Well, I ventured into my first heroic today. It was painful. (Sorry, I can't resist the temptation to qq a bit first, I promise a question will be forthcoming.)
We started off with the standard LFG screen pug. The druid tank yelled in /p "WILL SOMEONE GET THEIR *** DOWN HERE AND HELP SUMMON!?!" Hmm, that didn't bode well. I had signed up for a regular run, they insisted on heroic. I said I was neither geared nor skilled enough for a heroic, and was ignored. I asked to be assigned melee mobs as I was the only cc capable class, and I was not yet comfortable with caster trapping, and I didn't want things to go to hell too readily. To which the tank replied, "HA! You're never getting in to Kara." Gee, thanks, that's encouraging.
Two pulls and three wipes later, I set up my trap, ask if everyone is ready, get the ok from the party leader and the healer, pull, wipe, and get yelled at by the tank and called a huntard. Once we all re-rez (again) the tank insists on pulling, does so without checking if anyone else is ready, and we wipe again. At that point the healer started hollering at the tank. Not only had he not checked with everyone, but the healer was at half mana and he wasn't on full health.
"Haha I didn't even check lol"
...
{{bang head here}}
Two more wipes and my bow is broken, the healer is out of mana pots, and everyone is wishing we had horde characters to camp the hell out of this twit of a tank. Finally, finally, we agree to go our separate ways.
...
Anyway, the question comes in because in my panic over my first heroic run, I did an emergency respec to survival. With no other cc and my very very newbishness, I figured I needed all the help I could get.
Well, I don't think I got an accurate picture of what survival could do since I never, you know, survived. So I went back to grinding, and couldn't get adjusted to the new system. With all my new crits and my newly weakened pet, I was pulling aggro all the time. This last run has made me determined to wait until my guild catches up and we have enough 70's to do guild-only runs. However, I would like to get used to enough survival to not be completely inept when that happy day finally arrives.
I got on the net and tried to research hybrid builds. While there is much debate on one tree vs. another, there is little info about blending them. What I finally scratched together was this. My hope is that it has enough pet toughness to not make grinding a nightmare, enough crit to keep my damage decent, and enough trap talents to give me good cc practice.
Any thoughts?
sorry for the long buildup for a relatively simple question
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First - use wowhead's talent calculator (at wowhead.com). It loads faster and works better IMO.
Second, trap mastery and imp feign death can be avoided, at most you may need 1 point in trap mastery. Fill up survival instincts instead, followed by survivalist.
Third, the problem with hybrid builds is that you miss out on the best talents from the tree. In your case:
Serpent's Swiftness - a straight 20% DPS increase for you and your pet from the BM tree. Expose Weakness - a huge DPS boost. Lightning Reflexes - increased damage and crit Mortal Shots - Great Multiplication in crit damage, essentially a 7.5% DPS increase assuming 25% crit
If I may make a recommendation, I would go BM and just trap like normal. I'm a beast master and I have no problems trapping. When you hit heroics, you can either stay BM and have limitted traps (hey, people raid as 41/20/0, so it cant be too bad) or go full survival and hold back when soloing. Also, your DPS WILL be lacking with your build, while you do pick up crit and pet DPS, you are missing several key talents which any build needs for DPS. And that means on DPS-necessary fights you will more likely fail.
Second, trap mastery and imp feign death can be avoided, at most you may need 1 point in trap mastery. Fill up survival instincts instead, followed by survivalist.
Third, the problem with hybrid builds is that you miss out on the best talents from the tree. In your case:
If I may make a recommendation, I would go BM and just trap like normal. I'm a beast master and I have no problems trapping. When you hit heroics, you can either stay BM and have limitted traps (hey, people raid as 41/20/0, so it cant be too bad) or go full survival and hold back when soloing. Also, your DPS WILL be lacking with your build, while you do pick up crit and pet DPS, you are missing several key talents which any build needs for DPS. And that means on DPS-necessary fights you will more likely fail.
skribs wrote:
-- Alot of stuff I agree with -- (hey, people raid as 41/20/0, so it cant be too bad)
Well, I agree with everything but this. You have to remember that in a raid, a Hunter trap is rarely depended on quite so much as it would be depended on in a Five man. And the times it is depended on, there are circumstances that negates the lack of Trap talents. Let's say Moroes, where you have time before the pull to get the CD over with. You have the entire length of the table to have your CD over with after trap breaks, and so on. Other than that, I don't trap in Karazhan at all unless I just trap a random mob that the tank missed. In a Heroic instance, the trap talents are worth every single penny. Granted, they aren't necessary, since any specc can be used in a Heroic. They are however, very nice to have if you are inclined to specc Survival.
But Skribs is right. Your hybrid tree is... well, it isn't optimal in any way. I have applauded a 41/0/20 build before, since it is to me the ultimate surviver's build in solo PvE. But it comes up short in Group PvE. It is the build you use only if you are planning on spending the next week soloing. In a group, you simply won't cut it.
However! There is light at the end of the tunnel. I am Survival Specced myself, and I don't have any problems soloing. Granted, I'll have more downtime than a Beastmastery Hunter while doing continuous grinding, but my Group performance completely offsets this. And I can only imagine how I'd be with the full Five Man build. Didn't get to use it for long before respeccing to Raid Surv, so I haven't really had the chance to really explore the possibilities.
Here you go. One of the Ultimate Five-Man Survival builds
It will allow you to solo quite well, if you just adapt to a slightly weaker pet and keep your traps and Feign Death button readily available. Personally, I miss the wonderful Beastmastery soloing, but in a five man I have grown far too fond of our CC abilities and general utility. Just remember that Survival is an Agility *****, and for Five Mans, I don't recommend you speccing it until you have a minimum of 500-550 Agility. In my raidgroup, I don't allow any Hunter to specc Surv for Karazhan until they have a minimum of 600 Agility unbuffed.
Sigh, I figured it was too good to be true.
I suppose if hybrids could really give you the best of all (or at least two) worlds, all you long-termers would be touting them by now. I guess I just got greedy.
I don't have a problem playing the game solo. I think if I hadn't stumbled on a class that was built for solo play early on, I'd have given up on WoW altogether. The trouble is, I'm hitting a bottleneck in my quest to shop from Aethien's list. Quite a few of the items require, if not an instance run, at least a group quest.
While I'm willing to inflict my newbieness on guildies who will all be in the same boat, I hesitate to do that to (possibly) innocent strangers. So - how does one get geared and trained for group work without being a hinderance to the group you're learning in?
I figure the options are:
1) Grit my teeth and pug. Endure the jerks and snobs and space cadets more clueless than I am. Pay the repair bills and just hope against hope something drops and I win a roll or two. Sort of a baptism-by-radioactive-waste thing.
2) Wait altogether. Take a break from the game until my guild has had time to ripen a bit. It's not like RL couldn't use a little more attention anyway.
3) Wait in-game. Solo-grind what rep I can, and get what gear I can alone. Save up for my epic flyer. Hope for more bop recipe drops and maybe a couple more discoveries. Play alts.
4) Leave my guild, and hope to find one more able to mold a fresh 70 into a real end-gamer.
So far, I've been mostly 3, some 2, and as little 1 as possible. I hope 4 will never become appealing, I love my guildies.
...
Hmm, somehow I managed to turn this from a spec question to a gear whine. This life-after-70 stuff is a good deal more complex than I had anticipated. Thank goodness for this forum, or I'd be completely lost.
Does there ever come a time when WoW is anything other than a highly addictive exercise in patience?
*edit* yay! 100 posts
Edited, Oct 14th 2007 6:34am by Laecy
I suppose if hybrids could really give you the best of all (or at least two) worlds, all you long-termers would be touting them by now. I guess I just got greedy.
I don't have a problem playing the game solo. I think if I hadn't stumbled on a class that was built for solo play early on, I'd have given up on WoW altogether. The trouble is, I'm hitting a bottleneck in my quest to shop from Aethien's list. Quite a few of the items require, if not an instance run, at least a group quest.
While I'm willing to inflict my newbieness on guildies who will all be in the same boat, I hesitate to do that to (possibly) innocent strangers. So - how does one get geared and trained for group work without being a hinderance to the group you're learning in?
I figure the options are:
1) Grit my teeth and pug. Endure the jerks and snobs and space cadets more clueless than I am. Pay the repair bills and just hope against hope something drops and I win a roll or two. Sort of a baptism-by-radioactive-waste thing.
2) Wait altogether. Take a break from the game until my guild has had time to ripen a bit. It's not like RL couldn't use a little more attention anyway.
3) Wait in-game. Solo-grind what rep I can, and get what gear I can alone. Save up for my epic flyer. Hope for more bop recipe drops and maybe a couple more discoveries. Play alts.
4) Leave my guild, and hope to find one more able to mold a fresh 70 into a real end-gamer.
So far, I've been mostly 3, some 2, and as little 1 as possible. I hope 4 will never become appealing, I love my guildies.
...
Hmm, somehow I managed to turn this from a spec question to a gear whine. This life-after-70 stuff is a good deal more complex than I had anticipated. Thank goodness for this forum, or I'd be completely lost.
Does there ever come a time when WoW is anything other than a highly addictive exercise in patience?
*edit* yay! 100 posts
Edited, Oct 14th 2007 6:34am by Laecy
Meh, there's no reason to despair. You can't learn without doing, and doing will in this case mean going into PuGs or Guildruns. I don't see a single reason why you shouldn't go with PuGs (besides the obvious one, having to deal with the mouthbreathing smacktards that infest half the pugs in WoW) or Guildruns. You will learn as you go, and you have already shown more than enough care for the group if you considered respeccing just for CC.
PuG, PuG anything and everything you can.
For me, grouping is in my blood, I would have quit on this game before lvl 30 if it wasnt for Deadmines, wailing caverns, stockades etc.
And lvl 70 is where the real grouping begins.
Also, in contrairy to the horrorstories often posted on these boards, those are exceptions.
I've had hundreds (if not thousands) of good PuG's and probably less then 50 bad ones.
Get yourself into as many instances as you can and within a couple of weeks you'll be very much used to doing instances.
For heroics, start with either Heroic Mechanar or Heroic Slave Pens.
These are ran the most often and usually considered easiest.
There is a large chance there ar some people in there who have been there a lot of times and know the whole instance.
Also, Mechanar has a pretty sweet pair of gloves at the end for hunters ;)
And in time, when your guildies get better you'll have some good experience and you'll be able to help them.
oh, and before i forget get good people (especially tanks and healers) in your friendlist.
Makes pugging a lot easier ;)
For me, grouping is in my blood, I would have quit on this game before lvl 30 if it wasnt for Deadmines, wailing caverns, stockades etc.
And lvl 70 is where the real grouping begins.
Also, in contrairy to the horrorstories often posted on these boards, those are exceptions.
I've had hundreds (if not thousands) of good PuG's and probably less then 50 bad ones.
Get yourself into as many instances as you can and within a couple of weeks you'll be very much used to doing instances.
For heroics, start with either Heroic Mechanar or Heroic Slave Pens.
These are ran the most often and usually considered easiest.
There is a large chance there ar some people in there who have been there a lot of times and know the whole instance.
Also, Mechanar has a pretty sweet pair of gloves at the end for hunters ;)
And in time, when your guildies get better you'll have some good experience and you'll be able to help them.
oh, and before i forget get good people (especially tanks and healers) in your friendlist.
Makes pugging a lot easier ;)
I respecced SV for more utility in level 70 5-mans as well, and I absolutely love it. My build is 0/21/40, and sometimes I have so many CC options at my disposal that I don't quite know what to do with them all. Scatter Shot from the MM tree is a healer saver in groups, and it's my alternative to Intimidate in solo play. The stun duration is the same as Intimidate, and my pet disengages as soon as I use it. By the time the Stun effect is worn off, my pet is far enough away from the mob for me to re-engage and get another Charge off for another 1 second of stun and a threat spike.
In same level fights (ie elementals at Elemental Plateau) I found it quite tricky at times to score the kill without taking a beating or trapping mobs to buy (waste) time. As I got a bit more geared and a bit more acquainted with my new build, I found that my pet's difficulty in tanking due to my crit rate is almost balanced by the fact that all those crits make the mobs die faster.
Group play, however, is where my spec really shines. With my previous BM build, I had traps that lasted max 20 seconds on a 30 second cooldown. That meant the most I could hope for was 2 consequitive traps on one mob before I was kiting/pet kiting for the third trap. With SV trap durations/cooldowns on my current spec (from talents alone) I have max 26 second duration on my Freeze Traps with a 24 second cooldown. Absolutely brilliant. I can chain trap the same mob all day if I had to, and it's not uncommon to see two mobs trapped if a pull has gone awry. I lack the ability to silence casters, but in a pinch I can put them to sleep (and patch 2.3 is going to make that option even better).
Now, with the first set bonus from the Beast Lord gear active on my toon, I get 26 second Freeze Trap duration on a 20 second cooldown. I haven't had a chance to try it out in an instance yet, but I can't wait to see how much of a difference it makes. If it turns out the 6 second overlap is redundant, I can always respec and move three talent points to another chewy toy to up my dps or survivability. As it is, the overlap means if I have a trap down before the pull and my traps are off cooldown, I can trap the first mob and have up to 6 seconds to trap another mob and still get a second trap on the first mob as soon as/just before it breaks out of the first trap. Glee!
As for the PUGs...eep. Hate them. Can't stand them. I ran my first Heroic Slave Pens yesterday. Everyone in the group was very well geared. Everyone in the group had more than enough skill to pull off the run quite easily. Halfway through the run, 3 of the people in the group turned in to slobbering retards over loot with ninja accusations flying left and right. We cleared the instance, despite that being by far, without question, the most shamefully behaving group of people I had ever run with. 3 of them were put on my ignore list before I logged out for the day.
However...
The tendancy is very real to look at PUGs as simply a way to get through a dungeon. I've also come to look at PUGs as a means of "recruitment". I'm not talking recruitment in the guild sense, I'm talking about adding strong players to my friend list after the run to more easily call upon the next time I have a run planned and we need some extra people. That is huge. It's absolutely critical. The tank and healer I now normally run with (and am in a 3v3 arena team with) were met that way. We had some solid runs together, shared our dislike for PUGs, and decided if there was a run to be done, it was best done when all three of us were on. Right now, we're planning a bunch of non-heroic level 70 runs to get everyone keyed for heroics (I already have all of my heroic keys...just helping them get up to speed).
In other words, the more PUGs I run, the closer I get to not having to run with any more PUGs. The two others I now run with each have their own seperate guilds, but we have sort of our own pseudo-guild going that was built over time from the people we'd pick up for this run or that and who demonstrated not only the skill/gear necessary to succeed, but also a respectable attitude with zero drama.
In same level fights (ie elementals at Elemental Plateau) I found it quite tricky at times to score the kill without taking a beating or trapping mobs to buy (waste) time. As I got a bit more geared and a bit more acquainted with my new build, I found that my pet's difficulty in tanking due to my crit rate is almost balanced by the fact that all those crits make the mobs die faster.
Group play, however, is where my spec really shines. With my previous BM build, I had traps that lasted max 20 seconds on a 30 second cooldown. That meant the most I could hope for was 2 consequitive traps on one mob before I was kiting/pet kiting for the third trap. With SV trap durations/cooldowns on my current spec (from talents alone) I have max 26 second duration on my Freeze Traps with a 24 second cooldown. Absolutely brilliant. I can chain trap the same mob all day if I had to, and it's not uncommon to see two mobs trapped if a pull has gone awry. I lack the ability to silence casters, but in a pinch I can put them to sleep (and patch 2.3 is going to make that option even better).
Now, with the first set bonus from the Beast Lord gear active on my toon, I get 26 second Freeze Trap duration on a 20 second cooldown. I haven't had a chance to try it out in an instance yet, but I can't wait to see how much of a difference it makes. If it turns out the 6 second overlap is redundant, I can always respec and move three talent points to another chewy toy to up my dps or survivability. As it is, the overlap means if I have a trap down before the pull and my traps are off cooldown, I can trap the first mob and have up to 6 seconds to trap another mob and still get a second trap on the first mob as soon as/just before it breaks out of the first trap. Glee!
As for the PUGs...eep. Hate them. Can't stand them. I ran my first Heroic Slave Pens yesterday. Everyone in the group was very well geared. Everyone in the group had more than enough skill to pull off the run quite easily. Halfway through the run, 3 of the people in the group turned in to slobbering retards over loot with ninja accusations flying left and right. We cleared the instance, despite that being by far, without question, the most shamefully behaving group of people I had ever run with. 3 of them were put on my ignore list before I logged out for the day.
However...
The tendancy is very real to look at PUGs as simply a way to get through a dungeon. I've also come to look at PUGs as a means of "recruitment". I'm not talking recruitment in the guild sense, I'm talking about adding strong players to my friend list after the run to more easily call upon the next time I have a run planned and we need some extra people. That is huge. It's absolutely critical. The tank and healer I now normally run with (and am in a 3v3 arena team with) were met that way. We had some solid runs together, shared our dislike for PUGs, and decided if there was a run to be done, it was best done when all three of us were on. Right now, we're planning a bunch of non-heroic level 70 runs to get everyone keyed for heroics (I already have all of my heroic keys...just helping them get up to speed).
In other words, the more PUGs I run, the closer I get to not having to run with any more PUGs. The two others I now run with each have their own seperate guilds, but we have sort of our own pseudo-guild going that was built over time from the people we'd pick up for this run or that and who demonstrated not only the skill/gear necessary to succeed, but also a respectable attitude with zero drama.
Well, you were right. I joined a couple more pugs, had a couple more painful experiences. But then I joined up with a group that was very nice. The tank was an arms warrior that only did pvp, but he offered to respec for us. Figured it was his duty since he needed the run to work up to heroics for nethers. We told him we thought it would be okay. Our healer was very nice (incredibly well geared), and although he had to leave early, he gave us over an hour's warning about it. After that, it was me, a frost mage, and a lock.
None of us but the healer knew the instance, so we were very patient with each other. They gave me all the trap cooldown time I needed, pulled very carefully, and kept the chaos to a minimum while the warrior relearned all of his tanking moves. The only thing that cracked me up about him was that he was this constant flurry of motion, rather than just sitting there and getting thwacked on. I suppose it was a pvp habit.
Although the healer knew the instance, he never told us how to do stuff. I whispered him and asked him why, he said the best way to learn was to do things ourselves, and he was in no hurry. Since we were being so careful, we never died, so no harm done.
In the end we only got to the first boss, and the healer had to leave because we were going so slowly, but overall, I called it a successful pug.
Plus, the healer promised to keep me on his backup list for guildruns in case they have a no-show, and the tank said I could join his pvp group should I ever feel inclined to play that aspect of the game.
So - Yay! - and thanks for kicking me in the rear and not letting me give up on pugs.
None of us but the healer knew the instance, so we were very patient with each other. They gave me all the trap cooldown time I needed, pulled very carefully, and kept the chaos to a minimum while the warrior relearned all of his tanking moves. The only thing that cracked me up about him was that he was this constant flurry of motion, rather than just sitting there and getting thwacked on. I suppose it was a pvp habit.
Although the healer knew the instance, he never told us how to do stuff. I whispered him and asked him why, he said the best way to learn was to do things ourselves, and he was in no hurry. Since we were being so careful, we never died, so no harm done.
In the end we only got to the first boss, and the healer had to leave because we were going so slowly, but overall, I called it a successful pug.
Plus, the healer promised to keep me on his backup list for guildruns in case they have a no-show, and the tank said I could join his pvp group should I ever feel inclined to play that aspect of the game.
So - Yay! - and thanks for kicking me in the rear and not letting me give up on pugs.
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