Wrath of the Lich King is coming out in one month and the 3.0.2 patch is out so now is a great time to jump back on the bandwagon! I know there’s a lot of news that has arise since my departure but assuming that there are so much blogs out there that have some much info, I’m not really going to go into details. Of course, this blog is about the best hunter pets in the game: the crabs!
World's Fast Crab!
Tomorrow at 9am (Pacific Time), my subscription to World of Warcraft ends. This means this is the finally farewell from BigRedCrab for now. Of course I’m so excited for Wrath of the Lich King that when it comes out, I’m renewing my subscription. When that time comes, I will be more than happy to begin blogging once more.
But wait? Didn’t I give my farewells in the last post? Yes I did. Why then am I putting out another post? Have you checked out the picture at the beginning of this post? Look carefully at Stra’s Attack Speed.
This is not a doctored screenshot (other than the cropping) and this was taken in an official World of Wacraft live server. In other words this is not fake, it’s the real deal.
How did I manage to do such a thing? I will tell… when BigRedCrab comes back! Until then, I will leave that up to you to figure out.
(Just in case people were wondering, of the time of the screenshot, Stra was Content (not Happy) so her Damage and DPS are lower than it should be. Being Happy, her Damage would have been 155-188 which would have brought her DPS at about 417 damage per second.)
Aidem's Subscription has been cancelled
If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t posted anything on the blog lately. With the sudden surge of WotLK data, you’d think I’d be posting my opinions left and right. Unfortunately, I have some bad news (and some good news):
One of the biggest thing to come out of the Worldwide Invitational for hunters are the Pet Talents! This means no more Training Points. I’ve always hated Stra’s Training Points and I tend to respec her every week. According to what has been said, each Pet will have their own unique DPS, Tank, and Utility tree. I’m predicting that the DPS tree will be the number one end-game tree. The Tank tree will be for those who are leveling/soloing or have a pet specifically for tanking. The Utility tree is probably going to be used for Raids (shared with the DPS tree). If that was confusing, here’s a little summary:
Solo: DPS/Tank Build
Group(Non-Tank): DPS/Utility
Group (Tank): Tank
Raid: DPS/Utility
PvP: DPS
Okay, Aspect of the Crab is not a new WotLK ability, but I had to think of a post title. I just wanted to let those know who haven’t done much questing with the Midsummer Fire Festival to check out the new crab quest! The quest itself is a three quest quest-chain. Once complete, two additional quests are offered. Here is a quick run through of the three quests:
Keep in mind that Ashenvale is Neutral Territory. This may be a pain to have fun on PvP Servers so I recommend doing so at slow times.
First off, I’d like to welcome everyone who has just arrived from Mania’s Arcania. I already knew that BigRedCrab was on Mania’s blogroll (which from my stats brought in a few visitors), but I wasn’t expecting to be presented on the Coummity Round-Up. Anyways, again I’d like to welcome everyone. BigRedCrab is still fairly new (this only being the 7th post) but hopefully as time goes on, I’ll have a nice collect of topics.
For those who were wondering about the Claw Experiment, I just want to clarify that I know it’s basic common sense to train Claw if it’s the only ability available to the pet. The purpose of the experiment is not to sway hunters to train Claw, but to get people a “wake up call” on how much a pet’s DPS is increased with Claw. Most people, such as I, just train and auto-cast Claw and forget about it. So how much increase does you pet’s DPS receive with Claw? 33% It was most definitely a wake up call for me.
UPDATE: I’ve been getting reports that the pet growth rate stops at level 60. Fixed the blog post.
You’ve may seen level 70 cats, ravagers, or raptors everywhere. They can get pretty big and with Bestial Wrath, can get huge! However, there haven’t been many sightings of level 70 crabs going around. How big can a level crab get? Not too many people know. Fortunately, I made a chart just to show how big a crab can get from level 10 all the way to level 70, including when it’s in it’s Bestial Wrath state.
Crabs can get pretty huge too. Trust me, I’ve seen Stra so big at times that I’ve been able to hide an army of gnomes in Battlegrounds. Although Stra, or crabs in general, are still not the biggest pet at level 70, it’s something be amazed. Imagine minding your own business and suddenly a big red crab between the size of a dwarf and orc coming at you.
- New line of pet spells called “Smack”. Equivalent to Claw except with different name.
- Tendom Rip (Rank 1) – 25 focus, Next melee, 20 second cooldown. “Damages an enemy for 3 to 5 and reduces movement speed by 25% for 8 sec.”
- Spore Cloud (Rank 1) - 50 focus, 10 second cooldown. “Inflicts 2 nature damage to nearby enemies every 2 sec for 6 sec and reduces armor by 15%.
- Dust Cloud (Rank 1) - 50 focus, 20 second cooldown. “Kick up an obscuring cloud of dust, lowering the chance for enemies to hit by 30%. Effects last 8 sec.”
- Serenity Dust (Rank 1) - 75 focus, 2 minute cooldown. “Heals the pet for 510 over 15 sec.”
- Bad Attitude (Rank 1) - 25 focus, 3 minute cooldown. “Snap back for 5 damage at any target that strikes you for the next 2 min.”
- Nether Shock (Rank 1) - 30 focus, 20 yard range, 6 second cooldown. “Instantly lashes an enemy for 17 to 19 Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 1 sec.”
- Ravage (Rank 1) - 80 focus, 1 minute cooldown. “Violently attack an enemy for 4 to 6, stunning it for 2 sec.”
- Sonic Blast (Rank 1) - 80 focus, 1 minute cooldown. “Emits a piercing shriek, inflicted 4 to 6 physical damage and stunning the target for 2 sec.”
- Wing Buffet (Rank 1) - 40 focus, 30 second cooldown. “Blasts the target for 4 to 6 damage and knocking it back.”
- Snatch (Rank 1) - 40 focus, 1 minute cooldown. “Grab the enemy’s weapon with your talons, disarming them for 10 sec.”
- Pin (Rank 1) - 80 Focus, channeled, 20 second cooldown. “Pins the target in place, and squeezes for 20 damage over 12 sec.”
Finally, no more seeing Ravagers, Cats, and Raptors EVERYWHERE! With some of these abilities, many hunters will flock to new beast families. Although these leaked notes don’t tell which ability goes to which family, some of the descriptions and names are a bit leading. Here is my view of each of these abilities:
Exactly how important is Claw (Rank 9)? Is it worth investing 29 Training Points in? I asked that question too and with the help of the handy addon Recount, I did a little experiment. In fact, the ending results were a bit more unexpected that I thought. On average, Claw (Rank 9) was near 25% of Stra’s damage (not including Kill Command).
Just added a new page to the blog called “FAQ”. It has plenty of questions about Stra. If you are interesting in asking more questions, feel free to comment to this blog entry or on the “FAQ” page. I’d love to answer more questions about Stra, or even anything concerning the hunter class in general.
Please enjoy the following questions I get asked a lot:
Q: Why tame a crab?
A: Why not? In all purpose, I wanted to tame one of the rarest tamed pets available. At first, I wanted to tame a Sporebat, but the lowest one available was at level 60. I wanted a rare pet that I could tame at a very earlier level. Upon browsing through Petopia, I saw the crabs. Crabs are rare and appear weak (I mean come on, they’re crabs). Being an Alliance character, I decided to go with the red crab since most of them can be found in Durator.
Q: What exact crab did you tame?
A: The level 8 Surf Crawler. The highest level red crab before level 10.
