Its' Baseless Speculation Time!

So, you might have noticed a little bit of hubub in the last day or so when Blizzard lifted the NDA, kicked off the open beta of WotLK, and information started pouring out.

Happily, we've finally gotten a look at what new talents and abilities Hunters will have come WotLK.  Since it seems to be the "hip" thing to be doing right now, here's my take on some of the changes:

Being Talented

Master's Call [NYI] Rank 1/1 7% of base mana 40 yd range Instant cast 1 min cooldown Your pet attempts to remove all stun and movement impairing effects on the target, and cause them to be immune to all effects for 4 sec.

This apparently is replacing Animal Handler.  For the life of me, I cannot see how Blizzard is going to rationalise this.  I mean, it's cool and all, but how exactly does an animal make someone immune to movement impairing effects?

Perhaps it's best not to ask...

Cobra Strikes Rank 3/3 You have a 60% chance when you critically hit with Arcane Shot, Steady Shot or Kill Shot to cause your pet's next 3 special attacks to critically hit.

I find this interesting since it basically increases your pet's ability to keep Frenzy up (heck; maybe we could drop another point from it!)  But by itself, it's not that incredible.  That's why I want to pair it with:

Invigoration Rank 2/2 When your pet scores a critical hit with a special ability, you instantly regenerate 2% mana.

Let's do a little light theorycrafting.  Currently, I have ~20% crit, and an attack speed of 1.74 seconds.  Averaging that out, that means I'm hitting a target ~1.15 times a second with a 1:1 rotation.  Taking a 20% crit rate, that's 0.23 crits per second.  Which is 0.14 Cobra Strike procs per second.  Now, let's assume that Cobra Strikes doesn't proc again until our pet has gotten his three specials off.  We'll also assume we have a focus dump, and that we can supply him with enough focus to keep using it.

Combined with 2/2 Invigoration, three crits per Cobra Strikes proc, 0.14 procs per second and a base of 6200 mana, that's:

~0.14 procs per second × 3 crits per proc × (2% of 6200 mana) per crit = ~51 mana per second

That's about 256 MP5.  You'd need to be able to supply your pet with 17 focus per second; according to Cheeky's spreadsheet, I'm currently at 24 focus per second.  What's interesting is that also according to Cheeky's, I use 69 mana per second during my 1:1 rotation, which is about 347 MP5.   Let's switch on Viper, which gives me (in the average case) 87 MP5.  That means if I got just 4 MP5 from other sources, I'd never actually run out of mana...

Beast Mastery [NYI] Rank 1/1 You master the art of Beast Training, teaching you the ability to tame Exotic pets and increasing your total amount of Pet Skill Points by 5.

This, right here, is huge.  Let's deal with the second half first.

... increasing your total amount of Pet Skill Points by 5.

For those that aren't aware, loyalty and the Training Point system is being thrown out for a simpler talent-like system.  Starting at level 20, pets will get one Skill Point every four levels to spend in their talent tree (each pet family has access to one of the three pet talent trees that will be available.)  That makes for a total of 16 points at level 80 (not 15 as most people seem to think; they're forgetting the point you get at level 80.)

This means that BM hunters will have access to 21 points.  But there obviously has to be somewhere to spend those points.  Additionally, I don't think Blizzard will have the talent trees set up in such a way that allows BM hunters to completely max their pet out, so we can probably assume that pet talent trees will have at least 26, maybe 31 points you can potentially spend in them.  The only question now is whether this will allow BM hunters to "back-fill" their pets' talents, or go deeper into the tree into some 21-point über talents.

The other half is also really interesting.  As you should be aware, there are various beasts that are simply not tameable by hunters.  For example, there is no tameable basilisk or mana wyrm in the game, despite these being beasts.

Some have speculated that this will allow hunters to tame any mob categorised as a "beast," but I don't think that's likely.  For example, Marsh Walkers are beasts.  Now, having one of those as a pet would be so far off the "awesome scale" that we'd have to get a rocket scientist in to figure out where the needle went, but I really doubt Blizzard would allow it.

Also, notice how "Exotic" is capitalised; that makes it a proper noun which suggests that instead of the current "Tameable/Not Tameable" status of beasts, it'll become "Tameable/Not Tameable/Exotic."

None the less, whether or not this is as awesome as it sounds depends entirely on what pets Blizzard makes Exotic.  Remember that in the new system, every pet will have access to a particular talent tree and a family-unique ability.  Some ideas that spring to mind:

• Basilisks: tanking tree, Hypnotic Gaze ability.  Depending on how long the gaze ability works, you could even make Basilisks utility pets, and have them as a form of temporary, emergency CC.

• Hyppogryphs: dps tree, Wing Flap ability, or maybe Swoop.  And tanks think wind serpents are bad!  These could actually be pretty horrible (for the opposing team) in PvP; you could use them to knock players away from yourself if they get too close (or to throw defenders off the cliff at the Lumber Mill or the bridge in AV...)  Or if they had swoop, it'd give BM hunters a semi-frequent spell interrupt.

• Mana Wyrms: utility tree, Mana Burn ability.  Yes, a mana-drain pet.  Just imagine the QQing that would result from caster arena teams...

There actually aren't that many pet families that aren't already tameable and aren't obviously ridiculous.  But who knows; maybe there'll be some utterly awesome pets in Northrend that only BM hunters can tame!

(Of course, it could also be pointless where all the Exotic pets are inferior to regular pets in every respect, but let's not be too negative!)

Careful Aim Rank 3/3 Increases your ranged attack power by an amount equal to 100% of your total Intellect.

That's pretty interesting; being in the second tier of Marksmanship, it'll allow hunters to stack a bit more Intellect.  The problem is that in terms of stats, Intellect "costs" twice as much as Attack Power.  For example, for any gem that gives you +8 Intellect, you could have gotten a gem of the same quality with +16 Attack Power.  Still, even if you don't stack more Intellect, it's an extra few hundred AP.

Improved Tracking [NYI] Rank 5/5 Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 5%.

This is exactly eight kinds of awesome.  That's how many things we can track.  It basically boils down to a flat 5% increase in all damage on everything except things that are invisible (which we can't really shoot anyway,) and unclassified things like bugs.

Even better, it's a first tier talent in Survival.  I'm seriously considering dropping Aimed Shot and Rapid Killing to get this puppy...

There are more talents than the above, but they're the ones that interest me as a BM-centric hunter.  If you want to play around with them, MMO Champion have a hunter talent calculator.

L33t Pet Skillz

As I said before, pets are now moving on to a talent-like system.  In addition to the three talent trees (DPS, tanking and "utility,") there is also going to be one family-specific ability for each family.  Thanks to Wowhead's WotLK subsite, I've managed to put together a list of all known family-specific pet abilities:

• Bad Attitude - there's no apparent limit to the number of times this can happen, so I suspect this is going to work as reactive damage.  Combined with Crocolisk's +10% bonus to armor, could Blizz be intending them to be the AoE tanking pet?

• Dust Cloud - This looks to be a pretty powerful debuff, exclusive to Tallstriders.  Averaged out, it works out to be a 12% reduction in chance to hit.

• Gore - Now exclusive to Boars.  Sorry, Ravagers...

• Nether Shock - Can you say "tactical deprivation of heals in arena?"  Sure, I knew you could.  At least now Nether Rays are useful!

• Pin - Well, it's got a crab for an icon, so I assume this is what crabs are getting.  It's interesting; a combined root and dot that also roots the pet.  This could make for an interesting tanking ability for saving squishies and stopping runners.

• Ravage - Being able to stun with your Ravager would be great for saving squishies or just legging it.  Sadly, this also means that Ravagers lose Gore.  But then, I've never been fond of the Spiky Nightmare Clowns, so I'm not terribly fussed.

• Savage Rend - One of my mum's hunters has a pet raptor.  Named "Wally."  I just can't stop laughing at the thought of something being torn apart by a vicious raptor named Wally.

• Serenity Dust - Something to note about this one.  It says "moth" in the tooltip.  We can't tame moths.  Well, I guess come WotLK we will be able to tame them (although whether they'll be "Exotic" or not remains to be seen.)  Aside from that, it's a pretty amazing buff; +10% AP and a 2415 HoT once every 2 minutes.  I'm not sure where this will place moths in terms of being a tanking/grinding/raiding pet though.

• Snatch - First of all, I can see this really annoying rogues.  This is a good thing.  This is for owls, so this should make Tux (and Pike) happy.  Owls get this in exchange for losing Screech; though you can sort of think of this as a single-target version of screech...

• Sonic Blast - Basically Ravage, except it does slightly less damage, it does nature damage instead of (presumably) physical damage, and it's icon is a bat as opposed to a gaping, blood-soaked maw.  Since there aren't any hedgehogs in WoW, I suppose this must be for bats.

• Spore Cloud - Only does 6 DPS, but I suspect the 700 armor reduction is more the point.  It's also fairly obvious that this is for Spore Bats; this will make them pretty damned effective against casters.

• Swipe - Aside from being another ability starting with "s," this is the family ability for Bears.  They're like baby durids!

• Tendon Rip - Pretty simple snare; likely to be popular in PvP since the pet could potentially keep it up 30% of the time.  Pity it's only available on Hyenas...

• Web - How I shot web?  Spider is shot web!

If I haven't mentioned a pet family, it's because it's ability is already in-game.  It looks like we're going to have way more choices for viable pets come WotLK.  It's also worth mentioning that every pet has either Dash or Dive, as well as one of Bite, Claw or Smack.

That said, Wowhead has a number of other pet abilities in their WotLK database that aren't family-exclusive:

• Bullheaded - After having Tiddles get netted by those bloody Sunfury Archers, I say: bring it on!

• Call of the Wild - Sadly, nothing to do with making the target run around trying to find a bathroom...

• Carrion Feeder - Man, and I thought Cannibalise was nasty...  I mean, the health is one thing, but regenerating happiness?!  Just imagine this in PvP, though...

• Charge - Strangely, what used to be the defining ability of boars is now available to Cats, Hyenas, Raptors, Tallstriders and Wolves... but not boars.  Poor piggies are being hit with the nerf bat pretty hard lately...

• Dying Bite - This is the last thing you need to be worried about if you've killed my pet.

• Heart of the Phoenix - One thing BRK has advocated before is putting points into Improved Revive Pet for high-end raiding, since losing your pet early in the fight translates to a 30% drop in DPS.  This may make that unnecessary.

• Intervene - I'm sorry; I just can't take this ability seriously when it's using a picture of a turtle.

• Last Stand - Remember when BRK had that big thing about not needing tanks come WotLK?  Yeah, I'm beginning to think he might have been right.  All hail the Panzer Turtle!

• Lick Your Wounds - This + Mend Pet + Moth = Invincipet!  (Yes, I realise it's channelled; I just wanted to say "Invincipet.")

• Rabid - The only way this could be cooler was if it actually turned your pet into a Rabbid.

• Roar of Fortitude - A nice little buff for the melee peeps.

• Roar of Recovery - ... Are we even going to need mana pots come WotLK?

• Swoop - this one's for carrion birds and "undefined."  More un-announced pet families, methinks.

• Taunt - Wow; snap aggro for pets.  Very nice.

• Wolverine Bite - What's odd is that it only has one rank, and it's available at level 30.

We're Gonna Have To Find More Action Slots...

You may have noticed, while reading about the Hunter talents, that two abilities are mentioned several times:

• Bear Trap - So a combination of Freezing Trap and Immolation Trap.  Plus, it's got an awesome name: Bear Trap.  As Forthus suggested, disarming a Bear Trap should trigger every Bear Traps in a 40 yard radius.

• Kill Shot - For comparison, under normal circumstances, this does less damage (both over time and per mana) than Arcane Shot, on the same cooldown.  Against wounded targets, it does way more damage and becomes incredibly mana-efficient.  Awesome.

So that's about it for mechanical changes to our class thus far.  That said, there might still be a few surprises down the line for us considering that Hunters were one of the last classes to be worked on.  Only time will tell, but right now things are looking pretty good.

Frosty the Seasonal Boss

Granted, it doesn't really roll off the tongue.  If he'd been 10+ man, I could have said "Frosty the Raid Boss" which would have been perfect.  Alas.

Before we start, why do we want to kill Ahune, exactly?  [The Frost Lord's War Cloak] is why; [Amulet of Bitter Hatred] too if you're doing him on Heroic.

So, you've got your gun/bow/crossbow/squirtgun, a bag full of ammo/arrows/permanent dye and want to go bust up some giant summonable frost lord.  Good for you.  What do you do?

Well, to summon Ahune you need to do one pre-quest in normal-mode Slave Pens.  Just enter Slave Pens, and there will be an NPC right inside the entrance.  Grab the quest from her, and make your way through the instance to the first open area.  There, you'll see the NPC to turn in the quest.  Once done, the same NPC will give you a daily quest to summon Ahune.  The daily quest itself is turned in at the big crystal just to the left of the tunnel you entered through.

Remember that turning in the daily quest will immediately summon Ahune; make sure your group is ready!

Also, you should probably clear the area before summoning him.  Killing the groups on the right, left, the pat and the makrura ahead should do it.  Just don't stand behind Ahune, or you'll pull the naga further on.

Ok, you've summoned Mr. Ahune;  what do you need to know?  Happily, everything you need to know can be condensed into this  list:

• Ahune has two phases: "kill the adds" and "dps like a caged, rabid grizzly bear."

• Phase 1: ("kill the adds")

1. In this phase, Ahune takes 75% less damage, so you shouldn't be shooting at him unless there's nothing else to do.

2. Don't get within melee range of Ahune himself; he has a mean right-hook.

3. Keep Aspect of the Viper up.  Don't be afraid to use "normal" ammo for this bit.  DPS isn't the issue; it's keeping your mana and cooldowns in reserve.

4. At the start of the phase, a large, rocky elemental will spawn.  Smaller elementals will continuously spawn throughout phase 1.  The big guy must be dead by the time you reach phase 2—this shouldn't be a problem.  The little guys have about 1,500 hp on normal.  Try and burn them down as they spawn.

• Keep a close eye on your pet.  The elemental has a stacking 100 dps dot that cannot be removed.  If it gets to three stacks, pull your pet out and let the dot tick off.  Mend pet does just over 150 hps, so three stacks isn't too bad, but from there it quickly becomes fatal.  If it gets above five, your pet is pretty much dead.

• Keep an eye on your healer.  When one of the little adds goes after her (and they will,) nuke it.

• Once the big guy is down, you might find yourself having trouble killing the little adds that continue to spawn, on account of the melee destroying them in the blink of an eye.  If this is the case, you might as well autoshot Ahune.  It won't do much, but it's better than sitting there twiddling your thumbs.  Also, he's not immune to Serpent Sting, for what that's worth.  /shrug

• Don't be afraid to set your pet to aggressive once the big elemental is down.  Your pet will not aggro any of the nearby naga or slaves, and it allows you to perforate Ahune while your pet shreds adds that come after you.  Just remember to put him back on passive when you go to phase 2.  If he keeps going after Ahune himself, back off a bit so he's out of your pet's aggro range.

• Phase 2: ("dps like he just insulted your mother")

1. Swap in your best ammo.

2. Send your pet in to attack.

3. Hit Aspect of the Hawk.

4. Hunter's Mark the core.

5. If it's not on cooldown, and it increases your DPS, use it.  That means Bestial Wrath, trinket(s) and Blood Fury for Orcs.  If you don't have a Shammy and can handle it, Rapid Fire too.  A God Mode macro helps here.

6. DPS the Frozen Core as hard as you can.  Ahune has no direct attacks in this phase, so threat isn't an issue.  (Don't forget about the spikes; see the general section.)

• Phase 2 lasts about 30 seconds.  Phase 1 lasts for over 2 minutes, which means that Bestial Wrath and most cooldowns will be ready to go by the time phase 2 rolls around again.  Don't equip trinkets if you won't be able to use both in 30 seconds.  I personally only use one "On Use" trinket since I'd probably forget to activate the other one.

• In general:

• Stay off the sheet ice on the ground.  There's a random knock-down effect in place.

• If you see swirly effects near your feet, move.  If you see ice popping out of the ground near you, move faster.  If you don't, a big spike will burst up below you, and throw you into the air.  This is true in both phases, so don't get too focused on DPS.

• Due to the above, stay on the leftish side of the area, so you don't get thrown into the water.

• Once he's dead, make sure everyone loots the chest.  Until the chest despawns, you cannot re-summon Ahune.

• You can attempt Ahune as many times as you like, provided someone in the group hasn't summoned him today.

And that's basically it.  Go in there, nuke him down, and have fun.  I've already gotten my cloak off him, but it's such a fun fight that I'm looking forward to doing it some more before the festival's over.

That the pet schorchling looks awesome has nothing to do with it.  Nope.

Playing Catch Up

One of the biggest issues with pets is levelling.  Unlike Warlock pets which stay in perfect lock-step with their master's level, hunter pets have their own independant level, and gain XP independantly of the hunter.

Typically, this isn't a huge issue.  However, if you've got a pet that you haven't taken out grinding for a long time, or are trying to bring up a low level pet you trained (perhaps for its unique looks,) you're in for a long and painful grind.

The second oldest of my pets (in terms of how long I've had him in my stables) is Bisque, my turtle.  Sadly, turtles don't make very good questing or grinding companions due to their sub-par damage and, by extension, threat output.  As a result, Bisque has lagged pretty far behind my other pet, Tiddles.

However, I've been making an effort lately to bring the poor thing up to level 70.  The trick with this is that hunter pets only gain XP on kills from which you would also gain XP.  That means that if you are level 70 and your pet is at level 10, you have to kill mobs level 62+ or your pet won't get any XP.

That said, some mobs are better to kill than others.  For my money, the best mobs to grind on when levelling up a pet are these chaps and chapettes:

The Firewing Warlocks are by far the best mobs to use for this purpose once you're at level 70, for several reasons:

1. They're the right level: 62-63 for the most part, meaning you should have no trouble dispatching them even when your pet isn't really in a position to help.
2. They're all in pansy cloth armour, meaning you don't lose too much damage against them.
3. They drop tons of stuff you can sell off; trash, rep turn-ins and cloth by the truckload.

But most importantly: they're casters.  That means that unless they're trying to escape you, they're just going to stand there chucking shadowbolts at you.  This means you don't have to stuff about with kiting or traps or letting your pet tank.  Here's what I do when I'm grinding on them:

1. Hunter's Mark him.  Let him know that you're coming for him, and that there's no escape.  Running will only make him die tired.
2. Send your pet in.  Yeah, the poor thing's not likely to do much damage, depending on its level, but at least it won't be bored.
3. Wind up an Aimed Shot.  Nothing says "so long, and thanks for the XP" than an Aimed Shot crit to the face.
4. Just before Aimed Shot fires off, hit Arcane Shot.  They should both go off at the same time for that extra punch.
5. If you're lucky, you might have gotten a double crit, which usually kills these guys outright.  If not, just fall into a normal 1:1 Steady:Auto rotation.  The warlock should be dead inside of four or five shots.

The reason I send my pet in ahead of opening fire is that the warlocks will typically start casting a Shadowbolt at my pet when they see him.  Bisque is more than capable of taking a few shadowbolts, and it means I get to work my shot rotation without any pesky pushback.

You also shouldn't have any problems with runners; they don't tend to get very far once you're into your shot rotation.

And that's basically it.  Just stay in the area around the mana bomb, and grind on them until you're covered in Elf  blood from head-to-toe.  Or your pet gets a level.  Or you get bored.  Or your bags fill with so much cloth that you have to go and unload.  You know, whatever suits you.

One last piece of advice: put together some grinding music.  Personally, I like stuff with a strong beat, stuff ripped from 90's video games, and Yakety Sax.  Seriously, that song makes anything entertaining (warning: that second one is rated Very M for Lots of Blood.  Thou hast been warned.)

For reference, when I ground on these guys to get Bisque from level 64 and a half to 65, I went through half a stack of water, ~1200 bullets and had the following in my bags afterwards:

• 40 Netherweave Cloth,
• 75 Runecloth,
• 4 greens and a lockbox,
• a smattering of various health and mana pots
• 70 Firewing Signets,
• 1 Arcane Tome and
• ~6 gold worth of vendor trash.

You Learn Something New Every Day

Being an engineer (the fictitious in-game type, not the "my best friend is a slide rule and I can recite Pi to thirty decimal places" type,) one of my favourite, completely unnecessary maneuvers is to fly high above an enemy, dismount, and blast at them as I fall, using my [Parachute Cloak] to avoid falling damage.  The only issue with this is that my pet won't spawn until I physically hit the ground, and even then I'm looking at about a second and a half before I can control him.

Let me set the scene:  I'm flying back to Ruuan Weald from pilfering the etheral's mana cells for my sweet bag of goodies.  I'm pretty high up, and think "what the hell, let's see how close I can get to the flight master."

I wait until I'm nearly over him, and dismount.  So there I am, plummeting towards the ground like a sumo wrestler dropped out of a cargo plane, when the game starts to stutter.  "Oh bugger; it's swapping!  Damnit, pull!"  I mash my "gadget" macro to activate the parachute.  In my panic, I also accidentally hit the button next to it: my pet control macro, which casts Call Pet.  Imagine my surprise when Tiddles dutifully answers the call and pops up below me, chasing after me as I sail overhead.

Just when you think you know what you're doing, the game turns around to remind you that you really don't.

You know, I completely missed the flight master, though.

The Pew-Pew Macro

So I sometimes have people ask me why I have so many damn macros and addons.  "I can play just fine without any!" they cry.  I know you can; back when WoW first came out, I didn't even know you could make addons.  Oh wait... when WoW first came out, you couldn't.

That's beside the point; the important thing is that while you don't need addons or macros, they do help you play more effectively or efficiently.  Even really simple things can make the game a lot more fun and/or less annoying.

I thought I might share one of my Hunter macros today.  I don't think it would be an understatement to say that this macro has not only made grouping easier, but has saved both myself and my group a number of times.

So, let's cut straight to the macro itself.

#show [mod:alt]Parry;[mod:shift]Flare;Auto Shot
/stopcasting [mod:alt]
/stopattack
/stopmacro [mod:alt]
/startattack [nomod:shift]
/stopmacro [nomod:shift]
/stopmacro [target=focustarget,noexists]
/target focustarget
/petattack
/startattack

The function of this macro is three-fold, depending on which modifiers I'm holding down.  For the purposes of this post, assume the macro is bound to the '1' key.  The macro's functions are:

1. It turns auto shot on (1),
2. it stops me shooting (Alt+1) and
3. it makes both myself and my pet attack the target of my focus (Shift+1).

"But," I hear you say, "I already have a button to turn auto shot on and off; it's called 'Auto Shot.'"

Aah, not quite.  The regular auto shot button doesn't turn it on or off, it toggles it.  It's an important distinction.  With this macro, you can spam 1 all you like to start auto shot up.  But more importantly, you can hit Alt+1 to not only turn auto shot off, but cancel whatever you may be casting at the time.

Imagine you're trying to pull a mob off someone that's pulled aggro and draw them on to your trap.  You're blasting away, trying to generate threat, when the mob aggroes on you.  It's sailing towards you, and you need to stop shooting it or you'll break your own trap.  Without this macro, I would often toggle auto shot off and then back on again by accident, or not cancel my steady shot in time.  With this macro, it's much harder to mess up.

You can also use it to do things like hit a mob in a Freezing Trap with a Scorpid Sting without risk of breaking the trap itself (hit Scorpid Sting followed immediately by Alt+1.)

The last function is basically building an assist-like command into the button.  The way I use this is to have the main assist (or failing that, the tank) focused.  This means I can instantly start attacking their target, and sick my pet on it, by hitting Shift+1.  This is actually harder to do than it sounds.

Y'see, WoW does a lot of things to "help" the player.  For instance, if you get within range of a mob, but don't have it targetted, and hit an offensive spell, WoW will automatically target the closest mob for you.  Nifty, huh?

Umm, no.  Not when the closest mob happens to be the one you right just five seconds ago trapped.  Bam.  Bye-bye trap, hello irate mob.  You would not believe how many times I nearly wiped groups while trying to work the kinks out of this macro.  "It's OK, I'm sure it's working this ti... yeah, OK, I think I know what went wrong.  Hang on..."

So, if that all sounds handy, you can copy and paste the macro code into one of your character's macro slots, and off you go (make sure to select the "?" icon.)  If you'd rather know how the macro works before using it, read on.

Let's pull this puppy apart to see how it works.

#show [mod:alt]Parry;[mod:shift]Flare;Auto Shot

This line just controls what icon is shown for the macro.  I prefer to have each unique action have its own icon, as a kind of visual reminder to myself that the modifier keys actually do something.  It will show the Parry icon for the "stop shooting" action, Flare for "assist" and your gun's image for "start shooting."

/stopcasting [mod:alt]
/stopattack
/stopmacro [mod:alt]

These three lines are how the "stop shooting" bit works.  First of all, we use /stopcasting (if Alt is held down) to cancel the current cast.  We then use /stopattack to turn off Auto Shot irrespective of modifiers.  Finally, if Alt was being held down, we stop the macro (we've already done our job.)

But wait... why stop auto shot?  Because we don't know if it's already on or not.  We explicitly turn it off here so that we know what state it's in.

/startattack [nomod:shift]
/stopmacro [nomod:shift]


Now, we do the "start shooting" part; we turn auto shot back on and stop the macro if Shift wasn't being held down.  One nice thing is that this /startattack cancels out the previous /stopattack, so the auto shot timer won't reset if you spam this macro.

/stopmacro [target=focustarget,noexists]
/target focustarget
/petattack
/startattack

Now for the "assist my focus" part.  First of all, we stop the macro if our focus doesn't have anything targeted.  This is what prevents WoW from simply finding and targeting some random mob in front of us.  We then manually switch our target to our focus' target, send the pet in to attack, and turn on auto shot.

And that's all she wrote.  Not too bad, huh?  Admittedly, it took a bit of trial and error to get all the commands in the right order, but at least I've already done that part.

So there you have it: one instance where some macro magic can make life as a hunter a lot easier.

Hunters in WotLK: Addendum

What?  No, I'm not obsessively refreshing the WotLK leaks wiki.  I wouldn't do that?  It's not li...

Oooh, ooh!  Hunter changes!

Oh stop looking at me like that.  Like you're not just filled with an ulcer-inducing, burning need to know what's going to happen.  It's why so many people waste their time with rubbish like horoscopes and telephone psychics.  Not that I would...

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

• Scare Beast's tooltip now shows the correct cast time.

It's nice to know that Blizzard isn't afraid to think big with the expansion.  Maybe we can get the The Beast Within tooltip ammended.

• Damage caused by the pet ability Bite has been reduced, it's Focus cost has been reduced as well, and it's cooldown has been removed.

Hmm... considering that this means that Bite can now be cast ~6.7 times faster, I'd call this a buff.  What's interesting is that this is the niche currently occupied by Claw.  Maybe Blizzard got sick of Hunters complaining about how there are all these pets running around focused like an orbital laser doing heart surgery and no way of using it.

Note to self: complaining works!  /thumbsup

• Screech renamed Demoralizing Screech.

Again, another visionary change from our dark, blue masters.

• Furious Howl's buff range increased to 20 yards.

Ok, this one is a bit... I'm not sure.  Meh?  I mean, look at what Furious Howl does right now:

Furious Howl Rank 4 60 Focus Instant 10 sec cooldown Party members within 15 yards of the wolf receive an extra 45 to 57 damage to their next Physical attack.  Lasts 10 sec.

So the only classes that benefit from this are melee classes and hunters.  What's the maximum range on an untalented hunter again?  35 yards?  I don't think Furious Howl was ever really designed to buff the hunter; it's supposed to make the pet bestest-buddies with the melee dpsers.  But what boss is so huge that they needed to increase the range to 20 yards to make sure they got everyone?

Hmm...

• Shell Shield no longer reduces your turtle's attack speed.

Yes!  Buff turtles!  I'm still waiting on this, though:

Spiky Shell Rank 1 40 Focus Instant 10 sec cooldown The pet begins blocking attacks with its shell, causing 25 physical damage to all attackers.  Lasts 10 sec.

• Steady Shot's bonus damage slightly reduced. Scaling unchanged.

Initially I thought this was a sucky change... and it still is.  But remember that Steady Shot actually scales with both weapon damage and your RAP.  Wouldn't it be nice if Steady Shot was just as awesome at level 80, but cost the same amount of mana.  Maybe that's how Blizzard intends to "fix" Hunter mana issues.

Or maybe they're just dropping the effectiveness of Rank 1 so they can charge us extra mana with Rank 2 to get back to where we were.  Accursed pessimism!

So yeah, no sign of talent trees or the like.  I get the impression that Blizz is probably busy tweaking the classes where they know what they want to do.  I don't think there's much point in worrying about the lack of 51 point talents since it's still early days.

On a side note, if Blizzard doesn't make a vanity pet of the mobs on the bottom of this picture, I'm going to be a very sad panda.

My New Favourite Toy

What?  No, I still love you, [Parachute Cloak].  You know I'd never give you up.  But, you have to admit... you're kinda useless indoors.  Oh stop crying, it's not like I'm breaking up with you.  Besides, you're not even sentient!  How can you possibly be upset when you have no emotions?

OMG, emo much?

Where was I?  Oh yes, new favourite toy.  Behold the awesomeness that is:

Frost Grenade Requires Engineering (325) Use: Blasts enemies for 75 to 125 Frost damage and freezes them in place for up to 5 sec.  Damage caused may interrupt the effect. (1 Min Cooldown)

Look familiar?  If you've played a mage at some point since 2.0 went live, it should.

Freeze 14% of base Mana 35 yd range Instant cast 25 sec cooldown Blasts enemies in a 8 yard radius for 74 to 86 Frost damage and freezes them in place for up to 8 sec.  Damage caused may interrupt the effect.

That's right; Frost Grenades are a mini ranged Frost Nova in-a-can.  Well OK, it's less a can and more of a highly volatile explosive device with a hair trigger, but no one said Engineering was without its risks.

But what about them makes me love them so?  For those who aren't aware, without talents or set bonuses (bonusii?), hunters cannot trap a mob back-to-back.  The problem is that our Freezing Trap lasts for 20 seconds, but all our traps have 30 second cooldowns.  This is why good hunters pre-trap whenever possible: drop the trap early so that the cooldown can at least partially clear.  That way, you can drop the next trap sooner; in extreme cases where the mob resists, you can drop your next trap immediately.

But no matter how careful you are, there are going to be times when things go, excuse the Klatchian, librarian-poo.  That is, your druid tank accidentally pulls by Moonfiring your trap target, or the first trap resists and the cooldown isn't up yet, or some silly paladin didn't watch where he was dropping his consecrate.

None the less, hunters of all specs have a few tricks up their sleeves for times like these.  Beast Master hunters can use their pet's intimidate to root the mob for a few seconds, Marksman hunters can Scatter Shot, and Survival hunters have increased trap duration and so much damn agility that they can practically evasion tank [1].  That's not even mentioning Concussive Shot and Wing Clip kiting.

But some times that's not enough.  Enter the Frost Grenade.  This puppy will root the mob for five seconds (which is half of the difference between our trap durations and cooldown,) giving you enough time to get to distance and drop a new trap.

In a Steamvault run earlier tonight, these things got used on four occasions.  Twice was for keeping a mob occupied while I got a new trap ready, once to save the healer from a mob that broke free of the tank [2], and once on those bloody gnomes.  I hate those things; hold still and die!

As a bonus, the materials for making them aren't too expensive; 1 Primal Water, 1 Mote of Fire, 2 Motes of Earth, 2 Netherweave Cloth, 10 Fel Iron Casing and 10 Handful of Fel Iron Bolts (80 Fel Iron Ore in total) will net you 50 grenades.  They're made in lots of five and stack up to 10, so I'm keeping a stack on myself and one in the bank.

If you're a hunter and an engineer, I strongly suggest you check them out.  Best of all, the recipe is taught by your friendly neighbourhood master engineering trainer (335 skill required.)

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[1] I do not recommend or endorse hunters attempting to evasion tank simply because they have agility coming out of their eyes...  Now there's an idea for a WotLK talent: agility eye lasers!

[2] Admittedly, the mob was nearly dead anyway and I kinda accidentally ended up rooting it right next to the healer.  But it's the thought that counts, right?  Right?  Guys?