WoD Beta 18689: Perks on the chopping block

The Draenor perk system has been changed to only grant 4 perks on your way from 90-100 (down from 9 perks). Most of the damage boosting perks have been baked into their respective spells, but some perks have been removed outright.

I’m not sure why this was done to be honest. After leveling a lot on beta (one hunter to 100, one to 96, at least four to 92), I have to say that getting a perk every level was a lot of fun. I enjoyed watching the perk slot machine spin up and went “hell yeah!” when I received a perk I was hoping for. It was a nice reward for dinging a new level, and it was also a noticeable power increase in most cases. The power increase was great because it counteracted the feeling of getting less powerful as your haste, crit chance, etc. plummeted with each level.

There are a few other minor changes and additions we’ll cover before tackling the perks. I’m skipping the datamined ability scaling changes since they’re all related to the perks going away (no actual change).

Challenge Mode Bow

I am really digging this new Challenge Mode reward bow (Living Longbow). Firstly, it matches the MoP Challenge Mode armor nicely. Secondly, it’s a total throwback to Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers. It sprouts flowers and even has butterflies flying around it. It’s quite animated, I recommend checking it out in the model viewer. We’ve already seen the Challenge Mode gun, Crystal-Shot Longrifle (click for gif). It seems like this time around the gold medal rewards are weapons instead of an armor set. I’m just happy the bow matches the armor. The gun doesn’t match so much, but it’s cool in its own way and will match other armor sets.

Aspect of the Fox Visuals

All group members under the effects of Aspect of the Fox will now have a pulsing fox icon above their heads to let them know they can cast while moving. It may not be as “in your face” as some people wanted, but they can always create a WeakAura for that. Click here for an animated gif.

Beast Mastery Perks

Surviving perks are at the top. Removed perks are crossed out along with whether or not they were baked into existing spells.

• Enhanced Camouflage: You heal 3% of your maximum health every second while Camouflage is active.
• Improved Focus Fire: Focus Fire now also grants 2% increase to attack power per Frenzy stack consumed.
• Improved Beast Cleave: Your pet’s attacks strike nearby enemy targets for an additional 25% of damage done while Beast Cleave is active.
• Enhanced Basic Attacks: Your pet’s basic attacks have a 20% chance to reset the basic attack cooldown and make the next basic attack free.
• Enhanced Kill Shot: Kill Shot can now be used on targets with 35% or less health. (NOT baked in. Now Marksmanship exclusive.)
• Improved Kill Command: Increases the damage done by Kill Command by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Arcane Shot: Increases the damage done by Arcane Shot by 20% (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Cobra Shot: Increases the damage done by Cobra Shot by 20% (Baked into base spell.)
• Empowered Pets: Increases all damage done by your combat pets by 20%. (Removed completely.)

The Kill Shot thing kind of stinks, but I understand if they want that perk to be a marksmanship-only one. It definitely makes the most sense there. Empowered Pets was one of the more fun perks to land when you were leveling but I guess they wanted BM to rely less on pet damage overall.

Survival Perks

Surviving perks are at the top. Removed perks are crossed out along with whether or not they were baked into existing spells.

• Empowered Explosive Shot: Increases the duration of Explosive Shot by 1 sec.
• Enhanced Camouflage: You heal 3% of your maximum health every second while Camouflage is active.
• Enhanced Traps: Reduces the cooldown of all traps by 50%.
• Enhanced Entrapment: The root effect of Entrapment now requires an additional 100% damage to break.
• Improved Camouflage: Camouflage no longer breaks from dealing or taking damage (Removed completely. RIP.)
• Improved Serpent Sting: Increases Serpent Sting damage by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)
  
• Improved Arcane Shot: Increases damage done by Arcane Shot by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Cobra Shot:Increases damage done by Cobra Shot by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Black Arrow: Increases damage done by Black Arrow by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)

I had a sinking feeling that Improved Camo was too good to be true. A shame. It really made survival hunters live up to their name, but I guess they couldn’t make it work. The remaining survival perks don’t really offer much in the character power department, except for the Explosive Shot one.

Enhanced Entrapment is nice for PvP, but it’s always been the more boring perk for me. Even more boring than the (now removed) Improved Cobra Shot. Why not just bake this into entrapment and give survival hunters something cool here? Maybe the idea I’ve been pitching since these perks came out: Empowered Explosive Trap: Increase the damage of Explosive Trap by 100%. It would make Explosive Trap worth using in more situations. When you have to calculate to see if a zero-focus DPS spell is worth wasting a GCD on, something isn’t quite right. Am I overreacting here?

Marksmanship Perks

Surviving perks are at the top. Removed perks are crossed out along with whether or not they were baked into existing spells.

• Enhanced Kill Shot: Kill Shot can now be used on targets with 35% or less health.
• Enhanced Aimed Shot: Your Aimed Shot crits grant you 20 focus.
• Improved Focus: Increase your maximum focus by 20.
• Enhanced Camouflage: You heal 3% of your maximum health every second while Camouflage is active.
• Enhanced Chimera Shot: Reduce focus cost of Chimera Shot by 10. (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Aimed Shot: Increase damage done by Aimed Shot by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Steady Shot: Increase damage done by Steady Shot by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)
• Improved Multi-Shot: Increases the damage of Multi-Shot by 20% and reduces the Focus cost by 5. (Focus component baked in, but not damage component.)
• Improved Chimaera Shot: Increases the damage of Chimaera Shot by 20%. (Baked into base spell.)

Marksmanship doesn’t lose much of anything except some extra Multi-Shot damage (which it desperately needed). Hopefully Bombardment will be changed to compensate this loss, but as of now it has only been changed to account for the focus component.

Any new pets?

I’m not sure! I haven’t had the chance to check yet. Characters were all wiped so I’m starting from scratch. I’m debating leveling as survival this time, but I’m not promising anything. I did check on Gara though (of course) and there’s nothing to report yet.

On a weird note, Dismiss Pet is missing from hunter spellbooks in this build. Not sure if that is intentional or not. If it is, I don’t see how it solves button bloat since hunters use this spell enough that they’d want to make a macro button for it anyway (/petdismiss).

That’s all for now. I’ll update the post is anything else major is discovered.