Mania’s Arcania

I’m still trying to clear out the backlog of blog posts that accumulated in Google Reader over my absence. Here’s a few posts I wanted to mention (and yes, several of them are quite old).

• WoW Addicts Anonymous posted two nice little introuction articles that I found helpful: an introduction to threat mechanics and aggro, and an introduction to hunter shot timers. Since these are both concepts that I ignore whenever possible (because I’m a bad hunter), these simple intro helped me sort out the concepts quite a bit.
• Znodis has a short summary of why boars are such a strong recommended pet. Like Znodis, this state of affairs makes me a little sad, but for hunters who want the ‘best pet for soloing’, it’s the unfortunate truth. Incidentally, Znodis is moving his hunter blog to a new home at The Mystic Hunter.
• Lassirra at The Hunter’s Mark has started her epic saga on the hunter talent trees. Part I is all about Survival.

By the way, there are no Big Red Kitty posts here despite the fact that I marked quite a few of them because I haven’t finished reading through all his posts yet. Man, that guy is prolific!

Drysc posted several interesting teasers yesterday about hunter changes in the upcoming patch 2.3. A quick summary:

•  Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap will scale with ranged attack power.
• Wyvern Sting will be instant cast.
• Arcane Shot (ranks 6+) will dispel 1 magic effect in addition to the normal damage.
• We will be getting 20 and 24 slot ammo pouches and quivers.

(I’m sure this has been reported elsewhere already, but I’m still frantically trying to catch up with my Google Reader — I had almost 700 new posts to read on Monday, although I am down to 271 now. If I run across more news like this I’ll just throw it in here.)

Edit: And one more! Trueshot Aura will be free to cast and will last until canceled.

(You can read all of Kaet’s adventures by checking out the series Table of Contents at the end of this post.)

So I’ve been much happier with Kaet since I upgraded my equipment and skills. It’s just amazing to me what a difference it makes. I’m taking on a lot of orange creatures and although I have to be a little careful about aggro when I am using Frore (the crab I am not necessarily keeping leveled), I do pretty well. And Tibri, the crab I’ve been concentrating on keeping up with me, is an amazing tanking machine. I never have trouble with her losing aggro.

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Patch 2.2.0 is now available for download! … Although as I type this, the realms are not yet back up, nor are the patch notes posted. But when they do get around to posting the patch notes, you will be able to find them in the normal Current Patch Notes spot. In the meantime, let’s look at some of the highlights of this patch, as well as the bits of interest to hunters.

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The Harvest Festival is a memorial holiday celebrated by Horde and Alliance alike, all this week.

As a hunter, what’s the most important part of the Harvest Festival? The free pet food, of course! Don’t forget to stock up on Harvest Boar, Harvest Fruit, and Harvest Fish at the festival tables outside the gates of Orgrimmar and Ironforge.

Looks like Patch 2.2.0 is finally going to make it live tomorrow! Or so implies Nethaera on the WoW forums:

There is currently a known issue with fishing where players in some ocean areas are unable to catch fish. The areas are limited to ocean waters in the 40-50 level range, including places like Feralas and Tanaris. Fishing nodes will still function normally.

This will be fixed with the 2.2 patch tomorrow.

I can’t wait for dashing raptors and a level 70 ravager.

Shortly before I went away for two weeks, I posted a little rant about a statement Drysc made regarding how a new faster leveling curve will affect hunters and their pets.

Several people (including bulldazhor in this comment and Zeemboka of Moonrunner, in e-mail) let me know that while I was gone, Drysc posted another short note on the topic of pet leveling — and this one sounds a bit more hopeful. Drysc said:

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I have arrived! And Florida is even hotter and wetter than I remembered. (Both my husband and I were born and raised in Central Florida, so this area is no surprise to us. But we left here about seven years ago to pursue our careers, and a couple of years in California will really spoil you climate-wise.) Also, it is oddly more Southern than I remember …

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As I’ve mentioned a couple times now, my husband and I are moving cross-country, from San Diego, CA to Orlando, FL. The moving truck is here now and it’s time to load it up and start the long drive.

I will be out of touch for between one and two weeks, depending on how fast we get loaded, how fast we drive, and how fast we get settled in. During that time I may occasionally have access to e-mail and the web, but it is safe to say that I won’t be doing any major posting here or any changes to Petopia. I also can’t guarentee e-mail access, so it’s likely that if you e-mail me I won’t be able to respond until after the move is all over. But feel free to e-mail me still –just don’t expect a fast response. :>

I’m leaving comments open here because my regular readers are a font of information and answer questions well before I do anyway. *grin* Be nice to each other! Oh! Also … It seems likely that Patch 2.2 may launch before I am settled in, so I’ve updated Petopia with the info we know from Patch 2.2 (with appropriate notes about it being in Patch 2.2). But if you see someone confused about why Petopia says their raptor can learn Dash when it can’t, do me a favor and (politely!) let them know what’s going on. Thanks!

In-between packing for my cross-country move and searching for my husband’s escaped hamster, I spent some time this weekend continuing my research on loyalty. I now feel that I have a basic handle on what it takes for a hunter pet to gain a level of loyalty, although a good bit of verification remains to be done.

Summary:

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