One last drive through the suburbs

Gweryc's once again packed his things away in boxes, moving along with his guild Nerglish to the PvE server Anvilmar. I'll let our guild master speak on behalf of the guild regarding the reasons for the guild's move, but I was personally motivated to follow them for no other reason than to continue playing with the group of friends I had made in the guild.

I've played on RP servers for years. It's a truly discomfiting experience to play on a non-RP realm again. I'm essentially suffering culture shock. In a way, it's a lot like moving to the Big City after being a farm boy your whole life. There are people everywhere -- loud people, all vying for attention. Trade chat spins by at a ridiculous clip, a street filled with hucksters ready to sell me one of the many fine watches secreted away in their trenchcoats. The auction house is filled to bursting, a veritable mega-mall that puts The Scryers's humble general store to shame. PvP queue times are thick, a congestion of traffic. People have strange names; elves carry monikers less Darnassian than Shadowrun. I'm constantly preening my ruffled feathers, reminding myself that the flood of out-of-character names, chat, guild tags, aren't reportable offenses.

I entered into several AVs my first night, helping the Alliance to win a majority of victories. In the end, I had accumulated enough honor from AV to buy a new Thrown weapon, in addition to finding a Truestrike Ring for sale at a good price, and trading some badges in for the Bloodlust Brooch. Three epics in one night isn't a bad haul, not at all. Hopefully this is the start of a trend for the guild as a whole, an omen of good fortune for our new home.

WotLK Forecast: Inscription, misc. changes

More fun! The previously mentioned improvement to Aspect of the Beast, the buff to melee AP, now increases pet AP as well. Kill Command, however, has been changed from a 5 sec cooldown to a full minute. Ouch.

There are finally some known hunter glyphs worth talking about. No decreased cooldown on my melee attacks as I'd hoped, but still some worth noting:

Aspect Glyphs

• Glyph of Aspect of the Beast: Increases the attack power bonus of Aspect of the Beast for you and your pet by an additional 2%.
• Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey: While Aspect of the Monkey is active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.
• Glyph of Aspect of the Viper: You regenerate mana from Aspect of the Viper as if you had 15% less mana in your current mana pool.

Attack Glyphs

• Glyph of Bestial Wrath: Decreases the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by 20 sec.
• Glyph of Deterrence: Decreases the cooldown of Deterrence by 20 sec.

Trap Glyphs

• Glyph of Immolation Trap: Decreases the duration of the effect from your Immolation Trap by 6 sec., but damage while active is increased by 100%.
• Glyph of Snake Trap: Your Snake Trap creates 2 additional snakes.

There are others, of course, but I found these the most relevant. There are interesting options for both tanking and dps roles, though I'm really looking at dps as my fixed role in Lich King. With the addition of a fourth tanking class, the death knight (of which there will be 23857628 per guild, come the expansion), and the improved ability of hunters' Tenacity pets to tank, I don't think there's any need to try to fill a tanking role, especially with the wonderful melee dps buffs I'll be getting.

I can't say what glyphs I'll want to run with yet, especially since it's not known which of the glyphs are greater, lesser, or minor. And I still have hope that there might be a Glyph of Raptor Strike. For sheer dps, looking at what's available, I can say I'll at least want the Glyph of Aspect of the Beast. I wouldn't say no to the Bestial Wrath and Glyph of Immolation Trap options, either.

WotLK Forecast: Pet spec

Daniel Whitcomb of WoW Insider recently covered the pet talent trees in the Wrath beta. He proposed a build for Ferocity pets that I largely found palatable, but I disagree with his choice of using the pet-rezzing talent Heart of the Phoenix. Blizzard seems undecided on how to implement the spell at this time, with a number of players expressing concerns over its mechanics. In any event, the talent seems somewhat superfluous to me for a hunter already specced into Improved Revive Pet. It seems far better to me to invest that point in the group utility talent Call of the Wild, leaving us with this build.