Ajik - Hunter Application

[Ajik]

Hello all,

My name is Jack. I'm 27, and currently a graduate student living in Michigan. Yesterday I posted a LFGuild thread on WoW recruitment forum, and I was directed here by Ashin's reply.

I started playing WoW around the time when BWL was released, and I fell in love with the game instantly. In Vanilla WoW, I was pretty much playing a catch-up game since I did not play at release, but I did manage to get into a decent raiding guild and we went through MC, Onyxia, most part of BWL, ZG, and AQ20. Back then, the guild was ranked No.2 on the server, and the No.1 guild kept poaching players from us, and soon several key members left and the guild pretty much fell apart from there. In BC, I played a resto shaman and managed to clear BT pre-nerf, again my guild was ranked No. 2 on the server (No. 1 was on horde's side, oh yeah, back then I used to play alliance toons, yeeek...). Unfortunately, soon after we cleared BT, drama happened between two officers and the guild split into two and neither survived the split. In WotLK, I joined a casual raiding guild playing a rogue due to RL constraints, went through 12/14 Ulduar with various difficulty modes along the way, again guild split and didn't survive. In Cata, I went 6/13 HM in tier 11, 6/7 HM in tier 12 playing a healing priest (both Holy/Disc specs). Before the release of DS, the guild masters quit the game and deicded to go play SWTOR (lol??) The guild was disbanded, and I decided to take a break from the game.

I came back a month before the release of MoP and joined a reroll guild, just like every other reroll, it started great, but steadily lost people along the way. Just a few days ago, they have decided to release all the raiders and focus on PvP instead. That's when I decided to look for a new guild. I was attracted to South of Heaven not only because of its raid times and excellent results, more importantly, this guild has been around for quite a long time, and stability is the most important thing I look for when searching for a guild.

I am able to play all three hunter specs, though I'm more familiar with Survival and BM specs at the moment since I've been using them in Heroics and LFRs since the release of this expansion. I reached Lv. 90 roughly 3 days after release and has been gearing myself since then, mainly through heroic runs, reputation rewards, and LFRs. I only have very limited experience with normal mode raiding since the guild I'm in hasn't been able to raid, my experience comes mainly from PuG raids.

I'd like to think that I am a capable player that can take constructive criticism very well. Nobody is perfect and mistakes do happen, but I am pretty good at adjusting on the fly and will do anything to try not to make the same mistake twice.

Here's my armory link: http://us.battle.net...n/Ajik/advanced

I think that pretty much does it for my introduction. Thank you all for taking the time to read it through and feel free to let me know if you guys have any questions.

[Ajik]

Just FYI, here's a link to my priest where I did most of my raiding in Cata: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/cairne/Archona/advanced

[Mytralala]

Welcome to the forums! Thanks for your app!

[Ajik]

Welcome to the forums! Thanks for your app!

Thank you for the welcome. =D

[Ashin]

Hi Jack,

It was nice to talk to you in game last night, and thanks for a solid introduction. As I mentioned, we do have a hunter currently in trial. But the DPS roster is dynamic at the moment, so I'd like to pursue the dialog with you.

From talking to you last night, I understand the Hunter is a new toon, and that you'd previously had some HM raiding experience as priest. I suppose that prompts the question - have you raided as a ranged DPS class before? Sometimes players who are great in one role are not necessarily great in another, which is why I ask. Can you tell us why you picked hunter, what you like about it, and how you feel about the current state of huntercraft as of 5.x?

Thank you!

[Ajik]

Hey Ashin,

It was nice talking to you too. To answer your first question, yes, I have raided as ranged dps before. In vanilla, my main was a mage; and in Cata, my off-spec was shadow, and I was often the person asked to switch to shadow when dps was lacking and healing wasn't as intense during the initial release of Firelands; though after our disc priest left the guild, I was asked to switch from Holy to Disc as a main tank healer and never really dps'ed again. In some perspective, hunter plays very similar to rogue where energy/focus management is important. During the years that I've played WoW, I have played ranged dps, melee dps, and healer roles, I find that regardless of what roles I took, I always managed to become a solid player in the raid team.

I chose hunter because it is unique among ranged dps classes that it does not use mana, but instead uses a regenerated focus system that's similar to rogue's energy regeneration. This unique combination was what first attracted me to reroll a hunter before the release of MoP. On top of that, managing a pet at the same time also adds to the appeal. And after leveling through the content, I find myself enjoying the class very much.

With the range requirement removed and expertise introduced in MoP, both hit and expertise need to be capped. As a general rule of thumb, the stat priority goes agi > hit = cap > crit > haste > mastery for SV hunters and agi > hit = cap > crit ~> mastery > haste for BM hunters. Since the overhaul of talents, most talents nowadays are situational. For pure PvE benefits, most dps choices stay the same between specializations except the lv 75 tier, where Lynx Rush benefits BM hunters more and A Murder of Crows should be the best choice for SV hunters.

Overall, I feel that current hunters don't usually occupy the very top of the dps meter, but if played right can still be quite decent. Add on to the fact that hunters have the choice of bringing different buffs into the raid depending on the team composition, it makes hunters decent dps choices that can also benefit the entire raid in various ways.

[acierCRISIS]

Hello potential recruit. My name is kitty and im one of the guilds hunters.

Just a few responses, Im going to disagree with you about stat priorities. While in a vacuum its agi > hit/exp > crit > haste > mastery for survival i feel that in a raiding environment that mastery beats haste because two reasons. The first being the haste plateau is very difficult to reach with current gear (its possible with heroic t14 gear but thats a long ways off) and the second being that if your not meeting the break point haste is largely wasted because of the huge amount of instants we have to deal with now. I feel that in the current state of the game point for point mastery is better.

My second response is with the lvl 75 talents. Im not in love with AMOC atm. My reasoning being that when a fight starts you naturally blow everything right? Blow everything, reset with readiness and blow it again. Im not a fan of AMOC because of the huge focus requirement (60 is alot) and crows dont stack. With the 30 second duration on crows its technically more dps to use lynx rush which takes about 5 seconds to complete, leaving it ready to go again as soon as you use readiness so you can get it back on cooldown. Lynx also has no focus cost which means you can get serpent/black arrow down quicker.

Im also confused on why you chose to take exhiliration. While it can be a good "ogod!" heal i feel its better to simply avoid damage then to try and snipe what would be a kill hit. I think iron hawk is better in 95% of cases as preventing 15% of all incoming dmg adds up to more over the course of a fight rather then 1-2 exhil uses.

Edited October 16, 2012 by acierCRISIS

[Tilluk]

hi welcome to the forums

[Ajik]

Hello acierCRISIS,

Thank you for the insightful responses. I find that at my current gear level, almost all reforges are concerned with getting the hit/expertise caps. I can see your logic behind the temporary mastery > haste until heroic T14 gear, and I agree until we can hit the haste plateau, mastery is probably better than haste/focus regen. Right now though, I can't really test it very effectively.

I've only reset my lv 75 talent for a couple of days, and I'm testing a couple of openers using AMOC. One is to pop it right away, the other is to get in Black Arrow and Serpent Sting first, then pop AMOC. So far, I'm not seeing a detectable difference, but the 60 focus requirement is indeed very annoying. Sometimes even have to wait for a few seconds after it comes off of CD before I can use it due to Explosive Shots having higher priority. AMOC currently models higher than Lynx Rush on paper, though AMOC lasts 30 seconds while Lynx Rush is only 4 seconds. I can see them used in different situations. Maybe on a boss fight where it may become temporarily immune, it is better to take Lynx Rush for the short period burst damage than the prolonged AMOC talent.

Due to my limited MoP experience (pugging normal mode...), I find it more beneficial to have a "oops" button at my disposal. While I do my best to avoid dmg, some are simply unavoidable, and truth be told, in a pug where people often don't flask/food buff themselves, dps are not exactly on the healers' priority list. I agree that in an organized raid, iron hawk is the better choice with its 15% dmg reduction.

[Ajik]

hi welcome to the forums

Thank you. =)