Obligatory 3.1 Post

Things have been a little quiet around Azeroth in the Taxiderm stables of late, with 3.1 going live probably tomorrow or a week from tomorrow, and no real chance at Glory of the Raider; I have been doing more preparing for my trip to Maui on the 23rd and my trip to fatherhood in July.

That being said, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what 3.1 has to offer and the direction it will take my hunter. Specifically, I mean professions, specs, pets & alts. And for those that just cringed with the mention of alts I have no intention of changing mains again, despite seeing Rhubarb finally venturing into the Howling Fjord.

I will start with the bombshell that Blizzard dropped on me last week, finally making Engineering a viable PVE profession. For those that don't know, the Hand Rockets have been taken off the Global Cooldown (GCD). This means that they can be used without having to replace a spell or ability, they can be macroed into your existing spells to be fired whenever they are off cooldown. This is huge !!! I have been a very big fan of engineering since I began playing, every single 1 of my characters (except Taxiderm oddly) have been an engineer at one point, Rhubarb still is. That reminds me, I should add a link to my armories on the side, you know, really shout out my shame. What makes this announcement especially irritating is the fact that just a couple of weeks ago, I dropped skinning, for ... Alchemy. I had been debating going Engineering or Tailoring, you know for the mounts. Tailoring was potentially providing a small PVE DPS increase in 3.1 and of course Engineering was at that point a DPS loss for PVE. Ellevis suggested Alchemy which would provide a nice DPS increase and save me money on my consumables (we'll see if it ends up being enough to offset the cost of levelling it). I just recently hit 435 in Alch and can make all the Flasks, I am ready for Ulduar in that regard. I was tempted to switch to Engineering but in the end I realized I couldn't afford it, and left it to my pally. Tough though.

This brings me to alts. I have been levelling my pally so that I could have a source of bullets, Rhubarb being mining & engineering. I also plan to make her my non-raid Achievement whore. Between Wrath going live and the onset of the Achievement system, I did almost nothing but collect Achievements with Rhubarb, old dungeons and exploration type stuff. In hindsight I probably should have just made her my main from day one but whatever, hunter action is now where its at. I also have a thing for soloing old content, or at least trying to, Chickenpox was fun for that and I will probably be speccing her for that purpose alone.

The mention of specs brings me to the really big question, what will be my 2 specs ? And how will I afford them ? Cost aside I would like to maximize my use of the dual spec system. My plan is to spec MM as my main raid spec, I really like it and it will be competitive in 3.1. I had intended to spec BM for my second spec and I probably still will, since I have (in my opinion) the best looking pet in the game, the Spirit Beast, Loque'Nahak. If BM happens to be a better DPS spec than MM, I may make BM my main spec and just go MM for pet unfriendly fights. The problem is Survival is really fun for PVP, which I don't do a lot of, but I enjoy Wintergrasp. Hopefully my chosen specs will be fun too.

Now for pets, I plan to use my Wolf for MM or Surv and my Spirit Beast for BM. If I need to tank something for some odd reason I have a Worm for that purpose, although that would require a 3rd spec if being serious about it. *Sigh* Dual spec will definitely NOT save me any money.

I would really like 3.1 to drop tomorrow, mostly for selfish reasons, I leave for Maui on the 23rd and I would like to go into Ulduar before I go. I will try to log on in Hawaii, but I would definitely not raid, or really do anything but see what it feels like to enjoy my favorite hobby from my favorite place.

Upcoming posts will either be about 3.1 that has just dropped (fingers crossed, plz, plz, plz), or I will go into more detail about my intended specs.