And then it proceeded to get better when it was announced that Wrath of the Lich King beta was beginning.  I haven’t received an invite yet, but I’m still crossing my fingers.  Along with this announcement, came the news that the NDA was being lifted.  And that’s when the day got even better!

Reports started coming in about the new Hunter talents and the new Pet talent trees.  All I can say is Wow!  Some of those sound incredible.  Drotara, over at Less QQ, More PewPew, has already given a pretty good write up about the new talents.  All I can add is that, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the results of testing these things out, to see if they are as effective as they sound.  The jury is still out on a few of the talents involving stings.

All in all, I’m really excited about the new talents.  I’m hoping to stay Survival, but some of those talents in the MM tree are highly tempting.  The only way that this day could get any better would be if I found a beta invitation in my email!

/Happy Hunter Dance!

I’ve been waiting forever for that thing to drop.  I can’t wait to try it out in a raid setting.  Right now, I’m planning on pairing it with my Bladefist’s Breadth, until I can get enough Badges to get a Bloodlust Brooch.  I’m still roughly 30 Badges away, because I spent 100 Badges the other day on my new pants.  So for now, I’m stuck with the Bladefist trinket.

I’m hoping to experiment with the Hourglass a little this weekend on our Kara run.  I’m not sure if I’m going to wait for the proc before I pop Rapid Fire and my BB trinket, or if I’m just gonna keep popping RF and BB whenever they are up, and letting the Hourglass procs fall where they may.  Anyone have any experience with this type of rotation or setup?  Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

~Cal

We have been doing a few Kara runs, to get people geared up.  And recently, with the help of some new friends in Eve of Destruction, we have even ventured into Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair.  And I’m happy to say that we succeeded in both!  And last nite, we ventured in Zul’Aman for the first time, and successfully took down 3 of the 4 Avatar bosses.  The only one we didn’t get was Jan’Alai (The Dragonhawk).  All in all, I think Citadel is doing rather well at making a name for ourselves on The Scryers!

And I even briefly switched Talent specs.  I switched to BM.  I’m so ashamed!  Actually, at the time, we had very little physical DPS, and the Ferocious Inspiration buff was more beneficial for the mages and locks in our 10-man raids than Expose Weakness would have been.  And while I have to admit that the damage output was very nice, I really did miss being Survival.  So I switched back to Survival when we started doing some 25-man content.  And I’ve started doing some more PvP recently, so I enjoy SV a lot more there, too.  But I did change the spec up a little.  This time, I went with a 0/24/37 build.  This lets me get all the goodies from SV (EW, LR, and TotH) while still picking up Scatter Shot and Barrage.  So far, I’m really liking this spec.  The damage potential is not as good as BM, but it’s not bad, either.  And the burst damage is a lot of fun in PvP.  I need to mess around with Cheeky’s Spreadsheet some, and try and figure out what upgrades I need to concentrate on.  But for now, I’m having a lot of fun with this spec.

So, I made it back home a couple of weeks ago, and then the family and I went on a much needed vacation.  The wife and I took the kids to DisneyWorld.  We left on Friday the 13th (Yea, yea, I know) and got back on the 21st.  We spent 5 days at the Disney parks, including 2 days at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for Star Wars Weekend, and spent another couple of days at the beach in Destin on our way back home.  Now I need another vacation to recover from my vacation!  Hah!

Anyway, I’ll try to make a couple of posts soon to let you all know what’s been going on in WoW.  And I’ll even post a couple of fun pics from my trip.  Talk to ya soon!

~Cal

Well, to the amazement of all, we had a full Kara clear!  It took us a few nights, but it was well worth the effort.  We proceeded to one shot all of the bosses up to Shade, on our first night.  Shade took us 2 or 3 tries, but he went down, too.  Then on the 2nd night, we did the Chess event, and after a few failed attempts on Prince (damn Infernals, and their random placement), we went and took down Illhoof and Netherspite.  Sunday night, we took down the Prince, and we got Nightbane down to 1% before wiping on our first attempt.  We returned last night to finish Nightbane off.

And I was extremely fortunate to be rewarded with some great drops.  From Curator, I got Garona’s Signet Ring.  From Shade, I received the Drape of the Dark Reavers.  And for downing Prince Malchezaar, I was rewarded with the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix!  Wow, not a bad weekend at all! 

I am extremely proud of Citadel and what we were able to accomplish through good communication and team work.  I don’t think any of us expected to do a full Kara clear on our first run.  Truly awesome job, guys!

I will not be returning to Kara this week, as there are two other hunters in the guild that we are trying to get geared up.  But I am eagerly anticipating a return trip to Kara soon.  There is little else I need from there, gear-wise.  But I could really use the Badges, and I’d like to see everyone else get geared up, as well.

As for my performance in Kara, I’d have to say that it was ok.  There were a few hiccups, that I chalk up to me being rusty, such as Misdirecting the MT instead of the Off Tank on Curator (thank god for Readiness!).  Or my being a little too slow in getting that Distracting shot off on Nightbane, and having him charge the group instead of the Misdirected MT.  Ouch, that one hurt.  But I’m confident that these small mishaps will be gone once I get back into practice.  And I’m pretty happy with my DPS performance, as well.  Most of the time, I was competing for the 3rd damage slot with a very well geared feral (kitty) druid, with her edging me out overall, putting me at number 4.  And on the Nightbane kill last night, I got the number 2 spot, behind a Mage.  I chalk that one up to Readiness, and very liberal use of Rapid Fire.  Not bad for a Survival hunter in a 10-man.

And the good news is, they are going to Kara tonite, and I’ve been invited to go!  I’m really excited about this.  But I’m also a little nervous.  I haven’t been in Kara since last August, back before the bosses started dropping Badges of Justice, and before they removed the attunement/key requirement.  As a matter of fact, its been quite a while since I’ve done ANY instance.  I had a pretty long hiatus because of work and Real Life stuff.  So this may be a learning experience for me.  It may take me a while to get adjusted.  I sure hope I can get back into the swing of things fairly easily.

I’m fairly interested to see how I do as Survival in there.  I know it’s not optimal for 10-mans, but I’d still like to see how I perform in a raid setting at my current gear level.  Plus the trap talents should help out a bit on Moroes.  We’ll see how it goes, anyway.  Wish me luck!

But I have never experienced any pet aggro issues since the patch.  That is, until last night.  I’ve been doing dailies and grinding some with my pet cat Sanura.  And she’s been leveling up from 66 all the way to 70.  And as long as I let her get 3K or so of aggro built up (using Omen) before engaging the mob, I would usually be ok.  For this, I would normally turn off Claw, and just have Dash and Growl active.  This was to make sure that she would have enough focus to get that 2nd or 3rd Growl off.  And from levels 66 through 69, she would easily get 3K threat within just a few seconds.  But I noticed that once she hit level 70, it was taking 10 seconds or longer, and that each Growl was producing less threat.  Then I remembered to train her with the level 70 Growl, Rank 8.  Well, this did not solve the problem.  In fact, according to Omen, Growl Rank 8 was producing the same amount of aggro as Growl Rank 7.  Now, I know the actual numbers from Omen are not exact.  And for all I know, they may be inaccurate.  But I do know that my pet was holding aggro better at level 66 through 69 than she is at level 70!

I’d like to do some more testing on this, just to make sure.  But I do know that once she hit 70 last night, while I was doing dailies on Isle of Quel’Danas, that aggro suddenly became a problem.  And the amount of threat she was generating in Omen was almost cut in half.  This is seriously distrubing, and I hope that Blizzard is using pets of multiple levels to track this problem down.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the pet skill inconsistencies that Mania spoke of.

What are your thoughts?  Has anyone else experienced similar results?  Anyone have any 60 to 69 pets that they would like to test this out with?

But what about the long answer?  Let’s take a look at these macros, and see what makes them work.

First, the 3:2 Macro:
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !Auto Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/cast Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Now, we know that the 3:2 means that we are aiming for 3 Steady Shots, for every 2 Auto shots.  But how does that work?  Basically, this is a spam macro.  You put it on your castbar, and you spam the living hell out of it.  What makes it work as a 3:2 macro is having /cast !Auto Shot and /cast Steady Shot on separate lines.

Every time you spam the button, it tries to cast Auto Shot first, if its not on cooldown.  If it is on cooldown, then it goes to the next line, which is Kill Command.  But let’s ignore that for now.  The next line then, would be Steady Shot.  So, as you constantly press the button, its going to alternate between Auto/Steady.

But wait!  I thought we were aiming for Auto – Steady – Steady – Auto – Steady – Auto.  We are, and that’s the beauty of this macro, and why it’s great for any weapon speed.  When you have a slow weapon, Your Auto shot will still be on cooldown by your 3rd button press.  So it forces another Steady shot in there before Auto fires again. 

Now, depending on your attack speed, you may end up with more of a 2 Steadies to 1 Auto.  But for the most part, it averages out to a 3:2, because your Auto shots will get pushed back a little.  But the best part is, that when you get enough haste, either from Rapid Fire, Quick Shots, or some sort of proc/trinket, this macro will automatically put you in a 1:1 ratio.  That way, you don’t have to switch macros.  If you get your attack speed down low enough, this macro will still work in a 1:1 fashion, and not mess up any of your rotation.

Now for the 1:1 Macro:
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=3 !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

As I mentioned earlier, you can use a 3:2 macro as a 1:1 if your attack speed is fast enough.  But this particular 1:1 macro puts you in a 1 Steady to 1 Auto ratio, regardless of weapon speed.  It does this by using the /castsequence command.  Let’s take a look at that line.

/castsequence reset=3 !Auto Shot, Steady Shot

What this does, is cast one Steady after each Auto, no matter how many times you spam the button.  So there is no accidentally delaying your Auto shot because you hit the button too many times.  The reset=3 merely means that if you don’t press the button for 3 seconds, the cast sequence “resets” and you will get an Auto shot the next time you use the macro.

Now, you can use this 1:1 macro, and manually add in your other specials, such as Arcane, or Multi-shot.  Or you can add them into the above macro.  Either way, this puts us at a 1.5:1 rotation, where we have 1 Steady for each Auto, and we have an extra Arcane/Multi, every other round.

Here’s a 1.5:1 macro that I plan on testing out on Dr. Boom tonight:

/castsequence reset=3 !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/castrandom Multi-shot, Arcane Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command, Lightning Breath
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Once again, I’m merely trying to explain how the macros work.  And I am by no means an expert.  The only way to know for sure which one will work best for your spec and gear, is to try them out yourself.  Cheeky’s DPS spreadsheet is also an excellent resource.  You can plug in your gear, and see which rotation would be optimal for you.

If you’re interested, Drotara over at Less QQ, More PewPew, has compiled a list of some of the most common macros out there.  Alumatine also has all sorts of macros listed on his site, along with a description of each one.  I suggest you go check out both sites and browse around.  Both sites have tons of good information for hunters.

I also wanted to mention one other site.  It seems we have a new hunter blog – The Hunting Lodge!  Brigwyn is just starting out, but he’s already got some big-name MVP’s in his corner.  He’s apparently going to have some contributions from folks like Alumatine, Mirshalak, & Rilgon.  Let’s give him a great big Hunter welcome!

Bear with me. I’m making some changes to the site. I switched to a new theme. Unfortunately, when I switched, I lost my custom header picture. D’oh!!

And I’m at work so I don’t have a copy saved here. Ggaaaaahhhh!!!

When I get home, I’ll find it and re-upload it to use with the new theme.

I’m also making some additions and deletions to the blogroll. I plan on adding some more general WoW-related links, as well.

Leave me some comments, and let me know how you like the changes. Or if I should leave well-enough alone and quit frakin’ things up.