Inscription Fun For Renaming Hunter Pets

I haven't had the time to check into all the glyphs and inscription stuff that has been coming out in the beta patches but from what I've seen, it really looks like another fun profession. That's why I decided that I'm going to make the druid I'm leveling now and Inscriptionist when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out.

One of the things that caught my eye a few weeks ago while browsing through the new Inscription stuff that has been coming out is this nifty thing they can craft called Certificate of Ownership. Basically it's something hunters can get to rename their pets every 7 days. I'm sure there are a lot of hunters who wish they could rename their pet. maybe you named it something silly and now you want a serious name or something. Maybe you want to turn Snuggles into Spike. Or maybe you want it the other way around, turning a serious name into something cute. Whatever the case, with Certificate of Ownership, it's now possible. I'm sure this is something warlocks wish they could use for their demon pets but alas I don't think that will ever happen.

Now if only this worked on player names, my druid could sure use a name change but I'm too cheap right now to pay for the paid name change service.

Hunter and Paladin WoTLK Talents Available In Wowhead!

As the rest of the classes got a look at their cool new WoTLK talents, hunters and paladins were made to wait quite a while. But at last, they're finally here, again thanks to Wowhead. The paladin trees got quite a bit of a shake up, which probably was one of the reasons why it look longer to come out.

Click here to see the WoTLK Hunter talents.

I'd have to say that the new hunter talents look really nice. I don't play one but I understand enough about them to say that the new stuff will make a lot of hunters drool. Survival hunters will drool on the Hunting party talent, making them quite useful in raids by regenerating mana, rage, energy and runic power. This also helps their mana pool problems. Marksmanship's Chimera Shot will allow the hunter to be a bit more versatile, consuming various stings to fit the situation needed. BM's Aspect Mastery also improves on the hunter's need for the situation by buffing the various aspects the hunter could use.

Click here to see the WoTLK Paladin talents.

The Paladin talents got quite a shakeup, especially for the holy and protection trees. Imp conc aura is now in the holy tree while divine strength is in prot. Various talents have shifted tiers within their trees too. I noticed a lot of focus on Judgements for the holy tree, which is strange because it's something I don't normally use a whole lot as a Holy Paladin. Beacon of light is quite interesting since it heals the whole raid but not for much considering it's a small amount spread over 15 seconds.

Retribution's most interesting new talents are probably Conviction and Divine Storm. With all the focus on the Judgements for the holy tree, some people are already speculating on going holy/ret for conviction since it's assumed the increased crit chance will also apply to heals. Divine Storm is interesting since it not only affects more than one target but also heals the 3 raid members for 20% of the damage.

Protection's most talked about talent in Divine Guardian, which is useful for paladins of any spec but most especially for tankadins and healadins. 15% of all damage taken by the raid within 30 yards redirected to the paladin while his/her bubble (divine shield) is up has a lot of applications and has a lot of paladins drooling over this talent. I can see this as one of the talents that will entice paladins to spec into the Protection tree, aside from Blessing of Kings.

Click here to see the WoTLK talent trees of all classes from Wowhead.

Cutest Hunter Pet Ever?

It seems like every pet hunters can tame so far have nothing that caters to players who love cute and cuddly things... at least no until Wrath of the Lich King comes out. The Artic Grizzly Cub shown in the videos above is such a cute little thing that it makes me think that's what a gnome druid bear form should look like if only gnomes could be druids. I'm actually getting thoughts about playing a hunter because of this cub. Nothing beats the panda cub non combat pet in terms of cuteness but for me this takes the cake as the cutest tamable pet ever.

60-70 in 23 Hours!

I still remember when the Burning Crusade expansion first came out there was huge news of someone who leveled from 60 to 70 really really quickly. It took him just 28 hours to get all the way to 70. This was such a big deal because it normally took the rest of us a few weeks to do the job. Personally, it took me a little more than a month. Well this guy’s record just got beaten by a Chinese player named “SilverDragon” from the guild . TBC was recently just released in China and “SilverDragon”, a troll hunter, got from 60 to 70 in just 23 hours.

One side of me says congratulations for breaking the record. It truly is a huge feat that I really can’t imagine someone doing. It’s just crazy! This brings me to what my other side thinks about this feat. This is plain and simply a very dumb thing to do. First of all the game wasn’t designed so that you get from 60-70 in a little more than a day. It’s designed so that you can enjoy the content leveling your way to 70 at a much slower pace. I can say that while it took me longer than others to hit 70, it was fun because the leveling process in new zones doing new quests is fun. Of course there’s also the more obvious reason why this feat is stupid. Treasure your health! Don’t compromise it because of a game just to set a record!

Click on image to enlarge

Hunter "Deadzone" Could Be Trashed

The deadzone is probably the main reason why hunters hate doing arena battles. Line of sight issues are another but that's another story. For those who don't know, the deadzone is the spot in between the hunter and his/her enemy wherein he/she is too close to use ranged attacks while also being too far to use melee attacks, thus making the hunter unable to do anything. It's something all hunters complain about and finally after all the complaining, the deadzone might be a thing of the past soon.

I'm guessing this will be implenented in patch 2.3 since it's the awesome patch! No sure word on when though since Kalgan didn't say anything in his post

We're planning to shrink the min range on ranged attacks to reduce or eliminate the "dead zone". The only point to the dead zone was to ensure the min range on ranged weapons was enough such that ranged weapon attacks wouldn't be used while also being melee'd (at least by mobs... players have a bit of slush built in).

I'm guessing this still doesn't mean hunters could use their ranged weapons at point blank range. That would be way unfair. But this change would mean that hunters won't need to be so far away from their target to use them. If hunters could use their ranged weapons at point bank range, the devs would have to take away some of their abilities like wing clip to even things out.

Woe is my mage who will not only get his ice barriers dispelled by a hunter's arcane shot but will not be able to take advantage of the deadzone either.

Wowhead Has Some Hunter Love!

The new talent trees for WoTLK are out in Wowhead (still the alpha versions) but hunters and paladins are still left in the dark about theirs. Thankfully, Wowhead has a few new features for hunters to cheer about.

The most interesting new feature for me is the new talent calculator for hunter pets. As you might know, hunter pets will be switching from the training points system to the talent tree system in the next expansion. there's a calculator for every pet type - raptor, cat, boar, ravager, you name it!

Wowhead also has two other tools in choosing the pet that you want. They care about your individual criteria in choosing your favorite pet so they gave hunters a pet comparison table to show how each pet stacks up with the others stat -wise and also a 3D pet gallery to let help you make the aesthetics choice. After all, we do want our pets to look the way we want them as much as possible.

These tools will definitely make choosing your pet and optimizing their utility easier. The best thing is that you can do all this even before actually doing them in game. This way you can show your choices around to some people and ask their opinion and make the necessary changes without any consequences in the game.

Now if only the new hunter and paladin talent trees could come out sooner...