Off Topic

Off Topic: Diablo 3 is, surprisingly, still holding my attention

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I didn’t think I’d still be playing Reaper of Souls on a regular basis 2 months after release, mainly because vanilla Diablo 3 only lasted me about 3 weeks before I basically shelved it until patch 2.0. The game still has its problems, but I have to hand it to the devs as they’ve balanced out the reward system remarkably well. I still have motivation to find more loot, even though my Demon Hunter is powerful enough to solo Torment 6 rifts now.

Just recently I finally completed the 6-piece bonus of the Marauder’s set, and, well, if you’ve ever played a DH you understand how crazy those set bonuses are. Basically, I can drop sentry turrets which automatically fire my own hardest hitting abilities… without any resource cost. Since I can drop 4 sentries at a time, the screen is littered with Cluster Arrows and Multishots. It’s made it where Torment 5 is my “comfortable” rifting difficulty, but Torment 6 is still doable. And there’s still upgrades to be had.

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Hexapos

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Hexapos is the only water strider to use the “white fen strider” skin and in found in the Dread Wastes. Chances are you’ve flown over this guy without even knowing because he’s one of the handful of Mists of Pandaria pets which are invisible until revealed by a hunter’s Flare. The only way to find Hexapos is to look for his tracks on the ground and drop your flare where you think he’ll show up next, which is usually just a little bit ahead of the most recent footprint.

The problem with Hexapos is the enormous patrol path… he basically takes a leisurely stroll around the entire zone. The map below shows his patrol route and what tracks you should look out for.

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Hunter News

What would you like to see for Hunter raid utility?

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Update: The raid utility has been announced. See here for details.

In the latest alpha patch notes, Blizzard stated they are currently working on adding a new “minor raid utility” ability for hunters in Warlords of Draenor. When asked on twitter, Celestalon replied that they are still open to suggestions.


I’ll get us started with a few ideas here:

  • The Hunter’s Focus: Reduce the resource cost of all party and raid member spells (mana/rage/energy/etc.) by xx% for x seconds.
  • Lay of the Land: Reduce AoE damage taken by raid and party members by xx% for x seconds.
  • Vicious Talons: Increase all party and raid member’s Multistrike rating by xxx for x seconds. (multistrike raid buff didn’t exist at the time of this post)
  • Hunter’s Mark: Expose a weakness on your current target, increasing the critical strike chance of all party and raid members by xx% for x seconds.
  • Pack Leader: All party and raid members can cast all spells while moving for x seconds.

Be sure to post your own ideas in the comments (or tweet them to Celestalon) and maybe we can get Blizzard to read them all. Just post whatever comes to mind. Even if it sounds ridiculous, it could spawn another idea. You may want to read the raid utility section of the official patch notes to learn more about their plans for it in Warlords. You’ll notice a lot of raid-wide damage buffs were removed, so something more defensive or utility oriented is probably more likely.

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Hunter News

Hunter updates from the official Warlords alpha patch notes

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Blizzard just updated the Warlords of Draenor alpha patch notes. We already learned about most of this yesterday from the datamining, but the notes explain how they want each spec to have their own unique DPS cooldown. They also confirmed that Bear Trap will be affected by the Enhanced Traps for a roughly 2 minute cooldown. Also note that Rapid Fire’s base cooldown is also 2 minutes now. Bestial Wrath still has a 1 min cooldown.

I found it odd the notes made no mention of the new Exotic Munitions talent. Maybe just an oversight.

In the raid utility section, they also mention that hunters will be getting a new raid utility ability soon. Absolutely no idea what this is going to be.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)
Each Hunter specialization received a revision to the burst-damage-cooldowns they have access to. All specializations now have one burst-damage-cooldown available baseline, and can add to that through talent choices.

Beast Mastery Hunters retain Bestial Wrath. Rapid Fire is a good fit for Marksmanship, and we improved it. For Survival, we wanted to both increase the prominence of their traps, and give them a new damage cooldown. So, a new trap called Bear Trap has been created to fit that role. Note that Bear Trap’s base cooldown can be reduced by other passive abilities and perks, such that it has roughly a 2 minute-cooldown afterwards.

Bear Trap is a new ability for Survival Hunters. Bear Trap places a trap with duration of 1 minute that immobilizes the first enemy that triggers it for 8 seconds and deals heavy bleed damage over 20 seconds. Damage from other sources may break the immobilization effect. The ability has a 4 minute cooldown.

Careful Aim now also provides its effect against all targets when Rapid Fire is active.


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Hunter News

More fancy new ranged weapons from the Warlords alpha

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Wowhead just posted a bunch of new weapon models and there are some impressive hunter weapons in here. Most impressive of all (IMO) is the Challenge Mode transmog reward gun in the header image. There’s going to be a bow too, but it’s not in the game yet. But wait until you see the cool animation on this gun. You can use the 3D viewer at Wowhead or just view this handy gif I made of the firing animation. WANT.

Below are the other weapons added in this patch. If you missed the hunter class changes in this build, be sure to check out this post.

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Hunter News

Alpha Update: New level 100 hunter talent and more

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A new Warlords of Draenor alpha build just went up and MMO-C has begun the datamining. We have some tantalizing new hunter changes including the replacement for Flaming Shots in the level 100 talent tier. Here’s a summary of what’s new or changed:

General
  • Distracting Shot is back! It was removed previously as part of ability pruning but it seems Blizzard has listened to the feedback. We like our Distracting Shot. 🙂
  • Misdirection now redirects threat for 8 seconds, down from 60 minutes. They decided to ditch the 1 hour MD for something else, which we don’t know of yet (it’s not in this build).
  • A lot of spells have had their damage reduced (for example, Multi-Shot went from 60% to 30% weapon damage), but this is nothing to be alarmed over. It’s all part of the tuning process.

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Hunter News

Hunter patch notes from Warlords beta

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Below is a consolidated list of hunter changes from the Warlords of Draenor beta.

I will be updating this post every time new patch notes or major revelations from blue tweets are released (the latest updates will be in red). I’ll also bump it to the front of the blog when any major updates happen.

Last updated: August 22, 2014
Probably one of the final updates.

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Hunter News

First look at Hunter quivers and ammo pouches

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The latest Artcraft post takes a break from showing off the new race models and gives us a sneak peak at hunter quivers and ammo pouches. They’ve been dubbed “class accessories” and it sounds like they are going to be placed in a new cosmetic-only gear slot. Paladins will have librams, Shaman will have totems, etc.

These quivers and ammo pouches likely won’t make it for the release of Warlords of Draenor, but hopefully they’ll arrive in a subsequent WoD patch. They suggested that these could be rewarded for anything from leveling up to defeating a raid boss.

I know it’s a tall order, but I think it would be awesome to have one themed per-expansion or per-tier. Think about a dragonscale quiver for the vanilla sets (it could even drop in there), a frost-themed quiver with icicles hanging off it for Wrath sets, and so on. My other hope is that these quivers will also modify the visuals of your basic shots so we could have flaming arrows, frost arrows, poison arrows, etc.

As a transmog junkie, I’m pretty excited.

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Hunter Guides, Hunter News

Hunter item upgrade priority in patch 5.4.8

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Patch 5.4.8 drops today, much sooner than I expected it to be. It introduces 2 more upgrades to patch 5.4 PvE gear, for a total of 16 ilvls in upgrades. People began their mad rush to cap their valor points for the new item upgrades, but it turns out they only had a week to do so! Sneaky Blizzard. Those of you who were already sitting on 3k valor will be able to fully upgrade 8 of your items this week (assuming they all had 2 upgrades already).

If you’re in that situation then you’re going to have everything upgraded fairly quickly. If you’re not sitting on a large pool of banked valor, you may be wondering what you should upgrade first. I played around a little bit with Zeherah’s DPS Analyzer (which she just updated for 5.4.8 support) to see which gear would give the most bang for your valor point.

I knew weapons would be the largest upgrade, but I was surprised the legendary cloak was less of an overall upgrade than several pieces at normal and heroic.  Sometimes we let raw item level blind us, I guess. 🙂 For a raider in mostly normal mode gear, the 2 extra weapon upgrades represent about a 2% overall DPS increase. Trinkets are next on the list with about a 1.2-1.5% increase depending on the trinket and spec. Warforged gear in the Chest/Legs/Helm slots tends to come out ahead of the Legendary cloak.

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Hunter News

Blizzard is OK with some talents not working with Lone Wolf, more hints at a raid cooldown

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We talked a little bit about this earlier when Celestalon mentioned that Master’s Call and Spirit Bond would not work if a survival or marksmanship hunter chose the Lone Wolf talent. Yesterday, he talked a little more about this subject. In short, Blizzard is OK with some talents being made useless by choosing another (as long as the player can still choose between two in any given talent tier).

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