Sidewinders/7.1.5

I've been poking around in my guild's raid logs since the patch, partly because I'm so glad to be rid of Sidewinders, and partly because being rid of Sidewinders didn't make me worse.

Pre-7.1.5:  ilvl 870, average DPS for boss fights in heroic Emerald Nightmare: 209,635.1 (log)
Post-7.1.5:  ilvl 876, average DPS for boss fights in heroic Emerald Nightmare: 240,105.2 (log)

My ilvl has only gone up a little, but that's about the same kind of boost in raw numbers that I saw from initially switching to Sidewinders a few weeks into normal Emerald Nightmare.  I didn't like doing it; I like the on-demand instant shot that Arcane Shot has become, and other than kind of switching Marked Shot for Serpent Sting, it's the same three shots that were the core of my Molten Core rotation.

I realize a lot of hunters are disappointed in Marksman (and Beast Mastery) right now, but playing at the level I am (where that 308k on Nythendra is kind of a personal non-trash best), I'm really happy with my numbers.  I'm also really happy to have some traps back.

After this long, I had gotten used to the Sidewinders/Marked Shot AOE, but by the time we got to Dragons trash I was pushing out relatively decent numbers again.

Overall, across our raid group, the patch was good.  We steamrolled through H-Emerald Nightmare, beating our record times for both Cenarius and Xavius, andwent for a couple easy kills in normal Trial of Valor, but no one wanted to go through then minutes of Helya after all that.  Sunday we're going to look at heroic Trial of Valor and see what it looks like now.

Still want some kind of really AOE (either damage or heals) for my discipline priest, but that doesn't seem likely at this point.

The Return of Hunter's Mark

So I've been using a shot macro since like, Karazhan or Wrath sometime, when I realized I was not effectively using Steady Shot in my rotation.  The macro has changed a bit over the years, as shots available changed, haste plateaus affected it, and so forth.

So, Steady Shot is gone for me.  I don't really miss it - I like having Arcane Shot back, on demand, free and on the move.  I do miss the Aimed Shot mobility, but that's just a matter of retraining myself to stand still for it.  I've got Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, and Marked Shot for core shots now, with Bursting Shot as an interesting kind of combination of Barrage and the old Scatter Shot.  I went with Murder of Crows for my regular set up, which I've been occasionally regretting when I go to farm old raids and forget that I can't just change it on the fly when I remember, after I'm there, that I kind of want it for that.  I love the crows, though, and it feels safer in raids and dungeons since my mastery increases my range now and I don't have as good a feel for how far back is safe to Barrage yet.

I went with Patient Sniper originally for its synergy with Sidewinders, realized that Sidewinders didn't feel safe enough for group use with the whole range issue (like Barrage), and switched it to Trick Shot.  Originally I had been using Steady Focus, but I felt like I was drowning in Focus with it, so I moved that over to Careful Aim.  Depending on how haste, gear changes, and such affect it while leveling, I may switch it back.

Since I can't just easily switch between two Marksman specs (I was dual-MM again for the last while of Warlords) to go back and forth between having Lone Wolf or not for various fights in raids, I'm not sure I'm going to use it much.  I've got Binding Shot slotted, but I might switch over to Camouflage for general use.  I miss Freezing Trap, but Binding Shot doesn't really replace it.

So what does all this mean for the macro?  Short answer: the macro is dead.  I could throw something together, maybe - Aimed, Arcane, Marked, Aimed has a decent chance of regularly applying and exploiting Marked Shot and Vulnerability based on how the proc rate for Hunter's Mark seems to work out right now.  It wouldn't be sure-fire, though, and it would get hung up on Marked Shot any time Hunter's Mark failed to proc.  I'd have to do a similar one for Multi-Shot, as well, for AOE situations.

So what am I doing instead?  Marked Shot already lights up when it's usable, and Multi and Arcane light up when Hunter's Mark application is ready to go.  This means I need to remind myself to use Crows, Trueshot, and Aimed Shot besides when Lock and Load procs.  Crows and Trueshot are easy Weak Auras, and I set one up for Vulnerability to light up Aimed Shot when my target is vulnerable.  Button glow works fairly well as a cue for me.  (Anything audio or flashing is bad for my sensory input issues.)  So this is what I'm looking at now:

I switched from Binding Shot to Camouflage by the time I got to taking this screennshot.

However, this isn't ideal for someone who uses the mouse for the bulk of their abilities - it means I'm watching the action bar a lot more.  I can't play with straight keybinds for abilities on the left hand in a raid/dungeon situation for more than about an hour without aggravating the joints in my hand (probably arthritis), so mouse is preferred for something I play a lot.  (Sadly this is why I don't tank more - I do play that with left-hand keybinds.)  For my priest, since she's usually focused on health bars anyway, it just means clustering everything in one area of the screen.  I've done a decent amount of raid tactical calls as a hunter, though, from add calls to doing things like the conveyor belts in Siege of Orgrimmar.  Hopefully I can adjust to the point I don't have to watch the bars too much.

All that said, I'm enjoying the playstyle of apply Hunter's Mark, apply Vulnerable, nuke with Aimed Shot (currently from 46 yards out). And I helped my mom tame an explosive sheep last weekend, even though I had to swap to Survival to do it because of the Freezing Trap changes.  I'll live without the macro.

Now I just have to figure out how to track Atonement in larger raids, and I'm good to go...

Transmog Weapons

So as I'm logging around my level 100 toons today, when I got to my shaman, I suddenly realized I didn't know if she was going to have a spec that she could transmog into Gorehowl with the artifact weapons.  I don't play enhancement, and I remembered that elemental is getting a fist weapon (cool enough), but... Gorehowl?

Not all of my toons have weapon transmogs that I care about; my mage, for example, has the basic Draenor staff because all the staffs I like to go with her transmog are bound to other characters, and at this point I'm not buying duplicates when the looks are going to get shared so soon.

Some of them, though, I'm probably going to have to change.

Hunter (main), marksman
Currently:  Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas
Changing?:  Nope, hunters have been able to transmog between ranged weapon looks for a while, and Marksman is getting the bow artifact, anyway.  The Windrunners are cool, and all, but I'm a Tauren.  My alt hunters by and large don't really have a preferred mog weapon, although my original Night Elf is tranmogged into the Gorewood Bow (Blightcaller raids, heh) right now; most of them may use the artifact looks.

Warrior, protection/sometimes fury
Currently: Blazing Rapier/Drillborer Disk
Changing?: This pair was picked to go with her current transmog, so it really depends what pops up in the plate transmog, as well as my one-hand/shield options.  I did pick up the sweet shield Naana has paired with Quel'Delar, so I may look at the blue/steel/yellow/gold options.  That said, the base artifact look for prot doesn't jump out and grab me for the kind of transmogs I like for my warrior, so I probably won't be using that unless digging into the plate backlog turns up something I like with it.

Priest, discipline
Currently: Communal Staff
Changing?:  Probably not, at least not for the initial discipline staff's look.  I love the bits of disc priest artifact story I've heard, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how the quest story plays out, but my priest's current overall transmog is the one I'm most fond of, and I'm not likely to break it up for a while (unless I find shoulders I like better; the ones I have currently are because they're the best color match I had available; I'm not sold on the fiddly bits sticking out of them).

Warlock, destruction
Currently: Soul Harvester
Changing?: Eh... the destro staff looks cool, but... Soul Harvester.  That said, I do have a lot of neat purple-colored cloth if I haven't vendored too much of it, so I'll probably see what it looks like on the goblin once before deciding for sure.  Thematically, the Scepter of Sargaras isn't really a step down.  If I don't like the way any of the purple looks, I'll stick with my tier 1/Soul Harvester setup.

Shaman, elemental/restoration
Currently: Gorehowl
Changing?: Unfortunately it looks like I'm switching off of Gorehowl once I get an artifact for the shaman; I'm looking at either a mace and shield or fist and shield.  I have been accumulating something of a shield collection, so I'll see what options I've got to go with her current mog (which, at this point, is something of an iconic shaman look to me).  I'm leaning towards elemental at the moment, but if resto solos okay, I tend to play my healing capable toons as healers (excluding the paladin).

Paladin, protection
Currently: Knight's War Hammer & Emerald Shield
Changing?:  Like my other plate wearers, whether she keeps her setup depends what turns up in the plate transmog.  I love emerald plate on my paladin, and the prot paladin artifact's basic look is more blue/silver than green/gold.  If something turns up in the plate transmog I like as well, I might try it out.  The Knight's War Hammer and Emerald Shield work with this set so well, especially using the Ripped Sandstorm Cloak heirloom with it.

Death Knight, blood
Currently:  Darkened Broadsword
Changing?:  As much as I love this sword (I shamelessly rolled need on it while leveling her through Outland since my troll's was bound to her (Titan Grip!)), it depends what pops up in red/silver plate transmog options.  Being a green cow, I'm not sure the red/silver will look great on her.  Some of the salvage yard swords for death knights were pretty cool, too, so I may go with the black/blue transmog options, again, depending what pops up in my plate options on Tuesday.

Monk, mistweaver
Currently: Aspirant's Staff of Harmony
Changing?: Not immediately - I don't dislike the Mistweaver staff, but it doesn't look like it goes as well as I'd like with the Wolf Rider's getup I've got my monk in.  If there's a leather set that turns up in my mog interface that I like with the artifact staff, I might use it instead.  This staff was picked more because it worked the best with Wolf Rider's of my available options.  Wolf Rider's was picked partly so I had a toon that didn't clash with the Ruby Panther.

Don't care/waiting to see what pops up in the new transmog interface:  rogue (subtlety), hunters 2-4 (all marksman), mage (frost), druid (primarily restoration but sometimes balance), priest 2 (discipline).  I mean, I've got the Christmas Tree daggers for my rogue, but I'm not particularly tied to them.  If I can ever transmog the Dark Herring, though, that's hands-down what my rogue is going to be using.  And the Scythe of Elune!  I may have to play balance more on my druid, because I love the Scythe of Elune.  I was terribly frustrated in Vanilla when I found both halves of that story line in quest chains (first in Duskwood, then in Ashenvale), and they never linked up until Cataclysm and the Gilneans came in as a faction.

All in all, I think the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas, and the Communal Staff are the two weapons I'll be keeping for sure; a lot of the others are dependent on keeping the transmog they're currently part of.  I'd keep Gorehowl if I could (partly because I find the idea of healing while wielding it amusing), but alas, there are no two-handed shaman artifacts.

Bonus Transmog Discussion: Axeclaw Mail

I'm using the Axeclaw set (the Tanaan token drops) on my main for the bulk of her set right now basically because the gloves sold me on the set.  I love the green/white contrast and the rivets up the inside; I this may be the only armor set where the gloves were the piece that jumped out and grabbed me enough to make me want to use it.  I had been using the set belt in the transmog, until I got the Girdle of the Legion General and I suddenly had 3D pouches on my belt.  I'll probably mog out of this once I find a set in Legion that I like, but pouches on my belt.  I'm probably keeping the belt if they don't have any as neat in Legion.

Legion sounds awesome!

Okay, for once I got to watch BlizzCon streams at home in real time!  All in all, I'm excited about a lot of the stuff they talked about.  I'm not super-stoked about playing Marksman without a pet, but it's for sentimental reasons, not mechanical ones, so I figure I'll just swap over to Beast Mastery when I want to visit my pets.

But what I am looking forward to...  (If you don't have livestream access, try Blizzard Watch for info and lots of pictures!)

• The new Hearthstone adventure:  Okay, it's not a WoW thing, but I literally yelled, "Oh, my God," at the screen when they showed the Golden Monkey card, so... yeah, I'm kinda stoked.  I don't play enough Hearthstone to get past rank 15ish, but I play enough to get to 17 most seasons.  So slightly more than casual play, but not a lot.
• The whole artifact customization system:  It kind of reminds me of FFX-2's dress sphere system, lol.  But I loved FFX-2 (it's the only one I've actually finished), so that's really a plus for me.
• EAGLES
• The transmog system.  I was commenting in guild chat as I was watching it, and everyone seemed excited.  I've done a lot of quests on Duskhawk, and I've got a pretty awesome shield collection... on a level 47 alt on another sever from my warrior and paladin that will actually be relevant.  Only having to get something to drop once to use it in transmog for all the toons that could equip it will be really helpful for shared armor types for the classes I mostly heal on.
• Atonement focused Disc!  I've been playing Discipline (or a Discipline-heavy hybrid spec) since Vanilla, and I loved when they added Atonement.  It feels weaker this expansion than in previous ones, but I'm looking forward to the soloing survivability returning again.
• Okay, so when they started talking about the Subtlety rogue as ninja thing - yes, yes, that is why I made my rogue in Vanilla.  I spent most of that panel just kind of happily gibbering.
• Improved UI!  Every quality-of-life improvement they make just makes me that much happier.
• Meaningful profession content!  There are days all I want to do is spend three hours going in circles mindlessly mining - and now we won't even have to compete for nodes!
• The changes to the mob-tapping system also make me happy; I was doing Throne of Kil'jaeden dailies Saturday morning on my Disc priest, which is a, well, slow process.  And the event to spawn the Succubus boss popped up.  So I go up and start slowly working on the elite mobs there.  I can kill them, it just takes a while.  And a hunter comes up and starts killing them, and I was glad even though I wasn't getting objective completion just because it went so much faster, but in the Legion system, I would have been getting completion credit, and loot, and that would have been nice!  People might actually help you kill stuff in passing more often because it benefits them!
• The seeming mashup of daily/weekly quests and bonus objectives - show up in a zone at max level and there will be some content there to do!  No need to hit up a hub, just go to the map area and do it!
• I want to be excited about what they're doing with dungeons - I like the concept - the folks I mostly ran dungeons with up through, like, Wrath stopped playing for the most part around Cataclysm.  Maybe if I find some new folks to run with regularly.
• The frickin' Scythe of Elune.  Okay, I did like, all the quests in Vanilla.  All of them, as in, when they first put in gold at max level for quest rewards when you couldn't get the quest XP, I went and did every quest I could find.  And so I did both the Alliance and Horde branches of the Scythe of Elune stuff, and they dropped it, and then in Cataclysm in the Worgen stuff they finally wrapped that up, but I'm so excited by the presence of the Scythe of Elune that I'm debating making my druid primarily Balance instead of Resto to start out with that.  SCYTHE OF ELUNE.  
• I like the idea of my hunter getting a Windrunner-legacy bow, but I've been transmogging into the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas, and that's aesthetically hard to beat. (It's bigger than my Tauren.)  But I really do like the idea, and it sounds like the progression process for the artifacts will have lots of story meat.  And story meat is the best meat...
• NONI GREW UP and he has bacon for us!
• Baby mooses!

See? Bigger than my Tauren & 100% awesome.

So that scene at the end of the movie trailer, where he jumps off the balcony onto his griffon to fly into combat? THAT. THAT IS WHY I LOVE FLIGHT ON MY DRUID.

I'm kind of stoked. >.>

6.0 - Initial Thoughts

Patch day has come and gone, and besides Battleground queues being temporarily broken...

I need a 'mog worthy of her now.

First and foremost, my warrior looks amazing. When I first saw her updated model in the beta, I nearly cried. Troll hair has been notoriously... sad, and she just looks awesome now.

My wolf dances again. I started burning party grenades after watching my tauren’s facial expressions while dancing, and I had puppy out from a foray into the new UBRS, and... I may have kind of shouted in excitement to my husband.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I only changed 7 of about 40 faces: three unfortunate human eyebrows; two unexpectedly scowling gnomes; one overly perky night elf; and one troll that has so many awesome options now that I liked better. The rest I’ve been happy enough with, although I might go change some hairstyles now that they’re less blocky.

My rogue won the most-filled-crafting-tab. She’s the one that’s kept one stack of every type of herb.

Yes, that's Blood of Heroes.

I shoved so much stuff into void storage on my main hunter... and then went and did the same on my warlock, because wow, she had a lot of banked gear.

My shaman won the most-gold-from-currency-conversion: ~1400g.

I snagged the Bottomless Bag pattern for <100g. Thanks, combined Auction House!

And soloing... Just, wow. Last time I hopped into Dragon Soul 10N (about 3 weeks ago?) Morchok killed me since my pet wouldn’t tank him. I killed him in 9 seconds last night. Everything up to Spine was a cakewalk; Spine does some weird rolling stuff that’s going to take some work to get down smoothly.

I haven't tried out healing on my priest yet - I have heard mixed reviews.  I'll see how it goes later this week.

On classes

Why do I like the classes I play?  Why don't I like the ones I'm not?  A few bullet points:

Classes I'm playing:

Hunter

• Independence: I'm a solo player by nature, and being able to do so when I want to is great.  Hunters are great for soloing.
• Ranged: I have a ranged mentality; I like being far enough away to have a chance to run away if things go pear-shaped.
• Manageable rotation: Okay, so marksman doesn't really have that reputation, but for me, it works.  I can macro the core of it (Chimera/Steady/Arcane) and work in all the specials (Stampede, Crows, Rapid Shot, etc.) as they're available.  I can't make that work on every class.

Priest

• Multiple healing styles: A priest can go Disc or Holy, and within each, switch it up even more - single target, AOE, direct heals, indirect heals.  I love options.
• Reasonable healer soloing: I can quest as a disc priest and just not die.  Is this what it feels like to be a pally?  I'm not sure.

Rogue

• Stealth: I discovered the thrill of just walking by stuff to pick flowers way back in Azshara at level 50, and it's just wonderful.  I don't have to fight stuff unless I want to.  It's like flying before there was flying.
• Survivability: Evasion tanking the 2nd boss in the Black Morass for the last ~20% was a rush, and not doable on every class.

Shaman

• Chain Lightning:  I love elemental, and spamming chain lightning is a bit disturbingly satisfying, especially when it procs and you get double chains.
• Ghost Wolf: Happy puppy dances!

Warrior

• Shield Slam!  Shield slam is so fun it warrants an exclamation point rather than a colon.
• Charge:  I leveled in Battle Stance way too long just to keep using charge.
• Victory Rush:  Because hitting things makes you feel better!

Warlock

• FIRE.  Uh, yeah, that's most of it.  BURN ALL THE THINGS goes a surprisingly long way with me.  And I love my little goblin destro lock.

Druid

• Flight Form:  I'll admit it, I made the druid initially for faster herbing.  And then I discovered just how amazing flight form is: hop out of water, keybind, A BIRD!  As I said earlier today, such freedom.
• Healing:  My second favorite healing playstyle; variety of buttons, instant heals, some AOE "oh crap" options.
• Downside: I like the Balance playstyle, but moonkin form just does not do it for me.  If I could glyph to play Balance and still look like a Tauren, I would.   (Am I the only Resto druid not glyphed to look like a tree?)

Classes I'm not (really) playing:

Mage

• Main server is full.  That's pretty much my main reason my mage got stranded at 40.  I was enjoying fire, then moved her to move some heirlooms when server transfers were cheap.  Then I rolled my druid on my main server...

Death Knight

• Confusing rotations:  I don't know which buttons I'm supposed to push when.  I'm not sure which abilities really go with which spec.
• Starting zone:  I've played through the DK starting zone... five times now?  It's like the Worgen, Goblin, and Pandaren zones - once was enough.  Having the option would be nice, but having the option to skip it would also be nice.

Paladin

• Confusing rotations:  Same problem as the DK, really - I was okay until Mists, and then enough changed fundamentally that I don't know what I'm doing again.  There's even only one DPS spec and I'm not sure what buttons to push for AOE vs. single-target.
• Healing not compelling:  I tried healing briefly, but stopped because I couldn't figure out how to not run out of mana.  That was really unfamiliar.
• Upside: Since the paladin is my last character under 87 on my main server, I'm probably going to try her again when I finish my druid.  Maybe *gasp* tanking.

Monk

• Late to the game:  The monk suffers from being a new class when I'm full on my main server.
• Melee animations:  The monk animations override a lot of the best melee animations - undead female special melee attack, the flippy one.  I just... wasn't as interested when I saw that.

Deficiencies

As the title of this blog probably makes clear, I play Marksman hunters.  Four of them, three of which are 85, and the fourth is 82 and waiting for me to get around to doing Cataclysm zones yet again.  But as I have eight characters at 85 and a slew of lower level characters, it's probably also clear that I play other classes.

Like with hunters, my foray into other classes tends to be specialization specific: I play priests almost exclusively as discipline, for example.  I think my 85 priest has two 5-man runs as shadow... ever.  I've never specialized into Holy.  My warlock (who will likely get bumped up the alt chain due to the 'lock changes in Mists) is exclusively destruction.  My rogue was exclusively subtlety until dual-spec and the simplification of okay assassination damage rotations in Wrath made it possible for me to do more than solo or PVP on her.  My warrior was my most frequent foray into active dual-specializing; I leveled her as fury, but also kept up with her prot spec (which I love to pieces).  My shaman has an offspec (right now it's enhancement, though for a period in Burning Crusade it was resto), but she hasn't actually queued as anything but elemental in probably three years.

For the most part I do okay with these alts.  My priest has done 6/8 of Dragon Soul 10, somehow missing a random boss in each half, but having killed Deathwing.  I healed extensively with her at 70, gearing her out as well as Duskhawk through both Karazhan and whatever we were calling Justice/Valor points back then.  My warrior (whom y'all have seen in her shiny new transmogrification recently) can tank the new five-mans okay when I get up the nerve to queue into them, and my baby warrior is being leveled prot and doing random dungeons exclusively as a tank - I haven't even given her a DPS offspec.  (Prot AOE with Blood & Thunder, Cleave, and Victory Rush is a surprisingly satisfying way to level if you can find areas dense enough to pull enough mobs at the same time.)  I haven't done as much with my rogue recently, but I very much enjoyed 2v2 with my brother's rogue way back in the day, as well as Extreme Herb Farming (AKA getting exalted with Sporeggar via solo herbing trips in Underbog).  My warlock is... complicated as destro right now, but I think I'm getting a feel for it again.  She's got my transmutation alchemy, and I like her more as a goblin than when she was a blood elf.  My shaman I've taken through raid finder and gotten geared about equally to my priest - spammable chain lightning is awesome.

Those are the alts I'm at least marginally good at.  Combined with my hunters, that's six of ten classes.  The remainders (death knight, druid, mage, and paladin) I haven't gotten to level cap.  Even with all my baby alts, the ones I play the most are the priests (discipline, one of each faction, both in Northrend) and my warrior, who's in the upper 40s right now.  I like priest healing, and the queues for both the priests and the baby prot warrior are generally fast and painless.  That doesn't help with the "expand my horizons" kind of stuff I figured I would do prior to Mists, though.

Now, I've got one of each of the others.  I actually have a crapload of level 5ish mages, mostly gnomes, mostly with the same name.  I finally made myself get one further, so I have a draenei fire mage in the mid-20s.  She has portals!  And I know crap about fire.  My husband plays a mage at level cap, so I theoretically have someone around I could ask for help, except he plays the two other specs: arcane for PVE and frost for PVP.  Let's face it; I like to burn stuff.  This is why my warlock is destro.  I'm looking forward to Hot Streak, when I can cut out Arcane Missiles and spend more time with Pyroblast.  But really - I have no idea what I'm doing.  I push buttons, fire happens, and maybe I'm doing okay?  It's hard to gauge if I'm doing okay DPS at my level when I don't have heirlooms on the server she's on, and most of the other DPS I random into groups with do.  I'm having fun with her, which is the important part, but I don't want to be a burden on a group (or kicked) if I'm not pulling my weight and just don't realize it.

I tried playing a death knight back when they first came out, and it wasn't too bad; I just got bored with it. I made a new one a couple months ago to try to see if it's any better now in terms of "got bored with it" - and I'm not sure, because the specs and rotations don't really readily present themselves.  I have a bunch of buttons, and they do stuff, but I don't know which strikes to use in which spec.  She's unholy mostly because I find the ghoul names amusing.  She's also already acting as a bank, at 58.

I have a different but similar problem with my druid.  She's 15, currently feral, and which abilities she's supposed to use are obvious.  I just can't seem to get into playing her.  Maybe it's the zone - I started her as a worgen, so at this point she's been dumped into Darkshore, and really, after hearthing to Auberdine for the entirety of my Vanilla Alliance career, Darkshore is painful for me.  I spent a lot of time there, and the places and NPCs that I was familiar with are dead and destroyed.  Maybe if I take her over to Westfall the environment won't be so discouraging to getting to know her.

I've got two paladins.  One is my original Vanilla paladin, still in her 40s, who was shuffled around servers when transfers were free from overcrowding.  The other is my relatively new Tauren paladin, who is about 72.  I've been playing them as retribution, because ret is relatively easy, the buttons you push are pretty straightforward, and stuff dies.  I've gotten to the point that I'm not sure I'm doing ret right in groups, though; I'm pretty sure I should be doing better DPS, but I'm not sure how.  So I got them both some intellect plate (a challenge in both level brackets, surprisingly - and intellect plate heirlooms, at least from Justice Points, seem to be... lacking) and gave them holy off-specs, and... Oh, my God, I have no idea what any of these buttons or procs in holy mean.  I heal on three priests, right?  I push buttons, heals and bubbles happen, and I'm pretty good at keeping my mana bar at least half full for most of a dungeon, unless the tank or DPS are crazy and pull all the things.  But on the paladin?  I haven't really figured out her mana management.  I looked at some forum posts, and it seems to be a matter of picking efficient spells, using spells I don't have yet at that level, and judging with Insight.  But just reading spell tooltips and talents, I'm really not sure.

So yeah, there's four classes that I haven't played much, and at this point I think I've figured out why:  they're not intuitive for me.  Whether this is a deficiency of me or of the class or spec in question, I'm not sure.  My guild's death knight contingent, which had been pretty strong in Wrath even after the novelty wore off, has been more or less decimated in Cataclysm.  We don't have any death knights raiding regularly with us, and the ones that sometimes do are alts.  If I'm going to play her at all, I think I'm going to have to look up what each spec uses just so I can figure out how to get started with her.  We still have some dedicated druids; I think in the case of druids, it's really just me.  For some reason they don't click.  Paladins the guild still has in spades, and I think in this case it's a learning curve thing.  I'm going to have to actually sit down and read something to do 5's as a holy paladin, which seems kind of weird after how intuitively I got into discipline healing.  I think for the mage it may just be I picked a bad leveling spec, at least for groups; I'm kind of a slow caster on her still, so stuff tends to die in heirloomed groups before I can get a fireball off on it.

The overall deficiency with these classes probably isn't the classes, really; the problem is that I tend to pick specs that I like conceptually.  I was into Robin Hood and William Tell when I was in... about 4th grade; accuracy and trick shot kind of stuff appealed to me; I went Marksman in Vanilla, and other than occasional stints to tame pretty things, I've never left it.  I like discipline priesting because I like indirect healing, and I like utility, which discipline used to have a bit more of way back when.  I love atonement healing, and it's made leveling as discipline, which I've always done with my priest, so overpowered.  I can handle stuff up to about six or seven levels higher (singly; I've done groups of about six mobs three and four levels higher (accidentally) without dying) before the hit rating glyph for Smite and Holy Fire becomes insufficient.  I rolled my first warrior with the intention of tanking - before I rolled my first Horde hunter, actually.  I didn't actually level her for another two or three years, but smacking stuff in the face with a shield is my favorite part of being a warrior.  I've always loved subtlety's survivability, and getting around without being noticed is my favorite part of being a rogue: cat burgling, in a way, even though it's just an herb or something.  My lock is a pyro (and my void walker always got me killed).  And, well, I mentioned my shaman and chain lightning.

I like the idea of a pyro mage.  I have a chimenea in the back yard, and I like to have fires.  I also picked up grilling recently, because, well, fire.  (First time lighting a charcoal grill: one match. /flex)  Arcane appeals to me for similar reasons that discipline originally did, but the novelty of setting the world on fire with my draenei probably has to wear off first.  Holy was my first spec as a paladin, and I went ret when I picked the class up again... five? years later for the expediency of leveling.  The last time I really played holy, consecration was a talent.  It's changed so drastically since then.  Death knights and druids, though?  I don't really conceptually favor any of their specs - this is probably part of my problem getting into them.

So for now the death knight and druid will probably stay on the bench; since I kind of get the mage, and at least sort of get ret paladins, even if I haven't figured out how to make holy work, I'll probably focus on those two of my un-level-capped classes.

Beta Mists, 4: Shaman and Priest

Ok, I've been playing Duskhawk in the Jade Forest for a while, so I figured I'd take a look at some of my other toons.  First, my elemental shaman, since I hear totems have gotten serious work.

Elemental Spec

 Shaman talents are interesting.  First tier is defensive, and second is about movement - either rooting or escaping roots.  Third tier is totems - reset cooldowns, refund cooldown if destroyed or replaced early, target them.  Fourth tier is the hard decision - elemental mastery (haste buff) vs. ancestral swiftness (5% passive haste and next nature spell isntant) vs. echo of the elements (like elemental overload, but for any direct damage or healing spell).  Fifth tier is healing focused, with a totem, an atonement copycat on a cooldown, and a healing rain related spell.  Sixth tier (that I can't take yet) is a buff to weapon imbues, turning elemental pets into real pets (albeit on their totem cooldown), and an elemental damage spell.

Shaman Talents

So, without talents, what have I got left for totems?

• Earth: Tremor Totem, Earth Elemental Totem
• Fire: Searing Totem, Magma Totem, Fire Elemental Totem
• Air: Capacitor Totem (AOE stun), Grounding Totem, Stormlash Totem (adds electrical damage to allies' attacks)
• Water: Healing Stream Totem

Totem bar is gone; you get totem pullouts now.  Not very handy if you need to hit them fast, but with only nine totems without talents, that's not a ton of toolbar space to just put them all on one.  Weapon imbues got a pullout too, which is pretty nice for them.

Elemental loses access to the Healing Waves and Fire Nova.  No more water breathing. :(

Huh.  I just realized that the bank got a recolor.

Some of the elemental glyphs (Lava Burst, Unleashed Lightning) don't really seem enticing.  Telluric currents sounds like it's probably a Resto-focused glyph (reduces damage by 30%, restores 50% of damage done as mana), but we'll see how mana efficiency is for Elemental.

Okay, I'm done running around Orgrimmar; let's go see how the spells look.

Oh, my God.  I just noticed that Shields and Imbues have 1 hour durations.  FINALLY.  But now - Pandaria on the shaman.

The new Lava Surge not only resets your Lava Burst cooldown, it also makes the next one instant.  The best part: you get a graphical notice around your character, like for fulmination, so you know when it procs with less staring at your toolbar.

Mana seems okay for basic questing; Elemental is still nice and bursty.  Haha, one of my new totems aggroed a critter, which ran over to attack me.

Okay, now to check leatherworking...  Oh, hey, it gave me Zen Master Skinner already.  Leatherworking patterns aren't in yet.  Cooking looks to have two skill 500 recipes in - probably so people can catch up their cooking.

Over to my discipline priest.  Last time I tried to look at her was one of the server crashes, so I haven't gotten to do more than glance through her stuff.

Priest tiers are a bit different than the shaman ones; the first tier is about control - fears, roots, mind control.  The second tier is movement - the bubble speed buff, removing movement impairing effects.  Third tier is incomplete, but it's where they've got Archangel and what used to be Surge of Light, which now has a shadow alternate effect; the third option is TBD.  The fourth tier is emergency buttons - instant self heal, health swap, and a proc'd bubble.  The fifth tier has utility abilities; sixth tier has three options for damage or healing abilities, all of which look cool and make me want to get to 90 on my priest just to try out.  Cascade looks like Prayer of Mending on Steroids with a damage alternate; Divine Star is like a boomeranging fire orb that heals or damage; and Halo is like a healing or damaging Blast Nova.

Priest Talents

Like the shaman glyphs, other than Atonement, there aren't a bunch that excite me.  Hunter glyphs were much more fun.  There is, however, an offensive version of the dispel magic glyph - it deals damage when you do an offensive dispel.  Nice for PVP, probably.

On to the priest spells!  Offensive and defensive dispel have been split up - Dispel Magic and Purify.  Purify has Cure Disease rolled into it.  Discipline no longer has Heal, Holy Nova is MIA, and Divine Hymn is Holy-only.  Most of the shadow damage spells have gone over just to Shadow spec, but they left us Mind Sear and Shadow Words Pain and Death.

No tailoring recipes in yet, but hey!  There's some enchanting stuff.  ... and Zen Master Enchanter requires Blacksmithing (500).  [giggles ensue]  They haven't updated graphics for the new enchanting materials - they have Spirit Dust and Mysterious Essences, but the Cataclysm enchanting graphics.  Several of the skill-ups are 2-5 per crafting.  (FINALLY.  I've been leveling an alt enchanter, and some of the levels are so slow to get past.)  The numbers are large, of course (spirit by 200, etc.).

Enchanting - entry recipes in, but a few bugs

Now to go test discipline soloing!  Actually I really just want to see the void tendrils graphic.  You may have notices I also gave my shaman the earthgrab totem; I like RUN AWAY options, since I have been known to get my characters in over their heads.

I like how prevalent flight paths are in the Jade Forest.

Okay, discipline soloing is as nice as always; I accidentally pulled three wasps, and had no trouble with them.  Void tendrals are HUGE!  Hm, Archangel isn't flashing at me anymore when Evangelism hits five stacks.  All those little things I like are still there - Divine Aegis, Train of Thought, etc.

Void Tendrils

No healing attempts yet - too much to do around the house, and I've spent all weekend beta-ing.  But soon!  (I'll try to remember to screenshot the discipline spec next time.)

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...

Keybinds and Macros

I have an Intellimouse Explorer 3.0, and I love it to death.  Literally: I think I'm on my third.

A lot of my macros use mouse:1, mouse:2, and mouse:3 for targeting the same spell, not just for my hunters, but also for my priest.  (Button:4 is bound to Escape, to stop casting, and button:5 is bound to, ahem, Fishing.)  Mouse:3 is also my Ventrilo push-to-talk key, and has been for five years.  This hasn't been a big deal; I don't use mouse:3 targeting much on my hunters, which are usually what I'm playing when I'm on Vent.

My priest, on the other hand?  Mouse:1 is generally @self; mouse:2 is @focus, and mouse:3 is the unspecified cast, which means whatever I target or whichever party member I hit the function key for or click on.  Most 5-man dungeons I can just get away with Atonement splash healing with Penances on the tank (@focus casting), but raid healing tends to require a lot more direct healing.

I didn't raid heal much in Wrath of the Lich King; maybe three or four times.  In Burning Crusade, on the other hand, my priest was just as geared as my hunter for most of the entire expansion.  She healed for Karazhan; she healed for Gruul's and Magtheridon's Lairs; she healed in Zul'Aman.  Other than the last 800 reputation for the Caverns of Time faction, I even did the reputation grinds to get her the enchanting and tailoring patterns from reputation.  I healed with a hybrid 33/28/0 Discipline specialization, and I actually found it relaxing compared to the pressures of maintaining DPS levels on my hunter.  Karazhan was the raid that pushed me to actually start looking at hunter mechanics and for which my shot rotation macro was born.  For my priest, though, she was one-half of the guild's first two-healer raid through it.

In Wrath we tried very hard as a guild not to end up in the same rut we'd been in Burning Crusade, mostly running Karazhan for three or four combinations of alts and never progressing out of the first tier or tier and a half of content.  This meant I didn't really raid on my priest much, and given how fantastically we progressed through the raid tiers in Wrath, I was content with that.  I missed raid healing, but I would rather see my guild progress.

So now we're running Firelands, and we had been running alt/main Tier 11 raids to get people later to raiding more up to speed.  I had mostly been running on Duskhawk for these when I went, since we had plenty of people wanting to heal, but I took my priest a couple times recently to make the raids happen when we were short a healer.  So my priest has about one and a half Blackwing Descent runs under her belt.  Raid healing is an entirely different strategy from Atonement healing for most fights; a few (Omnotron Defense System, especially, but even Magmaw if I'm tank healing) actually work quite well with it, but many fights end up Prayer of Healing/Penance/Shield focused.

A couple weeks ago we switched from Tier 11 alt runs (waning interest) to Firelands alt runs (more interest and, since we're clearing it in about two nights, more slots per week needed to get mains in).  Like I said, I have about one and a half Blackwing Descent runs under my priest's belt; last Saturday I ended up taking her to the alt Firelands run.

It was terrifying!  I had an awful time figuring out where to stand so I could reach both tanks on Shannox (but I managed not to stand in any traps, woo!), and on Beth'tilac, I was immensely frustrated by Prayer of Healing's party-based targeting.  We tend to run in three groups for her, with the Phase 1 Beth'tilac tank and his/her healer in Group 3 and everyone else over in Groups 1 and 2.  I just couldn't seem to manage Penancing the targeted tank in Phase 2 and to still do sufficient Prayers of Healing on the other two groups in three groups.

The main thing I ended up getting out of that raid (besides a staff) was that I needed to rework my Penance macro to handle tank swaps.  I use default raid frames while healing, plus Decursive, and everything is smooshed down in about a six-by-eight inch area of my screen, by the parts of the toolbars that I use for most of my healing.  My DBM warnings are also dragged down there, along with the timers.  So my set-up is pretty basic, and pretty focused.  My Penance macro, for the longest time, was

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, @focus][button:2] Penance

This was unlike all my other healing macros, which look like

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, @self][button:2, @focus][button:3] Heal

I really didn't need to target myself with penance; I have Alt set as my self-cast button, and I tend to just Shield and Alt:Renew myself if I need healing.  To handle a tank swap without changing focus targets or targeting my non-focused tank, I needed to change up something in that standard macro line.  What I ended up with was

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1, @targettarget][button:2, @focus][button:3] Penance

This lets me maintain the boss as my target for Atonement opportunities (because if I can sneak in some stacks to pull out Evangelism, woohoo!), and when I hit Penance with button 1, whatever tank is getting facemelted gets the Penance.  When we did Beth'tilac last night, I was able to manage just fine with the three-group setup.  There are occasional hiccups; I'm pretty sure I Penanced Baleroc at least once last night when I had a tank targeted.

Speaking of Baleroc and mouse buttons and macros:  this is what I actually meant to write about today.  So I got pulled into healing Firelands again last night, and you've seen my healing macro pattern now, and I've told you I use middle-mouse (mouse:3) for Vent's push-to-talk.

Baleroc is a healer rotation fight, at least the way we run it. You spend two cycles healing shard targets and then switch to the tanks on the third shard in your rotation.  Since this means hitting targets as they get the shard debuff (the little blue person icon, I know now - DBM puts marks on them, but as I've said, I look at a 6"x8" section of the screen while healing, and if it's outside that area it doesn't exist), it's a lot of mouse:3 healing.

Mouse:3 healing, which is my Vent key.

As this was my first time ever healing Baleroc, and fourth time this expansion raid healing at all, I was doing a lot of talking to myself and swearing.  About halfway through the fight, I realized:

"You all can hear me, can't you?"

They thought I was asking if they could hear me, because I got a, "You're cutting in and out," response.  I was more concerned that the swearing was coming through, but apparently the "F--- me," that came out during one of my "which tank is getting hit" panics didn't come across.  (I still use oRA2, and my target-of-target for it just creeps into my healing field of vision, so I started using that to pick my tank healing target.)  I temporarily remapped my Vent key for the rest of the raid. >.>

Random coda:  On the drive in to work this afternoon, I realized: Wait a minute.  Baleroc, who has fire and shadow attacks.  Balrog, a creature of shadow and flame.  /facepalm

*poke*

So, I looked at the page-view stats for this blog for the first time today, and mostly it was kind of depressing, because they're about seven times the stats for my other blog - and I haven't written anything here since June.

There's a really simple reason for that - huntering hasn't really changed dramatically over the course of the past year.  Firelands added some new pet models (and Deth'tilac, as much as I hate spiders, is very pretty), but none of them have tempted me to try taming them.  Heck, I didn't pick up Skoll until this expansion (looking for the Time-Lost Protodrake, of course).  I don't go looking for most rares for taming purposes.  (As much as I love Har'koa and the Zul'Drak quests, her boyfriend is so dead if I ever find him.)

But no, this expansion has been pretty stable for Marksman PVE.  The secondary stat numbers (haste, specifically) for when one's rotation changes (adding a Steady or an Arcane, basically) are so huge that you really don't need to think about them.  It's not like the magic 800 for swapping to stacking Armor Penetration was.

Guild drama has been minimal all summer; raiding has been good; I still don't have the Headless Horseman's pony for Duskhawk.  Brewfest threw daggers to all my toons but my rogue.

Mists of Pandaria was rolled out at Blizzcon last week, and I was stuck at work, obsessively refreshing WoW Insider's live blogs.  I like the talent changes - 3 specs that you get your special abilities just by picking the spec, and then one talent tree of fun stuff that you can put points in regardless of your spec.  I hope improved mend pet ends up a glyph or something.

In the meantime, I've been playing a baby priest Alliance side on another server to play through the quests again - an RP server, at that, although I'm far too shy to have actually done any interactive role-playing.  When I leveled my priest on Bronzebeard, I was fashion-conscious on her to the point of getting ribbed for it - there are some awesome robes out there, and I refused to have shoulders that didn't coordinate.  I also may have used her little pillbox hat from a rare spawn in Hillsbrad well into the 50s.

I'm leveling as discipline again, partly because the dot-dot-channel playstyle of shadow has never appealed to me.  I've tried shadow, briefly, at 85, so that when I want valor/justice points on my priest and there's already a guild healer going, I can still take her, but I much prefer healing - atonement healing, that is.

Anywho, a priesty-comic I did (stick figure art!) a while back, since she's the alt I'm playing right now:

Missed Screenshots

There are quite a few screenshots I wish I'd taken, but just didn't think to at the time. (This applies to most max-level dings on my toons - I don't remember where most of them hit 60/70/80.) The one that comes to mind first, though, is the gnome in Warsong Gulch.

I used to do a lot more PVP, and despite how much I loathe it, I was, for whatever reason, in WSG. I think I was actually on my priest at the time, probably around level 59, probably getting marks for her level 60 undead pony.

Anyway, I'd just run into the Alliance base via the upper upstairs door, heading for the balcony. I was in that space between the balcony and the ramp when a little female gnome mage pops out. Now, my priest has always been mostly Discipline with a good deal of Holy, and this was well before the healing/spellpower change. She did most of her WSG by healing the flag runner, or running it herself until she died and someone else could pick it up.

The mage almost immediately sheeped me, and then, as I'm wandering around all sheepy-like, she pulled out a rocket launcher.

Yeah.

I so wish I'd gotten a screenshot of that.

To-do list: update

Ok, the list was:

• Take the rogue & the priest to Northrend & train professions (probably as soon as I get home) - DONE
  
• Finish grinding inscription on the death knight (tonight or tomorrow) - DONE
  
• Send leftover herbs to the rogue (right after the previous) - DONE
  
• Get old world flight paths for the death knight (maybe Sunday) - already had them! woot!
  
• Do the 225 Cooking quest on the death knight - Giant Egg (12), Zesty Clam Meat (10), Alterac Swiss (20) (whenever I do the previous) - DONE
  
• Auction leftover cooking mats (after cooking is at 300) - DONE
  
• Level death knight's Herbalism to 300 (while getting flight paths)
  
• Take death knight to Thrallmar (after finishing Herbalism)
  
• Buy first aid books for death knight (probably before I take the rogue to Northrend) - DONE
  
• Send leftover cloth to the priest (after previous) - DONE

So all that's left is leveling the DK's herbalism and then taking her to Outland. I'm not going to do that for a while, though.

Current Wrath to-do list

Right, so after having my DVD-RW drive crashing my system twice, the old DVD-R drive that hadn't worked for... two years? let me install from it, and I finally got into Wrath at about 6:30. A disconnection bug or so later, and I took Duskhawk up to the Howling Fjord to see the engineering, cooking, fishing, mining, and first aid trainers. Once she was all trained up, I parked her in an inn, and rolled my death knight.

Yeah, yeah... this blog is about my hunters. And the death knight by far isn't going to take their place. The mechanics are very different from what I'm used to (I'm still figuring out what of what I can do applies my diseases, and I kept forgetting to spend the talent points as I got them), but my DK is my scribe, and I wanted to get that out of the way. I did, after all, spend a lot of time farming herbs for her to go straight to 300. And, um, probably 300 cooking. After 3 hours, though, the DK was 58 and sitting in Orgrimmar with her cooking at 225 and her scribing at 120, and I wanted to play Dusk some before I had to go to bed.

So I logged back over to Dusk, got a couple of the initial Vengeance Landing quests, did the plague cannister collection, and then went up the elevator. I wandered along the road a while, marveled at the shoveltusks, went down another elevator, wandered up the coast, found myself in an excavation. Going up that elevator took some doing, and I found an Explorers' League camp. Alas, I'm a cow, and they weren't friendly.

But! There was a flock of turkeys by the road there, and remembering the General Achievement list, I quickly got 15 of them in the bag. Their corpses look like roasted turkeys, but alas, you cannot loot or eat them. (I was subsequently swarmed by a flock of angry turkeys. Go-Go Gadget Volley!)

By this time, I had decided to do the exploration achievement for the Howling Fjord and pick up all the flight paths there. So I spent the next forty-five minutes or so picking up every quest and flight path I could find, drooling over the Underwater Breathing on the Tuskars' (sp?) reputation fishing pole, and accidentally getting too close to another Alliance settlement (and getting flagged while mounted... yet again >.<). I found Arctic Clouds from which to extract air and water crystal thingies, as well, and they came in swarms! Well, like, six of them. And then subsequently got ganked by an Alliance mage riding past while I was blissfully extracting motes. (I thought I had aggroed an elemental, maybe, and kept extracting, figuring puppy would pick it up, and then I realized, wait, those are pink-purple arcane bolts... and then I was dead.) Wandering through the wolverine-men like village, I got swarmed by about 8, and took down 5 with Volley and puppy before getting killed. They have nets. >.<

And! I saw a Storm Giant - they're huge.

After I finished off the map, I hearthed back to Vengeance Landing, and I swapped out puppy for Hadrian, since I figure I'm going to want the bear for leveling. I had acquired 10 cobalt ore in my trip, which is a vast improvement from the nothing I managed to mine for the first few days of the Burning Crusade. I even have a whole water eternal, and over half an air one.

That was nothing about my to-do list, though. My to-do list for Duskhawk is entirely: Howling Fjord quests + mining right now. But what I need to squeeze in so I can do that without it nagging me:

• Take the rogue & the priest to Northrend & train professions (probably as soon as I get home)
  
• Finish grinding inscription on the death knight (tonight or tomorrow)
  
• Send leftover herbs to the rogue (right after the previous)
  
• Get old world flight paths for the death knight (maybe Sunday)
  
• Do the 225 Cooking quest on the death knight - Giant Egg (12), Zesty Clam Meat (10), Alterac Swiss (20) (whenever I do the previous)
  
• Auction leftover cooking mats (after cooking is at 300)
  
• Level death knight's Herbalism to 300 (while getting flight paths)
  
• Take death knight to Thrallmar (after finishing Herbalism)
  
• Buy first aid books for death knight (probably before I take the rogue to Northrend)
  
• Send leftover cloth to the priest (after previous)
  

I'll see what points of tailoring, enchanting, and alchemy I can grind with the materials I have on hand. I have a stack and a half of void crystals for ring enchanting, as long as that lasts me, and I'll see what I can do with the Arcanoweave Robes. Alchemy I may need to invest in some Nightmare vine, since I have enough Mana Thistle to do quite a bit of Fel Mana potion crafting. I also have a crapload of Felweed right now. But I really want to spend time on Dusk and her engineering. And... reputation for the mechano-hog. Mmm, hog.

So, my toons...

So, I have two level 70 marksman hunters on Bronzebeard: Duskhawk, a Tauren rolled in February 2006 when I went Horde full-time, and Mabs, my original Night Elf created on Easter 2005. Duskhawk is a goblin engineer (another of my... obsessions), and Mabs is my original dragonscale leatherworker, who paid 220g for the black dragonscale leggings pattern on the auction house, and accidentally deleted the 76g from auctioning the third pair she made. These aren't my only hunters, however. The others:

• Duskmoon, a level 34 Blood Elf, rolled to be my jewelcrafter on Bronzebeard. You can see how far that's gotten in a year and a half. :P Duskmoon is theoretically going Beast Mastery, but we'll see how long that lasts. (Last time I was leveling her a bit, I mentioned how I needed people to remind me I didn't need three marksman hunters on one server, and one of the other officers put it in the GMotD for several days. >.>)
  
• Kayera, a level 13 Troll on an RP server, rolled to try out RP. I haven't played her much since achievements kicked in.
• Duskhawk the level 16 Draenei, rolled to try out the Draenei starting area and because Bronzebeard was down at the time.
  
• Mabs the younger, a level 11 Night Elf rolled on a server where I had relatives playing (who subsequently transfered off, and as such, this toon is basically abandoned).

Those are all the hunters I remember having. >.> I may have a few others hanging out on servers where people I know offline play, but they're all level 1-4 or whatnot.

I do play other classes! I have (all on Bronzebeard)...

• Level 70 Undead priest, Disc/Holy hybrid, emphasis on Disc. She'll probably be 40/31/0 at 80. Mooncloth tailor.
  
• Level 70 Undead rogue, Subtlety. Pretty, pretty Subtlety. I'm as die-hard about the tree as I am about Marksman. Potion Alchemist.
  
• Level 66 Orc shaman, Elemental. The 3-foot braid is awesome with the caster animations. Dragonscale leatherworker.
  
• Level 52 Troll warrior, mostly Fury. She has the matched swords from Zul'Farrak, and will not be combining them. Swordsmith.
  

My bank toons are currently a level 30 Night Elf priest and a level 26 Blood Elf rogue. The Blood Elf has her own guild bank, because buying every vendored cooking pattern in the game for the future Death Knight (I don't get to install Wrath till I get home tonight) takes up a lot of space.

Right, no mages, no warlocks, no druids. The mage made it to level 11, the warlock to level 8, the druid to level 20; I just couldn't get into any of them.