"Should I respec to Survival?"

After the recent patch, this is probably a question which is going through a lot of Hunters' minds, so I'd like to address it.

First, I want to again emphasise, how strongly I support the concept of individuality within this game. This is something which min/maxers on the forum have showered me with abuse for, time and time again, but I still firmly believe that if you are not playing this game for the right reasons, which are your own personal reasons, then you should not be playing it at all.

This is a game; it is an entirely voluntary form of recreation, and you are paying to play it. Nobody is paying you. The point here is, that if with the talent spec you're using, you know the content you're playing, and you know you can generate the damage you need to beat it, that in itself should be enough for you to be able to continue to use it.

The second point to consider, in overall terms, is to carefully evaluate why you do what you do in this game. Ask yourself seriously; is raiding really worth it? What's your motivation? Is it fun, or is it ego-based? Understand that with the amount of control guild leaders tend to want to have of your life, you need to be extremely sure that for you, the payoff is going to be worth it. For me it isn't. Nowhere near it, in fact; which is why I refuse to do it.

The third point to recognise is, if gear is your priority, you don't actually need to raid, at least at the moment. Badge stuff is still good, crafted epics are available, and you can now get T7 purely from farming Heroics.

In terms of what I've read of the guild management philosophy of Matticus in particular, I honestly feel that if he wants to run a guild in the manner he describes, he should be paying his members. The difference between guilds and corporations or military units is that people in both of the latter two organisations are getting a guaranteed form of payment in exchange for their service. Guild members are unpaid volunteers; and sometimes, depending on guild politics, won't even be paid in game terms for their time, let alone in any other way.

If you join a raiding guild, you're basically signing up for a chance that a particular piece of loot that you want will eventually drop. Even if the piece you want drops, you're then running the risk that it will go to someone else, (possibly even a class for whom it is not as relevant as your own) because of guild politics. I read about guilds who did Kara and various other TBC raids for months, and Hunters within them either never saw the drops they wanted, or if they did, said drops got handed to Rogues instead, even while multiple Hunters were present in many cases.

"But I raid to have fun/experience the content!"

Yeah, right. Maybe that's true in the case of the few raiders I'm still willing to speak to online, (Rilgon, Pike, et, al.) but the fact that they have an unusual amount of intelligence and maturity is the reason why I'm willing to associate with them in the first place. For most of the population that I've seen, however, this argument is quite simply BS. The motivation is epeen. Loot is a secondary priority which ultimately falls back to serving the first.

So, with all of that said, Survival. It's been buffed this patch; all the cool kids on the forum are respeccing, and no doubt you're wondering if you should, too.

First of all, recognise that it is unlikely that Surv will stay in its' currently buffed state, long term. Apparently there are already calls for Explosive Shot to be nerfed again. So if you switch to Survival, it will still likely be only temporary. If ES is nerfed again, you will eventually need to respec back, if damage is your sole motivation for choice of spec.

Secondly, for Beast Masters, understand that Survival and BM are only really similar playstyles inside an instance, and even then they aren't entirely, due to more complex rotations.

For soloing, the difference becomes much more pronounced. Beast Mastery is largely stationary. You can stand in one place, send your pet, shoot, and for the most part, not have to move, due not only to Intimidation but increase baseline pet threat generation as well, due to higher pet damage. Against single targets anyway, it's much faster and simpler. Send pet, open fire, Feign or Intimidate if necessary, throw Viper up between mobs, and move on.

Survival on the other hand, is a lot more mobile and kinetic, especially for multiple targets. You put a Frost Trap down and then kite things around with Serpent, Lock and Load, and ES/Multi. Rather than simply letting your pet take all of a mob's focus, you occasionally need to pull threat from the pet in order to allow it to survive as well, depending on the situation. Your pet also doesn't hold threat anywhere near as well as with Beast Mastery, so you have to rely on Entrapment, TNT, Wing Clip, Snake/Frost Trap, and your greater degree of range to keep mobs away from you.

It is also true that Beast Mastery is, as the name implies, much more about enhancing the pet. Survival has literally no talents devoted to pet enhancement at all, which seems to be one of the main reasons why some Beast Masters don't like it. About the only pet buff we might get is Survivalist, and even that is secondary, via the Hunter. If you prefer a scenario where you've got a strong pet, rather than it being more about you, you will definitely be happier with BM.

The fourth point is mana efficiency. Both trees can be mana efficient, but Survival solves this problem in a different way. With Beast Mastery, you either put Viper up at the end of a fight, or if the mobs you're fighting are sufficiently weak, you can actually just leave Viper up all the time.

Survival on the other hand has two talents that reduce mana costs. Resourcefulness, which reduces the mana cost of both melee abilities and traps by 60%, and Thrill of the Hunt, which reduces the cost of any mana shot that crits by 45%. Finally, Survival also has Hunting Party, which procs on crit, and works like Viper to passively restore mana while we fight, or for a few seconds after.

A fifth point is our different areas of specialty in PvP terms. Beast Mastery is primarily anti-caster, with Bestial Wrath being able to chew through low armor targets, and also grant immunity to such things as Fear, Frost Nova/frost effects, and Psychic Scream. A Paladin on the other hand, can probably tank Bestial Wrath, and then one or two shot the pet.

Survival is much more anti-melee, being better suited to dealing with Rogues, Warriors, and to a lesser extent Paladins. This is because with Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, and Immolation Trap, we have a lot of periodic damage which, while being reduced by Resilience, is still somewhat capable of bypassing heavy armor. On the flip side, we do as poorly against casters as BM can against melee, since without Bestial Wrath, we are vulnerable to Fear, frost, roots etc. Surefooted helps a bit, but not that much.

If the only thing you care about is the amount of damage you're going to do, you're probably going to want to temporarily respec to Surv, in order to enjoy the ES buff while it lasts. If, however, you play for other reasons as well, you may or may not want to stay with BM or Marksmanship.

Taking suggestions

Is there anything here that anyone would like to see me write about? I'm a little starved for ideas right now, I admit. Anyone have any suggestions? :)

Explosive Shot added to my blogroll

As Arde just requested, I have added a link to his blog, Explosive Shot. The blog is apparently brand new; he only just made it from what he said, so please go and give him some encouragement.

Thoughts on 3.0.8.

Haven't played too much since the patch hit yet, so can't comment too much, though did do a CoS pug earlier.

So far, ES feels about the same for me, though early WWS logs suggest a rise of close to 2k DPS since pre-patch, among Naxx Hunters.

If the 30 second Lock and Load CD is there, it's silent. I also didn't notice it on single targets, since I generally take around 30 seconds per kill on single mobs anyway. There is no visible icon when it goes off, if it does, either.

I'm still here, and will be going back into the game after writing this to do some Heroics. There is hysteria among BM Hunters on the forum at the moment, although that is predictable.

I can't give Santyn those ArkInv rules I owe him yet, either; because AI has apparently been messed up by the patch. It's maintenance was shaky before 3.0.8 as it was, so I hope someone will come forward to pick it up.

I am staying.

My plans for the Auction House

I've spent the last few days levelling some alts, and professions, and generally trying to assemble necessary infrastructure, towards my goal of learning how to (hopefully) generate truly obscene amounts of gold via the Auction House...or at least enough to pay for some crafted purplez and an epic flying mount. ;-)

I have seen advertisements of people offering books and guides as to how they were able to generate hundreds of thousands of gold through the AH, but the precise means as to how they were able to do it has always eluded me.

On thinking about a recent YouTube video that I had seen from another such individual, though, I think I realised something. Every person who is selling on of those guides, nearly always does an introductory video. At first glance, this introductory video is entirely innocent; they're not revealing any of their secrets at all here, other than proving to you that their gold is real.

However, in the process of showing you that their gold is real, they also always do something else which, up to this point I'd overlooked, but which is very important. They show you what the content of their inventory and bank vault looks like. Said inventory and bank vault were inevitably filled with stacks of commodities of all kinds.

This, I came to realise, was a clue, and further reading and consideration led me to believe that it was an extremely important one; possibly the single most important one.

You see, previously I hadn't considered the idea of building up a large repository of mats and other salable items; I had thought that the idea was simply to either flip, or put freshly farmed items on the AH more or less immediately, and keep things moving continually. This document showed me just how incorrect I had been on this score.

I came to realise that a much more appropriate course of action, was to attempt to identify the most highly sought after commodities on my server, at least during a given period of time, and then attempt to fill my bank vault with a broad range of them. (Either from farming, which is the preferred and lower risk method, or buying from the AH during observed low-price points for the given commodity)

The plan is to then place no more than probably one or two stacks at a time of a given commodity on the Auction House, when my monitoring of long term price trends tells me that I am observing high tide for that particular commodity on Saurfang, my server.

Diversification, of course, gives me alternative options, which allows me to generate a consistent stream of income more or less continually. I have observed that Saurfang is currently experiencing a boom in the number of totally new players to the game, and as such, low level materials are actually much more in demand right now than some of the higher level items from Northrend.

Thus, if for example I observe that Borean Leather is moving sluggishly on a given day, (which is actually fairly likely on Saurfang, at least lately) I can either farm for or lean on my supply of Thick Leather instead, and make nearly as much per stack (7-10g, depending on what the market's doing) as the average price of a stack of Borean. (10g)

Some may consider it usurious to the point of cruelty to be charging new players 10g per stack of Thick Leather, but from what I have observed, simple economics dictates that if they weren't able to pay that, they wouldn't. In charging 7-10g, I'm generally making sure I undercut as well, and I also will often break a stack of 20 units up into 10 batches of 2 units each, and post those with a Multi-Auction addon I have, which can also make the price a little more attainable for the truly economically disadvantaged.

As well as making sure that I always undercut, the other thing to consider ethically here is that where commodities are concerned, the Auction House serves as a convenience only.

If a given player is unable to afford 10g per stack of Thick Leather, it does not mean that said player has no other way of obtaining a stack. All it means is that they will need to train Skinning, and then fly out to Tanaris in order to get it themselves, which is exactly what I have to do in order to sell it.

My peak sale time, from what I've been reading, is going to be the weekend. Friday night to Sunday night, server time, is when I'm planning to primarily sell. My time during the week will be spent filling my vault in preparation for the weekend.

This weekend will be my first attempt at doing this, so I am looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Blog Neglect

I apologise to my readers; it has been nearly a week again and I haven't updated the blog. I have, however, become a lot more active on Twitter recently, so if you're missing being offended by what I write here, add me to that if you use it, and you'll hear from me a lot more regularly. ;-)

I've been conducting an in-depth study of the Auction House, recently. I not only want to get enough money to get my epic flying mount, but truthfully I'd like to learn how to master WoW's economy more or less in general. I get the feeling that that is going to be my next major project in the game.

Along similar lines, I'm also tinkering with the ArkInventory addon at the moment, and the associated Ace library, PeriodicTable. Once I've got them cleaned up and straightened out, I'm possibly considering releasing my own set of ArkInventory rules, for inventory organisation.

They're fairly simple to write; but ironically, one of the most difficult things I've ever discovered, is actually keeping things simple. My greatest problem tends to be bogging things down with a lot of needless complexity.

It is my hope that they could be of use to someone, though; it certainly would have been of enormous use to me to have an ArkInv ruleset already written and waiting for me when I first started using the addon myself. It is the single most powerful inventory addon that I've ever come across; but therein lies the problem. If you can do absolutely anything, it generally becomes much more difficult to figure out what you should do.

Why I'm not looking forward to the patch

This post was originally intended as a reply to Requisition on Twitter.

Given that this is a post which will likely be severely misinterpreted by some, I offer the following disclaimer. I have no issue whatsoever with people who consider themselves, "min-maxers," on the basis of character stats; Agility, Stamina, crit, AP, etc, as this is, of course, entirely legitimate. My issue is with a specific group of people who utilise unforeseen and unintended exploits in game mechanics.

Santyn, you're also, of course, more than welcome to skip this particular post if you want to; it's possible that you won't like it very much. ;-)

I am not looking forward to 3.08, for the most part.

People might well wonder why. After all, if Survival's damage output gets boosted, that will mean I will have increased credibility in raids or Heroics, right?

Unfortunately, that is not all it's going to mean.

There is a certain demographic of players using the Hunter class, who care about absolutely nothing other than the maximisation of their damage in a raid or Heroic scenario. That by itself wouldn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. However, it very often is, for a couple of different reasons.

The first is that these individuals do not attempt to choose one of the three trees on the basis of that which is most compatible with their particular psychology and background. Many of them are entirely willing to force themselves to use a tree which they openly admit that they hate using, if only because it will give them more damage.

These are people who do not play this game for what, in my own mind anyway, are legitimate reasons. Their sole three priorities are their place on damage meters, the state of their Armory profiles, and most importantly, the opportunities for ego gratification which derive from the other two.

The second issue is what is causing the actual nerfs that Blizzard are making to our class.

a) Blizzard are trying to combat monoculture among players of all classes, including the Hunter. They do not want a scenario where a single talent tree or pet type is declared as the only one which is, "viable," and 99%+ of the player population then uses only that pet/tree combination, to the total exclusion of the others.

Tied in with the above is an extremely unhealthy and dehumanising attitude towards individual players; there is an enormous amount of pressure applied to players by guild or raid leaders to reach arbitrarily declared DPS minimums, and players are told that if they do not reach these, they will be summarily replaced.

Understand what I mean by this. 2,000 DPS per DPS class might be the genuine, mathematically derived minimum needed for successfully killing Patchwerk. It is not however needed for successfully completing Heroics. I have had the leader of a 5 man pug tell me that my gear was unsatisfactory for the Heroic mode Nexus, when I know from direct experience that it is not. Anyone who demands anything more than 1.5k DPS as a minimum for the successful completion of a Heroic is simply idiotic.

Blizzard want a scenario where players are not excluded from groups for arbitrary, subjective, irrational, elitist reasons. If a Marksmanship spec Hunter can generate sufficient damage to successfully clear the content in question, said Marksmanship Hunter should not be excluded from a group, as was described occurring here.

b) Blizzard also understandably do not want a scenario where raiders consistently try to exploit previously unforeseen (and unintended) effects or game mechanics in order to inappropriately increase their damage output. By this I am referring to both Call of the Wild stacking and Readiness/BW use in PvE by Beast Mastery, when it was intended for them as an Arena change, and the ability to force an excessive number of Lock and Load procs by people using Survival.

Unfortunately, what Blizzard do not seem to understand is that these two issues are social problems, not technical ones. Removing the ability to stack Call of the Wild is ultimately a futile gesture, because the types of individuals who want these sorts of exploits will simply immediately begin looking for the next one.

That is why the issue with Lock and Load developed with Survival, leading to the necessity of the cooldown. This was an indication that the exploit-based demographic have moved from BM to Survival, at least on the PTR.

Blizzard will continue to try and combat their use of exploits by applying technical nerfs, and collateral damage will continue to happen to both Survival as a tree, (in the sense that LnL has now lost effectiveness for levelling/soloing/PvP as well) and the Hunter class in general. (In the sense that when Steady Shot was nerfed to attempt to reduce the output of Beast Mastery, Marksmanship's damage output was reduced as well)

Hence, the min-maxing exploit crowd moving to Survival, is ultimately not going to accomplish anything positive. These individuals will not ultimately be thwarted by the nerfing of Beast Mastery. They will move to Survival and attempt to find any unforeseen exploit for maximising damage output that they can, and once all of said exploits present within Survival have been removed by Blizzard, they will then migrate to Marksmanship and repeat the pattern there.

The end result will ultimately be that all three of our talent trees are utterly trashed; Blizzard will nerf them to a degree that even legitimate use of them becomes virtually impossible.

This, in case anyone is wondering, is the entire reason why I have always been so passionately opposed to the exploiting min-maxing demographic; because I have been able to see where, long term, their attitude will lead.