WoW Armory Mobile App

As an owner of an Android smartphone I naturally installed WoW Armory mobile app on my phone.  Right now I am going through my third phone (and I recall at least couple of app updates) with it and experience never changes:

Here's how it works most of the time:

• Open the App, click OK to use mobile authenticator 
• Go to AH, click Sell tab, select an item to sell, set up price, click Sell button
• Enter the password, get "Login Failed" error
• Say "WTF", click Sell again, type the password, get "Connection Lost" error
• App crashes

• Restart the app, go to login, get "Incorrect password".  It was valid  a minute ago?!
• Wait 3 minutes, start app, log successfully, 
• Go to AH, click Sell tab, select an item to sell, set up price, click Sell button
• Enter the password, get "Password is incorrect" error
• Click Sell button, enter the password get "Login Failed" error
• Click Sell button, enter the password, get "Too Many Attempts" error

• Wait 15 minutes
• Restart the app, click OK to use mobile authenticator 
• Go to AH, click Sell tab, select an item to sell, set up price, click Sell button
• Enter the password, auction posted successfully
• Go back to the list of items, select another one, click Sell button
• App crashes.

Go to the first bullet to continue with user experience with WoW Armory.

And I admit, the error about incorrect password is on me, but I only encounter it once in a while and given the password policies where it has to be exactly 257 characters long with both Chinese and Lithuanian characters no wonder I mistype it maybe once in 20 logins, but "Login Failed" has nothing to do with my password.  And the fact that I have to type it two-three times to sell a single item on AH is not annoying, this is just plain unacceptable.

Patch 6.02 PRT Notes

Reading through 6.02 PTR Patch Notes I, naturally, pay attention to what changes are coming for hunters as a class more than anything else.

So

• Racial traits leveled out - good, not that I struggled with them, but it sounds fair;
• No reforging - ok, I guess it makes gear different again, right now the difference between best in slot and not-so-good in slot gear is negligible, it is probably a step in a right direction;
• Different stats system - I need to play with it to understand how it works and I am fairly sure some adjustments will be made after it goes live;
• Stats shrinking - long overdue, in my opinion;
• Combined AH - nice, more consistent prices and opportunity to buy some items unavailable for Horde right now;
• Healing changes - probably huge, but I never had a healing character, I don't know how it used to be and have no baseline to compare to what it is going to be in WoD.

While not all of the above is a good news at least it is not a bad news.  Hunter changes, though, concern me.  

Now hunters have no interrupt or silence ability/shot/talent.  Not only hunter does not have any anymore, but all the pets lost it too.  Pets lost all rooting abilities as well.  The only thing that's left to hunter is a Freeze Trap.  So if a mob starts casting anything at me I just stand there waiting for it to finish.  

Hunters also don't have any raid utility on their own anymore.  Hunter's Mark is being removed and I can bet new Fox Stance the way it's described in the PRT notes is not going to be used by anyone in the raid.  Pets still provide raid buffs though but I feel something valuable was taken away from me and nothing was given in return.

Also from the notes looks like Survival spec is going to be overpowered in PvE.  Pandaria was the first expansion I experienced where all three specs were fairly close to each other in damage output and raid utility and I feel my favorite Beast Mastery is being neglected for the Warlords of Draenor expansion.

Daily Chronicles

I have reached iLvl 577, have 4 heroic bosses under my belt now: Immerseus, The Fallen Protectors, Norushen, and Galakras.

I also got the last mount from the Argent Tournament and can finally take a breath not going to do those dailies in a while.  There are some pets I could get for points in addition to the mounts, but the thought of doing the tournament dailies again makes me sick.

Looked at the players ranking site and found myself fairly high up there.  Definitely the best geared player in my guild.  What I noticed is that most of the hunters that are ranked higher than me are Survival.  Even went out to FemaleDwarf page to run Survival spec and found BM being slightly better in terms of DPS.  It must be the gear then.  Dropped Skinning and leveled Enchanting for a slight DPS increase, and, possibly, some additional gold from DE of soulbound items.

At this level I started to just DPS down Warbringers - I just make sure my turtle pet has all the aggro and I mend it through the fight, but otherwise it's just a pure tank and spank routine.  The competition is tough though.  I rarely get a chance to kill one and I miss the good old times when it took me 7 minutes to kill one and then I found another one down the circle and by the time I finish the loop the first one was up...

Soloing Zandalari Warbringers

I found farming Zandalari Warbringers to be very lucrative and, at first, challenging.  They also have a chance of dropping one of three mounts, but those are soulbound and can only be sold to a vendor for 2.5g.

I believe I started soloing Warbringers at ilvl 520 and while it was tedious in the beginning, since they have huge health pool it is doable and can be done at comparatively low levels by Beast Mastery hunter.  The fight is about survival, not DPS.

First,

Build

I selected Spirit Bond as my Tier 3 talent and highly recommend it for any soloing and even leveling.  Makes hunter's life much easier than a lot of other DPS classes.  Please note I chose it over Exhilaration because I think sustained healing is more important while fighting NPCs, than a boost on a cooldown.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Animal Bond - same as above, healing;
Glyph of Mending - same as above and above, sustained healing;
Glyph of Misdirection - with Misdirection macro that misdirect to pet is one of the aggro mitigation tool with Feign Death being the second one.

Minor Glyph

Glyph of Revive Pet - this allows me to revive my pet without interruption even if Warbringer is banging on my head.

Strategy

Pull up a Turtle, set it to passive and turn off the automatic Growl.  Engage Warbringer, bind it to the pet and make sure it ignores you.

General tips

• Stand behind and away from Warbringer at all times;
• Monitor threat levels to make sure it targets pet at all times;
• Watch out what it casts (see Abilities).

Warbringer Abilities and Mitigation

Each Warbringer has four out of five abilities:

• Thunder Crush - frontal cone of damage.  Make sure you're not in it, Mend Pet.
• Meteor Shower - meteors are dropping all over.  Dance to avoid a hit (you may survive a hit or two), I believe you may be able to stay outside of the affected area and still DPS the Warbringer, but I never bothered to prove it.  Mend Pet often.
• Horrific Visage - keep Bestial Wrath on cooldown to interrupt, but even if you don't it is usually not critical, except for the Warbringer in Krasarang Wilds which tends to reset if you allow it to scare your pet too far away.
• Scarab Swarm - bunch of scarabs tries to get you or a pet, I usually Multi-Shot them down as soon as they appear or Glaive Toss through them if they are already on me.  If you miss them, don't sweat, they hit like kittens.
• Vengeful Spirit - Summons Vengeful Spirit.  This thing hits like a truck and can 2-3 shot your pet.  Fortunately it is extremely slow, so use Distracting Shot as soon as it shows up and step away, if it gets too close - change position.

Bare Minimum

So at the bare minimum a BM hunter needs to use:
Mend Pet
Misdirect to pet (I use macro which I use in place of the regular Misdirection)
Feign Death for threat mitigation

And, if Warbringer has Vengeful Spirit ability:
Distracting Shot

Week's Progress

Last night I decided to run the last LFR where I could get the Secrets of the Empire and then, unexpectedly, was invited into guild's Flex run.  By the end of the night I had 10xSecrets in my bag, much better than I was hoping for two days ago.  I also upgraded my Assurance of Consequences to the Flex version and replaced a bow with Death Lotus Crossbow. This brings my item level to 543 and in terms of DPS I increased my output by at least 10% this week.

Overall this has been a terrific week even despite the fact I still struggle to get a Primal Egg on the Isle of Giants after grinding over 6,000 Giant Dinosaur Bones.  I even approached one of the hunters grinding in the area and asked if he had any eggs dropped for him and he said he had two in the last two days, so I guess eggs have not been removed from the game it's just RNG.  Or me.

World of Warcraft Tools

Decided to list websites and tools I use to enhance my WoW gaming experience.  I like freebies and think I am already paying enough for my WoW account to use paid services on top of that, so sometimes I have to find workarounds or just suffer.  Still, I collected few sites I visit regularly.

FemaleDwarf - DPS calculator, imports WoW armory data, in theory allows you to compare different configs/setups for min/maxing, but feels too cumbersome to rebuild the whole setup, including reforging for comparison, so I only use it as a common sense validation after I reforge.

AskMrRobot - great tool site for reforging (free) and gear upgrades (paid services).  As much as I like what these guys provide I am not paying (at least yet) and only use free reforging advice.  I also don't like their stats weights as they put Haste way too high on the priorities list versus most of the other sites that discuss Hunter's stats' priorities, but since there's no alternative I am aware of I am sticking with them for a time being.

Curse - one of the number of sites where you can get WoW addons.  I like their client and try to use it to keep my addons up to date using it as much as I can.  I also scan its database of addons for useful tools to try from time to time.

Wowhead - ultimate WoW database and a thriving community.  Place to find information on everything WoW: quests, NPCs, achievements, gear, bosses and more.

Icy Veins - has some useful guides, I go there once in a while, but mostly from Google searches.

Retired:

• WoWReforge is dead (not being updated).  I used them a lot in the past, AskMrRobot does the same, however I feel stats weights were more to the point on this site.
• Huntersloot is dead (not being updated) - great tool for quick and dirty gear comparison and finding upgrade options.  Still looking for a replacement to this one.
• WHU (Warcraft Hunters Union) is (almost) dead, too bad, it was a great resource, dedicated to hunters with more useful information than icy-veins.

The Build

So it's obvious I play a hunter.  My primary specialization is Beast Mastery.  I keep my character properly gemmed and reforge every time I get a new gear piece.  I don't transmog.  My Build has been stable for a while:

I chose Thrill of the Hunt and Blink Strikes because they are passive and don't require additional button clicks.  I feel my hunter has too many already.  Spirit Bond as well as Animal Bond and Mending are there for soloing which I do a lot.  And Glaive Toss coupled with Misdirection to pet makes wonders when I need to get adds off my back in a hurry.

For misdirect I use the following macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,help][help][@pet,exists] Misdirection

which misdirects to the player in focus (I set focus on tanks in instances) or to pet if there's nothing in focus.

Overall I want to be able to solo high-level instances, such as Firelands, in my primary configuration even if I lose some DPS.  Survivalability of the pet is the number one priority as I pet-tank pretty much everything, including Zandalari Warbringers.  And most of the time I tank with a ferocious pet, only toughest mobs force me to pull out a turtle or a direhorn (for primals on the Isle of Giants).  As for my own protection I simply try to avoid damage using Feigh Death, Deterrence, and Disengage.

I also have Marksmanship spec as a secondary and tried to maximize DPS on that spec.  Never got close to what I am able to pull out as a BM in that spec though, I guess it just doesn't fit my playstyle, although self-healing shots are supposed to be useful I stay alive longer in BM spec.  Plus in BM spec I am able to use my exotic pets, such as quilen with battle rez Eternal Guardian or a strider with water walking.

Back to Work

My server had been merged with another one a month ago and now I feel like living in a city.  Everywhere I go I see players, people camping Warbringers have to stay in line to get one and AH trade is crazy.  Overall I don't like it, too much competition for resources; not only my Warbringer business went sour people who do get to kill them consistently drive AH prices down, so for me, working on the mats for Geosynchronous World Spinner mount, it's a hassle to make gold I need.  I discovered The Isle of Giants, have no idea where I've been all that time, but now I am grinding bones and looking for eggs to drop.  After 2 eggs (both hatching into Red Primal Raptor) in the first week I am running empty for the last two weeks.  Not sure if it's a bad luck or something is broken since the last hotfix.

I have used Wowhead profiler to compile the list of mounts I don't yet have and found about a dozen I could buy outright from vendors which I promptly did.  I also completed the list of my Honor Points mounts recently by running Heroic Dungeons and converting Justice Points into Honor Points.  My mounts count stands at 147 at the moment.  I am grinding bones for one more, hope to get two more from the eggs on the island, which would put me at 150 (and that's a bonus mount).  Plus I am getting ready to pull the trigger on the engineering crafted mount (see above) and in a few days might work to get Darkmoon Fair mounts too.

On the gear front I finally collected four Tier 16 LFR pieces. I dropped Timeless hands and chest in favor of the LFR Tier pieces (even if it lowers my ilvl and I lose some stamina) because of the DPS boost. And since I hit the ceiling of the items I can get out of LFR I decided to look into legendary cloak questline I abandoned a while ago because it wanted me to do PvP battles.  After hesitating for a few months I finally went and won both battles I needed in about 20 minutes all in my PvE gear and no performance enhancing substances.  Should've done it years ago!   Although being ilvl 541 and having 4-piece gear helped.  So now I will be looking for 20xSecrets of the Empire.  Ran 4 LFRs last night and 4 of the secrets dropped.  Nice feeling of being overpowered in ToT LFRs, and even in SoO LFRs I show up in the upper floor of the DPS charts consistently.