Not just Huntard Corner: Wowhead and Reputation Grinding

This may be helpful to someone of any class, not hunters.

I've been doing the rep grind a lot this week with Spiderheart as I wait for Akaa to close the last few levels so that we can hit Northrend together, and because Akaa (as noted in a previous post) is way ahead of Spider there and gosh darn it I want funky mounts too. Now, I'd known in a vague sort of way that Wowhead will let you look at data collections, but never checked its rep listings.

Wow.

Take the one for Exodar reputation, which I've been on most lately. It shows all the quests that give Exodar reputation, which I wanted. But it also shows all the quests that give overall Alliance reputation, since that's added to all the groups within the overall category. With these reminders in hand, I could and did spend a few hours in Alterac Valley battlegrounds and save myself 30-odd stacks of runecloth turned in to the cloth quartermaster in the Exodar.

Gotta like that. I'll certainly be making more use of this in the future.

Huntard Corner: Misdirection While Soloing

If you've got a hunter of level 60 or above, presumably you know about Misdirection. It's that great spell that routes the threat your hunter's next three attacks generate onto the target of the spell. Tanks like it because it helps them build the aggro that much faster; you like it because it lets you open with some nice damage-dealing instead of worrying about ramping up your damage (and therefore threat) gradually.

But don't forget its value when soloing! There are times when it's very easy to pull aggro from your pet—say, when you're leveling up a new pet. Misdirection is a very valuable addition to your arsenal of aggro-shiting techniques, along with Intimidation, Aspect of the Beast, and so on.

Huntard Corner, Northrend Horde Questing Division

There's a Howling Fjord Hordeside quest, "Green Eggs and Whelps", in which you apply a poison to proto-drake eggs and reap the results. If you have a pet out, you must put it in passive, because otherwise it'll attack the egg while you're spraying it, and that attack ruins the spraying. I went from 0% successful hatchings to 100% when I found this out.

Huntard Corner: Son of Focus

Here's another handy trick for the focus frame. While doing the Scourge event, I'd set focus on the necrotic shard whose minions we were currently mulching, and always know what our progress was:

Huntard Corner: Misdirection and the Focus Frame

I know this is going to be old hat to some of you, but so what? This is about things I'm learning and/or that I think may help others learn about faster than I did.

Patch 3.0.2 brought focus frames, long a staple of many UI-modifying addons, into the stock user interface. Focus is essentially a secondary target, something you mark and can then target for all the usual sorts of things - shooting, hitting, casting, healing, etc. - without losing your primary target. The ability to select focus targets and then do stuff to them has always been there, available for macros and addons and directly issued slash commands, but invisible.

Now it's visible. You select your target, right-click, and there's Set Focus as an option. Voila! Its own little frame...which you can right-click to unlock and move it around. Here's what I'm doing with it at the moment:

In the upper left, Tivara's legs and her bright red and black boots. In the middle, the focus frame, moved to right above my action bars. In lower right, the aforementioned action bars.

The red circle marks Misdirect, with 5 seconds remaining on its cooldown. (That great big number comes courtesy of OmniCC, which I recommend even to people who generally avoid addons.) At the moment I took this screen shot I wasn't in a fight. At the start of a pull, I'd click Misdirect and then the frame for the tank - in this case, our fine huge bull orc Gargantax, whom you can't have because we love him. He's got Misdirect, I switch to the first pull target, put up Hunter's Mark, and my pet and I go to work. After Misdirect has cooled down again, I put my right hand over on the mouse and repeat the pair of clicks, while my left hand keeps up Serpent Stinging and Steady Shotting (or whatever it is I'm doing, depending on the enemy), then bring my right hand back to the keyboard. Gargantax gets extra threat, I get a bit less, and my routine isn't disrupted.

Now, you may not have ergonomic preferences anything like mine. I find that I am at my most responsive and productive when I mostly stay on the keyboard, but throw in mouse action from time to time. If you've never thought about your preferences, this is as good a time as any, too. :) Do whatever is handy for you to make your focus frame as accessible and convenient for you as my setup is for me and then use it a lot. Your groups will benefit. It's a hunter treat for the rest of them!

Huntard Corner: Fixing the Cower & Prowl Problem

Right now, the Cower and Prowl pet abilities are bugged. They'll be on every time you log in, whatever they were at when you logged out, and they'll turn on again when you make major transitions like entering instances or crossing between Azeroth and Outland. If you forget to check it every so often, you will end up with the horror and embarrassment of your pet dumping too much aggro.
The good news is that the fix is simple. It's a one-line command for each ability:

• /petautocastoff Cower
• /petautocastoff Prowl
  

You can put them in a macro, and then assign it a hotkey or button and mash it from time to time, and that'll get you through until the problem is fixed in a lasting way.

Huntard Corner: Leveling a pet from 65 to 70

It's great watching a newly tamed pet jump from level 1 or 30 or 45 to 65 all in a flash. But then you've still got five levels to go. Of all the places I've tried leveling a newly tamed pet so far, I am happiest with the Death's Door region of southeastern Blade's Edge Mountains.

It's a very compact place, it's easy to get to even with a very slow flying mount for both Horde (from Mok'nathal Village) and Alliance (from Toshley Station), and it's loaded up with mobs of level 68-69 - enough to generate good quick experience, not high or tough enough to be a pain to deal with - and with plenty of places to pause to rest, recuperate, go afk to read blogs for a few, or whatever. It's also a nice source of some Cenarion Expedition reputation along the way, thanks to a quest chain that starts with a damaged gas mask dropped by any of those fel corruptors who roam the area north of Toshley Station.

By the numbers, there's a good chance your level 70 hunter is Aldor. Something like two-thirds of level 70s who have an Aldor or Scryer reputation went with the Aldor. If so, then this is a good place for you: it's loaded with Marks of Sargaras. I've been raking them in at 30 or so per hour, on average, and sometimes better than that. But even if your hunter is Scryer or unaligned, the marks are worth gathering. They're in much shorter supply than Sunfury Signets, which means they auction at better prices. It's money on the hoof.

A couple of hours this morning, including idle time for blog reading, IM chatting, and like that, got me the 80 marks I needed to get Tivara to revered with the Aldor, and it got Timmorn (seen above gnawing on a Death's Might demon) from 66 to 68. Good stuff!

Huntard Corner: Aspect of the Viper and Its Use

I'm prone to moments of great cluelessness. Years-long moments, sometimes. The Huntard Corner will be where I note down things I feel I should have learned earlier, and occasionally where I note things I find myself repeatedly helping others with. But mostly, this is me documenting things I benefitted from, in the hopes that they do someone else good.

First up, the new use of Aspect of the Viper.

It turns out this a simple one. It's a short-term toggle. When you're low on mana, switch to Aspect of the Viper and keep shooting. You regenerate an astounding quantity of mana. When you're topped off, or as topped off as you need to be, switch back to Aspect of the Hawk or whatever you may have been using, and enjoy your refreshed mana pool.

Go forth and slay and stop drinking so much!