Zach continues Monday's The Art of War(craft), which started an overview of the game's premier pet class by checking out their pets. Today, we'll take a closer look at the hunters themselves...

A hunter's basic repertoire of attacks consists of shots and stings, the former doing a variety of damaging effects and the latter applying a debuff. Although you only have to worry about one kind of sting being applied to you at any time, hunters have a sting for every kind of opponent. Serpent Sting is the most common, damaging sting, although they can also opt to use Viper Sting on mana-users or even Scorpid Sting against melee classes or other hunters. Stings are nature-based poison debuffs that can be removed by spells such as Cleansing Totems, Cleanse, and Cure Poison.

Most good hunters will try to keep a sting applied on a target, as it can confer benefits to the hunter beyond the basic debuff. Even with abilities to remove the debuff, stings can be reapplied almost immediately, so it can sometimes be a mana-intensive effort for both parties. Out of all the stings, hunters will protect and re-apply Viper Sting the most. On top of their sting, hunters also have a wide selection of ranged attacks. You can expect to be the target of their version of Mortal Strike, the marksmanship talent, Aimed Shot, or the Execute-like ability, Kill Shot, so always watch your health.

It's very difficult to get the element of surprise against a hunter, who will almost always have Track Humanoids active. Even against rogues, hunters have the option to use Flares, Track Hidden, and even Hunter's Mark if they get the chance. Tracking makes hunters ideal guards on flags in Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch. Melee players should be wary of approaching a hunter because most will drop a Freezing Trap where they stand to counter rogue openers or warrior Charge.

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Filed under: Hunter, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

Zach once sat down with Thrall and Varian Wrynn and had a laugh over some glasses of cold, green tea.

Two weeks ago we kicked off a series of introductory guides in PvP intended to give players a general idea of what to expect when facing certain classes. Understanding the behavior, capabilities, and limitations of a class puts players off to a great start in PvP, and after discussing the druid and the death knight in the first two installments, we now turn our attention to the hunter. Hunters have long been a force to reckon with in the Battlegrounds, an environment where they thrive. Also, as strong as they were back in vanilla WoW, they're even more powerful in Wrath of the Lich King, gaining new tricks, losing old limitations (e.g., traps can be deployed in combat), and having access to diversity of pets that make PvP encounters more interesting than ever.

Hunters are the game's premier pet class. More than even warlocks, hunters rely on their pet to accomplish their goals, with the best hunters mastering the art of micromanaging their pets and its varied abilities. Recognizing a hunter's spec is only aspect of identifying a hunter's strength and weaknesses. Part of learning how to deal with hunters involves recognizing a hunter's pet type who now even have their own talent trees. Let's take a closer look at this master of beasts after the jump.

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Filed under: Hunter, Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

Creative unveiled an official licensed World of Warcraft gaming headset back in last year's BlizzCon, and we even got a quick look at the product prototypes when they stopped by the annual WoW.com reader meet-up as well as when they invited us to their booth to check it out. Readers also got a chance to win a pair when we ran contests all throughout the last quarter of 2009. if you've been slathering over one of these fancy peripherals but never lucked out in one of our contests, you might be pleased to learn that the Sound Blaster World of Warcraft headsets are finally available for pre-order from Amazon starting today, February 1.

The headsets we previewed back in August were mere prototypes, and the finished product looks far more refined. The headsets follow the same design principle as the Steelseries WoW mouse, with a faux metallic finish and etched runes. The headsets also have interchangeable 'headset lenses' which feature either the Alliance or Horde logo to show your allegiance. Creative also says that they'll be releasing additional lenses in the future, the first set of which will feature the ten classes of the game. As with the official World of Warcraft mouse, the headsets also have a dazzling 16 million programmable color illumination options.

The fully customizable headset comes in wireless or wired versions, with THX TruStudio PC technology for a more immersive gaming experience. The wireless version reportedly carries up to 9 hours of battery charge as well as a standard, detachable USB connector that can also be used to charge it. The headset microphone is detachable to allow the use of the headphone for communication or merely for listening. The World of Warcraft headset can also be configured to match different character profiles, accessible through what appears to be an in-game menu. The Sound Blaster World of Warcraft wireless headset retails for $159.99 while the tethered version is available for $119.99. Creative is also offering a complementary accessory called VoiceTap which allows players to program their push-to-talk key or even a macro to it instead of to their keyboard or mouse, allowing full hands-free communication.

Filed under: News items

Zach is a PvP nut who is excited at the prospect of more meaningful Battlegrounds play. He is about as unfunny as Jay Leno but has a slightly smaller chin.

Last week we kicked off a PvP series on how to deal with specific classes starting with the druid. We featured those slippery shapeshifters mostly because I'm a doofus who thought they were first on the alphabetical list -- cut me some slack, though, since druids were first on the list for years before those upstart death knights came along. Of course, when the game's first hero class was introduced with Wrath of the Lich King, it was no coincidence that their popularity was directly proportional to their being completely imbalanced and overpowered. It was so broken that Arena Season 5 was dominated by death dnights and even unskilled keyboard turners and clickers could sometimes achieve gaudy rankings using the class.

While the class has been tuned down somewhat, this hasn't diminished their popularity and death knights remain formidable opponents in the Battlegrounds and world PvP. Today we'll take a look at the dreaded death knight and try to outline a few key points to remember when facing one. Just as with the first installment of this series, these articles are by no means an exhaustive and complete guide to fighting a particular class. PvP depends greatly on context, in part determined by your own class, your environment, your opponent's spec, and player skill among other things. With that disclaimer out of the way, let's take a quick overview of death knights just to give players a general idea of what to expect.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Death Knight, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)

Zach thinks Conan is funnier. This has nothing to do with World of Warcraft. But it's good to say it, anyway.

Considering that we have ourselves a bit of time before the next exciting thing comes out -- Cataclysm and the new Battle for Gilneas Battleground -- I thought it'd be a good time to write up a quick guide to fighting the different classes. Since we ended last year with a basic primer to the battlegrounds, we'll use the start of the year and the lull before the next expansion to compile a guide to fighting the different classes. That should probably hold true for a bit until Cataclysm turns our World of Warcraft upside down.

Let's start with the druid. My excuse was that we're supposed to do this alphabetically, but I realized that death knights actually come before druids now. While Blizzard has always tried to maintain a balance among classes in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way, I don't think anyone -- regardless of what class they play -- who has ever encountered a druid has snickered to himself about how easy the fight is going to be. Druids, by and large, have a very high survivability as a class. Pair this with their supreme mobility and you've got one hell of a fight on your hands.

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Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Guides, The Art of War(craft) (PvP), Battlegrounds