We were doing a “fake movie” as a lark and like it so much we completed production and are slapping it up here. It’s not Caddyshack, but what is.We did five attempts at chain-trapping a raptor through Refuge Point and every time somebody would attack it. Hunters, warlocks, mages… they just wouldn’t leave us alone. We gave up when we almost yelled a zone-wide cursing smackdown, and we really don’t want to get banned.

But the points of the movie are clear:

1. Always watch your trap cooldown when chain-trapping.

2. Put distance between yourself and your trapped mob to add that running-time the mob will need to get to you.

3. If you don’t want to kill the mob, use Distracting Shot. It builds threat without doing damage.

4. Refuge Point is full of n00bs.

Something we didn’t do: notice how we stood almost on top of our traps? That’s not necessary. We could have kept running straight so that the trap was directly in the mob’s path. We stayed on the trap for movie-making purposes, along with a bunch of other running amok stuff we did.

The window we opened at the beginning was the macro window. It shows the special chaintrapping macro we made just for this movie:

/cast Distracting Shot(Rank 1)
/stopcasting

And if you want it, the 25MB full-sized movie is here.

Of course, we shall keep you apprised of any updates.

/gag

We can finally continue tackling our analysis of our respec. Hooray! Now the issue was: Are we “starving” Claw of Focus by not taking 2/2 in Bestial Discipline and just relying on Go For The Throat to replenish our pet’s Focus supply.

What we needed was some similar scenarios involving the different talent specs. What we’ve got are two Moroes fights, one yesterday and one on 22 Sep.

22 Sep
02:31′17 to 02:34′57
3 minutes and 40 seconds = 220 seconds
DPS time was 86%, so total DPS time is 189 seconds
#Claws = 68 hits and 10 misses = 78 Claws
78 Claws in 189 seconds is equal to 1 Claw every 2.42 seconds.

13 Oct
02:31′18 to 02:35′16
3 minutes and 58 seconds = 238 seconds
DPS time was 92%, so total DPS time is 219 seconds
#Claws = 70 hits and 12 misses = 82 Claws
82 Claws in 219 seconds is equal to 1 Claw every 2.67 seconds.

So we’ve lost 0.25 seconds per Claw; they’re coming more slowly. But why? Is the lack of Bestial Discipline to blame?

Let’s dig deeper.

What else uses Focus beside Claw? How about Growl.

22 Sep
#Growls = 0

13 Oct
#Growls = 12

Oh ho! Since Hobbes was tanking last night, he had to “waste” twelve Claws and cast Growl instead. Since Growl requires 15 Focus to cast, the 12 Growls consumed 180 Focus. Since each Claw costs 25 Focus, we can say that the 180 Focus should have gone toward casting 7 Claws.

13 Oct
02:31′18 to 02:35′16
3 minutes and 58 seconds = 238 seconds
DPS time was 92%, so total DPS time is 219 seconds
#Claws = 70 hits and 12 misses and 7 Growl/Claws = 89 Claws
89 Claws in 219 seconds is equal to 1 Claw ever 2.47 seconds.

Well what do you know! Hobbes was able to cast Claw - or dump Focus, whatever you want to call it - almost exactly as fast as he was doing before the respec: 1 Claw every 2.42 seconds with Bestial Discipline and 1 Claw every 2.47 seconds without it, but with IAotH procing a 9% haste increase on a 10% chance per shot.

He is most definitely not being Focus-starved. /cheer

Could Hobbes do more Claw-DPS if we had 2/2 in Bestial Discipline? Possibly. Hobbes would have to have at least 15 Focus every 1.5 seconds to guarantee that no opportunity for a Claw would go unfulfilled, and we have most definitely not proved that an opportunity for a Claw to be cast did not go unfulfilled due to a lack of Focus. Our Claw-damage could possibly be better with Bestial Discipline, but it didn’t get worse with our respec. And that’s because we dumped 35 GFTTs, which is 1750 Focus, on Hobbes during last night’s Moroes fight.

Since Go For The Throat is crit-based, it is dependent upon our crit percentage and our firing rate. Hunters with faster weapons will have more crits per minute, and thus generate more Focus, than hunters with slower weapons if both hunters have similar crit rates. GFTT Focus regeneration is talent and gear-dependent and thus a hunter-specific formula.

What we could do is make a chart of crit-rate vs. firing rate and how much Focus per minute would be generated for each combination. Or we could write a program to do that for us…

We need to dig even deeper and break out Xcode again. More on this subject at a later date.

We’re quite pleased with these settings, but if you have a recommendation, as always we want to hear it.

Our native resolution is 1680×1050 so a 960×600 recording is the same aspect ratio, just approximately 1/2 of the size. The 15FPS seems to make most people happy, the compression is H.264, and the Quality is 2/3 of High, whatever that is.

Tell ya something. Making a movie where any mistake you make in your play is going to be shown to everybody is really nerve-wracking. If you think WWS reports are something to fear, try recording a boss fight.

We can go out and do a “Here’s how to kill a cobra” movie and when we make a mistake, just move on to the next cobras. Not quite the same thing in Karazhan. If you kill a boss but make a colossal error, it’s on film and you’re going to have to show it to everybody and their grandmothers on your blog.

Having said that, we did make a movie of our guild taking on Moroes. It was stressful for everybody involved. They knew we were filming this and nobody wants to look silly. If you watch and see something not quite right, please don’t turn this into a “Whatcha should’ve done is…” forum. Focus your attention on the hunter and what he does. This is a hunter blog and we’re putting ourselves out there for your entertainment and instructional viewing.

Download the full 24MB version here.And for giggles, here’s the WWS report for that fight.For those who care, here’s the WWS for Prince and Aran.

Massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS. Chain-trapping. Pet-tanking. Squishy-saving, (or at least attempting.) The hunter class is a whole lotta of fun.

Edit: If there was ever a time to delurk and say you like/dislike the movie or have other comments, now is it. The more feedback we get the more likely we are to continue to spend the extra two hours putting these together.

So the guild has two kara groups this week, yours truly is providing DPS in group 2. Friday night we’re going straight for Prince, taking two new people through Curator then swapping two through Prince.

We all did a nice job fighting through a little adversity - especially on BigBadWolf - and one shot ever boss until Prince. Of course the Infernals weren’t happy to see us and ruined our positioning instantly the first two tries. We had some initial bad luck on the third but overcame it and got his @ss down. And we got a present from Aran!In terms of raw DPS it’s nothing to write home about: three RAP at a cost of 0.23% Crit. But the Stamina, Intellect, and MP5 more than make up for the Crit. With our IAotH build we have to run Aspect of the Hawk which means mana regeneration becomes critical. We actually ran out on Prince when he was down to 5% and our Fel Mana potion cooldown still had 10 seconds on its timer. That cost us the ability to send a Mend Pet and Hobbes died.

If you want to run an IAotH build in Karazhan, you’ve got to watch your mana and focus on it more than if you’re running Aspect of the Viper all the time.

And yes, we made a movie. We chose not to record a fight where someone was new to it, but a spiffy Hunter/Moroes film is being produced right now.

“ZOMG BRK!! The patch! Talk about the patch! Sincerely, Everybody on the Planet.”

Okay okay okay. Wow, y’all can be a pestering cult following, ya know?

While the entire Test Realm patch notes are linked here…

What BRK Cares About for All Hunters in the 2.3 Patch Notes:

Zul’Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including the Forest Troll Warlord Zul’jin. Bring it, baby. We’re totally psyched.

Dwarf/Troll: Gun/Bow Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns/Bows by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill. If we have to lose Crit to get our Hit back, it’s a moot point. If we can raise our Hit without losing Crit, this could rock. But this really seems to be a subtle maneuver to get more folks to go Survival for raiding. That’s where Surefooted gives the 3% Hit bonus and where Crit is King. Survival hunters are cheering this development, that’s for sure.

Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat. Now this is fascinating. Just how much melee-time will be lost as our pets reposition will have to be measured against the amount of damage they end up not taking by being behind mobs. Take Ramparts for example. A pet standing in the dragon boss’s flames dies quickly and does zero DPS. If he positions so that he’s behind the dragon, and thus totally avoids that fire AoE, he does a lot of DPS, and a heck of a lot more than if he were dead. We are cautiously very optimistic.

Arcane Shot (Ranks 6 and above) now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to their normal damage. An obvious attempt to boost hunter-use in arenas, this could be pretty spiffy. Now if a warlock throws underwater breathing on his team and this is what the Arcane Shot dispels, it’s either a pretty crappy addition to our arsenal or just smart play on the warlock’s end. Or both.

Explosive Trap: The initial damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.

Immolation Trap: The total damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power. We are wary of the differences in the implementation of these bonuses. What strikes us as interesting is that these are RAP-based. Most hunters who use traps for damage are Survival. Had these been agility-based we would’ve appreciated the buff to traps more. As it stands, we’ll take a wait-n-see approach.

Misdirection: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Hunters overwrite each other’s Misdirection. We may actually miss having our Misdirection over-written by another hunter and watching the chaos ensue. Currently, this potential ‘whoopsie’ requires hunters to coordinate their Misdirection in raids. If this change comes to pass it’ll make Misdirecting less deadly, but maybe a little less fun.

Serpent Sting: The total damage dealt by this sting is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power. Another Marksman buff and yet another temptation to take Improved Stings. If your Serpent Sting does 660 damage over 15 seconds and you take 3/3 in Improved Stings and get the 30% bonus damage to stings, your Serpent Sting will do 858 damage over 15 seconds. That’s nice but not good enough to justify taking it over something else. Now take that Marksman hunter and his 2300 RAP and give his Serpent Sting another 230 bonus damage, boosting it to 1088 damage over 15 seconds. Perhaps the warlocks out there would even say that this constitutes a real DoT, (probably not, but they don’t usually cheer us on anyway.) We’re scared to say it, but we actually think this is pretty nice.

Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled. ‘Bout time. Next!

New recipes are available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to make 20 slot quivers and ammo pouches. Spiify. But we’re not going to get to make one because…

New recipes are available from the Honor Hold, Thrallmar, and Lower City quartermasters to create 24 slot quivers and ammo pouches. Why Lower City? Could there be a 24-slot ammo bag with a 15% haste rating from Honor Hold and Thrallmar at Revered, and a 24-slot ammo bag with, can we dream, an 18% haste rating from Lower City? We are looking forward to jumping on the PTR just to see these vendors.

New macro command to target by entire name: /targetexact Woohoo! Your “/targetexact Demon Chains” macro won’t target someone your raid named Doomilias or Demetria anymore.

New macro command: /petautocasttoggle Again, woohoo! Our Growl macros shall be halfed.

When you inspect another player, you can now see their talent choices as well as their equipment. Huntard examinations just got a lot more fun. And probably scarier; how many Pathfinding level 70 hunters do you think we’re going to find?

This time we try the Double-Misdirection Pet LoS Pull and Trap! Then we get two adds… will BRK survive? Can he use his pet’s aggro as a trapping aide? Will he get his ears scratched? Will we get some unsweet tea from Mrs BRK? We’re thirsty over here, ya know! OMG!

Full-size video available here.

We tried the export settings recommended by a video pro, uploaded the converted file to both YouTube and Google, and blech; it didn’t work. Stuttery and jumpy, just total cr@p. It’s very late, we went back to our original settings and are trying to upload it one last time before night-night time.

“Dear BRK, long time reader, first time writer. Last night while grinding away in the Hinterlands I noticed that every time my pet Void (a ghost saber) grabbed aggro both growl and cower would auto cast at the same time. I turned off cower and removed it from the pet bar and it still would cast. Do you have any ideas what is going on, and isn’t both of these counterproductive to each other? Sandier and Misha.”

Growling and Cowering at the same time are most certainly counter-productive and should never be both set to Auto-Cast.

Now neither your nor your pet’s spells need be on your action bars in order to use them. For example, one can cast Distracting Shot as part of a Pull Shot macro and Distracting Shot doesn’t have to be seen on your action bars at all.

Removing the Cower spell from your action bar doesn’t affect its effects. Your pet’s spells can be cast without them being on your pet’s Action Bars. And since your pet’s spells can be set to Auto Cast, they can Auto Cast from their quiet hiding place on your pet’s Spell Book without being placed on the pet’s action bar.

Open your spell book, click on your Pet tab, find that Cower spell and we’re pretty certain you’ll see the Auto Cast glowing, circling aura all over it. Right-click that icon to turn Cower’s Auto Cast off, and you’ll be good to go.

Now because you have Cower trained, you can make a Pet-Aggro Dump macro:

/cast Cower

This will make your pet cast Cower one time! Isn’t that great! /cheer

What might be more useful is to make a macro that turns on Cower’s Auto Cast:

/petautocaston Cower

Now we don’t have Cower trained as our tanks hold aggro pretty well. Can’t bloody well take down Gruul without them, know what we’re saying? But what we do have are two macros for Growl:

/petautocaston Growl

and

/petautocastoff Growl

We have these on our action bars and have mapped keystrokes to these slots. We use Shift-W to turn Growl on and Shift-E to turn Growl off. Very handy stuff for when your going into Karazhan and realize a little too late that you left Growl on from your leather-scavenging expedition. Just smack Shift-E and keep on trucking.

Why two macros? Because we have not seen a successful Growl-Switch single-button macro. A “toggle macro” for Growl would be awesome, but it hasn’t been done yet, (that we know.)

This may not be as pretty as the YouTube version, but maybe it’ll get through to more people.