Day 2 of Naxxramas

I first entered Naxx two days ago.

We have cleared the Arachnid Quarter and Noth the Plaguebringer, and have started trying to learn Heigan the Unclean, which is proving to be a somewhat difficult encounter.

I haven't had any drops yet, although I'm not overly bothered by that, as my primary focus is going to be on T7 badges, when we get up to those. I've primarily seen either Druid or Paladin gear drop so far.

Per my earlier post about reaching 80, where I talked about doing what was necessary in raid terms, I also used 50/21/0 for the second time here as well. At the end of the night, here was the result:-

Gearing up

I had someone on the forum yesterday suggest that as a Hunter at 80 with less than 1,000 base Agility, I suck. Since, truthfully, I was actually inclined to agree with that opinion, I decided today to do something about it.

I don't customarily read BRK with fanatical regularity, but I did happen to notice this post of his, and found it of great value as a gear guide.

My first move was to snag an Ice Striker's Cloak from the Auction House, and in the process kissed goodbye any even remote chance I might have had of getting epic flying in the foreseeable future. Still, I have basic Cold Weather flying, and now that I'm not questing so much anywayz, having to trundle back and forth across Icecrown (or other, similarly giant zones) in slow motion is no longer so much of an issue. (Although it was a pain for the Signet of Bridenbrad quest chain) I also, truthfully, consider gear a lot more important.

Although the Ice Striker's Cloak's base Agility is only as high as my old Cloak of the Craft had before I got the Agility enchant, another 80 AP is a major upgrade, and the Stamina gives me another 22 AP as well, thanks to the wonderful Hunter VS Wild.

Then taking BRK's advice, although I ended up needing to do a boatload of pre-requisite quests, I eventually got hold of the Signet of Bridenbrad, a ring with the unusual characteristic of having a socket. I filled that socket with a Delicate Scarlet Ruby.

A rummage through my bank reminded me of my Necklace of the Deep, which I brought up to date with two more Delicate Scarlet Rubies.

I made the mistake of prematurely selling my Belt of Deep Shadow in favour of my current green belt. With two Delicate Scarlet Rubies, it would only have four points more Agility than the green belt, and the green's 42 Intellect is a help to me, as well.

Still, purple text on an Armory profile is wonderful forum troll deterrent, although I find they all gravitate immediately to my Fuselighter. "Ooo-OOOH! Spellpower on a Hunter! Scrub! SCRUUU-UUUB! This trinket means that you are WORTHLESS, do you understand? You are NOTHING; you have NO WORTH as a human being in general terms because of it, both in WoW, and outside it. You fail at life, and your only acceptable option is immediate suicide, after first having mailed me all your stuff." ;-)

Lest I get trolled even here on the blog, my rationale for getting it was that at the time, due to crit scaling on the way to 80, my crit rate had fallen below 22%. Natives of the other two trees might be able to tolerate that, but as Survival, anything south of 25% crit has been known to send me into random panic attacks at times.

Thus, even an extra 10 crit rating was seen as a worthwhile upgrade, and I figured that at that point in the game I didn't need another AP proc trinket, especially considering that as an Orc, I have Blood Fury, which at times has a chance to randomly proc on both sides of the keyboard. ;-)

I also, a couple of days earlier while doing the Wolvar Pup daily in Moa'ki Harbour, had the presence of mind to grab a Cuttlefish Scale Breastplate. I remember that for the first few days after I initially discovered the Tuskarr, I was struggling to get the Prodigy's song, "Voodoo People," out of my head, wherein the word, "voodoo," had been substituted with, "walrus."

The other upside to following BRK's guide was also getting an almost complete Swiftarrow set, which means I now have an entry level Resilience set for PvP as well; so I can get back to working towards my Conqueror title, which is still my primary long term goal where WoW is concerned.

So although the Armory hasn't updated yet, I'm at 1030 base Agility with Terokk's Quill, and a bit over 3100 RAP with Dragonhawk. I was using the S3 Axe, but found that with the addition of RAP that I get from Stamina now, the difference is very small in that regard.

Reply to Kruger - A good Surv spec for Heroics?

Hey Kruger,
In terms of a good 51 point Survival DPS spec for Heroics, this spec is what I found on Elitist Jerks. Apparently it has been used to reach just under 4k DPS on Patchwerk in Naxxramas. I am assuming that that had plenty of Volley use, however.

As far as rotation is concerned, from memory Draculea recommended Serpent, ES, Steady, Steady, Steady if you're haste capped. If you're not, I'm not entirely sure; I use a tighter version of the old 1:1.5, and just hug the GCD in terms of the number of Steadies I can put out, but I've never had more than around 1.4k DPS with that rotation.

Trap dancing and keeping Serpent up can maintain Lock and Load pretty much all the time, so Explosive is more or less the only thing I use if using that strategy with 51+ point Surv, but the DPS with that is even lower; on the order of 1.2k.

If I want DPS in Heroics at the moment, I use this spec, and primarily spam Volley. Doing that, I've had just over 2k DPS in the Heroic Culling of Stratholme before, and that is the spec which I primarily recommend before the patch. Post patch however, 51 point Survival will be the way to go, especially considering the Steady Shot nerf.

In terms of Glyphs, I recommend Immolation Trap, Steady Shot, Serpent Sting, and Feign Death in particular. For pets, my cat does fine, but tends to die a lot in Heroics. You might want a Scorpid for the 10% extra Stamina.

Is Surv pure DPS? - Reply to Santyn

Hey Santyn,
I'm glad you decided to hang around. Believe me when I say that I know I can get unbelievably obnoxious at times; I've often wondered how it is that Pike has had the patience and understanding to continue reading me at times, as well. BRK also completely, silently disowned me a while back; he commented on my first entry, but then I never heard from him again, after that. He has periodic roll calls where he goes through the blogs he reads; I've never been mentioned in one of them.

It is a shame, because I learned pretty much everything I know about the class early on from his material. He is an exceptionally knowledgeable and intelligent Hunter, and I still admire him. Although he uses Beast Mastery himself, those who do so with intelligence, as Pike understands, have never been the target of my hostility.

Anyway, to reply to your assertion that Survival is as much about pure DPS as the other two trees. Although I wouldn't have always, at this point in the game, I do agree with you. Deterrence is gone, and our ability to gain %dodge from Agility is mostly gone with it. Hence, our mitigation has almost entirely gone with it.

I've been able to adapt to some extent, mainly by simply putting more points in Marks most of the time, but I grieve when I think of old timers like Mynithrosil, who actually played the offtank/healer bodyguard role a lot more intensely than I did, most of the time. The interesting thing is, he didn't just do it in 5 mans either, but also apparently did it in Sunwell. I on the other hand, always had the attitude that in raids, Surv was still DPS, but he found a way to make our smaller scale, defensive role work in a raid as well during TBC.

I have memories of a few occasions though when myself and a cloth wearer stood back to back and prevented a total wipe, and then I was able to use cables, or the cloth wearer was a Priest, a la this post. I miss those days, quite intensely at times, but I don't deceive myself. As much as I might miss them, they are gone, and most likely forever at this point.

Blizzard seem to want to make Survival our Arena tree at this point, which means that most of our primary old school talents are unlikely to make it through WoTLK intact, unfortunately. I've never been a fan of the Arena, and feel that it has done a lot of sociological damage to this game in other ways, so that does not make me very happy. I originally made this character primarily for PvP, but the old kind; battlegrounds, and fending off a Rogue who jumped on me out in Felwood or Desolace while levelling.

Got the Drake crossbow

Did another run of Heroic Utgarde Keep this morning, and got my crossbow.

I also had some more feedback from the forums earlier, which led me to try conducting the following experiment.

I went to the Beast Mastery Bible on Elitist Jerks and followed their instructions. I got the 50/21/0 spec, stayed with my cat rather than a Scorpid after being told that Scorpid Poison was only good for long fights, respecced my pet for Call of the Wild, got some more Agility consumables, and then got and used this macro:-

#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Kill Shot
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Scorpid Poison
/use Scarab of Isanoth
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Kill Command
/cast Steady Shot

The result, in H UK, was 1.5k single target DPS; 100 more than single target with this spec, but 500 less than what I got with that spec and almost pure use of Volley in Heroic CoS. Yes, this damage is bad, or so people claim, but my gear is still bad atm as well, I admit.

I'm going to stick with this for a couple of days, (mainly to test the difference with a Scorpid) and then probably go back to the above hybrid until the patch comes; this was merely to demonstrate a couple of things to myself.

a) That I'm not totally useless when it comes to using BM. I wouldn't want to use this for questing myself, but it is not entirely unenjoyable in an instance. If I keep Viper up between fights, mana efficiency is very good, and it was a good test to try and get used to keeping Mend Pet up constantly and keep track of my pet more, as well.

b) That the DPS difference is nowhere near as large as what many people claim. I was using BW every cooldown, and Readiness on longer fights as well, and even with that, my trinket, and Blood Fury built into the cooldown, the difference was, as I said, around 125 DPS between this spec and the Marks/Surv hybrid.

Where BM produces the massive results seen in raids, is due to the ability to stack Call of the Wild multiple times, with multiple Hunters using it in synch; it is a multiplicative, synergistic effect, and was apparently also unintended.

c) That I am not as inflexible, or as ignorant, as most people on the Hunter forum seem to insist on thinking. I can use BM; I've had top damage with both it, Surv, and my usual Marks/Surv hybrid in both battlegrounds and five mans before. So I reject the assertion that I am ignorant or that I don't know how to use the tree.

Why Explosive Shot needs the buff

I just did another Heroic CoS run, this time as 51 point Surv. From 2k DPS the other night, my damage in this last run fell to just under 1200; a drop of more than 800 DPS.

However, here's the reason why. In that run where I got 2k, I was using virtually nothing other than Volley. At the moment, if you're not Beast Mastery, your damage is pretty much entirely based on either Chimera or Volley.

In this run where I got around 1190 DPS, I trap danced, kept Serpent up, and was getting Lock and Load procs pretty much all the time; so if I wanted to use ES, I literally didn't have time for Volley, and even if I did use Volley, my damage from it was down radically due to no longer having Barrage or TSA anyway. ES, however, in its' current form, is just too weak.

ES' coefficient being raised to 18% is not going to make Survival overpowered. It will make us competitive, and in terms of raw, direct damage, it will be literally the first time in this game's history when we will be.

During TBC, Expose Weakness was advocated as the reason for taking a Survival Hunter, but it raised everyone else's damage, which meant that a lot of the time, we were still behind. The reason why we need that 18%, is because aside from traps and Serpent, which everyone else laughs at, that 18% is almost all we have. We don't have BM's speed, or Marks' RAP bonuses. LR and EW alone don't go anywhere near far enough to make us competitive with other people's damage, and truthfully they never have.

The other point is, Survival isn't a stationary tree; stand and fire largely without moving might be the BM or Marks playstyle, but it isn't Surv's. We need an ability which synergises with what we do; kiting.

It's been nearly four years, but I've had a funny feeling for a while now that WoTLK was going to be the expack where we would finally see Survival's true ascension. Assuming the ES buff survives the PTR, in pure damage terms, Survival's mobile playstyle is about to become irrefutably viable for the very first time.

I'm looking forward to it.

Happy Holidays to everyone :)

Whatever you celebrate, I hope you enjoy it. New Year's Eve is traditionally my own primary festive observance of the year; this is because I have observed that it is a period of a single day (or night) during which people are able to treat each other in a manner which, hopefully at some point, we will eventually start to permanently.

I was also going to link to a piece of music which I always listen to at this time of year, and which has become very special to me; a particular Scottish backpipe rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

Although I haven't been to Scotland, there is a particular mental image I have, while listening to this piece.

I'm standing on rough, thick green grass, on a high cliff overlooking a freezing, restless sea. It's fairly dark, but dawn has just begun; light enough for me to be able to make out some details, and also to see the first faint traces of the northern Sun on the horizon. There is a large flame burning in a steel brazier to my left, and in front of me is a group of around a dozen kilted pipers, assembled in a diamond formation.

The flame does little to dispel the biting cold from the wind, which bypasses me skin and even seeps into my bones. I do not recoil from it however, or find it uncomfortable; I love it. The wind makes an odd wailing sound, which is echoed by the constant undertone to the music, provided by some of the pipes.