/crit/hit/int before AP, so meh.
- Serpent's Swiftness: BM, so mostly meh, but - it does deal somewhat with the pet DPS overages without diminishing the hunter's DPS further.
- Unleashed Fury: BM, so not me.
- Viper Sting: I won't know if this is good or bad until I try it - depends what the %'s are.
- Volley nerf: anticipated. While 11k DPS on a trash pull was pretty... Volley tended to make me the object of AoE pulls' aggression. Hopefully the reduced damage doesn't diminish its utility but helps some with pulling threat off the tank during AoE pulls.
I will confess, I'm itching to get S5 gloves, even though I've taken Multi out of my normal rotation since Aimed got added to Barrage/Imp. Barrage. The season starts on the 16th, though, and I don't think my husband is going to be ready for 2v2 - I may have to see if I can put something else together in the interim.
O.O Naxxramas
Sunday evening, one of the guys who regularly runs our guilds' raids posted sign-ups for an exploratory Naxxramas run for this Wednesday. Given the pains of getting into Karazhan, I didn't expect anything out of it, but after Tuesday's impromptu 9-man Sartharion attempt (all three drakes down before the tank had to leave - they're going back this Sunday to finish it, but I have to work), and after all the reports on how easy Naxx is supposed to be, some people were very optimistic.
I have qualms about raiding this early into the expansion, but mostly because when we were raiding five nights a week, if I wasn't working on those nights, I was raiding five nights a week. We're a casual guild - seriously, no one has to raid, you can raid with whatever spec you want as long as there's room for your role (tank/heal/DPS) (although if you don't meet minimum requirements for your role, be it survivability, heal output, or DPS #'s, you may not get to go), and raid progression is not the core purpose of the guild. But it doesn't have to do with the health of the guild - it has to do with my time. If we're raiding, I'm probably raiding. And I still have to finish Zul'Drak, and I haven't touched the Storm Peaks or Icecrown.
(Well, ok, I went to the Storm Peaks specifically to get the Scrapbot, and I've been to the Halls of Lightning twice, but those don't count.)
I keep thinking that I haven't replace much of my gear, but once I started enumerating in my head what I was running with last night - new engineering goggles, Kirin Tor honored shoulders (ugly as they are >.<), a level 78 leatherworking crafted chest my brother sent me when he was skilling up, level 74 BoE bracers of which two dropped my first time through Drak'Tharon Keep, belt from the Violet Hold, pants from Loken in the Halls of Lightning, one ring from a quest in the Borean Tundra, another from a quest in Drak'Tharon, a quest trinket (with an emergency heal!), the halberd from the Ring of Anguish (alternately, the harpoon from the Kalu'ak for raiding, for the hit raiting), and the gun from Loken. That leaves my neck and cloak from Karazhan, my PVP boots, and the other trinket slot, which is most often nowadays occupied Madness or the Mark of Conquest.
I don't get rid of trinkets. This has been running me into some space issues, with the prolificness of trinkets as quest rewards in Wrath, but I decided if it's something I'm not going to use and there are non-trinket reward options, I'm going to take, say, the plate piece to sell. I'm mostly using the Darkmoon Card: Madness for soloing (although, looking at my armory, I apparently wore it through Naxx), since the proc buffs are kind of neat, and the stamina doesn't hurt for soloing, and what else am I going to use? More crit rating? Madness is fun, and the /emote proc is awesome. (This is madness!)
The Mark of Conquest is a level 62 trinket bought in Zangarmarsh for Hellfire PVP marks. I use it for raiding (and usually instances), because the mana it returns is approximately the cost of a Steady Shot. It procs a lot, and if I get pressed into melee, it still procs, but with a health return. On top of that, it has a small AP bonus. It is one of the most useful trinkets I've ever owned - I got it around level 63 or 64 and have used it consistently since. Yes, it's a level 62 trinket. I raid with a mana intensive spec and rotation, though, and I need all the mana return I can get.
As for the actual raiding - we went in last night about 9:30 EST and walked out at midnight with the spider wing cleared. We probably could have gone faster, but halfway through our Anub'rekhan attempts, our main tank got an emergency call from work, and we ended up having to swap out for the paladin tank that had rolled out earlier. Yes, still a few days shy of Wrath being out a month, we had rollouts for our first Naxx attempt. Rollouts for tanks and healers. And here I was worried in the back of my mind about not touching my priest yet.
I had gotten my ass handed to me while we were doing the drakes at Sartharion by one of the phenomenal BM hunters from Daughters of the Horde in terms of the damage meters - on the drake where I put out 1700, she put out 2200. O.O The numbers for me in Recount for the bosses in the spider wing ranged from about 1350-1550. Trash numbers, since Volley hasn't been nerfed yet, hit upwards of 9950 and 11000 on individual AoE pulls, which was very amusing; they pulled my overall average up to something like 1600 for the night.
Anub'rekhan was the most difficult for us - mostly in figuring out how to control the little scarabs and to survive the locust swarm (healers had to learn where to move to not get silenced, and I switched to dropping frost traps to slow the little bugs down so we could grab them better). The Widow we one-shotted, with most of the 15 minutes we spent on her spent explaining how she worked. Maexxna was two-shotted, since we didn't realize at first where she would be throwing webbed people. (I died on our kill attempt - getting webbed at about 8% meant people were a little more interested in killing her than busting me out, plus I got thrown way far away from the rest of the DPS.) Mostly tanky plate and cloth drops.
I have 6 Emblems of Heroism. I still haven't run a heroic. >.>
I have qualms about raiding this early into the expansion, but mostly because when we were raiding five nights a week, if I wasn't working on those nights, I was raiding five nights a week. We're a casual guild - seriously, no one has to raid, you can raid with whatever spec you want as long as there's room for your role (tank/heal/DPS) (although if you don't meet minimum requirements for your role, be it survivability, heal output, or DPS #'s, you may not get to go), and raid progression is not the core purpose of the guild. But it doesn't have to do with the health of the guild - it has to do with my time. If we're raiding, I'm probably raiding. And I still have to finish Zul'Drak, and I haven't touched the Storm Peaks or Icecrown.
(Well, ok, I went to the Storm Peaks specifically to get the Scrapbot, and I've been to the Halls of Lightning twice, but those don't count.)
I keep thinking that I haven't replace much of my gear, but once I started enumerating in my head what I was running with last night - new engineering goggles, Kirin Tor honored shoulders (ugly as they are >.<), a level 78 leatherworking crafted chest my brother sent me when he was skilling up, level 74 BoE bracers of which two dropped my first time through Drak'Tharon Keep, belt from the Violet Hold, pants from Loken in the Halls of Lightning, one ring from a quest in the Borean Tundra, another from a quest in Drak'Tharon, a quest trinket (with an emergency heal!), the halberd from the Ring of Anguish (alternately, the harpoon from the Kalu'ak for raiding, for the hit raiting), and the gun from Loken. That leaves my neck and cloak from Karazhan, my PVP boots, and the other trinket slot, which is most often nowadays occupied Madness or the Mark of Conquest.
I don't get rid of trinkets. This has been running me into some space issues, with the prolificness of trinkets as quest rewards in Wrath, but I decided if it's something I'm not going to use and there are non-trinket reward options, I'm going to take, say, the plate piece to sell. I'm mostly using the Darkmoon Card: Madness for soloing (although, looking at my armory, I apparently wore it through Naxx), since the proc buffs are kind of neat, and the stamina doesn't hurt for soloing, and what else am I going to use? More crit rating? Madness is fun, and the /emote proc is awesome. (This is madness!)
The Mark of Conquest is a level 62 trinket bought in Zangarmarsh for Hellfire PVP marks. I use it for raiding (and usually instances), because the mana it returns is approximately the cost of a Steady Shot. It procs a lot, and if I get pressed into melee, it still procs, but with a health return. On top of that, it has a small AP bonus. It is one of the most useful trinkets I've ever owned - I got it around level 63 or 64 and have used it consistently since. Yes, it's a level 62 trinket. I raid with a mana intensive spec and rotation, though, and I need all the mana return I can get.
As for the actual raiding - we went in last night about 9:30 EST and walked out at midnight with the spider wing cleared. We probably could have gone faster, but halfway through our Anub'rekhan attempts, our main tank got an emergency call from work, and we ended up having to swap out for the paladin tank that had rolled out earlier. Yes, still a few days shy of Wrath being out a month, we had rollouts for our first Naxx attempt. Rollouts for tanks and healers. And here I was worried in the back of my mind about not touching my priest yet.
I had gotten my ass handed to me while we were doing the drakes at Sartharion by one of the phenomenal BM hunters from Daughters of the Horde in terms of the damage meters - on the drake where I put out 1700, she put out 2200. O.O The numbers for me in Recount for the bosses in the spider wing ranged from about 1350-1550. Trash numbers, since Volley hasn't been nerfed yet, hit upwards of 9950 and 11000 on individual AoE pulls, which was very amusing; they pulled my overall average up to something like 1600 for the night.
Anub'rekhan was the most difficult for us - mostly in figuring out how to control the little scarabs and to survive the locust swarm (healers had to learn where to move to not get silenced, and I switched to dropping frost traps to slow the little bugs down so we could grab them better). The Widow we one-shotted, with most of the 15 minutes we spent on her spent explaining how she worked. Maexxna was two-shotted, since we didn't realize at first where she would be throwing webbed people. (I died on our kill attempt - getting webbed at about 8% meant people were a little more interested in killing her than busting me out, plus I got thrown way far away from the rest of the DPS.) Mostly tanky plate and cloth drops.
I have 6 Emblems of Heroism. I still haven't run a heroic. >.>
12/4/08
Revised Shot Macro
Okay, Duskhawk has been 80 since Tuesday evening, and has had Chimera Shot since this weekend sometime. (And got the 3000 quest achievement done on Monday night. >.>) I ran Drak'Tharon Keep with some Daughters of the Horde on Sunday night, and about halfway through it, I determined that just plopping Chimera Shot into my current shot macro didn't work if I wanted it to keep refreshing Serpent Sting without having to reapply the sting. (Although if I hit extra buttons, like Feign or Readiness (followed by Rapid Fire), it still requires a reapplication.)
So now I'm running with this:
I'm still pushing only about 1300-1400 DPS on bosses, but I'm still mostly in level 70 gear, and just got the gun off the last boss of the Halls of Lightning, which is where I last watched my meters. Once I'm not wearing a mix of level 70 arena and badge gear, I figure I'll start seeing my numbers creep up more. (And once my crit% is back over 30%, and my hit% is better than a measly, what, 6% with talents now? Meh.)
I still have 3 zones to quest in. Whee.
(Started herbing on my rogue - it has been disappointing so far. I've found... 2.)
So now I'm running with this:
#showtooltipYes, I've lopped out an Arcane and a Steady - it has to do with getting a Chimera Shot off roughly every time the CD is up, in order to try to keep Serpet Sting up. There's something like 11.5 seconds of cast time and global cooldown in that - it won't keep Viper Sting up, but I couldn't do that, anyway. Scorpid's even longer than Serpent, so I should have no trouble with that. Kill Shot doesn't go off as often as I'd like it to (when it's lit up) - I probably need it before the cast sequence, but I haven't thought about it while logged in to change it.
/castsequence Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
I'm still pushing only about 1300-1400 DPS on bosses, but I'm still mostly in level 70 gear, and just got the gun off the last boss of the Halls of Lightning, which is where I last watched my meters. Once I'm not wearing a mix of level 70 arena and badge gear, I figure I'll start seeing my numbers creep up more. (And once my crit% is back over 30%, and my hit% is better than a measly, what, 6% with talents now? Meh.)
I still have 3 zones to quest in. Whee.
(Started herbing on my rogue - it has been disappointing so far. I've found... 2.)
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