Mend Pet

For the last few months, my constant companion has been Ambrose, my pretty blue moth from Netherstorm.  I picked him up the day they became tamable and he’s been my companion in most of my Wrath raiding career.

I’m not one of those people who has something against cats.  Especially now that pets are much more equal and there is a lot more variety, you don’t see cats every where anymore.  I’ve always had a cat, leveling through old world, I had Echeyakee for a long while and I also had Broken Tooth when he was still OP.

I know that Moths don’t do the best DPS.  Raptors, Devilsaurs, Cats are all higher in DPS right now, from what I’ve heard.  But how much higher?  Is it enough that I should switch?

Today I went to Silvermoon to test out my cat and my moth to see how much a difference there was.  First, I’d like to point out that the patrolling NPCs in Silvermoon don’t like people in combat… they all would bug out and get stuck in place when they were walking by me… I managed to collect a whole group of them over my 10 min tests!

Anyway…

I didn’t do any real attacking myself (other than an initial auto-shot to get Recount going), both pets had identical talent specs and I had Call of the Wild turned off for both.  Their other special abilities were all on auto-cast… except Serenity Dust, since that stupid spell HAS to be manually cast every minute (a bit of a negative point in the Moth column already).

I set them on the Heroic Training Dummy for 10 minutes each.  Here are my results:

Well, as expected… kitty (Rajah) is coming out on top.  Nearly 20 DPS difference, in fact… here’s the breakdown, if you’re curious:

So what do I do?  Is 20 DPS enough?  Keep in mind, this is completely unbuffed and without Cobra Strikes and all that good stuff… maybe it would be an even bigger difference then?

I think I’ll bring Rajah along to the raids this week and see if I notice any difference.  It will certainly be nice to not having to manually cast Serenity Dust…

As patch 3.1 approaches, many of us are trying to consider our options regarding dual-specs.  Which characters should we get it for, and why?  Well, as I’ve been quite enjoying the Marksman tree lately, I started to consider whether I should get it as a secondary spec, just for fun.  Then I thought, maybe I’ll pick up dual specs on my mage, try some Frost for PvP!  And I’ve already given up on leveling my priest until I can get him his dual specs.

But all this thinking started making my wallet scream at me.  So I defined a few key points which would help me decide whether it’s worth getting or not.

From my humble point of view, there are 3 reasons one would be willing to get dual specs.

1. A likelihood of respecing mid-raid.
   If you are an off-tank and can find yourself often being asked to switch to your DPS gear for some fights, having a dual-spec option would be beneficial to both you and your entire raid.
2. Constant swapping between 10-man and 25-man specs, or PvE and PvP specs, or grinding and raiding/PvP specs.
   If you have two specs you swap between often, you’ll be able to save time and more importantly, money by picking up dual specs.  It isn’t necessary, since you could pretty easily just visit a trainer between your arenas and raids or your 10-man and 25-man, but if you think you’d like to do this more than 20 times between two specific specs (20 x 50g = 1000g), it certainly a worthy investment, and it will allow you to do this much more often than you might be doing now.  Keep in mind though that if you are someone who likes to test out different talents often, this isn’t a ticket to change your talents for free!
3. Convenience.
   Maybe you occasionally change between two specs.  Every few weeks you like to spend a day doing PvP, or once in a while if a healer is nowhere to be found you like to shake your branches or shed your shadowform.  Well, now that change will be much more convenient.  This change won’t make you PvP or change roles more often, but when that situation presents itself you won’t have to make the trip back to the old world and pick your individual points.  It’s only 1000g anyway, right?

I have characters that fall under every point.

My Hunter falls under category 3.  She doesn’t need a trash or farming or PvP spec.  I have never paid more than 35g to respec, and I can probably count the number of times I’ve respec’d on my fingers.  But I wouldn’t mind being able to switch to MM on pet unfriendly fights.  I wouldn’t mind being able to do a bit more damage on the off chance I decide to hit the BGs or arenas. I wouldn’t mind specing for a pet tank should the situation where it’s needed arise.

My Priest falls under both 1 and 2.  I love leveling as Shadow, but I hate grouping as Shadow.  It is the opposite for Holy.  Being able to switch to Shadow easily while I work my way through Northrend would be a huge incentive for me to play him.  And if I ever get to the point where I’m raiding, I know we wouldn’t need all the healers in ever single trash or boss pull, so I could always make myself more useful by switching.

So what’s my decision?  Well, as much as I’m enjoying MM, I don’t mind manually respecing when I feel like switching.  It’s certainly cheaper, since it’s a rare thing.  However, there’s no question for my Priest, he’s going to camp out at the trainer until the patch hits.

Last night I headed into Naxx donning my shiny new 13/53/7 spec.

I’d only tested it out briefly, a few minutes with the Target Dummy in Silvermoon (no one else ever uses the ones in Silvermoon!) and then a short romp through Heroic Violet Hold this weekend.

My overall impression from the raid?  MM is fun, but sometimes watching all the cooldowns feels like it’s just busywork.  But I think I’ve found my temporary happy medium between the horrible DPS of Beast Mastery and the unbearable clunkiness of Survival, so I’ll probably stick it out at least until 3.1 hits.

When the raid started, I was… a bit lost.  I am still new to this, and I’ve had to move my buttons around.  “Where’s Volley?!” I found myself panicking.  I couldn’t remember what the icon even looked like, I just knew it was always ’6′.  Well, now it’s ‘Alt-2′ apparently.

The first thing I noticed was my Volleys were critting SO much.  I check my character sheet… I’m up to nearly 47% crit while raid buffed… holy crap!  I’m sitting at 36% unbuffed, which is a lot more than my 30% in BM.  Crits are shiny.

The second thing I noticed was on our first boss fight – we started with Military, and we were fighting Instructor Razuvious.  About 30 seconds into the fight, I glance at my mana bar.  I’d used only a scintilla of mana, sitting at 92%!  CRAP!  I forgot to take Viper off again! I thought to myself.  But I check and double check, and I’m most definitely rocking the Dragonhawk.

Even with just 2 points in Efficiency and 1 point in Rapid Recuperation, I don’t think I dropped below 50% mana on any fight.

/melt.

Things I’ve learned:  I need to bind Readiness to a key somewhere.  I have all my cooldowns bound to mouse buttons, except for that one.  I wonder if I can find another button on my mouse that I’m not using…

I also need to pay more attention to when I need to use Aimed and when to use Multi.  I try to switch between them depending on how many mobs I’m fighting, but sometimes I just hit one without paying attention.

I’m glad I’ve decided to try this spec out, though!  And I was happy to see myself hit 3rd on DPS for one of the boss fights It’s no 1st place ZOMG OP BM, but it’ll do!

I’m gonna do it!  I’m going to try out the Marksman tree.

I haven’t been Marks since I was about level 64 (although from 10-64 I was solely MM).

Why?  Well, while being on the top of the damage meters isn’t everything to me, I can’t stand continuously being in the bottom 5.  In fact, as of late I’ve had to completely avoid Recount and WWS because every time I look it just quashes all my passion for Huntering!

I already tried Survival, but it’s just not for me.  So I think right now is the perfect time to give MM a shot.  I was catching up on my podcasts and happened to listen through BRK’s episode with Nassira and Nassira’s Hunter Discussion… and I must say, it got me a little bit pumped about the spec!

So now I have to figure out a spec and shot priority.  I know there are plenty of great resources out there, so that should be no problem.

I’ll let you know how it goes after next week’s raids!

Oh, and also… I won’t be around for the rest of the week, heading off to a conference.  But don’t worry, I have posts scheduled so you won’t miss any Mend Pet!

It has always been my philosophy that you should spend talent points the way you’d like.  Don’t just use some cookie-cutter spec – and if you do, make sure you understand every point and why it’s most valuable there.

Well, I’ve decided to play around with my talents on my mage.  It’ll be her very first respec – at level 69.

While I’ve tried (with little effort or result) to look for some good posts on which talents are most valuable to for a mage who’s leveling, I’ve decided to just go with my gut and what works best for my play style.

What is my play style? Well, Alouette doesn’t really do instances, and she has a permanent leveling partner.  A protection warrior.  Leveling a mage on her own and leveling with your own personal tanking pet (tee hee, don’t tell Tegrin I called him that!) it’s quite a different ball game.

Currently, Alouette’s spec is like this:  0/60/0 (FIRE!). When I made my mage, all I knew was this:  I wanna set stuff on fire.  So what did I do for her first 69 levels?  dump my points in every talent I saw that said anything along the lines of “Increases damage” or “Increases crit”.

It’s hard not to build my mage that way… and it’s hard to see any reason on putting my talents in either of the other trees.  After all, the abilities buffed by the first tier of talents in Arcane and Frost are abilities I don’t even keep on my main bar.

But now I’ve got through the talents and changed them around to accommodate for my new leveling companion.  And this is what I’ve decided to go with: 10/50/0.

Let me explain the changes I’ve made.

Arcane Stability 5/5 (added): I want some stuff from the 2nd and 3rd tier, and need to put these points somewhere.  This made sense because it might come in handy in PvP (Dark Iron is a PvP server).

Arcane Concentration 5/5 (added): Free spells is quite nice to have.  Sure, I can drink my conjured water and use my evocation between fights, but the less downtime I have while working my way up, the better.

Flamethrowing (removed): When I’ve got a meat shield with me, it’s not really necessary for me to be miles from the mob.  I can shoot them just fine from right behind the big Night Elf.

Impact (removed): I loved this one when I was leveling solo, but it seems unnecessary when I have someone taking the hits anyway, and he’s got his own, talentless stuns.

Burning Soul (removed): I’m not taking hits much, so pushback resistance isn’t that useful.  The 10% threat decrease is nice, but I’ve already got Vigilence on me constantly and as long as I don’t open with a pyro, I generally don’t pull aggro.

Molten Fury (removed): With 2 people hitting them, mobs die pretty quickly once they are down to 35%, an extra 12% is just overkill!

Living Bomb (removed): I’m still debating this one.  I never use it… like, never.  Because rarely do mobs live 12 whole seconds, and we tend to take them on 1 at a time.  Sure there’s the DoT, but I can do the total DoT damage with one Fireball.  I will probably pick this one up as I get a little further into the 70s.

So, that’s the extent of my changes.  What’s next for Alouette?  Where will the rest of her points go?

Well, I’m looking at Spell Impact in the Arcane tree for my next 3 points.  Living Bomb after that.  And then, I might delve a bit deeper into the Arcane tree to pick up Arcane Meditation.

I know this spec I’ve designed is pretty specific to my personal situation, but that’s what specializations are about.

If anyone’s got any little mage advice they’d like to share… now would be the time!