Rejig

I respecced last night before we took on Al'ar and Void Reaver, but before Chain Trap and BRK get all excited, I'm sticking with Marksmanship for now. The talents I dropped were:

Trap Mastery 2/2 - I'm doing less heroics these days, so the extra trap resist is less important. I've also got a lot more armour and HP, so if a trap gets resisted I'll probably survive and be able to kite the mob around.

Improved Hunter's Mark 5/5 - This was a tough choice. The talent adds 110AP to all melee attacks on the marked mob, which can add up to quite a bit if you have a large cadre of rogues and DPS warriors. Our raids don't seem to have that many melee classes though, and most of the time another hunter marks the boss and invalidates the buff, so I think I'll let this one slide.

Barrage 3/3 - I don't tend to use Multi-shot much in raids because of the chance of breaking CC, and I don't use it on bosses because of its mana inefficiency. I do use it in PvP whenever I can get myself into a decent position, but this isn't very often.

With the 10 extra points, I grabbed these talents:

Efficiency 2/5 - I already had three points in this talent, so I added two more points to help with my raiding mana issues. I'll still be potting aggressively, but it will give me a bit more headroom.

Go For The Throat 2/2 - This one's a bit of an experiment in boosting my pet's damage. I crit pretty regularly, so this talent should give him a lot more focus to burn on Bite and Claw. In long boss fights, this hopefully will add up.

Improved Stings 5/5 - Another experiment, with a mainly PvP focus. With these five talent points, Viper Sting will burn 1778 mana off an enemy, and reduce the chance to dispel it by 30%. It also ups Serpent Sting's damage by 30%, which makes it a bit more formidable and efficient. I might even use it in raids if I'm in a group with a mana regenerating buddy.

Combat Experience 1/2 - A small overall buff to Agility and Intellect, which means a few more points of RAP, a teensy bit of crit and a tad more Intellect, which gives me a little bit more mana.

It'll be interesting to see how much actual difference these changes make. Improved Stings in PvP will probably be the most visible, although if Go For The Throat works the way I hope it might it might boost my pet's damage significantly in long battles. Cross fingers!

Cruel World

Despite many moments of temptation, I managed to save up the huge pile of honor points required for this little beauty:

When I bought it, I felt a little bit let down. 30,000 points is an awful lot, and although there's an enormous amount of crit and an excellent PvP activation ability on it, I wondered how often I'd really use it. Well, it turns out that the answer is a lot. I seem to pop this once per Arena game without fail, and quite regularly while running around in battlegrounds. Being able to thwart an enemy's "one more shot and this guy is dead" calculations is worth a mountain of gold, particularly if it gives me enough time for Scatter Shot to come off cooldown, or my druid arena buddy to land a nice fat heal.

For raiding, this trinket isn't bad either. The crit is lovely, and the ability can provide a few extra delicious seconds of survival to grab a lifesaving heal from a raid healer. So far, I've used it after Lurker's Geyser and Tidewalker's Watery Graves, and I'm expecting to use it against Void Reaver's orbs and Al'ar's meteors and adds too. Note that if your HP is under 1750 when the time runs out, you don't die - you're left with one HP, which can be a little unnerving.

Future Weapons

Hunters are always on the lookout for a better ranged weapon, since every standard shot we make is modified by its quality. Going from an 83 DPS bow to a 93 DPS bow will actually increase your overall DPS by 20, because Auto and Steady Shot both get a 10 DPS boost. Note that Arcane Shot's damage is calculate from Ranged Attack Power only, so the damage of your ranged weapon doesn't matter at all when you're using that type of shot.

The next step up from my current Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix is probably the Arcanite Steam-Pistol from Al'ar. I honestly hadn't even considered this puppy until recently, when The Endless got the big chook to 42% in his second phase. It's a small damage upgrade, but it's one I'd jump on in a second if it actually drops.

Also on my radar is the Merciless Gladiator's Crossbow of the Phoenix, from Arena season two. There's no personal rating limitation on this any more, but at 3261 arena points, it's expensive. That's around 13 weeks of arena play at our usual 1400ish rating. Considering it would only be a minor upgrade and the points would be better spent on Vengeful gear, it's unlikely I'll follow this one through.

The next option is the current season's ranged weapons, the Vengeful Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow, Longbow and Rifle. These are a serious step up in damage, and well worth the 3750 arena points. They also require a rating of 1850, which is pretty impossible for an arena bunny like myself, although the rating restrictions for S2 were removed when S3 launched. This will probably not be the case when S4 launches, with the word on the street being that S3 main weapons and shoulders will still have rating requirements, but they will be lowered. It's also good to note that Season 4 will probably launch a significant amount of time after 2.4 launches too, which will further delay any chance of me getting my hands on one of them.

Probably the most likely and worthwhile upgrade is the super swanky Crossbow of Relentless Strikes which will be available from Smith Hauthaa for 150 Badges of Justice. I'm at 74/150 right now, which will probably mean another 7 weeks of collecting at my fairly casual rate of 10 badges a week. Note that these new items won't be available straight away - Smith Hauthaa only appears in phase three of the Shattered Sun Offensive, which is progressed by everyone on the server completing dailies on the island of Quel'Danas. I'll be there doing my part, let me tell you.

As for weapons like the Serpent Spine Longbow from Vashj or Legionkiller from Supremus, I know they exist but I'm not devoting any brainspace to them, as I'm just not likely to see them any time soon. Even the Ancient Amani Longbow from ZA isn't likely to fall into my hands without a dramatic change in my schedule, and by the time that happens I hopefully will have already upgraded.

You're Late

I'm mainly running Kara for Badges of Justice these days, although I do have a small list of items that have never dropped for me. That list became significantly smaller last Thursday when Legacy and Garona's Signet Ring finally came my way. Legacy is the classic object of lust for hunters everywhere. It's the reason that Kara raiding hunters get a little thrill deep inside every time The Crone pops up in the Opera event rotation. When I finally got it, I felt like I should make a speech thanking god, the academy, and dedicating the run to Heath Ledger.

The problem is, after running some numbers and making some comparisons, the Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe is simply much better, even for raiding. Giving up hit rating and over 1% of crit just hurts too much, even though the 8mp5 would be nice. I'm definitely just scraping by in the mana stakes, and that's 600 extra mana in a 10 minute boss fight. The pure agility on Legacy is great though, so there's a chance I might use it if I ever respec Survival, but for now it goes over my fireplace.

As for the signet ring, it's yet another solid piece of hit gear that has allowed me to shuffle a few things around for my raid set, making it:

Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe
Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix
Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Helm
Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes
Ebon Netherscale Breastplate
Vindicator's Chain Bracers
Gauntlets of Sniping
Vindicator's Chain Girdle
Shifting Camouflage Pants
Boots of the Crimson Hawk
Vengeance Wrap
Violet Signet of the Master Assassin
Garona's Signet Ring
Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph
Darkmoon Card: Crusade
Bloodlust Brooch

There's an awful lot of PvP gear in there now, which is interesting. I'd really like to craft the Belt of the Black Eagle now that I have access to Nether Vortexes, but I haven't seen the pattern on the AH for months. It would be nice for it to actually drop in SSC / TK, but just like Legacy, I haven't been lucky with it.

Ugh

It took The Endless seven tries to get Lurker down last night, which was almost enough to make me throw my leather raiding shorts in the bin and stick to Karathons for heroic badges until 2.4 drops. The crazy thing was that we probably had our best trash clear ever, with Hydross and Lurker groups going down like wheat in a hurricane. When we hit Lurker though, it was a disaster. People were dying on Spouts, rogues were getting one-shotted on Whirls, and adds were running amok everywhere. We really didn't deserve to get him down, but somehow we managed it.

We did discover that it's possible and sometimes even desirable to keep the island adds sheeped for pretty much the entire fight. Our DPS seemed to be lacking for some reason (possibly too many people already dead), and when a new wave arrived, any adds that were still alive weren't replaced. CCing them for the entire fight therefore becomes a decent strategy, although things can get messy if one pops out and immediately multi-shots players who are already low on health.

Nights like that one make me wonder why I even try to raid, but at least we got the bloody fish down. There was also one other fairly amazing bonus too - two Nether Vortexes dropped, so I got to make another kickass druid tank belt for a guildie. Grats Gopala!

Grats Kyo

The second Nether Vortex dropped the other night, so I finally got to make Kyodru his mega mondo druid tanking belt of gnarly stuff.

Of course he was drooling all over the place... and I felt pretty good about being able to make something powerful for a guildie. After 2.4 I expect this belt to become the standard for most druid tanks, so I'll have to come up with a decent crafting price when the queues begin. I'm thinking 50 gold for non-guildies, but it really depends on how many other people have the pattern on Barthilas.

More Haste, Less Rush

There are a tonne of items with Haste rating bonuses dropping in 2.4, which prompts a short examination of the stat and specifically how it affects hunters. Obviously it increases the rate at which we can make physical attacks, but what does that actually mean? Let's start with the basic haste mechanics, which were last changed in patch 2.2. The formula since then has been:

Hasted Speed = Weapon Speed / (Haste bonus 1 * Haste bonus 2 * (1+ (Total Haste Rating / 1576)))

Note the reference to both Haste bonus and Haste rating. These are two different things, and different abilities and items contribute to them. Attack speed increases from quivers and ammo pouches count as a bonus, as does the Beast Mastery talent Serpent's Swiftness, the hunter ability Rapid Fire and the Shaman spell Bloodlust. The Drums of Battle temporarily adds to the haste rating, as do items like my rather lovely Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes.

This formula applied to my current raiding gear is:

Hasted Speed = Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix / (Quiver of a Thousand Feathers * (1+ (Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes / 1576)))
Hasted Speed = 2.90 / (1.15 * (1+ (37 / 1576)))
Hasted Speed = 2.90 / (1.15 * 1.0234)
Hasted Speed = 2.46, which is just what it says on my Auto Shot tooltip. Yay!

It's good to note that Steady Shot's speed is also affected by haste, even though it doesn't say it on its tooltip. Its cast time is 1.5 seconds, which makes the formula for me:

Hasted Steady = 1.5 / (1.15 * 1.0234)
Hasted Steady = 1.27

This is a pretty essential mechanic, particularly if you're a BM hunter. If it was locked at 1.5 seconds, BM Hunters with full Serpent's Swiftness would lose the ability to weave Steady whenever they were Bloodlusted or popped Rapid Fire! So, Steady must accelerate as well.

Now that we've covered how haste works, we can look at what haste actually does. With 105% haste, you make 105 attacks in the time you would've usually made 100, which means a 5% increase in damage per second. This is good stuff, and this increase is a multiplier, which can means that the damage increase from haste gets larger as your gear gets better. If you do 500 DPS normally, a haste increase of 5% will take you to 525 DPS - an increase of 25DPS, which is equivalent to an extra 350 AP using the standard 14AP = 1 DPS conversion. If you do 700 DPS normally, the same 5% haste increase will take you to 735DPS - an increase of 35 DPS, which is equivalent to an extra 490 AP. That's pretty great stuff, so the more haste the better right?

Well, not exactly. The first downside of haste for hunters is that because we're firing faster, we're using mana faster. In endurance fights, this can be a problem. With a lot of haste, you're going to have to be very aggressive with mana pots, and possibly make use of Superior Mana Oil. Boxes in talents like Efficiency and Thrill of the Hunt also help. If you're still having troubles, Aspect of the Viper is your friend.

Haste also isn't that useful in Arena or Battlegrounds, unless you have a significant chunk of it. If you've got a very respectable 158 points of haste rating (a 10% speed increase) you're going to fire 10 shots in your standard time of 9, which will certainly help in bursting someone down, but it's unlikely you'll get the chance with all the interrupts, stuns, fears, traps, charms, intimidations and blinds flying about like doves in a John Woo movie. Personally, I'm going to concentrate on Stamina and Resilience, but I can see that half a second in the Arena can mean the difference between a win or a loss, not to mention peppering a caster with shots can almost halt their spells entirely.

There's also a limit to the amount of haste that can be stacked before it starts messing with a hunter's shot rotation. Auto Shot has a 0.5 second hidden cast time, which reduces the time Steady has to fire without delaying the next Auto. The standard player to server latency is around 0.2 seconds, but for me in Australia it's more like 0.35 seconds. This means, with my current raid gear:

Auto Speed = 2.46
Steady Speed = 1.27
Real Steady Speed = 1.27 + 0.5 + 0.35
Real Steady Speed = 2.12

This leaves 0.34 seconds of time to safely absorb network blips and human error without clipping my Auto Shot. When everything is running smoothly, it even allows me to sneak an Arcane shot into that gap every few cycles, which is good for the DPS. Now, If I had 200 points of haste rating and a 2.7 speed weapon like the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, the numbers would be:

Auto Speed = 2.08
Steady Speed = 1.16
Real Steady Speed = 1.16 + 0.5 + 0.35
Real Steady Speed = 2.01

This leaves only 0.07 seconds of safe time, which isn't enough to avoid clipping, given network jitters and my inevitable late night reflex degradation. I'd also lose the ability to slide in Arcane shot. This is an extreme example, but it demonstrates that although haste is quite powerful, it ultimately has a limit. Weapon speed, talents, latency and shot rotation all play their part, as well as all the other stats and bonuses you'll be missing out on by specializing in haste gear.