Ferocious Inspiration

Patch 2.3.2 Notes

2008-01-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.3.2
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The latest patch notes can always be found at
WoW -> Patch Notes -> Current Patch Notes

General
- /timetest is a command that can be run to provide information
on game performance. /timetest 0 turns the command off. When the
command is issued, the next time a player uses a flight master to
travel, certain statistics will be measured and displayed at the end
of that flight. All weather effects and spawns are shutdown during
the test.
- Effects triggered from being critically hit: Many abilities and
talents were changed in 2.3.0 to allow them to trigger from critical
strikes that occurred while the player benefitting from them was
sitting.
- Quest givers with blue question marks no longer show up on the
minimap.
- NPC's who you have completed a quest for will display a question mark
on mouseover rather than an exclamation point.
- The bank controls for the guildmaster level of a guild is now grayed
out. A guildmaster always has full access to a guild bank and this
cannot be changed.
- A "Withdraw-Repair Only" button has been added to the guild bank
controls. If this is set for a guild rank, then that rank cannot
actually withdraw funds from the guild bank, but they can still use
that daily amount of money for repairs.
- You will now automatically stand up when attacked, even if the attack
doesn’t land.
- Boat and zeppelin vendors and NPCs are back on duty.
- Reduced network latency by disabling the Nagle algorithm.

Druids
- Lifebloom: When this ability is refreshed it will take on the
strength of the incoming Lifebloom effect, rather than maintain the
existing strength.
- Ravage: The damage multiplier on this ability has been increased from
350% to 385%.

Hunters
- Arcane Shot: Ranks 1-5 will once again deal bonus damage based on
attack power.
- Aspect of the Viper effect increased.
- Freezing Trap is no longer limited to one target at a time.
- Pet leveling speed has been increased.

Mages
- Cold Snap (Frost) cooldown reduced. It is now in the Ice Block
position in the talent tree. This ability will no longer reset the
cooldown on Fire Ward.
- Conjure Mana Gem mana restore variance substantially reduced,
(Rank 5 – Emerald) now restores 2340 to 2460 mana and has three
charges.
- Ice Block (Frost) is now available on the trainer to all mages at
level 30.
- Icy Veins (NEW Frost Talent) decreases casting time of all spells by
20% and increases the chance your chilling effects will freeze the
target by 10%. Lasts 20 sec. 3 min cooldown. It is now in the Cold
Snap position in the talent tree.

Paladins
- Crusader Strike (Retribution) now causes 110% of weapon damage and
no longer gains any bonus from spell damage.
- Righteous Fury: This spell will no longer cost twice the listed mana
to cast.
- Sanctified Judgements (Retribution) now returns 80% of the Seal's
mana cost, increased from 50%.

Rogues
- Ambush: The damage multiplier on this ability has been increased from
250% to 275%.
- Cheat Death: When multiple attacks land simultaenously, all those
resolved after the attack which triggered Cheat Death will now have
their damage reduced by 90% as intended. However, the combat log will
still report them doing full damage.
- Hemorrhage: Rank 4 of this ability no longer has its charges consumed
by non-physical attacks and spells.
- Hemorrhage weapon damage reduced from 125% to 110%, but the damage
debuff has been increased.
- Hemorrhage: This ability now correctly does additional damage when
its debuff has already been applied.
- Preparation now resets the cooldown of Shadowstep and no longer
resets the cooldown of Adrenaline Rush.
- Shadowstep now adds a 3 second, 70% movement speed increase.
- Sinister Calling now also increases the percentage damage bonus of
Hemorrhage and Backstab by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Shaman
- Lightning Shield mana cost reduced.
- Water Shield now restores mana periodically regardless of how many
charges remain. Duration increased to 10 minutes.

Warlock
- The health cost taken from the Warlock after using Health Funnel will
now remain consistent between uses.

Warrior
- Defiance: The expertise granted by this talent now works properly in
all stances.
- Warriors no longer lose rage when using a macro to enter a stance
they’re already in.

Professions
- Cooking
Goldthorn Tea was erroneously unlearned by most players who had
learned the recipe. The recipe has been re-enabled and can be
learned again from Henry Stern in Razorfen Downs at no cost.
- Enchanting
Enchant Shield - Resilience now requires a Runed Fel Iron Rod instead
of a Runed Adamantite Rod.
- Leatherworking
Increased the range of leatherworking drums to 40 yards. Drums of
Panic remains unchanged at 8 yards.

Items
- Amani Charm of the Witch Doctor: Tooltip typo corrected.
- Hearthstone: The cast time on this item is no longer affected by
spell haste.
- Hex Shrunken Head: This item now has a 20 second shared cooldown with
other similar trinkets.
- Icy Chill Enchant: The triggered effect from this enchantment will
now cause a melee slow and movement snare as intended.
- Idol of the Unseen Moon: This item now has a 30 second cooldown on
being triggered.
- Idol of Terror: The triggered agility buff from this item no longer
overwrites other agility buffs.
- The Netherscale Ammo Pouch is no longer a Unique item.
- The Knothide Quiver is no longer unique.
- The Vengeful Gladiator’s Grimoire is now available on vendors.

Dungeons and Raids
- Heroic Coilfang Resevoir- Steamvaults
Mekgineer Steamrigger's Main Chambers Access Panel is no longer
interactable until Mekgineer Steamrigger has been killed.
- Tempest Keep- The Eye
The number of Blood Elves guarding Prince Kael'Thas' room has been
reduced.
- Zul’Aman
The Amani'shi Warrior's Charge ability now has a minimum range.
The melee haste provided by Halazzi's Frenzy has been reduced to
100%.
Dragonhawks in Zul'Aman can now be skinned. This doesn't include
dragonhawks that do not have loot.

Quests
- Blade's Edge Mountains: Players accepting the bombing run quests in
Blade's Edge Plateaus will no longer cause other players in the
region to stand up.

User Interface
- There is now an option to turn off the screen edge damage flash when
you have a fullscreen UI up.
- You can sell stacks by dropping them on the merchant window again.
- Ready check (/readycheck) will now display a visual display of each
party/raid member's status next to their name. This will display in
the Party UI, the Raid UI and the raid pullout UI. A player will get
a check mark if they are ready, a question mark if they have not
replied and a red X if they are not ready or are afk.
- You can now see raid members on the minimap as dark blue dots in
addition to party members which still display as light blue dots.
- You can now shift click names while the petition window is open to
paste them into the petition.
- Fixed various problems with /castsequence getting stuck.
- /cast will toggle spells again unless the name is prefixed with an
exclamation mark, e.g. /castsequence Steady Shot, !Auto Shot

Bug Fixes
- Characters may now possess up to five Paper Flying Machines in a
single stack.
- Fixed “Spell/Ability is not ready yet” message when clicking quickly
at the beginning of a cast.
- Fixed a server disconnect when moving the mouse over recipes in the
guild bank.
- Gnomish Universal Remote will now work properly with the Fel Cannon.
- Disconnecting a USB HeadSet will no longer cause problems with the
Voice Chat dropdown menus.
- Clockwork Rocket Bots will no longer attack each other in Shattrath
City.
- Channel changes will now appear properly in the chat log after zoning
in or out of instances.
- Unplugging headphones/speakers then plugging them back in while in
WoW no longer disables all sound in WoW
- If the original owner of a custom channel gives leadership away their
options menu will no longer show that they have moderation privileges.
- The first custom created guild ranking will now properly show up in
the Guild Control pane drop down menu.
- Control-clicking on inventory items that teach recipes will now
properly display you wearing the item made by the recipe in the
dressing room UI.
- Fixed an issue that was not allowing all charges of a Field Repair
Bot to be used.
- Creatures with random player targeting crowd control abilities such
as fear, charm, or sleep will now properly choose a random eligible
target rather than just choosing the nearest eligible target.
- The various Hallow’s End broom mounts now have their proper real-time
(rather than game-time) duration of 14 days.
- Tricky Treats now have their proper real-time (rather than game-time)
duration of 24 hours.

I find it funny whenever Blizzard incorporates a feature from a popluar mod (the ready check display in this case). I guess it really is a good thing that they pay attention to what their users want, even if it does take them a while to implement things like this.

Hunter's rejoice! Finally the pets should level faster...guess I will be testing this with my scorpid this week. I've had a scorpid, with the intent of using him in arena to mask my stings, for a while. But since it takes so long to level a pet, he's sort of been stuck at 65, making him pretty useless in arena, since he's dead about a minute in most of the time. Keeping my fingers crossed that leveling has really been fixed.

BRK - Lowbie Hunter Guide

2008-01-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

Over at BRK (Big Red Kitty) I discovered their new project - a lowbie hunter guide *movie*. It's fun to watch! The pet taming one especially had me giggling. I could totally see an newbie hunter watching that movie and deciding to go on a big white bear hunt. Keep up the good work BRK, and feel better soon!

Journal of a Hunter: Level 1 - 5 A New Beginning

2008-01-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

Featherrain

Today is the beginning of a new adventure. I find myself in Camp Narache in the surprisingly green hills of Mulgore. I have chosen the path of the hunter, and already I have successfully killed my first Plainstrider. It was a young one, but it put up a good fight.

I will be logging the progress of my Tauren Hunter in these Journal entries. This is not meant as a complete guide to leveling a hunter, but rather a record of my own experience as I begin the journey as a new faction (Horde) and race (Tauren).

Level 1 - 5

Complete all the quests in Camp Narache. (Mulgore 45,77)

This was fairly straightforward so far the biggest issue has been bag space. I am looking forward most to level 10, when I will be able to tame my first pet.

Beastmaster vs. Survival

2007-12-31T15:07:00.000-08:00

I was talking to one of my hunter friends last night, about why we play the class, and what spec we like best.

His story was that he'd tried some of the other classes, and when he rolled on our pvp server, he decided to try a dwarf hunter. He liked the dwarf race, and hunter seemed like a good thing to try. And now, 2+ years later, he's still a dwarf hunter, and loving it.

The conversation turned towards spec. Now, I'm pretty adamant about being a beast master, simply because I feel like, for me, it's the "true" hunter spec. It focuses on the pet, and really speaks to my play style. I don't mind what other hunters do, though I do recommend BM for newbie hunters, since it makes leveling so easy, but I wanted to know what spec my friend really liked, and why. For him, survival is where it's at. While I love the pet aspect of being a hunter, he's all about the traps. Even though survival may not be the highest dps output spec, he said he really enjoys it, and wouldn't want to play any other way.

We were both happy to admit that we spec the way we do because we like the way it plays, regardless of what Blizzard has done *this patch* to change those specs. Not that we won't discuss those changes in detail however, and try to find the best possible way to get the most out of our specs to back up our claims of their greatness! :)

Why Hunter?

2007-12-30T16:47:00.000-08:00

Why play a hunter? For me the answer is, why not?

Rolling my first wow character, I was new to the online community experience, and I didn't really know anyone else who would be playing, so I needed a character I could solo.

Of the races, I was most drawn to the night elves. I had played them almost exclusively in Warcraft, and liked the lore and of course the priestesses on their cat mounts. I didn't want to be human...that didn't seem like much imagination to me. Dwarfs were cool, gnomes were cute.

Of the classes, rogue, hunter, druid and maybe warlock seemed the most solo-able to me. Priest and warrior were out, they seemed like they'd be too group dependent, and possibly hard for a newbie to level. Mage and paladin were just sort of ok.

I decided I was most interested in the pet class option, and picked Night Elf because it was the race I knew the most about. (Ok, and they were pretty and tall)

So, in beta I played a Night Elf hunter and completely fell in love. This was my game, this was my class, this was home.

When the servers went live I rolled a dwarf hunter on an RP server, just for the fun of it. Had it not been for the constant 14-year-old "lol RP is stupid" in general chat, and the surly drunken male dwarfs trying to "RP" with me, I might have lasted longer.

Next I re-rolled a Night Elf Hunter on a PvE server, joined a guild and began my journey to 60. It took me a long time. Not because it was hard, but because I soloed most of the time, and I enjoyed the trip. I was in no real hurry.

Now this was back when hunters were a dime a dozen, and certainly weren't cool. But I loved it. I didn't get into instance groups very often, but I didn't care, I was having my adventure.

After I was 60 for a while, I re-rolled again on a PvP server. I had a guild, a raid...and a warrior. I missed my hunter. I tried other alts, I still missed my hunter.

When Burning Crusade launched, I rolled a Draenei Hunter and leveled her to 70 on my PvP server. I still have many other characters, that I play and enjoy, but I finally have my hunter again and if I ever had to start over, a hunter would be my choice. With my cat at my side, I roam the zones of World of Warcraft. I may have a different look, I may have detoured along the way, but in my soul I am Feather, and I'm a hunter.