I am happily arrived home.  However my computer has randomly been attacked by roving bands of idiots.  Half my WOW game is missing and I cannot find my disc atm. It's here somewhere.  While I was away apparently my sons 2 bands decided my comp was fair game for poking around in.

They must've tried to delete something is all I can think of, but it will take me awhile to locate the discs.  I'm sure they are supposed to be in the box labeled Gaming Discs, however they never are.   I'm glad to be home and ready to heal the crap outta some of you.

As some of you know, I've been dinking around with the Shandara's DPS spreadsheet, and have found some interresting numbers, to which I engaged a couple nights of testing.  The first night of testing went well, and I'm seeing very positive practical numbers, so I'll post what I found in the spread sheet here.

For most hunters, Survival is hands down the best spec.  It out performs BM by a long shot, and for most gear levels as well.  However, MM was getting closer all the while, and with the 3.1.3 change to Hunter's Mark (300 Ranged AP -> 500 Ranged AP),  it has become a solid contender.

I had originally made the switch to MM to test out the Imp Hunter's Mark (IHM from now on) talents to add an extra 150 AP to the mark, which affects all three of us hunters, as well as a select few melee abilities that count as ranged.  What I found next was the most interesting part:  For my gear level, Marksman beats Survival.  Not just by a couple DPS, but by up to 127.6 DPS higher.  Not to mention the gains the other hunters are getting from my IHM.  If I toss in the Glyph of Hunter's Mark (GoHM from now on), I lose about 42.26 DPS because I'd have to drop Glyph of Steady Shot, but Lumi gains 54 DPS more with it.  Grasen's gain will be at least 45 DPS more.  The increase in Raid DPS by swapping my spec over to Marksman is an estimated total of 184.34 DPS.  Now that we're getting into more and more hardmodes that are focused on high DPS, every last drop counts.

So from now on I'm going to be mostly running Marks, except for a few select fights where Survival simply handles better. (Vezax, Yogg, etc.)

So, is MM better than SV?  Completely depends on your gear level, and you can only find out if its a gain by consulting Shandara's Spreadsheet. 

I'll be back June 8th.

Dear Blizzard,

Please remove the handicap ramp leading to the jewelers shop in Dalaran.  While I have seen many many mentally handicapped toons, I have yet to see a physically handicapped one.  And yet, that ramp makes me feel like one because due to its curved shape, lack of railings and lag, I fall off the fucking thing all the time. If there was a lawyers shop in Dalaran, you'd be getting your ass sued constantly.

While you're at it, please remove the gigantic pit in Ironforge which some designer made who should spend his time in hell falling in and getting out of for eternity.

Furthermore, the next time a city like Shattrath is designed, please think monorail, or teleporters or some damn public transportation.  Oh, and a big ass blinking sign that says "WRONG BANK, FOOL".

I'm sure that every player in existence will thank you for considering all of this.

Yours,

Tankard

s731.photobucket.com/albums/ww315/wowGorg/

...where only the druids are safe......

So, having missing Friday's raid, and probably not many of you knowing the reasons, let me explain.  Additional info on my raiding status to follow.

So Friday afternoon, I got off work to discover some guy decided to crash his vehicle into a telephone pole near my devolopement.  This line was the only line of power to the entire area, including my house, which would make me unraidable until at least 11:30pm.  Well after raid would have ended anyway.  So I spent my time reading a book, and staring at my phone, wondering if Grasen would call me to tell me you downed Yogg without me.  I'm upset that that was out of my control, but what has happened has happened.

Since then, I've received full power back.  With a few small problems...  The first, and major one, is that somehow in the chaos of the power outage, my gaming computer has decided it wants to die.  It refuses to boot past the Windows loading screen, and also receive an error, something involving my hard disk?  I don't recall completely, but a friend of mine has taken it to look it over and see if he can fix it himself.  With that said, the next part will seem pretty obvious:  I'm unraidable until this computer is fixed.  I could TRY to raid from this laptop I'm typing from, but the performance would be so bad, you'd be better off bringing a Holy Pally to do dps with Holy Shock or some such.  I'll keep this updated when I have news to update with.

Hopefully this won't take long, and I'll be back in action shortly.