Clever Traps + Entrapment + Stormpike Bridge = no one gets through.

Also absurdy helpfull when your flag carrier exits their base, run up to their GY hill and drop one there, buys a LOT of time.

AB use is way more situational, though.

Still, the added damage on explosive traps also helps.

Yeah. I'm trying to get a nice PvP build if (or when >_>) my guild bites the dust. It's surprisingly harder than making a good marks build (7/44/0 atm), and with my gear I'm kind of inclined to just move my BM points in to Surv. for entrapment, and shift things around in marks a bit.

I'm still rocking the 0/41/10 build I first tried on PTR. It pretty much has everything you need for PvP, except for the fact that you don't have Survivalist and Deterrence. All you really need to maximize your PvP damage output is everything up to Silencing Shot and Humanoid Slaying. Savage Strikes is good if you have a solid 2 hander (and actually makes Mongoose Bite a skill I now have bound to a hotkey), otherwise maxing Entrapment is a better investment.

Marks Hunters have crazy damage and control in PvP now, too bad they have horrible HP and terrible mana efficiency.

I've been experimenting with a weird pvp build since the hunter talent review which I really enjoy, and am planning to take into TBC. I'm still trying to find out how I can fine tune it though.
21/21/9
The main points of contention for me are the two improved aspects, and GFFT rather than rapid killing. I kept Improved Aspect of the Hawk as a very small nod towards mana free pve dps, but I'm not sure whether I should get rid of it and Improved Aspect of the Monkey in order to fill out Endurance and/or Thick Hide. I'm using a cat as a pet, so I'm not sure I need to have GFFT, and rapid killing would help in increasing my dps in both pve and pvp.

I've been playing around with Improved Stings, and not sure how I feel about it yet, but I think I'll be keeping it for the novelty value. I plan on extending up to clever traps and deterrence in TBC, maybe get trap mastery, and get Improved Barrage and maybe put a point or two into Mortal Shots. I'm basically aiming for a jack of all trades build, although in return I'm losing out heavily on DPS. Still, that hasn't slowed me down much in BGs or otherwise.

I'm about to loot my 5th striker tomorrow. Does the rapid killing bonus stack with 5/5 striker? I'd take a good laugh if I don't see 1 minute rapid fire cooldown tomorrow and write an angry letter to blizzard.

As in other thread - no. So you can start writing that letter if you want >_>

That's pretty much the sort of build I was looking at. I'm wearing T2/T3 gear in BGs so a "glass cannon" build is well-suited at this stage

That's a very interesting build too, but I don't think I'd ever take Improved Stings over Mortal Shots. In a build lacking in raw DPS you're going to want spike damage to compensate. That said, I might take imp. stings over mortal shots in a small-group PvP build...

with this new patch i came back to pvp a bit to see how different hunters play. i absolutely love the buff to arcane shot but i'm sad to see how aimed shot feels like it's too much work to open up with. the only time i use aimed shot in pvp is either when i have rapid killing on and/or my cd's are up (blood fury, rapid fire, KotS). this is my gear http://ctprofiles.net/24178. i'm still using the bwl xbow because the base dmge is still higher than 99% of the ranged weapons (that 1% being the KT xbow :P). but since i use and rely on arcane and multi a lot than i did before the patch i wonder whether the bwl xbow is still THE ranged weapon to use in pvp. my only other choice is hwl ranged weapons since i pretty much quit raiding. my spec is 0/21/30 btw.

After digging through the old thread best I could, I couldn't locate anything about GFFT enabling our pets to scale with crit rate. Care to elaborate?

The higher your crit rate is, the more often GFTT procs, and the more focus your pets have. Therefore, GFTT allows pets to scale with your crit rate, limited by the maximum amount of focus your pet can dump. Pets with extra damage skills (like Claw) will scale better than those that just have bite, and pets with the really expensive damage abilities like Lightning Breath are even better. If you go a few pages back in the thread, you'll find all the math Eej did on where the limits are and how much dps you get.

An increase in crit-rate gives you more GFTT procs, thus allowing your Wind Serpent to use Lightning Breath more frequently. The maximum crit "scaling", as it were, would thus be when you on average crit once every 1.5 seconds (Pet global cooldown I believe, unless I'm wrong and the Imp changes affected every pet). So as your crit-rate increases, your pet's damage increases because it's casting Lightning Breath more.

So how exactly do you turn off the auto attack switch between ranged and melee? I have asked so many people but no one seems to know the answer for sure. It always seems to break my freeze traps prematurely, which doesnt bode too well in the end.

I was thinking that multishot rank 5 is totally useless in any rotation unless you want to nuke all you got for a very short period. Instead of multi rank 5 if you use silencing shot and multi rank 1, you will get more damage overall and spend 230 less mana every 20 seconds. Makes rank 5 kinda pointless against single target.

Anyone else experiencing extreme FPS lag whenever you try to use an ability which prompts an error message?
Spell is not ready yet, target not in range, etc.
Noticed this yesterday, tried spamming Multi-Shot, and my game basically stopped responding / updating until I stopped mashing the button.

Didn't experience anything like that in BG, didn't raid after the patch yet though.

I checked out Growl rank7 on thott, and it seems to add a mere 400ish threat. The pets don't hit like trucks either, so I wonder why they manage aggro so well now. The only explanation I could come up with was that maybe pets got a passive +threat% ability, much like defensive stance. Anyone who knows anything about that?

Well, you'll get like twice the amount of RAP switching over to GM Bow plus a slight DPS upgrade. Your multishots will hit for less but if you're specced for it, you'll be proccing GFTT/IAoTH/EW/MT a lot more. Like always, it depends on your build. :P

Given the choice between two weapons of roughly the same DPS but with wildly varying speeds (for example, 1.80 vs 2.90), it depends on your build. Slow weapons will do more DPS if you are specced for it, that is, if you have points in Barrage/Imp Barrage, because you're boosting your Multishot damage which is in effect an extra weapon attack. Faster weapons will do more DPS if you spec for procs like IAotH and GFTT, plus talents that boost your proc rate (by boosting attack speed), mainly Serpent's Swiftness. However, going with a fast weapon means gimping your Multishot DPS.

Someone should really make a spreadsheet to compare this (called "not me").

Exactly this happens to me every single BG I do Lactose. Zoning/Reloading seems to make it go away for a while, then it'll be back after a while.

Are you by chance using TrinityBars? I just updated after the author mentioned fixing some recursion bug that could lead to FPS lag, haven't had a chance to see if the problem is still there. I suspect it is one of my mods though, since if I play a friend's character with mostly default UI i never have the issue.

I've also noticed that every time it happens, if i scroll through my error logs there's been what looks like a stack overflow from excessive function nesting in the blizzard battleground map UI. I'm not sure if that could be related too.

I had the same problem and i am pretty sure was a bug in Trinity Bars. I am using the last version since few hours and i had no problems yet. I guess it was fixed.

edit: I am still experiencing extreme lag in bg's but this looks like a general issue. I don't lag anymore mashing buttons, at least no more than the lag.

by the way, i have just figured out a new Melee-Spam macro. It works pretty well, just mash it as fast as you can.

/startattack
/cast Raptor Strike
/castrandom Wing Clip, Mangoose Bite

Has anyone done Patchwerk with the GM bow/Windserpent/GFTT combo yet? I was planning on trying that out tonight in order to compare to my old results with Ash (and to abuse JoW!), but I landed about 1500 honor short =(

I did it with Toxic Injector a few days ago. I dont have the dps charts or anything, but I did notice a pretty significant increase. Still bring Major Mana pots and Demonic Runes, because Jow doesn't help nearly as much as you think it would.