More raiding

Hey again! The raiding of the new content has continued and our guild is nicely gearing up; from 31st to 6th we did Vault of Archavon 10 and 25, The Obsidian Sanctum 10 and 25 (with no drakes up), Naxxramas 10 and some 25 plus rehearsing Malygos in the Eye of the Eternity. So yeah, lot of the new content has been gone thru and I've got some decent drops.

For example, my T7-gloves are now gathering dust in the bank as I got Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets off of Grand Widow Faerlina. Gemmed and enchanted (+16 agi gem plus +20 agility enchant) they are very, very good gloves - gives me nice chunk of hit, which was one of the major reasons for swapping T7-gloves for these. Anyway, T7 does have haste which is good for Survivalist-hunters but still, getting that hit rating capped without having any talent points in Focused Aim is something to thrive for. I could've got sweet money out of selling those BoE-gloves, but naah, I didn't do it. These gloves are perhaps the best gloves for Beastmaster-hunter, barring 25-man raids and even tho I am Surv at the moment, I still like to stack hit + crit instead of haste + armor pen, which T7 has. My Steady Shot cast is at the moment down to 1.7 seconds, so it's not THAT far. And using Meteorite Whetstone along with Imp. Aspect of the Hawk brings the Steady Shot below it's GCD whenever they proc.

Anyway, here's a list of upgrades I've received lately and the enchants/gems I'm using:

Shoulders: Pauldrons of Havoc - these shoulders dropped TWICE during one reset period; first 4-horsemen dropped them and a enhancement shammy won the roll. But then I got lucky; Gluth, who has a shared loot-table, ALSO dropped these and now I was alone to roll for them. Whee. =) They currently have the lamey +40ap/+15res enchant because I don't have enough reputation for Sons of Hodir shoulder enchant yet.

Hands: Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets - dropped from Grand Widow Faerlina. Pretty much the best hunter gloves barring 25-man raids and ESPECIALLY brilliant for Beastmaster hunters... brilliant for other specs without hit cap as well. With these gloves I'm no finally hit-capped without spending any points in talents to get the hit rating up. This also means, that my pet gets all of my 8% hit (the 3% from Focused Aim doesn't scale to the pet, so my pet was doing a lot of misses earlier) which is great.
Gemmed: Delicate Scarlet Ruby
Enchanted: +20 agility

Finger: Sealing Ring of Grobbulus - very, very nice ring.

2-handed weapon: Wraith Spear - drops off Maexxna in 10-man version. Pretty brilliant polearm for a hunter, even though it's a trade-off between dualwielding pretty great 1-handers which both contain +hit rating (which is a bulk of my overall hit) and loads of agility (+22 agi enchant on both of my 1-handers). Anyway, this buffs up my crit very nicely and raidbuffed I'm with over 45% crit! I got this enchanted with +85 attack power, because the +110ap is soooo expensive and there is no +agility enchant in WotLK for two-handers, which is very weird. Anyways, wielding this means that I have to employ my "hit-ring" (Mobius Ring) and "hit-trinket" (Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood), as I usually use Hemorrhaging Circle as another ring and Meteorite Whetstone to boost my haste. But the hit-trinket ain't bad either: I've macroed it to my Steady Shot, so when I'm using that trinket, it comes up every 2 minutes and it's a nice boost to DPS.

Here's the spec I'm currently using. As I have Glyph of Imp. AotH, I only need to put 3/5 in the talent and still get the 15% attack speed increase. From MM-tree I decided to go for Aimed Shot, as there are lot of boss fights where you have to move, and Survivalist only has Explosive Shot and Arcane Shot as instants and they do share the cooldown. So, Aimed Shot is a nice extension to my shot arsenal and I can now shoot two instants in a row, which is pretty nicely whenever a situation requires increased burst damage. When Lock'n'Load procs, I can shoot XShot-Steady-Steady-XShot (thus using both free shots for explo shot - the two steadies in between makes sure that I won't overwrite the 2sec ticking fire damage prematurealy) and toss an Aimed Shot after that or to create even higher burst damage -> XShot-Arcane Shot-Aimed Shot. Also, decided to put 1/2 in Rapid Killing to bring the CD down one minute - it's now very possible to use it twice during a (raid) boss fight either for increased DPS or to get mana back with Viper more quickly, which is the main use I've had for Rapid Fire so far. Popping that and using XShot every 6 seconds, it's like 12 to 15 seconds and I'm from 20% mana to 100% again.
The other talents in MM are no-brainers; Lethal 5/5, Mortal 5/5, Careful Aim 3/3 and GftT 2/2.
For this particular build, I decided from the get-go, that I'm not even thinking of getting Sniper Training, instead I took Trap Mastery and 1/3 in Resourcefulness - that'll help a great deal for example in Gluth-fight. Also, the usual 2/3 in Expose Weakness and Hunting Party are guaranteed to create ~95% uptime.

That's pretty much it. What comes to my "wishlist", there's a helmet, boots and bracers on that list. Preferably T7-helmet, Trespasser's Boots from Noth and Bands of Anxiety from Grobbulus.

Today our guild is doing Naxx10 with an intention for full-clear - last time around it took 6 hours 15 minutes, maybe we can snatch 30min or so from it this time! :-) And please, oh please - let Kelly drop Nerubian Conquerer!