Monthly Archives: June 2014

Hunter News

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOCROAK

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There’s a new type of mob to kill in Draenor. They’ve been dubbed “vignettes” and essentially they’re rare spawns a la the Timeless Isle, but they drop their special item (plus garrison resources) the first time you kill them. All subsequent kills will just drop junk loot.

You can find them everywhere in Draenor, some of them drop loot like trinkets or weapons, and others drop toy items. One such mob I found was the Hypnocroak. He is hidden up in a cave which, at first glance, seems unreachable without a flying mount, but then you see the little rocks jutting out of the cliff face and realize it’s actually a jumping puzzle.

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

The best new Hunter Glyph: Glyph of Play Dead

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Out of the handful of new glyphs being added for hunters in Warlords, the Glyph of Play Dead is definitely my favorite. It only takes up a minor slot, so you don’t have to worry about it clashing with anything important.

The pet not only plays its death animation but also drops aggro. This is only useful in some situations, as I quickly discovered when I feigned death to get a rare elite back on my pet. Since the pet also dropped aggro, the elite mob reset and started evading. Any time you want to be able to feign to drop aggro without resetting the fight, you’re not going to want to use this.

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

New hunter pets in Shadowmoon Valley

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Shadowmoon Valley had a wider variety of tameable pets than Frostfire Ridge did (a lot of the ones in Frostfire weren’t yet flagged as tameable on the alpha). Some of the ones in Shadowmoon still can’t be tamed, but that’ll be fixed in time.

Is your stable full? You might want to make room for some of these guys, and this is only the stuff from a single zone… nevermind any rare spawns we haven’t even seen yet.

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Hunter News

WoD Alpha: Tanaan Jungle and Shadowmoon Valley screenshots

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I’ve been playing a lot of alpha lately. Between the server instability, the crashes, and the constant bug report submissions it’s taken me quite a while to finish most of the quests in Shadowmoon Valley.  Then there’s all the new pets to tame, killing rares, working on the Garrison…

I have some more hunter-specific stuff in the pipe for over the weekend, but for now I just wanted to do a quick dump of some of my favorite screenshots from the last day or so. The screens are all 2560×1440 and there might be some good wallpaper material in here. 🙂

The Tanaan ones are from the Warlords intro/starting experience, and the Shadowmoon Valley ones were taken throughout my questing experience. As a bonus, I’ve included some screenshots taken in Blasted Lands from the pre-Warlords 6.0 patch stuff where the Iron Horde begin invading through the Dark Portal.

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Echidnian Hydra

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These lumbering beasts wander the shallows of the Nightmarsh in Shadowmoon Valley. Hydras are one of the 3 new hunter pet families being added in Warlords of Draenor, the others being Rylaks and Riverbeasts, which I’ll feature shortly. Hydras bring the Keen Senses (mastery) buff.

There’s a little bit of a bug with these guys in the alpha right now. Instead of playing their run animation when they move around, they instead play their walking animation at superfast speeds. Oh, and they’re very stompy. Even more stompy than a regular hydra. For the sake of hunter ears everywhere, let’s hope they tone those noises down just a smidge. 😉

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Hunter Transmog

Hunter Transmog: Dread Hunter

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Today, we have another reader-submitted hunter transmog, this one from Zägerin on Drakkari.  Here is what they had to say about the transmog they call “Dread Hunter.”

After spending too much in the Dread Wastes for no good reason, I wanted a Black/whitish set for my hunter. This is the end result, the shoulders being the more difficult part to match. I am not happy about them but it’s the best I could do.

Helm: n/a

 

I’ve put this set together in a Wowhead item comparison so you can quickly view it on other races in 3D (click the little triangle above the item icons).

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Hunter News

WoD Alpha build 18443: Hunter tier 17 armor revealed, new set bonuses

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The vast majority of hunter changes in this build are tooltip changes for clearer wording, or to merge two abilities into one to reduce spellbook clutter. Piercing Shots is still listed in this build even though it’s supposedly getting removed, but I would wager that it’s just an oversight. The Enhanced Piercing Shots perk for marksmanship, which would have added Piercing Shots to Multi-Shot, has been changed to Improved Chimera Shot. Before we get started, keep in mind that some of these set bonuses could still change.

Beast Mastery T17 Set Bonuses
  • 2-piece: Kill Command has a 25% chance to increase the size and damage of your pet by 10% for 8 seconds.
  • 4-piece: While Bestial Wrath is active, one additional pet is summoned to fight with you.

These are much nicer than the old temporary ones. The 2-piece bonus lasts just long enough so you can apply its bonus to your next Kill Command.

The 4-piece sounds like it might just be an extra Dire Beast summon that pops during Bestial Wrath, which means probably only melee attacks and no specials. I hope I’m wrong and it pulls another one of your active pets with all its abilities intact (or at least claw/bite/smack). That would be very nice.

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Hunter News

Shadowmoon Valley gallery

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Shadowmoon Valley was open briefly on the alpha realms today. I got maybe 20 minutes of actual gameplay amongst the constant disconnections, but I was screenshotting constantly because it’s an amazing looking zone. In terms of visuals, Frostfire Ridge isn’t in the same league, if you ask me. These shots were only taken from a very small area of the zone. Unfortunately, the alpha is offline until Monday because of all the issues. I thought I’d share these screens in the meantime.

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Hunter Pets

Warlords of Draenor: New exotic pet abilities

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I recently spent some time outside Draenor to get my hands on a few exotic pets to test their new abilities. Today we’ll be looking at the new Quilen, Rhino, Devilsaur, and Core Hound abilities. Exotic pets in Warlords can have up to 3 special abilities or buffs. For example the Core Hound has a 5% multistrike buff, Ancient Hysteria, and the new Molten Hide. Exotics which only have 1 special ability bring double buffs instead

Quilen

Stone Armor: When falling below 40% health, the Quilen’s skin will change to stone, causing it to take 30% less damage and regenerate 3% of its maximum health every 1 sec for 8 sec. This effect can only occur once every 120 sec.

This has a similar visual to the turtle’s shell shield, only its automatic whenever the pet’s health gets low. The turtle’s shell is arguably better since it’s 50% reduced damage for 12 seconds on a 1 min cooldown, but the benefit of this one is its passive nature and the healing. The Quilen also comes with its crit buff and the battle rez compared to the turtle which has zero buffs.

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Off Topic

TBT: My first beta

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The first WoW beta I ever participated in was the Wrath of the Lich King beta. According to the screenshot’s filename, this was taken on September 16, 2008. The first thing I did, as any hunter would, was take a trip to Shadowmoon Valley to tame Uvuros. Core Hounds were a new pet family being introduced in 3.0 and I remember being quite excited about it. They weren’t shrinking very much once tamed, as you can see. I always liked the ridiculously large pets, even though melee must hate them with the fury of a thousand suns (sorry melee).

This was only a month before the pre-expansion patch 3.02 came out, so it was near the end of beta. I don’t remember doing a ton of testing in Wrath content. I think I didn’t want to spoil myself. That’s not really a thing anymore in the age of content being datamined before the developers can even open their mouths. That pre-expansion patch is worth another TBT in the future.

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