Trueshot Aura

According to Blizzard, paid character name changes are live for all realms as of today. Still $10 per name change, rules apply, batteries not included, and details can be perused in account management on the official site. So good news for you if you happened to do something dumb like naming your main "supernub" or something equally scintillating.

The last installment of my Hunter patch notes for 2.3.0. The nerf-bat seems to have passed our class by in this patch, which is good. Is everything going to be perfect? Of course not, but it looks like we may be looking in the right direction. On with the shortest part of the show!

User Interface

• All players now have a tracking bubble on their minimap. From that menu you can select a specific type of vendor or npc to look for or you can select a specific tracking type if your character has tracking. Yes this means that hunters can take all of those tracking buttons off of their action bars.
  Woo hoo! Oh, wait, I only have one tracking button on my bar (track humanoids), and it's for PVP.
  
• Items with Metagems in them will now display the gems required to activate the metagem and whether those requirements have been met on the item tooltip.
  This seems to be for those who hate math even more than I do. XD
  
• Inspect distance has been increased to 30 yards, and when you inspect another player, you can now see their talent choices as well as their equipment.
  Just remember, people: judge not, lest ye be judged. Oh hell, I'll admit it: I'm gonna be inspecting people's talents like a fiend as soon as this hits. Saves me the trip to the armory website.
  
• Corpses that belong to someone in your party, but that you cannot loot will say in the corpse mouseover who has loot rights on that corpse. This will help skinners who want to know who to talk to in order to skin their corpse, as well as master looters when special loot drops on a normal monster. Everyone will then see that there is a monster that the master looter has loot rights on.
  Ahh, the end of an era: "Everybody come back here and check this dog--someone needs to loot so I can skin!" Good riddance. ;)
  
• New macro commands: /targetlastenemy, /targetlastfriend
  I'm alreadly thinking of new macros...
  
• New macro command to target by entire name: /targetexact
  This is extremely self-explanatory, but good to know, and thus included here for completeness.

Hmm. I heard there would be a /castsequence type command for toggling pet auto-cower and auto-growl. I want this SO BADLY. That thing is such a pain in my rear to switch, and I often need to do it in the middle of a fight. I'll have to trawl the macro forum some time to check for details. It's currently down for maintenance.

Moving along in the 2.3.0 grind, today's installment is Instances, Raids, and BGs!

Zul'Aman
Zul'Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including the Forest Troll Warlord Zul'jin.
I can't wait to get into this. XD New 10-man? Count me in! Not to mention I want the new enchanting recipe that drops in there SO MUCH! It would be totally sweet for arena or for tanks. And had you heard there's a new mount drop in there (a bear, even)?

Dungeons and Raids

• Players that complete the attunement quests for Tempest Keep and Coilfang Resevoir may now choose to display a new title, "'character name' Champion of the Naaru."
  Yay! Title for meee (as soon as I finish this stupid chain)!
  
• The Requirement for Heroic Keys has been lowered to Honored.
  This is the best news in today's update. This little gem of a tweak will hand me all of the heroic keys. As my best warlock buddy would say, w00tsauce!
  Meeting stone level requirements, the Looking for Group system, and quests have been adjusted to match the new dungeon level ranges.
  Like the LFG level reqs weren't annoying enough before. This is not one of my favourite things.
  Auchindoun: Mobs inside Sethekk Halls will now continue to award Lower City reputation into Exalted.
  I will happily take any help I can get on my rep grinding.
  
• New random Daily Dungeon quests have been added for both the heroic and non-heroic five-person Outland dungeons, as well as for the 5-person Caverns of Time instances. Each day both a single heroic and a single non-heroic dungeon are randomly targeted by these quests. The Consortium quest givers can be located in Shattrath's Lower City
  This is going to be fun, I think. Should help with those times I want to run something, but am having a hard time deciding which rep/gear grind I want to instance for. Should also help drum up interest in PUGs, which is all to the good (and PUGS can be good).
  
• Quest givers who have available daily quests will have a blue exclamation point instead of a yellow one.
  Ahh, but the question is: will I be able to see the exclamation point for quests that are not level 70 (HH daily, I'm lookin' at you)?

Battlegrounds

• Daily quests have been added targeting a random battleground for that day. Look for Alliance Brigadier Generals and Horde Warbringers near your faction's battlemasters in all major capitals.
  This looks to be made of win. Come on, rep! I'm all about this, as it may lure me into BGs I normally don't like (AB and WG, I'm looking at you).
  
• Dropping the Flag in a battleground will now result in a debuff that will not allow you to pick up the flag again for 3 seconds.
  I think I like this, but then again, I'm speaking as someone who's never the flag carrier. I'm usually the one trying to take out the flag carrier and recap the flag, or running right alongside the FC, dropping traps and Scattershotting/silencing the people trying to take them out.
  
• Players will now be able to cast spells for free in the Battleground before it begins.
  This will be nice for those who are doing the buffing. Should save on water. I'd make a bigger difference to me before this patch goes through, though, because that's the time I refresh Trueshot Aura, which is gonna be free now, thus eliminating the main drain on my mana. One small bonus to hunters will come of this, though: we'll get to switch aspects for free!
  
• Players will now be able to cast spells for free for a few seconds after being resurrected by a Spirit Guide in the Battleground.
  See above.
  
• Alterac Valley (hoo boy.)
  
  • Additional Warmasters no longer report for duty upon destroying an enemy tower. However, destroying an enemy tower still eliminates the associated opposing Warmaster.
    This will make a difference only if these changes actually manage to slow down the zerg race that is the current state of AV.
    
  • All Warmasters are linked to each other and their respective Generals and can no longer be pulled individually.
    We've had so many bad pulls lately it's almost like this has already been implemented. But it will ramp up the difficulty a bit here.
    
  • Honor from capturing towers has been increased.
    Great--maybe I can convince people to actually help me hold the towers until cap now. A nice little change when you factor in the 20% decrease in cap time.
    
  • All Commanders and Lieutenants have left Alterac Valley in search for other battle opportunities.
    Oooh, I don't think I like this. My friend Vipore is gone?! Sad day, indeed. Slidore is actually going to take a shower? What will we do with our lives?
    
  • Players will no longer be sent to their starting tunnels on death unless that team controls no graveyards in the battleground.
    This could be trouble--what if the tunnel is closer? If I'm running defense, I'd rather take a rez in the tunnel than SFGY, thanks (and SFGY is a kind option in this scenario).
    
  • Many NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds are no longer elite
    So are we trying to slow down the zerging here or speed it up?
    
  • Bonus Honor in Alterac Valley is now only awarded during the battle for destroying enemy towers and slaying the enemy Captain. Upon conclusion of the battle, bonus honor is also awarded for intact towers, a surviving Captain, and for victory in the battle. The total bonus honor awarded should be similar to the previous total.
    We-ell, if the total's the same, why are we doing this again? This is one of those things we're going to have to wait and see on, folks.
    
  • The Horde and Alliance now have a limited number of reinforcements available in the battle for Alterac Valley. The number of reinforcements available is reduced upon player death, loss of towers, and death of Captain Galvangar or Balinda Stonehearth. In addition, all available reinforcements are lost upon the death of General Drek'Thar or Vanndar Stormpike. If a team is reduced to zero reinforcements, the opposing team wins the battle.
    Will AV become all about turtling and graveyard camping? God I hope not. This whole battleground thing makes me really suspicious that my friends crying BOHICA may be right. But who knows? Any news from the test realms?
    
  • Towers and Graveyards in Alterac Valley are now captured in 4 minutes (down from 5).
    Hmm. I would be all for this hitting today, since a big problem with the way AV is run now is that the battleground is over and done by the time some of the towers cap, thereby depriving us all of valuable bonus honor. With all the changes in this battleground, I have no idea how this is all going to stack up. Will AV become all about turtling and graveyard camping? God I hope not. This whole battleground thing makes me really suspicious that my friends crying BOHICA may be right. But who knows? Any news from the test realms?
  
  
• Eye of the Storm
  The points awarded from capturing the flag in Eye of the Storm is now increase based on the number of bases the capturing team owns.
  Yay, more honor!
  
• Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm
  Additional bonus honor is now awarded upon conclusion of the battle.
  Hurrah. IMO, this is addressing a major reason people don't play these BGs more. Scenario: I want some PVP gear. The honor requirement is much harder to attain than the mark requirement for just about everything you want out of the Champions' Hall. I get around 300 bonus honor from AV. I get around 150 from anywhere else. Where am I going to play? You bet your arse it's not the three BGs listed here unless it's bonus weekend for that bg, and I need the marks.

I've been asked to post my thoughts on the upcoming patch 2.3.0. I've also been putting it off, because let's face it: this is going to be massive. So I'm going to break it down. Today is for the General and Hunter-specific changes, tomorrow I'll try and cover PVP/Raids/items, and Friday I'll hit up everything else. Sound good? I hope so, 'cause we're off!

General

• Experience: The amount of experience needed to gain a level has been decreased between levels 20 and 60. In addition, the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60.
  On one hand, "Hey! I ground it out, everyone should have to!" On the other hand, maybe I'll actually level my alts past 20 now. Heh. Perhaps a good compromise would be that you have to level your first toon the old-fashioned way and then your others get the fast track?
  
• Silence effects now have diminishing returns when used on PvP targets.
  Huh-oh. Not sure exactly how this is going to play out, but could be reeeeally annoying when that annoying mage with a deathwish comes after me in AB again.
  
• Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise.
  WTF, guys. Are you going to decrease the cooldown on Kill Command? Because mine already procs more than I can use it due to the cooldown, and you're compensating for screwing the rangies on weapon skill by giving us additional +crit? As my undead would say, "Gee, thanks."
  
• A new flight path has been added to the Rebel Camp in northern Stranglethorn Vale.
  About freakin' time is all I can say.
  
• Flying units can see ground units and vice versa at any altitude.
  Oh, hell yes. Halaa just got that much better.
  
• Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.
  Undoubtedly a bonus for my friends with high-latency connections.
  
• Vendor Discounts: All vendors with an associate faction now give discounts at all levels above neutral.
  
  • Friendly: 5% discount
    
  • Honored: 10% discount
    
  • Revered: 15% discount
    
  • Exalted: 20% discount
  
  This is really how I always thought it should be, but now I'm going to have to be more careful about where I buy stuff! Aldor/Scryer rep is now even more important, and it's just that much more annoying that I can't buy the arrows/bullets I like from non-outlands factions.
  
• Quest givers who have available daily quests will have a blue exclamation point instead of a yellow one.

Clarity is good! The real question I have about this is, will daily quests that I no longer see the exclamation point for show up now as blue? (Honor Hold PVP quest, I'm looking at you.)

• Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.
  This could be very good or very bad, or even both at the same time. Good for damage mitigation from spray and other area effects, bad if our pets spend a bunch of extra time running around to stay at the back of the target.
  
• You can now obtain a tiny Sporebat pet with exalted Sporeggar faction.
  Wow, a reason to get exalted with Sporregar! I love sporebats, and maybe this will be good consolation for the captured firefly's absolute refusal to drop for me.
  
• An Azure Whelp pet now drops from the blue dragonkin in Azshara.
  Holy crap, people may actually head out to Azshara now.
  
• If you are seated and try to use abilities that require you to be standing, you will stand up and use them. This can be disabled with: /console autoStand 0 .
  I hate it when I stand up in the middle of eating because I've done something dumb like hit my feed pet button, and this probably won't help. I may actually use the command to disable this.
  
• Racial Abilities
  
  • Dwarf: Gun Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.
    Gnome: Escape Artist cooldown increased to 1 min, 45 sec.
    
  • Humans: Sword Skill now increases the critical strike chance with swords and two-handed swords by 1%.
    
  • Orcs: Axe Skill now increases the critical strike chance with axes and two-handed axes by 1%.
    
  • Troll: Bow and Thrown Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with those weapons by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.
  
  Look! Reasons not to play an Elven Hunter! (Still no damn reason to play a Human, though. Heh.)

Hunters

• Aimed Shot (Marksmanship) now reduces healing done to that target by 50% for 10 seconds.
  This is going to be soo much fun in Arena. Honestly, this shot needs all the help it can get, as it's not really viable for anything other than an opener as the cast time is so long. I usually only use it for Misdirection aggro, but I'll have to dust it off and see how it functions in PVP after this. Plate wearers, this one is coming for you.
  
• Arcane Shot (Ranks 6 and above) now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to their normal damage.
  This is possibly the most exciting thing on the list, right up there with my beloved Trueshot Aura getting some much-needed tweaking. In fact, this may be more exciting. But does it work in Opera? Hmm...
  
• Explosive Trap: The initial damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  I'm all for this. Explosive trap just got a bit better. Only downside is that additional threat when using this in an instance/raid to knock down a big pull of nonelites.
  
• Immolation Trap: The total damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  I'm all for my traps doing more damage, though this is going to be a much bigger bonus for those who are levelling and/or soloing.
  
• Misdirection: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Hunters overwrite each other's Misdirection.
  Ahh, the duplication of misdirection. This really shouldn't be a necessary change. If you are in a party with another hunter, always work out who's doing the initial MD vs. any subsequent MDs. That ability has a looong cooldown. Seriously.
  
• Readiness: This talent now finishes the cooldown on Kill Command.
  It's bloody well about time for this to work properly. 'Nuff said.
  
• Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap all gain additional damage based on ranged attack power.
  Word. As a MM hunter, I'm all about getting more out of my RAP. I suspect that this will make a dent in that tired old "MM SUX B/C BM DOES THE MOST DPS!!1!one" argument, but I'm not terribly optimistic. The way the comparisons are done doesn't really take traps into account, which is one of my beefs with the whole flawed comparison in the first place. *sigh*
  
• Serpent Sting: The total damage dealt by this sting is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  Blizzard, you just said this. See above.
  
• Steady Shot: Tooltip clarified to indicate base weapon damage is used in the damage calculation.
  I believe I've already stated I'm all for clarity. ;)
  
• Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled.
  YESSSS!!!! TA has always been an annoying mana-chunk to cast, and a PITA to track. Two annoyances of mine removed from the game! Score. Can't wait for this, and that's a sure thing.
  
• Wyvern Sting (Survival) is now instant cast and has a maximum duration of 10 seconds in PvP.
  ...I don't have this ability, so I can't really give my opinion, can I?

Overall, this stuff looks to be all to the good for Hunters. Still not sure how I feel about the change to the 20-60 grind, though.

It has come to my attention that macros can be a bit intimidating for some of the hunters I know and love, so I figure the time has come to introduce macros I know and love to the public domain. I've typed these macros out so you only have to paste them into a lovely new macro, and they're good to go! If you don't know how to set up macros, the guide here will get you up to speed. All you have to do is follow their instructions, sub in my macro text for the sample text it provides (/assist Nebu), and you're all set!

While writing this post, I realized that I use more macros than I thought I did--they're just so darn USEFUL! Because there's a lot to think about here, I'm going to break it down into focus-dependent and non-focus-dependent macros. We'll start off with the larger focus-dependent set.

• First and foremost, the keystone of all focus-dependent macros, the set focus macro. It's probably the most complicated of all, ready? Here it is:
  
  /focus target
  
  I know, you're thinking this is crap, and wasting a valuable slot on your quickbar. Not so fast! This little gem will save you heaps of time in an instance, and even more time in a raid. Target your tank and slam this macro right at the beginning of your instance/raid/etc., and it'll save you clicks and key hits for the whole instance. Once you have a focus, you can do all kinds of nifty macro tricks! Not sure how this is actually going to help? Read on, my hunter friends.
  
  
• The next macro that should be on your quickbar is a quick and dirty assist-target macro. This saves you clicking on your tank and hitting F to pick up their target.
  
  /assist focus
  
  Mine has a bonus line at the end: "/cast Hunter's Mark". With one hotkey, I can target the tank's target and cast Hunter's mark. All that's left is sending in the pet and starting the trusty shot rotation.
  
  
• The queen of the focus-dependent macros is the Misdirection macro.
  
  /target focus
  /cast misdirection
  /targetlasttarget
  
  This saves SO much time, and can mean the difference between life or death for your party's squishies. Think of the Attumen/Midnight fight, when Attumen suddenly appears and starts attacking your party (he always goes for the squishies). You want to get that aggro where it belongs (i.e. tank or offtank), FAST. You don't want to be "click, cast, click"ing in the middle of the battle. You want to hit a key and open fire! This macro is a 70 Hunter's best friend. Use it. Love it. Kill bosses in the face with it.

So enough with focuses, let's get to some fun toys that don't require a focus.

• This brings me to my most commonly-used macro of all: the Hunter's Mark/Petattack combo.
  
  /cast Hunter's Mark
  /petattack
  
  One button, two glorious functions. With the touch of a single key, you've cast HM and sent your pet charging in to kick your target's teeth in. Ahh, pwnage.
  
  
• And now on to my second-favourite, the Aspect rotation.
  
  /castsequence Aspect of the Hawk, Aspect of the Viper
  
  I almost always run in either Aspect of the Hawk or Aspect of the viper, and I got tired of having two hotkeys taken up by the two. So, being the lazy bastard I am, I set up a macro to rotate between the two. Hit the hotkey, and I cast AotH, hit it again, I switch from Hawk to Viper, one more click switches from Viper to hawk. Very useful. This concept can also be applied to your shot rotation, too. Mine would look like this:
  
  /castsequence Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
  
  
• Lastly, I've always found it really annoying to pull for a trap with arcane or distracting shot, since your autoshot gets triggered by this, and you're stuck hitting escape in order to NOT break your own CC. I don't like having to do that, so (you guessed it) it's macro time!
  
  /cast Arcane shot(Rank 1) OR /cast Distracting Shot(Rank 1)
  /stopcasting
  
  I even have a separate one for use on those pestiferous caster-types (if you're Marksman-spec'd):
  
  /cast Silencing Shot
  /stopcasting
  
  
• Last and possibly least, I used to be in a guild with a healer who freaked whenever I feigned death, thinking that I had actually died on their watch. Soooo...I made a feign death macro that would announce in party chat that I was only faking it.
  
  /cast Feign Death
  /p I'm not quite dead!
  
  I don't use this one anymore, since you no longer appear actually dead to your party members, so the healers I party with now just take the dramatic death scene in stride. (N.B. - If you spam feign death, it'll spam your party chat with messages that you're not actually dead. Also, should you feign death and then actually die, people may feel the need to correct you in party chat.)

OMG, I've been drooling over reading through all the Hallow's End posts on WoW Ladies all day. Everyone's posting about what they've been up to, what they've gotten, and showing off wicked screenies, and I'm stuck at work! As a wise gay cowboy once said, "This is one goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation."

I want to go fight the headless horseman RIGHT NOW, but it's still 15 minutes before I can leave here, which means close to 45 before I can actually log in. Tell me you guys are up for Horseman runs ALL NIGHT LONG! I must have the squashling! (And the ring! And the flying broom!)

WHY AM I STILL STUCK AT WORK?! QQ.

Well, Brewfest is over, but some things never fade...did someone say souvenir?


(N.B. - There may or may not have been drunken ram driving when I got my mount. I plead the fifth.)

In addition to the lovely Brewfest Ram, Dress, and fantastic Pony Keg, we'll always have the memories (I remember most of it...) of good times spent with friends in the beer garden!



That's Fang looking casual over there on the right, and yes, both Jaylee and I are completely smashed in this picture. I turned off the full screen effect to snap a few shots, and yes, I turned it right back on after this pic. Disabling that stuff's for wussies--real players squint while they stagger around drunk trying to net wolpertingers!

Hallow's End is up next, and I intend to enjoy every day of it. Bring it, horseman! I want that ring.

Holy crap.

Wow Item Creator!

QQ. That is all.

I don't feel that this screenshot needs any further introduction or explanation.