Interesting changes ahead

Posted on by
Reply

The 5.3 patch notes can be found here

5.3 has landed, and as I prepare to log in tonight and once again begin the heroic progression in ToT, there are a few changes that have been made that I would like to reflect on/

First of all – a buff! YES, that is right…. a BUFF!

Aspect of the Hawk now increases ranged attack power by 25%, up from 15%.

Aspect of the hawk/Ironhawk will now increase our AP by a further 10%. Now this may be a slight tweak to bring us further in par with hard hitting locks and other classes, after all; in a 25 man heroic setting it doesn’t look like we are fairing too well. From a purely anecdotal and personal standpoint, I think this is great. There are a few fights where I am not sitting too badly amongst my team dps ranks. There are a few fights when we can hold our own (in a 10 man setting, of course – I don’t have experience in current heroic 25 man), yet there are some fights where we get utterly destroyed. I look forward to testing out this slight buff and seeing the effect it has on my own personal dps.

A brief (and I mean BRIEF) analysis of raidbots can quickly see where we approximately sit in terms of dps on particular fights, as well as a general ‘overall’ rank.

Overall median dps in 25 heroic

Overall median dps in 25 heroic

 

Hopefully I can do a better analysis in a few days (before we get too much WoL data with the new changes). We aren’t sitting very well in the heroic 25 man standings, I chose to look at the median dps, as this negates any outliers that may skew the data. Obviously such an overall view is very superficial, and doesn’t reflect the performance on a fight-by-fight basis, and there are a lot of 10 man heroic teams out there that this may not be relevant for!… yet this is still an interesting starting point to see how we may change in the coming weeks with this slight buff.

The only other change I have been mulling over (that I really care about) is the change to Binding shot. As a predominant PvE’er, losing this utility shot is not a great change. They could have reworked intimidation some other way to counter BM control. The best choice would be to make silencing shot baseline and remove intimidation :P
I’ll save that can of worms for another day..

Wish us luck pushing heroic twins!

 

The time consumption of everything!

Posted on by
2

Let me first apologize, I feel that for the last year (and yes, Quel’s hunting corner is indeed over a year old) I have been making and breaking promises almost constantly. Now it isnt that I dont like writing; as my guild can attest, I have no problem talking someones ear off, and as someone that has spent a vast amount of time contemplating and procrastinating, I do not have a problem cataloguing my thoughts.

The problem I am faced with at the moment is life – but not in a bad way.

I am not sure about the age of my fellow bloggers and hunter pals, I know some are older, and inevitibly some may indeed be younger. I started this game at the ripe old age of 19 (I think), and that is indeed a good age to start in my opinion; I was not a young little dirt bag ruining the game for others with QQ and bad mechanic understanding (although, I have met some exceptional young players, I doubt that I would have been one of them). I was attending university at the time, and didnt ever play WoW to a large extent until I had a patella realignment (for those who arent overly familiar with bones, that is a movement of the knee cap). This was a chronic injury that I had to get fixed, and the result was an increasing amount of time sitting (and mostly lying due to keeping my leg relatively straight) around at home. This was during my university break, a fantastic way to spend an Australian summer.

With some creative furniture arrangement, I was able to play through the early days of WotLK, slowly falling in love with the game and the general grind. I discovered Achievements and all the addiction that was associated with them. I was a WoW nerd and fine with it.

That was all well and good when the majority of your time was spent avoiding study and working casually to pay for weekend madness with friends. Yet I am past those years now.

I am swiftly approaching my mid twenties, and have started my first (proper) job. My first step in my career as a college teacher. I am full time, meaning I am responsible for 5 different classes, and I love every minute of it. This does allow me some reprive, as I cannot wait until I can enjoy school holidays from the other side of the fence :P

Why unload all of this life story? Well apart from letting you know more about the awesomeness that is indeed “Quelys”, I want to outline why things have been slow here.

I currently raid in a fantastic Australian guild. I made the move from my old home in Conclave to Nocturnus Vexilari – the number one guild on my server (a server that indeed has seen better days). We are not ‘hardcore’ raiders, yet we managed to kill Sha of Fear heroic before patch 5.2. With my now busy schedule of teaching, I have to make sure I not only maintain a good attendance and commitment with my guild (I love raiding, and I love this game – especially hunters, so this is something that is important to me), I also have to make sure I remain an involved and interesting teacher, and leave enough time for a social life outside of games for my less digitally inclined bretheren. All of this pretty much puts me in a sour spot for blogging.

Term one for Australian schools is coming to a close soon, and I hope that now my first term at this new job is out of the way, I will finally start getting a hang of all the ins and outs. This should allow for a more relaxed time, and increase my amount of posts.

I have a couple of posts in the works at the moment, and just brainstormed a few more… Some of these are;

- Heroic Jin’rohk guide (we killed him first week)
- Normal mode compendium, similar to my MSV compendium (the HoF guide was half done, then I let time get away from me).
- Many other aweome posts that I dont want to reveal too much about!

With my compendium post, what I like to do when researching new fights is run through strategies, videos and ability lists that are available, and use all of this information to create my own mini-list that is encounter specific. This covers encounter specific information for me (I ignore tank swaps etc, that doesn’t change how I will pew pew), and spec choice that will most likely be optimal. Hopefully I can expand on it and throw it up soon :)

 

Regards, ye shooty lover people!

 

I am pretty :)

I am pretty :)

The Thunder King Cometh

Posted on by
Reply

Blizzard have released the official trailer of patch 5.2, and I must say this is what I love about Blizzard and their games – it makes you really want to play it. Hopefully this proves to be a formidable test for raiders, don’t forget there is only about two weeks before this bad boy is released (general guestimate, not a legitimate date).



My personal raid team is working on Heroic Sha. Unfortunately we hit a bit of a wall with the loss of a couple of DPS for a few weeks. To put it in perspective, when we had our full strength team two weeks ago, we had a 17% wipe. We are now just managing to reach that same level, so it is a bit annoying – yet that is the nature of such a social game. Storms have been ravaging Australia, which has meant a few of our raiders have been fighting the disconnection boss (Australia’s net is notoriously bad, that is until the National Broadband Network is finally rolled out nation-wide). All of these problems is something we will hopefully get passed, I myself have missed more raids than usual due to events that seem to crowd February (Soundwave, Valentines [wink], late meetings at work). This

Sunday we will have our full strength back in one place, with heroic terrace already cleared to Sha. It is safe to say I am extremely excited to get in there and see what this new sha-touched weapon can do! I hope your teams aren’t suffering as much as mine is, and you are progressing well! My HoF guide has had to sit to the side for a bit due to the hectic few weeks I just had, but hopefully that will be up (and I will throw the TotES guide up also) by the close of this week – hopefully not more empty promises!

As we approach closer to the patch date, are you getting ready? Will your raid team move swiftly into the new raid? I hope so!

Happy hunting!

 

MMmmmmmmm (get it?)

Posted on by
11

MM FINALLY IS GETTING LOVE!

This is the sort of love that I have been talking about! I know it isn’t completely terrible, but as people will quickly point out – having 0 niche market for the once beloved spec of many has seen it cast aside, brought back for boredom or to fool around with (or for those that do not need to take a particular aspect of the game too seriously). I have played around with it a few times, and it just didn’t pack enough ‘oomph’.

So what are the buffs you say? BEHOLD!!!

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

So there we have it, AiS, Chim, and ss all getting nice little buffs – my favorite by far is the chim shot change, it definitely did not pack the wallop it once did, and it is good to see that it may now be back to it’s glorious self-healing self!

Time to dust it off!

Time to dust it off!

So MM enthusiasts, rejoice! for those who had pretty much abandoned the spec, dust it off and prepare to enter 5.2 as deliverer of pain! I for one look forward to it. It has been said time and time again that MM does not do as much AoE as surv, or as much single target as BM, yet this may close the gap with the single target issue, allowing it a viable (and very reasonable) choice for some fights that are not constant AoE (non-windlord-esque fights). I can’t wait!

Only thing left on my wish list is to bring entrapment back as a talent or glyph (glyph might be the better choice there). If it was baseline, then we would have possible issues with our pet being destroyed while kiting (and killing) certain adds [anyone who has been on Rage duty on heroic Will as BM can sympathise].

Things are looking up guys :)

 

 

PS: Keep in mind this comment :P

You can’t just apply these to 5.1 numbers. You need to keep the entire suite of changes in mind. I say this because we always get a few players who only see -20% on some ability and get all “Don’t nerf me, bro.”

Coming late to the button-bashing party

Posted on by
5

The last month or so has seen a massive increase in hunters beginning to take notice at the amount of abilities we have, mainly after reading Ghostcrawlers opinion on the matter. After playing my hunter for so long, I find it weird that some people are all of a sudden bringing up that we have too many buttons.

To a point I can concede that we have a fair few abilities, however what makes it to the point that it is ‘too many’. I feel with the proper practice within the game, as well as a good understanding of keybinds and macros, the daunting task of finding a home for all of your abilities shrinks drastically.

Assign keybinds via the in-game menu

Assign keybinds via the in-game menu

I use shift as a button modifier, and cannot recommend it highly enough. I use control as well, but not as frequently. Having things like multishot (which quite frankly, even though being our main aoe, is a situational ability that depends on the amount of adds present*) bound to a shift-modified button can drastically lower the rent space of your keyboard. I have mine bound to Shift+2, and find that it is perfect for maintaining a tight switch between aoe and single target. I find R, T, F, and G to be great locations for some of your instant cast abilities – although it is all about being comfortable with your own play and keybinds. No matter what anyone says, at the end of the day there is no ‘right’ way to bind your keys (however spreading them far in hard to quickly reach spots is obviously a no-no..), everyone is different.

*obviously you would use multishot a lot in heroic dungeons, yet in a raiding environment you don’t need to multishot on every fight)

Macros can be your friend. Some abilities can be placed on the same bind (such as Bestial Wrath with a number of other abilities, depending on what you prefer. I macro mine with A Murder of Crows to compliment the damage increase). A widely accepted notion is to macro all of your ‘large CDs’ together – and that is fine for anyone starting off. Some macros in particular will work better than others, and I suggest looking into the various guides found around the interwebs (try searching through the WoW forums as a starting point).

Open up the macro menu by typing "/macro"

Open up the macro menu by typing “/macro”

The last point I have towards the influx of abilities refers to your hardware- I don’t think you should go out and spend copious amounts of cash to play this class to the maximum, yet I could see how having these can present a quality of life improvement. I personally use a basic keyboard, and a cheap mouse that has 2 extra buttons – one on either side. These are far from top of the line (gaming wise), yet I seem to be able to maintain a decent level of play. The mouse alone is something that I find a godsend – the extra two buttons allows for 2 extra macro/keybind homes, taking the total number of abilities I facilitate with my mouse to about 9 (if memory serves me right). It is possible to have more or less, but I find having certain abilities literally at my fingertips as a bonus. One example of a bind to my mouse is Disengage. Considering most progressed players steer their character with their mouse, having disengage bound to the mouse in particular helps me to use it more accurately as a movement ability.

As they look into some abilities, hopefully they will tweak as necessary, but don’t go overboard culling our tools just because some people are carrying on about the massive amount of buttons (predominantly after one developers comment).

Stay classy (mainly hunter-classed)

And MM is tweaked yet again…

Posted on by
4

Bliz have recently released a few class updates on the PTR for 5.2, with one particular change being directed at the best class in the world… of warcraft.. (us)

 Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

  • Aimed Shot cast time has been lowered from 2.9 to 2.5 sec.

With MM getting a small change, it says to me that they understand that MM is not performing as well as the sims indicate. Dare we dream of a return of the best (yes I said it, the BEST) spec for our class?

I would have to have a look into some of the top parses to determine if hunters really aren’t using AiS much, and the lower in cast time is to address the lack of use of MM’s (let’s face it) ‘signature’ ability… *note, I do know what Chimera shot is, but AiS is the big hitter, or at least it should be imo*

 

The saddest post I have ever written

Posted on by
3

Sorry for being away for so long, between the Christmas season and my PC dying on me, I have not really been able to keep up with a steady post schedule.

I would like to dedicate this post to a great friend of mine; Sam.

To us on Dath’remar he was known as Mothrakk, and he was one of the best people I had the pleasure of meeting in game and becoming friends with. A fellow hunter I always looked up to in my early days of playing, he always supported me in my goal of becoming a good raider and player – and that was just in game.

Out of the game Moth was a great guy. Together with other mates (mainly Deciuss, a dirty mage) we played many other online games, spending a lot of time on skype; talking shit to each other and generally being good friends. Through this game that we all take pride in, I was able to meet one of the best people I will ever know, and just last week I was talking to him about my holidays and we had agreed to swap stories once I had my PC back up and running.

Mothrakk took his own life last week, leaving a lot of his in game friends saddened and confused.
RIP Moth, you will be missed.

If you ever find that you can’t continue, or things are getting too hard try to talk to someone about it – Lifeline Australia can be reached by calling 13 11 14.

 

PS. He also carried me through a Herald of the Titans run on my mini hunter, and defended Org against attacks by dancing naked amongst them.

Naked Quel and Moth, just dancing for peace

Mogu’shan Vaults Heroic Compendium

Posted on by
2

With heroic Mogu’shan Vaults under my belt for the last few weeks, I feel it is time to throw up some encounter specific tips and tricks for this plethora of bosses :)

This was thrown together a tad quick, and I will add anything I forgot when I browse over my handywork tomorrow. I will also update/tidy this as I see fit :P I will add in a talent choice/glyph choice soon <3

Feng's hangout, pretty rad dude

Feng’s hangout, pretty rad dude

Stone dogs

spec of choice: Survival
Heroic mode notes:

  • Posthaste can provide a needed speedboost while running tiles; however, I suggest taking crouching tiger, hidden chimera if Cobalt is up.
  • Masters call removes the petrification debuff, so can be useful if you are running the tiles later into the fight and are becoming slowed.
  • Deterrence completely negates the Cobalt bomb explossion and consequential root. Try to clear as much as possible for the raid.
  • Make sure you keep rolling a multi shot onto the two dogs you are targeting
  • Try to maximise Readiness by using aMoC on a dog right before, as well as a BA – have both rolling as the tile stacks increase.

Fengizzle ma Nizzle

spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

  • Deterrence works on a myriad of abilities here, including arcane velocity and epicentre. It is pretty minimalistic in movement, so I suggest picking up crouching tiger hidden chimera to be able to take the pressure off your healers where applicable.
  • When the adds come out in his shield phase, make sure you have a frost trap up where the raid is stacked.
  • The adds can also be affected by binding shot, and if your raid aoe is low, it would be advisable to pick this talent up.
  • If your raid aoe is REALLY low, I suggest running survival for this fight.
  • Survival overall is a fine option, but the majority of the fight is single target, and thus BM is the best choice.
  • Disengage for movement where applicable – including after arcane velocity, to drop wildfire, to move away from the shield before adds.
  • You can also use deterrence to soak lightning fists if you do not have an alternate option.

Garajal

Spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

  • You want as much time in the ‘real world’ as possible to maximise your boss damage.
  • Try to utilize your explosive trap if you go to the spirit realm, as well as micromanaging your pet onto the severer of souls.
  • Line up your glaive tosses in the spirit world to maximise damage, and try to serpent sting a few before heading back to the real world.
  • You can use spirit mend in the spirit world for extra stacks of the damage buff if you are lucky enough to be using a spirit pet.
  • Deterrence can help the healers if damage gets a bit too high when you are voodoo’d.

Reset Kings (so glad they hotfixed that..)

Spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

  • You are able to go all out at the start, so feel free.
  • Deterrence can block the flanking orders if you get in a tight spot.
  • Micromanage your pet to easily swap between bosses (if two are up and one is putting up a “NO DO NOT ATTACK” shield/buff)
  • You can use Bestial Wrath to get out of pinning arrows ASAP, allowing you to run around with an arrow stuck to you which people will still kill regardless that it does no harm…
  • You can tranq off Meng’s delerious buff, as well as Zian’s shield of darkness, however I would refrain from doing this just in case you set the shield off.
  • You shouldnt have too much trouble with cowardice stacks, but just be wary not to go insane on Meng.

Elegoner

Spec of choice: BM
Heroic mode notes:

  • Stand on the edge of the circle so you can simply jump and reset your buffs.
  • During the spark phase, get in a similar position relative to your assigned spot and throw an explosive trap near the spark spawn point.
  • Make sure you are full focus and then switch your pet asap and get a KC off. Do not waste a focus on a sting, just use as many instants as you can before needing to cobra.
  • The later ones are the ones to use your CDs on (BW etc) as they are much slower early on.
  • As pillars come up switch asap, helping as needed (try to be between two pillars) after they drop you can focus a single add (try not to aoe unless your tank has a comfortable lead with threat).
  • As soon as the fight reenters phase one, disengage back to position and resume pwning face. Rinse and repeat, but save big CDs for the final “stack and burn” phase (Stampede/crows etc).
  • In my group we had trouble with me deterrence soaking the big add explosions (it was unreliable, unsure if this is rectified now), so try to avoid it if you can and focus on maximising DPS

Willies of the Emperor

Spec of choice: Survival

Heroic mode notes:

  • we are actually a major utility on this fight, don’t expect to be destroying the meters (if you are, your guild is nice and isnt making you kite and soak).
  • Survival with entrapment makes this very easy, with chain Frost – snakes allowing easy control.
  • Pick up binding shot but try not to use it early when everyones stuns (and your traps) are going off.
  • Keep your pet on passive and throw it on one of the main bosses to maximise uptime.
  • If you have to, disengage over and throw a concussive shot on the courage.
  • With crouching tiger hidden chimera you can soak every second set of rage sparks, with readiness being used primarily as a defensive CD for an extra soak, rather than to max dps.
  • If you DO have to use readiness for a soak, throw up Crows on a boss, readiness then get it up on the other. Same with Black Arrow.
  • Try to keep stings up on the boss, but your main focus is controlling the adds – your raid team will thank you for it.

    Yeah, that's right.

    Yeah, that’s right.

Comments up, bosses down

Posted on by
Reply

I had to recently get the help of my tech friend (who pretty much takes care of my site-related needs) to control the spam of my site.. H-O-L-Y crap was there some spam; I think even my spam had spam (and that spam brought some spam-in-a-can, something I have not eaten, and now will never try due to being put off by comment spam). The site is now cleaned up with a new filter in place, and after deleting about 6,800 spam comments, I feel that we are back in control! Quel – 1 Spam – 6800

So with that, if you have commented on the site within the last month, then I may have sorted it with the spam… It was practically impossible to manually sort through the amount of crap that had filled up my comments section. The validation system seems to work fine, as once I have approved a posters comment, they seem to have no issues getting another one up (as long as it is posted under the same identification) and I don’t even have to approve it from that point on!

Last time I had this filter in place, some friendly fellow hunters brought to my attention some interference that the filter had when they were trying to comment.. This is not great, so please let me know if this happens again by emailing me direct at admin@quelshuntingcorner.com

Comments are rare anyway, so I won’t hold my breath :P

Site updates are still on the way – I was inspired by our Heroic Garalon kill to begin writing a guide for it the following day. This should be up later this week – I find throwing this up would be a good (although unorganized) start due to the past performance we as hunters have on this particular raid encounter (and our inability to cleave). We now perform quite well, if not very well, compared with the other classes, and to be sat for this encounter for being a hunter is now unacceptable! (yay). With the Garalon guide, I feel compelled to complete the rest of my guides as well, I am still tossing up between a multi-layered guide encounter-by-encounter, OR a big “MSV” guide, highlighting tactics, tips, and tricks.. If you feel game let me know in the comments!!! ;)

Bug goes squish!!!

In game we managed to secure realm first heroic MSV clear last week, as well as taking down blade lord and garalon… hopefully we keep up this pace! The server first spam is quite satisfying :P
I’ll quickly mention that we hunters are utility gods on heroic will of the emperor!

I look forward to putting up my encounter guides (don’t forget, they are generally hunter specific, not raid guides) as well as updating my spec guides now we are knee-deep in mists. Hope that your particular azerothian adventures are just as fruitful!

<3 Quelys

PS. Feel free to check out our Holy Pallys PoV of our first Heroic Will of the Emperor kill – you can see my sexy hunter trapping skills ;)



Where the hell is Quel?

Posted on by
1

Well, I am still here… just flat out with everything!
RL has me swamped atm, and when I do have a bit of free time for WoW-related goodness, I tend to spend it playing rather than writing. I do have several drafts in the works, including a summary guide to normal MSV (to be followed up with HoF and Terrace), a discussion on the validity of ‘epeen’, a guide on how to be a good raider (regardless of class), and a few other sneaky bits!

My team is currently 5/6 heroic MSV, with everything else being knocked out on normal. This week we hope to finish off heroic Will (and get a certain sexy hunter a sexy heroic bow!) and start work on heroic HoF. I am liking a lot of the fights at the moment, yet I am constantly bombarded by QQ about hunters performance. I really want to dive further into this topic, but for now I will just say that Paragons 10m team had a hunter on every heroic kill of MSV, minus Will – to me that alone shows they aren’t too shabby… Yet we all know the ‘current state of dps’ posts/cries/anguish that have been floating around, and I agree we need some tweaks, but as I said, I will leave that discussion for another day.

My last little point I want to throw out onto the interwebs is this; IF you do not currently raid the end game content on your hunter, and your experience extends to LFR, work on your playstyle and gear/spec/reforging/talents before taking to the forums to make long winded re-hash posts of how hunters are terrible and you never top the charts – it is not a proper sample of data to have a bad LFR run and scream that the sky is falling.

Bear tea bag… sigh

Hope everyone is smashing out their own raids and enjoying BM burst pre patch!

- Quelys