The *New and Improved* Misdirect
The last I heard, changes to one of my favorite abilities, Misdirect, may drive some hunters crazy. Misdirect will no longer be limited to 3 shots, but rather 4 seconds. Furthermore, all aggro creating abilities will be misdirected – meaning TRAPS. That’s right, we can freeze trap that stupid caster to the tank around the corner. Not only will there be a delay, but the aggro transferred to all the mage’s mob friends will head towards the tank as well. What exactly this means will be both good and bad.
The obvious good is stated above, trap aggro will allow you to use that trap on the mob right behind you, and send him back towards the tank. Or the mob you’ve found yourself in a tender hand-to-hand moment with while Feign Death is on cooldown, might just be sent scurrying away with a well timed raptor strike from Marrowstrike. Gain the respect (or at least momentary gratitude) of your healer when you combine a distracting shot and a good crit followed by kiting the onrushing trash back to the tank, with a well placed snake trap helping that taunt along.
All of this means that Misdirect has the possibility of being another “Oh Crap” button, even more useful than Feign Death. In fact, this will probably change the two in my order, making FD more an aggro management tool than ever before.
No Egg, No Cry
Well, after many weeks of frustration, the happiness finally dropped for me. 
No more egg yolks, repeated pets, and rushing to the basin every week after pulling my hair out. I suppose I don’t have any more excuses about not grinding the Baron’s mount now.
RL Rants
To those 3 of you who read my blog, perhaps one of you didn’t realize that last week I was in Jamaica. My trip started after a full day at work (3am wake-up), no nap, and a departure time at 12:50 am. Yes, 10 minutes after midnight after spending the previous 20 hours in last-minute, you can’t leave before you do this crap.
Since I’m on the road about 50 weeks a year, I’ve managed to earn quite a few airline miles – and I had decided to spend them on an upgrade into first class for the trip down. My plan was to have a stiff drink, catch my flight, have another stiff drink, and sleep to Houston. Then, after 4 hours on the ground, catch my flight to Montego Bay and sleep most of the way there. Unfortunately, what I didn’t count on was someone bringing their 3 year old, and infant, into first class, with said 3 year old right behind me. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with children up front, who are old enough to behave – but expecting a 3 year old boy not to kick the seat in front of him for 3 straight hours was apparently a bit too much. (Yes, I was 3 once, and would have done the same, but my parents never flew me, much less up front.) I arrived at my vacation looking somewhat less respectable then my passport photo.
A great vacation ensued, with me getting the real life achievement [Falling Down] from cliff diving. Yes, it’s stupid, but I only needed to do it once, and I can crow about it for the rest of my life.
Then some idiot brought their dog into the front cabin on my way back. I’m allergic to dogs. Oh, the joys of travel.
And Now You’re Off on Vacation…
Yes, a bit of Jimmy Buffet. I’m off for a week to Jamaica for some R&R, stealing away from both the construction grind, and perhaps the grind of recruiting, dailies, and the usual. Not to mention, it’s a friend’s wedding, so I’ll be off line for most of the week. However, perhaps a little medetation is what I need to help decide the direction I’m taking my main in. I’ve been trying patch up serious issues in the guild for a bit now, and if things don’t improve, I’m going to face the real conflict of leaving a guild with some awsome people in it, but that’s not headed the direction I’m looking to go in. And frankly, on my server there’s not a ton of guilds who fit the “casual-hardcore” mold – and the thought of the multiple server transfers required makes my wallet quiver with fright. (Yes, I’m an altaholic) Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
In hunter news, word form the PTR is that our favorite trash downing ability, volley, faces a change in the way maximum damage is calculated. Now, the max damage possible on 10 mobs will be the damage cap overall for volley – so engaging more than 10 mobs at once will reduce tthe amount of damage potential to each mob. While this at first appears to be a nerf, the damage possible will now scale with gear, and make increased damage possible – so I think it’s a small buff. In addition, we’ll now be able to take into account when certain talents have a greater or lesser effect – but I’m not even going to try to do that now, my mind is already on the beach. (Besides, I’m sure the folks over at elitest jerks have already calculated it out.) Combine this with the hidden volley buff to the AP coefficient, and perhaps Volley becomes a bit more useful – although it could be very, very intersting in the new Onyxia encounter.
Next time, I’ll take a look at how we might use the new and improved Misdirect.
I Feel My Blood Presure Risin…
Well, I finally managed to level my Death Knight to 80 over the weekend. So. After a quick respect to Frost (something I swore I’d never do), and getting some quick armor upgrades courtesy of our blacksmith, I took off with 2 guildies and a pick-up rogue & mage for Halls of Stone – for my first “real” tanking experience. Now, a note to those who accuse me of easy-sauce – for some strange reason, I hate HoS. To date, my hunter has never competed it, and we took along 2 who had never been in the instance as well.
Well, everything went swimmingly, even the Maiden (who has served as the bane of every group I’ve gone in with). At least, until I was trying to tank multiple mobs on the steps. For all of the vaunted AoE tanking abilities of the Death Knight class, I find that Frost is weakest in that area. I had much better agro generation in Unholy it seems, but it just may be my as yet poor tanking skill and being at the bottom end of the learning curve. My blood pressure was soaring watching them run off, driving me insane trying to stop them from attacking my favorite dwarf. Making matters worse is that the mage disconnected, throwing us into a 4 man right as the battle started. We ended up calling in another DK, and I think a single attacker made it past us, to be downed by the dps.
But hey, I’ve got new shoulder pads! Thanks to Gus, Tor, and Dragon for making it pleasant.
Little Blue Dog 