Tag Archives: Warlords of Draenor Hunters

Hunter News

The end of beta, BlizzCon predictions, and the Warlords strategy guide

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Well, the beta is finally shut down after almost exactly 5 months of testing (including the alpha). I first got in on June 17th, and at the time the alpha was still limited to Horde characters in the Frostfire Ridge zone only (up to level 92). This was a couple of weeks after the alpha opened up and someone may have noticed my shameless whining about not being in the alpha and helped me get in. Thanks, you-know-who-you-are.  😉

In the past I had participated in the Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists betas but never to the same degree as I did in Warlords. Typically I’d check out class changes, maybe tame a new hunter pet or two, and that was that. I wasn’t really involved in the community back then, nor had a blog, so that probably explained my lack of interest. This time I felt compelled to get some info out to you guys. I hope I helped.  :mrgreen: I certainly tried to put a lot of effort into beta coverage here.

The end of beta event was pretty fun. It basically involved game masters spawning all sorts of things to kill us repeatedly outside of Stormwind and Ogrimmar — bosses, elites, rares, iron stars, and even hordes of gastropods. I stopped by the PvP server briefly to check out what was happening in Ashran. I couldn’t get into Ashran itself (it was full), but I got a few nice shots from the outskirts. Below you can check out a gallery of the event.

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Hunter Pets

Final beta video: B-roll footage of hunter pets at 60fps!

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If you didn’t know, YouTube recently introduced support for 60fps videos. You obviously need to upload the video in 60fps for this to work, and YouTube also seems very picky with the encode settings, but once it works it’s pretty cool!

It only works in the Google Chrome browser (or IE11 if you enable HTML5 video), but doesn’t appear to work in Firefox at all. You also need to set the video to 720p or 1080p to see the 60fps version. Support on non-PC devices or apps is spotty.

You’ll know it when you see it, because the difference between 60fps and 30fps is night and day.

Beta ends tomorrow, so enjoy this final video of some random hunter pets. Remember to set it to 720p or 1080p!  :mrgreen:

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Hunter News, Opinion

More number tuning for hunters, and it seems pretty reasonable

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Blizzard just posted some new class tuning hotfixes which should go live soon. Even though most of this is nerfs, I have to say these are reasonable changes based on where we stood after the last round of buffs we received. Combined with the changes to other classes, we were doing quite well at level 100 (at least Beast Mastery and Marksmanship).

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

• Adaptation now increases Combat Experience’s damage increase to 70% (down from 85%).
• Chimaera Shot’s damage has been reduced by 13%.
• Focusing Shot now has a 2.5 second cast time (down from 3 seconds), and its damage has been increased by 25%.
• Kill Command’s damage has been increased by 20%.

I can’t help but feel like these Focusing Shot changes are Blizzard’s somewhat desperate attempt to get people to actually take the talent. I’m sure there’s some hunters out there chomping at the bit for it. However, the problem for me (and many other hunters) is that it’s just not worth the hassle. It can definitely do competitive DPS with the other level 100 talents, but it comes with a severe handicap. These changes certainly help, but it’s still not something I’m really interested in. The extra damage is miniscule in the grand scheme of things, although the faster cast time is nice. For me, Focusing Shot looked really good on paper, but in practice it just flunked out.

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Druids in Travel Form

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Blizzard finally gave into our demands and made druids tameable. The catch is you can only tame them in their travel form. So if you were hoping for a kitty or bear druid, you’re out of luck (for now). A druid in travel form is part of the Stag family once tamed and brings the versatility raid buff with Grace.

Druids are not exotic, so no need to worry about that. The trick is just catching one in travel form who won’t notice your Tame Beast channeling. AFK druids work best. I wouldn’t recommend taming one of your friends or guildies, since you may lose them as a friend once they can no longer control their druid.

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Hunter News

[Hunter Buffs] They should have sent a poet…

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I present to you, the great hunter buffing of 2014:

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

General

  • Arcane Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Cobra Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Explosive Trap’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Kill Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Multi-Shot’s damage has been increased by 30%.
  • Steady Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.

Marksmanship

  • Aimed Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Chimaera Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.

Survival

  • Black Arrow’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Explosive Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Serpent Sting’s damage has been increased by 15%.

Hunter Pets

  • Hunter Pets now inherit 60% of the Hunter’s Attack Power (up from 33%).

Talents

  • A Murder of Crows’ damage has been increased by 80%.
  • Barrage’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Dire Beast’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Exotic Munitions’ damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Focusing Shot’s damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Glaive Toss’ damage has been increased by 15%.
  • Powershot’s damage has been increased by 15%.

Can I get a ‘hell yeah’? It’s also worth noting the overpowered specs from other classes also received nerfs. This will hopefully bring everyone closer together.

The bad news? Requires realm restarts to take effect. Can we get someone to trip on the power cord or something? Please? Or do we really have to wait until Tuesday? 😛

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Spirit of Atha

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Hail Hydra! That seems to be the hunter mantra of the week. Everywhere I go, I see hunters sporting their newly tamed hydras. Arguably one of the coolest is Spirit of Atha, the ghost hydra.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tamed this elusive beast. I was one of those who tamed it back in Wrath of the Lich King when there was a bug that allowed hunters to tame it as a crocolisk pet. In my infinite wisdom, I abandoned it and regretted it ever since. It was only available for a short time before it was fixed. In my defense, we could only own 5 total pets back then. For a while it remained a crocolisk until Blizzard made a new hydra family just for this one pet in Cataclysm. That version of the hydra family had a crit buff, today’s Hydras have a mastery buff.

The Spirit of Atha is found in Sholazar Basin. It doesn’t exist naturally in the world, the only way to get it is to summon it via a quest.

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Hunter News, Opinion

Celestalon: “Hunters are just at the top of our list right now”

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Good news! And no, my awesome matching talbuk mount and pet combos have nothing to do with it.

We’ve been complaining about our numbers for a while, but most of our evidence was based on simulations, which the devs were quick to dismiss. Now that we have actual logs to back it up, it’s becoming clear that hunters (at least BM and SV specs) are a teensy bit on the weak side right now.

Survival actually received some hotfix buffs on patch day: 12% to Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, and Serpent Sting, but it still wasn’t enough.  Even Marksmanship — our top spec right now — is up to 50% behind the currently overpowered classes. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect perfect balance in a prepatch like this when most of the balance design is focused on level 100. However, the results for hunters at level 100 are mirroring the level 90 results, just not as dramatically. 

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

Patch 6.0.2: Hunter guides, gems, new pets and buffs, and Survival hotfixes

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It’s patch day! That means it’s time to TAME ALL THE PETS. This is probably how things will play out for me upon logging in today:

  • Get my 3 extra Challenge Mode mounts from my mailbox, which will put me to exactly 200 mounts and give me the achievement! Woot!
  • Add all my toys to the Toy Box, fill up the new Void Storage tab, add reagents to reagent bank, and just clean up bags and bank in general. I’m going to be freeing up well over 150 bag slots.
  • Set up addons, action bars, etc. and change my gems (more on that below)
  • Tame Chimaeron!
  • Do the Blasted Lands quests for the launch event and get the title and pet (as seen in the image above from PTR).
  • Moar pets!

Hot off the press we also have some Survival hotfixes. Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, and Serpent Sting all had a 12% damage buff. It should help Survival a little bit, which according to sims was the lowest DPS spec in the game for 6.0, and I’m not just talking about hunters. We’ll see how accurate those sims were as we get to test things more. Survival likes multistrike, but the only way you’ll be able to get some in 6.0 is from the raid buff (one of your pets), which gives you 5%. Plus you can get a little more from Haromm’s Talisman.

Hunter guide for 6.0

My Patch 6.0 / Warlords of Draenor hunter guide was published on Wowhead today.  It’s geared mostly towards new or recently returned players, but I think most hunters will see value in it. It covers all the bases in a concise manner, including transitioning to 6.0 at level 90. Go check it out!

The WHU also posted their 6.0 hunter guide last night which you should also check out. So much hunter love.

Continue reading Patch 6.0.2: Hunter guides, gems, new pets and buffs, and Survival hotfixes →

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Hunting Party Podcast

Hunting Party Podcast Episode 202: Sim City

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This week we talk about the upcoming patch 6.0.2, the current state of hunters in the beta, talents, and answer some listener questions.

The show is broadcast live on Twitch TV every other Sunday at 10 a.m. ET (14:00 GMT). In addition to the live show you can find it at:

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Hunter Pets, Opinion

The 20 new pets I’m taming in Warlords of Draenor

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I kept putting it off, but I finally did it with patch 6.0 only a few days away. I made room in my pet stable for some new pets in Warlords.

From 55 pets to 35 pets, and here’s the proof…

emptystable

I abandoned sent 20 pets out to pasture. I went through all of the new pets coming in 6.0 and decided I wanted to tame 20 of them for my collection. “Only” 20. The good news is, most of the pets I deleted gently released weren’t rares, or if they were then I made sure they weren’t difficult to find ones. I have all the spirit beasts and didn’t send any of them to the farm. Same deal with the ultra rare ones like King Krush or Aotona, or my pair of oil-stained wolves (one of them is a backup if I ever lose the oil coat).

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