Hunting Party Podcast Episode 213: Farewell Solarflair

This was one hell of an episode, and a good send off for Solarflair who is on his way to work in the QA department at Blizzard! He’ll be there testing the new raids long before you ever get your hands on them. We wish him the best of luck.

Also this week, we talk about #TeamHunter BlizzCon plans, our experiences in BRF, and the Tranquilizing Shot nerf.

As a bonus, half way through the show the always awesome Rogerbrown from Method stops by to talk about hunters and his favorite spec. We’re going to try and get him on the show more often!

Last but not least, we now have a new time for the live show: Every other Sunday at 2PM ET / 11AM PT (18:00 GMT) on Twitch. We hope this will be a better time for more of you to tune in live, and it also does wonders for our sleep schedules. We’re slotted right in between Convert to Raid and Final Boss, making Sunday quite the epic day for WoW shows!


The next episode is scheduled for Sunday, March 29. Thanks for listening.

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5 thoughts on “Hunting Party Podcast Episode 213: Farewell Solarflair”

  1. Fantastic podcast! I don’t know how you guys do it; I am just listening and I’m exhausted.
    You can sometimes go pretty deep into our choices which I appreciate and Roger Brown thinks about things as if there could be change or improvement; he’s not passive at all.
    Good job and thanks!

  2. Nice cast!

    I got a question, but not related to the cast and wish to hear your comments and advice on this matter.

    I got my 4Ts and made the switch to BM recently from survival. At the beginning while I was waiting for my friend to get me some mastery gems and enchants, I jumped into a raid just to have a look and test the dps (all gears were enchanted and gemed with multistrike at this point, besides from the T chest and hands were gemed in mastery) and damn i did pretty well with it (hitting 45-49k dps in Highmaul boss 1-3, LFR though). While thinking I am not even properly gemed and enchanted and I got this kind of results, I’d probably do better when I got everything to mastery. Then when i got everything to mastery and jumped into the raids again and this time I felt I didn’t do as well as before, hitting around 36-38k (this time in normal mode). I even got caught up or lost to some players that are not as well geared. I read some forums and to see stats priority and even checked out some top hunters armory to have a more better understanding, small portion do gem and enchant half mastery and half multistrike. The following are my stats unbuffed:

    1474 Mastery (48.15%)
    1166 Multistrike (17.67%)
    517 Crit (19.7%)
    717 Haste (7.97%)
    367 Versatility (2.82%)
    http://tw.battle.net/wow/zh/character/%E5%86%B0%E9%9C%9C%E4%B9%8B%E5%88%BA/Ztriker/simple (unfortunately in chinese)

    This might just be my own imaginations with all the not doing well things as I haven’t really spent too much time with BM since the release of WOD. Should I continue pump mastery up or invest in another stat? Note that both my trinkets do offer multistrike when they proc (Scales and Beating Heart). There are some gears I could change to pump other stats up (such as I could swap my belt for another one that offers Haste+Crit instead of Mas+Mult).I did read the EJ forums where the guide author suggested a golden ratio stats for BM but I am not too sure if I should follow it or not and wanted to hear your comments first. Not saying I have already mastered the BM spell rotations, but I don’t think I am doing wrong in that section, at least not that much.

    Thank you for reading and I look forward for your reply!

    1. Stick with Mastery if you plan to play BM exclusively. If you are going to play Survival sometimes, Multistrike is fine too. Multistrike is still a really good BM stat (especially single target).

      You doing less DPS in normal mode vs. LFR can be explained by several reasons:

      1. LFR fights are much shorter. The shorter the fight, the higher your DPS will be.
      2. You could have had better luck with Frenzy procs (and Bestial Wrath resets) in LFR. Good or bad luck with these procs can add or subtract thousands of DPS.
      3. It’s LFR, you can ignore mechanics and focus 100% on DPS. 🙂

      As for the “golden ratio” of BM stats, I believe this might be referring to something you can see in Simulation Craft as a result of how BM stats interact with one another. For example, you could change 1 enchant from Mastery to Haste and it throws off your entire stat priority. You can even gain a few DPS by finding a “golden ratio” of stats (usually it’s a balance of haste/mastery/multi for single target).

      However, we’re talking about small amounts of DPS because no matter what stat is on “top,” they are still really close (except Versatility which lags a bit). Well within margin of error. And most of the time, Mastery remains on top which is why it’s safe to stack. It’s consistent… more pet damage is always good.

      If Reforging was still a thing, I think there might be more merit to exploring this golden ratio stuff, but it’s not. Enchants and gems and the stats they give diminish in their overall influence as our item level rises.

      TLDR; Prioritize Mastery as BM

  3. Thanks man! Your comments and advice always makes me feel more confident and really appreciate for the summary!

    Yes you are right on the luck part, now that you have mentioned some fights do feel that I get frenzy or BW resets more often then some, huge factor for sure.

    Would you recommend Steady Focus over Bestial Wrath on bosses like Hans’gar and Franzok? They are two but basically half of the fight you are only facing one of them.

    I am still thinking if I am going full time BM or might wanna switch specs for some encounters. So if I do plan to play dual specs, its all back with multistrike enchants and gems (damn it’ll cost :D)? Or is mastery a good considerations too.

    PS. I did feel good after last night’s guild raid topping the meter as BM (full mastery) on Blackhand when I had to kite tanks too, usually that won’t happen unless I am not assigned to kiting 😀

    And god damn it I had to give up the Humming trinket that dropped last night! As we have to gear up other people!

  4. Regarding the Tranq Shot nerf, they should just reverse it. By that I mean, Make Tranq have a baseline CD of 10 seconds, but if you want to use it any time you want, make the Glyph of Tranq Shot remove the 10 second CD but cause the focus cost to be 50.

    Orrrr… a better option (that they should have done to begin with instead of being lazy coders), make Tranq Shot cost 50 in PvP and 20 in PvE – react differently… similar to how Stampede is.

    But you know, that would require them to take time to fix the issue – so I don’t see this happening.

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