Not too many changes to report here, though Celestalon did say this build was created in the middle of them adding a lot of changes, which is why some classes got more than others. Hunters were one of the classes missing out for this build.
New passive abilities
- Beast Mastery: Mastery Attunement – You gain 5% more of the Mastery stat from all sources
- Marksmanship: Critical Strike Attunement – You gain 5% more of the Critical Strike stat from all sources
- Survival: Multistrike Attunement – You gain 5% more of the Multistrike stat from all sources
All classes received these new attunement abilities with a different stat for each spec. I’m not sure what the point of them is. Either they wish for these particular stats to be stronger for their respective specs, or they’re worried that these particular stats will have less value so they’re trying to balance them out.
The chosen stats make me think it’s the former. Beast Mastery definitely values mastery more than the others, and Survival is all about lots of smaller individual hits and ticks so there’s more chances for Multistrike to proc. I would have expected a haste boost for Marksmanship, but I suppose crit plays well with Enhanced Aimed Shot.
Also, a note regarding set bonuses getting datamined. Most of those are temporary while we make more ‘creative’ ones.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) June 11, 2014
Tier 17 set bonuses
First, a quick note on these bonuses. If they seem bland to you, it’s because they’re probably temporary. I wouldn’t expect the final ones to look anything like this, but here they are:
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Item – Hunter T17 Beast Mastery 2P Bonus: Increases the damage of Kill Shot by 10%.
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Item – Hunter T17 Beast Mastery 4P Bonus: Increases the duration of Bestial Wrath by 2 sec.
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Item – Hunter T17 Marksmanship 2P Bonus: Increases the damage of Kill Shot by 10%.
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Item – Hunter T17 Marksmanship 4P Bonus: Activating Rapid Fire also grants you Deadly Aim. Deadly Aim increases your critical strike damage by 10%.
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Item – Hunter T17 Survival 2P Bonus: Increases the Focus restored from Viper Venom by 2.
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Item – Hunter T17 Survival 4P Bonus: Increases the damage of Explosive Shot by 10%.
The BM one especially screams “temporary” to me since the 4 piece bonus has already been done in T14, only it was 6 additional seconds instead of 2. Out of all of them, I like the marksmanship 4 piece the best. Don’t forget that Rapid Fire activates Careful Aim, which means guaranteed critical strikes for Aimed Shot. But again, don’t get married to any of these. They could easily change in the next 5 months.
PvP set bonuses
- Item – Hunter WoD PvP 2P Bonus: When your Freezing Trap activates, you and your pet gain 1000 Focus.
- Item – Hunter WoD Survival PvP 4P Bonus: Casting Black Arrow automatically activates Lock and Load. Lock and Load causes your next two Explosive Shots within 12 sec to cost no Focus and trigger no cooldown.
The first one is obviously a placeholder number or datamining bug, but the second one? It looks like it would make an excellent PvE bonus if that guaranteed proc was in addition to the other randomly placed guaranteed proc, giving two guaranteed LnL per Black Arrow.
Wowhead has a good summary of all the other non-hunter changes (as if those classes matter, ha!) that you can check out.
