Roxanne Flowers

It's really only in Copper phase that you can get Mining skill from Smelting. By the time you reach Tin (for Bronze) you start getting very very little skill from Smelting (if any at all). By the time you reach Iron and up, you can pretty much forget gaining skill from Smelting. The basic notion is that you're supposed to MINE the Ore out in the wider game world rather than just buy it off the Auction House and Smelt your way to 300 without ever leaving town. As advertised ... welcome to Vanilla, where you actually have to PLAY THE GAME to advance.

Welcome to Vanilla. You're supposed to skill up Mining by ... uh ... MINING ... not by going to the Forge.

Hardly. I just don't remember everyone's handles off the top yet. ^_~ Having been thinking about this while playing this morning, I'm starting to seriously lean towards the Holy tree instead of the Retribution tree, with the intent of using Divine Strength rather than Divine Intellect to get past tier 1 Holy. My reasoning for that preference is simply because Paladins actually GET Strength from their Level advancements, while Intellect pretty much stays put and barely budges short of gear equips. As I'm sure plenty of people in this forum can tell me, you'd want to be going with Divine Intellect as a Holy Paladin equipping Cloth to use as a healer, rather than wearing Mail/Plate and orienting around being a tanker. Therefore, on thinking further about the prospect, I figure I'd be getting more synergistic advantage out of Divine Strength when augmented with Toughness and Anticipation from the Protection tree. Anyway ... what were your 2 coppers?

Seriously looks like a Bad Pointer condition, where the pointer is pulling what amounts to null data (and therefore zero) instead of what it's supposed to. Definitely a Bug Tracker submission.

Simple. Disc/Holy Priests use Holy Fire and Smite to deal damage. There are precious few ways to boost/buff Holy damage, and for the most part Priests don't have them ... but Paladins do (Judgement of the Crusader). This creates a synergy combination between Disc/Holy Priests focusing on using Holy Fire and Smite and either Protection or Retribution Paladins (Holy Paladins will be focused on playing healer as opposed to being focused on buffing Holy damage, ironically enough) since they are focused on either tanking and/or dealing damage. Retribution Paladins have access to talents that will augment the Holy damage dealt by themselves and by party members (Improved Judgement, Improved Seal of the Crusader, Sanctity Aura). Therefore, maximum synergy advantage for a Disc/Holy Priest (or a Holy/Disc if you prefer) is to be found in a Retribution Paladin. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Individually, the Holy damage Priest and the Retribution Paladin might underperform ... but together they augment each other, and with enough of them in combination may even start overperforming relative to the alternatives. The question then becomes, what is the right combination to reach that tipping point where the synergy between the two starts to "win out" over the alternatives. This is a question of dynamic equilibrium and therefore has no hard and fast "for all time" RIGHT answer, since it basically comes down to an interaction of teamwork dynamics which are (of course) highly fluid and potentially subjective. But it is a question that is relevant to the context of this thread of whether or not Disc/Holy is "viable" in a raid environment. Next question.

Fair enough that "everything changes at 60" when you go raiding. So that makes your priorities (and perspective) on things a lot clearer. Thank you. And yes, being worried about Level 60 raiding isn't exactly a priority for me right now. ^_~

Ah, right. Wishful remembering on the silence duration.

Crit bonus for spells is +50% base. Crit bonus for melee is +100% base.

If you want to play the Healer "all the time" ... why aren't you specced for Holy?

Ah, here's the disconnect of perspective. I'm thinking in terms of "all rounder" use for the 1-60 level process (mainly because I'm new to the server and have a long road ahead of me), which means that aside from dungeons I'm looking at primarily a solo experience against a wide variety of opposition, meaning that a Ready For Anything™ approach is my way to go. You're thinking in terms of 40 man raids at 60, which is a VERY different environment ... hence why we call the two leveling and raid specs. In a raid environment, you can "tailor" your Pet's talents to meet the specific demands of that particular raid and the management challenges (and opportunities) it presents. When you're fighting PvE for XP, that opportunity to "tailor" your Pet's talents to very specific things diminishes. Both approaches have their merits, but one doesn't translate all that well into the other, since the two environments have markedly different demands. With respect to Focus regeneration, my understanding has always been that it is 20 Energy per 2 seconds for Rogues (base) and that it is 5 Focus per second for Hunter Pets (base). Bestial Discipline will increase that by 10% per talent point, which if my understanding is correct would mean either 5.5 or 6 Focus per second regeneration for either 1 or 2 talent points spent. So it's definitely faster, but I don't see how it would be "faster enough" to go from 24 Focus to 30 Focus to 36 Focus in 2 seconds (as an ideal scenario) without having Claw trigger on auto at 30 Focus because Claw has no cooldown and dropping Focus from 30 to 5 before ticking back up to 11 instead of 36. The only plausible scenario in which you can have a Pet go from 24 to 36 Focus in 2 seconds without using Claw on auto in that interval would be if there was some sort of Global Cooldown preventing use of Claw during that interval so as to make Bite take precedence (somehow). Needless to say, I'm finding that notion difficult to support when looking at sustained auto attacks where Focus is being used just about as fast as it can be recovered. Trales, the big advantage of having Bestial Discipline is that it allows recovery of 30 Focus per 5 seconds instead of 30 Focus per 6 seconds, meaning your Pet can make Focus consuming attacks "more often" in a sustained combat, resulting in a higher DPS from your Pet (and thus more Threat generation). Cruzix, I'm spelling all of this out not because I assume that YOU don't know this (because I'm actually sure you do) ... but because there are very likely to be others lurking these forums and this thread who might not know this already. If you already know the answer, you don't need to see the work that goes into finding the answer ... but if you don't know the answer already, it can be confusing to backtrack to figure out what thought process produced the answer in the first place. For me, this is a "show your work" kind of thing so that everyone can learn from it, not just those of us participating in the conversation. For example ... I'd like to know the thinking behind your value judgements on why Pets don't need much in the way of Resistances (60 or 90 is plenty). I'd also like to know why you eschew the Armor talent entirely and instead prefer pure Stamina. This is less a question of right/wrong but more wanting to understand the relative "value" you place on each of the options, and why. So far, my experience has been that "a little of everything" will tend to go farther when dealing with a widely variable matrix of opposition, which is what you tend to encounter while leveling ... while a more "tailored" approach like you're advocating for winds up being a better fit when the range of things to face narrows down predictably in places like raids. I say this because it's pretty obvious looking at the Returns On Investment for talent points that the farther you go on any single thing the less return you get for it per talent point spent (yay Diminishing Returns). WARNING: Thread Derailment Imminent That's why I'm honestly considering doing something as bizarro as this for the Owl I'm keeping for my Melee Survival Hunter (yes, you read that right): Pet Level: 60 Pet Loyalty: 6 Points Available: 300 Cower - rank 6 (18pts) Causes no damage but lowers Threat. 15 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant, 5 sec cooldown Dive - rank 3 (25pts) Increases movement speed by 80% for 15 seconds. 20 Focus Growl - rank 7 (0pts) Taunt the target. 15 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant, 5 sec cooldown Screech - rank 4 (25pts) Blasts a single enemy for 26 to 46 damage and lowers the melee attack power of all enemies in melee range by 100. 20 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant Great Stamina - rank 6 (75pts) Increases Stamina by 17. Natural Armor - rank 7 (75pts) Increases Armor by 550. Arcane Resist - rank 2 (15pts) Increases Resistance by 60. Fire Resist - rank 2 (15pts) Increases Resistance by 60. Frost Resist - rank 2 (15pts) Increases Resistance by 60. Nature Resist - rank 2 (15pts) Increases Resistance by 60. Shadow Resist - rank 2 (15pts) Increases Resistance by 60. Total spent: 293 Points Left: 7 And I'm sure that right about now you're having a WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT moment on seeing that I'm actually planning on using Cower, because ... NOBODY uses Cower! But hear me out. Once again, I'm planning on playing an off-meta spec from 10-60 ... in this case, a Hunter with Pet predisposed to melee rather than to range. The basic formulation of the Beast Master spec is that the Pet tanks ... buff the Pet. The basic formulation of the Marksman spec is that the Pet tanks ... buff the Hunter. The basic formulation of the Melee Survival spec is ... that the HUNTER tanks, while the Pet offers Close Support ... which is a very different basic premise. If you can keep that aggro on yourself, rather than on your Pet, then things like Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite (and the Savage Strikes talent in tier 2 Survival) as well as the Counterattack talent at Tier 5 in Survival can start having some considerable effect ... and that's not even including Traps and the rest getting buffed up. But since that strategy only works in melee, and if you yourself are acting as an aggro magnet, in order to play as a Melee Hunter you need your Pet to "support" you without grabbing the aggro and playing tank for you. Out of all of the Pet Skills available, almost everything that your Pet can bring is either Damage or a Buff ... and there are very few Debuffs. Bite, Claw, Lightning Breath, Poison Spit, Scorpid Poison, and Thunderstomp are all basically damage Skills. Charge is an immobilize and next Pet attack buff to Attack Power. Furious Howl is a PBAoE Physical Damage buff to 1 attack. Cower and Growl are Threat modification Skills. Dash and Dive are Movement buff Skills. Shell Shield is a Pet Armor buff. And then there's Screech ... which is just about the only Debuff (other than a DoT) you can get from a Pet. It costs less Focus than Claw, does almost as much damage per use as Claw, but it reduces the Attack Power of all enemies in melee range of your Pet ... and it can be used every 4 seconds at 5 Focus per second recovery ... and the Debuff lasts for 4 seconds. This makes Screech the only Debuff that can aid a Hunter when facing multiple opponents simultaneously in melee range, and it can be chain cast on auto. Now to my mind, if you're planning on playing a Melee Survival Hunter, you want to have your Pet fighting right beside you in Close Support of what you're doing with your melee weapons using Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite and Counterattack, which also happens to be the perfect positioning for Screech to cover you and reduce the incoming damage you're taking while tanking for your Pet (rather than the other way around). You then have Cower available, but not on auto attack by default, so as to create a dynamic in which your Pet is able to shed aggro gained via Screech to you. The net effect then becomes one in which your Hunter can fight groups of mobs sequentially rather than in parallel, with your Pet holding the aggro of whatever you aren't fighting in melee yet while debuffing everything in melee range. That way, you split the incoming damage between yourself and your Pet, yielding a higher overall survival rate for the two of You against the "many" of the PvE Them. If it helps any, think of it as being Tandem Tanking, with your Pet as both Off Tank and Debuffer while your Hunter acts as the Main Tank and DPSer at melee range. Needless to say, I don't think I've heard of ANYBODY else contemplating any sort of build strategy like this. I know that there have been the odd forays into trying to make a Melee Survival spec work from time to time, but I'm not aware of anyone going to this length to incorporate the choice of Pet AND Pet Skills into the mix to try and make a Melee Survival Hunter build "viable" for a leveling spec. Needless to say, I'm still working to nail down the details for this one (and my Hunter is only Level 16, so I've got a ways to go yet), but I'm fascinated by the possibilities to be had in a "Come At Me, Bro" style of Melee Hunter that would seem to break a lot of the rules of the Conventional Wisdom that has been handed down to us. If people want to hear more about the notion, I'll consider making a separate thread for it so the idea can be more fully explored away from this discussion of the merits of Bite and/or Claw.

Bite: 35 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown Claw: 25 Focus; 5 yd range; Instant Because of the way that Focus Regeneration works, if Claw is on auto attack, your Pet will never reach 35 Focus to use Bite except at the start of a fight. That's because as soon as your Pet has 25 Focus and is attacking something, they'll use Claw and burn Focus back down to zero. In order to use Bite AND Claw, your Pet would need to wait an extra 2 seconds WITHOUT using Claw in order to recover enough Focus to use Bite. So my assertion is that because of how Focus recovery works, your Pet can't build 35 Focus to use Bite while Claw is on auto attack ... and if you've got Claw, there's no (good) reason NOT to put Claw on auto attack. Growl (and Cower, both) costs 15 Focus, so your Pet will be able to use those on auto attack while you've got Claw on auto attack, but when building Focus up from zero, your Pet is never going to skip Claw (at 25 Focus) to get to Bite (at 35 Focus) while Claw is on auto attack.

So Warlocks are whining about Lupos for No Good Reason™? The Improved Shadow Bolt procs are instead being stolen by OTHER WARLOCKS and the Shadow Priest(s)? Good to know ... Okay, new rule. Bring 1 Warlock and scads of Hunters with Lupos to every raid.

The primary motivation to not use Garrote is because the damage ticks break Gouge stun since they happen every 3 seconds. If you've got Improved Gouge for 5.5 second stun, opening with Garrote is counterproductive. Garrote is also a Bleed effect, meaning that there are certain things that are simply immune to it, such as Elementals. If memory serves, it wasn't until TBC that Blizzard added a 6 second(!) Silence effect to Garotte, making it an exceptional opener from Stealth against Casters. That said, in a Subtlety build with Hemorrhage and 5 CP Rupture, opening with Garrote amounts to a "you're already dead, you just haven't gotten the memo yet" ... especially on Humanoids that are prone to fleeing to find allies (see: Murlocks). The net result is something more akin to the "you can run, but you'll only die tired" style of dealing with things. The only downside is that the kill isn't immediate/instantaneous like you'd be getting from Ambush/Eviscerate. The upside though is that the DoTs from Garrote and Rupture don't give a damn about armor, so they can do "more" throughput against heavily armored targets, but you're going to have to Wait For It to let the DoTs tick.

Pet Level: 60 Pet Loyalty: 6 Points Available: 300 Claw - rank 8 (25pts) Dash - rank 3 (25pts) Growl - rank 7 (0pts) Prowl - rank 3 (25pts) Arcane Resist - rank 3 (45pts) Fire Resist - rank 3 (45pts) Frost Resist - rank 3 (45pts) Nature Resist - rank 3 (45pts) Shadow Resist - rank 3 (45pts) Total spent: 300 Points Left: 0 You tell me if there's something better to spend 25 talent points on a redundant skill that will only get used ONCE per battle ...

Just bring more Warlocks than Lupos. Problem solved.

Should have told him to camp the other spawn points ...

On a Cat, you've really got Bite, Claw, Cower, Dash, Growl and Prowl. Dash and Prowl are essentially "opener" skills. Growl needs no additional explanation and Cower isn't worth mentioning unless you're a Melee Hunter (and maybe not even then). In the context of a Cat, you're better off going with Claw than with Bite simply because you'll get more "use" out of Claw than you will out of Bite. Doing Bite AND Claw is just a waste of Talent Points.

Here's the thing you need to know about Claw and Bite ... http://web.archive.org/web/20070406174848/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/skills_list.shtml Bite: 35 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown Claw: 25 Focus; 5 yd range; Instant Notice the difference? Bite has a 10 second cooldown, while Claw doesn't have a cooldown. What this means in practice is that if you've got Claw on your Pet and set it to auto attack, they will spam Claw until their Focus is empty (or close enough to it) and then every time they reach 25 Focus they'll Claw again. What this does in practice is functionally dedicate all available Focus to using Claw as fast as possible, so if you're wanting to use Focus for something OTHER THAN Claw, you should probably not have trained Claw in the first place. Using Bite instead means that your Pet won't be generating damage from Focus quite as quickly/front loaded as you would using Claw, but because of the Cooldown you have Focus remaining to actually make use of on other skills.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?search=suffering#spells Suffering for Voidwalkers has a 5 second cooldown (see tooltip in game). This is poor game design on Blizzard's part, since it means that the Voidwalker's Suffering spell, if set to autocast, will prevent the Voidwalker from ever regenerating mana thanks to the 5 second rule of needing to not spellcast for 5 seconds in order to regenerate mana. Proposal: "Nerf" the cooldown of the Voidwalker's Suffering spell to have a 5.5 second cooldown instead of a 5 second cooldown. This would permit the Voidwalker to regenerate mana every 5 seconds after casting before autocasting Suffering again 0.5 seconds after receiving a mana regeneration tick. Overall, this would improve the mana "endurance" of the Voidwalker when using one as an aggro magnet at an ever so slight loss of taunt stacking speed when repeatedly casting Suffering.

I'm looking at someday (someday...) wanting to do Blacksmithing Specializations for two of my characters ... my Paladin and my Warrior (naturally). Leaving aside the downsides for each Specialization, such as the fact that Armorsmithing will require utterly ridiculous quantities of Mithril and Truesilver to complete (I know, I did it a decade ago), I'm more interested in learning about the upsides of the various options. To be more specific, I'm pretty sure I want to go with Armorsmithing on my Paladin again, but am having second thoughts of the need/advantage for going Armorsmithing on my Warrior, due to anticipating Rage Starvation from having "too much" armor (as paradoxical as that sounds). Which then brings into question ... what ARE the benefits of going with Axe/Mace/Sword Weaponsmithing? I mean, I know that there are Bind on Pickup items that you can only get from being a Weaponsmith or Armorsmith, so I'd appreciate receiving a bit of a rundown on what pieces of itemization are to be found along each of the options, and what (if any) synergies those options offer for different build styles used by the Mail/Plate wearing classes.

I appreciate the support. It's been fun watching the Read counter go up all weekend (now at 184) with nary a comment made. That is, however, only to be expected, since as I mentioned I'm pretty sure that Disc/Holy Night Elf Priests are even rarer than Moonkin Druids are, so this is DEFINITELY not a talent spec that will have broad appeal ... and that's even before considering that it isn't exactly a raiding spec either. At this point, my Priest is only Level 15 ... mainly because I'm playing all 8 Alliance classes in parallel, so it's going to "be a while" before I can start getting really deep into the talent trees. Right now, I've got 2 points in Healing Focus (as advertised) and am working my way towards Meditation. Once I've got Meditation I'll take a pause on Discipline to put 7 points into Shadow (as advertised) before resuming my advancement to the end of the Discipline tree. I'm planning on saving the remainder of the Holy tree for the 50+ stretch. Without a Wand, use of Power Word: Shield and Starshards is pretty efficient at taking down single targets in the low teens. Now that I've leveled my Enchanter to the point of making Greater Magic Wands (and had the resources to do so) I've switched over to just Wanding everything for the time being, since the DPS is comparable while the mana cost of Wanding is nil. I figure that dynamic will vary and shift over time, particularly as Starshards increases in Rank every 10 Levels. Perhaps the biggest hurdle to playing this spec (other than the choice of Racial) is the fact that it leaves the (well) beaten path of Shadow and Holy to wander into terra-incognita, where the Conventional Wisdom™ says there is no refuge or advantage to be found. That may indeed prove to be true, but I'd like to test the proposition first because I'm suspecting there is an Island of Viability out here in this Sea of Possibilities, and I'm the type of Player who likes to explore off-meta specs to find new potentials. So it's going to be a while before I have more to report/say on this subject, which will probably happen once I get my Priest past Level 20 or so, but I am certainly committed to seeing where this build will take me on Darrowshire.

Be a melee hunter for a while and tank for the (lowbie) pet. They just need to get *1* hit in on something to gain XP from it. So play as a melee/survival hunter for a little bit against greens to level your (lowbie) pet and give them time to get a hit in before finishing off whatever is gnawing on your ankle. Should level them up relatively quickly, so long as they can get a hit in at some point.

Either that or Improved Arcane Explosion ...

I've got 5/5 Master of Deception and even against -4 mobs as a Night Elf you still don't want to get into their frontal arc. Player Stealth = wimptacular even when buffed to the high heavens NPC Stealth = OVERWHELMING

Ghost Kitty from Mathystra in north Darkshore is always a favorite, especially once you can get Prowl at 30. Owls from on top of Teldrassil are worth mentioning.