Tinuviel’s Diary: Of Zombies, scourge invasion, Hallow’s End, achievements, and pets

With so much to do in WOW and a few more hours than usual put in at real life work, I haven’t written much on the blog in the last couple of days.  So I thought I’d write a round up of what I’ve been up to, before publishing some further battle of the pets, hunter spec, and shot rotation posts in the next couple of days.

1.  Zombie Invasion

Zombies in Darkshire

If you logged into WOW in the last few days you couldn’t miss this one.  Did you love it or did you hate it?  I think that rather depends upon your gamer personality.  Gamer personality?  Gamers are often divided into killers, explorers, achievers and socializers.  To see which you are take the Bartle Test here.

My guildies had very strong reactions to the event.  Some (mainly the killer personalities) embraced their inner zombies and went out to get zombified and infect as many other people and NPCs as possible.  Some enjoyed mounting the defenses of the towns and cities, killing zombies.  Others, (mainly the more achiever and socializer types) were upset by the whole event, as it stopped them getting their quests done, visiting the towns, using the auction house, or going about their routines.  Me?  I’m an explorer.  I visited the towns to stock up on supplies (including tinder and wood) and went off into the wilds with my trusty gorilla tolived off the land, away from most zombies.  When I did have to venture to civilization for supplies or travel routes, I killed any zombies in my way to stop them infecting me or others.  In fact, I RP’d it, behaving very much as I would in RL if ever there were an attack of the zombies, lol.  But love it, hate it, or avoid it, everyone reacted strongly to it, and I think it was a brilliant and memorable move by Blizzard.  It will probably have the psychologists analyzing our behavior patterns, much as the original ZG plague did.

Oh and if, like me, you wondered how it was all over so quickly and neatly, see the gallery screen shots of some of the end quest texts (which I didn’t have time to do) here.  It seems the all-powerful Naaru actually got off their shiny behinds and did something for once, creating a super weapon for the returned King of Stormwind to zap the zombies and plague to oblivion with.

2.  Scourge Invasion

The zombies have gone. But the other big thing, the scourge Necropolises (Necropoles, Necropoleis, Necropoli, or whatever the plural  of Necropolis is, I have seen so many different versions) are still popping up over several zones around Azeroth.  Argent Dawn out at Light Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands are running the resistance to this invasion, giving higher level players quests to kill the mobs spawning at summoning points under the Necropolises.  According to Tigole this event will be around for another couple of days.  It’s quite fun to do with a couple of friends, although the rewards (besides the tabard which is great) are a bit meh if you have decent gear.  If you look on your world map (need to turn off map addons like cartographer for this to work) you can see a purple skull marking the zone under attack.  (You can also ask one of the NPCs at LHC, who gives you a clue as to where to go next).  

Race to the zone and find the summoning circle.  Kill mobs and collect 10 necrotic runes for your first quest.  When the summoning crystal in the middle of the circle gets to zero health summoners and wraths appear.  You need to tag and kill one of the shadow of doom thingies for your Shadow of Doom quest.  This can be hard as a lot of other people are trying to do the same thing.  These guys also drop 30 necrotic runes.  You can use 8 necrotic runes and talk to a summoner to summon another one, but unless you tag it, you will lose your runes and someone else will get the loot.  

Hand in your quests, and use any spare runes with the quartermaster back at LHC in EPL to buy items.  The tabard costs only 8 runes.  There is also a fun though fairly useless trinket, which summons a level 60 paladin to fight with you for a minute or so.  He gets on his charger when not fighting, and bubble hearths when his timer expires!  There is are some epic armor set items, which are nice in that they are purple and have haste on them, but are not as good as Merciless gladiator or T4 raid gear.  However, if you are a level 70 in greens and blues it’s an easy way to score some good upgrades.  When you are at the summoning circles look out for the silver elite mob, he drops part of the set.  We got some leather legs off one, and a leather breastplate off another, though its pretty random.

For lower levels there is a necropolis outside Ironforge and I think Orgimmar.  There is a quest giver outside the gates of Ironforge who asks you to collect 3 runes and investigate the circle.  The mobs here are only level 10.  You don’t get much for it, but it’s nice to be able to take part.

As well as the necropolises, there are also some scourge bosses in various instances see here for a WOW insider link.  The big guy – Tendris Mirkblood – is in Kara – up the stairs behind the huntsman.  He drops an axe that can be uses as a guitar (go figure!), as well as some BOJs and a bat pet for everyone in the raid.  You can pick up a quest to kill him from the commoners in the major cities.  The quest rewards is a Monster Slaying Kit – which is kinda like the 6 demon bag.  Fun but pretty useless at 70.  Strategy to kill him here.  But he is not the only boss.  There are bosses in Shadowfang Keep, Scarlet Monestary, Razofen Down, Dire Maul, Scholo and Strat.  See the link above and Wow Wiki for more details.  Anelf and I have killed a couple of these so far, we have been running the other one’s lower level alt thru, that way the alt gets the loot, and Anelf or Tin gets the achievement for completing the instance (many of which haven’t shown up as being complete on the achievements system, even though I have lost count of the number of times I have been in some of them).

3.  Hallow’s End

Amongst all the excitement of the zombies and scourge, the Hallow’s End seasonal event continues.  Tinuviel now has her Hallow’s Helm and Squashling, and just need to do the GNERDS bg achievement to get the Hallows End achievements all sewn up.  I don’t have 20 masks, but that’s OK, as they are dropping that as a requirement to get the overall achievement for the seasonal event.  The hardest thing was finding a troll without a pumpkin already on it’s head, in order to ram on on there.  Troll’s are a rare breed on our server!

4.  Achievements and pets

I love the achievements system.  It opened up a whole new game for people like me.  My guild master and friend, Ent, is a real completist and is getting really into completing as many achievements as he possibly can.  I am not quite as obsessed with them as Ent, but they are taking up a lot of my game time at the moment.  When I took Anelf’s alt through SM last night, I found several books to read in the library, which ticked off part of the Well Read achievement.  Did I actually read them?  No.  I flicked through the pages, in order to get a tick in the achievement box.  But did I obsessively run around looking for books?  Yes.  And I enjoyed it.  They are really tapping into our base psychology again here.

I collected my 50 mini pets to get my Skunk.  He’s cute  It too me ages to get mini pet number 50 (I will write a post on the easiest way to get 50 mini pets).  But shortly after I got my squashling and bat, so with skunk I now have 53.  I’m trying to keep going and get some of the rarer drops like the whelpings, oozling or firefly, but not having any luck so far.  Having a level 70 gorilla makes these kind of grinds a lot easier now.  Like a lot of people I tried out a gorilla and loved him.  I didn’t really want to like him.  I don’t like being one of the crowd, and BRK had made them too popular with the Gorilladin Movie.  But then I guess they are popular for a reason.  I’m probably not going to level through Northrend with a gorilla (I trained Ol’ Sooty, the black bear, for that - remember when he was elite and used to kill all your low levels in Loch Modan?  It was a real rite of passage to get his head?), but the gorilla is really useful for clearing out low level instances quickly and for grinding for rep and items.

I am also collecting mounts, I almost have 25, I am debating whether to go for 50 and the albino drake reward.  my guildmate, Kzin, has a drake, and it does look nice.  It’s a lot of money to get to 50, and I am don’t have much rep at all with the Netherwing or Skyguard.  But the albino drake is cool.  To level up my gorilla I worked on the ogres in Nagrand.  I was half way through revered with the Kurenai and that got me to exalted, so now I have all my talbuks  Leveling the gorilla from 65 to 70 didn’t take that long at all (I wish I had made a note of how long it took but it seemed something like about 40mins per level).  Obviously, it will take much longer to level a pet from 75 to 80 in Northrend, when more experience is needed per level, and when you don’t get the accelerated leveling speed, you now get from 60-70.

We got our Jenkins title fairly early on (I think I was the only person in the guild with the key for UBRS).  I hope more people have it now, I felt a bit guilty about not offering to take anyone in there whenever they wanted to go, but I didn’t want to spend the next couple of weeks standing holding the door of UBRS open.  When we did go (as a spur of the moment thing) we did at least take a full raid of 10 guildies with us, so they could get their title.  I am not actually using the Jenkins title (not really my thing), and anyway I have The Ambassador title (for being exalted with the 5 alliance cities), I like the introduction of these kind of titles, so I am working on the Diplomat (I wonder if you can get round chocolate balls covered in gold foil in game with titles like these?) and Guardian of Cenariaus.  I think I should also work on my Argent Dawn rep which isn’t.

5.  Next up – more battle of the pets, specs, mana regen and shot rotations

So what’s next for Tinuviel and the blog?  I want to test out some more pets and get some more battle of the pets info up on the blog.  Stuff I have been reading seems to support the findings from battle of the pets so far.  Cat’s rake is getting a nerf to bring cats dps in line with other pets.  Some of the exotic pets (although not it seems devilsaurs) are getting buffs soon.  It may be that all exotic pets get some more love in future.  Blizzards seem to be debating how much more powerful and attractive they want to make the exotics over non-exotics.  Other people’s testing of wasps seems to show them as being underpowered at the moment (thanks to the commentator on the blog who pointed me in the direction of the post on Mania’s forums about this).  Gorilla thunderstomp might also be getting a bit of a nerf, seems it can be a bit too good, when scaled with hunters gear.

I am also be continuing to test some specs and shot rotations and the beta.  I especially want to look at the most effective way to regenerate mana while maintaining high dps.  I have been playing with the marksman spec, and I wanted to prefer it, as I thought it might take more skill to play (with Chimera shot).  But it doesn’t really, you are just refreshing chimera instead of the appropriate sting.  And it does not seem to be producing more damage than the BM spec (a lot more comparable than previously), but not so much more that a hardened BM like myself will jump ship, even though I quite fancy a change.

6.  Something amusing to end on

I didn’t take many screenshots this week (had to steal some for this post).  But I did take these two of a rather over sized devilsaur.  Something seemed to be going wrong with the pet sizes (I think there is a similar picture on Around Azeroth).  First I saw a full sized King Mukla as a hunter pet (didn’t get a screen shot), and then this guy…

When he and his owner walked into Light Hope Chapel, he was so tall his head stuck out of the roof…

Of hunter macros, addons, shot rotations, UI, and glyphs in patch 3.0.2

We are going for all the shiny bells and whistles here, but hopefully still aimed at the casual player.

1.  Shot Rotations (pve)

A number of things have changed in terms of your spells, but the best basic shot rotations are still very simple for most situations, and will be pretty familiar to most of you.

For Beastmaster hunters:

For very short fights – spam steady shot  … that’s it.

For longer flights – begin with Serpent Sting, spam steady shot, and refresh serpent sting every 15secs as it is about to wear off.

For Marksman Hunters:

Begin with Serpent Sting, follow with Chimera Shot, Spam Steady Shot, refresh Chimera Shot each time its cool down is up (if you do it right, this will refresh serpent sting for free, if it does not you will need to manually add another serpent sting), continue to spam Steady Shot in between Chimera Shots.

For Survival Hunters:

Begin with Serpent Sting, follow with Explosive Shot, spam Steady Shot, when explosive shot is off cooldown add that, when serpent sting is off cooldown add that.

For a more detailed explanation of this see Less QQ, More PewPew, here.

What about auto shot? You don’t need to worry about auto shot anymore, it will thread itself between your other shots without clipping as long as you are not moving.

What about arcane, aimed, and multi-shot?  Steady Shot provides better sustained damage over time for your mana than either arcane, aimed or multi-shot.  Generally, weaving these into your shot rotations will result in lower damage and dps.  Aimed shot has changed.  It no longer has a long cast time, it is now instant cast, but it does a lot less damage.  Like Arcane shot it offers another instance shot that you can use when running.  Both are useful in pvp, or in fights where you are required to move around a lot.  Otherwise, stick to steady shot.

Do I need a shot rotation macro?  Generally no.  Most people used to use macros to try to automate the weaving of auto shot between other shots, and minimise the manual errors leading to clipping of shots and lower dps.  As this doesn’t happen any more, you don’t neccessarily need a shot rotation macro, especially as a beastmaster.  However, there are a couple of macros posted on WOW wiki here, which allow Marksmen and Survival hunters to automatics thread in their chimera and explosive shots when they are off cooldown (I would remove the arcane shot from these).  Having said that, I am using a macro, just to automatically weave Kill Command into my Steady Shots every time it is triggered:

#showtooltip Steady Shot             

/Cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command

/Cast Steady Shot

#Script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

2.  Macros for 3.0.2

Some of your previous macros will work – others need tweaking.  These work:

Pet attack:

/petattack       

/cast Hunter’s Mark

Assist Pet:

/Assist Pet

/Cast Auto Shot

Set focus:

/Focus Target

Note:  There is now an inbuilt set focus – you can do this by right clicking on the persons picture icon (as you would to inspect/invite) – but I still like my focus button.

Assist focus:

/Assist Focus

Use:  Will target your focuses target.

 

Misdirection:

#showtooltip Misdirection

/target focus

/cast Misdirection

 

Switch aspects:

#showtooltip Aspect of the Hawk

/castsequence Aspect of the Hawk, Aspect of the Viper

Use:  Aspect of the Viper restores mana whilst you are shooting and doing damage, but at a cost, reducing your damage, so keep Aspect of the hawk on, and switch back and forth to Aspect of the Viper, as needed, to restore your mana.

Summon random minipet (vanity/non-combat pet):

/run CallCompanion(“CRITTER”, random(GetNumCompanions(“CRITTER”)))

Use:  If like me you have been collecting pets, you can use this little macros to summon a random one.

Get your thinking caps on – macros I would like:

If you have working macros for the following, I would appreciate you posting them in a comment to this post.  Feel free to post any other useful macros or addons you think would help other players.  Please do not post links – just tell players the name of the addon and the reputable site they can get it from.

Pull macro:  One that shoots distracting shot and then stops shooting (I keep shooting auto shot) – I got something working on the Beta, but not on the live.

Summon random mount macro:  Similar to the random critter macro – but perhaps which also distringuishes between flying and land mounts, and swift and slow mounts.

3.  Addons and UI

This is my current UI (usually Recount sits in the little space to the bottom left):

Here is my list of addons I will add the direct links later, but for now they are all downloaded from either Curse (mostly) or WOWinterface.

I installed a lot of them just today – but they do not appear to be causing errors.

 

AckisRecipeList – scans your trade recipes and provides a list of the ones you don’t know, and tells you where you can get them

Auctioneer

AutoProfitX – sells your greys (don’t really need this now I found FUbar-GarbageFu again)

AutoRepair – repairs you automatically when you visit an armor repairer (ditto)

Bartender4 – replaces the standard action bars with something much more customisable – I tried to live without it and found I couldn’t really

Cartographer

CooldownTimers2 – cooldowns on all spells, traps, trinkets, pet abilities, etc.  invaluable

CT_Viewport – puts the black square background on the bottom of the screen

DoubleWide – wider quest log

DruidBar – shows my druids mana bar when she is in feral form

EquipCompare 

FloatingFrames – allow you to move your picture icons

FuBar – the bar at the top with the mini addons

FuBar_BattlegroundFu – pvp

FuBar_CharmsFu – raid icon markers

FuBar_DurabilityFu – armor

FuBar_GarbageFu – allows you to throw the least expensive item when your bags are full – great!

FuBar_GrindFu – how many kills till next level

FuBar_HonorFu  - pvp has dates for bg holiday weekends

FuBar_InnboundFu – shows your hearth inn

FuBar_ItemBonusesFu – shows your stats

FuBar_KillMeterFu – bit like grind fu

FuBar_LocationFu – where am I?  Where should I be?

FuBar_LootTypeFu – group/free for all/master

FuBar_MoneyFu – shows your money and how much you have across all your alts

FuBar_PerformanceFu  - shows your pcs and games performance (latency/fps)

FuBar_PetInfoFu – hunter pet info

FuBar_TopScoreFu – records your best scores

Gatherer – remembers where you found herbs/mining nodes

KHunterTimers – shows how long an unused freeze trap will last

Omen – must have threat meter

OmniCC – cooldown timers for cc

RatingBuster – compares stats on gear

Recount – must have damage meter

simpleMinimap – moveable editable map

SimpleUnitFrames – not sure I need this now I have free frame but seems slightly useful – I don’t like the more complex ones like X-perl and pitbull that many people love.

TwinTrinkets – see my trinkets on that little 2 button bar – my druid especially uses this a lot – I tend to macro them with my hunter

4.  Glyphs

You can see all the available hunters glyphs here and here.

Bluebear my druid is  360 inscriber.  She has learnt all the recipes she can until Northrend and WOTLK.  Inscribers learn non-Northrend major glyphs from their trainer.  They discover minor glyphs from Minor Inscription Research, which has a 20 hour cooldown, which is why there are initially less minor glyphs than major ones available.  In Northrend inscribers learn major inscription research and can discover major glyphs.

I am currently using Glyph of Hunter’s Mark (Increases the attack power bonus of your Hunter’s Mark by 20% (Requires level 15 to use.)) and Glyph of Freeze Trap as my major Glyphs (When your Freezing Trap breaks, the victim’s movement speed is reduced by 30% for 4 sec. (Requires level 20 to use.)).  I consider these the best 2 major glyphs available for my pve play-style.  Some of the glyphs look attractive on the surface, but only have very situational uses or are more pvp related.

Once WOTLK comes out, I will be trying to obtain Glyph of Steady Shot (Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when your target is afflicted with Serpent Sting. (Requires level 62 to use.))  And either Glyph of Bestial Wrath (Decreases the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by 20 sec. (Requires level 40 to use.)) or Glyph of Volley (Decreases the mana cost of Volley by 20%. (Requires level 40 to use.)) as my primary major glyphs.

So far, I haven’t really found any of the hunter minor glyphs to be appealing.  Glyph of scare beast is OK if you pvp a lot (I do use scare beast sometimes on druids in bgs, mainly to annoy them, rather than it being really affective).  Glyph of revive pet is also OK if your pet dies a lot in raids, but I have a pet resto druid in addition to my hunter pet, so that rarely happens.

To use a glyph, go and stand next to the Lexicon of Power (blue shiny book, located next to inscription trainers in major Azeroth cities [not outland, I don't think]).  Open your spell book and the glyphs tab, open your bag with the glyph scroll in it.  Right click on the glyph and then click on the slot where you want to place it.  Done!

5.  Troubleshooting

This was an annoying error I had and it’s fix - I kept automatically switching to another target and shooting at it once mine is dead.  Fix:   In the interface > Combat Menu > uncheck Auto Attack/Auto Shot and check Stop Auto Attack.

Battle of the Pets! Round 3 – cat versus moth

Yes, I know I said I would bring you Count Ungula the Nether Ray in round 3, but the Count was being difficult and refused to use his special family skill, Nether Shock, on the target dummy.  Target dummies aren’t perfect there are a few player spells that are not working on them too.  So before reporting the Count’s score, I will go test a nether ray on some live animals/casters to see how his Nether Shock works.

Instead, this fight, I present, the Moth! The not-so-humble moth is causing a lot of excitement.  He’s a force to be reckoned with, and is overlooked at your peril.  There are no named tameable moths until level 71 Aspatha in Northrend.  But several of them have uncommon colors.  Tin chose the aptly named Vicious Teramoth, because she liked the color and it matched her hair.

‘Sid Vicious’ gave the CatWithNoName a run for his money.  Sid beat cat on the level 60 and level 70 dummies when using just growl or just growl and focus dump.  He could not, however, match the cat when the cat used Rake.

Sid’s family special skill is an interesting and useful one – Serenity Dust – increases the moth’s attack power and heals it.  It does not do much in terms of damage on its own, but it adds a big boost to the damage of the pets focus dump.  Sid could not beat the cat, as his slightly overpowered (there I said it) Rake, but this special did show an interesting effect when compare to the devilsaur (currently no. 2 in the dps stakes).

The devilsaur either beat or was fairly similar to the moth on other rounds, but when the moth had both focus dump and special skill running, the moth out dpsed the devilsaur.

So, at the moment the cat is still the king of the hill, followed by the moth, then the devilsaur, then the wasp (although the wasp also benefits the hunter, and the hunter’s party with its reduce armor debuff).

Are these ranks going to remain?  Probably not.  Some changes in beta build 9095 and some recent announcements by Ghostcrawler suggest that the cat’s prowess could be upset and that exotic pets could be given a boost in future.    In this build some pet skills are getting small buffs, many are getting focus reductions, but one – Rake – is getting a big nerf – “Rake – Damage ranges decreased, max rank is 24 to 34 damage down from 59 to 83.” (This is still on the beta, not the live realms yet, and could still be changed.)

Level 60 target dummy

growl only – cat 216dps   moth 219dps

growl and focus dump – cat 264dps   moth 276dsp

special skill only – cat 301dps   moth 228dps

Focus dump and special – cat 360dps   moth 320dps

Level 70 dummy

growl only – cat 82dps   moth 99dps

growl and focus dump – cat 131dps   moth 145dsp

special skill only – cat 146dps   moth 87dps

Focus dump and special – cat 180dps   moth 166dps

Hallow’s End and the Headless Horseman

 

Four Little Leper Gnomes are We

(I am on Bluebear – my druid – in the picture above, in case you are wondering why I have a bear paw sticking out my back )

Hallow’s End is going on in WOW right now, and this year there are achievements to go with it.  Suddenly, people are interested in getting sick on candy and going trick or treating, and every is running around trying to find an elusive troll without a pumpkin on their head, so that they can jam one on there and get the achievement.

Like many other people we have been farming the Headless Horseman.  I have to say I am really disappointed in how easy and boring the fight is, and in most of the loot table.  Lord Ahune for the Summer Fire Festivals was at least a challenging fight for most people, and Coren Direbrew was a fun fight, even when you were farming him night-after-night as we were, to help our less geared guildies get trinkets.  But the horseman is just too easy, we kill him in less than a minute, and Anelf is dpsing rather than healing.

So far, we’ve killed him about 30 times, we have oodles of rings and all have brooms.  Two of us have helms for the achievement, but we have yet to see either the squashling or the sword drop.  However, last night Entrigan got this…..

The Horseman’s Reins.  Woot!  Major Congratulations Ent!

I was so pleased Ent won the roll  Not only is he our awesome guild master, but he has been going all out to get the achievements, and also to get a rare mount. (Obtaining this mount gives a Feat of Strength achievement.)  He has been paying the Baron in Scholomance a visit almost every day, for a while now, trying to score that uber rare mount.  But this one’s even better – it flies!

Battle of the pets! Round 2 – cat versus wasp

Can TheCatWithNoName defend himself against the new challenger – the wasp?

Meet Blacksting, the famous red and black wasp from Zangamarsh.  He has a unique, gorgeous skin, and in the wild will sting you turning you completely black for several seconds with his sting.

Blacksting is a fearsome animal, with Sting as his family skill adding nature damage and decreasing the armor of his opponent.  He also has the focus dump Smack.

Who will win?

We watched for parries; wasp put in a credible performance, but he was not able to match the cat (or the devilsaurs) performance on either the level 60 or level 70 target dummy.

Level 60 target dummy

growl only – cat 216dps   wasp 212dps

growl and focus dump – cat 264dps   wasp 238dsp

special skill only – cat 301dps   wasp 253dps

Focus dump and special – cat 360dps   wasp 304dps

Level 70 dummy

growl only – cat 82dps   wasp 92dps

growl and focus dump – cat 131dps   wasp 132dsp

special skill only – cat 146dps   wasp 97dps

Focus dump and special – cat 180dps   wasp 142dps

However, we were still pretty impressed with Blacksting.  Using him without his hunter doesn’t fully utilize the benefit of his family skill.  Lowering the armor of your opponent benefits the hunter as well as the pet, whereas the cat and devilsaurs family skills benefit the pet only.  At the moment, Blacksting and Smaug have done enough to keep their feet in the stable slot and avoid the abandon button – but will the next challenger unseat them?  Stay tuned for the next installment of Battle of the Pets!  Round 3 – the reigning defender CatWithNoName takes on the nether ray – no other than Count Ungula.

Patch 3.0.2 – changes you may or may not know about

Here are some of my initial observations on some of the changes and FAQs with Patch 3.0.2.  (Apologies to Horde readers for only giving locations for things in alliance cities – Harrylime doesn’t get around as much as he’d like).

1.  Talents

Ok this one should be obvious if you have logged on by now.  All your talents on all your characters have been reimbursed.  You need to reassign your talents.  You now have access to the new 51 point WOTLK talent trees.  If you are a hunter, your pet also has a talent tree, this is on the same talent window as yours, the tab is located to the top right.  Don’t forget to go to your trainer and purchase and higher ranks of new spells you have learnt.  Also to note, if you wish to respec, the respec cost has not reset.  Tinuviel did respec, it cost her 35G.  The talent refund does not count as a respec in terms of the escalating cost of respecs, but niether does it reset the respec cost back to 1G.  Tinuviel’s talent spec is here.

2.  Stablemasters

Visit the stablemaster if you are a hunter to purchase your two additional stable slots, the fourth slot costs 50G and the 5th 100G.  If you are a high level and have the money you will almost certainly want these and will be crying out for more, with all the new pets on offer.  Stablemasters will also offer to return any rare minipets or mounts to you that you once had but destroyed because of lack of bag space.  This only applies to those that are achieved through quests, not vendor items.

3.  Mounts and minipets

Mounts and minipets are now stored on a tab on your character window, rather than taking up bag or bank space.  To put them in this new storage space, right click on them. You can view this window by opening up your character window, and going to the pets tab – as a hunter your hunter pet window is also there.  You can also summon your pets from this window, or drag them onto your hotbar.  I have been trying out an addon for my minipets, though it doesn’t seem to be working perfectly – Minipet.   Just found this macro - /run CallCompanion(“CRITTER”, random(GetNumCompanions(“CRITTER”))) – going to try it instead.  If it is the first time you have used your minipet since the patch you will get an achievement – Can I Keep Him?  There are several achievements relating to collecting minipets.  Collect 50 minipets and you are sent a pet skunk by non other than Breanni from WarcraftPets.  Tinuviel is frustrated she really wants a skunk and had planned to get one – she has 49 minipets and a 50th with Harrylime, that she was planning to trade on the neutral ah to get across to Tinuviel (a little pet smuggling league with Anelf’s help).  However, there is a bug, which means that you cannot sell any minipet that you owned before the patch  There was also another bug where some minipets and mounts disappeared when you put them on your new tab.  Blizzard have been sending people these back in the mail.  This is a bit confusing in itself, as they sent me back pets I had not lost, I took them out of my mail and has a message to say I already knew them, so now they are taking up bank space again!  I am worried about deleting them in case the corresponding ones in the tab disappear!  It’s all a bit of a mess at the moment.  On the up side, you can make quite a lot of money selling pets on the ah as lots of people are suddenly interested in collecting pets for the achievement and because they always wanted to, but didn’t because of the bag space issue.

4.  Achievements

Lots of players are throwing themselves into the new achievements system.  You can view your achievements by clicking on your achievements window – the icon looks like a shield and is on your micro bar next to your talents.  Achievements are generating a whole new interest in the old world, old world dungeons, trade skills, exploring, and doing stupid meaningless things to get the achievements.  You have never seen so many LFG for UBRS since Burning Crusasde Hit.  And why?  Because huge numbers of people want the Leeerooy!  (sp – not enough ee’s) achievement – which involved killing 50 rookery whelps in 15 secs and gives the surname Jenkins to the player.  Some other achievements give titles – a run through Gnomer with a gorilladin and a few runecloth turn ins to the gnomes gave Tinuviel the title Ambassador, meaning she is now exalted with each of the 5 alliance cities.  Anelf is throwing him/herself into achievements quite literally – he’s getting very annoyed as he cannot get the achievement Going Down?  - fall 65yards without dying to register no matter how many times he tries it.  Tinuviel and Bluebear did it quite easily, once someone suggested jumping off the scryer rise in Shatt was a good place, but Anelf’s achievement seems to be bugged.  He’s ticketing Blizzard about it.  Some of your old achievements will be recognized and awarded, others won’t.  Don’t bother trying to ticket Blizzard unless you have really tangible evidence and it is impossible to replicate in the next year, they have said they won’t reinstate them, you will just have to redo them.  They have also said the achievement points won’t buy you anything, the achievement system is the reward system, not another grind toward something.  If you are in a guild you will keep seeing you guildies achievements popping up in guild chat.

5.  Glyphs, herbs, lexicon of power

The new profession, Inscription, was introduced in Patch 3.0.2.  This has sent people into crazy mode.  Inscription is based on the herbalism gathering profession.  Scribes mill batches of 5 herbs to produce pigments, they then turn the pigments into inks, and use the inks with parchment, which is bought from a vendor, to make their wares.  Scribes make several things, the big one being Glyphs.  If you open up your spell book, you will see you have a glyphs tab.  There are spaces for 3 major and 3 minor glyphs (though one of the major ones is only opened up at level 80).  Glyphs buff you in some way.  For instance the Glyph of Hunter’s Mark improves the attack power bonus of Hunter’s Mark by 20%, while the Glyph of Freeze Trap slows the mob if they break from the freeze trap early.  Scribes learn the recipes for major glyphs from their trainers, but they discover the recipes for minor glyphs from Inscription Research, which has a 20 hour cooldown, so only one discover per scribe can be made per day.  Hence, if you look on the ah you will see lots of major glyphs being sold, but not many minor ones, and the minor ones are tending to go for higher prices because of rarity.  

To apply a glyph take your glyph and stand by a lexicon of power.  This is a blue book, and is located next to the inscription trainer in a major city.  You can ask a guard where these are, but in sw the trainer is in a house next to the Stockades; in IF in a house next to the gryphon master; and in Darnassus in the trade area upstairs from the enchanters.  There is also an inscription trainer in the mage tower in Honor Hold in Hellfire Pennisula, but there doesn’t seem to be a lexicon of power there.

Bluebear, my druid, is now 362 inscription.  It took me a day and a bit to power level her.  I had almost all the herbs saved up beforehand on a bank mule.  I had saved every herb I had picked when leveling Bluebears herbalism from 1-375 plus some from some other toons.  It used 100s and 100s of herbs to get up to this level.  There is no point in trying to go to 375 until the expansion, as all my recipes have now turned grey and green and I cannot learn any more (except discover minor glyphs) until I reach a Northrend trainer.

A couple of pieces of advice to people thinking of taking up Inscription.  Stop!  Don’t rush into it.  Unless you planned to do this in advance, like I did, and saved up lots and lots of herbs, think twice before changing now.  The price of herbs have skyrocketed on the ah, even if you have a lot of money, I would not think it a good idea to buy your herbs off the ah.  Don’t try to level inscription without having a high level herbalist alt and without picking your own herbs.  And right now you might want to consider selling your herbs rather than leveling inscription.  If you were there at the beginning you could make a lot of money selling glyphs; you will still be able to make some, but prices for the glyphs and herbs will be begin to fall and then stabilize.  I actually donated all the glyphs I made while leveling to my guild, although now I have leveled I am trying to sell a couple, especially my minor glyphs.  El’s Extreme Anglin has a good leveling guide for inscription here.

Scribes can also make a couple of other nifty things.  One is vellums for enchanters to write their enchants on so that these can be sold on the ah.  This is cool, you now won’t have to search the end of the earth to find someone with a +35 agility enchant and then worry about handing over your mats, and hope you can trust them.  Scribes can make certificates of ownership – always wish you had named your pet raptor ImWithStupid something else?  Now’s your chance to rename him MyOtherPetsADevilsaur.

6.  Barbers shop – shave and a haircut

The barbers shop in Stormwind is in the alley behind the ah; the barbers shop in Ironforge is across from the ah, to the left of the bank as you are facing it.  I am pretty sure there is not a barbers in either Darnassus or Stattrah.  Click on the seat to sit down and get your hair cut.  The price seems to be dependent upon your level.

7.  Currency

Items like your marks of honor and badges of justice has disappeared from your bags and are not on a currency tab of your character window.  There is also an option on the interface menu to display these at the bottom of your backpack.  Not only does this mean that they no longer take up bank space, but also that you always have them with you if you see that must have purchase.

8.  Raid bosses nerfed

We went to Kara last night.  Oh boy have they made it easy!  The bosses dropped like we were in Deadmines (well slight exaggeration).  We a lot of new people in our group, especially the two tanks, my Bluebear as main tank, and a guildmate Warillarly as offtank.  We were able to run through from the Huntman to the Curator easily (with one hiccup on Romulo and Julianne when I let Romulo kill Anelf – oops!)

9.  Target dummies

As well as practicing your new skills for real, you can also go smash a target dummy.  In Ironforge these are located between the Military ward and the Forge, in stormwind they are near the Champions Hall in the old town (someone told me).  Note if you have been reading Battle of the Pets!  you will realize you need to get your pet behind the dummy if you want to test him without his being parried.

10.  Addons and macros

Many of your addons and macros will be broken.  Curse gaming has a list of supposedly 3.0.2 compatible addons.  Many of these still have major incompatibility issues too.  A big thank you to all those addon developers out there who go to the effort to give us their wonderful free addons. Like many people I am an addon addict, and wait anxiously for my favorite ones to be fixed again.

11.  3.0.2 – The Petopia Patch?

Some people are calling this the hunter patch.  Not because hunters got over-powered, but because one of the most visual changes is all the pets, particularly corehounds and other exotics running around.  Enjoy!

Battle of the Pets! Monstrous bite not monstrous?

The rematch took place.  A level 70 target dummy was chosen.  Smug leapt into an early lead almost doubling his previous figures when he was being parried.  With growl only, and growl and focus dump, the results were:

Growl only – devilsaur 92dps   cat   79dps

Growl and focus dump – devilsaur 154dps  cat 131 dps

However, when the pets used only their special skill or their special skill and focus dump, Smaug’s lead came tumbling down:

Special only – devilsaur 117dps  cat 146dps

Special and focus dump – devilsaur  156dps  cat 180dps

Now, something should jump out from this – Smaug did not seem to be using his Monstrous bite on the target dummy, whereas the cat was using his rake quite happily to score a lot of damage to the target dummy.  Is Monstrous bite broken?  Or are target dummies not functioning properly to allow the testing of all spells?  More testing to follow.

Next up in battle of the pets cat vs wasp… stay tuned.

Battle of the Pets! Controversy – Smaug launches appeal!

Smaug was not a happy dinosaur about the result, oh no!  He launched an enquiry and insisted on a rematch.

He said that the tests were sizest and disadvantaged those of larger than average girths.  He wasn’t finding it easy to get behind the dummies and the wall, and the dummies were parrying him more than the sneaky cat.

The judges have upheld Smaug’s appeal (I think he might have threatened to eat them if they refused to listen).  So there is to be a rematch for this first fight.  Stay tuned for results.

All other fights will ensure that fighters have a chance to get behind the target and are not parried.

*The target dummies do not fight back, but they do dodge and parry.  Mobs can still dodge when attacked from behind, but not parry (I asked a rogue).  If your pet can get behind a mob, it is likely to do more damage, if it has to fight the mob from the front, either because it is tanking for you, in pvp, or because of the position of the mob, then it will do less.  It may be that in some dungeon and other scenarios the Devilsaur really will have a harder time positioning itself behind a mob, and this might be a real factor to be taken into account when choosing a pet.

Battle of the Pets! Cat vs. Devilsaur

The old king of the hill takes on the new contender for the throne.  Who will win?

Meet Smaug – previously he could be found sneaking up on unsuspecting adventurers in Un-Goro crater.  When tamed, he became a big red killing machine.  He has pretensions to the DPS throne.  An exotic ferocity pet with bite (54-76 damage at level 64)and Monstorous Bite  (Your devilsaur ferociously bites the enemy, causing 43-57 (rank 5, level 64) [rank] damage, and boosts its own damage by 3% for 12 seconds. This effect stacks 3 times. 10 sec cooldown) he thinks he’s a force to be reckoned with.

 

Meet The Cat with No Name – he’s handsome and cool.  He is confident in his status as the No. 1 hunter pet.  This one also has one of the prettiest of skins.  His claw (56-76 damage at level 64) and rake ( at level 64 - Rake the target for 28-38 bleed damage and an additional 10-12 damage over 9 sec. – 10 sec cooldown) are forces to be reckoned with.  He’s not afraid of the devilsaur.

 

So what happened?

Devilsaurs are exotic pets, supposedly uber pets, right?  I expected him to win.  But no, the tests shows the cat as the clear winner.  Out of the 8 tests, the devilsaur only won 2 rounds, and then the least important ones, and by a smaller margin than the margin between the cat and devilsaur on the big hitting rounds:

Level 60 target dummy

Growl only – devilsaur 233dps   cat 216dps

Growl + focus dump – devilsaur 269dps   cat 264dps

Special skill only – devilsaur 267dps   cat 301dps

Special skill + focus dump – devilsaur 305dps   cat 360dps

Level 70 target dummy

Growl only – devilsaur 49dps   cat 82dps

Growl + focus dump – devilsaur 93dps   cat 137dps

Special skill only – devilsaur 70dps   cat 93dps

Special skill + focus dump – devilsaur 95dps   cat 120dps

 

We have a winner!  The Cat with No Name goes through to the next round.  /cheer!

 

But don’t release your devilsaur into the wild just yet…

Blizzard have said that they intend to buff exotic pets and that they intend for them to do more damage than normal pets.

The battle of the pets is partly a bit of fun, I don’t claim to be the worlds best theorycrafter, however I think the tests above show that something is not working as intended.  Rake should not outperform Monstorous bite given the on paper numbers.  The devilsaur was doing a bit higher dps on the level 60 dummy until the special skills were introduced into the equation.

Also, the major drop in dps on the level 70 dummy makes me wonder if the pets really are getting my hit rating?  They are supposed to be.  But I even took points in Animal handler as I was skeptical about this.  It looks like the devilsaur was suffering more misses than the cat, could hit be correctly applied to the cat but not the devilsaur?  Unfortunately, I didn’t look at the detail on recount at the time.  I may have to do more testing to figure this one out.

Battle of the Pets! The rules

Patch 3.0.2 hit and everything we thought we knew about pets has changed.  In the Burning Crusade the mighty cat was the hunters favorite, followed closely by the viscous ravager.  Who now will be king of the ring?  Which pet has the highest DPS?  I thought I would put it to the test.  Here are the rules:

Take two level 65 pets. Feed them. Talent them with DPS talents.  Turn off dash, cower, other focus using talents that do not add to DPS.  Aspect of Hawk on.  Now spend 2 mins attacking a level 60 target dummy and then a level 70 target dummy with each pet and with each of the following sets of skills:

• Growl only (control)
• Growl and focus dump (bite, claw, smack)
• Special skill only (monstrous bite, rake, etc)
• Focus dump + special skill 

*just to smooth out the comparisons I did not use Big Red <insert pet here>

Each post we will compare 2 pets.  The winner will take on the next contender, knock-out style.

Who will win, Battle of the Pets?