Monthly Archives: December 2015

Hunter Transmog

Hunter Transmog: Challenge Mode Weapons

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Consider this to be your 6-month warning. Like the Challenge Mode armor from Mists of Pandaria, the Challenge Mode weapons from Warlords of Draenor will probably be going away forever in the 7.0 patch.  I remember the mad rush for people to complete the MoP CMs in the final days leading up to 6.0. I knew people with the gold to spend on carries who couldn’t get it done in time because of the sheer demand those carry groups were under in the final days. So if you want these? Don’t procrastinate!

What’s more, it looks like Challenge Mode transmogs will be going account wide for the same class. So if you unlock this stuff on a Hunter, theoretically you should be able to use it on any Hunter on your account. For someone like me who only plays Hunters this is pretty cool news. There’s no word yet if the weapons you unlock will be usable on other classes though. For example, Hunters can buy almost all of the weapons (except for a few), but I’m not sure that means you could use the 2H sword on a Warrior alt (don’t count on it).

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Hunter Guides

Infallible Tracking Charm: How does the heirloom trinket stack up?

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I’ve gotten a handful of questions about the heirloom trinket, so I thought it was worth a quick post to make the info easily searchable. Is the Infallible Tracking Charm worth using? It will obviously be a nice trinket for leveling to 110 as it scales up, but how about now, in Hellfire Citadel?

For those who don’t know, this heirloom trinket has a chance (roughly 5%) to drop from any mythic dungeon boss. It’s personal loot so it doesn’t matter what your loot rules are. This is a good week to run these dungeons because it’s the dungeon bonus event (complete 4 mythics, get a heroic raid cache) and a lot of people are running them in group finder.

The trinket is ilvl 715 at level 100 and it cannot be upgraded with valor. It has 351 passive agility and a proc called Cleansing Flame which instantly does damage to your target and increases damage you deal against demons by 10% for 5 sec.

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Opinion

Legion Alpha: Some more things making me grumpy about Survival

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Warning: This post is going to be a bit of a rant. If you’re looking for objective analysis, you can skip this post, alright?

The most recent alpha build has some changes to Survival that unfortunately made the spec… less exciting… for me. Alpha/beta is a very iterative process so I guess this is to be expected. You can’t get attached to anything this early in development. Pretty much anything could be ripped out from under your feet.

Like Dragonsfire Trap.

That trap may have been my favorite single thing about the spec. It was a powerful talent that transformed your Explosive Trap into a single target DoT that caused the target to “panic” for 8 seconds. While panicking, they were completely CC’d and that CC did not break on damage. It was a worthy trap for the one remaining spec that can actually use traps.

And now? Now it’s basically a useless talent in comparison to the old. It’s a itty bitty fire damage DoT that slows the target by 20%. I don’t know, maybe they thought the old version was overpowered? I don’t see why though. For starters, you can make its CC break in PvP if that’s your concern. Secondly, you had to forgo a cooldown like Snake Hunter to even get it! Then if you wanted it to live up to its full potential, you had to devote your level 100 talent (Expert Trapper) to it too! Yes, it was a very powerful trap but look at what you gave up to get it. I thought this was a cool thing! It was a interesting choice to make in solo/questing situations. It could have also given you a lot of utility in dungeons by sacrificing a little DPS.

What I’ve noticed about this change is my overall survivability out in the world has dropped. I guess I was relying on that trap a little too much? Since my pet can’t really tank (especially in AoE) because it holds no threat, I was using that CC to avoid damage. Now I am relegated to killing only 1-3 mobs at a time. First WoW problems? Maybe I’m just spoiled from how Hunters have been for so long. Maybe I’m too focused on the solo experience and need to account more for the group experience (it’s always more difficult to do that in beta).

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Hunter News

Beast Mastery will dual wield pets in Legion

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I’ve talked about my desire for Beast Mastery to be able to have two pets many times in the past, and I’m happy to say it looks like it’s becoming a reality in Legion. I hesitate to get too excited since things can so easily change at this point, but I can’t resist.

The extra pet is tied into Titanstrike, the Beast Mastery artifact, so this is not something you’ll see at earlier levels. Also, some of the functionality of the secondary pet isn’t unlocked until you get deeper into your artifact trait tree. Lastly, the secondary pet is probably going to be a fixed appearance as it’s referred to by name (Hati) and is themed around being the guardian of the Titanstrike.

Update: Beast Mastery is now unlocked on the alpha. More details here. 

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Hunter News

Legion Alpha: Hunter tier 19 armor preview

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Both Wowhead and MMO-Champion posted previews of the Hunter tier 19 (and PvP) armor today. This is definitely Sylvanas-inspired armor and will probably suit Marksmanship the best with their Dark Ranger talent and the Thas’dorah bow. There are many colors for the various difficulties and PvP tiers, with the Mythic and Elite PvP sets being a little bit flashier as usual.

For the other colors, I’m not sure which goes with what difficulty yet. We won’t know for sure until the tier sets are in the database. When that happens we should also be able to preview the sets on other races with the model viewer on Wowhead.

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Hunter News, Opinion

Legion Alpha: Some more time with the Melee Hunter

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I’ve warmed up to the melee Hunter a little more since my last post. I still don’t think it’s going to pull me away from my bread and butter (Beast Mastery), but I am starting to get the hang of it. I still sometimes need to remind myself to use traps more often because they can make such a difference now. More specifically, Steel Trap and Dragonsfire Trap. Sometimes I wish the Trap Launcher toggle was still there because it would be nice to avoid that extra click and just drop the trap at my feet when I don’t need to throw it.

I’m really enjoying Harpoon the more I use it, but the ability has some quirks. The first is one I am sure will be fixed, basically it just pulls you in a direct line to your target, even if that makes you clip through the ground. Secondly, I wish it made you leap towards your target in a small arc, rather than just be dragged along the ground. Lastly, I wish there was less of a delay. You have to wait for the travel time of your harpoon before it starts pulling you. That makes sense, but I wish it could be thrown a bit quicker.

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Hunter News, Opinion

Legion Alpha: Testing the new melee Survival Hunter

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I’m in Alpha! Yay! So far only Survival is playable, so I was kinda forced into trying out the melee Hunter first. The most recent Locked and Loaded I posted at Blizzard Watch goes into my initial thoughts on the spec (keeping in mind it’s still incredibly early). I’ll talk about some of that stuff here, but you should go read that too if you’re interested in how Survival is shaping up (coming from someone who has only ever played ranged like me).

Character copy isn’t available right now, all you’re able to do is make template level 100 characters. Upon creation the plop you into the new Dalaran (with ilvl 680 gear) and you begin the artifact quest. I’m not going to talk specific details about the story, but essentially you get your artifact weapon VERY quickly.  The Survival one involves a solo scenario that takes about 15 minutes and after that you are back in Dalaran getting your weapon. Something to keep in mind is we don’t know what comes before this (i.e. how do we get up to Dalaran?), and Blizzard needs to make 36 of these scenarios (one for each spec) so you can’t expect them to be hour-long affairs. I am satisfied with a small amount of spec-specific content like this.

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