First, a run down of what we know about the change to our resource.:

• Hunters will no longer use mana. Instead they will use Focus.
• Focus will be capped at 100.
• Shots will cost anywhere between 30 and 60 Focus.
• Focus will regen over time over time at a rate of 6 per second, 12 per second while casting Steady Shot.
• Haste will cause Focus to regen at a faster rate.

Ok, for those of you following along at home you, Focus will seem very familiar. That’s right, it sounds a lot like the Energy mechanic used by Rogues. Also note that our pets use Focus, though it works slightly different. I’m picturing Hunter’s Focus being a cross between the two.

So what does this mean?

• Aspect of the Viper in its current form is gone. They might re-tool it to function similar to how it did in BC by making it increase our Focus regen rate. I doubt it though, so expect it to be gone completely.
• Viper Sting will probably still exist, though its use with Chimera Shot will be severely altered. My guess is that they will change it to restore a set amount of Focus, maybe half of what Chimera Shot cost to fire.
• Hunters will no longer have any use for Intellect, Blizzard has already stated the they are even going so far as to remove it from our gear. A side effect of this is that Enhancement Shamans will also no longer use Intellect and will be changed to work similar to Ret Pallies, using a talent to gain Spell Power and Mana from Agility.
• All three talent trees are going to be significantly re-worked. To what degree I have no idea, but expect talents like Careful Aim to be completely gone and other talents such as Efficiency to be completely changed.

I know I’ve only scratched the surface of how far reaching this change is going to be, but I’m going to stop there. With Cataclysm so far out everything is subject to change making it hard to speculate on any of the specifics.

Now what do I think of the whole thing?

I don’t like it. I am genuinely scared of what Blizz is going to do to my class. I like playing a Hunter right now. All three trees are perfectly raid viable. The class is fun to play with constant action and the ability to top the charts while providing a degree of raid utility. But this is such a drastic change that I don’t know if I will be able to continue raiding with my Hunter come the next expansion. They are essentially turning us into a ranged Rogue with no stealth and a pet. If I wanted to play a Rogue I would have rolled one.

Also consider how many changes Death Knights have received in the few months they have been around. They are a fairly new class and require a large amount of adjustments to try and balance them, which they still aren’t. Putting Hunters on a new resource system is going to put us in the same boat as DKs. Blizz will be several patches trying to adjust the class to bring it back in line with everyone else (a place where I really feel we are right now). That means that while you are trying to re-learn how to play, you also get to deal with frequent balancing changes.

So what am I going to do?

I will be keeping a close eye out for news on Blizz’s plan for the class, and offering my input where ever I can. I will also be putting in for a beta key as soon as they are available so that I can help test out the changes and hopefully do my part to keep the class playable.

But most of all I’m going to continue to play the class I love before it gets gutted. There is still a lot of content in Wrath I have yet to see, so I am going to enjoy it while it last.

But give it a rest already.

Cataclysm won’t be released until next year. That means 12 months (give or take, my money is on a November 2010 release) and, at very least, one more content patch left in Wrath. Play the game as it is now. Yes Blizz announced a ton of changes, but Cataclysm isn’t even in beta yet, so who knows how many of those changes will make it through.

Remember, BlizzCon is more than just a “Look at Our Cool Shit” weekend for Blizzard. It is a test-bed for new ideas. They have everyone’s attention, making it a perfect time to throw out ideas and see what kind of reaction they get. We know how they work, if enough people whine something gets changed. So they announce huge game altering changes and see how much whining happens. Think of it as a mass informal consumer questionnaire.

Anyway, my point is enjoy the game as it is now. There are still raids to be cleared, gear to be got, and fun to be had. So have fun today and worry about tomorrow when it gets here.

And the best part of it? It “Smells Faintly of raspberries.”

The 22 second internal cooldown put in in 3.2 is definitely there, but I am wondering if the 6% chance listed on the tooltip is wrong. I would have to do further testing to verify, so right now I’m just saying that it feels like more than 6%.

We started off by clearing out Ignis and Razorscale, neither of which I had downed before. I had seen the encounters, just never been successful. Clearing these two out completed my Siege of Ulduar achievement, which thrills me to no end. After that we went up and tore through Kologarn. I had already downed him before, so nothing new there. After that we decided to work try for the Assembly of Iron. It took a few tries, but we downed them also, completing The Antechamber of Ulduar achievement, which thrills me even more.

Overall the run was a blast. I hate the Ignis fight. I spent both tries laying dead on the floor right from the start, one because I didn’t stop firing quick enough after my MD pull and drew aggro, and the other I was pulled into the pot right off the back and died. Razorscale was fun, though a tad bit hectic. Kologarn is easy. And the Assembly of Iron was a blast. I’d have to say that it is easily my favorite encounter in the game so far. Some of the abilities used by the bosses are awesome. There is just enough movement to make it interesting without being a pain in the ass. Really, it is a well put together encounter.

Anyway, after last weekend I am now 7/14 in Ulduar. I am hoping to clear it out eventually (ok, honestly I doubt I will ever be 14/14, but 13/14 is good enough for me), but with 3.2 and a new raid instance dropping today guild focus may move forward. We’ll still be running Ulduar for gearing, but I’m not sure how far we will get progression wise. But there’s always hope.

• Mount changes FTW! I have several low level alts that will benefit from this greatly, and I can’t wait to get my level 72 Death Knight a flying mount to speed up his grind through Northrend.
• I can finally prospect all that Titanium Ore I have been collecting over the last month or so. Now I just hope that I can get a decent return on investment.
• I broke down and started doing some of the Argent Tournament dailies. I don’t fly all over Northrend, I have just been doing the one’s in Icecrown. I don’t do them every day, but I figure spending some time there will help me out in the new raid.
• Business has been booming lately. I have slowly been expanding into new markets and profits have went up accordingly.
• To be honest, my alts are screwed. Between farming up the Jeeves schematic and farming 5-mans for Conquest badges (so I can get geared up for the new raid ASAP) I will be spending a lot of time on my Hunter. Well, I’ll probably spend a fair amount of time farming badges on my Shaman also since I really want to get him geared up also. But the rest are going to be parked for a while.

Well, that’s all from me for now. Time to get through the daily grind at work.

Obviously, the encounter started out with a full compliment of ten people, but by around 40% only the tank, a healer, and me (on my Hunter) were left. But we’re a stubborn bunch and refused to let him win. So thanks to the fact that Heigan has no enrage timer, we three continued to dance the dance and managed to take him down to the encouragement and cheers of our dead brethren.

And let me tell you, it took a long, long time.

DPS like crazy during the phase 1, then switch to viper and regen mana during phase 2. Rinse and repeat for what felt like forever. But we did it.

And you know what, that was probably the most fun i’ve had in Naxx in a long time.

• Ran a few instances on my Shaman as DPS. I’m slowly learning how to play Enhance in instances. Biggest thing I have noticed? Scrolling combat text makes it hard to position correctly. If my adventures as Enhance continue something will have to change.
• No Ulduar last weekend, but I did run in two different Naxx-10 groups, one with my Hunter and the other with my Shaman. Both were successful in their own way, and loads of fun
• It may be bad, but I find myself whispering random Hunters I see and trying to give them advice on what gear and enchants to change. (Why do people think spell power is useful to Hunters?) I try to be as tactful and non-pushy as possible. So far I have been getting mixed responses. Some thank me for the advice, and even go on to ask specific questions, while others become outright hostile.
• I’ve been slowly stockpiling Titanium Ore in preparation for 3.2, here’s hoping that it pays off in epic gem sales.
• I’ve reached the point where one alt with 4 32-slot Inscription bags can not hold my inventory of glyphs to sell. I either need to cut back on some of the less profitable glyphs or set up another alt to sell glyphs also.
• Thinking about going back to a fresh UI and and building a fresh one. My current one is becoming too cluttered.

Well, that’s all for now. Time for me to head off to bed and get some sleep.

• Progression in Ulduar over the weekend, with two upgrades for me (can’t remember the names, armory Santyn to see them). Hours of wipes, but I can’t even begin to describe how much fun those hours were.
• Gold. I’m slowly making it, yet also spending it. The gem market is starting to die down. I think this is because many of the more hardcore players are done getting upgrades until 3.2, meaning low demand. But I have been investing in Titanium Ore to prospect. Not actively hunting it, just keeping an eye on the trade channel for good deals.
• I don’t know what I would do without Inscription. Lately, glyphs are the largest source of income for me. Well worth the gold I invested to level it.
• Naxx-25 over the weekend too. I had a blast completely decimating the meters. Personal best of 6k DPS on Loethab.
• Parenting advice for Hunters out there: when the raid wipes but you manage to live thanks to Feign Death, read a book to your kid while waiting for everyone to run back in.
• Not much alt time lately, been spending too much time doing other stuff. I’m going to have to remedy that. I really want to play some of my alts in end-game content.

Well, that’s all I have for now. Now tell me what you’re thinking.

I currently have two level 80 characters, a Survival Hunter and a Resto Shaman. My Hunter is in Ulduar ready gear (have yet to pick up any drops there) and my Shaman is in a mix of heroic and Naxx gear. I have long considered the Hunter my main, but with very little to do on my him outside of raiding (I hate dailies), he has been seeing very little play time. Consequently I have been taking a deep interest in learning to heal with my Shaman and getting him geared up.

Also, these 2 characters are in different guilds (on the same server). My Hunter is simply a raider in Soulbound, while my Shaman is a senior officer in Circle of Friends. I won’t go into any more detail about that here, I’ll save that for another post. The raid leaders in Soulbound are aware of my Shaman, but will generally only ask me to bring him if our raid has entered PuG status since the toon is in a different guild. Anyway, enough background and on with with the story.

This realization of multiple mains came upon me last Saturday night during a 25-man VoA run with Soulbound. We were short people so we started pulling in PuGs to fill slots. The raid leader wanted Heroism, but we couldn’t find any Shamans. My Hunter already has the achievement for Emalon, so I offered to switch to my Shaman. So I jump over while the raid continues the search for more people. Long story short, in the search for more people I end up inviting a friend of mine (an awesome Prot Paladin) who I have been running occasional heroics with on my Shaman. We did Archavon first, and then started to weed out the people with too low DPS for Emalon. Several Soulbound people had started to log on so we began pulling them in for Emalon. One of those pulled in was another Resto Shaman, so I was asked to switch back over to my Hunter, which I of course did.

At this point my friend (the Prot Pally mentioned above) whispered me and asked if I had switched to an alt. His question confused me for a second, and then it dawned on me. While he has grouped with me many times, I had always been on my Shaman, never on my Hunter. I was even on my Shaman when I invited him to join the current VoA run. Naturally I explained to him that my Hunter was my main and that my Shaman was an alt.

But after that I got to thinking. I have been playing my Shaman so much lately that it has become more than an alt, yet my Hunter is still my main when it comes to raiding. So that leaves me with a declared main, and an alt that is more than an alt. Well, what is more than an alt? A main.

That leaves me with two mains.