But They Are Lovely Glasses...

So there I was, heading out of Heroic Slave Pens*, and there, standing at the meeting stone, was a level 70 hunter. As I am prone to do when I see my fellow hunters, I decided to inspect him. This is what I saw:

A 23/20/18 spec.
An elemental shammy helm packed with intellect and bonus damage and healing.
Some sort of caster trinket.
Various spell-hit gems.
Two random daggers enchanted with Unholy and something else that I've never heard of before.

So as I was sitting there sort of /boggling at the guy, someone else nearby straight up asked him what was with his gear.

"What about it?" said the clueless hunter.

"It's all wrong for your class," the other guy said.

"Oh... I was trying to get a good balance of everything... how should I do it?" said the hunter.

And something funny happened. I felt sorry for the guy. Ebayed? Without a doubt. But you can't repress my inner hunter-trainer.+

So there I sat and told him what sort of stats he should look for in gear, and what sort he should definitely avoid. Then I told him a little about the different specs and how he should pick one to specialize in, rather than trying to spread out and be mediocre at everything. I told him to look at mine as a rough example.

He asked what the advantage would be of specializing like that, especially if he mostly wanted to do battlegrounds.

So I challenged him to a duel. Bestial Wrath, Intimidation... the duel was over in a couple seconds after he'd done maybe 600 damage to me total. "See?" I said.

"Thanks, I'm going to go respec right now!" he said, and hearthstoned out of Coilfang.

Did I magically transform him from huntard to hunter? Nope, I doubt it. Is he probably going to make some mistakes with his respec, if he even goes through with it? Yep. Is he still going to be wearing crappy gear? Probably yeah. Would I trust him with traps anytime soon? Nupe.

But is he at least sorta tentatively on the right track now? I think so.

I have a tendency to see myself as a teacher. I am Hunter Class Leader in my guild and that is a badge that I wear with pride, not so much because it says I am good, but because it says my guild trusts me to take other hunters under my wing. I do not see myself as an expert hunter by any means; I still have a lot to learn and practice, and there are a lot of hunters out there that are as good or better than I am. Master Hunter? Nah, I'd love to be called that someday, but I don't think I'm worthy of the title. (And even if I am, it's not something I'd want to peg on myself-- that's a title that's got to be bestowed by another master.)

I simply want to teach others how to pull a little more efficiency and a little more enjoyment out of this class. And a lot of the comments left at this blog indicate that I have had at least some measure of success and that really makes me feel good. One of the great things about the blogging community is that we can all teach each other and you can have many different teachers. Because we have that luxury, do not take one person/site/guild's word as gospel. Search around, read different blogs, test things for yourself, reach your own conclusions, and come out a better hunter. That is my advice for the day.

I hope that you readers have obtained a little of that communal knowledge from my blog, and I will continue to do my best to provide more. ^_^

And yes, I know that perhaps I just view Azeroth with rose-colored glasses.


*Funny story here. We got a group together specifically for Heroic Underbog and it wasn't until some time after we'd downed the first boss in Slave Pens that we went "Wait a minute... this isn't Underbog..." We are brilliant, eh?

+My guild is quite aware of this. "Tawyn, ready for a summon?" "Hang on, somebody just asked me how to play a hunter." "...Tawyn... just link him to the website... and get out now while you still can..."