Tag Archives: Focusing Shot

Patch 6.1: Stampede makes a come back

If you’ve been following the patch 6.1 news, I’m sure you saw the change to Stampede: It now lasts 40 seconds, up from 20 seconds. A Murder of Crows was so good that they needed to literally double it to make it competitive. From my initial testing, it seems they were successful.

However, there was a possibly unintended side effect because of an interesting relationship between Stampede and Lone Wolf. Whenever you have your standard pet out and use Stampede, it calls the remaining 4 pets. However, when you’re using Lone Wolf it calls out all 5 pets. One would think it should only be calling out 4 pets so that the talent has the same value regardless of your chosen level 100 talent, but this is not the case for marksmanship and survival. I’d like to think this is a bug or an oversight, but who knows for sure? It’s been around for a while, so maybe it is intended. I don’t understand why. Also see the bottom of this post for an important note on another Lone Wolf/Stampede bug.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the Stampede buff’s effect on all 3 specs.

Continue reading Patch 6.1: Stampede makes a come back

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Focus Pocus: A closer look at Focus Fire, Steady Focus, and Focusing Shot

Have you been enjoying the hunter spec equality we have now? I sure am. With more people playing BM and SV again, I thought it warranted a closer look at a couple of the less popular talents.

Focus Fire, aka RNG Fire

The recent buff to Improved Focus Fire (5% per stack instead of 2%) has put a great deal more importance on the  Focus Fire ability. Every basic attack has a 40% chance to add a stack of Frenzy. I’ve never paid much attention to stack generation before this, but now my eye is on it constantly, and I’ve discovered just how RNG-dependent BM DPS can be now.

Sometimes my stack generation will be so high that I’ll have generated 5 stacks before my current Focus Fire buff has even expired. It feels fantastic when this happens. Other times, I’ve had my Frenzy stuck at a single stack for an entire 30 seconds.  Ouch.

This RNG got me thinking about the Steady Focus talent. Delirium had done some testing in beta which discovered it also increased pet focus regeneration, but it still seemed like an inferior talent to the guaranteed damage of Dire Beast.

Continue reading Focus Pocus: A closer look at Focus Fire, Steady Focus, and Focusing Shot

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Hunter patch notes from Warlords beta

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.

Continue reading Hunter patch notes from Warlords beta

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More Lone Wolf details, Kill Shot being improved

One of the questions I always had about Lone Wolf is whether or not you’d actually be sacrificing anything by taking it. The damage from your pet is replaced, but you don’t have to worry about your pet derping, so that damage is probably even greater than the damage lost from the pet.

Lone Wolf hunters can also still bring one of the 6 major raid buffs without a pet, so that aspect of pets is covered. Next on the list was our abilities and talents that play off the pet. We weren’t sure if Blizzard was going to retool those for petless hunters or not. Well, it looks like some of those simply aren’t going to work with Lone Wolf.

Continue reading More Lone Wolf details, Kill Shot being improved

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