In fact, I spent a good part of the past week playing when I should have been doing more responsible things, like posting or answering e-mail. But that’s okay — I had fun. And I’m pleased to say that as of this evening, Mania is level 77 and is flitting about Northrend of her new Armored Blue Windrider. Of course as soon as I could fly I flew straight to Sholazar Basin to search for Loque’nahak, but unfortunately he was nowhere in evidence.

On the other hand, I was able to finish leveling up my mining skill there, so both it and herbalism are capped at 450. My cooking and fishing are lagging behind, but they’ll get there soon enough. (I’d given up on getting the world drop for Heavy Frostweave Bandages, so that I could keep going with First Aid, but someone just told me that it’s not a world drop, as such — it’s more of a multi-zone zone drop — and so I just need to head to Zul’Drak.)

Moreover, I am Revered by the Kalu’ak and Honored by Wyrmrest Accord (which is important for a mini-pet and mount, respectively) and I’ve made significant progress towards my Explorer title. I’ve also completed the quest achievements for Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, and Dragonblight — not because I am going for the Loremaster achievement, but because I am constitutionally unable to leave a zone when I still have quests to do. (This is also why I am level 77 and still in Grizzly Hills.)

So that’s what I’ve been up to.

(As an aside: Regular readers know that I am a big proponent of playing your way, whatever that may be. I happened to have the time and inclination to spend too much of this past week in-game leveling my brains out — and I had fun. But that doesn’t mean I think everyone should level this way. Nor do I usually level this way — Mania hit 60 just prior to the Burning Crusade, and I started her more or less at launch. On the flip side, I don’t think that anyone who is already 80 necessarily needs to get out more, either. Sometimes you just want to hole up and level. *shrug*)

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Today’s RFC: The Birds of Prey family and their Snatch skill.

The Bird of Prey family is new with Patch 3.0 — sort of. This family includes owls (which used to have their own separate Owl family) plus eagles, rocs, and most hawks. But even the pre-existing owls have changed considerably. Instead of that old standby skill Screech, Birds of Prey now use the family skill Snatch, which causes damage and disarms the target for 6 seconds.

Now Screech was a very popular pet skill in the old days, so I am very interested to see how Snatch — and Birds of Prey — stand up in the present. Birds of Prey are most certainly gorgeous creatures, but are they any good? Is Snatch worth it? What are Birds of Prey best at?

So please, if you’ve had any experience hunting with Birds of Prey in a post-Patch 3.0 world, take a moment to comment and let me know what you think. In particular, I’d like to know:

• What are the pros and cons of Birds of Prey in general?
• What are the pros and cons of Snatch in particular?
• Are Birds of Prey particularly good (or bad) for soloing, grouping, raiding, PvP, tanking, damage-dealing, etc?
• What talents do you suggest for Birds of Prey? Are there any required talents, or talents you should definitely skip?
• Do you know any clever strategies for hunting with Birds of Prey, or are there any particular gotchas to watch out for?
• Would you recommend a Bird of Prey?

(These are just guideline questions — you need’t try to address each one in turn. And yes, this post looks a lot like the other RFCs — after all I’m asking the same questions!)

I’m especially looking for input from people who have been hunting with Birds of Prey for the past couple of weeks (since Patch 3.0), but even if you haven’t, feel free to throw if your theorycrafting — just let us know whether your advice is based on experience or spreadsheets (or both)!

This post will remain here as a reference for the future, and additionally I’ll try to distill the basics down into a brief summary for use on Petopia.

As always, thanks for your help!

Post from: Mania's Arcania

But a lot of things changed in Patch 3.0, and now that I am leveling up again I’m starting to figure out how to use some of the changes to my advantage — in a very lazy way, of course. I’ve put together some notes on the skills I am using on the off chance that this is useful to someone else. I’m still not using anything even vaguely complicated (with one minor exception, discussed below), but I am pretty pleased with some of the new functionality.

Again, keep in mind that these are probably not the optimal skills, or the optimal ways to use these skills. I do not suggest that you look to this post for advice! (… Unless your playstyle happens to be as weird as mine.) I really just wanted to share.

Steady Shot

I know a lot of hunters will be horrified to learn that I rarely used Steady Shot before Patch 3.0. But hey, at least it was on my action bar — unlike the rest of the skills in this post.

I knew Steady Shot was supposed to be good steady damage for relatively little mana, but I also knew that Steady Shot would ‘clip’ or interrupt Auto Shot — to the extent that using it badly could actually lower your DPS.

Now I could have set up a shot rotation macro to use Steady Shot properly, but … a shot rotation macro isn’t really a great fit with a playstyle built around randomly pushing buttons whenever I feel like it. Anyway, if I used Steady Shot consistently during a fight I would run myself right out of mana. So mostly I skipped it.

But after Patch 3.0, Steady Shot no longer clips Auto Shot — so I can click it whenever I feel like and the net result is positive, not negative! In fact, because Steady Shot can be used again pretty much as soon as the arrow launches, I often find myself hitting it just to have something to do while I wait for the Arcane Shot cooldown.

By the way, you can now train Steady Shot at level 50. Very nice!

Aspect of the Viper

Unfortunately, I still have problems with with running out of mana if I pound Steady Shot too much. Luckily, the new Aspect of the Viper takes care of that reasonably well. Aspect of the Viper reduces your damage rather severely (in the 50% range, depending on your talents), but when you’re just doing relaxed farming and quests that’s not a huge problem. (… Unless you forget to switch out of it after your mana refills, which I often do.)

Now like I said, I’d not at all interested in complexity when I play, so I need either a button I can press randomly and get good results, or a clear and present indicator that it’s time to use a skill. For Aspect of the Viper, that indicator is when all of my other skills go blue because I am out of mana. Then I switch Aspects and rely on Auto Shot for a fight, sometimes two, and then I switch back.

Very simple for me, and very in-my-face. (Mostly. I do forget to switch back sometimes, but eventually I notice that it’s taking more time to kill things.)

And conveniently, you can now train Aspect of the Viper at level 20 so you have plenty of time to play with it!

Aspect of the Beast

Speaking of Aspects, I’ve gone from mostly using Aspect of the Hawk to mostly using Aspect of the Beast. This is entirely and completely because of Pike’s Aspect of the Beast post — so go read it if you haven’t already!

Short story: More damage from pet and slightly less from hunter works out really well for keeping aggro on the pet during casual farming. For example, I rarely bother to send my pet in first anymore — I just right-click to attack and trust my pet to get aggro before the enemy makes it to me. (And the rest of this list is for dealing with what happens when that doesn’t quite work.)

You can learn Aspect of the Beast at level 30, incidentally.

Intimidation

Speaking of aggro … I am rather embarrassed to say this, but I only just recently realized how useful Intimidation is for aggro control. Now perhaps Intimidation doesn’t belong on this list since it didn’t change in Patch 3.0 … But I only recently started using it, so it seems new to me!

I don’t use Intimidation every fight, but it’s a really handy emergency button for when I mis-target and end up walloping on the wrong enemy (i.e. not the one my pet was attacking) for awhile and then he comes to chew on my face. In many of these cases I can use a combination of Disengage and Misdirection, but Intimidation is always there for me when I’ve tried other things already and I’m still in trouble. It’s my ‘Oh hell!’ button.

Disengage

The new Disengage is just plain fun! It flings you backwards several yards — or more, if you happen to be standing on a steep slope or next to a cliff. (Dangerous, but still fun.) It also stops your Auto Shot, so you need to remember to attack again, but it’s a quick way to get back to range. And fun! (Did I mention it makes me laugh every time I use it?)

Disengage by itself is handy if your pet has dragged an enemy up into your melee range, or when the Freezing Trap you dropped at your feet to stop an add wears off and you don’t feel like slowly walking backwards. And Disengage with Misdirection is even handier.

You can learn Disengage at level 20.

Misdirection

Prior to Patch 3.0, the long cooldown timer on Misdirection meant it wasn’t terribly useful for me during normal solo questing, and since I don’t raid or group I didn’t really have much call to use it. In fact, even though Misdirection was arguably the pinnacle of usefulness for the hunter, I never even bothered to put it on my action bar.

But now Misdirection has a 30 second cooldown, which means I can use it almost every fight. Unfortunately it’s a little complicated to use …

Unlike my other favorite skills, Misdirection is cast on a friendly target — in my case, always my pet. But that meant that when I used it in combat I had to hit the button, then select my pet (usually via my pet’s portrait), then cast Arcane Shot or what have you to transfer a nice solid bit of threat. This isn’t hard, per se, but it didn’t really work with the way I normally play (aka flailing).

So when I started to test out Misdirection I went looking for macros to help me use it. I found a good many very handy — and rather complex — macros. I didn’t need something that would Misdirect onto my focus, my pet, my mouse-over target, or my best friend’s mother depending on which keys I held down — I just needed something to cast it on my pet. Every time. Because that’s all I need.

Luckily I was able to modify the Misdirection macros I found very easily into the simplest possible variant:

/cast [target=pet] Misdirection

I used the question mark icon, so it automatically shows the Misdirection icon and cooldown. If I don’t have my pet out, I get the error “You have no target.” But I only use this macro with my pet.

And it works wonderfully! I’ve found three main uses for Misdirection:

• I use it to direct adds onto my pet before they get to me, or to keep adds on my pet if I need to heal him. (I’m mostly hunting with a cat right now, so not a lot of AoE threat coming from him.)
• I use it during combat if I look like I’m going to pull aggro. (I use the in-game threat display to keep an eye on that, especially now that I am leveling again and upgrading my equipment faster than my pet is upgrading his attacks.)
• And I use it in combination with Disengage when I do pull aggro and have something nasty chewing on my face. In that case, I case Misdirect then Disengage, and suddenly I am many yards away and all the threat is coming from the pet. It’s beautiful. (And it makes me laugh.)

Unfortunately, Misdirection is not available until level 70. I’d love to see Blizzard move this one down to level 40 or 50 where it would do us more good!

A Sample Fight

So here’s how a normal fight might go for me:

1. I engage a target by right-clicking in it, which starts Auto Shot.
2. The target aggros on me and runs towards me.
3. My pet, on Defensive, Dashes, Charges, or just plain runs for the target.
4. Usually the pet gains aggro and stops the target outside my melee range.
5. Sometimes the pet gains aggro inside my melee range, in which case I Disengage to get back to range.
6. Sometimes the pet fails to gain aggro, in which case I hit my simple Misdirection macro and then Disengage.
7. Now in any case I’m back at range. I hit Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, and Steady Shot in random orders until the target is dead. I’ll also sometimes throw in Kill Command. (I carefully trained myself to hit it when it lit up, and now it is always lit up so I just keep hitting it.) Or I start reading the web page open on my other monitor and just Auto Shot the entire fight. That’s pretty common.
8. If there are adds that I can see coming and Misdirection is off cooldown, I use Misdirection to get the add on my pet and then keep going on the original target.
9. If there’s an add I don’t see coming, I Freeze Trap it until I have a chance to deal with it.
10. If something goes wrong for whatever reason, I set my pet on the face-chewing add, hit Intimidate, and either Disengage or back up to get back to range. Then we work on the enemies in the new order!

I expect that’s all pretty normal, really, except for the randomly hitting buttons part. (And I do mean randomly. It’s not unusual for me to lose track and Serpent Sting three times in a row, or re-Mark after 5 seconds, or … well, you can imagine. I am a bad hunter, after all.)

But I’m pleased to have a small array of new buttons to press when I want to. And my husband keeps telling me how proud he is of me for using more than three skills. (I suspect he’s being sarcastic.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention Feign Death! I don’t use Feign Death for aggro control or anything like that. No, Feign Death is my ‘Do-Over’ button.

I use it all the time.

Post from: Mania's Arcania

But I did want to share something that happened to me yesterday — no, wait … earlier today. (What day is it again?) This isn’t the sort of thing I want to encourage, but it is kinda cute.

So I’m logged in on Mania, waiting on the platform outside Orgrimmar for the zeppelin to Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra. (Aside: I much prefer Borean Tundra to Howling Fjord.)

It’s just me and my cat Cloud, waiting patiently, but then a level 70 hunter runs up with his black devilsaur. (Since I didn’t ask him about posting this, he will remain nameless — unless he happens by to claim his identity. He did happen by! As he posted in the comments, it was indeed Nenva and his devilsaur Killasaur that I met.)

“Nice name”, he says.

I look around. I’m the only other one there — well, me and Cloud — but neither of us exactly have interesting names. I do have my own one-person guild, Arcania, but unless you know about this blog that’s not terribly interesting either.

“Who, me?” I ask.

He nods.

“Thanks!” It’s only polite to thank people for a compliment, even if you have no idea why they’ve delivered it.

“I’m a Petopia fan too,” he adds.

Oh, I get it. Maybe he does know about the blog. That’s cool that he recognized me by name. Very few people do (which is generally a state of affairs I prefer, since I wouldn’t want any of my frequent screw-ups in game to reflect on the site).

I answer, “Well that’s good to know!”

And then he floors me.

“You even made your character look like her, like that person that runs Petopia,” he says.

I burst out laughing, in-game and out. Here’s someone who knows what Mania looks like (okay, so I did just post a picture, but still — how weird is that?) and doesn’t know I play on his server. But even weirder, he thinks I made a … what? a tribute character and guild?

Now that sounds like I’m making fun of him, but I’m not. I was just surprised — very surprised. So after a pause, I answer: “I’m not terribly surprised that I look like her.”

The zeppelin arrives and we board. I see him studying me, targeting first me and then Cloud and then me again, probably inspecting my inferior equipment. Finally he asks:

“Wait, are you the REAL Mania?”

And I have to laugh again. There’s probably a Mania on most realms, and I bet very, very few of them ever get that question. Or have any idea who I am, for that matter. But I know what he means, so I just say, “Yes.”

“No way!”

“Way!”

“OMG!” And then we zone into Northrend.

He hadn’t been there before, so after we arrived we wished each other good hunting and I watched him run off excitedly. I’m sure he’ll have a blast there.

So anyway, here’s a long post for a very nice hunter and his very cute black devilsaur. Yes, I am this Mania, and yes, I’m a Petopia fan too. *grin*

Post from: Mania's Arcania

But the WoW hunter community has kicked into gear with some nice posts on bugs you may run into and various ways to deal with those bugs. With no further ado:

• The Hunting Lodge: Macros to Fix Pet Autocast Issue
• Big Red Rhino: Ask a Rhino - Cower Bug
• WoW Insider: Scattered Shots - Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Some of it isn’t strictly hunter-related, but in the face of a new expansion … well, we are all more than just hunters.

Hunter:

• Mirshalak’s Lair: Rough Survival Levelling Guide for 3.0
• Big Red Kitty: Building a 51/10/0 BM Hunter - I used this to respec Mania last night.
• Bloodarrow’s WoW Blog: WotLK Hunter Pet Leveling Build

Northrend Info:

• Too Many Annas: Where are YOU going? - A review of the Northrend starting zones.
• WoW Insider: Wrath 101 - Horde flight paths in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, and Dragonblight
• WoW Insider: Wrath 101 - Alliance flight paths in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, and Dragonblight
• Warcraft Pets: Wrath is Here! - Includes a list of new Wrath minipets.

Professions:

• Kaliope’s WoW Crafting Blog: Guide to Crafting in Northrend (WotLK)
• WoW Insider: Wrath profession goodies
• WoW Insider: Finding your Wrath profession trainers

General:

• DrainingSouls.net: 5 Must Have Addons for Wrath
• Random Ravings of Warcraft: WotLK - Boost your XP advantage - Get a head-start even before you get the expansion.

Inspiration:

• Ravven’s Glass: SO much fun
• Warcraft and Other Hoooha: Death Knight - Reviewing the Class Quests

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Allow me a brief moment to exult in my accomplishments …

My Collector’s Edition (CE) arrived sometime this morning while I was asleep. (I left a note on the door instructing FedEx to leave the package, complete with signature, in case for some reason they were inclined to take it back with them if I wasn’t here!)

Upgrading my main account to the CE was very smooth. Either no one is trying to upgrade their account right now, or Blizzard did a good job anticipating demand.

The very first thing I did in-game was hit a mailbox and pick up Frosty, the CE mini-pet — largely because I knew this would round out my collection of mini-pets and get me Stinker, the adorable skunk.

The second thing I did was get a picture of the three of us together! (Okay, two pictures, digitally altered to look like one.) Why isn’t Cloud (my Twilight Runner) in this family portrait? Because he is taking the picture!

No, no … actually he’s staying as far away from Stinker as possible because Stinker has a ‘thing’ for black cats, and Cloud is afraid that dark grey is too close for comfort.

Post from: Mania's Arcania

GameStop was very organized: starting at 10pm they routed people through the money part of the transaction so that at midnight sharp they could just toss boxes at us and chase us out. It all went very quickly. Even the two-hour standing-in-line part wasn’t bad, since we had a variety of things to do:

• Fimlys interviewed first BRK and then me for the Twisted Nether blogcast. (Well, I don’t know if interview is the right word, but I got to answer some questions.)
• I ran into a friend from college and we caught up. (This was perhaps the most surprising part of the evening for me.)
• We traded hunter stories with the handful of people who knew us. (And thank you guys so much for coming out!)
• We talked to people standing in a similar line in Ottawa, of all places. (Hello, person who’s name I couldn’t hear!)
• After Fim proved too shy on his own, I dragged him around getting quotes random WoW players in line in exchange for TNB stickers. (Unfortunately he only had four stickers to give out at the time.)

It was great hearing how useful people find Petopia, even when they aren’t entirely certain who I am. *grin* But the best thing was just being surrounded by people who understand the language of the game .. and the passion we put into it.

I also want to publicly thank my husband for making me really cool “Mania’s Arcania” business cards on very short notice. I wish I’d been less shy and given more of them out.

And now! … I’m going to frantically try to finish updating Warcraft Mounts. But after that, I may try to log in for a bit.

[edit] BRK captured the non-event much better than I could. Check out his post lamenting that There Are No Microbreweries in Orlando.

Post from: Mania's Arcania

I will add only this: You can use Petopia’s Advanced Pet Search to get a handy somewhat sortable list of level 70 Wrath pets by setting the Expansion field to Wrath Only, Tameable to Tameable Only, and the Max Level to 70. Or just use this scary-looking URL:

http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/browse/search_advanced.php?q=1&max_level=70&tameable=1&expansion=4

… assuming Petopia is up, of course.

[edit] Whoops! To be most useful, you probably want to look for pets that are *under* level 70, not just level 70. I’ve fixed the link above, and that adds a whole bunch more pets.

There’s truly something for everyone in Northrend — including a level 6 carrion bird bird of prey!

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Still, if you happen to be in the area it would be neat to meet you. The main reason I like midnight openings is that I get to meet other WoW gamers, and meeting pet-obsessed hunters would be even cooler. We’ll be at the GameStop in Waterford Lakes in Orlando, FL starting around 10-10:30pm. (That link has a map.)

And we won’t be alone! Well, we might be alone if no one else shows up. But metaphorically speaking, lots of other bloggers — and even Blizzard themselves — are doing midnight launch non-events. (Okay, Blizzard’s probably counts as an event.)

Let’s see what we’ve got here …

• The Big Bear Butt Blogger will be at a GameStop in Maplewood, MN. (I’m not entirely certain where MN is, but it sounds cold.) He’s threatening to show up drunk, which sounds like a great idea to me!
• Lassirra from The Hunter’s Mark will be at a GameStop in South Burlington, Vermont (which also sounds cold).
• Mike Schramm from WoW Insider will apparently be at a GameStop in Chicago. (Again, cold. Orlando is looking pretty good, yes?)
• In fact, WoW Insider has a nice list of a bunch of locations which I could have just referenced to begin with and saved myself some typing and oh my god we’re on that list! Ack! They put us on just like we were a real event!

Oh boy … I really hope no one thinks we’re organized or anything! *sweats* I mean it’s just going to be me and BRK and maybe Fimlys and probably a whole bunch of random gamers who have never heard of any of us and a couple of GameStop employees who couldn’t care less either way. It certainly won’t be fun.

Okay, it might be fun.

But anyway … Blizzard themselves will be at four different US locations: New York, San Francisco, Anaheim, and Austin — plus, internationally, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Taipei, and Seoul. (The one I would most like to attend would probably be Austin — lots of MMO and ex-MMO designers in that line I bet!)

If you’re going to a midnight release tonight, drop us a comment and let us know where — who knows, you might meet someone else in the same area! And if you’re not … well, enjoy your probably-much-more-exciting-evening-not-in-a-line. *grin*

(Aside: I love it when I’m browsing the TV and I come across some sort of show on ESPN-18 or some such that’s labeled a “sporting non-event”. Those poor uneventful schmucks, I say to myself. They think they are doing something worthwhile — but ESPN spits on them! Heh. Yeah, I know that’s not really what it means. But I still think that every time regardless.)

Post from: Mania's Arcania