PST is an Acronym not an Onomatopoeia

I think I'm back to playing hunter for a while. I have been fairly unlucky with drops in Kara on Grufft so my bonus healing still wallows around 1200. It has barely improved in the stints of healing I have done there. I had some upgraded pieces but they left my bonus healing nearly unchanged while adding to stats. It seems to me that druids can squeak by with less bonus healing than other classes but it's discouraging to make three full trips through there not yield anything phenomenal. So discouragement there and a new hunter spec have drawn my interest back to Lÿnn.

I ran an heroic last night with Gurch. He is a very well geared Shadow Priest, so I was pleased to see that I beat him by a shade on DPS placing me second in the group. This is even with a gimp pet. I admit to bringing a level 61 pet to heroic Arcatraz. I have Shy-rotam's mate and darnit... instances are the best place to level them. We conquered Heroic Arc without many problems so I felt no remorse. I was narrowly beaten by an elemental shaman from our guild. I'm now setting about to re-gear for survival versus Beast Master to help put me back on top.

As BM spec hunter, I stacked three things typically. In order they were hit percentage (until hit cap), crit percentage, and ranged attack power. Hit is important because it is a point for point increase in DPS. Increase my hit percentage by one precent and I increase my damage by one percent. For nearly all of Kara, I was hit capped or very nearly hit capped. In ten to fifteen full runs of Kara I can say with utmost certainty I have missed fewer than one hundred shots. Crits came before AP for me because of the talents that come along with crits, like Go for the Throat. There was always a need for other incidentals that accompanied gear upgrades like stam, int and MP/5 but I never chose gear based on anything besides hit, crit and AP.

Things aren't a world apart with Survival but it does require that I re-gear. I need agility. Agi by itself was not as important with BM. I needed hit, crit and AP. Crit and AP do come from Agi but I have several pieces that had little or no agi but instead "Equip:" effects. These pieces have to go. I got rid of one such culprit already. My former neck piece offered no agi but I now have the SSO neck that gives +19 AGI amongst other things. This need for AGI comes from two talents: Expose Weakness and the one that gives me +15% AGI. I forget the name.

Now the sad news. I was window shopping the smith on the Isle and I need around 440 Badges of Justice to get the items I want. This has inspired me to be more diligent about the dailies that offer an SSO bag and possible BOJ and the heroic daily dungeon. I will try to get into as many Kara runs as I can but they have been pugs now-a-days since CN has been starting Kara an hour too early for me. Equally disappointing was the guild's last two "scheduled" Zul'Aman runs. The first was canceled and yesterday's was rescheduled to tonight. Ugh! I want in! this toon has been so lucky on drops, I know I can save myself some badges by getting some super neat ZA gear. /bigdotsigh

Survival of the Fittest

So I like DPS. I really like being the lead DPS. It's an epeen thing. Damage meters have been my friend for quite some time as I nearly always pumped out the most damage in 5 and 10-man instances. DPS not being the only thing, I do consider my self an accomplished trapper as well and can consistently trap up to three times without fail... well if I don't get resists or early breaks. On a typical heroic I will have 2-4 resist and 1-3 early breaks during the whole instance. This, I would venture, is fairly normal for most hunters. I had no points in survival and no set bonus so my traps were as baseline as they come.

This has now changed with my new Survival Spec. Buru had hounded me for quite some time to put some points in survival so that I could CC in Kara. Taking points out of Marks and putting them into Survival significantly weakens BM's DPS with the loss of 5% more crits, 15% more damage on crits, additional pet focus on crits, and increased AP for melee from Improved Mark. I had tried to respec Survival to see how I like it for solo'ing and pet threat was an issue. My cat was just not keeping up with my threat at all with the new spec. Having to jump shot during solo PVE is pretty lame so it was back to BM.

Since then, I still had a hankering to try something different. I have finally spec'd back to Survival and it seems like it is here to stay. I learned recently that range = threat mitigation. Stand far away and I gain less threat than standing close up. That being said, for the first time as a hunter I dropped 3/3 points into Hawk Eye. I have railed a lot of ppl that have this in their spec. Never a Survival hunter but every BM hunter for sure. What a waste these three points are sitting in longer range when they are much better spent in the marks tree. And I won't take the threat reduction argument from BM hunter. They have less threat issues than Marks or Survival because less of their damage comes from their bow. I have put out a lot of damage in raids and only once do I recall cresting the tank on a boss. Feign death is your friend. Hit the dirt for no apparent reason 1 minute into a fight and you're probably set for the rest of the fight, depending on aggro resets and length of fight.

So now, instead of topping the charts on DPS I have to imagine the usefulness of buffs and debuffs. In this respect, I bring four things to the table: Expose Weakness, Improved Hunter's Mark, Scorpid Sting, and Screech. Expose Weakness and IHM work in tandem to raise melee attackers AP against my debuffed target by nearly 300 currently (and EW will continue to scale with increased AGI), Scorpid Sting drops the chance a melee attack will land by 5% and screech reduces target's AP by 210. On top of those things, I still get to put out a lot of damage, especially in the form of crits, nearing 45% crit chance while raid buffed.

Did I mention I can trap like a champ? I have points to improve the longevity, damage and animal content of my traps by 30%. That puts Freezing Trap at 26 sec. I took 2/3 points to reduce the cost and casting time of traps. The reduction in time of 4 sec brings my trap cooldown to 26 sec. Isn't that neat? 26 sec trap, given no early break that I can recast in 26 sec. And what about those early breakers? If I'm in trouble I pop Readiness and all my Hunter Abil's come off of cooldown. This also comes in handy for multiple trapping, making it possible to freeze trap 2 mobs at the onset (3 actually if it is allowed)

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy to put my full on DPS whore days behind me and look forward to my new utility spec.

Gruul Down

I had my first taste of the next level of progression last night and WOW! Max heard an ad that Syndicate was looking for a hunter and a something else. I was able to /tell in time and got in. It's quick and easy... or at least it was with the guild I went with. Gruul is currently on farm for them so they're accustomed to the fight. I dislike saying it but I don't think Colombian Necktie is close to ready for this. I did pretty well putting out a smidge over 750 dps... and I was 9th on the DPS list. Ouch! We have some things down. There needs to be one bear tank and 3 warrior tanks (I think Buru would be our only contender). There's a butt ton of heals and a mage tank as well. Mage tank needs a bunch of HP. I think he/she tanks a caster so armor is not necessary. These are all requirements for the five ogre boss fight before Gruul. Three of the same token dropped from these guys for warriors, druids and something else that's not hunter so who cares. Wow thanks for being random.
Moving on to Gruul. The fight was a breeze as DPS even keeping my pet alive was facil. There's two different things that the whole raid needs to worry about. I know the name of one 'cave-in'. There will be small pieces of rock that can be seen falling to the ground in an area of effect. If you stand there you take damage. The other is a thunderstomp of sorts that adds a ticking movement debuff and throws each person to a random area. Once each raider lands they have to speard out. In three or four ticks the raiders turn to stone and shortly thereafter explode causing damage to others nearby. Apart from those attacks he's tank and spank. He dropped a hunter/who-cares/who-cares legging token and I lost the roll. Meh. Well it was an easy 5 badges.
Afterwards we f'd around in Black Temple which got old. They voted that over actually accomplishing Magtheridon. A sum total of 2 purple gems dropped and we wiped a few times. Whoopee!
All-in-all great raid learning experience in Gruul's.

A proper update

Well, Lÿnn has been progressing nicely. After 6 or 7 full trips through Karazhan, I have some pretty solid gear. Romulo's poison, the Curator's Signet ring, t4 helm and more. I'm nearly all epic with the exception of shoulders and pants, both of which are pretty decent blues so they don't detract. Sweeney recently shared an interesting site with me: be.imba.hu. It gives suggestions for improving your toon and shows where the toon would be able to perform adequately. If I recall correctly, it places me part way into SSC, ZA, and TK but not yet ready for BT, Hyjal or the Sunwell. I have done a good job at building the toon and have a capped hit rating and crit percentage just over 29%. It has shown on all our Kara runs as I lead DPS every time (I think). The last part of the puzzle has always been Ranged Attack Power for me. It seems a bit backwards to many I'm sure. My RAP sits just over 1600 whith AotH is active so it's not horrible. I emphasized crit more than RAP because I have several talents that utilize crit like Go For the Throat. When raid buffed, I pump out a lot of focus for my pet with that abil.
Colombian Necktie is coming along nicely, we have several new members and are currently working on a second string of people and getting them geared for progression. We even have a Gruul's Lair run tentatively planned for Monday. It was originally a ZA run but some people discussed and their consensus was that we're not ready. We have another guild that Khanjin has been talking to so that we might have sufficient people but I'm not sure any solid deals have been made. Speaking of, I better get to our website and see if sign-ups are working.