Roxanne Flowers

The talent isn't "broken" ... because it is working exactly the way that Blizzard implemented it. This is how it worked then, and how it works now, so Blizz-like checkbox is checked. What you're getting hung up on is the verbiage used in the talent, which does not accurately/precisely describe what the talent actually DOES (I know, surprise). You're thinking that Anger Management ought to simply alter the timing of the Rage Decay Ticks out of combat. That's NOT what the talent does. Here, have a look: So I might have my timing off slightly in my posts above, but what I wrote describes what I see playing in game.

Then why is it that out of combat I see my Rage going UP AND DOWN over time after combat? The Rage decay behavior over time looks like this: 10 . 11 . 9 . 10 . 8 . 9 . 7 . 8 . 6 . 7 . 5 . 6 . 4 . 5 . 3 . 4 . 2 . 3 . 1 . 2 . 0 . 1 . 0 ... 0 ... 0 I can hit Bloodrage (untalented) while just standing around, not being attacked, and at the end of 10 seconds I've got 15 Rage, because Anger Management has been adding +1 Rage per 2 seconds even while I'm in combat. The behavior over time looks like this: 10 . 11 . 12 . 13 . 14 . 15 Without Anger Management, I only see Rage go DOWN out of combat and never bump UP over time. The Rage decay behavior over time looks like this: 10 . 8 . 6 . 4 . 2 . 0 ... 0 Likewise, without Anger Management, untalented Bloodrage generates 10 Rage ... and that's it. The behavior over time looks like this: 10 Your turn.

Your tears are delicious. Please cry more.

Probably the best answer is that they were looking to diversify into supporting off-meta specs ... and failed. Occam's Razor(arrows) and all that ... Makes me wonder if this was originally intended to be a Survivalist Set to be augmented by Lightning Reflexes and Survivalist that just got mangled too badly during development and then they ran out of time and just shoved it out the door rather than spend any more resources on it. Result? Junk of all Trades, master of nothing.

Counter-proposal ... http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LV0xzZVEzA0xRio Anger Management is ALWAYS ON. In combat. Out of combat. Always. It's a "free" +1 Rage every 2 seconds talent that is ALWAYS ON. That's +30 Rage per minute. Guess what? You aren't going to be getting +30 Rage per minute from 5/5 Unbridled Wrath, unless if you're Dual Wielding 1.30 speed Daggers (maybe?). That's why Anger Management is "so good" for so many Warriors. You'd also be surprised to learn that 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout can reduce incoming damage pretty dramatically simply because Attack Power scales so much better for NPCs than it does for PCs. For us, Attack Power is like 15:1 or so in terms of DPS. For NPCs it's more like down around 2:1 or so (exact details can be found in another thread here in the Warrior Forum) which is incredibly powerful scaling.

WTB 4 handed weapon for tanking.

+9% is for single wielding and for skills use (yellow damage hits). If you're Dual Wielding, going beyond +9% will improve your hit chances with both main hand and off-hand auto attacks, which are both penalized by Dual Wielding.

Challenge accepted. Total Armor: 2141 Total Agility: +151 Total Intellect: +66 Total Spirit: +38 Total Stamina: +114 Total Critical Strike: +3% Total Spell Power (damage and healing): +42 Reduces Rapid Fire cooldown from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. Equipment slots left open (12): Neck, Back, Wrist, Hand, Waist, Ring 1, Ring 2, Trinket 1, Trinket 2, Main Hand, Off-Hand, Ranged Weapon It's essentially a Marksman Set, but one that can be used by "every Hunter spec" instead of just Marksman spec alone, and which is meant to augment (slightly) the damage potential of your Magic (as opposed to Physical) attacks. The +Healing will boost your Mend Pet skill (ever so slightly). 15 seconds of Rapid Fire every 5 minutes is a 1:20 uptime ratio of a +40% ranged weapon speed boost (combine with Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc for most noticeable effect). 15 seconds of Rapid Fire every 3 minutes is a 1:12 uptime ratio of a +40% ranged weapon speed boost (combine with Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc for most noticeable effect). Arcane Shot (untalented) has a 6 second cooldown, but with 5/5 Improved Arcane Shot this can be lowered to 5 seconds ... which effectively increases the mana cost over time by +20% if always fired at every cooldown (6/5=1.2). 5/5 Efficiency plus the 3 Set Bonus adds up to ... +20% reduced mana cost for Arcane Shot ... bringing the Mana Per Second cost of Arcane Shot back into line with its untalented version. It's a Set that is "limited" enough to allow you to pick up pieces of ANOTHER SET to combine with it, so don't think of this Set as being ALL you'll be wearing. You could be wearing a few other Sets in addition to this one. Ironically, this Set looks like it might be fairly decent at supporting a MM/Survival build, particularly if going 30-31 talent points deep into Survival (in which case you're looking at around +173-174 Agility and getting even more Health out of that +114 Stamina). But yeah, on balance it looks like you're right ... this Set by itself isn't filling any particular NEED except perhaps as an adjunct to combine with ANOTHER Set (or two or three) to create powerful combos. For starters, I'd want to have the Primal Blessing Set as my melee weapons and then start looking at what other Sets I could put into the remaining equipment slots for even more Set Bonuses. Think of this Set as being only HALF, or maybe even a THIRD (or a quarter?) of your equipped gear, rather than it being everything you've got. In that sense, the Set is very "flexible" in that it can be combined with a lot of other possible Sets.

And here I was assuming there would be a PvP and a PvE realm for TBC, and that both realms would serve THE ENTIRE PLANET. What were you assuming? Different realms for different time zones?

Yeah, Prospecting for Gems was part of Jewelcrafting, that we don't get until the Exodar crashes off Kalimdor. The reason for selling Ore instead of Bars is because you can raise Mining skill by Smelting (some) Ores, which allows people to stay in cities advancing their Mining Skill without having to go out and find the stuff themselves ... you know ... the LAZINESS reason.

Some roles are ALWAYS in demand. If you read these forums, it sounds like there are NEVER enough (good) Tanks. There may be "plenty of" people willing to Tank, but there's never enough people who are really good at it WHEN you need them to join your raid. Same goes for healers, although there tend to be more people capable of healing than there are people who are good at it. And naturally, the same again goes for people whose job is to do damage. The bottom line is that raiders need to be on top of their game ... preferably enough so that they don't need to be coached through it. Players who raid need to not only know their own class, but what other classes are capable of doing, so as to have the flexibility to adjust to changing circumstances. There are lots of Level 60 characters by now, but the number of Players behind those characters include a lot of people who don't have the right mentality for playing the game the way it needs to be played in raids. So really, it comes down to "if you're good you'll find a place" for the most part. When you're confronted by Quantity, what sets people apart is Quality.

Same here.

Well joy. Tried loading up the Power Word: Fortitude macro this morning and ... it doesn't work, even with Supermacro.

Congratulations on joining a realm that hasn't suffered from runaway inflation yet.

/join team Killerduki

Don't look to me for Feral experience, I play Moonkin. I'm just looking at the costs and rates of recovery and figuring "what can I do with these resources in the time allowed?" and just theorycrafting from there based on the constraints.

Good for you. /cheer Probably. Might take slightly longer to form a 5-man group, but so long as you can FIND a group to join, you shouldn't be blocked from progressing. According to the posters in our Warrior Forum, you either go Fury or Go Home. I myself am building my Warrior on an 11/0/40 spec and think the elitist jerks can have fun playing with their cookie cutters in the well worn wheel ruts they don't want to climb out of. So no ... it's not a question of "easier" but more a matter of "what do you enjoy more?" ... and from the sound of it, you enjoy being an aggro magnet. Keep it up. If you're a Hordie at heart, stick with the Horde. You'll enjoy it more, which is what this is really all about. If you hate PvP and ganking, Darrowshire is the place for you. Welcome to the Promised Land. Now, help us Keep Mulgore Beautiful and do what you can to clean up Barrens Chat (the never ending battle). Reports of the demise of Horde side on Darrowshire are greatly exaggerated. You've already seen for yourself that you're Not Alone™.

Depends on what your goal is. For most people, the goal is to do the maximum quantity of damage in the least amount of time (kill it fast). That tends to lead to certain "inefficiencies" of turning resources (like Energy) into damage output/throughput, but those factors are tolerated simply because the desired end result is achieved of minimizing time spent in combat. Tiger's Fury costs 30 Energy and adds damage to all of your attacks for 6 seconds. Claw costs 45 Energy and adds damage to one attack and adds 1 Combo Point. Rake costs 40 Energy and adds damage If you're not really interested in using Rip as a Finisher (because you don't expect things to survive for 8-12 seconds after using Rip), you can go with Ferocious Bite instead for "instant damage" but that will cost you ALL of your current Energy to do, even if you've got an Omen of Clarity proc up. To REALLY game all this out with Theorycrafting, you'll want to have an opening strategy and a sustained combat rotation. So for opening, if max damage in the shortest amount of time is your goal, you want to open from Prowl. Before you attack, use Tiger's Fury so that it will buff your Ravage (or Pounce, take your pick) damage. You can even write a macro that will check to see if you have Tiger's Fury active on you so as to do a "double click on one button" for activating Tiger's Fury before using Ravage or Pounce while Tiger's Fury is up. Depending on the timing between use of Tiger's Fury and Ravage/Pounce, you'll have 30-50 Energy available to you and a scant couple of seconds (or so) left on Tiger's Fury. You then switch into your sustained combat rotation. Assuming you aren't Powershifting to convert Mana (shapeshifting cost) into Energy via the Furor talent, you're going to be limited to a 20 Energy per 2 seconds rate of recovery. Tiger's Fury consumes 30 Energy and lasts 6 seconds, so if you're using Tiger's Fury as soon as it comes off cooldown, that's costing you 30 Energy every 6 seconds, leaving you only 30 Energy recovered to do other things with during those 6 second cycles. Note that 2 Tiger's Fury durations matches up to 1 Rip duration. So assuming you're fighting something that Bleeds, you can do the following rotation as Energy recovery permits. Opener: Prowl . Tiger's Fury (30) . Ravage (60) or Pounce (50) Bleed Rotation (costs 130 Energy over 12-13 seconds): Tiger's Fury (30) (when not currently active) . Rake (40) . Tiger's Fury (30) (when not currently active) . Rip (30) . Repeat Non-Bleed Rotation (costs 75 Energy over 6 seconds): Tiger's Fury (30) (when not currently active) . Claw (45) . Repeat ... until ... Ferocious Bite (35) to Kill and/or 5 Combo Points on target Non-Bleed Powershifting Rotation (approximately 6 seconds): Tiger's Fury (30) . Claw (45) . Shift to Caster . Shift to Cat . Wait for 1 tick of +20 Energy to recover . Repeat ... until ... Ferocious Bite (35) to Kill and/or 5 Combo Points on target Powershifting to spend Mana to gain 40 Energy from 5/5 Furor will allow you to add extra Claw attacks into the rotation, but you'll have to wait 2 seconds after shifting back into Cat Form to recover the extra 5 Energy you'll need (above 40) in order to be able to Claw. This can easily turn the Non-Bleed Rotation from being net recovery negative into being sustainable (at the cost of Mana for Powershifting). The whole Powershifting rotation takes about 6 seconds or so to complete, which then dovetails nicely into the duration of Tiger's Fury so as to keep maximum uptime on that buff. Note that Ferocious Bite is natively "more efficient" than converting Energy into Damage than Tiger's Fury is, so using Tiger's Fury to buff Ferocious Bite only makes sense if you use Tiger's Fury, wait 2-4 seconds to recover 20-40 Energy and then use Ferocious Bite to maximize damage output. However, if TIME is a luxury you don't have, use Ferocious Bite without having Tiger's Fury up.

I'm assuming the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds because that's pretty standard for everything else.

Rip costs 30 Energy and has a 12 second duration. This basically means that if you're going to be doing a "Rip rotation" you want to orient it around using Rip every 12 seconds regardless of how many Combo Points you've managed to stack onto your target. So for repeatable use Combo Point builders, you've got Rake which does a 9 second bleed DoT for 40 Energy and Claw for 45 Energy. Over 12 seconds of Energy recovery, you'll receive 120 Energy ... assuming you aren't Powershifting to generate 40 Energy from Furor on an almost constant basis. 120 Energy over 12 seconds is enough to pay for: Rip = 30 Rake = 40 Claw = 45 Total: 115 Energy 12 seconds amounts to 8 cycles of 1.5 second global cooldowns, and shifting forms "counts" against the global cooldown. So with 5/5 Furor you could shift out/shift back to gain 40 Energy to spend on either Rake or Claw, but doing so would essentially "cost" 2 global cooldown cycles to do, meaning that unless you want to go seriously negative on your Energy recovery rate over time, you're stuck with doing no more than 2 Powershifts for Energy from Furor every 12 seconds due to the constraint of fitting that many global cooldowns inside of a 12 second window ... which can be done, don't get me wrong, but it takes WORK in order to get the pattern down. In the simplest possible context, for a much more Brain Dead rotation using Rip, try simply do the following: Rake: 40 Energy, 9 second bleed DoT Rip: 30 Energy, 12 second bleed DoT Claw: 45 Energy Repeat Basic idead is to use Rake after the bleed DoT expires and to use Rip after its previous use expires so you aren't "wasting" damage. In sustained duration fights, this will give you the most efficient bleed DoT performance that can be supported by use of Rake and Rip. The benefits of using a Rake/Rip/Claw(x?) rotation is that if your target decides to run, you've already got them DoTed (and bleeding out) for that You Are Already Dead, You Just Haven't Gotten The Memo Yet performance profile. But yeah, if you're going to use Rip, do it on a 12 (or so) second rotation cycle. Figure out how many Cat Skills you want to make use of during those 12 seconds (including Rip itself) and that'll tell you what your "optimal" rotation is going to be when using Rip.

So let me get this straight. The purpose of a Pet is to add (45-57)*6 = 270-342 damage every 10 seconds (4 others plus Hunter plus the Wolf Pet)? That's literally +27 to +34.2 Damage Per Second if it's buffing 5 Players (assuming they're all within 15 yards of the Wolf when they Howl) for an average of +306 damage per Howl ... and that's before including the effects of armor in reducing physical damage throughput (so you really aren't going to be getting all of that). So ... 3 Lightning Breaths generates 297-339 Nature damage for an average of 318 damage ... and if your Wind Serpent can do this 3 times in 10 seconds then it is by definition inflicting more DPS by using Lightning Breath than a Wolf is buffing a party of 5 by using Furious Howl. Wind Serpents can dramatically increase their rate of fire of using Lightning Breath if the Hunter has the Bestial Discipline talent in the Beast Mastery tree which increases your Pet's regeneration of Focus. Furious Howl gains no such benefits from the Beast Master talent tree (or any other trees, for that matter). Pretty much the only way I see Howl being better than Lightning Breath for a Hunter in a raid is if you've got multiple Hunters in a party group and they all bring Wolves to Howl for them so as to maximize the staggered uptime on Howl and to affect 10 targets instead of just (up to) 6 when there's only 1 Hunter in a DPS party ... except, that's hardly realistic now is it? How many raid groups put 5 Hunters together on one of their party groupings? My point being that to get the "most" out of Furious Howl you have to jump through a LOT of hoops, including both positioning and timing. That's a lot of extra work for remarkably little return on investment. Wind Serpents with Lightning Breath can at least be "parked" (using the Stay command) at range to use Lightning Breath against targets, they can have their "rate of fire" increased by Beast Master talents allowing them to recover Focus more quickly and they don't require careful positioning or timing to deal their damage while staying out of melee range. Which brings me to a question that I haven't seen answered anywhere yet (or if it has been, I must have missed it). Unleashed Fury increases the damage done by your Pets by 4% per talent point (up to 5 talent points). Ferocity increases the critical hit chance of your Pets by 3% per talent point (up to 5 talent points). Frenzy offers a 20% chance per talent point to gain +30% attack speed for 8 seconds after dealing a melee critical strike (up to 5 talent points). Bestial Wrath sends your Pet into a rage for 18 seconds that causes +50% damage. These are the Pet Damage talents from the Beast Mastery tree. Now obviously, Frenzy applies only to melee attacks by your Pet, but can it also proc off melee Pet Skills like Claw and Bite and Charge and so on? Do PBAoE Skills like Screech or Thunderstomp proc Frenzy? Or is it the case that Frenzy only procs off auto attacks by your Pet? Does Unleashed Fury only affect auto attacks, or does it also apply to Pet Skills like Claw, Bite, Lightning Breath(!) and so on? Does Ferocity apply only to melee auto attacks, or does it also apply to Pet Skills like Claw, Bite, Lightning Breath(!) and so on? Is Bestial Wrath a "true" All Damage buff of +50% that also applies to Pet Skills and not just merely auto attacks only? Reason I ask is because it looks like going Beast Master with a Wind Serpent offers a greater amount of synergistic buffing than going Beast Master with a Wolf does, in "pure" min/max terms.

You're assuming that you weren't outbid or that someone else didn't just pay the buyout price.

You did. Your preference is: Divine Strength Divine Intellect Consecration My preference is: Divine Strength Spiritual Focus Consecration

Yeah, at Tier 1 Holy, if it's just a question of getting further down the talent tree, going for Divine Strength is the better of the two options until you have the luxury of dealing with endgame itemization. 5/5 Improved Seal of Righteousness works on a +1 per 6.67 Damage (basically 1/0.15=6.67) basis. At Level 26/Rank 4 Seal of Righteousness that basically amounts to a +1 to +3 damage bonus, which is very nearly a rounding error in the amount of damage the Seal is doing per melee hit. At Level 42/Rank 6 you're still only looking at +2 to +6 damage per melee hit. At Level 58/Rank 8 you're looking at +3 to +10 or so per melee hit. Not exactly overwhelming damage bonus stuff here. Indeed, you can EASILY exceed that amount of damage bonus just by doing a Judgement of the Crusader plus Seal of Righteousness combo, since the JotC will amplify the Holy Damage being done WAY BETTER than what you could be getting out of Improved Seal of Righteousness (up to the JotC rank cap), and you don't need to have Improved Seal of the Crusader to get the most out of Seal of Righteousness. These two really work well together straight out of the spellbook even without spending talent points on them. So in that regard, I'd say that killerduki is giving sound advice here in that the return on investment in Improved Seal of Righteousness is primarily aimed at improving the damage throughput of doing Judgement of Righteousness, rather than of improving the SoR functionality all that much. I will however contrast myself with killerduki by recommending investment into Divine Strength and Spiritual Focus as my personal preferences for tiers 1 and 2 in Holy, rather than spending (precious) talent points in Divine Intellect and Improved Seal of Righteousness, for a leveling build that isn't dealing with endgame itemization opportunities. Things change when you're either at or getting close to the Level Cap, but until then, I think that the return on investment is greater for Divine Strength until you can collect a set of "caster gear" meant to support an Intellect based playstyle that revolves around spellcasting rather than (just) using autoattack.