and i cant tell u guys how happy i am they fixed the inspect bug.. im an inspect fiend.. and it was killing me that i couldnt look at people's gear..

The Shattering on PTR

Can't even find my way around Org things are so different, looks so nice though.

Supposedly its hitting live next tuesday

According to who/what?

MMO Champ.

How good/bad is the streaming client for the game? I'm trying to reinstall the game on my 70GB laptop hard drive and I just can't make enough space to install 4.0.1 (next step is to move yet another 10GB of files to an external HD).

My laptop is definitely outdated and I have monthly bandwidth cap (100GB monthly bandwidth cap, but still).

It doesn't necessarily stream the game, it builds the install as you play. So you will need all of the required hard-drive space eventually as it downloads.

Last night we ran a quick Sunwell and the legendary bow Thori'dal finally dropped and went to me We have been working on the guild achievement "We are hardcore" in the hopes that we can get off to a good start with guild advancement when cata drops. All we need now is the main hand glaive which we are paying a 20k finders fee and a realm transfer for.

My guild ran BT on Monday and the offhand dropped from Illidan. We're still missing the mainhand and Thori'dal.

Yeah, but I won't need the extra 15 GB of free hard drive space to install 4.0.1 and possibly another similar patch in the future. I found most of the info I need here.

How are hunters currently (and in Cataclysm) from a balance POV? I don't intend to do any hardcore raiding or PVP if I level one to 85, but I also don't want to end up with a class that struggle at finding a group/raid spot.

If you play well you will get a spot. Hunters should be in fairly high demand for their freeze traps and kiting in 5 man and raid content and the whole point of the class/talent/glyph changes is to make it easier to tweak classes to even the playing field.

Theoretically all things being equal DPS output should be identical when we get to 85. In reality there will be variations, but there shouldnt be any dead classes, though you may have to take a different talent tree than you would like.

I cant give first hand knowledge, but my new guild takes a hunter to its ten mans whenever he is available. He is a nice guy, knows what he is doing and how his class works.

Hunters were really good in WOTLK and will be more than fine in Cata. I have a feeling we'll be desired in every aspect in Cata; rated bgs, 5man instances, raids, etc. Cata is definitely going to give good hunters a chance to shine again and it shouldn't be very difficult to rise above the mediocre hunters. I recall in tbc how good hunters could really shine in some of the harder heroics like shadow lab, shattered halls, etc. cc, kiting, misdirects; we def bring a lot to the table.

Currently we are a touch behind in dps since the new patch dropped, but that is going to be balanced at 85. Focus takes some getting used to, but is pretty good once you get it.

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Seems reasonable enough. Paying someone 20k gold plus $25 to server change. They'd most likely be coming in to a quality raiding guild and earn themselves a spot in a progressive raid group. You'd just have to be a wandering/not-so-loyal carrier of a main hand warglaive.

A touch?

I've yet to see a hunter do over 6k dps on LK 10.

Didn't you just kill LK that once, LK?

Yeah, but I pugged him unsuccessfully in a lot of groups before then and saw a lotta hunters with a lot better gear than my shaman doing a lot less dps.

If you have hunters in great gear doing sub 6k DPS then that may contribute to it being an unsuccessful run. I wouldn't use PUG's that can't kill Lich King as my measure for how Hunters measure up in the DPS race.

A hunter that knows his class and has decent gear will put up great DPS numbers - might not necessarily be first on World of Logs, but more than enough to clear any relevant content. Same goes for any class - at least that's what Blizzard is shooting for.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's on the PTR for 2 weeks and it hits live on the 30th.

I agree with all of this. My guild worked on 10 man heroic lk like two weeks ago and although most of the dps were doing more dps than me, I still put out good numbers as well as fulfilled my role on the fight.

Anais, I wouldn't jump to many conclusions on lk, it's not a very good measuring stick for hunter dps. Any good hunter is doing dps to the boss, pooling focus to dispel enrages on shambling horrors, killing ice orbs and dropping traps on LK. All of which hurts our dps a lot.

On an all out fight like festergut, hunters should still put up pretty competitive numbers, although we are probably a good 10-25% behind our pre-4.0 potential.

I saw a beta video by Method however on Haifus <somethingorother> and the top dps in the video was a survival hunter doing like 53k dps.

Pugged hunters are probably the worst measure of the class as a whole because, in my experience anyway, a greater percentage of hunters are bad as compared to other classes.

The class has so many great utility skills and you can have so much fun with it but most just try to DPS DPS DPS.

I would agree with that. A good hunter is a blessing. A random pug hunter is a curse.

When 4.0.3a hits live:

Nice, I'll hit 80 on my alliance alt right before they lower the xp to level.

They're planning on having a legendary caster DPS weapon. Between that and Time Warp, I can't wait to start raiding on my Mage.

bah, I wish they would have allowed us to fly in azeroth as soon as the shattering takes place. I'm really hyped to check out the new world.
Looks like it's time to abandon Dalaran, no more portals as of Tuesday sucks.

What's the reasoning for removing the portals again? There's still a few weeks where most activity and all raiding is happening in Northrend. Do they want you to have to take a ship there every time? I guess I can make some spare change by selling ports for a while.

Where are you putting your hearthstones?