And That's What Hunters Do

This is another one for my non-WoW-playing readers.

One of the distinctive things hunters have, besides their pets, is the trapping ability. Hunters learn to lay down traps that can do a variety of things: explode in a single burst of damage, keep exploding every few seconds for a while, unleash poisonous snakes, chill an area so that enemies moving in it must slow down, and so on. But the bread-and-butter trap for most hunters is the Freezing Trap. Here's Tivara laying one down:

The trap lasts for a couple of minutes, and goes off if any enemy gets within a few yards of it. And when that happens, there's a sudden puff of frost, and this:

Fwoosh! That naga's not going anywhere for twenty seconds, unless one of us damages him, by accident or on purpose. That's the hunter version of crowd control, often abbreviated "cc". When I say that I did a lot of cc on a run with friends, what I mean is that I did a lot of stuff like that. Which is very fun.

This Is a Knife

I got to see all of Zul'Aman for the first time last night! Previously I'd taken part in victories over the bear and eagle bosses, defeats against the lynx boss, and a dud start on the dragonhawk boss. Hex Lord Malacrass and the big guy Zul'jin were new to me. Now they're not. :) The fights were a lot of fun.

And did Zul'jin have anything with my name on it? Why yes, yes he did. He had his mighty two-handed sword, Jin'rohk, the Great Apocalypse, and I beat out the player of Tivara's friend, ret paladin Aciryl, on the roll for it. Here it is in morning light:

Now I need to get a good enchantment for it.

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!

Heroic Wolf Runners

Thanks to various real-life complications, it's been most of a year since I've done a heroic instance with any of my characters, and I've been missing that. Tonight I got to fix that, with a run to heroic Botanica:

I have always loved draenei architecture since I first saw it, and still do.

I did quite well, I think! I had some problems with trapping - the usual "forgot to turn off auto-shoot" problem - but there were some real-life distractions on that. When it comes to damage, the numbers pleased me a lot. Tivara dished out about 550 dps overall, and Timmorn did about 245. And, of course, his Furious Howl enhanced the other damage dealers' performance. He was neck-and-neck in Recount's damage tracking with Samadhi's felguard, so I feel happy about that.

Even better, several of my guildmates feel a real urge to sweep up as many heroic-instance achievements as is feasible in the next couple weeks, so I hope to get in on that. Even when the loot isn't of particular interest, as was the case tonight, the rep and money are very nice.

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!