“Dear BRK, the WoW hunter board is discussing how to fix the mana usage problems that many hunters (especially MM/SV) have. Do you as a BM hunter have any mana problems and how do you deal with them? Sedenya and Yinkiz”

First off, notice these things about this email:

  1. Short and to the point.
  2. Good capitialization, punctuation, lack of l33tspeak, etc. It’s not a legal document; your use of parenthesis, brackets, and bracers aren’t at issue. but if u rite 2 us lik this dont axpect a response, kk?
  3. It’s not one the same questions we get everyday, (the addon is RatingBuster!)

Granted, it’s hard to avoid #3 if you don’t know what questions we get every day, but #1 and #2 should be something you should strive for in almost all your communications, especially when you’re attempting to elicit a worthwhile response.

And that’s a lesson from your Uncle BRK.

Now then, about this rubbish concerning MM/SV mana issues…

What does a Mage do? Stand at range and DPS.

What does a Shadow Priest do? Stand at range and DPS.

What does a Boomkin do? Stand at range and DPS..

What does an Elemental Shaman do? Stand at range and DPS.

What does a Warlock do? Stand at range and DPS, (and play with their minion, or kick dirt on it, whatever.)

What does a Marksman Hunter do? Stand at range and DPS AND use his pet in melee combat.

Hmm.

We’ll say it again. Hmm.

Hunters, regardless of talent spec, have an flexibility in their attacking style that the other classes just can’t match. Can those others do more damage or more DPS? Sure. But do they have a two-pronged attack capability? Not really, no.

(Tell ya something, we have never understood why any hunter would complain about how powerful warlocks or any other caster classes are. Hunters should destroy these people by the truckload. Go ask Renoobed/Mabd or Shifttusk how they feel about going one-on-one with a squishy. We think they’ll back us up on this.)

So what does Blizz do with the Hunter talent trees?

They make one of them mana-inefficient but blazingly burst-deadly at range.

They make one of them more dependent upon their melee-attacking pet and thus more difficult to fight if the enemy ignores one of the two-pronged assaults.

They make one of them less deadly from range, but if played properly, a ridiculously difficult target to kill.

There are positives and negatives in every class and talent spec:

With MM, the positive is that this is most massive burst-damage capable spec, bar none, end of story. The negative is that this massive burst-damage is massively mana-inefficient.

With SV, the positive is that, played properly - we feel we have to say this over and over because SV-playstyle is greatly different than MM/BM - can be one of the most elusive and tricky targets anybody has ever tried to kill. The negative is that the ranged and pet-melee DPS suffers without a lot of people to pick up a buff from Expose Weakness and it’s harder to get the gear necessary to make the spec shine.

With BM, the positive is that we can produce massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS and bring a terrifyingly destructive pet into battle, simultaneously. The negative is that our burst-damage is heavily constricted and keeping one’s pet alive become much more critical than the other specs.

How mana-efficient are we as a BM hunter? Let’s take the Bear-Boss in Zul’Aman as an example of our mana-efficiency. Our guild can take him down in approximately 5-7 minutes. We haven’t timed it exactly, but we can complete the 20-minute timer pretty easily, so 5-7 minute estimate should be satisfactory.

We go full-out on this boss. We power through Rapid Fire and trinkets and drums and Beastial Wrath and keep a solid Auto/Steady/KC sequence going, and we break 900DPS consistently. With Aspect of the Hawk active, without totems or a shadow priest, we need to pop three Fel Mana potions throughout the course of the fight to keep our mana above zero at the time the boss dies.

But if you give us a totem or a shadow priest, we can leave the Fel Manas in the bank; we won’t need them.

What does a MM hunter have to do in terms of mana-regeneration in order to achieve similar results? Well, we have no direct experience with this spec in this fight, but we can assume that their mana-consumption is going to be tremendous if they want to try to keep up that degree of DPS.

But does that mean that the MM/SV specs are broken because of their mana-inefficiency?

We don’t think so. That’s the cost of doing business, the price one must pay to go down those trees. If you want to be a MM hunter, you’re going to be mana-inefficient, period, end of story. If you want to be a ranged DPS class and not have mana-issues, perhaps you should put away your pet and roll an Elemental Shammy.

It’s like complaining that your motorcycle doesn’t seat four comfortably. Or your 3/4-ton pickup truck doesn’t get 100mpg. Or that if you eat 1000 cookies a day, you’re going to gain weight.

Follks, learning to work with and around your spec’s limitations is what makes playing this game so hard and so rewarding.

“Dear Blizzard-Claus, this Christmas, please make my class and spec not have any negatives or drawbacks. Thanks, Hunterboy and Petmeister”

Can you guess what B-C is going to do with this letter?

/crumple

/roundfile