It’s been nearly 13 months since the last major WoW patch. Can we never have that happen again, Blizzard? Please? Alright then… so what’s there for a Hunter to do on patch day? Well, I can tell you what I’ll be doing.
First I’ll login to every character to collect their transmogs, then vendor most of that gear away (I have a feeling the enchanting market will be flooded). Then I will tame some new pets, probably starting with Thok. Then I’ll go learn all of the items that have become toys in 7.0. Collecting toys is kind of my thing (I even made a damn spreadsheet in preparation). I think I’ll have about ~270 of them on patch day, so getting to the 300 toy achievement in Legion should be easy (you get a recolored Sky Golem mount as the reward).
Then at some point I’ll begin the laborious process of opening thousands of Salvage Crates. From the gear in there, I will learn the appearances I don’t know and probably auction the rest to other transmog collectors. This is the part where it sucks to have only played Hunters for most of your WoW career. I do have some reasonably high level plate and cloth toons to send BoEs to for unlocking (and I think I will need to for the achievements, there’s only so much mail armor).
After that there won’t be much for me to do until the pre-expansion content starts unlocking (demon invasions). I am looking forward to that stuff. I imagine there will be a little more for you to explore if you weren’t on the beta or didn’t spend much time on the PTR.
What is the best Hunter spec for 7.0?
I don’t know. You tell me. 😛
BM, MM, and SV are all really close in damage output for the pre-patch. I think it’s good to experiment with all of them before Legion, so you can choose what artifact to pursue first. Even if you dabbled in the PTR, there is a huge difference from beating on a target dummy and doing regular content over a period of weeks. Try out the new specs in dungeons, raids, solo content, and PvP. Haven’t those dummies suffered enough?
I posted a “getting started” guide of sorts for all 3 Hunter specs over at Blizzard Watch this week. It covers the basics of each spec in 7.0 but doesn’t go into the advanced. If you have no idea where to begin with these new specs, it’s probably a good starting point for you.
In the past, Hunter specs were close enough to each other (gameplay wise) that it wasn’t a huge deal to swap between them. It was sort of expected that one spec would be better for a particular patch and everyone would swap to it. In Legion, I’m not so sure if that’s such a good idea.
Chances are only one of the specs will resonate with you because of how different they are. Play that one. Honestly, just have fun. Blizzard has “promised” that every spec will be viable in Legion, and so far this is true. I know my statement here doesn’t really apply to the hardcore Mythic raiders — they’ll always play the spec with the best potential, and good for them. They’re competitive and it’s necessary. But if you aren’t in that situation (like 95% of us), please just play the game for fun. Whether that’s sticking to one spec, playing two, or even playing all three.
Secondary Stats
Hunter stat priorities are changing some in the pre-patch, but probably not enough for most people to worry about.
- BM: Mastery > Haste > Crit > Vers (all pretty close)
- SV: Vers > Crit > Haste > Mastery (lol)
- MM: Mastery > Haste > Vers > Crit
Mastery is ahead by a good margin for MM (Sniper Training is a lot better now), with the last 3 stats all being very close. If you’re trying to max out MM, you’ll probably want to swap all your Crit gems/enchants to Mastery.
SV is the odd one out. BM and MM work great with Mastery, while it’s mostly a garbage stat for Survival at the moment. Hunting Companion isn’t very good.
Immaculate gems are being buffed from +75 to +200 stats, so if you have any unused socketed gear it may become a better option in the pre-patch.
Trinkets and Gear
Long story short, Hellfire Citadel trinkets have been nerfed for whatever reason, including the beloved Mirror of the Blademaster. Trinkets such as Infallible Tracking Charm, Stone of the Elements, and Chipped Soul Prism are among the top trinkets for all 3 specs. Yes, even over some Mythic HFC trinkets. Check out Icy Veins for BiS pre-patch trinkets: BM, SV, MM.
I’ll probably rock the Stone of the Elements and Infallible Tracking Charm for BM. I do have the Chipped Soul Prism, but it’s not socketed or valor upgraded.
Tier 17 and tier 18 set bonuses were updated to support the new specs. As for Survival melee weapons, I made an entire post about that. It details some easy ways to get your hands on a melee weapon.
Addons
Patch days are always iffy for addons, so I don’t know if your favorites will be updated in time, but I wanted to highlight a couple of new ones that I think are worth having.
- DejaCharacterStats restores all of the details from the old character sheet. For some reason Blizzard removed a lot of this in the default UI for 7.0. I think it’s worth having to see Focus Regeneration alone.
- AdvancedInterfaceOptions restores the huge plethora of interface options that Blizzard also removed in 7.0.
Oh, and keep an eye on World Quest Tracker. It won’t be of any use until Legion launches, but I think there’s a chance that an addon like this could turn into Legion’s version of Master Plan.
If you have any other 7.0/Legion addon suggestions, let me know.
New Hunter Pets
There are quite a few new pets to tame, and Petopia has the full list of everything available in the pre-patch. I hope you made room in your stables.
All but two Mechanical pets will be available for taming if you are a Goblin or Gnome. Many of these mech pets have challenges or gimmicks associated with them. Wowhead asked me to do a complete guide on Mechanical pets, which you can find right here. It’ll show you how to find and tame each mech! Those of you who aren’t Gnomes or Goblins (and don’t want to race change) will have to wait until Legion for your chance at these.
As for non-mech pets, I think my favorite additions to the pre-patch are Thok the Bloodthirsty and the updated Core Hounds. The easiest way to get to Thok is to go to the Seat of Knowledge in Pandaria and queue for the Underhold wing of SoO LFR. You’ll have to kill Malkorok and Spoils of Pandaria to get to Thok, who is just a simple walk up and tame. I was able to solo this fine on the PTR, but if you’re not raid geared you may need a friend to help you out. The orange, green, and yellow Core Hounds were updated with new textures and effects and they look amazing.
Hey, Bendak, what about those new Scalehide and Oxen families? Oh, yeah. Those. It’s not that I don’t like any of them (I like the yaks and mushan especially), it’s that Blizzard decided not to give these two families Basic Attacks (like claw or bite). Obviously this is a bug that will be fixed at some point, but I reported said bug months ago on the alpha and it’s still not been addressed. Hopefully this is at least fixed for Legion. In the meantime, feel free to tame Scalehides and Oxen, just realize that they will be a DPS loss over other families until this bug is fixed. So I wouldn’t recommend using them quite yet. Update: This has been hotfixed.
Speaking of pet abilities, they are in a sad state right now. Group buffs are gone, so any pet that had one has no special abilities now. Pets that had other abilities (like Shell Shield for a Turtle) remain intact. This creates a weird inconsistency where some pets have useful abilities and others have nothing at all. It’s even weirder for Exotic beasts as now some of them have worse abilities than standard pets, which begs the question of why Exotics are even a thing anymore? I campaigned hard for Blizzard to make pet abilities consistent, but no such luck yet. I’m hoping they still have something up their sleeve in this department because right now it feels like they just took a sledgehammer to the whole system and didn’t pick up the shattered pieces (too dramatic?).
So, did I miss anything? Probably. If you have any questions about the pre-patch, feel free to ask below and I’ll see if I can answer. 🙂
Is it possible to already get the mats in SoO for the iron juggernaut pets on non gnomes or goblins in the pre patch?
Yup! Just make sure you don’t summon the juggernaut and waste the item until you can tame mechs in Legion! It is consumed on use.
hey bendak! this blog is fantastic 🙂 keep it up!!!!!!
from your experience in 7.0 what is best for aoe? Beast cleave or chimera breath/wurm earthshake?
Thanks, Bendak! I appreciate all your work to keep us informed. 🙂
What about white Corehounds? No update for them??
Nope. The reason these ones saw updates is because they share the same model/skin as the 10th anniversary Core Hound mount and they could re-use those assets. Chromaggus and The Kurken are unique.
Is race change to gnome hunter available on day one?
Yes
Awesome thanks, couldn’t find definitive answer anywhere myself 😀
Looked over the new pets on Petopia…wow, not one new cat. Being a cat guy, this has me down a bit. I do like the new bear looks, but long ago when we had to keep them happy, I had a bear run away from me. Ever since then I don’t trust them…even though it’s impossible for that to happen again. To this day my wife asks if I’ve seen any sign of Yogi anywhere. Yes, epic level smartass 🙁
There are new cats coming in Legion, as well as Mana Sabers (spirit beasts). But yeah no new cats in the pre-patch. Sorry to hear about Yogi.
Hey bendak, What about those Mana Wyrms. Are these going to become Tameable for the Serpent Family once the Pre Patch for Legion hits Live?
Yes, you can see them all on the petopia list: http://www.wow-petopia.com/prelegion.php
I definitely prefer them to the other style of flying serpents.
Are we getting access to new talents or are they just changing the current ones?
Talents still only go up to lvl 100. So the same number of talents as before, but almost all of them are changed.
Haste still capped at 19%?
Great posting and writing. I can’t imagine questing as Marksman but surely am willing to give it a try. I suppose Tanaan is the best place to go and practice some stuff.
It will be a shock, I’m a-guessing.
What do you think (by the way) of the MM Artifact little speed buff? I think it’s the only Artifact that impacts other players.
To be honest I didn’t have much trouble leveling with petless MM at all. You can always take the Black Arrow talent for that as well. The MM artifact speed bonus is very nice, it’s like having the old Aspect of the Cheetah back. Survival actually has two cool bonuses (an eagle that helps you in combat, plus you fly as an eagle when you’re a ghost). BM doesn’t have any special effects like that.
Windrunning, the MM artifact bonus, is one of the reasons I’m seriously considering getting my MM artifact first, despite the BM artifact quest-line matching my dwarf better. I always used Cheetah a lot in towns so I’ve gotten used to a little extra running speed.
I found MM with Black Arrow talent and pet (with growl off, or tenacity specced) is quite easy for some initial questing on the broken isles. Sidewinders + Marked shot +Barrage means you don’t have to use Aimed Shot too much and it’s cast-time is still way better than it was at the start of WoD. MM also has an extra defense ability in bursting shot (basically a push back ability) which is quite nice.
I hope BM gets some useful special effects because it’s really lacking in utility at the moment. I get the feeling Blizzard wants to entice/force people to try out the new SV/MM specs.
I still haven’t decided on MM or BM as main spec for Legion. Questing with BM on beta wasn’t too bad either though with Chimaera Shot just so I have an extra button press.
I have mixed feelings about Patch 7.0. It will be good to finally get some room in my bags&bank again but it also means saying goodbye to BM in it’s current form which is probably the most fun hunter spec since vanilla
Amen. BM is a hollow shell at this point. SO bummed. Started in it day one (got the statue) and now … they really just want it gone.
I dusted off my rogue. Not much better.
Are you still having to macro attack for your pets in everything that the hunter does or have they fixed the lag/attack/pathing issues for pets now?
Thanks for the great introduction!
Fixed that? I wish. Nah, you’re still going to want to macro /petattack into Kill Command at least so that you can instantly switch targets with it. Hati will also switch the same time as your main pet at least.
The following update was released by Blizzard yesterday: “Hunter, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, and Death Knight pets have been trained to move around more smoothly and better adjust to player pathing when the player is moving.”
Has anyone noticed that pathing is better? More importantly, has anyone noticed that pets are now more likely to attack when the hunter attacks rather than waiting to make a sandwich first?
I have yet to be in game since this went live and am curious. It would be a big deal if this gets fixed.
Thanks!
I had the chance to play last night and this AM. I think pathing in terms of our pets following us is improved. I saw no signs that they attacked any more quickly or shifted between targets as I did any better. This has such an impact on the class, both in terms of playability and concept. Whether it is by accident or design, it must be changed.
Hey! Im looking everywhere if the Stable will be getting more slots for more pets in the pre patch or in legion but cant find it, tons of new pets and im quite full by now 🙁 Any idea?
No more slots 🙁
Awwww T_T That’s awful! I have no idea what to release 🙁
You filled 55 slots? I’m impressed. O.O
I’m still feeling iffy about the class changes, but we’ll see how they are tomorrow, before I drop $50 on the expansion. I’ll be doing the same wardrobe stuff and bank cleaning, and then I’m gonna go tame a kodo even if they’re fairly useless right now, and THEN I’ll see about all the class changes. I’m considering starting a new hunter for the full experience, but idk yet.
It’s kind of a bummer that we have updated models for several things, as well as yet another entirely new model for wolves/cats, but things like hyenas (which I adore) are still running around with crappy vanilla models. Although at this point, considering what they’ve done to bears, an updated hyena might be utterly horrible, it’s so hard to tell with Blizzard. 😛
I will be going BM in the Pre-patch. Can you recommend what talents to use for now? I’m a little lost as for what to pick.
I have some recommendations here https://legion.wowhead.com/guides/classes/hunter/beast-mastery/talents
Any recommendations on Survival weapon enchants?
Mark of Shadowmoon
Thanks!
Azortharian’s guides are up on icy-veins now. I’ve looked through the BM one and it makes sense based on what I’ve played in Beta.
Also, WeakAuras2, Shadowed Unit Frames, Bartender, Omen, and Skada should be working for patch day, since they work in Beta. In case anyone uses J’s Hunter Bar (JSHB), Kaelyth redid it from the ground up and is calling it ClassMods now; I’ve been testing it out on Beta.
-BM_Jaeger
So… Thok changes color depending on what npcs you let out of the Cages, Red for Yaungol, Blue for Jinyu, and Green for Sourok. Has anyone tried to tame one of the other colors yet?
I’m pretty sure it was reported that it doesn’t matter what color you tame him with — he reverts to the blackish color.
That’s a bit disappointing, thanks for the reply.
I am excited and scared to go home…..
None of the three specs look particularly interesting to me…tonight’s raid will be interesting. Clearing Mythic HFC with all these changes will be the most entertaining raid XP in months….
IDEA: All pets have a special ability that is only useable by BM hunters.
This preserves the idea of exotic beasts, but greatly expands the selection of pets with a certian ability.
I’ll stick to my opinion – as fun as survival gameplay may be. Raids don’t need hunters as melee. As if any raid would ever call for ‘more melees’ unless they are really shorthanded.
bm (sorry don’t bite me) got just butchered down to an empty husk in this addon. No utility. No control. Hell even MM has more durable pets without losing dps by just going with a tenacity pet and a black arrow guardian splitting the damage up between the two.
Everything feels different, and I don’t feel strong in any field anymore. Marksmanship is absolutely bewildering with its Sidewinders and randomly generated damage debuffs. Beast Mastery feels neutered with the removed glyphs and removed pet utility– I actually have sequences where I do *nothing* due to focus generation being passive. Oh, and Survival has just lost its mind.
Very tempted to re-roll now. Hunters were a lot of fun to play in MoP, and still held some charm in WoD.
BM is weak in the beginning, but titanstrike will bring back the tough feeling. And as you get more AP in titanstrike they get super tough.
After spending last night trying to cope with the Hunter changes, and gaping spaces in my UI where Hunter ability buttons once resided, it’s unfortunately refreshing to know I’m not losing my mind. The feeling of being lost and out of touch with the only class I’ve played since starting over ten years ago was fairly pronounced. At first I thought some addons were really bugging out, as I could have sworn I was missing a full page of abilities from yea o’ spellbook. Not the case at all. This is the new opportunity Blizzard has provided to be at one with one’s selected Hunter Spec. While I’ll support our Survival Hunter brothers and sisters, as they are Hunters after all, I must comment on that polearm mailed to us, as it journeyed from my mailbox to a vendor faster than any other item that’s been vendored. Shouldn’t have Blizzard provided an achievement for that?! **Thank you, Bendak, for time and time again helping to ease the blow with your informative and even insightful posts.**
Played around with BM a bit today. I’ve played hunter for 9 years now, and have been BM about 90% of that time(switched to MM during mid-ICC because ArmPen was OP and the raid leader gave me little choice).
I picked BM from the start because having a pet was my aesthetic. Bonding with that beast and adventuring through Azeroth together was the exact thing I wanted. After trying stuff out today, a few things stick with me a lot. I know everything is weird because this is all tuned for artifacts and we don’t have those, and yes, I’m damn excited to have two pets finally running around with me, but just…things feel odd.
A) I feel very disconnected from the pets I’m summoning. I don’t like all these random pets, and while I realize there’s a glyph to summon some of my stabled pets some of the time, I don’t understand why that same glyph can’t just…summon nothing but my stabled pets 100% of the time?? I don’t understand why it needs to be this random roulette summoning thing. And Stampede is even worse. Okay, thank you for taking yourselves literally. Yes, now it is a proper stampede, but it’s a stampede of throwaway pets I don’t care about. I miss the stampede of my stable coming out to play.
B) Everything procs at such weird times I find myself looking at my bars way more than I should be. This could possibly be just a hold over of me relearning my class on day 2 of pre-patch, but I already miss having my internal clock tell me exactly when I needed to push buttons(which could also just be from 13 months of doing the same shit every week or some people saying the class was too easy((easy to learn, hard to master)) but still). I haven’t died to fire since Cata(no joke) and was the most mobile and alert I’ve ever been in Pandaria and WoD, but tonight I nearly died three times because I was looking at my ability bars and focus bar so much trying to keep track of what was randomly procc’ing. Time will tell if my brain and eyes adapt.
C) My pet is so squishy. It’s…sad. I’m not even trying to solo raids or anything, just LFR and doing some of the pulls I did before in Tanaan(big ones, lots of mobs, had no trouble with them before). A squishy pet wouldn’t be so bad if mend pet hadn’t been gimped so badly. I don’t understand why hunters, the over-arching pet spec, have tank pets that can’t hold a candle to a warlock pet.
Again, time will tell on some of these things. I just really wish I saw my stabled pets for everything, and I wish my pet didn’t get gibbed so often now.
Even though I usually play MM i fancy this Thok the Bloodthirsty as a BM pet. Thing is, I got killed on the first boss on LFR. I’m around 715ilvl atm, is this too low for soloing SoO or am I doing something wrong? I am getting killed mainly because the boss is pulling me to the air.
use disengage when you get thrown into the air. You don’t get ejected from the circle, you hit an invisible barrier at the back.
And use aspect of the turtle when he goes into the blood rage if you enjoy living. Probably do the mechanics properly too and make sure you step in the purple swirlys to get the barrier. I’m at 695 and it took a few tries (and maybe a flask helped, I don’t know) but the disengage was essential.
Thank you! I was maining DK on MoP so I didn’t even though on Disengage
You should send a link to these forum posts to blizz so me and others can up vote the. Or put more insight to it. I couldn’t find it.
So, what about tranquilizing shot? Is there an alternative for Survival? Wonder how I am gonna det the vial of fel cleansing without it.
You may have to swap specs in Lion’s Watch in order to do it. As far as I know, no Tranquilizing Shot equivalent for Survival. At least we don’t have to have dual spec unlocked or anything to change specs, now.
So, ran a heroic yesterday to get a feel for it. I was on BM, and the fight was Archemond. We wiped like 3 times and I was about to go when I decided to switch to MM. I was pleasantly surprised at my durability. During the previous 3, I died a horrible death along with my pet. After switching, I lived, we downed the boss, and I was 7th in DPS. Nothing to write home about, but not bad for the first try. Certainly, I’m not saying we won because I switched…just saying I adapted and personally overcame the situation.
It wasn’t hard to figure out. When I’m off soloing the world, as usual BM is perfect. Once the instance door closes behind me, out comes MM. On a side note, I’ve tried Survival too and crazily enjoy it. Then again, I always enjoyed when we were able to melee way back in time. Now, with the coordinated attack it’s even more fun.
Anyway, the point is having fun on the game. Stop worrying about things and take the time to work it out. Hunters have been through far worse nerfings and we came through. No different now. Look, if we wanted things easy, we would have rolled Paladins. Just saying…
I keep seeing pics of hunters with 2 mech pets at the same time (Treble and Rush basically)… Is this a thing we could do in Legion?… Or we will have to stick with Hati and another pet?…
I wish we could haveTreble and Rush at the same time! =D
One pet will be Hati, but you can use the Essence Swapper (http://www.wowhead.com/item=138393/essence-swapper) on it to make it look like Treble (or Rush). And then have the other out as your regular pet.
AWESOME!
Great post Bendak! I have a suggestion for the add-on section: If anyone is addicted to JSHB (JS Hunterbar) and was sad to hear that it is no longer continued, the co-author (kaelyth, who has been keeping the add-on up to date) expanded it into classmods (https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/classmods) which you can now use for your alts as well!
¿Can someone tell me if there’s any DPS difference between Exotic and normal pets? I would rlly like to tame a Yak ^^
There is no difference. Have fun with your Yak!
Thx!! Now i’ll become a mongol hunter!
Looks like at this point, Oxen and Scalehide do have a Basic attack, Smack. Has the same dmg listed as Bite or Claw.
Is there anyway we can convince Blizzard to let hunters Tame the new Unicorns? (Wild Dream Runner, Equine SunRunners etc) They are really awesome looking critters.