The Quest for Happy (or) "My Dog's Name is Woofles"

"Hello Edy where the heck have you been?"

I been doin' dis and dat. Lil' Ulduar. Lil' guild drama. Lil' achievementing. Lil' soul searchin' and rescued a stray puppy.

Whats this? What kinda damn answer was that? Well dear reader Edy has been bustin' her ass and having her calm tested for the last few days. Lets start with raiding. This past Wednesday your girl was back in the cold gates of ulduar taking in the sights and busting an arrow in many an iron dwarf. Managed to down 3 bosses that night but I had to come to a very painful crossroads and had to make an admition to myself that BM, as much as I love it and always will, was not going to put out the numbers I need to be truly completely raid useful to the people I run with. I also had to admit it wasn't fair to the people I run with to not try and fix that. Solution. I went back to that damned SV tree and by God this time it works. I dont know what I was doing wrong first time that was killing my dps. Exact same rotation. Spec isn't that much different just a point or two moved around. Either way it works and even if i fuck up my rotation timing a bit I still maintain 3k dps pretty easy. Its about time that Dual spec paid off for Edy, and now as BM/SV I can easily have my utility when I need it in a pet tank and put out the big numbers when I have to. I used our second ulduar day as my testing ground and the change was very clear and I must say makes me feel good to not feel like the dead weight in the run.

Now in the days between some guild drama went down and we lost 2 more members (one of which I could kiss for leaving) to a guild supposedly wanting to help us progress in the end game. Over all the course of this infection in M.A.S. I have become somewhat jaded as to caring what people what to do or dont want to do. That said however I personally have had to deal with tons of drama I sure as hell want nothing to do with as well as revolations that certain members feel there is an elitest mindset in M.A.S. itself. I was not aware pulling favors with a guild I have become good friends with over time to try and get some folks some experience and gear (folks might I add have put forth effort to progress on their own anyway) was being an elitest. I have never been a recruiter as I dont like people in general so I work with what I have aquired over time to help those that have shown the desire to do something for themselves. That however limits my ability to help but in no way makes me an elitest. I am not in charge of these runs but whatever I wont rant about that any longer it gives me a headache and really does nothing to make me want to interact with the guild I truly love.

Now I have been in flux trying to find my happy place in game again. I love instancing and raiding its where I feel I shine and even though the fights dont really change alot split second flubs/choices make for fun times for me when I have to test my skills in my class. The fact BM is so far behind MM/SV the last weeks I have been having a hard time with that happy. I had even reached the point i didnt even want to raid anymore. SV has given me that little bit of piece of mind back. I dont love it but its more fun that it was the first time I tried and as such I think I think can deal with it until blizzard can (if ever) fixes my beloved BM tree. Also in my quest for happy I have sadly found my self distancing myself from the guild I love so much. I think I have just gotten too used to running with people that are where I am in terms of skill I just really haven't felt like dealing with short tempers on learning runs, trying to teach lil' role things that should be known before reaching this level, lack of commitment, and the shooting star syndron a few get telling them to reach further and faster than they really have the ability to. I do admit fault and I could probably more to show but I honestly have no desire to explain every single aspect of everything. I am not a leader by desire. I wont be the person teaching do this this and this to explode the charts cause I dont know that kind of stuff myself well enough to teach anybody. I can only find my happy and move from there. Its a work in process.

Lastly I picked up a stray in my transition to SV raiding. His name is Woofles and anybody that is a fan of the comic Squee you will know where I got the name and he is a good puppy so far. Snuggles probably isn't keen on having to share my attention but honestly I dont have the heart to have him die all the time in raids when I am SV and also that boost from Woofles' howl makes for a nice boost. I might end up being all snuggles all the time again over time but I think my Snuggle-butt has earned his little vacation. Maybe I wil test he waters with Snuggles in our Naxx 10 attempt tonight.

Beastly

Well this weekend nothing much really happened. Once again no tiger from that bastard of a troll but I will not admit defeat yet. Green proto drake is still hiding from me. Got stuck in a failed Naxx 25 and didnt do much other raiding. Then to top things off I still cant get my stupid Battle Bot. All bitching aside though I am rather happy this week. For starters even though that Naxx 25 was a fail boat filled with the bottom rungs of top guilds on D-spine I got the one thing I abosolutely lusted after but had resigned myself to not seeing. The sexy Arrowsong is mine and I one very pleased Ed! *cough* Sorry about that....anyway its not so much I needed it. I wanted it because honestly every stat was better for BM and god knows I needed the hit since am seriously tied down in what I can do since if I lose hit from any single thing I have it on I will drop to just above 7% which is below the hit cap for me (I do wanna actually wear my T 8.5 pants at some point after all). This brings some issues to my mind though and with the looming rumors of an impending BM hunter buff it leaves me with some questions as a raider that uses the spec. Where exactly do us beast masters belong in the raid world?

This question has been bouncing around for months now and seems to not be something Blizzaard has found a solid way of fixing. When the great hunter nerf of '09 stuck I dont think the Blizz folks really thought out just how hard us poor loyal BMers would be hit and bleed out. They took our steady shot and volley power which was....ok. Then to add salt to the wound they took out pets umph away. Now I understood the need for the steady and volley nerfs though i might not have liked them. Those affected all hunters and honestly with damage volley was dealing we had no need for any other move. The problem for the BM hunter comes with the fact that we have no other shots in tree to make up for this loss. I personally speced to get aim shot cause i think its a waste to use multi on a single target or for those cases you dont need to hit but one target in the middle of a grouped mob. The problem with that is that multi and aimed shot share the same cd so in reality i have no extra shots to work with. I have auto, steady, my stings, volley and arcane (which is a joke shot imo with the minimal damage it does) and my pet. In a raid this is a problem. At times I cant have my pet fighting because I need him alive to keep the little boost to my ap up (for example Heigan, as my pet also can die from the waves). Now since my pet is removed I effectively lost a desent amount of damage on that target putting me at a bit of a handicap in the numbers game. Now in previous posts I have pointed out I do pull my weight in raids thats never been an issue because whatever I lack in sheer killing power I make up for in spades with my ability to do the utility jobs I am usually asked to do in raids.

"Why not just go Survival?" I'm stubborn. I also completely fail at learning to control SV. I can do my utility stuff BM allows in my sleep where as SV I cant react because its not second nature to me. I could never feel comfortable in that spec and as such I will gladly take my knocks as the underdog beast master. BM wasnt exactly the raid spec when I started raiding at 70 either Marks was and I still took up the challenge to make it work. Why change now?

That said Blizz is still aware that BM is below where it needs to be. With the last patch hunters did get a buff in general as hunter's mark's damage was buffed by about 200 I believe and all ranged items 226 and up recieved stat buffs to make up for the lack of specialty arrows we had in the BC days. Then there was a buff to a Marks talent as well and thats fine and dandy, but how does that exactly help a BM hunter? We again begin to fall behind as our pets really recieve no boost from hunter's mark and personally the weapon buff has no effect on what i do for the mear fact I have a 213 bow that is the exact same as before this patch came. Mind you I am by no means saying these changes are not good its just not dealing with the problems plaguing BM. Blizz has been commenting on this as well and it leaves me to wonder what exactly CAN be done about it at all?

We got our pets back to just about what they were before the first nerf. So I dont think pet buffing is a fix. We still fall pray to the fact our pets are fragile things and if they die we loose alot so it wouldnt make sense to make a BM hunter live or die with their pet and if your pet cant help at all in that fight then you are even more stuck. We also run into the problem of letting the pet play for the hunter with anymore buff as well. So if you cant buff the pet they maybe the hunter? Now I am all for this but then we run into HOW to do this? Do we buff the amount of ap given from the pet? That could work and could probably be easily done but still leaves us a little too dependant on the pet though its not gonna be as bad as the pet doing the damage itself. Now we could also be given a shot of some sort or a buff to a talent that increases our steady shot or something. Since blizzard said they had no intention of completely overhauling any more classes at present giving us another buff built into an existing talent seems the only possible choice to buff the class. I dont even have any ideas on how they can do this but I sure its being covered since they finally acted on Marks after they saw no changes for a while. I stand really curious of the future of my spec in the lands of Azeroth. Until we see some changes i can only do what I do best and thats take my cat, my spec and pwn some face in a no so direct manner.

The Way of the Ed

Well after a few days of trying to figure out just what the hell it is I want to talk about I finally settled down to decide I should address my play style (specially since I cant seem to get in a raid for crap these days and when I do people are so busy pointing fingers its a bad one anyway).

Edyion:

Well for starts Edy is a beast mastery hunter as I am sure you are well aware of by now. Yes I did not succumb to the temptation of the survival numbers. Close a few times (hell even as I type this I'm thinking about it) but I am stubborn and don't like to have my game dictated to me as to what I should and shouldn't spec since its blah blah blah fludda fludda. I started out BM as a tip on leveling from a friend of mine when I started playing. From there I began to really enjoy actually having to multitask to be affective and the utility of having a pet that wouldn't simply die in 3 hits whether it be solo or in a group and even possibly off tank something on the healer until the tank could get to it or I could get it to the tank.

Now without getting into the old "overpowered" BM of 3.0.2. and the great nerf of 3.0.8. I will admit we did need the nerf to a degree. The exstint to which we got hammered was way too much though and we are still working to recover verses the explosive shot in terms of dps. On average in a raid I will never be close to out dpsing a SV hunter and I have excepted this after much fustration and what I felt to be set backs since even equally geared I am easily run into the ground at the moment but I do hold my own. Which of course brings me back to why I remained BM in the face of all this.

Its simple. I like the utility.

I might not be pumping out the dps at the moment (will see how that holds up when 3.1. finally reaches us as I had to give up the PTR for various fustrating reasons) but my pet is still more sturdy than that of a the other hunter trees and I have perks that come in very handy on a PVP server and when I actually do decide I wish to battleground or arena. Most of all since I love instancing my pet is like a build in off tank and does very well at it. I have a very very tight relationship with my guildmates I have known the longest and in particular our few remaining tanks and our long suffering healers, and as such they have grown to trust my play style. I learned to pick up add slack and to be the flexible hunter in a run that I am now. Now I don't get the buffs of the MM and SV trees for party benefit, such as True Shot Aura and Hunting Party, which probably also hurts my raid utility some. My pet also has to be alive for me to benefit from the ap boosts, which can be a bit of a pain but at the same time since my pet takes more of a beating huntanking is more manageble for my spec than others, so in essence you are getting 2 of me for the price of one.

Now am I one that pays a ton of attention to the mechanics and math of dps? No. Math is not my thing and I sure as hell dont play this game to crunch numbers. My dps is not the top in most cases and unless something is really off or I am completely out of commission I will not be the bottom either. I am stable upper middle dps. Would I like to be the top? Who wouldn't? Its not the end of my world that I am not. Is my spec perfect? Not by any means, but my spec is set to a way that I am comfortable with. I am fortunate enough to be a guild that isn't overly concerned with those things as other more "hardcore" are. I have run with numerous other guilds and for the most part they like the way I play because, again, I am dependable and flexable.

With Dual spec I do intend to experiment more and fully learn the Marksman and Survival trees but will I be giving up Beast Mastery? Highly unlikely. With the knowledge of these trees I will be able to better improve how I do certain things I am sure. Would I be able to give you the exact numbers and mechanics of my spec? Hell no. Never said I was the hunter grand puhbah. There are sites for that. I'm just trying to give a little insight into the inner workings of the brain of an Ed.
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That said I think i will give a little insight into the things I do with Tytanya at some point as well.