Trueshot Aura

These are the 6 map icons for the new Mysteries.

This will bring the count up to 15 Total mysteries.

While it does not appear every picture is present for them, It does seem like we have a majority for a least a couple of them.

This one appears to be a “Modern Art Sculpture” Probably representing family. This could be something similar to the Maoi, or it could be something entirely different. We do not know.

It could be a way to increase tribal size.

I cannot find a “Mystery Complete” Picture at the moment, so there may not be one.

It is clear from the 5 bowls present that it  takes 5 steps to complete at a minimum.

There are Gems added also which match these bowls in size and number:

5 Gems for 5 Bowls.

Crystal. I have no idea for this one.

There is also an overlay (Adjacent) which appears to be placed with the image for it’s “complete” image.

It has a 9 step completion, Crystals exist to fill the slots

Having a Star it could represent something to do with drops or spawns, but really, your guess is as good as mine.

Others.

No idea for these 3.

There are likely more things involved which are not in the gamecode yet.

As some of you may know I have stopped playing WoW Many months ago.
I am currently playing some flash games, include a few long running games on Facebook.
One of these is My Tribe.

In standard theorycrafter practice I have been working on ways to advance in this game, and get high efficiency out of everything I do in it.
I spend some of my time answering questions on the official boards, as well as working on ideas with others.

My current theorycraft projects include:
Calculating the equations for levelling up time, based on existing attributes, Elder Level, and Mental Strength
Calculating the equations for task speed, which are based on one strength attribute, and skill level.
Calculating the building point system, and the values stardust and moondust affect this by. Based on the completion times, and the speed with which workers complete the buildings, along with any rounding systems in place.

This post is here to display a recent 10minute research to post on the forums.
Space Efficiency while placing Farm Plots on a My Tribe farm.

There are two main tessellations for fields which use perfect space efficiency. These are as follows:

Analysis of perfect farm tessellations for MyTribe farm layouts

Disengage – The ability for a hunter to make a large leap backwards while in combat.
A huge movement, with one keypress, in a known direction, that is NOT on the Global Cooldown.
Think about it. This provides the ability for bursts of movement at very high speed.
If there is one thing that causes a problem in PvE content for people, It is the inability for raiders to move at a reasonable speed out of Fire, or Acid, or Mana Puddles, or Poison Novas, Or even to be Not-In-Front-of-The-Boss when he casts X-Random-Flame-Breath / Frost Breath / Cleave

I have been known to use this ability a half dozen times in a single fight. While writing this I decided to check my guilds logs on World of Raids.
I could not find a raid where I used it less than two dozen times in a night. I also could not find a raid where another hunter in the raid used it more than four times.
There was one exception to that: Faction Champions – The hunter we faced off against liked to use disengage too.

Surely this ability should be on the toolbar of every hunter? Mages can’t resist using blink every time they have a situation where it is appropriate, Or just any situation where it won’t kill them. So why do hunters avoid this ability?
We can answer that question very easily. It takes time, and inspiration, to learn.

If you play PvP you don’t have the choice, You NEED to learn it, and use everything you can to win.
If you play PvE you have a choice, You don’t need to use every ability you have, You only need to do enough to stay alive, and to do the most damage you can. You don’t need to learn every little trick, And usually won’t even think of a lot. But despite not needing them to pass content. They can provide a significant performance boost. Tricks like this can minimise the time you spend moving. And minimise the amount of damage you take, giving your healers more time to focus on targets who can’t avoid taking damage.

Why use disengage in PvE ?
Disengage moves you roughly 15 yards directly backwards, with a roughly quarter second “cast” time (not GCD linked), then a quarter second in midair, and you have moved 15 yards in half a second.
Disengage will NOT be affected by slowing affects.
Frost on the floor on Anub’Arak in ToTC ? No effect on disengage.
Slowing poison from an add hitting you ? No effect on disengage.

Do you need to move away from someone or something ?
Face them, Tap disengage, Tap your instant-casts, Land in a safe position, Or closer to a safe position, wasting no time pressing E or Q (Or whichever key you use to strafe)
Death Rune centered on you on Iron Council ? Disengage Right to the edge, two steps and you’re out.

Need to move towards someone or something ?
Face away, Tap disengage. BAM, You’re standing in the blue rune on iron council, Or in range of your next target.

Even better? If you learn to use disengage, You will always be prepared to use it. You will face your back to the direction you need to jump.
Ever done Twin Valkyr ? You get annoyed losing damage with the wrong “buff” for your mob when you change?
Go sideways between groups, Stand next to the other colour swirlymabob. with your back to the one you have active.
DBM says “Change Colour” Right click on it twice, Tap disengage, Turn around before you land, and if the tanks are in a good position, you’re in range to dps the other boss until you need to change colour again, You are always on the best target for you, AND you lose less than a second of dps time while you move.

Now, A few extra things to note. If you have a parachute cloak, or slowfall, or levitate. You move even further while those abilities are active.
You can disengage in water, as long as you are in combat, by pressing Disengage, and Jump together while near the surface
If you jump before you hit disengage, You will get an extra couple of yards.

If you didn’t learn to kite in Classic WoW, LEARN TO SPIN IN MIDAIR
Combine that ability with a well aimed disengage, And you are the closest to an acrobat that you can be in this game.

If you do Icehowl, Face the wall when he casts his stun, Tap disengage when it reaches the end. You keep moving, in a “sum of two vectors” direction, and land away from the wall, in a nice position to run.

I could go into a huge list of encounters where you can use this fight to avoid random effects such as fire, acid, or poison, or where you need to move fast. Or even where you get slowed down regularly and might need movement. But I shall leave that up to you.

A Snobold has 808k health

If we kill the snobold, the raid deals 808k less damage to the boss.
If the snobold is on a dps, then that dps needs to output 808k AFTER being free’d from the snobold for it to be a worthwhile “investment” of damage

If we assume the first add spawns after 30 seconds (20% fight duration)
And that we lose 100% of the casters damage (no wanding, no instant casts)
To get this “investment” back that caster would need to do 808k damage in the remaining two minutes.
This equates to 6734 dps average, for the remaining fight.

If the second add spawns after 60 seconds (40% fight duration)
Same assumptions (which benefit the idea of killing it)
The caster would need to do 808k damage in 180 seconds for it to be worth killing it. This is 8978 dps average for the remainder of the fight.

If we can afford to lose DPS, (i.e. we have plenty to kill him on time) then it means we have less adds to deal with before we start on the jormungar, However, if we have dps problems, it is DETRIMENTAL to kill the adds on any dps which can NOT meet the benchmarks written above.

The Beasts of Northrend

First thing to notice here is how the encounter progresses. They no longer wait for you to finish, and are instead on a timer.
On 10man you get to deal with them if you’re a little slow
On 25man, if two “Phases” are up together, the encounter resets, so you NEED to finish on time.

The Jormungar will enter 2:30 after Gormak becomes attackable.
Mr. Smashy will enter 3:00 after the Jormungar become attackable.
The main thing to remember here is that you need all your dps to be pushing hard here.

Phase1 : Gormak
The main thing to notice here is the Fire Bomb. This is no longer just a flame patch. Every second it applies a debuff.
This debuff stacks up every second, and deals 2000 damage every 2 seconds for each application, and lasts for 20 seconds after you move out of the flame patch.
You will need to attack the snobolds here, even if you skipped them on nonheroic, as if you reach 4 snobolds he will be able to oneshot even a heroic-ulduar geared tank.

Phase2 : Jormungar
Acidmaw’s Poison debuff ticks a lot faster here, so fast movement is a higher requirement.
Nothing else you need to do differently here, just faster movement.

Phase3 : Icehowl
As per usual he does a knockback, and you need to run away. You no longer have a runspeed buff here.
If you can switch back fast, use Aspect of the Pack as soon as you start running to allow those around you to move a little faster.

Important: Tranq shot does NOT remove his enrage on heroic mode.

Today we have a new encounter to try out, Anub’Arak.
Tankspot tactical video: tr.im/anubarak

As a hunter it is a fairly simple fight actually.
Do not worry about permafrost too much, you can disengage if you need to move across it suddenly

Phase 1:
Dps adds, don’t pull aggro, they need to stay on permafrost
Make sure you aren’t standing infront of the boss at any point
Phase 2:
Dodge spikes when they go for you, Stand on permafrost when they come for you.
Kill adds

Phase 1 and 2 alternate until he reaches 30% health

Phase 3:
Starts at 30% Health
Tank n Spank
DO NOT worry about your health, healers will have you at roughly half health for this, it is expected
Save any cooldowns you have after 50% for this phase, It is a race to drop his health before your healers go oom

The Theory

As every marksmanship hunter knows, the majority of the damage we deal is physical damage. This damage is mitigated through the armor that is worn by every player and creature in the game. Blizzard have given us a new toy to play with, Armor Penetration. Which will let us ignore a percentage of the enemies armor.
The theory here is to minimise the enemies mitigation, and as such raise the damage on the physical damage shots that we fire.
Physical Damage: Auto Shot, Aimed Shot, Silencing Shot, and Steady Shot
Magical Damage: Chimera Shot, Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot.
The top 3 of these in any boss fight are of course, Autoshot, Steady shot, and Chimera Shot. Usually in this order.
Between the 4 Physical damage shots we have roughly 60% of our total damage. Anything that applies to all of these shots can’t be bad right ?

The Math

To understand how ArP works first we need to understand how armor works.
We know the armor equations, Fairly common knowledge, for anything above level 60:

DR% = Armor / (Armor + 400 + 85 * (AttackerLevel + 4.5 * (AttackerLevel – 59)))
Lets plug in lvl 83 (A raid boss)
DR% = Armor / (Armor + 16635)
We can clearly see a diminishing returns model here. For every thousand armor, the damage reduction gained is reduced. The first 5000 armor gives 23.11% reduction, to double that we need 14300 Armor.

What does this mean for ArP?
We aren’t subject to any diminishing returns based on armor, we will always ignore by percentage. Taking the diminishing returns on armor into account this means that actually the higher our armor penetration, the more effective it is.
Take our example above for example. If we go from 0% to 65% armor penetration, we remove 23.11% of the bosses damage reduction. However, to gain the same effect again it would only take 35% armor penetration.

Lets get some real numbers here.
Ghostcrawler announced the formula for armor penetration before, Lets put all out formulas together here, and see if we can get a formula for the damage increase we should see on physical shots, for a given value of armor penetration
C = 400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59)
We also know how much armor is succeptible to penetration:
(Armor + C)/3
Knowing that level 83 bosses have 13083 armor we can then plug this number in to give as a value 9906
The next step taken by the game is to compare armor values, To take the maximum succeptible value, or the bosses armor value. To see which is actually used. (i.e. if the boss only has 500 armor, we can’t ignore 2000)
The lowest value here is 9906 for level 83 bosses.

But wait, We forgot something: Raid debuffs, Sunder armor applies 20% armor reduction, and Faerie Fire applies 5%. Any good raid group will have these two debuffs (or others with the same value) up constantly. If we redo our above equations we get a boss armor value of 9812.5 and an effective penetrable armor value of 8815.75
Assuming we have hit the softcap (51% – gives us 100% with trinket procs) we can work out the increase this gives to our shots with and without trinket proc.

First lets apply our penetration.
9812.5 armor – (51% of 8815.75) = 5316.5 Armor
and with proc
9812.5 armor – 8815.75 penetrable = 996.75 Armor

Now, Lets use these values, and find out how much of our damage the boss is mitigating each time:
%Reduction = (Armor / ([467.5 * Enemy_Level] + Armor – 22167.5)) * 100
Plugging in our numbers gives the following
Before ArP (Full Armor) = 37.10% Damage Reduction
Passive ArP (No Proc) = 24.22% Damage Reduction
Trinket ARP (With Proc) = 5.65% Damage Reduction

This means without ArP only 62.9% of our physical damage is effective.
With passive, 75.78% (which is a 20.47% increase from having none)
With trinket proc 94.35% (or exactly a 50% increase in damage from having none)

If we account for the trinket uptime we can even break this to a general number for how much this is worth.
Typical logs suggest between 17% and 23% uptime on boss fights, We shall take a half-way value for this of 20%.
20% time with trinket, and 80% time with just passive gives us a 26.38% total increase to all our physical shots.
All this maths is done accounting for both raid debuffs on the bosses, And if the bosses have higher armor due to these buffs being missing, The damage you gain will become even higher.

How does this apply overall ? Assuming a 10.5 second rotation, roughly 65-75% of our damage is physical, if not more. (steady shot, autoshot, aimed shot, silencing shot), which means this is roughly a 19.5% damage increase over our usual damage without arp.
If you consider that a good portion of the ArP we will have before trying to build it up, this is a very high amount of damage to pull out of one “b-rate” stat.
Once you reach hard-mode ulduar, or ToTC Raid levels of gear, This damage increase is much higher than you will get from gearing without it, and once you have around half of this, even gemming for agility is no match!

Remember though, Being over the cap provides only a minor increase, as it will only apply when the trinket is not up, Anything beyond cap you want to gem for agility!

Note: The 10.5 second rotation I name above is the following:
Steady Steady Steady Steady Steady Chimera Aimed Then repeat
This rotation assumes you will weave in your silencing shot when it is off cooldown as it is not linked to GCD, and uses the Steady, Serpent, and Kill shot glyphs.

Due to latency, or movement you may end up dropping one steady from this, This is better than clipping chimera and aimed.

The “guide” Part

Use a 10.5 second rotation
Only gear for it when you have high stats beforehand and can reach the softcap (620 with grim toll, 567 with Mjollnir)
Use the glyphs listed above.
Use Imp Steady shot in your talent tree
and don’t even THINK of touching arcane shot if you’re standing still.

A Guildie recently decided to swap tradeskills to get a bit more out of his character.

As any good player should he checked his tradeskills and worked out a profession which would give him the best bonus. As a tank he has decided on blacksmithing. So for him here is a quick guide to levelling Blacksmithing,  Designed to give the lowest net cost if you Auction or Disenchant

Shopping List:
550x[Copper Bar]
040x[Rough Stone]
040x[Coarse Stone]
005x[Silver Bar]
265x[Bronze Bar]
005x[Gold Bar]
380x[Iron Bar]
090x[Heavy Stone]
040x[Green Dye]
015x[Citrine]
075x[Steel Bar]
560x[Mithril Bar]
005x[Dense Stone]
530x[Thorium Bar]
160x[Rugged Leather]
205x[Fel Iron Bar]
180x[Adamantite Bar]
020x[Primal Earth]
010x[Primal Fire]
375x[Cobalt Bar]
275x[Saronite Bar]
005x[Eternal Earth]
005x[Eternal Water]
005x[Eternal Shadow]
010 Eternals in total, Any of: [Eternal Fire] [Eternal Air] [Eternal Earth] [Eternal Water] [Eternal Shadow]

1-100, Keep the grinding stones, Vendor the rest.
20x[Copper Bracers]
5x[Chain Copper Pants]
20x[Rough Grinding Stone]
30x[Copper Chain Belt]
20x[Coarse Grinding Stone]
25x[Runed Copper Belt]

100-105 Make 5 [Silver Rod] These are used by enchanters, So sell these on the AH

105-150 Make some [Rough Bronze Leggings] Until you can make some [Heavy Grinding Stone]. You will need 30 of these, So make them now while you can get skill points. Make some more [Rough Bronze Leggings] Up to 145, And finish off with 5x [Patterned Bronze Bracers]

150-155
You can now make 5 x[Golden Rod]. Sell these too

155-300 Again, Straight forwards all the way to 300

25x[Green Iron Leggings]
15x[Green Iron Helm]
15x[Golden Scale Bracers]
20x[Mithril Scale Pants]
20x[Heavy Mithril Breastplate]
05x[Dense Sharpening Stone]
35x[Thorium Bracers]
20x[Thorium Boots]

Outlands : 300-350   Straight forward again,  Disenchant it if you don’t want it for an alt.

10x[Fel Iron Chain Coif]
05x[Fel Iron Plate Belt]
05x[Fel Iron Chain Gloves]
05x[Fel Iron Plate Boots]
05x[Fel Iron Breastplate]
10x[Adamantite Rapier]
05x[Adamantite Breastplate]

Northrend.   Again, Disenchant unless you have a buyer

05x[Cobalt Belt]
05x[Cobalt Triangle Shield]
05x[Cobalt Helm]
05x[Cobalt Chestpiece]
05x[Cobalt Tenderiser]
05x[Forged Cobalt Claymore]
05x[Notched Cobalt War Axe]
05x[Spiked Cobalt belt]
05x[Horned Cobalt Helm]
05x[Brilliant Saronite Boots]
05x[Tempered Saronite Bracers]

You can now unlock some nice money-makers. These two will continue to sell well on the auctionhouse. Depending on titanium prices you might want to make more Belt Buckles, but they are not guaranteed to skill every time.
05x[Eternal Belt Buckle]
05x[Titanium Weapon Chain]

The savage Saronite set is a good way to finish off. You can sell sets of this fairly nicely,  and if no-one wants any, they all disenchant into large shards, which covers almost the entire material cost.

425-430 Make any 5 of the Combination: [Savage Saronite Bracers][Savage Saronite Gauntlets][Savage Saronite Pauldrons][Savage Saronite Waistguard][Savage Saronite Walkers]
430-435 Again, Another Combination: [Savage Saronite Hauberk][Savage Saronite Legplates][Savage Saronite Skullshield]

At this point you have almost everything unlocked, You can reach 440 by making more Savage Saronite, and then 440-450 from making titansteel.

Remember, your blacksmith sockets are opened up at 400 skill, So you do not need to get the full 450 to take advantage of them.

I’ll replace this with a real post later.

But i’ve now set this thing up, pretty much sorted I think.

Populating the blogroll at the moment, If i’ve missed anyone out then let me know!