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

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.

Survival T17 Set Bonuses

• 2-piece: Increases the Focus restored from Serpent Sting by 2.
• 4-piece: When you hit a target with Explosive Shot, you gain the Rapid Shot effect. Rapid Shot increases your haste by 10%, stacking up to 0 times.

The 2-piece doesn’t sound very exciting. It increases the focus return from 3 to 5 for each tick of Serpent Sting. That’s only an extra 0.66 focus per second. Not exactly game changing, but it’s something.

The 4-piece buff lasts for 6 seconds, which means the only time you’ll see it stack beyond 10% is during Lock and Load procs. Ignore the “0 times” bit, that’s just a datamining issue. I like this one because it adds more benefit to Lock and Load and the multistrike stat at the same time. Also, if you happen to be using Exotic Munitions you’ll be seeing a nice benefit — assuming it stacks reasonably high — from all those extra Auto Shots.

Marksmanship T17 Set Bonuses

• 2-piece: Activating Rapid Fire also grants you Deadly Aim. Deadly Aim increases your critical strike damage by 10%.
• 4-piece: Aimed Shot critical strikes have a chance to call down an artillery strike on your target, dealing 10 damage. (Approximately 1.50 procs per minute)

The 2-piece bonus was the 4-piece in the previous build. It makes the Rapid Fire + Careful Aim combo even better. Bigger Aimed Shot crits? Yes please.

The 4-piece certainly sounds cool, and goes with the theme of centering all the bonuses around critical strike, which is marksmanship’s secondary stat attunement.

.@tylerjamesshand Don’t worry about tier set bonuses too much yet; we’re still heavily iterating on them. Redesigning >50% still.

— Celestalon (@Celestalon) June 24, 2014

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with these. Each spec has bonuses which play directly into their secondary stat attunements (mastery for BM, multistrike for SV and critical strike for MM). It’s still early and these bonuses could still change. Survival and marksmanship’s 2-piece bonuses are the most likely to change at this point since they were the only ones that didn’t change in the previous build (although I kind of like marksmanship’s).

Tier 17 Armor

This T17 is the normal and heroic versions (there will no longer be tier gear in LFR). The mythic mode set hasn’t been revealed yet. The video above gives you a nice look at it, and there’s also the image below. Wowhead has it in their model viewer, but it’s missing the belt and gloves.

What do you think of this “Rylak Stalker” armor?

(image courtesy MMO-C)

+10