Five Man Preparation

It's been a while since I've done a non-heroic five-man on any of my characters. Luckily, I approach these instances much like I'd approach a raid. In short:

• Have elixirs. Two is better, but one is okay too. I don't waste flasks here, usually even not on heroic.
• Have buff food. Even if it's just Stamina food.
• Are you reasonably enchanted? I wouldn't kick you for not having EVERY slot up to date, but if the gear is good and the enchant is reasonably acquired, go ahead and put it on. It won't hurt. Gear that is not great or slated to be replaced is exempt.
• I don't worry or care about mana or wizard oil. It might not be worth the expense. Same for stones. Poisons are always required though.
• Every gem slot should be filled. Even if it's with a throwaway greenie.
• Have at least a few emergency health or mana pots.
• Have bullets (or arrows or whatever). Mostly for huntards, but please don't run out
• Have you repaired?

So, there's the subset of raiding checklist that I apply for five-mans. I treat heroics somewhere between a normal five-man and a raid. I'm more likely to use mana oil in a heroic, but probably won't blow a flask.

Hunter 101 - A primer

Note: Sorry if this one seems a little long. I play my hunter as my main now, and I'm pretty darned familiar with the ins and outs.

Hunter Role
The hunter’s role is easy. You only need look to BRK’s website to know that our number one role as a Hunter is providing Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged Damage Per Second. We have other skills, discussed in other categories below, that we are expected to know and use appropriately. But at the core, if a hunter isn’t providing lots and lots of DPS, we’re not doing our jobs.

Luckily, the hunter is a “pure DPS” class. There is no spec that we can choose that doesn’t have at its core the requirement to kill things. It makes our jobs easy.
Possible Hunter Trees
The hunter has three trees available. Of these, one is mainly focused on the use of his or her pet, another is focused on pumping up the hunters ranged damage, and the last is about the hunter’s survivability and melee abilities. While all hunters will use skills from all trees, a hunter that focuses in a tree will be better at those abilities than a hunter who did not.

Hunter Defining Skills
Other than providing damage output, there are a few other things that are class defining. First and foremost, of course, is our pet. We are one of the two classes that have a constant companion in the form of a pet. Since you must control yourself and your pet (at least past level 10), a hunter can be more challenging to play than some of the other pure DPS classes.

Hunters also make good “pullers.” That is, with our extreme range we can often get the attention of mobs “down field” and relocate them to where our party wants to fight them. Picking a fight on your terms instead of the enemy’s terms can often be the difference between a won and a lost fight.

Hunters have at their disposal several tracking abilities that make them invaluable in finding mobs of certain types. Beasts, Giants, Undead, Dragonkin, Humanoids, Hidden, and Demons can all be tracked. While some other classes can track one or a few of each of these, only Hunters can track them all.

Hunters also have the ability to change their aspect to improve dodge, improve ranged attack power, move faster (both singly and for the party), prevent nature damage and regenerate our own mana. The kings of different stances and forms are druids, but hunters are holding their own here.

Hunters have one of the best threat reducers in the game in the form of Feign Death. Of all the threat reductions in the game, this is the most permanent reduction ability with the shortest time.

Finally, we have access to traps that can slow, incapacitate, or do damage. No other class can currently do anything of the sort.

What makes you a good Hunter
Hunters who never pull threat from the tank (whether this is another player or your pet) are some of the best hunters in the game. Two ways to avoid ever using your melee abilities are: modulating your damage output and using feign death. Feign Death completely removes the Hunter from the threat table and is essentially a “do-over” for generated threat.

Hunters should no need much attention from the healer. The only incoming damage should be from area attacks because good hunters can get out of the fight. Since hunters can heal their own pets, unless the circumstances are dire, the pets also shouldn’t need much attention from healers either.

Finally, hunters should be able to trap any mob he or she is asked to. Granted some enemies will be harder to maneuver into a waiting trap. Without being deeply specced into Markmanship, it’ll be challenging to get a spell casting enemy into a trap. But taking advantage of terrain and line of sight can generally accomplish this. A hunter must also never (ever) break his or her own trap. The two most likely causes of breaking your own trap are to have used Serpent Sting (a poison damage over time) on it or to continue attacking (either melee or ranged) after the enemy is safely encased in ice.

Little-Used Hunter Skills that you must master
Excellent hunters can also only fight on their own terms (at least against the AI). Being able to kite enemies and only engage them on your terms is the hallmark of a truly awesome hunter. Once, certain end-game bosses relied on a hunter to kite as the most accepted strategy.

Hunter Skills You Should Always Use
A previously unmentioned skill is the ability to Hunter’s Mark a target. This allows the hunter to keep track of marked mobs on the minimap as well as increasing the ranged (and with talents melee) damage done to the marked mob. You should always mark your target to increase the damage done to it.

Stings, finally, are another Hunter skill that can have many different effects, depending entirely upon what the Hunter desires. Draining life, mana, or the ability of an enemy to hit are all exceedingly useful hunter skills that the good hunter has mastered.

Emergency Hunter Skills
There are a number of emergency skills hunters can use. However, many of those skills are buried deep within the various talent trees. Bestial Wrath and Intimidation are skills in the Beast Mastery tree that can make the hunter and his or her pet immune to fear and deal more damage. There is also the ability to stun in that tree. The Marksmanship tree has gems such as a temporary stun and the ability to interrupt spell casting. The Survival tree offers abilities such as putting an enemy to sleep, refreshing all your skill cool-downs, or increasing the hunter’s chance to dodge and parry.

Advanced Hunter Skills
If you can have two (or even three) enemies encased in blocks of ice at once you are the king of chain trapping. As a brief primer on how to do this, you must place a trap and let the trap cool-down expire. Since the trap lasts for one minute and the cool-down is only thirty seconds, a trap can still be live after the cool-down is finished. Pull the first mob into the waiting trap and as soon as that trap is activated, place another trap. Hopefully, you can direct another mob into the trap you just placed. At this point any enemies not controlled must be killed quickly because the first enemy trapped will only stay in ice for a short time.

Even before having access to Misdirection at level 70, a hunter can still pull to the tank. Shooting an enemy and then running to the tank and feigning death will effectively put the enemies into combat with the tank. The tank must use some sort of area threat generation (thunder stomp, consecrate, etc.) to hold them all in place, however.

Stereotypes with Which Hunters Live
The usual insult hurled our way is that of being the “huntard.” The hunter is one of the easiest character classes to advance to the maximum level without ever grouping up with other players. When we have reached a level where we must group to progress, quite often we have developed too many bad habits by relying only on ourselves for 70 (or more) levels.

To help fight the huntard stereotype, ensure that you can perform your primary job without causing an undue burden on your other party members. Arrive at your mission with plenty of ammunition, consumables and a happy pet.

For as long as WoW has gone on, there is a joke about a piece of loot being a “Hunter Weapon” (or chest piece, belt, boots, what have you). To fight this stereotype, you should know the top three or four stats you need. Also, be aware that equipment that “increases damage and healing caused by magical spells and affects” is of nearly no use to you. At the very least, you should rather want agility, attack power, or critical strike rating.

Profession Considerations for Hunters
Nearly any profession can work for a hunter. Leatherworking can produce both leather and mail armor, this is a popular choice. Leatherworking also allows the creation of armor kits which can increase armor on four locations. At high skill levels, these armor kits can increase elemental resistances, increase mana regeneration and even attack power.

Engineering is often chosen because apart from water and repairs, the single biggest expense for a hunter can be ammunition for a gun. Engineers (who generally also take mining) can make bullets throughout the leveling process and arrows at end-game. Engineering can also allow use of goblin jumper cables after a hunter feigns out of a group wipe. This gives the hunter the chance to save everyone else (or even one person if the resurrection specialist has died).

Alchemy (and its companion herbalism) is also a popular choice for any character.

Druid 101 - A primer

Druid Role
Wouldn’t you know that starting alphabetically gives us one of the only classes which has up to four possible roles. Druids can do it all. They just need to (usually) only do one of those things at a time.

The druid is the rare class that can tank, heal, provide damage from range and provide damage from melee. Of these four roles, only two of them share a talent tree. And for both tanking and melee damage production, different selections may be made within the tree.

The best advice there is for druids is plan ahead by knowing what you want to “be when you grow up.” That way you can be practicing and honing your skills as you level. The only caveat here is I would not ever level as restoration unless I was paired with another player - it would just be too slow.

Possible Druid Trees
The Balance tree contains mostly skills for providing ranged magical damage. This tree contains such bombs as a debuff that causes enemies to hit less often, casting time reductions, access to a new form (with its own aura) and the summoning of three short-lived combat pets to help out.

The Feral tree contains, amazingly enough, mostly attacks and things that help with tanking and DPSing. This tree covers both the melee damage and tanking roles, so your choices in this tree will differ slightly based on what you want to do.

The Restoration tree has mostly healing goodness in it. Of the four one-point talents, one is actually most used for feral. The other three however, allow instant cast nature spells, heals that consume a heal-over-time for instant healing, and the slow-moving tree for increased healing.

Druid Defining Skills
When you’re looking for someone to bring you back to life in the middle of combat a druid is your only choice. The downside is this ability has a longish cool-down (20 minutes); once it’s been used, it’ll be a fair amount of time before it can be used again.

Innervate allows a druid to give a raid member, party member or themselves, a short buff that radically increases mana regeneration rates. Again, this has a cool-down (6 minutes), so it’ll have to be used strategically.

What other class can change their form altogether? The answer is only one (Shaman) and only to a single form. Druids, by the end game, will have at least six forms. They’ll have seven if specced deeply enough into balance for moonkin form or restoration for tree of life form. And we even pick up one more if we’ve completed the epic flight form quest.
For healing, druids are considered the HOTtest. In fact, most druid heals only work over time. Of the other healing classes, only the priest has a HOT. HOT healing is a druid skill.

What makes you a good Druid
As cool as some of your class-defining skills are, a good druid saves them. In fact, many end-game players consider those cool-downs to belong to the raid instead of to the druid. Most druids won’t innervate or battle resurrect unless instructed to by the raid leader.

As a true hybrid, druids can often fulfill a role where no other class can. Need your tank to turn into a damage guy or even off-healer? Druids can do this. If your tank dies and you need a damage dealer to step up and take a few hits for the team, you better hope you have a druid. Need a little extra healing from one of your casters? Druids come through with flying colors.

Little-Used Druid Skills that you must master
While druids don’t have a lot of crowd control, they can put both dragonkin and beasts to sleep by using the Hibernate skill. There are so few dragonkin in WoW and BC that the druid crowd-control is nearly forgotten many times. But think of hounds, bats, or rays for beasts, and you’ll see that druid CC is still alive.

Druid Skills You Should Always Use
For a long time Mark of the Wild (and of course the big sister Gift of the Wild) were considered the most awesome buffs in the game. They are still pretty awesome

Additionally for characters who are meant to keep an enemies attention (tanks, either others or themselves in bear form), druids should cast thorns. Thorns returns a little damage to an attacker, microscopically increasing threat.

Emergency Druid Skills
Barkskin is a self-buff that prevents spell pushback and is usable in all sorts of normally incapacitating states (stunned, feared, frozen, etc.) As an emergency, a druid can cast Barkskin and for twelve seconds do some uninterrupted casting.

In the case where an entire party needs some emergency healing, druids can cast an area heal in the form of Tranquility. Druids should be aware, however, that like all area healing spells, Tranquility can generate a lot of threat.

Advanced Druid Skills
If things go so far wrong, the druid has a number of escape mechanisms. Entangling Roots (currently usable only outside) can hold an enemy in place while the druid withdraws. Quick form changes (to travel form or cat form plus dash) can help you escape on land. If you need to get past water, aquatic form can be a boon as well. Just be aware of using water as an escape with aquatic creatures. Naga can swim faster than you do.

If you’re casting and run out of mana, swapping to a feral form allows your mana to regenerate as you continue to dish out damage.

Stereotypes with which Druids Live
The stereotypes for druids have actually gotten a lot better with the Burning Crusade. Prior to the 2.0 patch in preparation for BC, the only really raid viable tree for druids was restoration. With 2.0 and the BC, both feral and balance became more realistic. However, some bad itemization for balance led to the balance druids (Boomkins) being called Out-of-Mana-kins or OOMKins.

While not truly a stereotype, a druid that goes deeply enough into any of the three skill trees to get a “form” will rarely see any changes in gear as they advance. Players just beginning a druid should expect to see the same model for their character for a very long time.

Again, not strictly a stereotype of druids, only Night Elves (Alliance) and Tauren (Horde) can be druids. Thus you should like one of those two races before considering a druid.

Finally, there is the perception that as a feral or resto druid, you’re not good enough at tanking or healing to serve in that role for a five man instance. Your ability to perform that role is much more about your skill as a druid rather than an inherent weakness in either of those areas of the class. This stereotype is likely left over from pre-BC where these statements were truer.

Professional Considerations for the Druid
As wearers of leather, many druids go for leatherworking and skinning. There is a specialization tree in leatherworking that will increase either melee damage or spell damage & healing. . Leatherworking also allows the creation of armor kits which can increase armor on four locations. At high skill levels, these armor kits can increase elemental resistances, increase mana regeneration and even attack power.

Alchemy (and its companion herbalism) is also a popular choice for any character. Tauren druids also get a racial bonus to herbalism.

Warcraft Classes for Dummies

I'm going to be starting a new series over here in the next couple of days. I'll focus on each class individually and covering the following topics:

• The class' role - for classes that can have multiple classes, each will be covered
  
• The possible trees for the class - the trees from the talent tree with signature skills for that tree highlighted
• The class defining skills - the hallmarks of this, especially skills that only this class can use
• Abilities that make you a good member of that class - for instance, crowd controlling and removing debuffs
• Infrequently Used Skills to be mastered - the skills, that while not often used, are critical to certain encounters
• Class skills that should always be used - the "core competencies" of the class and what can increase the effectiveness of the class
• Emergency Skills - the skills that can quickly save your hide when things go horribly wrong
• Advanced Skills - the skills, either core or emergency, which if mastered show a truly good player
• Stereotypes - the general misconceptions tied to the class
• Profession considerations - professions that marry particularly well with the class

This will be a primer for all levels of players. I hope to present information for players new to the game, coming back after a hiatus, players switching from a known class to another, and perhaps even experienced players of the class.

I expect the class discussions to begin on Thursday.