With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of the things I've seen, as well as some tricks to make you a little more lethal in the current PvP environment. Hunters may be a little broken at the moment - PvP wise at least - but there are still a lot of tricks that Hunters can use to make the most of what they've got. Here are a few tips, tricks and pieces of advice for all the new hunters out there.

1. Always be moving

I'd suggest that this is the most important tip of all. If your a Hunter in PvP you should always be on the move. More often than not, a stationary Hunter can quickly turn into a dead Hunter. As a ranged class you will do your best work from a distance. No matter at what level, a Hunter at range can be a deadly prospect. On the other hand, a Hunter whacking their opponent over the head with their stat stick, is not such a scary proposition. Played well, you will never see a Hunter within melee range of his/her opponent. Ideally you'll always want to be moving to maintain as much distance between yourself and your target as possible. You may need to use some tricks to maintain this distance. You can use traps, concussive shot, and your pets snares (a spider or crab comes in very handy for this reason).

If you are unlucky enough to find yourself in melee range, don't forget your defensive cooldowns such as disengage, distracting shot and deterrence. Defensive cooldowns are there for you to use, no point saving them for when it's far too late!

2. Use your tools

Playing a Rogue I'm constantly surprised at the number of Hunters that fail to use Flare when defending a node. If you're a Hunter, defending a node alone and you're not using flare, then you are just begging to get ganked.

3. Hard cast with care

This is really only applicable to Marksmanship hunters and relates a little to tip number one. It probably wont take you long to realise that Aimed Shot can hit like a truck (although the size of the truck seems to be in a state of flux). This can make it very attractive. On the down side, hard casting Aimed Shot can be painfully slow, taking around 2.5 seconds, or more, to be on its way (without any haste buffs). I've lost count of the number of times I've caught up with a Hunter while they plant their feet and wind up an Aimed Shot. For most classes 2.5 seconds is plenty of time to close the distance and either 'interrupt' the cast (a Rogue using Blind for example) or to get within melee range causing the cast to fail and trigger the 'target is too close' message that signals your impending doom. In the larger Battlegrounds you can often get away with hard casting Aimed Shot, but in smaller battles or arena, where you may be focused on a little more, hard casting becomes harder and riskier. Don't forget that hard casting Aimed Shot also stops your auto shots, meaning that if your Aimed Shot plans are foiled you've lost even more DPS than just the cost of the Aimed Shot on its own.

4. Dealing with Pillar Humpers

If you've done any sort of arena, there's a good chance you'll have come up against a 'pillar humper'. The 'pillar humper' is the guy, or team that huddle up behind a pillar or anything else that will cause you line of sight issues, in an effort to get you to close the gap between you (the hunter) and them. Lucky for us we have our pets, and Kill Command works around corners. Send your pet in, fire off a Kill Command or two and that may be enough to scare some of the less experienced players out from their hiding place. A well placed explosive trap and/or snake trap sent over via the trap launcher can also come in handy.

As lame as it may seem, sometimes the best way to deal with a pillar humper is to start humping a pillar of your own. As a Hunter, the worst thing you can probably do is charge towards them, that way you are giving your opponent what they want and you've given away your one big advantage, your ability to deal damage at range.

5. Camouflage does not always equal invisible

I'm guessing 99% of people know this one already, but just in case you're in the 1%, Camouflage does not equal a Rogue's stealth.

Camouflage: You blend into your surroundings, causing you and your pet to be untargetable by ranged attacks. Also reduces the range at which enemy creatures can detect you, and provides stealth while stationary.

You can lay traps while camouflaged, but any damage done by you or your pet will cancel the effect. Cannot be cast while in combat. Lasts for 1 min.

If you're running around in Camouflage, there's a very good chance that the opposition has already spotted you. You are only truly 'stealthed' when you remain stationary. As of 4.1 one any stealth class (read Rogues and Feral Druids) can use their openers on camouflaged Hunters. Whether or not this is an intended change - I didn't see it in the patch notes - or a bug, I'm not sure, but currently in 4.1 a Hunter is vulnerable to a Rogue/Druids stealthed opener.

What does this mean? A Hunter in Camouflage wanders out into the field of battle. The sneaky Rogue spots him from the other side of the field. The Hunter stops moving and 'stealths'. The Rogue can no longer see the Hunter, so he/she knows the Hunter is stationary and is standing in the position that the Hunter disappeared from. The Rogue can now sneak up behind the Hunter and unload. Now the Hunter could have flared the location he/she was standing, but that would have given away their position to anyone that was even paying the slightest attention. Either way, you've lost any advantage you may have had.

To be blunt, Camouflage is now really only useful against the flagrantly inattentive opposition, for 'sneaking' past some mobs in instances and for when you want to look like a character from the Predator movies.

That said, even though Camouflage may not necessarily grant you the same benefits as stealth, you can use it to get the first shot away on a ranged opponent. While you are untargetable by ranged attacks, you can channel an Aimed Shot, trigger Rapid Fire, and perhaps get off another Aimed Shot before your opponent has a chance to react and close the gap.

First some caveats. To this point I've only soloed Magtheridon's Lair on my Blood Death Knight and Protection Paladin. I have been doing this for the past month or so on every reset. That said, I'd suggest that soloing Magtheridon on a Hunter would be possible so long as you took along a Tenacity pet and kept mend pet up.

First things first, why would you want to solo Magtheridon? Simple answer - the gold. On average Magtheridon drops 500 gold. Split one way, that's 500 gold. Assuming that you get 12 gold per daily quest, that's the equivalent of completing almost 42 daily quests. Successfully soloing Magtheridon takes 20 minutes at most. How long would it take to complete 42 daily quests? Then there are also the random items that he drops including the 20 slot Pit Lord's Satchel, Black Sack of Gems, assorted Tier Armor Tokens and miscellaneous epics. By the time you vendor all that stuff you can be looking at another 100 gold.

The raid itself shares a lot in common with Onyxia's Lair, in that there is only one boss, with a handful of trash pulls leading up to him. Sadly the trash doesn't drop a thing, however I'd still recommend clearing the trash from both sides before engaging the boss. If you leave them up they will aggro when you engage the boss and come and join in on the fight. It doesn't make it impossible, just makes things a little harder than necessary.

Once you've cleared the trash you are set to engage Magtheridon. He has is sitting in the centre of a room, banished, with five Hellfire Channelers channelling magic around him. Magtheridon is a three phase fight.

The first phase begins when you enter the room. For the first two minutes of the fight Magtheridon remains banished. You should use this time to attempt to kill as many of the five Hellfire Channelers as possible. The Channelers can cast dark mending, which will heal one of their allies with the lowest HP. This is the part that I find most annoying. It's easier enough to interrupt one target, but if you have five all casting around the same time you are in trouble. In both my tank specs I really don't put out enough DPS in order to burn down the adds quick enough. This is the section I may actually find easier on my Hunter. In tank spec I usually just give up on trying to burn the adds in the first two minutes and just concentrate on keeping self heals up (eg. through Death Strike on my Death Knight).

The second phase begins when your 2 minutes are up. At this point Magtheridon will be free and start attacking you. Magtheridon has a frustrating ability to despawn when soloing him. In my experience it is most likely to occur whenever he uses one of his core abilities, Quake. Quake has a knock back effect. From what I've seen, he tends to despawn whenever he has knocked me back a significant distance from him, so there may be a bug that causes him to despawn whenever there is no aggro target within a certain radius of him. The way I deal with this is to position myself with my back to the wall just prior to his release. This minimises knock back when it does happen. His second ability is Blast Nova. To be honest, in tank gear at 85, the damage from Blast Nova is so insignificant that you may not even notice it being channelled.

At 30% Magtheridon moves into phase three. He retains quake and blast nova but also causes the roof to cave in. Move out of any rumbling ground effects and that's about it.

When Magtheridon is dead the adds should despawn and you are free to loot.

The strategy for soloing Magtheridon in tank spec is really quite basic, run in, wait for Magtheridon to be attackable, stick to the wall to reduce the chances of him despawning and then focus on him until he dies. Magtheridon himself doesn't really hit all that hard. I'd suspect that a majority of the damage I take while soloing him comes from the adds. If you are trying to solo this in a DPS spec it may be a better strategy to attempt to burn a few down before Magtheridon is free. When I do get around to attempting this on my Hunter I think I'll try misdirecting four of the channelers on to my pet while I try peeling one away and burning them one at a time. Marksmanship spec may be the best option due to the self heals of Chimera Shot. I may update this post once I've had a chance to give it a go.

All up Magtheridon is definitely an achievable raid to solo at level 85. It also has the best gold to time ratio of any of the raids/dungeons I've soloed so far. If you can run it on a couple of alts you can potentially make 1.2K gold per week. Definitely worthwhile in my opinion.

Edit (10 March 2011): In the current PTR Patch Notes for 4.1, Blizzard have indicated that the amount of gold dropped by Magtheridon will be reduced:

The gold amounts on the following encounters have been substantially reduced: Flame Leviathan, Magtheridon, Gruul the Dragonkiller, Doom Lord Kazzak, and all encounters in Karazhan.

So if you want to farm Magtheridon for the gold I'd suggest getting in there now because the time to gold ratio may not be as attractive come 4.1.

Now, leading up to the patch, there was a lot of doom and gloom, particularly in the Hunter community, where the Survival 'nerf' was like waiting for Armageddon. The sky was falling in. Any time I would say something like, "we'll just have to wait and see, it may not be as bad as it looks on paper", I'd get howled down. On paper the Survival 'nerfs' did look a little dramatic, I'll give you that. A significant damage reduction to our signature shot as well as a decrease to our Into the Wilderness passive bonus, down from 15% bonus agility to 10%, did not bode well. Reality is though, that these 'nerfs' haven't had the dramatic impact upon the Survival Hunters DPS numbers that a lot of people were expecting.

Taking a look at a couple of graphs from Stateofdps.com you can start to build a picture of what effect the patch has actually had. Keep in mind though that State Of DPS is only measuring the DPS for each class as compiled from the top 200 parses from World of Logs, so you can make the case that the data is not representative of what the average player is seeing, but then, in the absence of anything else, this is what we have to work with.

Interestingly, looking at the numbers (first chart is 10man normal, second 25man normal), even though a couple of classes/specs experienced 'nerfs' (eg. Survival Hunters and Unholy Death Knights), no class/spec has actually seen a decrease in their output. As you'd expect, as players gear up, and get used to the encounters, DPS as a whole is on the increase. Looking at the 10 man normal raid data, there are a couple of big Patch 4.0.6 beneficiaries.

The biggest mover is no doubt the Markmanship Hunter, and to be blunt, the buffs that the Marksmanship spec received where desperately needed. Prior to the patch, Hunters had one spec that so far out performed it's other two specs that players had no choice but to spec Survival if they wanted to maintain viability in raids. For a pure DPS class, that was horrible design in my opinion. Prior to the Patch both Marksmanship and Beast Mastery specc'd Hunters were performing so poorly that a couple of the tanking specs were putting out higher numbers. The way things are currently panning out, it appears as though Survival may edge out Marksmanship as the top Hunter spec in Heroic Dungeon gear levels, while in higher gear levels, and when you can get your hands on epic ranged weapons, Marksmanship might be the DPS spec of choice. In terms of the 25 man normal data, the same general trend applies, although Survival has been slowly overtaken by a handful of other classes at the top.

Another of the big movers is the Shadow Priest. Shadow Priests have gone from doing more than acceptable numbers to hitting the top of the charts. While they are sitting difference between Shadow Priests and second placed Survival Hunters is minimal in 10man, the gap widens in 25man, with Shadow Priests sitting out at the top. If the trend continues expect to see Shadow Priests on the receiving end of the nerf bat in the near future.

Finally Retribution Paladins and Balance Druids both received a nice little boost. For Retribution Paladins at least, a large cause for this boost would be the change to the way Mastery works, now a flat buff to holy damage rather than a proc based benefit.

Maybe it's just me, but personally I don't have a problem with hybrids sitting in the middle of the pack DPS wise. The beauty of playing a hybrid class is that you aren't locked into a specific role. If you get bored of healing, you can switch to DPS, or tanking, without having to re-roll and leave behind all the history and achievements you've built up over time. If your DPS gets nerfed to the ground then you always have the option of picking up a secondary role without having to consign your toon to the bench until the situation improves - which it almost always inevitably does.

Here's a run down of the bosses, including the gold drop - and/or other notable drops - as well as my rough rating of how difficult I find them.

Lucifron

Drops: 39 gold and the chance of Formula: Enchant Weapon - Spellpower which - if you're an enchanter - can make you some cash from people looking to enchant their bind on account gear. The Bind on Pickup Epics vendor for an average of 4-5G each.

Difficulty: Easy. The only thing to look out for is Lucifron's Curse which will increase the cost of your spells and abilities by 100% for 5 minutes. It's not really an issue for my Death Knight but can have more of an impact upon any classes unable to dispel it who also rely on mana. If I'm on my Paladin I usually go grab a drink or something and let the curse drop off before moving on to the next boss.

Magmadar

Drops: No gold, just a variety of Epics that vendor for up to 10G each. Also has a chance to drop Formula: Enchant Weapon - Spellpower as well as a few other old world recipes and schematics. If you are a Skinner you can skin Magmadar for Core Leather which - depending on your server - can still sell on the Auction House.

Difficulty: Easy. For some people clearing the Core Hound trash leading up to the boss will prove more challenging that the boss itself. The trick to the trash is ensuring that each pack dies at roughly the same time. Leave one of the pack alive too long and it will cause those that you've killed to come back to life. A lot of 'tab' targeting should see you through. I prefer to clear a majority of the trash packs as Magmadar periodically casts an AoE fear that can send you running off randomly. If you don't clear the trash, accidentally pulling them while dealing with the boss could make the encounter more difficult than it needs to be.

Gehennas

Drops: 59 gold. Also a variety of BoP old world recipes, schematics and enchants. More Epics that vendor for up to 10G.

Difficulty: Moderate. Soloing Gehennas now is no where near as painful as I found it at level 80. Gehennas is accompanied by two Flamewalker Elites that can both stun and sunder armor. Neither Gehennas or his two friends deal massive amounts of damage, although they are capable of whittling away at your health pool. The aspect that adds a degree of difficulty to all this is that Gehennas casts Gehennas' Curse which reduces healing effects by 75% for 5 minutes. When soloing, this essentially makes it a race to bring down the boss before he can bring you down. With the massive health pools we have at level 85 it's no longer that much of an issue, soloing this at level 80 with 35,000 hp however was a different story. Again, this is usually a good time to grab a drink or make a toasted cheese sandwich while waiting for the curse to drop.

Garr

Drops: No gold. The big ticket item for some people however is Bindings of the Windseeker, one of the two bindings required to craft the Legendary Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. Other drops include various Epics and recipes (see previous bosses).

Difficulty: Easy. On either of my tank toons I just stand there and spank the boss, ignoring the adds entirely. On my Hunter I'll misdirect to my pet or feign death if any of the adds run toward me.

Shazzrah

Drops: 59 gold. Other drops include various Epics and recipes (see previous bosses).

Difficulty: Easy. Nothing super hard here. That said, I've wiped on this guy before solely due to laziness, trying to skip trash and accidentally pulling Shazzrah and Baron Geddon at the same time. On his own Shazzrah is not that tough, clear the trash around him and taunt him back toward the hallway you approach him from so as not to pull Baron Geddon at the same time.

Baron Geddon

Drops. No gold. Also has the chance to drop another Bindings of the Windseeker. Other drops include various Epics and recipes (see previous bosses).

Difficulty: Moderate to Annoying. I find him much easier to solo on my Hunter than I do on either of my tank toons. The thing that makes Baron Geddon annoying is his Sulfuron Ingot that is used to make Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. The Ingots can still sell for a decent price on the Auction House. Other drops include various Epics and recipes (see previous bosses).

Difficulty: Easy. Golemagg is accompanied by two core hounds. The core hounds can't be killed while Golemagg is alive. I just ignore them entirely and spank the boss. On my Death Knight I don't think I drop below 90% health.

Sulfuron Harbinger

Drops: 39 gold. Other drops include various Epics and recipes (see previous bosses).

Difficulty: Easy. Whilst easy this fight could quite possibly be your longest inside Molten Core. Sulfuron is accompanied by four priests that can all heal. Since you won't be able to interrupt them all there's a good chance that one or more of them will get a heal or two away. If you're unable to burn them down quick enough, your next option is to continue dealing damage until you either get a lucky run of critical strikes and they die, or they run out of mana and can no longer heal. Once the priests are dead Sulfuron is a cake walk.

Majordomo Executus

Drops: No gold. Other drops include various Epics and recipes (see previous bosses).

Difficulty: Easy. This fight is all about killing Executus's eight friends. You never actually kill Executus himself. As they drop one by one it gets progressively easier.

Ragnaros

Drops: 118 gold. Has a low chance to drop the Eye of Sulfuras another key ingrediant required to craft Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. Ragnaros has the highest health pool in Molten Core, but it you play it right, he's probably not your biggest threat. Like the Baron, a majority of the damage you take will be fall damage, but this can be mitigated by positioning yourself so you land in the lava. The lava damage isn't significant enough to really worry too much about, and you are going to get out of there as fast as you can anyway. During the fight Ragnaros disappears and adds spawn. They have very low health so aren't a huge issue. AoE should see the end of them.

In summary

In a typical run of Molten Core you could reasonably expect to walk away with around 300 gold from boss drops alone, another 80-90 gold from the bind on pickup epics you can vendor, and then a varying amount based on what you can get on the Auction House from all the various other stuff you pick up including the items people need to rep grind with the Thorium Brotherhood. I usually also finish up with three or more bind on equip epics that I've auctioned off for 40-60 gold each. It's not unusual to finish up a Molten Core solo run in around an hour or so, having made in excess of 500 gold. If you are looking for a way to make a little extra gold, and can't stomach the thought of running the same daily quests over and over each day, then running through Molten Core every now and then could be a nice alternative.

I never raided Molten Core when it was top end content, but I can definitely see how it would be a huge challenge in level appropriate gear!

Whether or not you think something looks good is obviously a matter of personal preference. But one things for sure, when you create a character you need to remember that it's look, style and movements are things you will no doubt be looking at for quite some time. For me there are certain races that I would rule out instantly based on their appearance alone. For example, I've never levelled a human character past 10 because I can't stand the way that they run. It's like they have a pole stuck up their... well I'm sure you know where that's headed. Gnomes are another race I struggle with based largely on their running animation. To me it looks as though they are taking two metre steps on their 30cm legs.

Other races have cosmetic issues that, while I don't like, I can deal with. For example, when Draenei wear cloaks they seem to float well above their tails. But to me, the male models look like the perfect 'tank', so I can hide the cloak and I'm happy.

When I race changed my Night Elf Hunter to Worgen, I did so based on not only the 1% increased chance to critically hit, but also the fact that I thought a werewolf firing a bow and arrow would look freakin' cool. Unfortunately, it hasn't quite lived up to the image I had in my mind.

In my opinion, it seems as though Blizzard have only half finished with the Worgen model. The female model looks terrible, more like something you'd keep as a house pet as opposed to the savage beasts that you'd expect. I'll put it another way, when Thrall's done with his current business don't be surprised to find him back in Orgrimmar with a couple of female Worgen chained to his throne Jabba the Hutt/Princess Leia style!

The male model at least looks the part, when stationary and viewed from the front. Start moving around and it's a completely different story.

Lets start with the running animation. It's fine, if your idea of an agile beast-man is more akin to a 97 year old arthritic lawn bowler. The slow, loping - almost uncoordinated - running animation looks nothing like the athletic and agile animation I'd have expected. The running animation alone, I can deal with, it's the other obvious 'bugs' that bug me the most. By bugs, I mean the little things that should have been picked up by quality control.

My big beef? When a male Worgen has a weapon sheathed on his back it disappears through the characters cloak. It's ugly and makes the model look unfinished.

My second issue also relates to the cloaks. Worgen cloaks share the same gravity defying properties as their Draenei counterparts, although to a greater extreme. It's like the Worgen and constantly breaking wind. Sure I can hide the cloak, but I'm still not sure why it looks so wrong?

The ranged attack animations also look a little daft, as if a Worgen Hunter is a descendant of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. As a Hunter, the ranged animation is something you need to be able to get used to, it's something that you'll see over and over again.

Where does this leave me? The min/max'er in me says, 'stay Worgen'. The guy who likes playing computer games and stares at the back of his character for hours on end say, 'that thing's ugly.' For my Rogue, Worgen was a good choice, for my Hunter... not so much.

For me, there comes a point where aesthetics win out over numbers. I think it's time to go Dwarf.

That got me thanking about racial abilities as a whole, and, in particular, which ones had the ability to provide the greatest benefit to a characters damage output

I used my hunter as an example. He had been a Night Elf since the day I started playing. I chose a the Night Elf at the time with no understanding of what racial abilities where, and what they could do. I chose Night Elf because, at the time, I simply thought they looked the coolest. Time passed, I played the game, and came to the realisation that, as aesthetically pleasing as I may have thought the Night Elf was, the there was no benefit from selecting the Night Elf race that would help me perform my role better. A hunters primary job is to dish out damage while the Night Elf racial abilities are situational and defensive at best. If I'm to be dishing out the damage then I need me some skills that help me do that better dammit! Looking around it's pretty clear that some classes have stronger offensive racial abilities than others, and at a glance you could make a case that in that regard a majority of the Alliance races have drawn the short straw.

I decided I would plug in my Hunters details into FemaleDwarf.com. In a cookie cutter Survival spec, my DPS as a Night Elf is listed as 11,663.

Note: All data below is based on a Level 85 Hunter, in gear of average iLvl 329, that is right on the hit cap. The character has a bow equipped.

So basically what I found was that if I wanted to maximise my DPS as a Hunter, in choosing a Night Elf I'd made the wrong choice, both race and faction. This didn't surprise me as, in terms of racial abilities it is obvious that Night Elves have nothing that contributes to DPS directly. If you were selecting an Alliance race to play a tanking role, a Night Elf is a very good choice. As a DPS race, there are not a lot of benefits. For min/max'rs, you can basically rule a line through any of the races ranked 5 and below.

If you absolutely have to play on the Alliance side, then rolling a Worgen Hunter is the best choice if you want to maximise your DPS. That 1% critical strike chance increase is too good to pass up. On paper 1% doesn't sound like much, but look at it another way. At level 85 you need 178.8 Crit Rating for a 1% Crit chance. Currently rare gems give a 40 Crit Rating. If you were to gem for the 1% Crit Chance then you'd use almost 4.5 gem slots. Critical Strike may not be the number one Hunter stat, but it's way better than Spirit! Dwarves can increase their chance to critically hit by 1% as well, although they are required to use a gun to receive there racial reward. When random loot drops are random, you cannot always rely on a specific weapon type dropping for you. To put it another way, if you could choose between a flat 1% Crit Chance increase or a 1% Crit Chance increase only if you equip a gun, what would you choose? What happens if the Hunter best in slot ranged weapon is a bow, or even a butt ugly crossbow?

Draenei are actually the Alliance dark horse - or goat - as their racial, Heroic Presence has the potential to provide a very good increase to DPS subject to your character being below the hit cap. The reason that they appear so low on my list is that in running these numbers I assumed my character was already hit capped and therefore the 1% hit chance was wasted. With reforging now available you could assumed that in taking the Draenei racial you can then do without 1% hit on your gear which could then be reforged into something more useful. I did some experimenting with reforging on FemaleDwarf and reforging the 1% hit to crit/haste/mastery brought the Draenei roughly equal to the Night Elves. So while the hit bonus could potentially be useful it's value is not as high as some of the other racial bonuses, even less so when you consider that as our gear improves it's likely that we'll see slightly more of every stat - including hit - popping up.

The best race to play a Hunter on the Horde side is the Orc. They have a couple of racial traits that provide a clear boost/benefit to their DPS output. First up is Blood Fury, which - at level 85 - increases attack power by 1169 for 15 seconds remaining. Blood Fury has a 2 minute cooldown. When I was playing an Orc Hunter I had Blood Fury macro'ed in to a few of my shots to trigger whenever it was off cool down. I've actually seen people QQ on forums about how Blood Fury is 'under powered' and 'needs to be buffed'. You really have to laugh, 1169 attack power for 15 seconds every 2 minutes might not equal huge numbers at 85, but playing a DPS role would you prefer Blood Fury or Quickness? Orc's also get another nice bonus from their passive (ie. always on) racial ability Command which increases damage dealt by pets by 5%. For a Hunter this is a very nice bonus. All Hunter pets, not just the Beast Mastery variety, contribute a decent amount of a Hunters DPS. Giving that a 5% boost is only going to have a positive impact upon a Hunters overall DPS.

Taking Trolls out of the equation - as their Racial relies on a specific weapon type - Goblins come in a clear second all races able to play the role of the Hunter. Goblins have two abilities that give a nice boost to DPS output. Time is Money provides a 1% increase to attack and casting speed while Rocket Barrage is a free engineering tinker that can be triggered every 2 minutes without the need of engineering.

There are quite a few things to note about these figures.

The first being that they were run as a snapshot based on my own Hunter at a certain point in time, and that the data that FemaleDwarf should be viewed as an educated estimate, or best guess.

The second factor consider is that these figures were done with a Bow equipped. Obviously this impacted the Troll data - due to their Bow Specialization Trolls have a 1% increased chance to critically hit when using bows. It also impacted Dwarves - who share a similar racial ability that rewards the use of guns. If I'd run the data using a gun with the exact same stats, I'd expect that the DPS output of Trolls would drop while the output of Dwarves would rise. That said, the DPS output of Trolls would not suffer from using a non-preferred weapon as they still retain their Berserking racial ability as well as Beast Slaying which is a situational DPS increase (5% damage increase when fighting beasts).

It's pretty obvious that some racial abilities have a bigger impact upon DPS output than others. While the methods used to arrive at my 'findings' are not exactly scientific, and may not stand up under the scrutiny of scientists, mathematicians and cosmonauts, I'd expect that if, one day, an accurate study was conducted the results would be very similar.

It does seem that when it comes to DPS racial abilities, the Alliance drew the short straw.So if you're rolling a new Hunter, or any DPS toon for that matter, and you're wanting to wring the most DPS out of your toon as possible then Alliance side, there's only one choice, Worgen. Horde side, it's hard to go past the Orcs, but if you did, Goblins and even Trolls aren't a bad option either.

For most players, Argaloth is realistically the first raid boss they'll drop in Cataclysm. In many ways he acts as a Damage Per Second (DPS)/ready check to see if you're ready to step into the other Cataclysm raids. The mechanics of the fight are relatively simple as is as much about the DPS hitting the required numbers as anything else.

Currently, in 10 man* Argaloth has 21,473,000 hp and will enrage 5 minutes into the fight. Due to one of his abilities (Fel Firestorm) there is realistically 30 seconds of downtime where it may not be possible - depending on your class - to sustain your peak DPS.

In order to defeat Argaloth the second he enrages you will need 71,576 raid DPS. Given that you will need two tanks and two healers, and assuming that both tanks will average 4,000 DPS, the six DPS will need to average close to 10,600 DPS for the duration of the fight. If your group needs a third healer or a DPS dies mid-fight, then obviously the DPS required of each player will increase.

Bottom line, 10,600 DPS is the minimum average that each DPS player needs to put out to kill Argaloth. To be blunt, any player filling a DPS role in the raid that is pulling less than that is asking his/her fellow raiders to carry him. If you are thinking of 'PUG'ing' Argaloth, and capable of sub-10K DPS then expect to get kicked from the group if the raid wipes.

Strategy

When you enter Argaloths room he is standing in the middle of a square metal grid. Prior to the pull the group needs to split into two groups of five. There should be one tank in each group. The two groups should position themselves on the opposing front corners of the grid (left and right as you look at the boss). Each group needs to stack up on their respective tank. Good new for hunters is that you can still use your ranged weapon in melee range on Argaloth, so there's no reason not to get nice and cosy with your friendly tank.

Here's a dodgy diagram to show you, not only my dodgy Photoshop talents, but also where people should stand.

Argaloth only has three abilities:
Meteor Slash - Deals 200,000 Fire damage split between enemy targets within 65 yards in front of the caster. Increases Fire damage taken to all targets affected by 100%.

Meteor Slash is the reason the groups need to stack in order to spread the 200,000 damage between five people (40k damage per person). Every time Argaloth casts Meteor Slash the tanks need to taunt off one another so that one group doesn't receive two Meteor Slash's in a row.

Consuming Darkness - The Shambling Doom inflicts 3900 to 4100 Shadow damage and additional Shadow damage every 0.5 sec for 15 sec.

Consuming Darkness is DOT that he casts on a random raid member (I'm not 100% sure whether this can drop on the tanks or not). It ticks very quickly for a decent amount of damage. If not dispelled it will do around 120,000 damage to its target over the 15 second period which is enough to kill a DPS, particularly if you're on the receiving end of Meteor Slash at the same time. Consuming Darkness needs to be dispelled ASAP.

Fel Firestorm - The Fel Firestorm calls down a hail of Fel Fireballs, leaving a Fel Flame at the location for the duration of the Firestorm.

At 66% and 33% Argaloth will channel Fel Firestorm. I believe he does this for a 15 second period. Fel Firestorm leaves patches of fire on the ground. Everyone needs to move around (not as a group) and stay out of the fire. When he's finished everyone needs to very quickly regroup to their assigned positions at the corners of the grid.

Having attempted to 'PUG' this raid a couple of times it's clear the fight mechanics are fairly straight forward. This raid is definitely 'PUG-able' provided that you find yourself in a group that can meet the following requirements:

• 6 DPS capable of pulling 10.5k DPS for the length of the fight
• is made up of 10/25 people who know not to stand in the fire
• has at least one person capable of dispelling the Consuming Darkness.

From my observations so far I can only see a handful of ways that a raid can fail in the Argaloth encounter.

1. Raid DPS is too low to beat the 5 minute enrage timer.
2. Healers don't dispel Consuming Darkness fast enough - or don't dispel it at all.
3. Tanks fail to switch on Meteor Slash properly resulting in the same group getting hit with two Meteor Slash's in a row.
4. Groups don't fall back into their assigned positions following Fel Firestorm quick enough, resulting in one or two people wearing 200,000 damage.

Overcome those obstacles and you're well on your way to all new epic purple 'lootz'.

* This has primarily been written from the point of view of a 10 man raid as I've no experience in the 25 man version.

The last few weeks have been a little hectic. The very relaxed, casual, guild my main characters are in decided to knuckle down and kill the Lich King before Cataclysm hit rendering the achievement a little meaningless. I'm happy to report that our rag tag little group of ten misfits, decked out in gear around the ilvl251 range, put an end to the Kings reign of terror. It was the first time we really pulled together with a common goal, and even though there were points of frustration, it was overall an enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Sadly I benched my hunter for the fight, taking in my Rogue instead, due to his higher DPS output and ability to stun the Valkyries, which had been an issue for our group. One of the benefits of having a number of level capped toons is that I can switch between them depending on what the group needs. The down side to this is that my 'main' often misses out due to my flexibility. This has also made it a little harder to PUG things, especially when people are wanting you to 'link achievements'. I've tanked bosses on my Paladin, healed on my Shaman, smoked stuff on my Hunter and dispatched the King on my Rogue. My Hunter is 11/12, Rogue 7/12, Paladin 7/12 and Shaman 7/12. Put all the Boss Kills together and I'm 12/12, but without the Fall of the Lich King achievement to show for it.

I'm a little sad that my poor old Hunter is unable to walk the world with a legitimately earned 'the Kingslayer' title above his head - lets face it, running through ICC in Cataclysm gear at level 81+ is not exactly 'legitimately' earned in my opinion - but with a bit of luck I'll get back in there to give the King one last spanking.

So with Cataclysm now live I made the decision to race my Rogue through to 85 first. In the post 4.0 world Hunters, in a lot of ways, seem to have been turned into ranged Rogues, minus the sneaky-ness. My guild is not exactly starved for ranged DPS at the moment so the Rogue looks set for quite a bit of raid love. In the past week, my little Night Elf Rogue underwent some... ah... changes, potentially brought on by a full moon. He's now a little angrier looking, a lot hairier, and has been have a blast slicing through all kinds of new bad guys. I would write more, but I have to go now and carve up some more bad guys.

A few of my friends have asked me about a macro I use to trigger the engineering enchant on my Rogues gloves, so I figured I may as well post it here.

At it's core the macro is quite simple. The only 'tricky' part is clearing the sound fx so I don't get annoyed by the 'that ability is not ready yet' sound file that would play if the gloves were still on cool down.

First up, here's the macro:

#showtooltip Mutilate
/startattack
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use 10
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast Mutilate

Secondly, here's a basic breakdown of how it works in case you want to play around with it yourself:

/startattack

Starts attacking (if I'm not attacking something already)

/console Sound_EnableSFX 0

Disables the SFX so that it doesn't I don't get annoyed if trinket/gloves 'on use' is still on cool down.

/use 10

This 'uses' or triggers the whatever 'on use' ability is in slot 10 (my gloves in this case). If you want to use a trinket instead, the two trinket slots are 13 and 14, so replace /use 10 with /use 13 or /use 14 depending which one you want to use. For reference 13 is the top one in your character sheet and 14 the bottom one.

/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This clears the 'not ready' text message from the screen. I do this for the same reason I disable the SFX - so I don't get annoyed!

/console Sound_EnableSFX 1

Turns the sound effect back on. Boolean nerds have probably guessed what the 0 and 1 do in both lines of this macro.

/cast Mutilate

Triggers my Rogues Mutilate ability. You can replace Mutilate with whatever spell it is you want to use (eg. Icy Touch).

And that's about it. Like anything there are many different ways you can go about getting the same result. This is just the way I do it and it works good enough for me. One down side with using the macro is that your 'on use' will not necessarily align with other things such as heroism/bloodlust. In my case though, I'd more often than not forget to trigger the trinket/gloves at the right time anyway, so I go with the 'better to use it, than not use it at all' method.

If you've got a variation on this, or any improvements, let me know in the comments here. Happy hunting.