All posts by bendak

Hunter News, Opinion

WoD Beta: Number tuning is almost here, but is that all?

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Survival and marksmanship are in need of some help in the damage department, and it’s coming soon.

This is both good news and bad news. Good news because numbers will start to become balanced. Bad news because it means most of the actual design is done. I’m personally most concerned about survival right now, but marksmanship has problems too depending on who you ask. The other specs have both a cooldown and execute. Survival feels strange without either. There is, however, some good news about Black Arrow.

Continue reading WoD Beta: Number tuning is almost here, but is that all? →

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Opinion

Fun Hunter Glyph Ideas

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Hunter glyphs? Let’s be honest. They’re not terribly exciting. I’m talking more about the minor glyphs here. We do have some pretty good major ones, even though we now have fewer options in Warlords due to some of them being exclusive with each other.  For example, you can’t use Glyph of Liberation and Glyph of Disengage at the same time, or Glyph of Mending and Glyph of Mend Pet. You have to choose one or the other.

We did get a few new options in Warlords. Here they are:

  • Glyph of Snake Trap (Major) — Your Ice Trap is replaced with Snake Trap. Venomous snakes released by the trap will poison nearby enemies with a Crippling Poison that reduces movement speed by 50% for 12 sec.
  • Glyph of Quick Revival (Major) — Your Revive Pet is now instant but costs 80 Focus.
  • Glyph of Deep Frost (Major) — Victims of your Freezing Trap are now immune to any damage for its duration.
  • Glyph of Play Dead (Minor) — Your pet also plays dead when you use Feign Death.

The first two aren’t really my cup of tea. Deep Frost has some situational uses I would think. Play Dead is simply awesome.

Continue reading Fun Hunter Glyph Ideas →

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Off Topic

10 Years, 10 Questions

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The ALT:ernative Chat blog has started a “10 Years :: 10 Questions” project, asking players to answer 10 questions about their finest memories in World of Warcraft. She plans on reading them all and producing a series of podcast documentaries featuring some of the best entries.

I thought this project sounded pretty awesome, and I’ll never turn down an opportunity to wax nostalgic about my old times in WoW. I chose to answer my questions in blog form, but you can also submit your answers directly to the project here.

Ready to be crit with a wall of text for over 9000? Then continue reading…

Continue reading 10 Years, 10 Questions →

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Hunter News

WoD Beta 18689: Perks on the chopping block

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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).

Continue reading WoD Beta 18689: Perks on the chopping block →

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Savage Warwolf

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Just when I thought my stable was safe…

It looks like we finally have a successor to the Shattered Hand Warhound from Outland. The Savage Warwolf is a level 98 wolf pet found in Nagrand (Draenor). It runs around Telaar with the orcs that use these beasts for their mounts. I’ve never seen more than one or two up at a time, but they do respawn fairly quickly. So don’t be surprised if you go there and don’t see any immediately. The ones being ridden don’t count as beasts, you need the riderless ones.

Check out the video below to see this cool wolf in motion.

Continue reading Pet of the Week: Savage Warwolf →

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Hunter News

WoD Beta 18663: Clefthooves, Stags, and more new pets

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The highlight of this beta patch was a serious amount of new tameable hunter pets. We have two new pet families and a bunch of new pet skins to discover.

Let’s get the non-pet stuff out of the way first because there’s not much of it in this build:

  • Glyph of Misdirection is back in the build. This has been absent from alpha/beta for a very long time, and some of us were beginning to get worried. It’s all good though.
  • Misdirection is now learned at level 42 (old: level 76)
  • Exotic Munitions: Poisoned Ammo has been buffed slightly (40% AP to 48% AP)
  • Exotic Munitions: Frozen Ammo has had its damage nerfed considerably (40% weapon damage down to 15%). There should no longer be a question of what munition does the most damage on single target.
  • Hunter WoD PvP Marksmanship 4P Bonus: Aimed Shot reduces the cooldown of Rapid Fire by 5 sec.
  • All enchants have been buffed. For example, cloak enchants now grant 250 seconday stats (up from 200).
  • Scopes have been buffed (from 750 to 938 stats)

Continue reading WoD Beta 18663: Clefthooves, Stags, and more new pets →

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

Gara, the loyal Spirit Wolf: Hints at a new tame?

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Hunter @Miacoda discovered this sad and lonely spirit wolf, Gara, apparently keeping vigil at its master’s grave in Shadowmoon Valley for Elune knows how long. The interesting thing about Gara is that you can only interact with her if you are in beast mastery spec. Nothing happens yet, but this is a pretty big hint at something.

Update on Gara: For the latest info on Gara, see this new post.

Continue reading Gara, the loyal Spirit Wolf: Hints at a new tame? →

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Hunter Guides, Hunter News

Hunter scopes in Warlords of Draenor

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It looks like hunters will finally have more than one weapon enchant to choose from, for the first time since vanilla that I can recall (back then it was 3% hit or +9 weapon damage I believe). Unfortunately they still don’t make your weapon glow or shoot out flaming arrows or anything fancy like that. Visual effects are still the territory of melee enchants it seems.

The new scopes proc one of three secondary stats. Like everything else in Warlords, the procs are moving away from primary stats entirely. It’s a good move in my book. I spoke here about how this new system is almost like a replacement for reforging, allowing you to customize your secondary stats to a reasonably large degree. These scopes further emphasize this new method of secondary stat stacking. (Update: You can’t stack secondary stats quite as much as you used to with the reversal to agility flasks, but it’s still there to some degree).

Continue reading Hunter scopes in Warlords of Draenor →

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Hunter News

Many Hunters! Handling it! An interview with Artemishowl on all-hunter raiding

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Who needs tanks when you have turtles? Who needs healers when you have spirit beasts?

A group of top US Horde hunters have been tackling Mists of Pandaria raid bosses over the last couple of months with much success. Both tier 14 and tier 15 have been cleared in 10-man and 25-man. They’ve even killed the majority of them in heroic mode (all but a few in Throne of Thunder). This Saturday, August 2 they will make their first all-hunter attempt at Siege of Orgimmar in flexible mode.

I contacted one of the raid leaders of Team Hunter, Artemishowl of Blood Legion, to ask her some questions about what it takes to pull this off. She was kind enough to take time out of her schedule to answer, so let’s get to it. You’ll also find some videos embedded in this post showing off some of their kills.

Continue reading Many Hunters! Handling it! An interview with Artemishowl on all-hunter raiding →

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Draenor Raptors

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I’m looking forward to using raptor pets more often in Warlords of Draenor. Not just because of these cool new models/skins, but because raptors now bring a crit buff, Strength of the Pack, which makes them useful in more situations.

The best way to describe these new raptors is just that they’re classic WoW raptors re-done in higher definition. Take a look at the video below to see them in action.

Continue reading Pet of the Week: Draenor Raptors →

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