Top Mail Helm Models

I'm not gonna lie; shaman tend to win the hat/shoulder graphics lottery.  Ten Storms, Earthfury, Olivia's Graceful Gaze...  They get some awesome stuff that just isn't available other than recolors, if you're lucky.  Hunters don't completely miss out, though.  Here are some that I've bothered banking, or wouldn't mind having:

Stylin' Crimson Hat:  This is one of those fun-but-has-stats items that weren't uncommon in the Burning Crusade; my leatherworker was never lucky enough to get any of the patterns.  This is the hunter one; the others have different color combinations.

Foreman's Reinforced Helmet:  I could have sworn I had banked, but apparently not.  It's a great item for an engineer-themed transmog.

Beastmaster's Cap:  I put on the whole set for the picture; this is the upgrade from the Beaststalker set that's no longer available except through the Darkmoon Faire.  I liked the color scheme on this set better.  The shamans get most of the wolf-type helms, but this one is all ours.

Malefactor's Eyepatch:  This is the helm I use with the Blood Knight transmog set I used for most of the end of Cataclysm.  (It matches my ravager.)  The eyepatch is from a quest chain in Blade's Edge and was a good helm for quite a while.

Surestrike Goggles v2.0:  I used these goggles for ages in Wrath.  They dont' have as many bells and whistles as Deadly Retinal Armor, but I think they look better on more races.  It's hard enough finding a helm that works on a tauren.  Most of the Wrath-era goggles use this shape if you want a different color scheme.

Straw Hat:  My current transmog hat, the Straw Hat is from getting to Best Friends with Old Hillpaw.  It's a nice, simple hat; works well with most of the sets I've had this expansion; and it works okay with tauren horns.

I much prefer to have good hats than have to turn off my helm, and I think the Straw Hat is going to be my default at this point if I'm not otherwise trying to match a set.

Weapon Models: Top 5 Bows

Okay, I lied.  I've actually got a top six bows.

6.  Skyfire Hawkbow:  This one drops off O'mrogg in Shattered Halls; I'm not sure I ever actually saw it drop, but I've always liked the look.  A good one for my Blood Elf if I ever feel like farming it up on her.

5.  Lohn'goron, Bow of the Torn-Heart:  This was the quest bow to get at the end of the Burning Crusade, from a long quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley.  This one I used for quite a while, and it's among my... um, I have more than four bows banked.  I have a lot of bows banked.

4.  High Warlord's Recurve:  I've never had this bow; given that you can't use it for transmogrifying, I'm not sure I'll bother at this point, but it's still one of the coolest bow models you can get (Horde-side, anyway).

3.  Ironfeather Longbow:  When it originally came out, this was a tank bow: it had strength on it.  I was using it on my forsaken hunter anyway, just because it was the best thing she'd run across for damage otherwise.  It's a lovely bow, and it's no wonder Tyrande has it.

2.  Arathar, the Eye of Flame:  This is my favorite of the Cataclysm raid bows; I think I have three of them banked, actually.  It's got the cleanest lines, and I like the green highlights.

1.  Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas:  I didn't actually know about this bow until they announced they were putting pets into the Burning Crusade raids.  I didn't know if the Sunwell raid was going to be included, and I didn't know if I could solo it.  (The results: no, and yes.)  This dropped during the test run, and I've been transmogging into it since.  It's huge.  It's like the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle of bows, and it really doesn't go badly with the Saurok set I'm transmogged into.

Yeah, I'm gonna be using this one for a while.

Bonus list:  Other bows I have banked still:

• Rhok'delar
• Mandokir's Sting
• Gorewood Bow
• Striker's Mark
• Themios the Darkbringer
• Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth

Weapon Models: Top 5 Crossbows

For the longest time, crossbows were a rarity in the game; only a few existed, and they were from lower-end content.  We saw more crossbows later in the Burning Crusade, and by Wrath of the Lich King they were making regular appearances on raid loot tables.  These are my five favorite:

5.  Felglacier Bolter - One of the many Wrath-era crossbows, this one drops out of the Pit of Saron, off Ick.  Groups that fell apart in Pit of Saron usually did so right after this, on the gauntlet, so it wasn't too horrible to farm for.  It's got a very Northrend-esque color scheme.

4.  Windrunner's Heartseeker - I like the references this one makes - all the Windrunner sisters; its model is a little be Scourgey, a little bit Night Elfish, with a dragony set of horns to boot.

3.  Steelhawk Crossbow - I want to say I used this up until the bow dropped off Prince; Attumen the Horseman drops it.  It's one of several bird-themed crossbow models, and perhaps the list garish of them.

2.  Death Lotus Crossbow - This is one of the new Pandaria crossbow models.  It's fairly understated, with a bit of sha-taint, and it comes in pink, blue, and purple flavors, depending what kind of raid you're running.  This is what I'm currently using, but I love the Sunwell bow enough that I've got it transmogrified.

1.  Scourge Crossbow - This crossbow model is used for a ton of green-quality ones, and when I was looking for a nice transmog crossbow for my blood elf this is the one I picked.  It's got clean lines, a nice mix of natural wood and metal, and a relatively compact size.

Next up:  Bows.  I'll have a bit more to say about them.

Weapon Models: Top 5 Guns

Right now I'm transmogging everything to a bow, so doing the guns first may be a bit... incongruous?  But, as a Tauren and an engineer, these are my five favorite gun models in the game.

5.  Flawless Arcanite Rifle:  This is perhaps the most suitably Tauren gun in the game, and it's from engineering, which makes it that much better.

4.  Bodyguard's Rifle:  There are several recolors of this gun from quests in Pandaria that are equally attractive.  The details of the styling are nice, and they fit well with a lot of the expansion's graphical themes.  I like the sleeker barreled guns, as well, so it gets points for that.

3.  Nesingwary 4000:  I'll admit, I hated this gun for a while in Wrath, because I couldn't get rid of it.  I had this gun from the time I could first make it as an engineer all the way up through the middle of Ulduar, when I finally got Giant's Bane.  In retrospect, though, it's a nice-looking gun, very Kirin-Tor-esque and Northrendy.

2.  Fox Hunter's Rifle:  This is perhaps the only version of this model you can get Horde-side; it's Lorna Crowley's gun.  Have I posted about Lorna before?  I love Lorna, and I wish we saw more of her after Silverpine.  Awesome characters get awesome guns.

1. Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle:  This is probably the hugest of guns you can get on a Tauren, and once the new gun sounds go in, maybe I'll go back to it.  It has nice, clean lines, nice details, and you get it off the Opera event in Karazhan.  I got this so many times while trying to get the Lil' Bad Wolf pet.  Ahem.  Of course I still had it in the bank...

Next up: top five crossbows.  And I'll take the pictures outside the Shrine so you can actually see them. >.>

Updated Transmogrification

Well, I still haven't found the gloves I want for Dusk (and I haven't found a set for my shaman), but here's updated pictures of my transmogrified toons:

Duskhawk, Marksman Hunter: Blood Knight, Battleforged, Talhide, Felscale, Malefactor's Eyepatch

Elsabeth, Disc Priest: Primal Mooncloth, Boots of the Long Road, Vicious Fireweave Gloves

Throop, Prot Warrior: Flintlocke's Piloting Pants, Shinkicker Boots, Tyrant's Shield, Oath-bound Gauntlets, Coldrock Pauldrons

Noski, Subtlety/Assassination Rogue: Vengeful & Merciless Gladiator, Skystalker's Leggings

Katrine, Destro Lock: Dark Coven Shoulderpads, Ebonweave Robe & Gloves

Transmogrifying

I hadn't originally planned to change up Dusk's Firelands gear, since the set really didn't look that bad sans hat.  But then I found pants I really liked, and, well...

Blood Knight/Battleforged, with some Talhide Shoulders and Heavy Scorpid for the pieces I couldn't find.  And my 365 boots since I didn't find any others that worked better.

My priest, on the other hand, I knew what I wanted to do with.  It's not completely done, but I loved my Primal Mooncloth set, so voila!

I just need to find a different staff...

Ready to Raid? Maybe, Maybe Not

I'm not particulary familiar with either Beast Mastery or Survival; I dabbled in them for a few levels at a time here and there (mostly on my Elves), but I drift back towards Marksman pretty quickly. (I like big numbers, I guess. Chimera Shot is critting in five digits now, and it's hard to back away from that.) Despite that, though, I've read enough that I think I can exposit on some general information for more than just my favorite tree.

The question, of course, is, "Am I ready for Icecrown Citadel (10/25)?"

Your raw output will probably give you the best idea, based on the guidelines of the raids you run with. Websites abound which will tell you what your gear has you ready for. The one I look at most often nowadays is WoW Heroes; it gives a good breakdown of where your gear lands you in terms of where you're likely to be successful.

How well you're doing versus how well your toon can do are different matters. If you don't have a DPS meter, both Recount and Skada are pretty accurate. Recount has pie charts that I'm partial to, but Skada is more modular and lightweight, so you may prefer one or the other. If you're not familiar with Elitist Jerks or have no idea how to use Excel, Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer takes Shandara's hunter spreadsheet and puts it into a web form - import yourself, check the rotations for shots you do/don't use, and hit Update DPS without buffs to see what your baseline, unbuffed DPS maximum potential is. Then, while unbuffed, take yourself and your pet over to one of the boss level Target Dummies, reset your DPS meter, and go at it for at least 5 minutes. (Hunter's Mark having a 5-minute duration is a good way to guesstimate your timer if you don't have another convenient way to measure.) To cleanly end the test, if you have Serpent Sting up, put up Scorpid Sting, pull your pet back, and Feign as quickly as you can in succession. Otherwise Serpent Sting will keep ticking and lower your meter's reading.

Compare your target dummy meter with your theoretical number from Zeherah's analyzer, and you'll have a good idea of your stand-still numbers; you can extrapolate it upwards by figuring what percentage of your maximum you're hitting (I hover around 90% on target dummy tests), then go to Zeherah's analyzer and enable best raid buffs and debuffs, take the percentage you're pushing, and you can guesstimate your ideal 25-man stand-still output.

You don't normally get to see these numbers on bosses, though sometimes things like the Icebound Wards will approach them, or, if you get your movement down cleanly, you'll get close on Festergut. They will tell you if there's something seriously wrong with your execution, however. And if your raid leaders tell you they want to see 5k minimum, and your analysis on Zeherah's says your toon's maximum output is 4k with raid buffs, no matter how good you are, you've got some work to do.

So, what can you do to bring your numbers up?

The first, and fastest, thing is to look at your talents. Other people have done the legwork, and there's a lot of information out there. The summary is basically that, at the highest gear levels, the top tree is Marksman, then Survival, then Beast Mastery for raiding output. All the trees can meet the minimum enrage timer thresholds for fights like Festergut, but, especially if you want to raid as Beast Mastery, you need to know what you're doing. If your execution isn't as tight, you'll probably want to try each spec and see which one meshes best with your capabilities. Don't just toss points wherever; respecing is expensive. Poke around the various hunter blogs (I link a whole bunch over to the right) and Elitist Jerks and see what good options are for the tree you're using. (For example, some distribution of 7/57/7 is the most common Marksman raiding spec, but going through Aspect Mastery in BM or including Hawkeye in Survival isn't uncommon or wrong.)

If there are talents you absolutely love but which don't help you with raiding, consider dual-specing to have the talents you enjoy most on your own time in one spec and the talents that make you most productive in a raid in the other.

How are your glyphs? Some glyphs that are great for soloing aren't so hot for raiding, and if you're going to stick with one spec rather than dual spec, you might want to invest in a stock to swap back and forth.

• Marksman will probably want Serpent Sting and two of Steady Shot, the Hawk, Kill Shot, or Chimera Shot.
• Beast Mastery will want some combination of Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, the Hawk, Kill Shot, and Bestial Wrath.
• Survival will probably want Explosive Shot and two of the Hawk, Kill Shot, Steady Shot, or Serpent Sting.

What pet are you raiding with? As cute and lovable as your spore bat might be, a wolf (top choice in most cases because of the AP buff), cat, raptor, or even a wasp or worm for raid debuffs will probably be a better choice for your raiding pet.

Are you pushing the right buttons? Rotation is one of the hardest things to fix if you've been playing a long time; if you've got some bad habits ingrained, it might take a while to break yourself out of them. Unlike some people, I don't consider being a clicker to be a bad habit, but if that turns out to be the core of your problems, unfortunately I don't have a recommended way to break out of the habit (at least for a ranged toon). Kill Shot at 20% and below is important; Kill Shot has edged me over someone I was competing with on meters because when it crits, it's sweet, and it's end-of-fight burst not everyone can match.

• Marksman will, at the beginning of a fight, put up Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting, pop Rapid Fire, hit Chimera, Aimed, possibly Arcane, and Steady Shot until Rapid Fire wears off, hit Readiness, pop Rapid Fire again, and then fall into the Chimera, Aimed, possibly Arcane, Steady x3 or x4 rotation until Rapid Fire and Readiness are off cooldown. I say possibly Arcane because after you get about 500 Armor Penetration (ArP), you want to drop Arcane from your rotation (and talents), because you'll get a better return from physical damage at that point (Steady Shot, Piercing Shots).
• Beast Mastery starts out with Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting, then falls into an Aimed, Arcane, Steady rotation; remember to refresh Serpent Sting as needed. I don't know enough about Beast Mastery to tell you when the ideal Bestial Wrath usage is, but if you're set on raiding as BM, one of the hunter blogs over to the right should have information. At some level of ArP, Beast Mastery will also drop Arcane from the rotation.
• Survival will put up Hunter's Mark and Serpent Sting to start, then go through Explosive, Black Arrow, Aimed (or Multi depending on spec), Steady, refreshing Serpent Sting as needed and taking advantage of Lock and Load procs whenever possible. Arcane isn't even on Survival's radar.

If you're pushing the right buttons but not getting the numbers you think you should be, find a hunter who plays a similar spec and does put out the numbers you want and see if they can help you figure out where things are going wrong. (Browse logs for your server if you don't know of someone to go to, or try the WoW hunter forums.)

How's your hit rating? You want 8%, which is ~263 hit rating without talents; if you put points in Focused Aim it can be as low as ~164 hit rating. This is the only stat that has a hard and fast cap number that you really have to worry about hitting - everything else is either capless or isn't worth going to the trouble of capping unless you're in a top end raiding guild (in which case I really hope you don't need to be reading my guide).

Are you gemming and enchanting right for your spec and gear level? Different specs use different gems, and at different gear levels, some gems are better than others. Meta gem requirements need to be met, as well. Nightmare Tears are always good options for turning on a meta if you're gemming straight through with your best gem stat. Your meta gem is probably going to be a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, but if for some reason it's not, it's probably a Chaotic Skyflare Dimaond. If your hit rating is low or you don't want to invest talent points in Focused Aim, a few pure hit rating gems may be required. If you need to for socket bonus or your meta gem, pair it with Agility (Marksman or Survival), Attack Power (Beast Mastery), Stamina (Beast Mastery or Survival), or mp5 (Marksman).

• Marksman hunters want to gem for Agility until they hit about 800 passive ArP on gear. After about 800 ArP, gemming for ArP will give better returns than Agility. If you want to flesh out your socket bonuses (I'm a little compulsive like that, too), pair Agility with Crit or Hit (depending on your needs) for yellow sockets or mp5 (yes, mp5) for blue sockets.
• Beast Mastery hunters generally gem for Attack Power, but they can start gemming for ArP at a much lower threshold than Marksman. Crit, Hit, and probably Stamina (more pet health) are good secondary parts for orange and purple gems for socket bonuses.
• Survival is similar to pre-ArP Marksman, except that Stamina being a DPS gain for Survival means they will want that instead of mp5 on any purple gems they need. Agility stays good for Survival since they will never switch to ArP.

For the most part, you're going to want to enchant along the same priority as your gems: Agility for Marksman or Survival, Attack Power for Beast Mastery. If a slot only has one or the other, either is fine. Your head enchant will come from the Ebon Blade quarter master, and unless you're a scribe, you'll want to grind reputation with the Sons of Hodir for your shoulder enchant. (It's not as bad as it used to be - after getting to Honored, you can buy about 400-500 Relics of Ulduar and pop up to Exalted.) Beast Mastery and Marksman hunters will probably want Icescale Leg Armor, while Survival may opt for Frosthide. Take advantage of your profession's special buffs - cloak and glove enchants for engineers, extra sockets for blacksmiths, better gems for jewelcrafters, etc.

What's your ammunition? If you're still using vendor-sold ammunition, see if you can't find an engineer willing to become your supplier of higher-end ammunition.

Do you die too often? No matter how theoretically awesome your toon is, dead DPS is 0 DPS. Are you pulling aggro? Get a threat meter or turn on the in-game threat warnings. Omen is the tried-and-true in threat meters, and Skada can act as one, as well. Get the Feign Death minor glyph. (And, you know, use Feign. A lot.) Other than persistant damage (damage that hits the whole raid no matter what, or things like Saurfang's Boiling Blood), DPS shouldn't be taking damage. Yes, when you get a slime on Rotface, you'll take some damage, and your healers should keep you up long enough to merge the slime and get back to DPSing. But taking damage from standing in the slime pools would be your fault. Damage from standing in fires (fiery, poisony, or otherwise) is your own fault, and don't blame your healers if you die from it. If you're not seeing damaging effects, check your graphics settings. Turn down what you can live without if you need to for system performance issues, and make sure projected textures is turned on. Make sure you have Deadly Boss Mods or a similar addon to tell you about damaging effects as they get close. (For example, DBM will tell you when Putricide is throwing Maleable Goo at or near you.)

If you're doing everything else right but just have low ilevel gear, you'll need to invest some time running Heroics and older raids, and then spending badges. Trial of the Crusader runs aren't uncommon still - the raid is trashless and a good run can take less than an hour. If your guild or raid group isn't hitting it still, a PUG on your server probably is. Weekly raids, either in-guild or PUGs, will land you bonus badges and sometimes shots at gear you may need. Onyxia can be a fast, fun run with good gear (particularly a helm and guns). Even if you don't PVP, the Vault of Archavon in Wintergrasp drops tier gear.

If you're not sure what gear to go for, hit up some of the hunter blogs linked to the right, or WoW.com, and look for the various hunter gear lists. Or, do what I do, and go to WoWhead, pull up the Item->Armor->Mail->Slot I'm looking to upgrade and filter by stuff with Attack Power. Then I sort by ilevel, find what I've got, and see what's available that's better that is reasonably attainable.

And when you get to a raid, remember:

• Bring your flasks, food, and any other self-buffage reagents.
• Be stocked up on ammunition.
• Be on time, and try not to need a summon.
• Remember to swap into your raid spec and pull out your raid pet if you have more than one of either.
• Pee before you go! (To quote my husband.)

Bah

Well, 3.1 is here. This means I'm going to have to accept that I'm not getting upgrades from Naxx-25, which is frustrating, because I really kinda sorta wanted the bracers off Grobbulus. Yes, of all the possible hunter drops in Naxx, for me, the bracers are what I wanted the most. The good news is that there's another similar pair of bracers in Ulduar-10. The bad news is that it's in 10, which means there won't be purchaseable bracers of iLVL 219, so I'm going to be relying on drops again.

Yeah, yeah, only four Naxx-25 Grobbulus kills in my stats. (42ish boss kills total? And nothing from them?) It's still frustrating. Maybe with the changes to Efficiency and Chimera Shot I'll be able to take the hit to mana (and the AP loss) and switch out to the Bands of Anxiety. Going to need to pick up a smidge of hit rating, though. Why do the Eaglebane Bracers have to be so all-around awesome?

The Nature of Drop Percentages and Stat Spreads

I've been through Naxx-25's Construct Quarter three times now (with 2 Thaddius kills), Military twice, and Spider, Plague, and FWL once. That's 100 individual loot items, including tokens but excluding trash drops. How many of the pieces I'm interested in have dropped?

None, of course. :P

What am I looking for? This, or this (or this for this, I like both, and they're both upgrades), or this. I'm sure there are other things that are small upgrades in there (like shoulders - I should probably look into shoulders), but those are the pieces I know I can't upgrade elsewhere (yet, anyway).

The bracers in particular I'm not satisfied with the 'equivalent' i-lvl items; I don't like the stat spreads. The 7.5 chest is another piece I don't like the stat spread for. I'd rather keep what I've got than take a piece that's really better for a different spec. Part of it is balancing hit rating - not dropping too low, and such. I would be okay with swapping gems out for crit or AP again if I got a piece with more hit rating, but so many of the potential 'upgrades' would drop my hit rating to the point I'd have to reenchant for it, which would probably result in a net crit or AP loss.

3.1 Patch Notes

The 3.1 PTR is up, although I'm not over there, and I've been hearing conflicting information about what's actually on the PTR so far as changes to Survival, vs. what's in the patch notes. But, I'm a Marksman hunter, so other than academic curiosity, I don't care what they do to the deep Survival talents. :P

From the patch notes:

• Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.
• Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.
• Talents
• Beast Mastery
• Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
• Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.
• Marksmanship
• Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
• Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
• Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an auto shot, to 80%.
• Survival
• Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
• Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
• New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
• T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.
• Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
• Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.
• Pets
• Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
• Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.

None of that seems particularly awful; we already got our nerf. The Disengage change is minor, and tweaking the CD back up a little after having it reduced previously isn't huge - especially since one of the undocumented changes is the removal of a minimum range on Kill Shot. You don't have to back up to pick someone off. (Side note: Something about the synergy of raid buffs last night in Naxx had me Kill Shot critting for 10k. We didn't even have a warrior or a druid. 2 prot pallies, 1 frost DK, 3 shamans (one of each flavor), 2 holy priests, a warlock, and me. I don't know what was going on, but it was sweet.)

The Frost Trap change is a small nerf, if I'm reading it correctly; it means that if the person/mob who triggers the trap resists or is immune, the trap just fizzles, instead of them just ignoring the effect.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk apparently looks different now - I'm guessing something along the lines of the cobra animation for one of the deeper BM talents, but we'll see. I'm not sure why the Improved Wing Clip mention fell under the BM notes - that's a Survival thing, and one of the few things I wish I still had from my 2-day Survival experiment.

The Piercing Shots change was announced a while back, and I will be shuffling points (or using dual specs for a raiding spec) to pick it up. The reduction of the points for Ranged Weapon Specialization means I may also pick it up for a raiding spec, but I'll see how many loose points I have to play with. Wild Quiver... meh, still probably won't bother.

The Survival changes mention Black Arrow, so I'm not sure why they didn't list it in the Survival talent section, but hey, at least you get the inkling that Survival hunters will now be able to do Fire, Nature, Arcane, and Shadow damage, on top of physical damage and two traps counting as Frost. If you ever doubted that hunters were casters, we may be the only ones with all five schools now. Woo. o.O

I'm really not familiar enough with Survival to know how good or bad some of the changes are, but it seems like they're trying to bring down the somewhat crazy numbers that Survival started doing after the 3.0.8 changes. Trap Launcher: a cool idea I've seen tossed out on the Hunter and Suggestion forums occasionally, and I'm a little curious how far down the tree it is. It should make Survival's trap dancing a little easier (to synergize with the undocumented tweak to Sniper Training?), but the idea of throwing a snake trap across the field at someone is just awesome.

The Roar of Sacrifice change - I don't have a Cunning pet right now (long story short: I had 3 pets that turned out to be Ferocity when they added talents, and wanted a bear as my Tenacity pet; I initially picked up a sporebat as my 5th, but switched it to a Hyena, theoretically for PVP). But this was the mana regen talent? I'm guessing it wasn't meant to be used on anyone but the hunter, and they're just fixing it. The rhino nerf disappointed my GM (who, post-3.0 warlock changes, has been a hunter full-time o.O), since he had a ball during the Lunar Festival 'defending' Thunder Bluff's elder from Alliance. (No, our guild wasn't subsequently KoS at the Alliance elders, really.)

Changes mentioned on the official forums that didn't get included in the PTR notes: remote stable use, and the ammuniton changes. I kind of wish remote stable use had been a saleable engineering item, but oh well. (It could have had awesome RP possibilities... /e pulls out her Goblin SAT Phone and issues the command: "Release the hounds!" Ahem.) The ammunition changes apparently aren't coming all in one piece - for now they're just increasing the stack size and removing (?) quivers. Hopefully this means that my Mammoth Cutters won't be useless yet, and that when they do eventually change, Engineering ammunition will just become a relic-like item of some sort, which we can still craft. We make some of the better ammunition in the game, and it would be nice if that didn't disappear completely.

Um, yeah, I've mentioned I'm a Goblin Engineer before, right? >.>

Two gear upgrades last week - both unexpected. A belt off Gothikk, and a sword off the Four Horsemen. My 2h sword skill was at 116 when I got it, heh. I mostly dual-wielded up until the Zulian Stone Axe (with an Agility enchant) from Venoxis in Zul'Gurub, and then mostly had two-handers from there on out, other than a brief switch into dual Stellaris with +Int enchants until I got the S3 axe. One of the things I've always understood about playing MM is that you can't neglect your mana pool; at least the gear reflects that now.

Post-3.0.9

Okay, after having several weeks of weaker Steady Shots, things have somewhat normalized. I'm not pushing quite the same numbers I had been, but I made some adjustments.

I had switched over to the Whale-stick Harpoon, for the +hit, so that I could re-gem for AP/crit. That served me pretty well for a while, but then I got the Lightning Giant Staff, which was, overall, an AP/crit boost, so I've re-gemmed yet again, back to +hit gems.

I picked up the PVP boots initially, but then the Dragon Slayer's Sabatons dropped, and they are, overall, a PVE boost over the epics.

I got the heroic badge neck, which was an upgrade. Getting revered with the Ebon Blade netted me new shoulders. Heroic Azjol-Nerub got me pants and a ring. Grobbulus had another ring. I also have the Bands of Anxiety off Grobbulus, but with my current gear set-up, I don't know that I want to swap out from my Eaglebane Bracers. I get AP from Int, so the Eaglebane have more AP for me, and I would drop under hit-cap with the Bands. That would mean re-gemming something again.

Basically, between re-enchanting, re-gemming, and the new gear, I've added about 700 RAP since pre-3.8. I'm still hit-capped, and still over 30% crit. It's amazing how many people I talk to who are good hunters (seriously, better DPS than I am) who have trouble buffing their crit - I think it's just because I prioritize it until about 30% over AP.

It wasn't cheap, but I'm cleared for all wings of Naxx under our raid guidelines. I'm hoping we hit Malygos this week. >.> Granted, I found Aces High! to be kind of meh, and finding out that phase 3 is basically that quest... well, I want to at least do the fight once, and then I'm okay with never going back.

The macro has ended up mostly unchanged, just shuffled - the cast sequence is now Chimera, Aimed, Arcane, Steady, Steady, Steady. When Hawk procs, I can probably get in another Steady, but that only matters on fights where I can just stand and shoot.

Oh, and I'm now riding an orange raptor full-time for my ground mount. Mmm, raptor.

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. >.>