Our long-awaited raid utility is finally here.
Aspect of the Fox
Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells for 6 seconds. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 3 minute cooldown.
I don’t want to say I called it, but I kinda do. 😉
I like this cooldown. For a short period of time we can allow all of our friends to experience the awesomeness of a being hunter. 😀 The duration seems a bit short, but I suppose if you have multiple hunters in your raid you could chain these together. It’s not unusual for a raid to have 2-3 hunters. It definitely seems like a more healer-oriented cooldown to me (though the casters will be happy to have it as well).
I know some people are going to complain that it’s a buff that doesn’t benefit the actual hunter using it (with few exceptions, see below), but that’s not the point of a raid utility cooldown. It’s supposed to help your raid as a whole, right? Hunters have always complained about other classes bringing mandatory raid utility, so you can’t be surprised when the utility we get isn’t mandatory (though some would argue it might end up being mandatory for some Mythic stuff). In the end, it’s something we didn’t have yesterday, and it’s going to indirectly lead to more damage and survivability for your raid (or arena team — don’t forget about PvP benefits).
Other things it will let you do on the move as a hunter: Focusing Shot, Powershot, Tame Beast, Dismiss Pet, Revive Pet, and mounting.
One more thing…
I didn’t spot anything else in the patch notes update related to hunters, but this is worth mentioning:
@YIFFClub @andys_90 …bug, it still was. This is clearly a bug, as evidenced by the tooltip. We’re going to try without the CC-break in…
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) July 22, 2014
In Warlords, Bestial Wrath is no longer going to break the hunter out of crowd control. Only the pet will be broken out. Apparently this was a bug the entire time. 😯 That’s some bug…
So, a little bit of good news and a little bit of disappointing news.
I am not impressed. The point of those kinds of skills were so you yourself could move and cast when you need to. Having a random hunter be responsible for it.. seems to be a little more venty than usable. It is nice to think about but in use, you have to know you need it, put the call out on vent. Have the hunter use it. Then you can cast and cast that healing spell or whatever. Just… seems like a pain.
Actually I can see how this can be helpful;
What you can use it for is if a healer is in the middle of a long cast, but needs to move or be moved, you can hurl this up, and they can be lifegripped or just move while still casting that heal they’re in the middle of.
What you’ll probably want to do is make sure you give the Hunter assist or something so they can macro it to a raid warning “YOU CAN MOVE WHILE CASTING: 6 seconds!”, or at least they should be macroing it to some sort of announcement, if they can’t be in Vent/Skype/Teamspeak/Mumble.
My hope is it’ll have a visual/audio cue, kind of like Stampeding Roar does now.
Still.. think about that. Well meaning hunter arbitrarily decides for well meaning reasons. To /macro it. Valiant healer. Is busy valiantly healing, not Needing to move/cast at that time. See my point yet? That kind of ability is highly situational. And best controlled by the class in the situation. The issue still stands. Easily ignored raid warning aside. Healer pauses healing “I will need to move and cast” the hunter needs to pause in their own movement, dodge void zones / moving wall of fire plasma death, hit aspect of the fox, healer who has been waiting, stutter stepping themselves is lucky to get off one cast dodging all manner of hell themselves…… it just seems a major pain in the butt. Harder to use properly than intended with such a short window. Bump it up to 10 seconds duration maybe
I happy it looks like we’re getting some love, but I’m not sure how beneficial 6 seconds is going to be. It’s not like devo aura where people can cast freely and take reduced damage. It’s just a little mobility for 3 cast or so? Even less for bigger cast times. It sounds very situational.
i am not disputing that it will not be a useful raid cooldown but it seems incredibly hard to use properly outside of a vent situation. say that some healer that you currently cant see is about to be hit with an aoe that he needs to move out of but if he doesnt cast this heal half the raid will die and you will wipe, how exactly can you say I NEED FOX without vent or taking the time they dont have to type it into raid chat and hope to god a random hunter is listening for exactly this set of words? also outside raidings it 100% useless to a BM hunter who didnt take focusing shot…. button bloat even
i think about it this way…
what sort of fights are they designing that this will be required?
we have seen where stampeding roar has its required times to get the raid from 1 spot to another. my guess is this will be similar. will it stack with roar?
im hoping for a visual que that its active like SR.
in any case i want a addon that screams “What does the fox say. ning ning ning” for 6 seconds 😛
For seven years, ive been playing BM…. what the hell is with these removals of the old “signature” skills, come on seriously?
Actually hunters can benefit from it apart from Focusing Shot, Power Shot and Barrage:
We can tame beasts while moving!!! This can make taming certain pets (e.g. Ban’thalos) a lot easier.
It would be nice if Aspect of the Fox also allowed MM hunters to move for those 6 seconds without loosing Sniper Training but I guess that won’t happen 🙁
Forgot about Powershot, but barrage can already be cast while moving. I added all I could think of to the post including tame beast, which I kinda hope they make a requirement for some challenge tame now.
I forgot about mounting. I won’t have to rely on my parachute cloak anymore when jumping of cliffs 🙂
It looks like AotF brings some nice quality of life features to the hunter class. It almost looks too good to be true.
I can almost hear the insults coming from the others players to tell you to activate Fox Aspect in “X” situation and you didnt because you forget xD…
IMO i think is ok that dont affect the Hunter itself, because he have enough mobility, this kind of skill make the Hunter somekind of “mandatory” class in raids/dungeons, the only thing i i see bad for Hunters is PvP…
I could see aspect of fox used when it is obvious for the whole raid to move like desecrated weapon or ice phase of Hagara. It would nice if sniper training didn’t rest when it was up. I remember the tooltip change on BW when we lost readiness and how it was bugged so I forgot about it. With the changes to DR and reduction in CC skills, not sure it’s going to be much of an issue. I am more concerned about sniper training in pvp since I prefer marks pvp at the moment or chimaera shot breaking cc’s.