Back to the alts...

So, since I've really stopped PvPing again with Sakuran I've taken to leveling Laic and Repentant. Well mostly leveling Laic and using Repentant as a healer for instances. My hunter is sitting pretty at almost level 45 and Repentant just dinged 38. I am contemplating doing some PvP with Repentant, just to get a feel for how PvP is with a priest. I'll hold off doing anything PvP wise with Laic until 51 when I can start AV with him, the rewards for that first quest are just too nice.

Speaking of Laic I've gotten pretty comfortable with soloing with him. I'm currently 34 points into survival, primarily to pick up Wyvern Sting (which I love). My basic pull is macro'd as follows

/petattack
/castsequence reset=combat Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, Concussive Shot

The first button press sends in the pet and casts Hunter's Mark. I wait for my pets first growl to go off (auto-cast) then I hit it again for the Sing. Then just auto-shot to victory. The Concussive Shot is for accidently pulling aggro or for mobs that flee when near death. If I get one add I hit it with Wyvern Sting, which usually puts it to sleep long enough to finish the first (or else I just melee it down). If I get two adds I'll drop a Ice Trap, hit multi shot to get the two coming after men and then immediately cast Wyvern Sting. I usually have enough time to get the cast off before they're on me. One stung, one frozen, and the one my pet is on, mostly dead. After that I'll just put the pet on the mob I stung and melee the blocked one. As I'm survival specced, I do enough damage with melee to take them out. If I get in trouble I can always root, kite, and drop another freeze trap.

On Saturday (I think) I spent a couple of hours on my Hunter grinding the Highborne in Azshara with a priest in the guild. Amazingly enough, there was nobody else on them and we were uninterupted. Having a constant renew of my pet meant we had ZERO downtime. I'd just use Autoshot and he'd wand away and the mobs would just drop. Undead tracking enabled us to make very, very fast time and the XP just flew by. Might have to make a return trip pretty soon :P

PvP grind, back again...

Okay, as everyone knows Patch 2.0 brought alot of changes, including the 'elimination' of the PvP grind. Well, sort of. It's true that the nefarious decay system is gone, but it's still a bit of a grind. I didn't start PvPing again with Sakuran until the nerf to honor, so I've all I've done is with the slower amount. Seems like I can pretty consistently get around 300 honor per hour (I'll ignore BG tokens as they are NOT, even remotely, a bottleneck). The first thing I grabbed was the Lieutenant Commander's Leather Shoulders (+17 STA, +1% hit, +1% crit, +22 AP). A nice upgrade from my Spaulders of the Unseen (+22 AGI, +7 STA). The cost was 4125 honor, or roughly 13-14 hours of PvPing, which is a decent amount. However the net bonus on the gear was +10 STA, +1% hit, and +.24% crit. Really doesn't look like much when you put it like that.

So, I'm looking at some other upgrades and I'm just not sure how convinced I am that I want them. My current headpiece is the Shadowcraft Cap (+20 AGI, +13 STR, +18 STA) and am looking to replace it with the Lieutenant Commander's Leather Helm (+23 STA, +1% crit, +1% hit, +36 AP) for a cost of 6375 honor and 30 AV tokens. So, we're looking at around 21 hours of work for a net improvement of 5 STA, .31% crit, 1% hit, 3 AP, and actually losing 1.43% dodge. Now, I suppose I could go for the Field Marshall's Mask (+27 AGI, +31 STA, +1% crit, +1% hit), but that's at a cost of 19125 honor or roughly 60 hours of work. With Burning Crusade 26 days away, why the heck would I do that? I do enjoy PvP, but not to the extent that I'll sink 2.5 days of my life into an upgrade that is going to be replaced within, I'd say, 3 months. Not worth. That being said, sinking 20 hours into a piece that will be replaced in 2 months is a little more reasonable, but just barely...

I think that, rather than sink my time into PvP, I'll again focus on my alts and try to level them. Repentant is still sitting at 36 waiting for some guildies to grind with (not that I can't grind on my own, but kinda promised I'd grind with them). Laic is at 43 and I think I have a decent shot of getting him to the mid-50's, or even 60, by the time BC hits. Who knows, stranger things have happened.

I <3 Mutilate

So, here's a number crunchy explanation

MH Damage: 146-199, 95.6 DPS
OH Damage: 57-77, 44.8 DPS

Mutliate: 60 energy, instant attack with each weapon +88 (IIRC). +50% damage if opponent is poisoned. +20% damage from points in Subtlety. +30% crit damage from points in Assassination. Grants 2 CP.

So, without poison...
Base Mutilate: 487 damage
Mutilate with MH Crit: 999 damage
Mutilate with OH Crit: 796 damage
Mutilate with both Crit: 1297 damage
and with poison
Base Mutilate: 747.9damage
Mutilate with MH Crit: 1498 damage
Mutilate with OH Crit: 1194 damage
Mutilate with both Crit: 1944.54 damage

Now, I have around a 20% chance to crit, unbuffed. Since each weapons crit is calculated independantly I have a 64% that neither crit, 16% MH only, 16% OH only, and 4% that both crit. Taking that I get an average damage (crit included):

Mutilate w/o Poison: 658 damage
Mutilate w/ Poison: 987 damage

Also due to talents I have a 100% of getting an extra CP from any ability that grats CP that crits. With mutilate that means I have a 36% of getting a third CP.

So, as an opener I can do the following:
Energy Skill
110 Base
50 Cheap Shot
70 -tick-
10 Mutilate
30 -tick- Cheap Shot breaks
5 Kindey Shot (Find Weakness +10% damage, Improved Kidney Shot +9% damage)
25 -tick-
45 -tick-
65 -tick- Kidney Shot breaks
5 Mutilate
So, for those 10 seconds I've got my opponent locked down, and done roughly 1746 white damage and, on average, 658 damage from the first mutilate (assuming I didn't proc a poison off my initial hits) and 1086 damage off the second (presuming poison procced somewhere in there, taking into account the +10% damage bonus from Find Weakness). Grand total for damage is 3490.

None of the abilities listed above can be broke by damage, so I am free to use Deadly Poison V, which deals 136 damage over 12 seconds and stacks up to 5 times, for a total of nearly 680 damage over 12 seconds. With a full stack that's 113 damage per tick.

Now, if I wanted to I could Cold Blood that last mutilate to bring it's damage up to around 2139, pushing my total damage deal in that 10 seconds (not including poison damage) to around 4542 damage.

At this point my opponent is free, but DOT'd and crippled and I've got 3 CP :P

Patch Madness...

Well, as I'm sure everyone knows, yesterday was patch day. And what a crazy day it was. I got a few of my addons updated, most significant were Bartender and AG Unit Frames. Auctioneer is down for around two weeks, so I'll be doing no AH work in the near future...

It's funny going back to Vanilla WoW. I mean, I have my couple of addons, but so much is new again. Fubar was throwing errors, so I had to disable it. I really like the new talents, though I've very disappointed that some of the newer announced rogue talent changes didn't make it. It doesn't effect the build I'm using now, but it does effect my planned grinding build...

Of all the changes, the one I'm adapting the worst to is no longer being able to auto change pages on my hunter. The newest Bartender3 build appears to offer page swapping while holding down a modifier key, but it's still not the same thing. That being said, auto attack and auto shot interchanging is a wonderful change! Still going to have to figure out how to make this all work...

More as I know it... What are your impressions on the patch?