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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Solo Hunter Glyphs

I just realized, thanks to comments, that in my previous post Solo Hunter Spec I omitted to describe the glyphs that I use for my Beast Mastery 55/15/0 build.

So here's the updated spec, along with the glyphs that I find most useful for Beast Mastery. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that BM hunters received much love in regards to glyphs.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Hunter's Mark - Perhaps it doesn't seem very useful but since I use Hunter's Mark for each and every mob (except when I'm AoE-ing), I would say that the 20% bonus to RAP is nothing to sneeze at. My level 5 Hunter's Mark now gives a 360 RAP bonus, up from the standard 300.

Glyph of Bestial Wrath - Now here's something that I like. Combined with Longevity in the Beast Mastery tree, my Bestial Wrath skill is now on a 1.14 minute cooldown. Very wicked, I'm telling you. If you're Beast Mastery, this glyph is a must. This combination guarantees that Bestial Wrath is up almost every fight.

Glyph of Mending - Another glyph that I consider essential for a Beast Master. 40% extra healing is huge. Combines with level 2 Blood of the Rhino, I now heal my pet for 2263 every tick.

Now if I could just use a 4th Major Glyph, I would give (strangely) Glyph of Explosive Trap a try. Why? Because it makes my AoE attacks even more powerful. I use Explosive Trap extensively when farming, for example, Stratholme. Since the mobs in there are pretty weak - but many - this would be a nice boost to my AoE DPS.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Feigh Death - Slightly decreases the cooldown of your Feign Death. Marginally useful. Better than nothing I guess.

Glyph of Mend Pet - This one is a bit more useful than the previous because every time you heal your pet, it gets a bit of happiness. This means that since you're healing the pet pretty often, it will always stay Happy, translating into the highest damage possible. Also, you don't have to feed the pet anymore.

Unfortunately for the 3rd minor glyph I haven't found anything remotely useful. Hopefully there will be some new, improved glyphs in a future patch.

Also be sure to check my other articles in this series for Solo Hunters:
Solo Hunter Spec
Solo Hunter Gear

11 comments:

Shawn said...

It's funny how there are glyphs I didn't even know about since the last time I checked the AH. I didn't even know about the Bestial Wrath or Mending glyphs. Or maybe I didn't and I didn't want to spend too much. Who knows anymore? Anyway, I'm totally picking those up. I have the Hunter's Mark, glyph of mend pet, and the serpent sting one. I'm a terrible hunter in that I totally forget to use Hunter's Mark when I'm killing stuff, so I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing so. Especially when I went and bought a glyph just for it. I'm why Hunters get a bad reputation, apparently.
Also, for those of us that have Hunters aren't speccing their pets with talents that increase happiness, glyph of Mend Pet comes in very handy. Whatever saves on food, I say. Which does of course sound terrible.

Darth Solo said...

Well, don't be too hard on yourself. Just think of Hunter's Mark as a skill that greatly adds to your DPS. To me, it's second nature to use it on every mob.

Also, there's another use for Hunter's Mark. When you attack a mob, you typically send in your pet, cast Hunter's Mark and then start firing. Well, the GCD that you "waste" casting Hunter's Mark is the extra bit needed for your pet to gain solid aggro.

As for food, again, don't feel bad. It's just pixels. If I had a pet IRL, I would obviously feed it and take care of it but in a game, it's a mostly annoying mechanic.

Ayanah said...

To make sure you never forget Hunter's Mark you could use a simple macro that combines the ordering of your pet to attack and cast Hunter's Mark at the same time. Since petattack doesn't trigger a global cooldown they are both cast at the exact same time.

/cast hunter's mark
/petattack

Aggrajag said...

As an Orc BM Hunter I have replaced my Arcane Shot with the following Macro. This way I don't have to worry about triggering loads of trinkets/racials/abilities and even though the timing of some casts is not perfect it does mean that I'm getting the benefit of the items far more often than triggering manually:

#showtoolip Arcane Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use Rune of Finite Variation
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Kill Command
/cast Rapid Fire
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast Arcane Shot
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Darth Solo said...

@Ayanah indeed, many people use this macro and I recommend it, especially to those who forget to cast Hunter's Mark. Personally, like I said, it's in my reflexes and I never fail to cast it. Even when fighting multiple mobs, I will cast it on the primary one and when it's dead, I'll re-cast it on the remaining one(s).

@Aggrajag thanks for the tip. Perhaps I should also make a macro like that so I don't have to hunt for trinkets/abilities in the middle of a fight, although my fingers have developed their own memory by now.

Tsani said...

As third Minor Glyph you could take a look at Revive Pet. Something is better than nothing and it does help when that mob just doesn't care whether it's snacking on something alive, dead, or pretending to be dead.

Anonymous said...

Kudos to the solution of a macro.

/petattack
/cast Hunter's Mark

I'm thinking that the spell needs to be in caps.

Darth Solo said...

I could use the Glyph of Revive Pet but I've never been in the situation where a mob was pounding on me while I was trying to revive the pet. But like you said, since it won't cost me a thing I guess I'll use that one.

Anonymous said...

I guess one could consider glyph of Multishot...? I use that spell a lot with my croc pet.

Darth Solo said...

Ah but that's a major glyph. I need a minor one.

Barclay said...

How do you actually add them?