A new beta build just went out and we have more hunter changes. Let’s start out with the biggest one:
Aspect of the Fox: Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells and abilities for 6 sec. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
We spoke about this a couple of days ago, so I encourage you to check out that post and its comments for more info and opinions on this new raid utility. Opinion is pretty mixed, to say the least.
New Raptors!!
New mission: Find out where I can tame these!
I haven’t seen any Raptors yet in Shadowmoon, Gorgrond, or Talador (but maybe I missed them) so these might be found in Tanaan Jungle, Spires of Arak, or Nagrand. Thanks to MMO-Champion for the image.
Lone Wolf Changes
Next up is some changes to Lone Wolf. It now specifies which abilities benefit from the DPS increase:
- Lone Wolf (survival version): While you don’t have a pet active, your damage dealt with Auto Shot, Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot is increased by 30% and you are able to provide one of several beneficial effects to your party and raid.
- Lone Wolf (marksmanship version): While you don’t have a pet active, your damage dealt with Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Chimaera Shot, and Kill Shot is increased by 30% and you are able to provide one of several beneficial effects to your party and raid.
Don’t worry about the tooltip, it changes based on your current spec (you can see the toggle button on Wowhead’s page). The main point of this change was to remove Multi-Shot (and Serpent Sting for survival). This also means it won’t affect Glaive Toss or Barrage or any talent.
Why are they doing this? AoE damage. This is something I’ve been commenting on about Lone Wolf ever since it was announced at BlizzCon. The talent used to give a much greater benefit to AoE than single target. If you assume your pet does 15% of your DPS as a MM/SV hunter, then this talent makes up for that 15% loss and gives you an additional 15%. But AoE damage was receiving a full 30% boost, which is quite a bit. Especially when your pet that you got rid of wasn’t giving you any AoE damage in the first place.
Set Bonus Changes
Blizzard has gone and updated several old set bonuses to account for class changes. Of particular note is the change to the T16 2p bonus to account for the loss of Rapid Fire:
- Item – Hunter T16 2P Bonus: Increases the damage of Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot, and Multi-Shot by 15%.
Also some minor changes to the WoD PvP set bonuses:
- Item – Hunter WoD PvP 2P Bonus: When your Freezing Trap activates, you gain 50 Focus. (used to also give pet focus)
- Item – Hunter WoD PvP Survival 4P Bonus: When Black Arrow deals damage, it also increases Fire damage taken on your Black Arrow target by 2% for 4 sec. (used to be 1%)
Old Set Bonuses Changed
- Item – Hunter T10 4P Bonus: When your Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot abilities deal damage, you have a 5% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.
- Item – Hunter T13 4P Bonus (Arcane Shot): Your Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot abilities have a chance to grant 30% haste to you and your pet for 15 sec.
- Item – Hunter T14 4P Bonus: Increases the duration of your Bestial Wrath ability by 6 sec, increases the chance for Black Arrow to trigger Lock and Load by 20%, and increases the damage of Aimed Shot by 10%.
- Item – Hunter T8 2P Bonus: Increases the critical strike chance of Arcane and Aimed Shot by 10%.
- Item – Hunter T9 2P Bonus: Increases Haste by 5%.
New Pet Buffs
Pets which previously gave the physical or magic damage debuffs have now been changed to multistrike and versatility buffs, along with new buff names.
- Porcupine: Defensive Quills (versatility)
- Dragonhawk: Spry Attacks (multistrike)
- Chimaera: Frost Breath (snare)
- Boar: Indomitable (versatility)
- Core Hound: Double Bite (multistrike)
- Wind Serpent: Breath of the Winds (multistrike)
- Ravager: Chitinous Armor (versatility)
- Bat: Sonic Focus (multistrike)
- Rhino: Wild Strength (versatility and multistrike)
- Worm: Strength of the Earth (stats and versatility)
- Bird of Prey: Tenacity (versatility)
That blue Raptor! Do want.
I’m also glad they changed the T16 2p. I was going to write how it was going to be only good for MM and that higher ilevel off pieces might be the way to go when starting out.
Of course it’s not like you need all this gear to level.
Don’t need, but it certainly makes it easier when everything gets 2 shotted 🙂 Except when your pet kills something before you can hit it (first world hunter problems).
That is something I would love to see changed.
Only an issue with the Blink Strikes talent. Pick anything else in that tier and its a non-issue, as your projectiles other than Glaive Toss travel faster than the pet, even during Charge or with Dash active.
The new pet models they keep rolling out look SO much better than the old ones… (wolves, cats in MOP, now raptors) At some point they have to go back and just make them the default skins for Azeroth proper, right? Why roll a troll with a crappy old raptor for 90+ levels when you can just have that new sweetness the whole time?
Man that Lone Wolf change make it only for SV Hunters…
I hope they add some variations of the new raptor models wearing feathers. I always liked that WoW raptors were intelligent enough to wear some bling.
Adaptation increases BMs AoE damage but Lone Wolf is just for single target DPS. I guess Blizzard really wants to limit Lone Wolf to situations where they screw up pet pathing.
Can it really be Blizzards intention that Lone Wolf hunters call out their pet to optimize their dps in AoE situations ?
As for the pet buff name changes:
Tenacity: Do they know pets have a tank-spec called tenacity ?
Defensive Quills: We get protected by defensive quills which increase our offensive abilities ?
Unless BMs overall damage is significantly lower than SV/MM it looks like “Anything MM/SV can do, BM can do (and probably better)”.
AoE DPS -> BM/SV
Burst DPS -> BM/MM
Cleave -> BM/MM
DPS on the move -> SV/BM
“Adaptation increases BMs AoE damage but Lone Wolf is just for single target DPS.”
This. This makes no sense, unbalances the talent.
They might have felt Lone Wolf was too strong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets changed again. You have to admit the 30% AoE boost was pretty crazy. It invalidated the other talents on AoE fights pretty much. I doubt Incendiary Ammo or Focusing Shot could compete.
Exotic Munitions you can only use one at a time, whereas Lone Wolf you’d be getting both single target and multi-target benefits at once.
Adaptation will probably be tuned appropriately.
I’m most worried about Focusing Shot tbh… I’m just not feeling it.
Re: the pet buff names — Versatility does increase survivability too, but yeah the tenacity name is weird.
I’m seeing Focusing Shot being really competitive for all three specs already, with Lone Wolf being a slight advantage for SV/MM in some cases. This might just make Focusing Shot flat out better – to be honest, that’s probably the right call though. Using Focusing Shot *efficiently* takes more skill, but Lone Wolf is still there if you want an easier play style or something prevents pets from being effective.
Incendiary Ammo makes that talent the clear winner for aoe though.
I had only really considered Focusing Shot for MM, but thinking about it I can sort of see the uses for survival. Especially now when burning off all those LnL costs focus. I need to give it a fair shake still. Always being able to move for almost an entire expansion is a tough habit to break (especially when you only really play a hunter).