The glyph system in Legion is changing in several ways. First, there are no more major glyphs, only cosmetic minor glyphs. Second, glyphs are now applied to the affected ability directly and are consumable. You can no longer permanently learn a glyph. For example, when you right-click one of the Dire Beast glyphs it will open up your spellbook and highlight Dire Beast, which you then click to apply.
Hunters have a few cool glyphs and a few that could still use some work. I’ll explain them all below, but you can also watch this video to see them in action.
Looking for Hunter glyphs in the Legion pre-patch? There is only one. You’ll have to wait for Legion for the rest. In the meantime, you can purchase some abilities from previous glyphs.
Beast Mastery
BM’s glyphs are all about modifying your Dire Beast, which is kind of important since it’s now a rotational ability and you’ll be seeing these pets quite often. Early in the alpha I wrote this post about what I felt was wrong with the random nature of Dire Beast since it did not focus on our own pets. It just didn’t feel very “Beast Mastery” to me. I wasn’t the only one that felt this way. The Glyph of the Dire Stable is a direct result from that community feedback. Thumbs up to Blizzard for that one!
The Glyph of the Dire Stable can summon from both your stable and your active pet list (including producing a copy of your current pet). For some reason, Blizzard decided to leave in a small chance to summon a regular Dire Beast. I’d say it’s roughly 80% from your stable, and 20% regular/random Dire Beasts. I wish Blizzard would just make it 100% from your stable since getting away from random beasts is the entire point of the glyph. However, even with this random element the glyph is simply awesome. With a full stable, every time you cast Dire Beast it’s like a new surprise. What pet will it summon this time? It’s loads of fun.
The Glyph of Nesingwary’s Nemeses seems to summon beasts from past Nesingwary quests (from all expansions). I likely didn’t see all of them in the video, and the reason for that is it only summons one of the Nesingwary beasts about 33% of the time. The other 66% are standard Dire Beasts (these are not exact chances, just my gut feeling after playing with it). It’s a cool glyph, but in this case — much more so than the Dire Stable glyph — you see regular Dire Beasts more often than the Nesingwary ones. I think the chance for Nesingwary beasts should be higher.
Glyph of Arachnophobia summons a variety of spiders and behaves the same as the Nesingwary glyph (you’ll see more normal Dire Beasts than spiders).
Marksmanship
MM glyphs just change the appearance of your Hunter’s Mark. Honestly, these are kinda disappointing since Hunter’s Mark usually doesn’t stay active for very long. If I recall correctly, the Bullseye glyph used to exist in some form (at least the graphic) but the Skullseye is completely new. Not much else to say here. You can see them both in the video.
Survival
The Headhunter glyph is pretty neat. It replaces the Hatchet Toss axes with little javelins. Hatchet Toss does almost no damage and I believe it’s mostly there for pulling and tagging.
The two Harpoon glyphs are pretty bad right now. I did take this footage during the alpha, so it’s entirely possible these are placeholder visuals. As you can see in the video, I had to run those parts in slow-mo so you could even see what the glyph added. It doesn’t look very good. If these glyphs are improved, I’ll be sure to update this post.
All Specs
The base Flare graphic has changed in Legion. Now you get a visual of the Flare slowly falling to the ground so you know when it’s going to finish (it takes the full 20 seconds to fall). These first two glyphs simply modify that graphic. The Stellar one merely turns it from red to blue, but the Goblin Anti-Grav Flare turns it into a slow falling rocket. I’m a big fan of these.
The Lesser Proportion glyph is the same as it was pre-Legion. It reduces the size of your pet slightly (I think it’s only 15%). Though it appears you can only apply this to one pet at a time (and remember, glyphs are now consumable).
Thoughts
There are a couple of standouts, like the Dire Stable and Goblin Anti-Grav glyphs, but some others are pretty underwhelming.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called Fun Hunter Glyph Ideas featuring some community ideas and some of my own. There were some good ideas in the comments too. A lot has changed in two years, so some of those don’t apply anymore, but you might have fun reading it.
I feel like MM needs at least one more glyph since the Hunter’s Mark ones are never really going to be seen that often. Perhaps something to modify projectiles, like adding tracers or something like that. I always thought it would be cool if there was a shot that left a lingering tracer (similar to the Ashes of Al’ar streamer effect). In an earlier build there was a glyph called “Elune’s Arrow” that made your Arcane Shot blue colored instead of purple, but that was removed for some reason.
For BM, a glyph that lets you use classic Bestial Wrath effects may be in order. I personally like the new effect, but dislike that it’s now orange instead of red.
I hope Blizzard continues adding new cosmetic glyphs in the future. There is an enormous amount of potential here. Even simple things like changing colors on abilities is great. The more we can customize, the better.
P.S. If you recently got into the beta (launching today!) you can pick up these glyphs from a test vendor at the Inscription trainer in Dalaran.
Dire Stable should be 100% from your stable. Please Blizzard. 🙁
Also, will you be able to craft these glyphs when 7.0 drops? How is inscription changing?
I’m actually OK with the 80% (ish) on Dire Stable. Beasts from the area might see the rush of pets coming to our help and decide to “join the gang”, so to speak. Just for the sake caramaderie with fellow beasts, you know?
I know it’s a beaten subject, but let’s pause for a moment and think about Blizzard’s response to feedback:
1) They gave us Dire Stable, which is cool;
2) A LOT of people complained about the ugly-ass gun from Mimiron for BM, so they added a secret item that makes it a bow for 8k (last I heard, at least)
3) A lot of people have been talking about how pets get smaller when they get tamed; so Blizzard kept the glyph for making pets *smaller*.
For the rest, from what I’ve seen, all of the really important issues (on all three specs) have been completely and utterly ignored; not even an answer, no blue post saying “no, this is how hunters are going to be, get used to it”. Nothing. Zero. Nada. Just plain, empty, dark and silent void.
I love hunters. I’ve been playing BM throughout my life in WoW (except for a time when I went SV for rading during Wrath). I may keep playing a Beast Mastery hunter, but that will be out of sheer love for the class, not for enjoyment.
That’s just sad.
I’m hoping to get into beta and getting the chance to remove that bad impression I’m getting from the alpha feedback forums.
From a BM perspective, so far I think they’ve been pretty good with feedback on the aesthetic issues: the new Hati model (which can apparently be changed to look like your pet using an in-game item); the Dire Stable glyph; the Titanstrike bow skin and so on. But the total absence of any comment from the developers on actual gameplay feedback is really concerning. If they’d at least said, ‘that’s it guys, we’re happy with how this is’ that would be something. Instead it just makes it look like Hunters (especially BM) don’t interest the developers at all beyond addressing a few aesthetic concerns.
Glyph’s gaining a 3 step interface AND becoming utterly useless. Well OK then. By adding mouse clicks we can’t even macro them. Assuming they last till they are changed(?) I see I’m buying one Dire Stable and calling it a day. If they also charge me 8K for a choice I should be able to make for free … not fun. Lot’s of class change apparently for the sake of change, not enhancement of the game play.
Any percentage is simply not ok. We pick our pets for a reason, and Blizzard gave us the ability to do so. Any excuse for changing either Dire Stable OR Stampede is simply an arbitrary decision, no game play metric involved. I now have 3 level 100 hunters so at least I won’t have to pay to learn each spec … but what Blizz seems intent on doing seems very counter productive to keeping folks engaged wit the game, at least long tern folks. With all the focus on Overwatch and Hearthstone it’s pretty clear to me they are simplifying WoW to be able to devote fewer maintenance resources to it over time. I don’t like this but I understand this. Just wish Blizz would state this so we can know and choose to move one, or not.
dude…. all other bliz games use their own teams. Overwatch or any thing game is taking away from WoW dev… they are most liky busy trying to finsh the game before it hits ( same with event) i always find it funny when people who arnt in the field of game design makes up reason to give their dislike reason/proof why. instead of them just saying they dislike it and they are worried… and to end this post lol. you thinkin them “simplifying wow” to make them put less time in wow is soo wrong its painful to even read such made up. they reason it feels wow is geting more and more simplifyed is due to the fact after years and year n years of doing this. they get way better at it and a fun fact though out all of wow most specs have 5 to 6 core skills. not couting cooldowns or useless skills. and before you go off and rage about all the changes, they dont want cross spec skills as much and due to them reworking the specs it only makes sense skill would be droped.redone or even add new ones. most specs had all 3 things happen. right now BM and all specs in wow are find and good
enjoy my counter rant to made up throw up post
Why are the Dire Beast Glyphs a %? I cannot understand the thinking behind those glyphs. Blizzard will allow hunters to customize an ability but will force RNG on em? Is it a bug?
If it isn’t a bug…the thought process behind that choice…that decision to make it work randomly not all the time….
The rocket falling sounds pretty cool: everyone can see it, yes? Not just me …
Thanks so much for showing these! Ever since Dire Stable was announced I’ve been eager to see what it would be like in practice 🙂 Thoughts:
– I’d have preferred 100% stabled pets, but I think 80% is OK with me as long as the other Dire Beasts are relevant to the area. Helps it mix it up a little. I also really like that it’s going to draw from all our pets instead of just the 5 we have with us.
– I do, however, really wish there was an equivalent glyph for Stampede. I am so, so sad that we are losing the ability to have 5 of our favourite pets out at once. I realise the change to the spell no longer makes the old Stampede possible, but it would at least be something if the stream of stampeding beasts were pets drawn from our stable.
– I’m also kind of sad the King Krush/Devilsaur size is a bug. Glyph of Godzilla would be awesome 😛
Another thing: was that shouting in the video during the Dire Beast glyph tests your Gnome Hunter? If so… yeesh! That’s going to get very old, very quickly.
I just wish they removed the size reduction for pets, bosses nowadays are so oversized, so it’s not an issue anymore. And the bestial wrath color change, some pets look ridiculously foolish with the orange /red color, would make them much fearsome with glowing eyes… But I’ll keep dreaming.
But I don’t want to be forced to be with a second pet >_> And I don’t want it to be a “clone” of my first pet, that I already have a bond with.. So we have no option of just not having this second “nuisance”?
We are actually being forced to use Dire Beasts.. and every 10 seconds at that.. seeing as how that is our ONLY focus regenerator since their taking Cobra Shot away.
And their also taking all Major Glyphs out of the game also.. And making only cosmetic Minor Glyphs available — and everytime you summon a new pet, you have to put in a new cosmetic glyph, because.. glyphs will now be consumable…. REALLY??
And to quote someone earlier: The total absence of any comment from the developers on actual gameplay feedback is really concerning. If they’d at least said, ‘that’s it guys, we’re happy with how this is’ that would be something. Instead it just makes it look like Hunters (especially BM) don’t interest the developers at all beyond addressing a few aesthetic concerns.
And even worse, this quote also: What Blizz seems intent on doing seems very counter productive to keeping folks engaged wit the game, at least long tern folks. With all the focus on Overwatch and Hearthstone it’s pretty clear to me they are simplifying WoW to be able to devote fewer maintenance resources to it over time. I don’t like this but I understand this. Just wish Blizz would state this so we can know and choose to move on.
So pretty much what their trying to do, and have been trying to do, ever since Mists of Stupidity, is tank their own money making jackpot. Because they simply have “bigger and better” things to do. And their lazy AF and don’t want to devote any amount of time, period, to a game like WoW, that requires a lot of upkeeping and updating (graphics, models, new worlds, new dungeons, etc)
THANKS FOR TAKING MY 100’S OF DOLLARS FOR A GAME YOU COULDN’T GIVE A MAGICAL FLYING RATS ASS ABOUT ANYMORE BLIZZARD!!
To bad they can’t do a glyph that turns the hunter in to a spirit wolf or cat.I miss the old ranger wolf form from EQ.
Hi,
Am I the only that think since the patch BM is more a Beast master of the hunt instead of Hunt master of the beast ?
Do you understand what I mean ?
meh.. Big Orange Kitty just doesn’t sound right.