Monday Things We’re Thinking
Heart of the Phoenix is more broken than we thought. We knew that it doesn’t auto-cast; that a dead pet will not spontaneously rise from the dead. You have to have a macro for HotP and smash it when your HotP-trained pet dies. However, we’ve found that a good 50% of the time when HotP is activated, our pet will come back to life “grayed-out”. He’s alive and at our side, but his action-bar is all grey; our pet won’t do anything and sending him to attack doesn’t work. We have found two solutions:
Dismissing your “grayed-out” pet and then Calling him will “un-gray” him and allow him to attack. This takes time, of course, but since our pet is doing 33% of our total DPS, it must be done.
But if you put your pet on Defensive before a boss fight, the “grayed-out” problem can be solved, too, as a “grayed-out” pet will still auto-attack in Defensive mode. If you put your HotP-trained pet on Defensive before a boss fight, when your pet dies and is HotP-rez’d and gets “grayed-out”, he will still respond in Defensive mode and attack that which you’re attacking. A pet on Passive and “grayed-out” will do no such thing; he’ll just sit at your side until he’s Dismissed/Called.
Stop going into heroic instances with sub-level 80 pets. Your level 79 pet’s chance to Miss against a 82 elite boss is much higher than a level 80 pet’s, and let’s not even talk about level 75 pets and how worthless they are in heroics. We’re getting too many reports of hunters using heroics to level their pets. Stop it, and this includes the Spirit Beast. Get yourself a nice level 80 Ferocity or Cunning pet for heroics, even if it’s not your favorite pet in the world. You have four stable slots, so use them. Would you appreciate your tank using a heroic to level his weapon-skill? How do you think he feels when he sees you bring a level 75 gorilla to heroic Culling of Stratholme? Knock that cr@p off.
Mammoth Cutter ammo is expensive. Unless you’re an engineer or have a buddy who’ll keep you supplied with the stuff, don’t use it for trash-fights in instances. Save the good stuff for bosses.
Mammoth Cutter ammo is incredible. There is no reason in the world not to have a stack of the stuff for boss fights. Switch out your old and busted Violet Hold ammo for the sweet-smelling Mammoth Cutter shells for every boss fight. Stop being so dang stingy.
Heroic Halls of Lightning. Healers hate it. Loken, the final boss, requires either wonderful group timing and coordination, or a butt-load of DPS. We, of course, prefer the latter.
For Loken, everybody stands on top of him, right at his feet. Hunters should pop Aspect of the Wild for extra Nature damage protection. Let Loken do his little damage aura/bolts/thingies, as the closer you stand to him, the less damage they do. When Loken is ready to drop his hammer – when many people run away to take less damage – don’t move. Let the group take the blast and heal through it while you bring your MQoSRDPS into Loken’s skull. You must stand as close as you can; your Kill Shot should not be capable of being fired. DPS the beejezus out of Loken and you’ll get him down. The achievement for him on heroic is to kill him under two minutes. Using the stand-and-blast strategy, we did it in 1:33. Don’t let your healers /cry their way out of doing this instance.
When doing an /inspect of a hunter to see if he’s gearing himself with care for heroics, make note of the following:
- Scope on ranged weapon, either the new +damage or +crit, is mandatory.
- Armor kit on legs, mandatory. They’re plentiful on the Auction House and not too expensive.
- If the hunter has a meta-gem in his helm, it has to be activated.
- Helm-enchants should still be purchased from the Cenarion Expedition in Zangermars. Yes, we all want to be revered with Knights of the Ebon Blade for the new one, but the CE helm-enchant is easy to get and pretty inexpensive. No reason at all not to have something on your noggin.
- Shoulder inscriptions from Aldor/Scryer aren’t necessary, as the turn-in items needed to get the inscription are wicked-expensive. Shoulder inscriptions from Sons of Hodir aren’t always possible, as the rep-grind takes a few weeks. If you find a hunter with a nice piece of shoulder armor but no enchant on them, don’t worry about it; shoulder enchants are a PITA right now for most everybody.
- If they’ve got the max Agility enchants on back/hands/feet, that rocks. If they’ve got smaller versions, that’s OK too. Not everybody wants to blow 500 gold on each max-enchant right now. However, the lower-versions are available on the Auction House at blow-out prices.
- Belt-buckles aren’t required, but dang they’re nice. They make activating your helm’s meta gem very easy, since the prismatic socket can accept any color gem without penalty.
Teaching your tanks how to work with your new Freezing Arrow takes time. We’ve found that the easiest way to work a Freezing Arrow into your crowd-control plans is to just let the hunter drop one at the feet of the mob that’s to be trapped, without letting the tank pull first. Yes, the hunter will aggro all the other mobs in the pack, but any tank worth her salt should be able to pick up the remaining mobs without difficulty. If the tank pulls first, the hunter has to predict the path the mobs will take, drop the trap perfectly, and then hope the mobs don’t single-file to the tank, which always seems to result in Skull getting trapped instead of Blue-Square.
When you get a four pulls or so away from a boss fight, turn your pet’s long-cooldown spells, e.g. Call of the Wild, autocasting off. When you get to the boss fight, turn the autocast back on. This saves the pet spells for boss fights, when they’re needed most, and allows you to enjoy their benefits during some of the trash. You can choose to just leave the autocasting off at all times, until right before the boss fight, but this procedure is certainly not mandatory.
We need heroic Oculus, AN, and Old Kingdom. Stupid achievements…
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Are you really way too busy today?
I completely disagree about the pets in heroics brk. My pet is never going to level grinding dailies, there are like NO pets practically at level 80 to take, and all my friends want to do is heroics. Just make sure the rest of your group is good enough and knows you are going in with a level 75 pet. It will make them happier come raid time to know that you have a cat or a devilsaur instead of something in their raid.
Heroics are so easy right now that there is no reason to use that time to score some gear tokens while getting your pet where he needs to be for raids!
I can’t agree more with you BRK. I was running Heroic Nexus the other day with another hunter (The battle for the chest happened! And I won of course!) and they had the will to bring a level 73 devilsaur into the heroic. Yup. Level 73. They didn’t even take the time out of their supposed busy schedule to tame a new devilsaur and at least pick up the free levels. Anyways, it was annoying but hey if you at least have one BM hunter completely dominating the charts who cares what the other one is doing?
New Trapping:
I do the following.
-Put Pet on Passive
-Have a wee chat with the tank and explain how hard it is to drop a AOE like slow firing arrow unto a fast moving mob.
-Secure party leader rights when he agrees with you (emo if he doesn’t
).
-Mark the mobs urself
-Cast Misdirection on tank.
-Shoot Frost Arrow at Blue Square (doesnt use up MD hit).
-Try not to freak when you see mobs running for you
-Casually right click three mobs in turn like a pr0 to each hit them with a shot in controlled fashion to secure some nice aggro for the tank on each
Last but not least.
Send pet and start hammering that DPS buttooooonnnnnn ZOMG!
Works a treat and you have a happy tank.
1) I haven’t run into any bugs with HotP, except for the complete lack of autocast. Everytime my pet dies I smash the pet ability on its action bar and he pops back up, good as new. Could it be maybe the bug is caused by one of your addons?
2) I’ve had a lot of experience with HotP because I’m taking my devilsaur (currently 77) instancing with me. ^.^;; In my defense, I do ask first.
3) As for Freezing Arrow, I’m still getting the hang of it – but I don’t find it too difficult to shoot it into the initial fray and still snag my target. Makes me feel better if I don’t entirely trust the tank, anyway.
“Way to busy for hidden messages today, seriously.” ~TJ
@saayu.
Bit confused. hunter in heroic is lvl 80, wouldnt his pet auto level to 75?
@BRK
got to agree about HotP. its very buggy. Had a few occasions where, upon hitting it my pet bar just disappears and I have to pet res instead
Grinding up to 5 levels on a newly tamed pet is a extremely slow process when compared to 4 or 5 quick heroics. And as long as your at the top of your game, you’ll still be able to pull your own weight.
Freezing arrow:
Sorry, but on mob pulls…stick to a trap and just peel your target off the pack after pull. Freezing arrow really comes into its own when dealing with casters who just refuse to walk into a trap. you could LoS them or just fire this baby at their feet.
Freezing trap rocks. Plain and simple. You can fire the damn thing 20 feet behind you without turning around, how awesome is that? My tank buddy helped me get one of our heroic groups used to using it for various situations (and practice for me). We did a number of pulls with it, some “leading the target” shots on pats, etc. Then later in the run our healer was getting beat on while we were burning down mobs. He’s 10-15 feet directly behind me. He’s a shammy so it wasn’t killing him, but it was annoying so I hit Freezing Arrow and drop it on the mob without turning around, froze it and went back to dps’ing kill order without skipping a beat. Saved the shammy’s hex for another mob and he didn’t have to stop healing. gotta love it.
Most instances you can LOS the mob you want to trap.
Shoot it near the path the mob will take when you get agro. Most people forget that distract shot has a taunt effect now. Take advantage of it. Let the tank pull and distract the mo you want to trap. Done deal.
Like Nightt, I cracked the code!
You mention that we need to watch for scopes on ranged weapons, but you only mentioned the damage or crit scope. How do you feel about the sun scope, the +40 haste one? I know haste is not a good stat for beastmasters, but for marksmen such as myself, it looks pretty tasty.
Loken is easysauce if you’re coordinated, you don’t need NR or have to put your healer through the pain and suffering of healing through lightning nova just because dps are too lazy to move (isn’t ‘don’t annoy your healer’ the core tenant of WoW? Or is it still ‘don’t stand in the fire’?).
Go two lightning novas going down the stairs, have your tank turn him around and do two back the other way. Rinse and repeat. Well, probably not, because even the crappest dps should be able to kill him in time for the achievement, even with the moving. Did it last night with two warriors running around with the 75 Amphitheater of Anguish axe and me pulling second dps as the tank, he didn’t last beyond the third fourth nova. (actually, all the achievements for HoL are scary easy considering what they look like on paper)
Borean Armor and Heavy Borean Armor (and apparently even Heavy Knothide) kids all work on shoulders and helm now.
There’s no excuse to have bare shoulder enchants at 80. Perhaps you don’t have Aldor/Scryer/SoH ones yet, but you could at least slap a +12stam borean armor kit on there for a nice bit of boosted health. All about the balance, right?
HoTP is awsome .. when it works : / I have yet to have the “grayed out” problem but what it does ALOT is not work. Pet died during a boss fight i use HoTP .. and no pet!!!! /SIGH now I have to waste time casting revive pet and then healing it up.
“There’s no excuse to have bare shoulder enchants at 80. Perhaps you don’t have Aldor/Scryer/SoH ones yet, but you could at least slap a +12stam borean armor kit on there for a nice bit of boosted health. All about the balance, right?”
Thats a rly good idea hehe. If Shat had a port back to dalaran I wouldn’t think twice about going back to get my shoulder enchant, but I am sick of wasting 10g+ for mages to port me or waste my hearth : /. When your doing Nax 25 if your in more blues than epics the xtra stam is needed.
Also, as far as heroics go. I always bring my low lvl pet’s hehe. I am usually in grps with death knights who are sooo OP right now that me slacking a bit on dps rly isnt a problem. Plus it is the fastest way to lvl a pet and I needed a cat for Nax (didn’t want to bring my gorilla) so i tamed one from ZD and a few heroics later it is 80
…stand through Loken’s blast. Really?
If you were to pull that on me- not by accident but intentionally- I, as a healer, would have no reservations in leaving the group- something I truly hate to do- and warning my guildmates about the huntard I’d just run with.
In healerese, willingly taking 75k in completely avoidable party damage is… is… it’s like if you were to show up for a heroic using level 1 purchased ammo from Thunder Bluff or Ironforge or wherever you people get your ammo, with your pet set on aggressive and Growl auto-casting. It smacks of the same sort of “I don’t care how hard I make life for you” idea.
I never thought I’d see the day I was disappointed in BRK. I love the stories and the general hunterism even though I’m a druid but… wow. Disappointed.
I was “guilty” of using Heroics to level one of my new pets over the weekend but I don’t feel it was a big sin. No one mentioned it, as a matter of fact, and I was able to get him to 80 much faster than if I would have through grinding.
@BRK
About the ammo, you shouldn’t be using the VE ammo anymore. The level 75 stuff is roughly half the price for the same DPS.
@ Llanion
“Wherever YOU PEOPLE get your ammo”
Yep, Kill the druid.
we appreciate your messages.
As a newly minted 80 I ended up with a level 76 Spirit Beast in my second heroic (Ootgarde Keep). As a rule I try not to level pets in Heroics. As I had no level 80 pets atm … I took my 79 gorilla to Pinnacle
He was handy on the gauntlet part of it.
@Azurax
An (admittedly, perhaps ill-considered) attempt to simultaneously lighten the mood and convey just how very much the idea of standing in the blast comes across as “I really don’t care how hard this makes life for other classes, this way is easier for me.”
I myself am an engineer and thus considered an ammo-vendor quite often.
@llarion…
It really depends on how much you are resisting with Wild up. To be honest, I have run this as a tank numerous times, and each healer I have done it with prefers a different method.
My priest and paladin friends prefer us to stay in. CoH is hacked and can virtually heal everyone to full before any real threat of falling over occurs. The paladin has Divine Guardian and bubbles through the spell, being immune and reducing all damage the group takes by 30% is enough to get through the encounter speedily. Witha druid or shaman on the other hand… its almost alwaysbest to turn and run.
@BRK…
To be honest, as a tank. I do not mind the level 78-79 pet in a heroic. Both our guild’s hunter’s leveled their raid pets exclusively in heroics tanked by guild tanks. I would rather see them leveling it with me tanking, than heading to naxx with an unleveled pet. We require some synergy with out hunter’s pets at some times. So I would rather see a level 80 wasp in a 10man without a Druid than being forced into having a stupid Core Hound or Gorilla just cause they are 80.
As for the Freezing Arrow, I have been extremely dissapointed in the application of this skill. Its a nice skill to have, but with the activation timer, it produces too many issues for me to even consider using it. Tanks can take on more and more mobs. Often times it just plain is not worth the hastle that is a “breakable” CC. I can honestly can not count how many times I would rather just charge in and take on 4 mobs rather than have to deal with longer pulls just because Sheep and Traps break on damage and Thunderclap is the biggest way warriors keep multiple mobs. Sap and Hex are by far the best methods of CC now when you need them. Not like you need them often though.
Mammoth Cutters Rock! My GM just hit 415 engy (i think( and immediately buzzed me saying hey I can make these (proud papa LOL)
I immedaitely ordered 5 cases and proceeded to AH my remaing Adamantite Shell Machines.
he is great, I help him run around Sholozar (hes lvl 73) and get saronite (with some rare Titanium) while watching his back and he gives me the ammo – no charge!
As far as gearing goes, I have leg enchants, shoulder enchants (just cause I had some dust left from the ‘old days’), adding slot to belt (which already has a slot (I assume I can add the second sockeet to this). I also made Giantmaim legs and bracers, and the Ice striker cloak.
With a hit of 190, AP at 2705 I feel that I can be a good addition to a Heroic run.
Have yet to get a meta helm (tho I am 80 havent run any heroics yet – coming soon to a blog near you!)
I have 5 stable slots, Wolf 78, Gorilla (sooo close to 80 its silly), Cat 79, Wasp 78 and the last one, of course, reserved for SB!
LvLing pets in heroics isn’t a big deal. I normally run with friends or guildies and most of the time heroics are a joke. Unless you really care to do the most DPS possible and kill that mob 2 seconds faster it is okay to bring a pet in for quick, easy levels. I would advise telling the party about your pet first and to pay attention to where your pet is fighting.
Yeah HotP is borked but I have only experienced it once.
Something I am thinking on this Monday… there are only 3 epic guns(I’m a dwarf hehe) in the game. The crafted Nesingwery 4000, Kel’Thuzad 10 man, and Kel’thuzad 25. Maybe we will see another drop in Ulduar…
I wouldn’t dream of leveling a pet in a heroic it just doesn’t make any sense imo. With all the dailies out there it isn’t a big deal to break out a pet I want to level and go do dailies or the tons of other quests out there. Whatever pet you leveled with should be no less then 79 and even a gorilla at 79 will do more dps then a spirit beast at 76 in a heroic.
I’m an engineer <3 mammoth cutters for my Nessingway 4k
I’ve never had hotp on autocast and only really had a problem when I wait too long to hit the button and my pets corpse had allready faded. I’ve seen issues with my pet bar disappearing when leaving vehicles. Oh and the ever persistant growl/smack/cower etc. bugs.
<3 my wasp even if everyone else in the group hates it. And I’ve only really needed to use freezing arrow on bad pulls since the tanks in my guild can aoe tank through any heroic.
Bah, someone beat me to it on the hidden message =(
Just did the Loken achievement with 16 seconds to spare, DPS was roughly me with 2.2k, the rest between 1.1k and 1.4k.
We ran from the AoE, as the healer couldnt heal through it.
Dear BRK and his avid readers:
this is kinda off topic, but since ammo was mentioned, i thought i’d bring it up.
i hate guns. i’m sorry, but they completely turn me off in so many ways. ergo, i’m using a bow (the Drakkari Hunting Bow, atm) and wondering what THE bow is now to get? maybe for someone who won’t be getting to endgame stuff for a long time (silly guild)? and what ammo i should strive for?
thanks!
@ elly
The best bow – is really a crossbow. The Drake Mounted Crossbow from Heroic Utgarde Keep.
As for arrows – Saronite Arrows are the same dps as the Mammoth Cutters and can be made by Engineers.
Since I can’t edit my comment – The Crossbow is the best until you get into 25man Naxx. ( A Bow does drop off Instructor Razuvious in the 10man – I have that also but prefer the Crossbow)
BRK, I really gotta disagree with sub-80 pets in Heroics. I leveled both my cat and devilsaur running heroics, and no one minded in the least.
As a matter of fact, one of my guildmates calls it “leveling the playing field”, as we’re always in a DPS race. He usually gets beaten by at least 3-400 DPS when I’m toting a lv80 pet. (he’s a DK and geared about as well as I am, btw.
@ llllaanionionnn
l2heal, k? been there twice with guild healers and they had no problems healing through it. in fact, on the first occasion, it was the healers idea that everyone just stand and pewpew, and that he would take care of the rest.
lololol
Don’t forget about the pre-BC 30 Hit scope, Biznicks Accurascope. If it doesn’t put you too far over the hit cap its still better than any of the three new scopes for a BM hunter.
I haven’t been toting a sub-80 pet for heroics, but that’s mainly because most of us still have some lvl 70 gear (in my case, it’s about half lvl 70 gear). Heroics are hard for the undergeared, so we need the extra DPS.
If, however, I (and the rest of my group) had the BRK’s lvl of gearing… I’d bring a sub-80 pet in if I wanted (unless we’re going for an Achievement or something).
I DONT KNOW WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING ABOUT!
LOUD NOISES!
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Bringing sub-80 pets to heroics = fastest way to level them.
‘Nuff said.
I still outDPS most of the people with which I am running (since I am MM); I could care less what they think about me leveling my pets in heroics.
@Sybok – XD Thats the best thing I’ve ever seen. I love it!!!
Considering that I’m Marks, and on a good day my pet might be 10-12% of my DPS IF she’s 80 and Ferocity… I honestly don’t see what the problem is.
I’m still posting 2200+ DPS even with a sub-80 pet, so *shrug*
I haven’t really seen anyone mention another problem with Heart of the Phoenix… At least in my case, the pet doesn’t just “come back with full health.” There’s a brief moment, maybe a second, where it rezzes with about 20%, then pops up to 100%. This makes HotP worthless in any kind of encounter where the AOE is flying since your pet pops up and in that second-or-so window gets taken out by a single attack.
Same happens any time I bring my pet out, whether it be by calling it or demounting. I don’t know if the game is recognizing it as having that low health, or if its just a graphical ‘quirk’.
Its actually your pets health before the system figures in its new total health, as far as I can tell. Sometimes it also seems to be the amount of health you were dismissed with.
Doomilias? Don’t be a jerk. Everyone has a different preference for healing. Just because some one disagrees with BRK, and doesn’t do things the way you do them, doesn’t make them wrong. Learn to not open your mouth when you don’t have something constructive to say.
You sound angry in this post.
1) I’ve haven’t used heroics to completely level a pet…but the last few levels is made easier in a heroic (I’ve brought both a cat and a spirit beast at level 78 into a heroic and they’ve reached 80 through the run or two). I was still the top of the dps meters, and never did the slight reduction in dps cause the party any problem. It’s probably also a matter of what heroic you run…some are MUCH easier then others, making them much more friendly for pet leveling.
2) Heroic Ocu was the last one I needed for the achievement. The last boss requires a bit more strategy then the normal version does…otherwise it’s easy. Remember, you can save yourself on the repair bill by stripping before mounting.
3) I would never suggest standing through the Nova. That’s just insane. You can still EASILY get the achievement while avoiding the Novas. Just remind your healers that they WILL need to do some party healing to offset the Aura damage please? Last time I did HoL, the tree decided he was only going to heal the tank, causing all the DPS to die from the aura when the boss was still at 40% and they somehow 2-manned him till he died…granted the healer died (eventually) too, but not before using every mana trick in the book, and the tank was at 200 health at the end…but they did it. Woulda been much easier if he put the instant cast HoT on the rest of the party to offset the Aura damage earlier in the fight…
4) One thing I’ve noticed about HoL is that my pet never takes Aura/Nova damage…I just have her beat the boss down while we’re all running for our lives from the Nova…
5) The Nessingwary 4000 is a slight upgrade to the UP Crossbow (only because of the gem slot)…but really, I can’t justify the cost for such a minor upgrade. The Arrows are also much easier/cheaper to craft then the bullets…
6) Helm enchant: I’ll be exalted with Ebon Blade in a day or two…why go back and get one from outland…it can wait. Same for a majority of the enchants…we’re all replacing gear so fast that the cheap enchant, if any, is the best way to go.
@Teaakius-The CE helm enchant has hit and unless something’s changed and I missed the memo hit (until capped) >>>>>>everything else. Now if you’re sitting at the cap already then by all means go for the Arcanum of Torment (50 AP and 20? crit, yum)
A day or two ago I was a Draenei with 307 hit rating…which means I was 40 to 50 points over the hitcap with my racial. I think I’m back down to the 270’s again, after adjusting a few pieces of gear.
Also, hit is important…but sometimes I’m willing to sacrifice a fractional percent of hit for a juicy amount of AP and crit…I’ll hafta run the numbers after I run my other planned enchants and see where I’m sitting.
@Teaakius
Wow, that Druid sounds like a giant jack hole. He could easily have cast heals on more of the party than just the tank and himself.
I used heroic naxx to lvl my spirit beast
I decided that BRK had a point about lower level pets in heroics (though my guildmates said they saw no problem) … I went out and got a lvl 78 Worg. Borg hit 80 after just an evening of questing and I find he is actually very good on dps. The fact that I never know what color he will be is a fun bonus. I leveled to 80 with my Gorilladin so he hit 80 shortly after I did. I dont have the time right now to tame a spirit beast so Ill take Borg to heroics and work on taming and leveling a devilsaur when I have time.