I understand the killing the healer part, especially in a party, but I wouldn't mind surviving for more than 3 or 4 seconds--shield up. I can put up a shield and start renewing and flash healing and I will still get pulverized. Much of it has to do with DKs at higher levels than me, but I don't see why I cannot at least survive long enough to actually put up a bit of an offensive. I never seem to get that far. I do against other classes. I killed a same-level rogue posthumously the other day. It was my first one-on-one PVP kill, I think, though I'm not sure it technically counts. (For the record, I don't fight unless attacked, though it might change soon now that my healing power is getting to epic proportions.)

I will one day relish the moment I put a DK risen as a ghoul using Shadow of Death into a Shackle Undead to watch him slowly die his final death. (Okay, I won't simply watch--I'll probably tickle him the whole time.)

This was very well made with excellent animations but I really hate the "air fight" type of cheesy action scenes that are so common.

I'm a casual player like many others here it seems. The biggest thing that gets to me is all the "leet" players out there who are so dang RUDE when you try to ask for information from other players in chat. They expect everyone to want to play their way, and if not, then they have no business in the game. I started off and didnt really start asking any questions seriously until my Pally was almost 40. Then it was off for help to get the Epic horse quests done. I didnt even know anything about "specing" I just built what worked for me, which turned out to be a Retadin. Now I am a Tankadin for my guild and havin fun!

WOW, you asked in general chat for help? You are a brave, brave man. I hope it wasn't the Barrens chat. I know alot of people are hardcore about the game (I admit that I raid ALOT and play ALOT) and they are elitists. It's hard to ask them for help, hell even I hate to ask stupid questions to my guild cause I know about to get bashed for it. Best way is to look up guides on the internet or just google it. Also a good guild will help.

i miss playing wow. I'm in a pvp server and yet i really dont like pvping. I have mix season 3 and 4 armor and full tier 4 lock armor. But then i just i didnt have time anymore. I love raiding with my guildies, but with my work schedule i dont have time to play at all. Im thinking of re-rolling a casual toon, but i dont think that i'll have fun with it.....sigh...WoW is like crack so hard to get rid of :(

I want to play this game

You can always transfer your toon to a PvE server..

Crack, the people who drink in my guild will playing this game tonight. I love it.

Its better when the drunk people get on Vent we had 2 in are party channel the other night...good times

the other night I got to do a defend the city raid, that was one of the most exciting PvP things I've done in months.

Got a bunch of friends who don't like to raid, pvp into the space and it was just absolute mayhem!!!

Last night in Naxx my guild started the 10-man and tried to do it this time with only two healers. Well our first 3 pulls wiped us once and came real close the other two times. I was putting out MASSIVE heals and wondering why in the hell we couldn't two heal this. Came to find out our raid leader had it on 25-man naxx. We switched over and had a good run. It was good to know if we can accually do heroic naxx pulls with only 10 people.

Just read the 3.0.8 patch notes. Hunters are pissed haha.

Sounds like every class is going to get a ridiculous balance pass for 3.1, at least hunters, priests and warlocks (if not others) so even if it's pretty lame right now, it's only going to be bunk for a few months.

Got my black ice the other night. Beat out two pallies, two dks and a warrior. :X

Not this hunter, but maybe we are tired of getting nerfed EVERY patch?
We are no doubtedly the most nerfed class in the game.
It doesn't matter to me, I'll just find other ways to melt and vaporize faces...
I am a marksman hunter, this is just my raid spec.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Maybe other classes are tired of having hunters be severely overpowered with every expansion and it takes blizzard several rounds of nerfs to get them back down to every other classes level.

Seriously, hunters being the top dps by a huge margin in raids is ridiculous. Other classes don't even come close. Hopefully other classes catch up once once they gear up more.

exactly.

Really, I'm more tired of LAZY players. Really. I am. There are so many lazy players that aren't pushing themselves or their characters and wondering "WTF I've got the same gear as that guy and I'm not even getting close to his DPS?" There are times I'm able to out DPS another hunter with better gear.... this tells me one thing. LAZY HUNTER.

It's easy to do to be a lazy player. You're grinding, questing, instancing, raiding, farming, whatever, it gets tedious, it gets monotonous. But that is no excuse to not be the top of your game when playing with other players, their lives and gold depend on it.
-----Added 15/1/2009 at 10 : 56 : 31-----
I almost forgot, I've been trying to game the auction house and doing very well.

I started with just a few gold and some mats, and over the past close to two weeks, I have turned it into over 2,500g with mats overflowing from my bags, bank, and mailbox. I find it incredible actually.

My goal was to make enough for my epic flying mount, I never bothered to get one back in BC days. Now, the goal is to make enough for that mount, and the Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth since it helps when farming mats and questing with friends. I love the fact it has a vendor. I've encountered it playing and used the vendor... very handy! Now if I was an engineer and could MOLL-E, I could stay in the outback on a walkabout much longer!

I'm not lazy, but I will see if I can find the WWS reports of ALL top DPSers (from top guilds) in Naxx that I saw posted. The top 10 were all hunters, most of them BM. I think there might have been a death knight in there and then more hunters after the top 10 with a spattering of warlocks and mages. BM hunters are overpowered. I'm not certain as I have never played one but it seems to me that hunters rely a lot less on gear than a lot of other classes. Thats why I said hopefully other classes will catch up when everyone starts getting more geared. Correct me if I am wrong.

Believe me I know about lazy players. As a level 76 undergeared shadow priest, I have out dpsed level 80's in instances and thats just sad. Its even sadder that the people are in my guild.

BM hunters have been overpowered since they got Beastial Wrath and The Beast Within. I've been playing the WotLK 10-day trial and while Death Knights are fun, I won't be coming back. I hate PvE and the changes to Arena make it worse than it already was.

I feel the same way, people are always QQing over one class or another saying "They have this, they have that!" I hate it, just play the damn game! No one was created equal, it takes skill to be the best. Gear helps ALOT, but working on your rotations! Don't just stand back there and press one button and let your pet do everything! Rotate your spells to get max DPS out of your gear. Stop expecting the game to play it for you.

That mount is the shit. Our main tank has it and it makes repairing and getting regents SOOOO much easier. In Naxx we can just run back to the entrance to the instance and he can mount up so we have repair and such. ALOT of gold, but it is worth it. Plus, you can have people on the back of it and run off the side of a cliff. Two things can happen, if you guys stay on the mount, it hits the ground and dies with you living. If you are a druid, you can eject everyone off the mount and hit your flight form cast. You live and they die :).

Hunters were never "overpowered", give me a break. For what we had, we were always on the short end of the stick. Sure, we had great burst damage, but the trade-off to having it was we gave up mobility. We are the only class that has no middle management of DPS, DoTS and we have to stand still to get the most of our damaging shots off.
Show me any other class that has to do the same.
If a hunter stands still in pvp, its over...

Worst of all, we are the easiest class that is susceptible to any form of CC from any class and dependant on others to be aware of the only form of CC we have.
Until they removed the 8 yard restriction we had on us, anything in the range of 5 to 7 yards schooled us and there was nothing we could do about it. Mages frost nova'ed and stood at 7 yards pyroblasted / frostconed, rogues can just walk up and avoid our traps while sapping from 8 yards out (and how useless is our flare?) then with their poisons / stuns / disarm keep us with their striking range while we have no way to combat at close quarters. Warriors, with their charge / intercept / hamstring spammed us to death, Pallies with their stun / quaranteed crit ...... Warlocks with their mini warriors chainfeared spammed and DoT us to death.. And you say we are over-powered....

Sure they gave a so called buff on our AoE, but what hunter uses Volley unless in an instance and raiding?
PVP volley is useless and arenas should be called LoS dancing because everyone humps the poles.
Hunters are OP'ed... Puhlease...

exactly! I'm tired after an instance or a raid because I'm actually pressing buttons in a tight rotation and being hyper aware of that, sometimes to the point of death because I don't see the mob chewing on my foot, I'm looking 25 yards away. I've since learned to just keep my pet nearby so that I can attack the guy on me. Is there a way to stop the autoattack when I shoot something? I'd rather him stay by my side until someone tries to eat me.

really? you can also repair! Oh that is the shit. Do you get faction discounts?

Pole dancing in arena... :)

No unfortunately you don't. Had some pugs in a 25 man the other night start bitching at our tank because he was "jacking the prices up for his own gain". They thought that he got the extra money off the items and when in reality there was no rep discounts that we are used too. Repair, Regents, Poisons, trade goods, food, drink, and being able to empty your bags... that mount is great. If you could only check your mail, but then our other tank is maxed out in engineering and he just drops the mailbox.

I was talking about PVE hunters overpowered. In PVP hunters need a buff, I totally agree. The only thing you have in PVP is your big red pet.

In PVE, good hunters can out dps great dpsers of most other classes, right now. I'm sure what happened in BC will happen again. The more gear dependent classes like rogues and warriors will start to become real strong in the higher tiers of the end game. Terrible hunters can still keep up with good players of other classes. Being a great hunter is very complex, that's true, but terrible hunters still hold there own by doing next to nothing. Believe me, we have both awesome hunters and terrible hunters in our guild.

Lol, pole dancing. Dumbest shit ever.

I really miss this game (back when I had 40 hours a week literally to devote to it). I just watched a video with ventrilo recordings of my guild taking down the Twin Emps in AQ40 when I was the MT of our guild and it almost brought a tear to my eye. A huge rush of memories all at once. This game definitely offers a community that no other game does. Man I wish I was rich so I could stay at home and play all day ha ha ha ha ha.

Your post, and blizzard's actions in 3.08, speak only to the fact that you're looking at the game from a very short term perspective. Hunters and druids are the classes which scale best with levels, as opposed to gear, because weapon damage doesn't do as much for us (particularly BM). Both classes will fall behind the classes who benefit more from having big crazy weapons in Ulduar and on. It's just a mechanic of the game, and it's the same mechanic that has been true of hunters and druids v. rogues and warriors since the game began. Handing out a bunch of nerfs on this content because of that discrepancy is silly.

And, if you've been paying any attention, hunters in 25 man guilds who are clearing the expansion are no longer the dominant crazy force they're made out to be. We have very good hunters in my guild, and they're already falling behind classes which scale better with gear.

Hopefully this will all be a moot point when 3.1 rolls around, though, since it sounds like they're going to rebalance us again anyway.

You see that's my point. I want hunters not to be a powerhouse for awhile then fall back. I think it's the class mechanic that needs reworking, not just a round of nerfs.

To say that hunters are overpowered is a misstatement. To say that BM hunters in general are OP is also incorrect. We have 3 contributing factors to topping the DPS meters. An overpower tanking pet that does way more damage that it's supposed to. I'm talking about the scorpid. We have 1 specific BM spec which is 50/21/0 which gives us about 40% up time on Bestial Wrath over a 4 minute fight which is insane. We also have a bugged Aspect of the Beast that's giving pets 20% AP instead of the advertised 10%. If you take into account the Glyph of Aspect of the Beast also gives 4% more AP to pets instead of the advertised 2%. All of these things whether used by themselves or all together contribute to hunters being top of the DPS. If you take the 2nd best hunter spec(imo, of course) 53/11/7 and a non-scorpid pet, He will not outperform a Warrior or Unholy DK on fair fight.

ALL of the things I mentioned are being nerfed. Readiness no longer affects bestial wrath, Aspect of the beast is fixed, Scorpids are nerfed. I'm definitely not complaining about them. The problem is they're also nerfing non-"exploiting" hunters by reducing the damage of Steady shot by roughly 35% and reducing pet haste by 50% and pet damage modifiers by 10%.

Another thing is that pet management is a pain in the ass that other classes don't have to deal with. You think it's hard to get out of a fissure when it's a glowing red circle right under your feet, Try getting your pet out of it when he's on the other side of Kel'thazud and out of your sight. Our pets also don't get the gimmick buffs from Loatheb or Thaddius which puts us roughly 3k dps behind other dps. Other fights, like Malygos our pet bugs out. They can't attack Scions, they can't attack necro lords, They won't reliably stand in static fields, they get bugged on the cyclones and need to be pulled back. They get insta-gibbed out of nowhere on Anub'Rekhan, 4 horsemen, Grobbulus, Sapphiron, Kel, and Heigan and 2-3 drake Sartharion. When our pet dies. It's a straight up 60% damage reduction until it's rezzed which is 4 seconds of zero DPS just to rez our now-unbuffed and unhappy pet.

I'm sorry but hunters should not be judged by perfect condition fights like patchwerk and we should not be judged by specific specs, pets and abilities that are overpowered and/or glitched. It's no different than 5 HAT rogues in a raid all pulling 7k+ dps on every fight. The only difference is that hunter's big dps doesn't require 4 other hunters to do it. It's broken and it's being fixed, the rest of the nerfs, steady shot, pet haste and dps% were too much.

It's true that hunter's don't scale with gear very well/ I dominated DPS when we first got into naxx but as my raid mates and I geared up at the same time, their dps got higher and higher while my DPS has barely moved. Now I'm pushing hard, cuting corners and risking my pet's life at every corner just to stay in the top 5 which consists of a fury war, arms war, unholy DK and Mage. I'm one of, if not the best geared person in my guild and Without "exploiting" OP and soon to be nerfed specs and pets, I would fall out of the top 5, guaranteed.

I'ved typed too much.. gotta go raid now. 3 drake Sartharion sucks.

Well said mike!

Hunters are doing fairly well in arena atm.

We're very well represented in 3s and 5s. We're being killed in 2s but I believe it's because the DK/Paladin is such a dominating team. When that combo gets nerfed and with the 3.08 deterrence changes, it should help us prevent some of the huge burst damage we take from mages and other classes. BTW 7 of the top US 2s teams are Paladin/DK and teams with DKs make up about 45% of the top 100 teams.. OP much?

Lol, the new 2's team is Paladin/DK. No longer is it Paladin/Warrior.

If DK's are OP now because of their arena representation, what about Resto Druids before WotLK? Shit, what about Resto Druids now? I don't know if they're still as ridiculous as they were before Wrath, but I remember them being extremely frustrating to play against because of their HoTs, travel form and LoS exploiting.

I haven't really encountered many restro druids in arena this season. Lots of moonkins in 2s, lots of Ferals in 3s and I haven't even done 10 games in 5s yet so I don't even know about that. As a BM hunter, they haven't really been a huge problem. We've run into a moonkin/shaman team on my server that destroys us with bloodlust wolves/ents and it sucks we had to fight em like 5 times one night. Not to mention spirit wolves will jump off ledges to chase me while my pet runs all the way around and down the ramp to chase them.. grr..

Ya spirit wolves got that pounce and stun also. Which me as a mage hates.

Spirit wolves are fucking overpowered as shit right now. I was questing on my (then) 76 (now 78) DK in Dragonblight and this 73 shaman jumped me. The wolves absolutely wrecked me. I guess I'd have been ok with a touch of healing, but right now it's punishing.

Just need a new ring on my hunter (Surge Needle plz?) and I'll be in full epics on him. Nice to be shiny again.

Ya I love how I can pull 4 things a couple lvls higher then me and the wolves keep my healed till almost if not all the mobs are dead... I just hope I can hit 80 with her before the big nurf comes, unless it was in this new patch, didn't read the Shaman part of the notes.

The more I read this thread, the more I realize how little I know about what goes on in this game. I've only been playing for a few months, and I use the resting system heavily, to give you an idea of my experience. I'm more or less a PvE holy priest who runs the occasional instance.

What's a good resource for figuring out how to pwn as a healer by expanding beyond the basics? I want to know how to figure out getting into raids and more instancing. I understand that holy priests are valuable in these situations, so how do I get into the action?

Also, from what I understand, you get good gear from doing quests, instances, and raids, but the gear varies depending on which you do. Is this right?

Are there any good (and free) online guides for figuring this stuff out? Most of what I see are wikis, databases, and wildly random forums. I've found the occasional guide that has helped, but mainly when it comes to questing, skills, and talents.

Before you ask: Yes, I'm a part of a guild, but it's a casual guild with only a few members. It consists of a few of my cousins and a couple of friends. My cousin plays heavily, but I find it hard to get advice through WoW directly. We only play together on occasion. He's lvl 80, and I'm sitting at 69.

My Character @ The World of Warcraft Armory

There's a "blog" called wowinsder.com that could provide you with a TON of information. I imagine if you search "priest" you could find a listing of good starting gear and where to get it. But to save you some time, here are two excellent posts for both shadow and holy: Spiritual Guidance: Hitting the cap - WoW Insider Spiritual Guidance: Easy pre-Naxx gear for Holy priests - WoW Insider.

The place to go to "l2p" as it were is probably the Elitist Jerks forums. They're very heavy on the theorycrafting over there, but if you can spend some time going through it, there's a lot of really good information to be had. They can be found here: Elitist Jerks.

Basically you have the idea right on the sources of gear and the order of their power. "Weak" items come from questing (with the occassional gem), "Good" items come from regular instances, "Great" items come from heroic instances and "Awesome" items come from raiding. The power of the item corresponds relatively well to the difficulty of coordinating what you have to do to get the item.

Raids are almost exclusively max level only. There are still level 60 and 70 raid instances but they're very rarely run on a serious basis. I don't know of an end all, be all guide to holy priests. You just gotta dig around the wikis and forums.

There's some good strategy at Holy Priest - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

That page covers alot. It's not hard to cast heal, you just want to keep practicing how to conserve mana, when to renew, aoe heal, flash heal, or greater heal. One thing to remember is you have more than 1 spell. You have aoe, instants, heal over times, dispel quick and mana inefficient or slow and mana efficient heals. Stopcasting is a strategy you'll need to learn for raids. That's covered on the wowwiki page.

I hope it helps.

Thanks, guys. I think I've become quite good at healing: choosing the right spells in terms of mana effciency. I need to work on bringing enough mana water with me though.... I also need to be more forward in coaching my party. I hate it when I'm doing my best keeping a barely passable tank alive and one or two rogue/mage/hunter/whatever(s) do something to spin the aggro out of control. Nothing pisses me off worse than blowing my mana load because I have to split greater heal between two or three players when group heals won't keep them alive. And I can see where they go wrong too. (And I have limited experience outside of being a healer.) Either the tank doesn't know how to build aggro or the others try to do too much at once and all hell breaks loose (or both).

Where I need to focus is on doing more instances and maybe just level as fast as I can. I have 11 levels to go to max. I don't do nearly enough instances. Maybe I'll start mapping out which ones I want to do and try to get some better gear that will help me level faster.

Thanks for the resources, guys. I'm certain to use them.

Before today, a renew and spamming CoH was more than enough to keep the group alive. Oh well, I guess CoH was getting boring just spamming but I liked being able to have a great aoe healing spell and 6 seconds isn't too bad i suppose.