http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=98661929&sid=1
This is something I found buried in the archives of the Hunter forum yesterday. It's written by Yurch of Anatheron, a man who has mentioned being a real life Survivalist, in addition to playing a Survival Hunter in WoW.
As opposed to just playing with Surv as a talent tree, if you want a window into the underlying mentality, this thread is something I'd suggest reading. It's intended as humour, but as Shakespeare said, comedy is usually the container of the greatest truth.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Master Nesingwary, I presume
Ding 77, and I finally arrived at Nesingwary Base Camp this morning, in Sholazar. The preliminary quests were a little tedious, but then there was the Great Hunter Challenge! For most of you, winning that might not be much of a challenge; but here's another challenge I'll set for anyone who hasn't done it yet. Do it from start to finish, (60 mobs) without having to drink once.
I did, and not only that, I was still at 23% mana when I'd finished. I could be wrong here, (I really sucked at mathematics at school) but I think that works out at an average of 1.28% mana per mob. Of course, I was also getting Replenishment ticks as well at times. Still, even with that, my mana usage was utterly minimal.
So how did I do that, you ask? There are a couple of things I rely on.
So, the sequence/rotation:-
For a per-mob comparison with Beast Mastery, also:-
Our adjusted total per kill mana cost for Survival while farming/questing assuming the above sequence, then, is 21 - 3.75 = 17.25%. This also does not take passive mp5 regeneration into account, either.
The downside here, however, is speed, or a lack thereof. With probably a good 5 seconds spent on initial setup prior to the trap going off, and another 10-12 seconds after the trap goes off, I'm looking at around 17 seconds per kill.
On the other hand, given that I could expect to be drinking for probably 10 seconds after every third kill with Beast Mastery, (which I don't experience with Surv) in actuality, it probably works out about even.
I did, and not only that, I was still at 23% mana when I'd finished. I could be wrong here, (I really sucked at mathematics at school) but I think that works out at an average of 1.28% mana per mob. Of course, I was also getting Replenishment ticks as well at times. Still, even with that, my mana usage was utterly minimal.
So how did I do that, you ask? There are a couple of things I rely on.
- The first thing is the pet ability, Charge. Charge is available for both Ferocity and Tenacity pets, and assuming you're not using a Gorilla, or actually, even if you are, there's really no reason at all not to have it, since it still offers the 1 second stun, +25% melee attack power on next attack, and is faster than Dash, too.
The single main reason why it's important for me though, is because of what it allows for mob positioning. I'm talking the ability to make a mob stop on a proverbial 5c piece. (A nickel I think, for my American readers) This is good because it means I can pull from a very short distance away from a target, and still not have them touch me. I'll explain why that sometimes happens in a moment. - This particular piece of magic - Crude Throwing Axe. Remember BRK's low threat pull shot trick, Rank 1 Arcane Shot? I do, and I loved it. Unfortunately however, with the end of downranking, we can no longer do that. The Crude Throwing Axe is our salvation. It does roughly the same amount of damage as Rank 1 Arcane did. The only downside is that Thrown unfortunately doesn't benefit from Hawk Eye, so its' range is only 30 yards.
The fun part about using Thrown is that it almost involves a certain amount of actual stalking, since getting an axe on a moving target while still allowing yourself some margin of range between yourself, the mob, and the trap can be a bit fiddly. I sometimes had to wait a few seconds for a mob to stop at exactly the right point, (30 yards from me, with the trap set at 15, dead centre between the mob and max range) before throwing.
So, the sequence/rotation:-
- Using RangeDisplay, measure 15 yards from your intended target, and drop Snake Trap. Remember, we want Snake because of Crippling Poison. If you're not able to get enough range in time, this will give you more of a margin for error, without letting the mob touch you.
- Move back out to 30 yards, and throw a Crude Throwing Axe.
- Backpedal constantly as the mob comes towards you. Send your pet the moment the mob hits the trap, and Charge will stop it at that exact position. This is important because the distance between you at that point will probably only be around 10 yards.
- Once you've sent the pet, side strafe back out to 25-30 yards.
- Face forward again at that range, fire Serpent, and then use a Lock and Load proc with Explosive Shot. Fire Explosive, then wait one second for the DoT to finish working, and then fire it again. Once the second Explosive DoT has finished, the mob should be dead.
For a per-mob comparison with Beast Mastery, also:-
- 1x Hunter's Mark = 3% base mana.
- 1x Serpent Sting = 9% base mana. (Assuming Steady Glyph)
- 4x (5% each) Steady Shot = 20% base mana. (conservative estimate; assumes manual timing. For macro spammers, 5-7 steadies would probably be more realistic)
- Total = 32% base mana.
This is consistent with my own experience with BM, where I was having to drink every 3-4 mobs. This also includes the conservative four steady estimate. That number would be 37% of base mana with five. Use of Bestial Wrath on kills when it is up would push this up to 47% of base mana, or almost half the Hunter's total mana pool for a single mob. This is approaching a degree of mana inefficiency more commonly observed with the Mage, (in the neighbourhood of 60% per kill in some cases) rather than the Hunter.
- 1x Hunter's Mark = 3% of base mana.
- 1x Serpent Sting = 9% of base mana. With Improved Stings, on a mob with 10k health, Serpent will account for 20% of overall damage, or roughly 2k. This maintains a damage to mana ratio of slightly over 2:1.
- 1x Snake Trap = 9% of base mana.
- Total = 21% base mana. (Explosive is used twice, but is free in mana terms due to Lock and Load)
Although I don't have 5/5 Hunting Party at the moment, for the sake of argument, in order to make things easier, I will assume that I do. Even with an assumption of a single crit per kill (conservative to the point of unrealism) Hunting Party thus gives us 3.75% mana back total. (0.25% mana per sec for 15 sec)
Our adjusted total per kill mana cost for Survival while farming/questing assuming the above sequence, then, is 21 - 3.75 = 17.25%. This also does not take passive mp5 regeneration into account, either.
The downside here, however, is speed, or a lack thereof. With probably a good 5 seconds spent on initial setup prior to the trap going off, and another 10-12 seconds after the trap goes off, I'm looking at around 17 seconds per kill.
On the other hand, given that I could expect to be drinking for probably 10 seconds after every third kill with Beast Mastery, (which I don't experience with Surv) in actuality, it probably works out about even.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Back in my old battlegroup
I wasn't able to play WoW nearly all of today, since the weather is hot here at the moment, and my video card is temperamental at the best of times.
When I finally got in about an hour ago though, having become bored of levelling, I decided to hit AB and keep working towards my Conqueror title. Apparently it's the AB weekend, as well, which is good for honour.
It turns out that Saurfang is in my old battlegroup, Vengeance, which also contains the server I initially levelled this character on; Jubei'Thos. I wasn't really sorry to leave Jubei, but I do remember having some good fun in Vengeance. Truthfully, Bloodlust was a little too intense, I will admit. It's nice to be able to kick back and not have to work quite so hard once in a while, but still manage to light up the board anywayz.
This was a good match, which also included a particularly satisfying 1v1 victory against a Beast Mastery Hunter with a Devilsaur. I was also actually using my current levelling spec; 0/16/51. Explosive Shot is a truly beautiful thing. ;-)
When I finally got in about an hour ago though, having become bored of levelling, I decided to hit AB and keep working towards my Conqueror title. Apparently it's the AB weekend, as well, which is good for honour.
It turns out that Saurfang is in my old battlegroup, Vengeance, which also contains the server I initially levelled this character on; Jubei'Thos. I wasn't really sorry to leave Jubei, but I do remember having some good fun in Vengeance. Truthfully, Bloodlust was a little too intense, I will admit. It's nice to be able to kick back and not have to work quite so hard once in a while, but still manage to light up the board anywayz.
This was a good match, which also included a particularly satisfying 1v1 victory against a Beast Mastery Hunter with a Devilsaur. I was also actually using my current levelling spec; 0/16/51. Explosive Shot is a truly beautiful thing. ;-)
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Ding 76
Finally made it to level 76; going slowly, but steadily. If I keep pushing at it, I might hopefully hit 80 by the weekend. I'm enjoying Zul'Drak; laid back kill quests with not as much running around as the Grizzly Hills. It's good.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Added Gaming Diva to my blogroll
Another blog which I should have added some time ago now, as I have been aware of its' existence for a while:- Gaming Diva.
Also, I am in agreement with a statement in her latest post, that Orcish women can indeed be very beautiful. My first character in this game was a male Forsaken Mage.
After a while I became a leader of a levelling guild, which before a coup and disintegration, had close to 100 people at one point. Because of this, I felt perhaps it would be good to have a character who was more physically striking; and on visiting Orgrimmar on a few occasions with my Mage and witnessing some of the female guards walking around, my reaction was the same as that had by Jim Gordon in Batman Begins, on seeing the Tumbler.
"I've gotta get me one of those." ;-)
Also, I am in agreement with a statement in her latest post, that Orcish women can indeed be very beautiful. My first character in this game was a male Forsaken Mage.
After a while I became a leader of a levelling guild, which before a coup and disintegration, had close to 100 people at one point. Because of this, I felt perhaps it would be good to have a character who was more physically striking; and on visiting Orgrimmar on a few occasions with my Mage and witnessing some of the female guards walking around, my reaction was the same as that had by Jim Gordon in Batman Begins, on seeing the Tumbler.
"I've gotta get me one of those." ;-)
An Open Letter to the Hunter Community
I was prompted to write this after getting onto the forum after maintenance began a little while ago, and discovering this thread. This message is not directed at the resident readership of this blog, who have been extremely positive and supportive of me, and for that I thank you.
However, to a large extent, Survival Hunters have been consistently persecuted by our peers for as long as this game has existed, and during The Burning Crusade, Rilgon and other Marksmanship players became targets of this, as well. It is time for this sort of toxicity to cease, once and for all, and I ask every Hunter with a blog who is willing, to join me and repost this letter on your own site. Together we need to ensure that nobody who plays a Hunter is viciously trashed purely for their choice of talent tree, ever again.
I've been seeing a lot of threads on the official Hunter forum recently about how terrible Survival supposedly is, and about how if someone isn't using Beast Mastery, they literally shouldn't be playing a Hunter at all. While this sort of attitude has been prevalent more or less since the release of the Burning Crusade, over the last week or so it has become persistent and savage to the point of being intolerable.
A friend of mine only just recently told me about a WWS log where a Hunter managed to hit 7.5k in Naxx 10 with Beast Mastery, so I acknowledge that it is true that, empirically speaking, Beast Mastery is capable of much higher raw damage output.
However, what needs to stop is the elitist vitriol, and the belittling of people who use Survival, and who do so because they enjoy doing so. There are several points here that I need to make.
The first is that nobody, at this point, is chasing world first kills. They've all been done. Hence, in Nihilum's eyes, the most Godlike BM Hunter in the game would be late to the party at this point, in pure epeen terms.
The second is that given both the first point, and the degree of homogenisation which Blizzard has introduced into raiding, (specifically to counter exactly this kind of elitist unpleasantness, I might add) you also can't legitimately use the familiar argument that Survival's DPS will be an impediment to progression. Survival is, and I will openly acknowledge this, currently producing the lowest raw damage output of any of the three Hunter talent trees. However, while acknowledging this, I refuse to believe that the tree's damage output is sufficiently poor to make it truly unusable for progression, and will seek confirmation of this from Blizzard if it proves to be necessary.
I was told on the forum a few days ago that 3,000 DPS was a minimum requirement for killing Patchwerk, one of the bosses within Naxxramas. As of level 75 with a Marks/Survival hybrid spec, in mostly Season 2 Arena gear from The Burning Crusade, I managed half that, 1,500 DPS, in Drak'Tharon Keep earlier today, while also topping the damage meter in my current 5 man group. This was also the fifth time I have been to a 5 man instance in Northrend so far, and I have come first in damage with something very close to the same spec, every single time. I managed to hit 1,200 DPS with 0/12/52 at level 74 in Ahn'Kahet, as well.
Given this, I am entirely confident that I will be able to hit the pre-requisite 3,000 DPS with a Marks/Surv hybrid at 80, assuming I get the appropriate gear upgrades.
My third point is that anyone engaging in the above mentioned vitriol is unable to legitimately claim that they are doing so for the purposes of educating others. I attempted to respec Beast Mastery myself yesterday, yet of all the people who are currently engaging in this kind of abuse of Survival Hunters, there was only a single person on the forum who was willing to give me spec advice. Thus, the people hurling abuse at those playing Survival Hunters have demonstrated that they are not doing it for the purposes of educating others, improving the state of play among Hunters, or anything else constructive.
It is purely and simply a case of insecure individuals who apparently have a desperate need to use any excuse they can find to feel superior to their fellow players, and taking advantage of online anonymity to treat others in an unconscionable way, without needing to accept accountability for it.
If you want to be able to legitimately claim that you engage in such abuse of people for the purposes of education, then actually educate. Link to specs from the wowhead talent calculator, offer links to theorycraft, and otherwise demonstrate that you are willing to truly follow through with providing legitimate information. If anyone knows which build the above mentioned Hunter who was able to obtain 7,500 DPS was using, please let me know, as I *am* very interested in using it and attempting to obtain similar results myself.
Stating the empirical truth, on its' own, that Beast Mastery as a talent tree is capable of producing a higher degree of damage output than the other two Hunter trees, is legitimate and acceptable. Engaging in snide, vicious, dismissive, elitist abuse of other Hunters who use either of the other two talent trees for their own pleasure in World of Warcraft is not, and it needs to stop.
Regardless of which talent tree we use, as Hunters, we need to cease abusing each other over our choice of tree once and for all. We have traditionally received more than enough abuse and ostracision from the rest of this game's playerbase as it is.
However, to a large extent, Survival Hunters have been consistently persecuted by our peers for as long as this game has existed, and during The Burning Crusade, Rilgon and other Marksmanship players became targets of this, as well. It is time for this sort of toxicity to cease, once and for all, and I ask every Hunter with a blog who is willing, to join me and repost this letter on your own site. Together we need to ensure that nobody who plays a Hunter is viciously trashed purely for their choice of talent tree, ever again.
I've been seeing a lot of threads on the official Hunter forum recently about how terrible Survival supposedly is, and about how if someone isn't using Beast Mastery, they literally shouldn't be playing a Hunter at all. While this sort of attitude has been prevalent more or less since the release of the Burning Crusade, over the last week or so it has become persistent and savage to the point of being intolerable.
A friend of mine only just recently told me about a WWS log where a Hunter managed to hit 7.5k in Naxx 10 with Beast Mastery, so I acknowledge that it is true that, empirically speaking, Beast Mastery is capable of much higher raw damage output.
However, what needs to stop is the elitist vitriol, and the belittling of people who use Survival, and who do so because they enjoy doing so. There are several points here that I need to make.
The first is that nobody, at this point, is chasing world first kills. They've all been done. Hence, in Nihilum's eyes, the most Godlike BM Hunter in the game would be late to the party at this point, in pure epeen terms.
The second is that given both the first point, and the degree of homogenisation which Blizzard has introduced into raiding, (specifically to counter exactly this kind of elitist unpleasantness, I might add) you also can't legitimately use the familiar argument that Survival's DPS will be an impediment to progression. Survival is, and I will openly acknowledge this, currently producing the lowest raw damage output of any of the three Hunter talent trees. However, while acknowledging this, I refuse to believe that the tree's damage output is sufficiently poor to make it truly unusable for progression, and will seek confirmation of this from Blizzard if it proves to be necessary.
I was told on the forum a few days ago that 3,000 DPS was a minimum requirement for killing Patchwerk, one of the bosses within Naxxramas. As of level 75 with a Marks/Survival hybrid spec, in mostly Season 2 Arena gear from The Burning Crusade, I managed half that, 1,500 DPS, in Drak'Tharon Keep earlier today, while also topping the damage meter in my current 5 man group. This was also the fifth time I have been to a 5 man instance in Northrend so far, and I have come first in damage with something very close to the same spec, every single time. I managed to hit 1,200 DPS with 0/12/52 at level 74 in Ahn'Kahet, as well.
Given this, I am entirely confident that I will be able to hit the pre-requisite 3,000 DPS with a Marks/Surv hybrid at 80, assuming I get the appropriate gear upgrades.
My third point is that anyone engaging in the above mentioned vitriol is unable to legitimately claim that they are doing so for the purposes of educating others. I attempted to respec Beast Mastery myself yesterday, yet of all the people who are currently engaging in this kind of abuse of Survival Hunters, there was only a single person on the forum who was willing to give me spec advice. Thus, the people hurling abuse at those playing Survival Hunters have demonstrated that they are not doing it for the purposes of educating others, improving the state of play among Hunters, or anything else constructive.
It is purely and simply a case of insecure individuals who apparently have a desperate need to use any excuse they can find to feel superior to their fellow players, and taking advantage of online anonymity to treat others in an unconscionable way, without needing to accept accountability for it.
If you want to be able to legitimately claim that you engage in such abuse of people for the purposes of education, then actually educate. Link to specs from the wowhead talent calculator, offer links to theorycraft, and otherwise demonstrate that you are willing to truly follow through with providing legitimate information. If anyone knows which build the above mentioned Hunter who was able to obtain 7,500 DPS was using, please let me know, as I *am* very interested in using it and attempting to obtain similar results myself.
Stating the empirical truth, on its' own, that Beast Mastery as a talent tree is capable of producing a higher degree of damage output than the other two Hunter trees, is legitimate and acceptable. Engaging in snide, vicious, dismissive, elitist abuse of other Hunters who use either of the other two talent trees for their own pleasure in World of Warcraft is not, and it needs to stop.
Regardless of which talent tree we use, as Hunters, we need to cease abusing each other over our choice of tree once and for all. We have traditionally received more than enough abuse and ostracision from the rest of this game's playerbase as it is.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Ding 75, and an angry rant
Just hit 75 earlier today. I would have been higher, but I hadn't really played WoW at all for most of the weekend. I'm finding it important to fit other things into my life as well; I'm starting a herb garden in the back of my house, and want to possibly do courses in astrology and herbalism at some point in the New Year.
In other news, after being subjected to some particularly caustic abuse from the usual elitists on the forum last night, I'm ashamed to admit that today I succumbed to the pressure temporarily, and attempted two different builds based around Beast Mastery. For levelling anyway, both were an unmitigated disaster. I tamed a Devilsaur from Un'Goro Crater, used my boar, and also my cat. My cat worked best out of the three, but none of them could hold threat. I also found mana efficiency to be terrible compared to what I'm used to, I will admit; and my damage wasn't really up all that much, either. I averaged around 640 DPS, but if I really go frantically with it, that is less than 40 DPS higher than what I'm able to get with Surv, while trapping, no less.
I'm going to apologise in advance to Pike and any other users of Beast Mastery who customarily read this blog, (as well as asking you to remember that it won't be directed at you specifically at all) but I can feel myself building up to going on a major rampage in the forum over the next couple of days. I'm extremely angry. I'm tired of the amount of negative stigma I'm seeing directed at Survival lately; the cry of "lolsurvival," seems to almost be as common as "lolret," these days. The other thing that upsets me about it more than anything else, is how baseless it is. The very elitist who savaged me on the forum last night, admitted that the difference between BM and Surv in damage terms is around 15%; that isn't exactly what I'd call huge...certainly not large enough to justify the level of vitriol I've been experiencing lately.
These same idiots also cry about how even during levelling, their pets are unable to hold threat; if I use nothing but Lock and Load procs, a trap, and Serpent, I usually won't pull threat until a mob has only around 10% health left, and by that point, I've also often got TNT or Entrapment proccing anyway, so I will generally barely get touched. I also read yet another thread by a member of this same group just a few minutes ago, crying about how trapping is too difficult for her.
Again, the above is proof (in the sense that I know that Pike released a video about chain trapping, which actually led me to improving my own level of ability with that as well) that this rant (and others which will almost certainly follow on the forum) is not directed at Pike and those users of Beast Mastery who genuinely are diligent, intelligent, skilled, and know how to use the tree well.
It is directed at a small, but disproportionally vocal group of utter morons who, while inexplicably managing to obtain access to raids, still continue to give both the BM tree, and our class in general, an undeservedly bad name. I'm going to start to become a lot more active in my opposition to them, because I'm fed up with the fact that they, as a group, exist.
In other news, after being subjected to some particularly caustic abuse from the usual elitists on the forum last night, I'm ashamed to admit that today I succumbed to the pressure temporarily, and attempted two different builds based around Beast Mastery. For levelling anyway, both were an unmitigated disaster. I tamed a Devilsaur from Un'Goro Crater, used my boar, and also my cat. My cat worked best out of the three, but none of them could hold threat. I also found mana efficiency to be terrible compared to what I'm used to, I will admit; and my damage wasn't really up all that much, either. I averaged around 640 DPS, but if I really go frantically with it, that is less than 40 DPS higher than what I'm able to get with Surv, while trapping, no less.
I'm going to apologise in advance to Pike and any other users of Beast Mastery who customarily read this blog, (as well as asking you to remember that it won't be directed at you specifically at all) but I can feel myself building up to going on a major rampage in the forum over the next couple of days. I'm extremely angry. I'm tired of the amount of negative stigma I'm seeing directed at Survival lately; the cry of "lolsurvival," seems to almost be as common as "lolret," these days. The other thing that upsets me about it more than anything else, is how baseless it is. The very elitist who savaged me on the forum last night, admitted that the difference between BM and Surv in damage terms is around 15%; that isn't exactly what I'd call huge...certainly not large enough to justify the level of vitriol I've been experiencing lately.
These same idiots also cry about how even during levelling, their pets are unable to hold threat; if I use nothing but Lock and Load procs, a trap, and Serpent, I usually won't pull threat until a mob has only around 10% health left, and by that point, I've also often got TNT or Entrapment proccing anyway, so I will generally barely get touched. I also read yet another thread by a member of this same group just a few minutes ago, crying about how trapping is too difficult for her.
Again, the above is proof (in the sense that I know that Pike released a video about chain trapping, which actually led me to improving my own level of ability with that as well) that this rant (and others which will almost certainly follow on the forum) is not directed at Pike and those users of Beast Mastery who genuinely are diligent, intelligent, skilled, and know how to use the tree well.
It is directed at a small, but disproportionally vocal group of utter morons who, while inexplicably managing to obtain access to raids, still continue to give both the BM tree, and our class in general, an undeservedly bad name. I'm going to start to become a lot more active in my opposition to them, because I'm fed up with the fact that they, as a group, exist.
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