New Hunter Talents Revealed

A new video from February’s press event has been uncovered, and I am very happy to say it features some new information about the hunter talents in Warlords. They are a little different than they were back at BlizzCon. You can find the video below, but I’ve gone through frame by frame to pick out all of the tooltips and summarize it for you.

  • New Level 100 Talent: Flaming Shots Your auto shots now deal 80% weapon damage as fire damage (Bola Shot has been removed!)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Focusing Shot – Deals 100% weapon damage and generates 75 focus. 2.55 sec cast. Replaces Cobra Shot and Steady Shot. Cannot be cast while moving. (This is very similar to Snipe from BlizzCon, but less weapon damage and more focus regen)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Versatility (beast mastery only) – Increases your pet’s combat experience to 70% increased damage (a 20% pet damage buff) and grants many specialization-specific abilities regardless of chosen spec. (This is the same as it was at BlizzCon)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Lone Wolf (survival and marksmanship) – Increases your damage done when you do not have a pet summoned. Celestalon tweeted that Lone Wolf is still in.
  • Stampede is now a talent. It replaces Lynx Rush in the level 75 tier.
  • Thrill of the Hunt now affects Aimed Shot in addition to Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot. As I reported earlier, Aimed Shot is now marksmanship’s only focus dump. Marksmanship no longer uses Arcane Shot.
  • Aspect of the Iron Hawk renamed to Iron Hawk. Due to hunter aspects being removed, this is now just a 10% damage reduction.

I am a little disappointed to see Bola Shot removed, but Flaming Shots sounds like it’s right up survival’s alley as it will allow full magic damage. I hope the shots leave an actual flame trail — that is something I miss from our old ammo like the ice arrows. It’s kind of uninspired though if you ask me. Bola Shot changed gameplay, this is just… moar passive damage. Whoop-de-do.

Snipe has been renamed Focusing Shot, but it’s essentially the same. The big difference is it now generates 75 focus per shot which should make for some interesting gameplay. Empty your focus bar, then recharge it to full with a single shot as the passive regen will easily fill in that extra 25 focus. I am really interested to try this one out. I also noticed the tooltip no longer mentions refreshing Serpent Sting. Possible changes to DoT mechanics? Or just an oversight?

Since the person playing in the video chose beast mastery for their spec, we weren’t able to see if there has been any changes made to Lone Wolf. Versatility looks exactly the same as it did at BlizzCon. 

Making Stampede into a talent was an excellent choice if you ask me. It helps with button bloat and gets rid of a less popular talent in the process. Beast mastery will have a hard decision to make between Blink Strikes and Stampede. I don’t think this will be a popular change, but we knew ability reductions were coming.

Remember these talents are all subject to change (they’ve already changed at least once). I also wouldn’t put much stock in the specific numbers — balancing will come later. If you think I missed anything in the video, please post in the comments. I tried to pause over all the tooltips as they moused over them but may have missed something.

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22 thoughts on “New Hunter Talents Revealed”

  1. Boo. I like Murder of Crows and Stampede. I think I’d be happier if they were on separate tiers. But oh well, no more crows for me.

    It looks like Focus Fire and Bestial Wrath survived as cooldowns. BW makes sense but I figured FF would get baked into something else.

    1. Yeah, good catch. If there was ever a useless button, it’s definitely focus fire. Press it when it flashes. That’s about it. I guess it could still be cut though. BW is way too iconic to be cut.

      1. There’s a little more to focus fire than hit it when it flashes, if your BW has less than 20 secs on CD you want to hold off until after BW to dump those frenzy stacks into FF ontherwise you are losing a load of pet damage. Focus fire adds some more flavour to an otherwise boring spammy rotation.

  2. Lone Wolf no longer appears on any talent tier. Perhaps it’s been baked in as a passive for MM or SV? it’s certainly no longer a possible talent choice in the video.

    1. Yeah, but that is presumably because the person playing chose BM, and Lone Wolf would only be visible for SV and MM. Versatility for BM, Lone Wolf for the others.. Many talents in WoD change based on spec. Of course, it could have changed from BlizzCon. We won’t know until we see a video of a SV or MM hunter, or hear from Blizzard.

  3. First I want to say that your site here is really nice hehe. I was a little upset when I saw the change to stampede, and I agree. Focus fire feels even more pointless than slice and dice for our friendly rogues…and slice and dice is just wiggling your arms faster.

    1. Well, the Aspect bar is missing from the videos and this talent also makes no mention of aspects. Not “confirmed” but pretty safe to say that yes, they are gone.

  4. I’m just upset he chose BM… I mean really, that dropped from the #1 spot months ago! I really was curious if Lone Wolf stayed in, and now we don’t know for sure :[ Would love to be an Archer/Ranger! Was going to play one in FFXIV until I found out Archer is only a class, and for end game you have to upgrade to Bard. Srsly?

    Also, I don’t know if I will miss aspects because I’ve always had them, and been using them in all their different ways since launch, or if I really do like using them. I still want my constant speed boost on demand…

    1. I think they may have just taken out that name. The third talent spot will probably be Versatility for BM and Lone Wolf for the others, but we won’t know for sure until Blizzard releases something.

  5. ok I got scared for a minute. that talent inspired me to roll a hunter for my new main and im loving it now, would of been disappointed if that was taken out.

    1. Nice catch but I believe that is just showing which spells are affected by the new Readiness stat. Right above it you can still see “Master of Beasts”

  6. I’ve always thought it would be interesting (a way to set the specs apart a bit more) to give BM “Aspects” (an improved system of them, that is.) and to give MM and SV “Arrow Types.” They would be selectable in the same way that seals/aspects/forms are, and would be kind of fun. Fire = 75% Normal Damage +25% Cleave, Poison Arrows = Less direct damage, add in a DoT, Ice Arrows = 75% damage + 20% slower movement, etc…

    Or maybe I’ve been reading too many Green Arrow comics. 😀

  7. I thought bola shot was boring but flaming shots is even worse. Versatility/Lone Wolf is a passive talent but at least it has some flavor and implications for certain things; flaming shots doesn’t even have that, it’s effectively just an increase in your auto-shot damage by some amount. I really hope blizzard can do better for us than a SECOND passive level 100 talent that you won’t even notice during gameplay.

  8. The last thing hunters need is more passive damage from auto-shots (maybe Flaming Shots should be renamed Aspect of the AFK Hunter) and a single focus-regen shot which replaces both cobra and steady shot goes against spec differentiation.

    I guess we’ll have to wait until we get closer to the beta since I cannot see Blink Strikes as a MM/SV talent since it doesn’t work with Lone Wolf, and too be honest if people choose Lone Wolf they shouldn’t be able to choose Murder of Crows and Stampede.

    Making Stampede a talent is a mistake in my opinion and will ultimately lead to its removal, which is sad since it has become an iconic hunter ability. It won’t be able to compete against Blink Strinkes and Crows, both of which have a shorter cooldown and don’t suffer from pathing/movement issues.

    Looks like 1 ability after another gets removed and with it the flexibility of the hunter class, and at the same time the points adressed in the “The Hunter Project” are ignored.

    1. I agree on Flaming Shots but not so much the rest.

      There’s not really any meaningful differentiation between steady shot and cobra shot that is lost by focused shot, especially since it looks like serpent sting might not be something that cobra shot maintains any more. In practice steady shot and cobra shot are just cast time attacks that give back focus. MM wants to cast 2 in a row for steady focus (losing steady focus, that would be loss of spec differentiation), BM/SV need to do it every once in a while for serpent sting, at least on live, and that’s it. I’d LIKE each spec to have its own, more unique method for regaining focus, and if we did then tossing them for focus shot would be a valid complaint, but as it stands right now that’s not really fair.

      As for stampede, pathing issues aside (which honestly are overblown, I’ve only ever had them in very unusual cases like the conveyer belt), it could easily be perfectly competitive with AMOC and blink strikes, it all depends on the tuning. Why is the cooldown important if it does damage in proportion? Longer cooldown/higher damage is often a valuable characteristic on fights. A row with AMOC, blink strikes, and stampede is exactly what a good talent tier should look like; unlike what we have now with lynx rush, all 3 options will be varied enough that you’ll be able to choose which is best for many different situations (assuming they’re tuned properly of course).

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