I’ve noticed something that may or may not be my imagination. When I was low level in mining and cold only mine copper and iron, copper was all over the place. I would always find nodes of things that I could not mine, like gold, mithril, thorium. Now thaq i can actually mine those things I never find them! Sure some of it has to do with the areas, but it seems since the last patch ore has become a bit scarce. It could be my imagination though. Still, I’ve seen little coper and it used to be everywhere. (I think its just my imagination, though, since I’ve been auctioning ore I’m more “aware” of looking for it. )
Interesting; Alliance or Horde? I ask because I had the achievement on a Horde alt who has never done the PvP quest there.
Somehow I doubt it.
In Ashenvale there’s an area called “The Master’s Glaive”. It’s the petrified body of an ancient monster with a giant bladed weapon stuck in it – the “glaive”. Only it’s not a glaive. It’s a gladius. Stupid Blizzard.
Darkshore.
I never really looked too closely, but I figured it was just the blade that was still there, and the shaft had been broken off or rotted away.
Darkshore … whoops, you’re right.
But it doesn’t have the right shape to be a glaive, even with the shaft missing. It’s symmetrical, with straight sides, and it’s been used to stab the monster. Glaives have single-edged curved blades and are slashing weapons. Maybe its the head of a giant spear, but it’s still not a glaive.
I played D&D, man! I know my glaives from my voulges!
I read somewhere that they changed how mining nodes work. You used to be able to get multiple “hits” on a mining node. But now they work like herb nodes: one use only. I don’t have a mining character at the moment, so I don’t know for sure.
This is correct. Mining nodes now are one-hit, but you still get the amount out of a node that you would have with the multiple hits. In other words, if a node is a 4-ore, 3-stone node that would have required 3 hits to get all of it, you now can hit it once and get 4 ore and 3 stone in that one loot. You can still let someone “work in”, you just have to let them know not to loot the node after they get their point (and trust them not to, of course).
Correct. However, they still offer the same amount of stone, ore, and gems that they used to. It’s possible that they toned down the ore distribution, but I think it’s more likely that we’re just seeing more people mining now.
FWIW, I have noticed the same thing. I have a couple of mining hotspots, and the last few times I’ve hit them I’ve noticed fewer available veins. I chalked it up to more people mining.
Just wanted to note, also, that I dinged 67 last night on my human DK. I’m down to two group quests in Terrokar/Sattrath so I flew to Orebor Harborage and did a bunch of quests there, and more when I dinged Neutral with Kurenai. Hit 67 on exploration points when I got to Telaar in Nagrand to deliver the message to the one Broken.
I got the “Honorable Kill” achievement taking the Overlook last night, too. 
I want the 100 honorable kills achievement, myself. Most honorable kills for me tend to be attacks of opportunity since I am usually solo. Sometimes they make me feel a bit guilty, but hey, its not like I’ve been immune to it. Thats why I usually try to make sure I’m relatively safe before engaging an enemy in contested areas. You never know when someone out for the achievement will come along. 
A bug I’ve noticed (but haven’t yet reported) is that when you hearthstone back to an inn, you aren’t counted as ‘resting’ (that is, there’s no “ZZZ” under your character portrait) until you step out of the door and back into the inn. Seems to have started with one of the more recent patches.
And it’s happened to me on two servers, so it’s not server-specific.
Check out a battleground, unless you want the pride of knowing you got it solely through world PVP. I participated in one Arathi Basin game and eight Alterac Valleys, and I had 100 honorable kills, the achievement for killing one of each race, and the achievement for killing one of each class after about three games. As far as I can tell, if you cause any amount of damage to an enemy you get credit for the kill. I racked up a ton of kill credits just by throwing down Consecration in the middle of a melee.
I just noticed that bug yesterday, for the first time.
I need some help again with my hunter. It seems like my DPS should be a lot higher than it is. Last night I spent more than 1600 arrows mostly just killing murlocs in Swamp of Sorrows, and I didn’t even finish the second murloc-killing quest. It’s taking me 15-20+ arrows to kill a single murloc. The murlocs there are all lvls 41-44. In contrast, my similarly-leveled ret paladin can take out the same murloc with fewer than ten blows (and has the added benefit of being able to survive getting ganged up on).
My hunter is lvl 43 now, specced Marksmanship using this guide. My current talent distribution looks like this. I originally had almost everything dumped into the MM tree and so was further into the higher MM talents, but then I unlearned them a few levels ago and redistributed some points into the Beast Master and Survival trees as shown. That may have been a mistake, as afterward my special shots all seemed to become more expensive and/or my mana regeneration dropped precipitously, because I’m constantly running out of mana now where I wasn’t before.
I typically have Aspect of the Beast active. My typical attack sequence goes like this:
- Cast Hunter’s Mark and send pet (cat) in to attack.
- Hold my fire until cat has dealt some damage and has the mob’s undivided attention.
- Fire Concussive shot followed quickly by Serpent’s Sting.
- Fire continuous stream of “normal” shots until mob is nearly dead, then finish it off with Arcane Shot.
I have a feeling I should be using my more powerful shots more often, but at the moment that would drain my mana so quickly that I’d be forced to stop and drink after only 1 or 2 mobs. The more powerful shots also have an unfortunate tendency to immediately divert the mobs’ attention from my pet to me. So I tend to reserve Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot either for killing blows or for emergency use when my pet loses threat and the mob comes charging at me.
I’ve discovered that Volley should never, ever be used under any circumstances. All it does is enrage every mob in the vicinity, who run right out from under the falling arrows and gang up on me. The only exception would be if every mob in Volley’s radius is occupied with a tank. Unfortunately I only have one tank: my pet. Ditto Multiple Shot - I never ever use this unless nearby mobs are far enough away from my primary target that the Multiple Shots won’t split and hit them. My pet can’t maintain threat on more than one mob at at time — the one he’s actually attacking — and I don’t see how to change that.
So I don’t know if I simply need a much better bow, or if I’m doing something wrong, or what.
Also: Tauren War Stomp. Is this ability good for anything? I mentioned a while back that Smite, the tauren in Deepmines, used his War Stomp to keep my paladin stunned for a longer duration than my tauren hunter’s War Stomp has. Somebody pointed out that that is a scripted battle and you remain stunned just long enough for Smite to go to his chest and get a new weapon. However, my pally has since fought more tauren (in Dustwallow Marsh) who are all lower-level than my hunter is currently, and their War Stomps consistently kept her stunned for at least 4-5 seconds. (I’ll need to run her back there to verify.) My own tauren’s War Stomp has a stun duration of a mere 2 seconds — not even long enough for him to turn his ponderous bulk 180 degrees and flee. I was trying this in a cave full of murlocs, and was about 50 yards into the cave when I got mobbed. I had to turn around to make for the mouth of the cave. If I was “outdoors” in a wide-open space I could just run straight forward through the stunned mobs, but in this case there’s no way I was going to try to escape by running deeper into the cave.
Is there some way that I’ve missed up to this point to recall my pet after ordering him to attack? There are three scenarios in which I’d really like to be able to call him off:
• Every now and then, as soon as he attacks, instead of standing and fighting the mob will haul ass away from him for about 20 yards. More often than not, this means running right into a crowd of the mob’s buddies. I’m seeing this a lot with murlocs, and fairly often with raptors.
• I’ll cast Hunter’s Mark and order my pet to attack, then for one reason or another (I mistargeted, or another mob wanders onto the scene between me and the original target) I’ll change my mind and switch him to a different target (before he has engaged the original target). Then as soon as that new target is dead, my pet takes off after the original target, who by this time has strolled over into a crowd of his buddies.
• Occasionally, usually in a cave, I’ll target a mob, not realizing there’s a chasm or other impassible obstacle between me and it (usually I’ve been visually fooled bythe terrain and didn’t see the chasm/obstacle). When that happens, my pet takes off through the cave to get to the mob, and suddenly I have no idea where my pet is. Next thing you know, I’m left having to try to navigate the cave through hostile mobs without my pet.
In each of those instances I’d really like to be able to yell, “Stop! Come back! Break it off!”, but I’ve seen no way to do that.
What all this boils down to is that I’m playing my paladin a lot more than my hunter these days (in the last couple days she’s caught up with him after being 6-7 levels behind him) simply because she can kill stuff quickly. Playing my hunter is starting to get really boring when it takes so freaking long to kill things. It shouldn’t take me four hours to kill the 30 murlocs needed for a quest.
Unrelated note: I’ve noticed that any item with “of the Bear” in its name is hella expensive at the AH compared to similar items with other suffixes.
Delirious Trout Slapper of the Monkey: 15g
Delirious Trout Slapper of the Bear: 199g
I will also add: Where are the cool quest rewards for hunters/Horde? My pally is constantly getting awesome quest rewards re: useful weapons and armor. My hunter is getting squat. I think I’ve seen only one bow as a quest reward, and very few bow drops. Almost every bow I’ve used so far has been a white-text bow from a vendor. I’ve found exactly one useful bow from a drop, and my current bow was purchased from the AH, and it’s still not that great.
To bring your pet back from a mistaken “attack”, hit the “follow” button on the pet bar.
Rather than quoting your post, Rik, I’ll try to address it more generally.
My level 33 Hunter has intensely high DPS (at least, so I think). I’ve soloed enemies 4-5 levels higher without much trouble (okay, I died a couple times, but I still got the bastards).
My talents are all in Marksmanship, except for about 11 which I put into Beast Mastery for Aspect Mastery. I almost always have Aspect of the Hawk running, and Aspect Mastery increases it by 30%.
My battles usually proceed thusly:
- Hunter’s Mark.
- Concussive Shot, or Serpent Sting if I want them to get closer to me before Bitey intercepts them (since she’s set to Defensive, she auto-attacks whatever I attack).
- Bitey intercepts and Growls, generating a lot of threat. If I used Concussive, I apply Serpent Sting now, otherwise I let auto-attack run for a couple shots until Bitey has enough threat generated that I can safely use Arcane Shot.
- Wait for Arcane Shot to cooldown, use. Wait as necessary to give Bitey a chance to Growl again so I don’t generate more threat than her.
Obviously my tactics need to change if I pull more than one enemy at a time, but that’s basic. Mobs die very, very fast. Aspect of the Beast increases your pet’s damage, IIRC, but you do the bulk of the damage output of the pair, and I believe Aspect of the Hawk increases your ranged damage by a higher degree than Beast increases your pet’s.
I don’t know why you’re hurting on mana that badly, although I run out pretty quickly myself. My biggest piece of advice: use Aspect of the Serpent! It is fantastic. Your damage is cut in half, but you recover mana at a stupidly fast rate while doing damage. I can go from 15% mana to 100% with one enemy. I almost never have to drink.
Slows runners, interrupts spellcasters. (Interrupt those mobs that heal themselves.)
There is a couple pet buttons you can play with here: “Follow”, and “passive”.
The “follow” command/button is the one just to the right of the “attack” button. (The "attack button is the leftmost button, looks like a claw/scratch.) If you send your pet in, then cahnge your mind, hit follow, and he’ll return, an even ignores the mobs hitting him.
The “Passive” button is the rightmost button with the baby seal face on it. This will set your pet so that it will attack only the stuff you manually send it after. The next button to the left of it is “defend”, which is were the pet responds to mobs attacking you.
Pets chasing runners is not usually a bad thing. Some people claim that that draws aggro from nearby mobs, but they forget that “social” mobs (like Murlocs) aggro buddies anyway, even without the pet there.
Pets set on “defend” may occasionally chase other targets (like in the scenario you mentioned above) that you had initally ordered them to attack, then countermanded and sent after a third mob. I’m not sure why. Pets on “passive” do not seem to suffer from this feature. Just be quick with that “follow” button.
Once you recognise which mobs run (instead of fighting to the death), you’ll want to get in to melee range, and wing clip their asses, so they don’t run far. Also use the “daze shot”.
There are more bow, crossbow, and gun quest rewards in outland, but pre-60, not so much.
You could do engineering and make your own guns, but that is a material-intensive way to approach the problem.
Try this build. The build you’re using is designed for a level 80 who’s already maxed out his marksmanship tree and is using his extra points in the other two trees. It’s not good for leveling.
And don’t use concussive shot as part of your normal attack routine. Use it only if the mob breaks away from your pet and starts charging you. That should only be happening occasionally. If its happening more often give your pet more time to build up aggro.
Your attack routine should look something like:
Send pet
Apply hunters mark while pet is closing with target
Put serpent sting on target
Fire a mix of normal / arcane / aimed shots depending on the difficulty of the mob and your mana levels
When acquiring gear you should go for agility first, then spirit, then intelligence. Strength is worthless to you. Most important though, is your bow/gun. Always get the best weapon you can off the auction house and add a scope to it to boost DPS.
A properly spec’ed and geared marksmanship hunter is a crazy killing machine. I have a mid-40’s hunter and have no trouble taking out groups of 2 or 3 mobs higher than my own level. You should absolutely be killing and leveling faster than a paladin can.