The Hunter's Refuge

Other Games

2011-08-11T14:30:00.000-04:00

I have stopped playing World of Warcraft this summer. I highly doubt I will play World of Warcraft again, and definitely not before another expansion.

I have mainly been playing a modified version of Diablo 2 and League of Legends this summer.

Diablo 2 Epic Mod

My mod for diablo 2 makes it more challenging while making quite a few abilities a lot more interesting. Yet the core gameplay of Diablo 2 is still there.

The installation to get it all working is slightly more difficult than just loading Diablo 2, but instructions are on the site and it makes for a much more interesting game.

2k Rogue / Hunter

2011-04-02T16:32:00.000-04:00

Siphter and I finally managed to get back to the illustrious 2k rating.

Marksmanship with a Spider pet ended up being the ticket. Once I was able to get more used to Marks I can see how Marks is just night and day better than BM. It makes me sad but Kill Command is just a bad signature shot for PvP.

In 3's as Hunter / Rogue / Resto Druid we are also doing much better with me as Marks. I think we could possibly get to 2k with the comp but I'm not sure about anything after that. The highest Hunter / Rogue / Resto Druid team in the world is 2.2k, but I'm partly sure that is because nobody runs with this comp (the other part is its just a inferior comp).

Well, my goal is still to get to 2.2k at some point with a 3's team. Not sure if we'll ever reach that goal but it's another step closer with me as Marks.

BM PvP Talents and Glyphs

2011-03-25T15:30:00.000-04:00

You can look at my Armory page to see what exact talent spec and glyphs I am currently using.

Talent specs after Cataclysm have gotten much simpler since they are now 31 point talent trees. The main two options for a BM Hunter is to go into Marksman or Survival with most of the extra points.

Here are my two different builds for BM PvP:

BM PvP Spec A

BM PvP Spec B

My main spec (Spec A) has two important talents from the Survival Tree: Survival Tactics & Entrapment.

Hunter vs. Wild is pretty much a mandatory talent for every Hunter PvP spec. 15% more stamina for 3 talent points, yes please.

Improved Serpent Sting is just filler to get to the next tier. Slight DPS gain.

Survival Tactics reduces my Disengage by 4 seconds which is always nice for survivability and can be used even offensively.

Survival Tactics also supposedly reduces the chance for your traps to resist, which should allow more consistent crowd control via Freezing Trap.

Entrapment snares targets when they break a Snake Trap or an Ice Trap (Frost Trap). This ensnare lasts for four seconds with 2 talent points. This is a decent control mechanism, especially against melee.

My secondary spec (Spec B) goes for more damage in the Marksmanship tree with my extra talent points.

Go for the Throat used to be mandatory for BM Hunters before Cataclysm. Go for the Throat used to give your pet 25/50 focus on an auto-shot crit. As of Cataclysm this talent now only gives your pet 5/10 focus on an auto-shot crit. That's a huge nerf to the talent, but it gives BM Hunters a choice with their spec.

Go for the Throat still gives a decent increase in DPS per talent point (roughly the same as Bestial Discipline).

Efficiency is really just filler as BM to get down to Sic 'Em! as the 3 less focus cost on Arcane Shot is insignificant, and Efficiency is only 1 less focus during The Beast Within (12 focus cost BW without 3/3 Efficiency, 11 focus cost BW with 3/3 Efficiency).

Sic 'Em! is a much more interesting talent for Survival than for BM. BM does use Arcane shot a decent amount, especially against high armored targets. The DPS gain from this talent is still marginal and very random at best. Of course, during Bestial Wrath it can contribute to a little more burst as the chances of an Arcane Shot crit are pretty high since you will be spamming it between Kill Commands.

Prime Glyphs

Kill Command - 3 focus reduction is not much but there is nothing else interesting for BM.

Kill Shot - Doesn't hit for near as much as it used to, two of them are usually required for a kill.

Arcane Shot - Used frequently and a decent increase in Arcane Shots damage.

Major Glyphs

Bestial Wrath - Lower cooldown = more frequent burst opportunities

Disengage - 5 seconds off a great defensive ability, self explanatory

Raptor Strike - 20% less damage is huge when versing any team that focuses the Hunter, and it's not that tough to land with it now being instant

Master's Call - 4 second increase in duration used to be great, but now that Master's Call can be dispelled, any decent team will usually dispel it after a few seconds (just like a freedom). Also the 4 second base time of Master's Call is usually enough time to free yourself up and move away.

2v2 Update:

Siphter and I played a few games the other day but just couldn't get into a decent rhythm and my spec was a little bit off. We will be playing more games in the near future. We will break 2k.

3v3 Update:

I play with Siphter and Evanie as BM Hunter, Subtelty Rogue, Restoration Druid. We have climbed above 1800 and are starting to get a good feel for the comp. The comp itself is not a great comp, but it's not a terrible comp either. I believe it is possible for our comp with our moderate skill level to get to 2k at some point.

Why BM Hunter for 2v2 Arena?

2011-03-01T16:08:00.001-05:00

Beast Mastery in Cataclysm has been fairly bad from the start. The main reason BM started out so bad was because Blizzard removed the immunity from cc during the Beast Within. So even though the burst from BW was higher (shots cost 50% less focus), in PvP it was actually lower burst since decent opponents would cc the hunter during BW. Also, BM in PvE couldn't even compete with any class due to it being simply very poor damage.

With the 4.0.6 patch and the Aspect of the Hawk hotfix BM is now viable in PvE and even in some PvP.

My experience with BM is in Rated BG's and 2v2 Arena (Double DPS with a Rogue).
Why do I play BM for 2v2 Arena?

Spirit Beast Spirit Mend is the best self healing a Hunter can achieve, and healing is crucial as Double DPS

While LoS'ing opponents and using this heal I can outlast a decent amount of 2's teams that focus me (Marks heal with Chimera Shot requires line of sight which opens the Hunter up to more damage)

Kill Command can be cast through LoS

While I am LoS to avoid damage or if their are LoS'ing me to avoid damage I can still do solid damage to low armor targets

Bestial Wrath burst is very high

Kill Command crits for 30k are possible against high resilience clothies
Arcane Shot spam is decent against all classes

The Beast Within can be used a 2nd trinket about every minute
Improved Mend Pet does a decent job of removing cc from your pet if you keep Mend Pet always up on your pet
Mages die very quickly

The strategy vs Mages is to both open on Mage and get that Ice Block. After Ice Block is when you blow Bestial Wrath and finish the Mage. As a Hunter in 2's your job is to always be on the Mage until death occurs. Mages left open are bad news and Hunters are very good vs Mages.

Scatter Shot is baseline so BM can actually use Freezing Trap to cc the off target
Arcane Shot damage is solid because of the high Attack Power that BM can attain

Don't use Kill Command on high armor targets, just spam Arcane Shot

Focus regen is very fluid as BM and the need to Cobra Shot (or Steady Shot) all the time is much lower than Marks or Survival

As a Hunter we still lack good defensive abilities. Which is why a Rogue is really nice as a partner as he can keep classes that gun for me off of me. So if the other team has a Rogue that is going for me, my Rogue's job is to keep him off me and I kite, doing damage to the other Rogue while healing myself.

I believe BM could still use a few tweaks to make it more viable in 3's and against high armor targets. If I could change 2 things about BM this would be it:

Kill Command would ignore 50-75% armor and be castable when your pet is within 10-15 yards of target (instead of the current 5 yards) due to pet pathing issues.

Silencing Shot should be a baseline Hunter ability. I think most classes that have a silence have it baseline. This change would really allow all Hunter specs to perform close to par in PvP, or at least be close to Marks Hunters.

2v2 Rogue / Hunter Update
My Rogue partner broke his finger and now has a cast on his hand for 3 weeks. We will probably not do any 2's until the cast is off. So 2k will be delayed for a bit.

In other news:
The Hunter Getnerded with Kung Fu Cleave (Marks Hunter / Arms Warrior / Resto Shaman) is now the highest Arena Rated Hunter in the world at 2953 in 3's. Arena Junkies post link.

1914 in 2v2 as Hunter / Rogue

2011-02-23T23:49:00.001-05:00

Another week of solid 2's performance gets us up to 1914. The huge buff to Aspect of the Hawk definitely increased BM's damage, maybe gave us an extra game out of the 13 we played. We went 10 and 3 this week. Not quite as good as 10 and 0, but we'll take another 100 point increase.

I do not enjoy vs'ing Priest / Feral. I hate Feral Druids without a healer. I think we went 2 and 1 vs this comp but it was super scary.

I enjoy vs'ing Mages. They are predictable and squishy. I feel like I control the fight since I can chunk their health.

I enjoy any team that thinks they can outlast us without doing much damage since we can both heal ourselves decently.

Well, I think we can hit 2k, perhaps even by next week.

Removing the Sound of Aspect Switching

2011-02-20T16:58:00.000-05:00

Hunter

Aimed Shot damage has been decreased to approximately 160% weapon damage (at level 80+), down from 200%.
Aspect of the Hawk now provides around an additional 2000 attack power at level 85.

Hunter

The changes to Aimed Shot and Aspect of the Hawk announced yesterday have not yet been applied to live realms and should not go into effect until after the holiday weekend.

Macro'ing Aspects to your shots (the ! before the Aspect makes it so you never remove your aspect, since it will keep casting it over and over):

/cast !Aspect of the Fox
/cast Cobra Shot or Steady Shot

/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast all other shots

The ! before the Aspect makes it so you never remove your aspect, since it will keep casting it over and over... which brings me to how annoying that sound is.

This is a great post on the forums detailing how to remove the sound of aspect switching:

Arånann
Hello everyone, I've been playing around with macros to put me in hawk and fox depending on the shot I want and like the rest of you that tried it I found the constant CAW CAW CAW sound to be horrible. So I started googling and playing around and figured out how to remove the Aspect Sounds from the game. It's not against the ToS, we're not modifying MPQ files here, just substituting our own sound files just like fonts. This functionality is built into wow, that's why we can just make a folder and the game picks up the substitions on it's own. No addons or hacking needed.

With the latest batch of blunders (i.e. hotfixes) from Blizzard, imo it will be beneficial to switch to AotH for certain shots since AotH will give either 2k+ AP. You should know that aspects share their own weird cooldown system and when spammed can have strange effects on your shots and may delay them slightly. Enough rambling here's what I did:

Downloaded this addon to get a proper blank .wav file, Blizz is picky about .wav files and they have to be saved with certain attributes. Not all blank .wav files are equal, don't ask me why, I'm no sound engineer

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/humbuzz-b-gone.aspx

Create the following directory:

YOUR WOW INSTALL\Data\Sound\Spells

Copy the blank .wav file from the addon you downloaded to this folder.

Make two copies of this file

Name the first copy AspectofTheHawk.wav

I'm pretty sure upper and lower case would matter here, but I have not tested it. Make sure you name it exactly as I typed above.

Name the second copy Pathfinding.wav

I think that should do it, I personally went one step further and made more copies of the blank file and named them the following. This was mostly done in my troubleshooting phase trying to find which file was creating the second sound. Renaming AspectofTheHawk.wav removes the CAW CAW CAW, but there's still a whoosh sound every time you change aspects. That whoosh sound is Pathfinding.wav, so here's the whole list just in case you want it. Pay attention to case and spelling:

_HU_AspectofTheFox_01
_HU_AspectofTheFox_02
_HU_AspectofTheFox_03
_HU_AspectofTheFox_04
_HU_AspectofTheFox_05
AspectofTheBeast
AspectofTheCheeta
AspectofTheMonkey
AspectofThePack
AspectofTheSnake
AspectofTheWolf

You'll find it interesting that there are aspects we've never heard of in there! I, only renamed them trying to find the whoosh sound.

Have fun!

EDIT - Shot Macros

I've been using the following to change aspects automatically -

#showtooltip SHOT NAME
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast SHOT NAME

Substitute the aspect name as needed for steady and cobra macros, I'm playing with castsequence macros too to see if I can make it any more elegant. Thought some folks might want to see the macro, when you spam it, that's when the Aspect sounds become annoying.

1817 in 2v2 as Hunter / Rogue

2011-02-16T00:41:00.002-05:00

Siphter and I have finally got back into playing some 2v2 now that Hunter's have been buffed a little bit and made a little bit more viable. Last week we went 6 and 4 but developed some very good general strategies against most teams. This week we went 10 and 0, and the last game was freaking epic.

So this week during our 10 and 0 streak this was how our games played out:

Mage / Healer or DPS: Always on mage, blow mage up, take almost no damage from the mage and he can't cc very well. He goes down almost instantly every game as Subtlety Rogue and Beast Mastery Hunter can just chunk his health.
Holy Pally / DPS: Always on the dps. Surprisingly this comp used to be our toughest but now its one of our easiest. We lock down the dps target and cc the paladin.
Ret Pally / Disc Priest: This was our last fight to go undefeated this week. The first minute of this fight looked like a big time loss. We focused on the Ret Paladin but he was laying into Siphter (my rogue) pretty heavily and Siphter couldn't heal the damage. I told Siphter to run and kite and kite he did. With concussive helping Siphter out he was able to kite the Ret Pally around the entire Sewer Arena for a couple minutes to get back to 50% health with recuperate. Then we switched to Priest and downed him after a good 10 second burst on him. After that we were able to finish off the Ret Pally.

The major strategy we use is that if a target is on me (hunter) Siphter will help me out by being on that target. So I can kite that target and heal through my Spirit Beast. We can outlast a lot of healer / dps comps because of Spirit Mend and because of Recuperation (rogue heal).

Being able to have a slight heal as double dps in arena really opens up the possibilities and allows longer games which is a lot more fun than just zerging and winning or losing in the first 30 seconds of every battle.

After this weeks games Siphter and I both have renewed energy in playing WoW and trying to see where we can eventually be at in 2's. We have been playing a lot of Rated Battlegrounds with our guild, but it hasn't infused us with the same energy that this weeks 2's did. The road to 2000 has been laid, will we make it?

Patch 4.0.6 Hunter Changes

2011-01-06T15:36:00.000-05:00

The 1st patch of Cataclysm comes out and it looks like Hunters are going to be getting some decent buffs to help them out in PvP. This is very much needed as the latest statistics have the Top Arena Representation of Hunters at about 1% (the average is 10%).

Hunter

Aimed Shot! weapon damage has been increased to 200%.
Aspect of the Wild, Aspect of the Hawk, and Aspect of the Fox can now be cast while mounted.
Deterrence now provides 100% chance for melee attacks to miss instead of 100% parry chance. This means that attacks that cannot be parried, notably some rogue abilities, can now be prevented by Deterrence, and the hunter will gain the benefit of Deterrence even if disarmed.
Dust Cloud's cooldown and duration have been modified to make it closer aligned with Tailspin (same effect, different pet).
Kill Command's damage has been increased by 20%.
Kill Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 50%.
Master's Call now has a 35-second cooldown, down from 1 minute. In addition, the visual effect is more obvious.

Talent Specializations
Marksmanship

Chimera Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 20%.

Survival

Into the Wilderness (passive) has been reduced to a 10% Agility increase, down from 15%.

Pets

Pets now have 70% of the master's armor, rather than a different value based on which type of pet they are.
Shale Spiders now correctly have a special ability (Web Wrap).
Bad Manner (monkey) now properly breaks from damage.

My Analysis:
The Deterrence and Master's Call changes are the most important.

Deterrence will go from having many holes to only a few. Being able to cast it while disarmed is a much needed change and makes having 1 handers not required for serious PvP.

Master's Call cooldown almost being halved is huge from a mobility standpoint. It seems like Blizzard is really sticking to Hunters having a minimum range and will just buff the mobility of Hunters as needed to compensate (which will either leave us underpowered or overpowered but unlikely ever perfect). With the warrior nerfs to Charge / Intercept (Juggernaut) I believe Hunters will be able to kite melee very effectively after this patch.

My Wish List:

Deterrence clears debuffs and is on a 1 minute or at most 90 second cooldown
Steady Shot buffed vs. high armored targets
Kill Command should have a minor range of 10 or 20 yards to account for pet not always being able to get to target easily

4.0 & Cataclysm Hunter Abilities that Need Change

2010-11-01T15:48:00.001-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. The changes that 4.0 brought got me down. Right now things look pretty grim for Hunters from a mechanical / game play standpoint.

My list of Hunter Changes that would make the mechanics / game play better:

All focus damaging shots lowered by about 50%

This change would enable a larger window of choice in the first few seconds of a fight instead of shooting off two abilities and being out of focus.

Trap Launcher should be an innate ability of all traps and could be toggled on or off depending on players preference (or something similar)
Remove Freezing Trap or change it into Freezing Shot that has the same cast time as Fear, Polymorph, etc. and rebalance Hunters accordingly
Pet Resurrection time needs to be reduced to 3 or 4 seconds or Hunters need an instant rez ability that has a few minute cooldown that is available for all pet types (not just Ferocity)
Spell Penetration should not be required for Marks / Survival or Traps
Hunter pets should have the Hunters full resilience again, they die way too quickly again
Tranquilizing Shot should not cost any focus or should dispel 2 buffs
Black Arrow should heal the Hunter so Survival Hunters have a way to heal themselves similar to Spirit Beasts for BM and Chimera Shot for Marks

Pet Scaling in Cataclysm

2010-09-14T00:13:00.003-04:00

I was unable to get into the Cataclysm Beta which meant that I couldn't really post anything interesting for the last few months.

However, I am now on the PTR testing shiz out.

Hunter pets scale in Cataclysm baby!

Here is the current basic scaling:

Ferocity (damage) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 50% armor
Tenacity (tanking) -- 50% of master's AP, 50% health, 70% armor
Cunning (utility) -- 50% of master's AP, 40% health, 60% armor

Now the real interesting stuff that I found out on the PTR:

We all know that Hunter pets have scaled fully with the Hunters Hit and Resilience stats.

Hunter CRIT is now fully scaling with Hunter pets!!! This is what it means with a 5 minute test for each pet:

Now, my Cunning Serpent pet did the least damage because it only received 40% of my AP and did not have the Ferocity talents that boost crit chance and the Rabid talent.

The Devilsaur did so well because it scales better with attack power (50%) and it receives the 9% crit in Ferocity along with Rabid. But the reason why a Devilsaur is better than a Core Hound in solo play is because it now bring along a 5% crit buff like the Feral Druid buff. The thing is it buffs itself with the 5% extra crit and then buffs me with the 5% extra crit which in turn fully scales with my pet. So my pet actually receives 10% crit buff from the Devilsaur buff!

Now this pet double scaling was the reason why pets were under performing in solo play but were extremely good when the Hunter had full buffs in Wrath. In Cataclysm pets cannot be buffed by others but since the Devilsaur buff is not from others it bypasses that restriction. I'm guessing this will eventually change, as I only have 45% crit and my Devilsaur has 65% crit (45% from me, 10% from its 5% crit buff, 9% from Ferocity talent tree).

But dang, I will not miss the days of 5% base pet crit chance, 10% pet crit chance from BM talents and 9% crit chance from Ferocity pet talents in a world with resilience negating 15% of the 24% (9% crit chance against Resilience targets). And that left the Cunning tree out of the equation in PvP as BM, since your pet being unable to crit would make the Frenzy and Ferocious Inspiration talents worthless.

But I digress... Cataclysm will finally fix the pet scaling issue for good. Full scaling with the Hunter Crit %. Amazing.

Testing Live Streaming this Week

2010-08-25T18:15:00.002-04:00

Can't Keep Up

2010-07-25T12:34:00.001-04:00

Since I am not currently in the Beta I can't keep up with other Hunter bloggers who are in the Beta.

So instead I will give you links to the best blogs that are giving good info in the Beta:

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/
Frostheim even does a podcast with other Hunters and its pretty entertaining.

http://www.bigredkitty.net/
BigRedKitty is back to doing Beta Video Blogs which have always been very entertaining.


That is all I got for now. I'll try to keep on top of significant changes, but since everything is changing and changing again its almost pointless to try to keep up until things start getting nailed down.

Cataclysm Hunter Changes

2010-07-02T16:45:00.004-04:00

Cataclysm Beta Hunter Talent Tree

Cataclysm Beta Hunter Skill Drilldown

7/2/10

Blue Posts about Hunters:

Hunter

Aimed Shot Cast Time / Dead Zone in Cataclysm
It's not a "dead zone." It's a minimum range. I say that because many hunters use "dead zone" to refer to an old design quirk where there was a range at which neither range nor melee attacks would work. We haven't had a dead zone for some time.

If a melee is up in your stuff, you have a couple of choices. Choice one is to use your melee abilities. Choice two, which will probably work out better, is to get away from them and resume using ranged attacks. You have several defensive cooldowns you can use to gain distance or survive long enough to gain distance. Your third choice is to keep shooting even with someone attacking you in melee. By design that is supposed to be quite ineffectual.

In Cataclysm, hunters have some capacity to do damage while moving, but again that's not going to be a super effective way of dealing damage. It's a last resort.

[...] I meant trying to shoot while someone is in melee with you isn't going to work out well. We don't want a model where the hunter goes about his merry way while melee dudes are trying to melee him. (Source)

Looking for Dungeon "Unlock"
The vast majority of our dungeons must now be visited and their entrances explored before you can LFG for that dungeon. A few classic dungeons will always be available that are extremely hard to visit or are low level. Ragefire Chasm, Stormwind Stockade, Deadmines, and Wailing Caverns are automatically unlocked. (Source)

Hunter Changes
We wanted to share some our intent with some of the hunter changes, which will in turn help you give feedback.

Focus -- We'll be messing with ability costs for some time. Depending on your weapon, autoshot costs can be higher than "focus dump" abilities, which clearly won't work. We're working on a DPCT priority list that makes more sense. As far as regen goes though, we think the current rate is about right. We don't want the rotation to become erratic and we like the gameplay of building focus through shots. In situations where you just can't stand still, such as kiting, you can use the new Aspect of the Fox. We've tied the focus regen for using cast-time shots during Aspect of the Hawk, otherwise there would be no reason to be in anything but Fox. Focus is more of a combo between rage and energy, since you build it and use it up. The skill of playing a hunter involves keeping your focus high enough -- as it is somewhat random due to procs -- but use it before you overflow.

Shots -- Each hunter talent tree has a "signature" focus dump: Survival has Explosive Shot, Marks has Chimera Shot, and Beastmaster has Raccoon Shot... I mean Kill Command. These all have cooldowns, so if you are at 100 focus, use Kill Command and still have focus left over, you can use Arcane Shot next. This is why Explosive and Arcane no longer share cooldowns. Once you figure out which abilities to use for each spec, the number of abilities you need to manage should feel less daunting. For example, Marks would use Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, Arimed Shot, Chimera Shot and Arcane Shot on a boss fight, and Serpent Sting gets refreshed automatically. Think less in terms of shot rotations and more in terms of prioritizations.

Pets -- We haven't done our design pass on them yet. The design is for them to no longer receive raid buff since they get complete scaling from the master (and we don't want them to double dip). Their abilities will be divided into 3 categories: basic focus dumps (e.g. Claw), specials (e.g. web), and exotic abilities for the BM exotic pets. Specials never cost focus and basics have short cooldowns but meaningful damage. All pets will do the same dps. We don't want "wolf or die" in Cataclysm (and before that it was cat). Each pet family will bring a unique raid buff, allowing hunters to be wildcards for when you are lacking something. The ease of swapping pets will facilitate this further.

Cobra Shot -- We're not happy with the damage yet. We want BM to basically not use Steady ever again. Marks may use Cobra in PvP situations where spell damage trumps physical damage.

Kill Command -- We like the Frenzy / Focus Fire mechanic, but are likely to make it it's own clicky and not tied to Kill Command. Kill Command itself will be the signature focus dump for BM. For other specs, it will be more situational, such as dealing damage to a target out of your (but not your pet) LoS. Marks also has the Resistance is Futile talent to give it some more use.

Aimed Shot -- We are returning this ability to be an opener once again, like Ravage or Ambush. In longer fights, Master Marskman can proc instant Aimed Shots, to keep the ability relevant.

AE damage -- The design is that you use Multi-Shot on 2+ targets, and Explosive Trap and Volley on 4+ targets.

Venoms -- The focus cost may be too high. However, don't expect to have to use these on every target. Part of separating Serpent Sting from the Venoms so that they could be more situational. Even Serpent Sting isn't necessary on every target, especially those that will die quickly. Instead 2-3 Steadies with an Arcane or Kill Shot should do the job. Hunters are used to using every ability on every target because there is no real resource cost with mana. Now priority and efficiency become important.

Ultimately, we think these changes will solve some of the problems the hunter class has had as well as making them more fun to play, or we wouldn't be going through so much re-design.

4/9/10

Cataclysm Class Preview: Hunter

New Hunter Abilities

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

Resource Mechanic Change

Here we come to the meat of the upcoming hunter changes.

Hunters will no longer use mana; instead the class will use Focus. Focus generates much like Energy, by building up. It will not be affected by Intellect at all. Haste will improve its generation. Hunters will generate roughly 6 Focus per second, slightly less than rogues' Energy generation rate of around 10 Energy per second. Below, we have listed some examples of how we intend Focus costs to operate:

Steady Shot/Cobra Shot: No cost. Generates 9 Focus per shot (or 12 per second instead of 6).
Arcane Shot/Chimera Shot /Explosive Shot: 45 Focus.
Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot: 60 Focus.
Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the resource change and new abilities listed above, we intend to make adjustments to some of the other abilities and mechanics you already know well. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we’re going for with each spec.

A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags -- though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change -- and we will not be making any additional quivers.
Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.

Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:

Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy's Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Rampage).
Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).

Stings and other periodic effects will now benefit from haste and critical strike ratings. Hasted damage-over-time abilities do not lose duration, but instead add additional damage ticks.
Viper Sting will now restore 9 Focus every 3 seconds.
We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. To this end, the class will now start with ranged abilities at level 1, and we will be removing some melee abilities, such as Mongoose Bite.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.
Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.
Rapid Recuperation will cause Rapid Fire to give 20/40/60 Focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.
Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, and Arcane Shot.
Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.
Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter’s Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Beast Mastery

Ranged Damage
Haste
Pet Damage

Pet Damage: Many of the passive benefits to pet damage will no longer be available in the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, these will be provided through the new Mastery mechanic.

Marksmanship

Ranged Damage
Armor Penetration
Double Shot

Double Shot: The hunter will have a chance to launch a free attack off of the global cooldown for 50% damage.

Survival

Ranged Damage
Ranged Critical Damage
Elemental Damage

Elemental Damage: Hunter abilities such as traps, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot will do elemental damage of the following types: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind that what you’ve just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you’ll see these planned changes as well as others continue to develop in response to feedback and testing.

[...]

A clarification of Camouflage and what becoming obscured actually means:
Camouflage is *not* stealth. Your enemies will never wonder where you are. We're trying to use the new Cataclysm water effect to put a shimmering PREDATORy visual on you. It's protection from ranged attacks and it gives you some combat bonuses, but it's not like Shadowmeld or rogue / druid stealth where players can't find you.

The idea with it is that Hunters are only vulnerable to melee attacks or ranged AEs while they are in the obscured state. If you target a camo hunter or a rogue using Smoke Bomb, you will get an error message saying something like "Target obscured." You can see them and target them, but can't use your attacks. Imagine they are behind a pillar or something. You can try and get off an AE near them or you can move to melee.

As most of you know, we tried Camo once before, but because it was true stealth it was very hard to balance, plus it felt like we were just handing out the same cool abilities to every class instead of coming with unique mechanics. Hunters were so overwhelmingly excited about the basic idea that we wanted to try it again, but not as stealth.

Regarding Cobra Shot sharing cooldown with Steady Shot:
At this point in time it's not actually a cooldown. Cobra Shot has a 2 sec cast time, but Beastmaster has a talent to reduce the cast time to 1.5 sec (as well as a few damage hooks). Both generate focus so there is no reason for BM to ever use Steady again.

Regarding focus and how much of it Hunters will have:
Hunters will get 100 focus

The focus costs mentioned in the preview are just examples, so it is a little too soon for you to try to min / max your rotations just yet. In general, the basic rotations of all three hunters work okay on live today. With focus you might hit moments where you don't need to Steady at all, and you'll never run dry again for long periods of time like you might with mana.

If the costs of some of the defensive cooldowns are too expensive or even need to be free that's certainly the kind of thing we'll consider.

Regarding Ammo in Cataclysm:
There is no ammo slot on your character sheet in Cataclysm. It no longer exists.

Other known information:

Hunter's can be every race in Cataclysm, except Gnome.

My Analysis:

Mana to Focus
The shift from mana to focus is a huge change for Hunters. My only experience with an energy system is when I leveled a druid to 70 about two years ago. It seems to work out fine for druids and rogues, so I have optimism that the focus system will work itself out eventually for Hunters, but we might be a bit screwy for awhile after Cataclysm hits (which doesn't sound fun).

Level 85
The 5 extra talent points mean that we can now attain a 51 point talent and a 21 point talent in another tree. However, right now, Counterattack is the worst 21 point talent in the game, and Intimidation is mediocre at best (remove it from the GCD please). Readiness is our only real solid 21 point talent. I hope that when they redesign the talent trees we get some love in our 21 point area.

Cobra Shot (level 81)
I like that Hunters are getting an elemental shot they can use in place of Steady Shot, that should be very helpful in PvP against high armor targets. The fact that BM gets the best version of it and will most likely use it always in place of Steady Shot is good in some regard since BM really lacks magical damage at the moment. Unfortunately, BM still has the most uninteresting shot rotation and this changes none of that.

Trap Launcher (level 83)
Replacing Freezing Arrow with Trap Launcher and giving it a 60 second cooldown severely nerfs Hunter crowd control. The only trap you would launch in PvP would be freezing trap, which is now only available to launch every 60 seconds instead of every 30 seconds. In PvE this change allows hunters to Trap Launch an Immolation Trap which could be nice.

Camouflage (level 85)
This is a complex ability that could be interesting or pretty stupid. Until more is learned about the bonus damage when exiting this state I just will have to sit on the fence about this ability.

Hunters GCD being Lowered? Arena PvP: 1800 and 1950 team, TR & MLG Columbus

2010-05-30T01:55:00.000-04:00

Hunter GCD Reduction:
Ghostcrawler mentioned on the forums that a Hunter GCD reduction could happen because of the incoming resource change (mana to focus).

If Hunters actually receive a 1 second Global Cooldown (like Rogues) instead of a 1.5 second Global Cooldown the difference between good Hunters and bad Hunters should be more evident. Faster reaction times and faster thinking would play more of a role in the best Hunters. With our burst reduction in Cataclysm this change seems needed, but time will tell.

Arena Team: 1950 and 1800
My Hunter / Druid team hit 1950 and my Warlock / Rogue team hit 1800 this week.

I still feel like we are learning a lot with our Hunter / Druid comp and with his Druid getting some much needed weapons after hitting 1800 we were able to cruise to 1950 with a lot of his arena gear still being Furious. I expect when he is able to upgrade to Wrathful with a couple more pieces and as we learn to play our comp even better we will easily climb above 2k.

1800 has been the bane of my Warlocks existence as I have had the crappiest Item Level 200 weapons since I dinged 80. This week was quite rough as most of it was spent trying to figure out how to get my Warlock to 1800 so I could upgrade the crappiest part of my gear and really upgrade my character.

After switching between Warlock / Druid and Warlock / Rogue to see which comp would be the easiest to get to 1800, my lack of gear gave Warlock / Rogue the edge, even though Warlock / Druid is probably the better comp (although both comps are great).

I kept switching from Affliction to Destruction to see what worked better and Affliction ended up being the better spec which allowed us to hit 1800. Warlock / Rogue can definitely be a top tier comp, as we were beating 2k Rogue / Priest teams pretty easily and even found a way to beat Paladin / Warrior teams. The only team that seems impossible is Paladin / Death Knight.

My other friend has come back to WoW with a Mage and so we will most likely play Druid / Warlock / Mage in 3's as a form of Wizard Cleave.

Tournament Realm and MLG Columbus:
On the Tournament Realm the practice phase has ended and the real phase has begun. This phase will last a month and the top 8 teams will continue to regionals. The current standing is below (the "real" phase has just begun so there will be a lot of movement).

http://www.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?ts=3&b=Coliseum+1

MLG Columbus is coming up in a week and will have 14-16 teams attending. This should prove to be some entertaining arena matches as their wont be the usual one dominating comp that every team plays but a very diverse field of comps. And there will be some fresh blood with about 15 new players who have never been to the tournament scene.

Hunter Druid 2v2, BRK Returns

2010-05-15T12:56:00.000-04:00

Over the past month or so I have been playing both my Warlock and my Hunter. My Warlock joined Siphter's arena team to play as Warlock Rogue. I definitely can feel a much better synergy than what my Hunter had with his Rogue. We are already 1700 and my warlock still has horrible weapons and Furious arena gear.

My friend also has a Druid. My Hunter joined up with his Druid and now we are 1800 with him in mostly Furious arena gear, and he's attaining his arena weapons over the next week or so which will help immensely. After always playing double dps with my Hunter it's a bit odd to get used to dps with a healer. Games are much longer, but almost every game is winnable.

With healer dps in 2's the healer has to know when to heal and when to dps. Their dps at critical points is what wins games. Positioning in 2's is also extremely important. Understanding where to be comes in time after playing the comp for awhile. We are still learning a lot about the Druid Hunter comp in 2's, but its nice having a comp that has some synergy.

I tried all three hunter specs with a Resto Druid. Survival did okay. Pump in a lot of explosive shots and hope for a lot of crits. Beast Mastery did bad. No control with scatter shot and limited damage verse armored targets. Marksmanship did the best. Great burst for when someone steps out into the open for a few seconds. Great defensive or offensive capabilities with readiness, and Silencing Shot is oh so nice. Only problem comes in the form of sting removal classes (Shaman, Paladin and Druid). However, survival doesn't perform any better vs these classes, so Marksmanship is still the way to go.

In other news Big Red Kitty is back! I've added his blog to my Hunter Blog list. Looking forward to his posts about the alpha & beta of Cataclysm.

Best and Worst BG for Arena (Easiest vs. Toughest), Lag free WoW, Cataclysm Hunter info April 9th

2010-04-06T18:02:00.001-04:00

Easiest vs. Toughest BattleGroups

If your like me and glaze over the forums and read blogs about WoW PvP you might stumble across discussion on the easiest or toughest BG's to play arena in. Bloodlust (BG 9) is usually considered the toughest BG and Retaliation and Emberstorm are usually considered the easiest BG's.

I have actually played on three different BG's (Bloodlust, Nightfall and Retaliation) with the same comp and same players in 2's. As far as 1800-2000 rating in 2's is concerned, Bloodlust did seem to be the toughest to get a high rating, but the other two were very similar. Our 2's team was rated about 1750'ish on Bloodlust and after we moved to Nightfall are rating seemed to be about 1850'ish. Our rating didn't change when moving from Nightfall to Retaliation.

The most significant change to our rating to get above 1950 was when I switched to Marksmanship and we were able to beat some Paladin teams that we absolutely had no chance against as a BM Hunter.

Honestly, I agree with the statement that BG's aren't that much different except for the maybe the top 20 teams in each BG. If your team is below 2500 switching BG's will probably not have much affect on your rating. What will have more affect on your rating is switching your spec or just plain getting better at the comp your playing.

Lag Free WoW

If you live in the Continental U.S. and play WoW with a ping that is higher than 200ms than there is probably something you can do to improve your ping. I used to play WoW with about 300ms on average, but now my ping averages 85ms.

The free lag fix:

This "addon" is not a true WoW addon but a folder that has a simple registry fix in it that can easily be reversed whenever wanted. This registry fix is rather popular for any online game as it changes how TCP/IP requests are handled in Windows. If you want to know more about just head over to the Leatrix Latency Fix on WoW Interface.

I've used this registry tweak for awhile now and it is totally legal and doesn't even seem to cause my internet to slow down in any other noticeable way. I could care less if my downloads take 10% longer, since this fix alone decreased my ping from 300ms to about 150ms.

Another thing to consider when shooting for the lowest ping is to play on a server that is hosted in a location closest to where you live. For example, I used to play on Blackrock, which has its physical server location in Los Angeles. Now I play on Auchindoun, which has its physical server location in Boston. This change from a Los Angeles server to a Boston server has reduced my ping by about 50-100ms.

Here is the list of U.S. servers and their physical locations.

Hunter Cataclysm Changes on April 9th

More detail about what is coming in Cataclysm for Hunters is suppose to appear sometime April 9th. I should have a post about the changes with some comments over the weekend.

Patch 3.3.3 Hunter Changes

2010-03-04T14:01:00.000-05:00

Ferocious Inspiration (BM Talent) - Now gives a 1/2/3% damage aura (100 yards) instead of on pet crit and increases steady shot damage by 9% and still gives arcane shot a 9% damage boost.

The change to an aura coincides with other class skill procs that are expected to be always up changing to auras as well. For PvE it is a convenience change, for PvP it is a slight buff (as your pet won't always be able to easily crit currently to always have the buff up).

The addition of steady shot 9% buff to the talent makes it a significant PvE buff that helps bring BM PvE damage almost in line with Survival (Marksmanship is still easily tops with good gear). This steady shot buff for PvP is a slight buff, since steady shot can easily be LoS'ed by competent players (or just ignored if the target has high armor).

I don't think BM is going to be that interesting in PvP with these changes, but every little bit helps. The big change that will change everything is when pet crit scales with player crit. That change will give BM a ton more possibilities.

What have I been up to recently? I've been PvP'ing with my Hunter in 2's and 3's. We are close to 1900 in 2's and close to 1800 in 3's. I've also been leveling my new class. I guess I'm just a sucker for pet classes as I chose to level a Warlock and am already level 35.

From Blackrock to Kel'Thuzad

2010-02-11T02:06:00.001-05:00

Blackrock, my home sweet home for about two years, is home no longer (at least for Shaedon). Blackrock has had the most unplayable lag this past week and Siphter and I were getting tired of BG 9. After investigating all the Boston hosted servers we felt Kel'Thuzad was the best fit (best population with least imbalance). We've been on Kel'Thuzad for the past week and it has been a roaring success.

BG 10 is a bit more pleasant, Siphter and I are already around 1850-1900 (with me playing Beast Mastery). I'm going to try to switch to Marksmanship and see if we can get any higher (the best Hunter / Rogue right now is 2200 as Marks). I can definitely see the opportunity for Marksmanship to dominate though as it does in 3's.

Infrequent Posts until Cataclysm

2010-02-05T12:56:00.003-05:00

I have not posted in awhile and don't plan to post much until Cataclysm. I will most likely update all of the main pages when Cataclysm begins.

Until then I plan to play my 3rd Hunter and try to get her to 80. My first Hunter was my Night Elf which I played all of the normal game and part of Burning Crusade. My Orc Hunter took over halfway through the Burning Crusade and through Wrath of the Lich King. My Tauren Hunter started in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King and is currently level 66.

Whenever I try to get into a new class I end up lamenting on how uninteresting their abilities are compared to Hunters. Hunters have so many options, with all the different pets to choose from, that I can keep leveling Hunters and still enjoy myself more so than if I try to level other classes I have yet to truly play.

On another note, HuntsmansLodge had a good write up about BM PvP in 2's and BG's that I suggest you read if your interested in Beast Mastery PvP.

Analysis of the Hunter 3.3 Changes

2009-12-07T23:12:00.009-05:00

Patch 3.3 comes out tomorrow.

Hunter 3.3 Changes:

Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
Talents
- Beast Mastery
  - Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.
Pets
- Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.
- Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
- Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
- Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
- Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
- Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
- Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

Analysis of the changes going from top to bottom:

Reduction of the Call Stabled Pet is a good one. Being able to switch pets on the fly is needed, and the 30 min cooldown was way too long.

Deterrence working against Ranged Attacks makes it useful vs Hunters and Paladins. This is a straight up buff for Hunters in PvP.

Immediate Intimidation is a solid buff to BM Hunters in PvP. It should increase the difference between skilled BM Hunters and the non-skilled, as timing the Intimidation just right will be a key play.

100% Resilience is a very nice change for pets (used to be 50% I believe). This would help pets survive better in PvP if it weren't for the next change...

Innate 90% AoE Avoidance for PvE is very nice, but going from 75% AoE reduction to 0% really blows (even if we had to spend 3 pet talents on it).

Cowering seems useful and essential now, unfortunately that means another keybind. ; (

Culling the Herd is a pet talent that is full of promise when pet crit scales with the hunters crit chance. Only applying after a pet special crit is just not going to happen very often in PvP with resilience. If you have a Ferocity pet in PvP it might work out for a little extra burst. In PvE this is actually a very good talent.

Improved Cower seems unnecessary. I would probably avoid this pet talent unless you have extra.

Hunter pets needing only 5% of the Hunters experience instead of 10% is a very nice change. I say it could use another reduction come Cataclysm, maybe 2-3%. As of right now it makes leveling a pet only take a couple of hours instead of a good 4-5 hours (75-80).

The Wolverine Bite change is a great one, but unfortunately, at the moment, Cunning pets cannot crit much in PvP due to Resilience. When pet crit scales with hunter crit Cunning pets will look much better for BM Hunters.

MLG Anaheim: Go CheckSix!

2009-11-04T14:39:00.003-05:00

MLG Anaheim takes place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Starting times are 6:30 PM PST on Friday, 9:30 AM PST on Saturday and 9:30 AM PST on Sunday. Watch it live at http://www.mmo-champion.com/.

The only Hunter in attendance is Twixz with CheckSix Gaming (formerly known as eMg). Checksix will be running the BeastCleave comp, BM Hunter, Enhancement Shaman and a Paladin.

I am hoping for some good matches and a 2nd MLG 1st place finish for CheckSix. It is very pleasing to have a Hunter in tournaments for a change (and actually doing well). Here is Twixz's MLG armory page for the tournament.

There has been a big lack of content to talk about this summer as the game has had no major changes in awhile. I am starting to get extremely frustrated that the talked about 3.3 changes involving pet scaling have not shown up yet in 3.3 notes (this makes me think they are postponing it until Cataclysm). When Cataclysm begins to draw near hopefully there will be some interesting changes to take note of.

Patch 3.3 Hunter Changes

2009-10-03T19:37:00.008-04:00

Oct. 16th Changes

Hunter

Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.

The most annoying part about being a Hunter might just be fixed with this. I like the idea of still having to level a pet (up to five levels), but the time it took was way too much. This should help out a ton.

Oct. 13th Changes

Pets

Culling the Herd: When your pet's Claw, Bite, or Smack ability deals a critical strike, you and your pet deal 1/2% increased damage for 10 sec.

Oct. 7th Changes

General

Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.

Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.

Hunter

Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes.

Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.

Pets

Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.

Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.

Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.

Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.

Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.

Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.

Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

Oct. 1st Changes

Hunter

Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

Beast Mastery

Intimidation: If the hunter's pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet's next swing or attack.

Pets

Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

I will continue to update this page and create a link for it on the main page (replacing the 3.1 button).

WoW Racial Poll

2009-10-02T00:16:00.002-04:00

The question was: Which race will your hunter be after Cataclysm is released and race changes are made available?

Poll Results:
965 Votes

Worgen - 254 Votes (26%)
Night elf - 113 Votes (11%)

Goblin   - 110 Votes (11%)
Orc    - 99 Votes (10%)
Troll - 99 Votes (10%)
Undead   - 71 Votes (7%)
Human   - 70 Votes (7%)
Dwarf    -   61 Votes (6%)
Blood elf - 44 Votes (4%)
Tauren   - 24 Votes (2%)
Draenei   - 20 Votes (2%)

I was surprised with the results of the Hunter racial poll.

I didn't realize that Trolls would be as popular as Orcs.

I expected Goblins to also fair better than Worgens as a jump forward seems to clearly be better than a sprint ability in PvP (unless you would be immune to slowing effects when under sprint). I expect that the reason Worgens might be so popular is because of their unique look. It would basically be like have two beasts as a Hunter (yourself and your pet).

The Tauren and Draenei races got very little love in this poll.

I'll be interested to see what racial changes blizzard will make come Cataclysm. I might just have to redo this poll after those changes are announced.

On a side note, patch 3.3 has been released on the PTR and some initial changes are up. I will probably put up a 3.3 Hunter Patch compilation page sometime over the next few days.

Updated Gold Guide

2009-09-21T16:41:00.001-04:00

Updated my very old gold guide.

Currently have 74k in gold.

Hope I can help other people not have to farm or do dailies.

Short post, off to softball.

Patch 3.2.2 Hunter Changes

2009-09-16T21:46:00.004-04:00

Some big changes to the Beast Mastery tree are coming up quickly, as the 3.2.2 patch is nearing its release. Here are the changes:

Hunter

Talents
- Beast Mastery
  - The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
  - Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.
  - The Beast Within - Now reduces the mana cost of spells by 50% for 10 sec. (Was 20%)

For now it looks like patch 3.2.2 will leave BM Hunters as still the one trick pony with Bestial Wrath, but the trick will last much much shorter... Even with the 10% damage buff to the Hunter, BM will be worse off after patch and less fun.

However, not all is bad, just today we received a very good answer from Blizzard on the direction BM might be headed:

Aarulan, I think those are all good points. I can't go into detail on all of them, but for starters Intimidation could be a lot better and Kill Command could be as fun as say Lock and Load instead of a macro'd ability. We're not going to be in a big hurry to buff Tranq Shot. It might be a better way to go to nerf all dispels to something more like that so that they didn't trivially undo buffs, debuffs and CC.

Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

Link: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19820327060

If Blizzard does end up buffing Intimidation and Kill Command BM Hunters will gain utility, which BM severely lacks. I just hope we see these buffs sooner rather than later (especially the Intimidation buff).