by Eddie Carrington

If you’ve played a hunter for any length of time, you’ve heard the mantra that hunters should always, “Stack Hit until capped. Then stack Agility, followed by either Critical Strike or Armor Penetration.” That’s solid advice, but the choices presented really depend on you being Marksmanship or Survival.

Unfortunately, we tend not to explain why or how they help your spec of choice. And forget it if you’re a Beast Master, you might never learn how to improve your pet’s performance to help increase your own raid performance. (Okay, I’ll admit to having a bit of a bias for letting people raid the spec of their choice instead of whatever is today’s maximum dps darling.)

Anyways, let’s take a look at what we call hunter stats and how they impact your hunter.

Hit Rating

Hit rating is probably the single most important stat you need to track as a hunter. So important it’s even one of the few stats that Ghostcrawler has opened up and said hunters would need to stack even in Cataclysm.

You can check WoWWiki and it’ll give a long explanation on how Hit is defined as the percentage chance you will miss a target. I don’t know about you, but talking about reducing your chance of missing as a definition of hit is a bit confusing. So let’s make it a bit simpler.

With each percentage of Hit you achieve, the better the chance you’ll hit your target. Simply put, you can’t hurt it if you can’t hit it. So you stack Hit to make sure you hit the raid bosses.

Also, keep in mind that Hit impacts your pet also. Based on the patch notes of 3.2.0, your pet receives 100% of your hit. Meaning, every 1% below Hit cap the hunter is your pet will be 1% under cap also. So if you’re at 8% Hit, you’re pet will be capped and can’t miss.

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THIS GUIDE IS NOT MADE AND IS TAKEN FROM ELITIST JERKS, MURNA FROM THE ELITIST JERKS GETS ALL CREDIT, IM JUST SHARING IT

With that being said here is the guide, it’s quite a read but it’s worth it

Post updated for patch 3.2.2

Agi – Agility
AP – Attack Power
ArPen – Armorpenetrationrating
BiS – Best in Slot
CP – Combo Point
iLotP – Improved Leader of the Pack
FB – Ferocious Bite
SR – Savage Roar
Str – Strength
TF – Tiger’s Fury

1. Speccing your Cat

Maximum Single-Target DPS: Talent Calculator – World of Warcraft

This spec takes every talent, that increases single target DPS. You’ve got one point left, possibilities could be: 4/5 Furor, 1/2 iLotP or 1/3 Feral Instinct

Maximum AoE-DPS: Talent Calculator – World of Warcraft

This spec only has 5 different points. You’ve got 3/3 Feral Instinct here and 2/2 iLotP. You could aswell take the two points out of iLotP and together with the last left point skill 3/5 Feral Aggression.

Actually Feral Swiftness and Survival Instincts don’t directly increase your damage. But they offer very significant survival tools. Additionaly, both allow you to DPS for a second longer here and there.

2. DPS Rotation

As there is no real rotation, we speak of a “priority list” for cat DPS. Try to follow the following instructions in the given order.

1. Keep up Savage Roar
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.

This priority list is quite hard to maintain. Cat DPS is one of the most complicated ones in PvE WoW. Try to remember these rules:

1. Remember: Savage Roar buffs everything; Mangle buffs bleeds and shred; Bleeds buff shred. That means, never shred without applying mangle and at least one bleeding.
2. It doesn’t matter how many CP you use for SR. Just make sure it never drops!
3. Use Rip and FB only with 5 CP
4. It is very tricky to squeeze in FB’s in your rotation. At first you should try to maximize SR, Mangle, Rip and Rake uptime (in this order). When you get more experienced, try to FB more. You need to guess how much time is needed for building up 5 CP’s – this depends on your crit chance. Usually, a FB is worth dropping Rip for 4 Ticks approx (8 seconds). Remember that after using Rip, you need energy for building at least one more CP to refresh SR if necessary.
5. FB is most efficient when used at 35 energy. It gets worse when you spend more, thus making it least efficient when using with 65 energy.
6. A 5 CP FB is always more efficient than a shred, even when used at 65 energy.
7. When using the shred glyph: When rake and rip are about to expire and you could shred to extend the rip duration for 2 more seconds at the cost of letting rake drop for 1-2 seconds – do it.

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by Chase Christian

Your goal is firmly in sight: your rogue is ready to being his or her assault upon the Lich King’s lands. With only a fleeting few levels between you and the level cap, these last few minutes are among the most important in your rogue’s development. With nearly every trick available and our DPS rotations fleshed out, your rogue will be feeling more and more like the level 80 you are about to become.

All three talent trees are fairly viable for leveling, and so this is by far the most flexible period of the leveling process. As I mentioned in the last installment, experimenting with different specs, rotations, and playstyles will only become harder and harder to do once you reach level 80. During these important formative levels, max out your respect costs and give every build a fair shake. You’ll be a better rogue for it in the end.

New abilities:
While there’s only really two new moves between level 71 and level 80, one of our earliest spells gets a complete makeover. Feint, which we learn at level 16, finally becomes the spell we always knew it could be. If used, it reduces all AoE damage that a rogue will take for 6 seconds. This spell alone will save you a hundred times while raiding, as there is plenty of AoE damage being thrown around. You won’t pick up Rank 8 (the version with the bonus) until level 78, but be sure to use it in any dungeons you explore while leveling up.

Prior to that, you’ll be receiving one of, in my opinion, our “signature moves”. Tricks of the Trade is our threat redirection / damage boost combo, which sees extensive use in both PvE and PvP. In a raid or dungeon environment, it becomes the tank’s best friend, and can really make your dungeon experiences much smoother. In certain fights where DPS gain significant buffs (like Hodir), Tricks of the Trade is crucial to a tank being able to maintain aggro on a mob. It can even be a DPS buff to share with another rogue during “burst phases” of certain fights. Tossing this to your partner in PvP can often be enough to score a kill, as the damage bonus is significant.

One of the reasons I see TotT as so integral to the WotLK rogue is its integration into the new T10 set. The 2 piece set bonus makes TotT yield energy instead of costing it, resulting in a significant DPS boost for everyone involved. We want to cast it more often, it allows more threat to be redirected due to increased energy, and it results in a higher uptime on friendly DPS classes. Imagine it as a poor level 80’s Renataki’s Charm of Trickery: pop it when you’re low on energy to give you just enough juice to extend that stunlock a few more seconds.

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Darkmoon faire comes along every 1 month, and in that time is an easy way to make some decent cash by sitting patiently by a vendor.

Lhara – NPC – World of Warcraft

This vendor “Lhara” sells exotic goods, amongst those exotic goods are goods such as Frost Lotus, or Arctic Fur.

These items are stock items, and respawn in her inventory every 13-16 mins.

Arctic Fur sells for a good 100g, Frost Lotus for 60g.

Now some may say this is not worth the wait… but if you got something else to do, you could check back at the vendor every so often to grab your free materials and sell them for profit.

Enjoy, dont all crowd over that one vendor all at once >.>

Btw, frost lotus is only 4g from the vendor at neutral, arctic fur is 12g.
Also she sells a bunch of other random trade materials that also tend to sell quite high, such as low lvl herbs, due to players powerleveling their inscription / alchemy etc etc on their alts.

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If you stand at a certain spot @ Bloodlord Mandokir you won’t run around while getting feared. Do to this
exploit you don’t need to clear the full room and you also will not need to reface him after fear making the fight even easier since you don’t get hit from behind.
Pics added for positioning are as following:

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4…1809005827.jpg
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/4…1809005828.jpg
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/7…1809005844.jpg

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by Daniel Whitcomb

So. You’ve conquered Ulduar and Naxxramas. Or maybe you’ve just collected a lot of badges and got some nice shiny gear. Either way, you’re ready to go humor that old codger Fordring and fight and die in his silly little Arena. Even if the whole thing is obviously a waste of good time that could be spent killing the Scourge, the Ebon Blade’s agreed to cooperate, so you’d better be ready too, death knight. So today, we’ll give you a few tips about surviving the first few bosses of the Trial of the Crusader the death knight way.
Northrend Beasts

The Northrend Beasts are actually 3 boss fights in one, all in quick succession with no time to rest or rebuff. If there’s a challenge in this fight, it’s probably being able to switch up your tactics quickly between each boss.

The first boss, Gormok, is pretty straightforward for DPS. Stand behind him and wail away (while avoiding the Snowbold fire, of course). If you’re on Snobold duty, be sure to be ready to engage those as well. Either way, If the Snobolds and Gormok himself are close enough to take advantage of pestilence, don’t be afraid to take that route. Every little extra bit helps. You’ll probably be taking some extra AE damage from Staggering Stomp as well, so watch for that and make sure to bandage or swap in a Death Strike if needed. Gormok’s also an excellent boss to summon your Army of the Dead on. Try it at the beginning or just after he’s cast a staggering stomp. As long as the stomp doesn’t clear them out, they should do a nice chunk of damage.

Tanks will be switching off aggro here via Taunt as the Impale debuff stacks. Determine with your fellow tank and raid leader as to how many stacks of Impale you’ll take before switching. When your time comes to take over, be ready to taunt. When handing off, it might be best to disengage and back off while the other tank takes over. If you accidentally pull aggro again and get another stack of Impale, you may overtax your healers. Of course, if your fellow tank does this to you, you can use Death Grip to reclaim Gormok, but watch out, I have heard reports that he can hit diminishing returns on taunt if you do it too much.

The next boss, the two Jormungar worms, are slightly trickier. Acidmaw will probably die first, since his Paralytic Toxin will be the bigger trouble. As a DPS, if you get hit with the toxin, be sure to run to the Dreadscale tank and take a hit of the burning bile damage to burn it off. Acidmaw should drop quick, at which point Dreadscale is more or less a tank and spank. However, you’ll still want to try to spread out a bit to avoid others with Burning Bile, and above all, watch the slime pool. you don’t want to back into one of those while trying to dodge Burning Bile, you’ll be just as dead. Also, remember your Anti-Magic Shell. It can be just the thing to avoid a few ticks of said burning bile, get you some extra runic power, and take some pressure off your healer.

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I just found out a much easier way to do the achievement:

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Usually, like most of us know, it is done by getting the stun dispelled with ex. Cleanse, or using a PvP trinket.

However, there is something much easier. When/If you get stunned, you just hover your mouse in front of your character
and spam the right mousebutton as he throws his hammer at you. You will then catch the hammer and be able to throw
it just like if you were cleansed.

This tactic is alot fun too, and I do really believe that it was this way Blizzard really wanted us to do this achievement

Enjoy

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Hadronox Denied

http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=1297

Ok as some of you know methods such as feign death, vanish and crashing racer etc no longer give the achievement for some reason. Here is a tip to easily complete the achievement without the needs of a specific class or item.

1) Position your team at the very top of the web.
2) Have a member run down hugging the right, and pull the 1st pack.
3) Pull them to the spot just before Hadronox, but after the web.
4) Die.
5) As the player is dying the team slowly runs down.
6) The healer resses the dead player, while the rest charge Hadronox.
7) Kill the Boss and ding achievement.
Quickly run down and jump into the water below or get swarmed by an endless wave of adds!

Using this method any group can get the achievement easily, in my cases we havent encountered a single add till after the kill.

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Another little gold making tip.

Every year Winterveil comes through, and people need small eggs, I’m not sure why, cookies or something.

Here are in, (My Opinion) The best spots to farm them.

Alliance!

Westfall, Anywhere you see a vulture, pull it’s head off. And still it’s eggs.

Horde!

Outside Silvermoon City, Dragonhawks! Same deal, de-head them and loot the eggs, I’m sure someone could whip up a botting profile for these,

If you’re going to do that swing by Curse.com – WoW Addons WAR Addons Gamer Blogs Forums and pick up Lootfilter.
LootFilter – Addons – Curse

Last year I made a killing off this by dominating the AH, I got (over all of Winterveil a total of 2500g~

A note on lootfilter, only allow it to filter bags that don’t contain reagents / food, etc.

I made a mistake of not doing this and lost 600 symbol of kings and 100 food and water.

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