4.3 Patch Notes Updated with Changes for Hunters and Pets

Several new updates to the 4.3 patch notes affect hunters, including the removal of some prominent pet bugs and the implementation of some mechanical changes that, to put it bluntly, do not even work.

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Assorted Advice and Commentary for 4.2

I kept starting and stopping a variety of posts because I’d find something to write about but it wouldn’t be enough for a full post.  So, today, a stew of all those ingredients.

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Moving Into Hunter Arena PvP!

A lot of hunters are starting to get into PvP, if only to fill in some gaps in their raiding gear. A lot of hunters don’t have access to epic PvE head and shoulders, and using Vicious Gladiator pieces in those slots can be a DPS increase, especially when you consider the 70 agility from the two piece bonus. Also, the PvP ranged weapons have the same ranged DPS as their PvE counterparts, and as we all know, especially for marksmanship hunters, weapon DPS has far more of an impact on your DPS than even agility, let alone the secondary stats like crit and mastery. The PvP weapons have the same agility and weapon DPS, and generally trade one of the secondary stats for resilience.

The 359 PvP weapon is purchasable for 3400 Conquest points, and is probably a significant upgrade over any blue, and possibly even over the new ZA 353 PvE weapons. As always, femaledwarf.com should be used to ensure that this is the case.

The next step of PvP weapon is the 372 Vicious Gladiator, and this is more DPS than anything in the game short of a heroic raiding weapon. It’s not the easiest weapon to obtain, though, since you need to have a 2200 rating in 3v3 or 5v5. 2v2 doesn’t count because Blizzard doesn’t balance around duels or 2v2, instead focusing on groups of 3 or 5.

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Macros for Aspect Dancing

Aspect dancing is the practice of switching aspects in between shots to gain access to different benefits, much like druids shift forms and warriors switch stances.  (Frostheim has an excellent guide on the merits of aspect dancing here.)  Once the announced changes to Aspect of the Hawk take effect, aspect dancing will become all the more crucial to pay attention to because any extended period of time spent in Aspect of the Fox will be a very substantial dps loss.  At the same time, skipping Steady or Cobra Shots due to movement remains a huge loss as well.  We’ll be left in a position, then, where we will want to spend as little time as possible in AotF but will still want to have it up before any Steady or Cobra cast during which we will have to move.  How can we go about making these snap transitions as smooth and fast as possible?  One general approach is to use macros, and that will be the focus of this post, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other good ways to change aspects.

Edit: Some commenters, as you can read below, are reporting issues with macros that combine aspect switching with shots.  If you’re having such issues yourself, remember that a separate macro for switching aspects does work just fine.

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Misdirecting Different Tanks

Endgame huntering often requires repeated MDing to different tanks over the course of a single fight.  Tanks trading hit for mitigation and ICC’s threat mechanics both push hunters into this role of MDing often and to changing targets.  We should wonder about the ways we can make this job easier.  What we want to avoid are methods of MDing that cost us any more dps than what is unavoidably lost by spending a global cooldown on MD.  Misdirect techniques that require us to stop targeting the boss, search for a player or use several sequential keystrokes or clicks should not be used.  The options provided below all allow a hunter to MD a desired tank without stopping autoshots or wasting time.  Some methods, though, are better than others, as is discussed at the end of the post.  This piece assumes a basic familiarity with macros, addons and standard MD techniques. 

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ICC Macros

This post holds macros that you may find useful for Lady Deathwhisper and Saurfang in ICC.  If they fit your play style, great; if not, don’t use them.  Also note that these macros are at their bare bones.  You should add in Kill Command, trinket activations, etc., as appropriate.

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An Obedient Pet: Pet Attack Macros!

In raids and dungeons a pet can have to avoid several things: “standing in fire”, the cower bug, generating threat, pulling adds. Why not avoid more than one of those things at the same time? I use pet attack macros for that, and cram them full of commands (well, so long as the macro remains intuitive, useful and does not conflict with itself functionally).

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Mana Saving Macros!

Mana management is not tricky. We all do it, and we’re all good at it. This post is going to go over a new macro that I believe could increase your damage throughput!

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Beginner’s Raiding 101!

This is a short guide to help people get started raiding. Much of the advice is not class specific, however it was inspired by an email I got from a fresh level 80 hunter, who had never grouped for an instance.

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Hunter Arena Keybinding, UI, and Addons!

[Rip’s editor’s note: Jurgwena is back today to talk about Arena UIs. We’re going to keep the ratio of PvE to PvP high, but this is exciting stuff for me! Anyways, left to my own devices today, you’d all have been stuck reading the type of nonsense I write when I can’t think of any topics for a guide.]

Hey everyone. As promised, this article will explain how to craft the perfect arena UI. To get ready for this article, I downloaded some new mods and totally redid my own UI.  For starters, I want to discuss what mods you should be using, and then what your UI should do for you. After that I’ll address more specific tips that will help you get the most out of a UI, and then at the end hopefully we’ll have time for a quick discussion on keybinds.

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OutDPS Arena- Introducing Jurgwena!

[Rip’s editor’s note: Hi folks, today’s post is the first OutDPS hunter PvP post! Since I’m a mouth breathing, key turning, button mashing, terribad PvP hunter, I invited someone with a real arena rating to write about this. Put your hands together for Jurgwena! (And yes, that’s his real personal rating on his 5v5 team)]

This will be the first post in a series about Hunters in arenas. Don’t expect an emo cryfest about the state of hunter pvp. We’ve been dealt a hand, and it’s up to us to play that hand to the best of our ability. For the first round of posts I plan to discuss the tools (like macros and mods) that’ll help you win games.

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Dual speccing Marksmanship!

I’ll be dual speccing marksmanship and starting to learn how to play it, so you can start to expect some quality MM content here. I did the math, and I’ve reached the point where the highest DPS SV build I can use is slightly less then the highest DPS marks build I can use, and to top it off, I don’t even run with the highest DPS SV build. Instead, I bring replenishment to the raid.

Since improved hunter’s mark is still bugged so that it can be written over with a normal hunter’s mark, I’m going to work with my fellow hunters on this to make sure that (a) only one of us specs into it, and (b) everyone takes the non-improved version out of their macros, if not off their bars.

What I’m expecting is a large increase to my DPS on fights where I have to move (freya, thorim, etc) and a small increase on fights where I can mostly stand and unload.

I’m looing forward to this challenge, and I’m hoping that I will be able to contribute a few good guides soon.

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Hunting Freya!

[Ed note: welcome wow.com visitors :) Feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed, updated 5 days a week, and take a look at some of the other guides I’ve done.]

Well, Freya is one of the more annoying encounters. She has a metric arse-load of trash that respawns after a little while. To be honest, the boss herself is a bit of a pushover. It’s her adds and trash that make this take so much time. Here’s my guide for playing a hunter on the Freya encounter.

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Lock and load!

Everyone has an opinion about lock and load. It used to be the bread and butter of the trapdancing spec, and is now still an incredibly nice talent that’s well worth the points spent in it. What it does is proc from 20% of the ticks of black arrow outside its 22 second cooldown, providing you with a short window of time to fire off two explosive shots without causing a shot cooldown, taking ammo, or taking mana. In effect, you can fire three in a row. This post will go over how to use these procs.

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Survival Macros!

I covered the shot priorities list. Now it’s time for macros. Some of you are thinking “Macros? I thought you said not to macro shots, just to weave them manually based on what’s available and highest priority?”. This is correct! However, and I went over this in the last patch, it’s fine to take all your instant non-global cooldown abilities that you want fired as often as possible and macro those into your shots. No /castsequences, though. Those cost you DPS, and every time you post one on the internet, Chuthlu kills a kitten.

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Survival Rotation!

3.2 edit: I’ve gone through this survival rotation guide and ensured that everything is accurate for patch 3.2.

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Survival in patch 3.1! Pun intended!

I was so excited about this post, I used two exclamation points in the title. That’s one over my budget, but I’ll just have to try and save one from another post sometime.

Well, the servers have been up and down like a toilet seat. I haven’t been able to play for long, and we couldn’t raid or anything, but I got my auctions up. Today I’m going to go over the raw changes to the hunter class and start laying the groundwork for how to hit top DPS in this patch.

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