All posts by bendak

Hunter News, Opinion

A closer look at marksmanship hunters in Warlords

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Update 8/22: This article is still mostly accurate but is slightly depreciated. It will give you a good overview of the overall changes but you may want to view more recent posts under the Marksmanship tag for more info and recent opinions.

If you missed it earlier, Blizzard released the first version of patch notes for the Warlords of Draenor alpha. I’ve summed up all the relevant hunter info in this post if you want to catch up.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be looking at some of the individual changes in separate posts such as this one — my opinions on them, and what I think they mean for hunters.  Previously, I discussed the survival changes, and today I’m going to look at marksmanship. A new focus dump, farther attack range, and potentially “fixed” AoE? Say it ain’t so.

Continue reading A closer look at marksmanship hunters in Warlords →

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Hunter News

Holy Misdirection Buff, Batman!

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I was just listening to the live interview with Celestalon on Final Boss TV, and he dropped a bomb in regards to Misdirection in Warlords of Draenor. Here is the new tooltip just posted by Wowhead:

Misdirection

Wow! You’ll effectively be able to permanently transfer threat to the tank (or your pet for soloing I would imagine). This was added to give hunters a little more raid utility, without that utility being a “mandatory” raid-wide DPS or survival cooldown.

I’m sure we’ll get more details soon, like if there are any restrictions, but I’m pretty excited about this. Not just for raiding but for keeping mobs on my pet while soloing. Finally I won’t have to use a major glyph slot to keep my pet permanently misdirected.

Updated 4/21:

Sorry for those of you who were excited for the change, but it looks like it’s not going to happen anymore. Blizzard has something else up their sleeve for hunters.

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

New Hunter pets and pet buffs in Warlords

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More fun hunter stuff from the Warlords of Draenor alpha has been datamined! First up, it looks like all buffs will be able to be provided by non-Exotic pets, including bloodlust/heroism.  It appears that some exotic pets will be getting new special abilities instead of having access to exclusive buffs.

We currently know about 5 new pet families in Warlords:

  • Rylak (Exotic) — Haste, Stamina, and Slow fall
  • Riverbeast — Mortal Wounds (reduced healing)
  • Hydra — Mastery buff
  • Stags – Versatility buff
  • Clefthooves (Exotic) — Versatility, Multistrike, and damage reduction.

To learn more about the new pet families in Warlords, check out this video. 

Below is a handful of the new pets you’ll find in Draenor.

Continue reading New Hunter pets and pet buffs in Warlords →

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Hunter News

New hunter glyphs datamined

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The fine folks over at Wowhead have been datamining the alpha client and there’s a few more huntery things to share, including 4 new glyphs.

New Glyphs
  • 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.
    • It looks like Snake Trap is being removed as a baseline trap, but for those who will miss it, you can turn your Ice Trap back into Snake Trap. The only difference is the snakes will only use Crippling Poison.
  • Glyph of Quick Revival (Major) — Your Revive Pet is now instant but costs 80 Focus.
    • I would have a hard time using up a major glyph slot on this one. With Heart of the Phoenix, and now that Revive Pet’s cast time is already below 2 seconds with haste… it just doesn’t seem that appealing to me, but it may have use in specific soloing situations.
  • Glyph of Deep Frost (Major) — Victims of your Freezing Trap are now immune to any damage for its duration.
    • Sooo… what if we want to break the target out early? In PvP its not as much of an issue, but the 1 min duration in PvE could be annoying. On the other hand, there are probably situations where it would be nice to lock down an add for a minute and not have to worry about it breaking.
  • Glyph of Play Dead (Minor) — Your pet also plays dead when you use Feign Death.
    • How adorable. Seriously, this is a pretty fun sounding minor glyph.
Glyph Changes

As a bonus, check out this BoP engineer crafted gun, Shrediron’s Face Shredder.

 

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Hunter News, Opinion

A closer look at survival hunters in Warlords of Draenor

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Update 8/22: This article is still mostly accurate but is slightly depreciated. It will give you a good overview of the  overall changes but you may want to view more recent posts under the Survival tag for more info and recent opinions.

If you missed it yesterday, Blizzard released the first version of patch notes for the Warlords of Draenor alpha. I’ve summed up all the relevant hunter info in this post if you want to catch up.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be looking at some of the individual changes in separate posts such as this one — my opinions on them, and what I think they mean for hunters.  Today I’m going to start with the survival spec changes as there seems to be a lot of discussion and concern over the removal of Kill Shot from survival’s toolkit. The news isn’t all bad though. Survival may actually live up to its namesake now.

Continue reading A closer look at survival hunters in Warlords of Draenor →

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Off Topic, Opinion

The end-of-expansion doldrums

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My WoW playing time has dropped off a cliff over the past few weeks. My motivation to gear up any further is mostly gone, though that isn’t anything new. I always feel like that at the end of an expansion when I know quest greens and dungeon blues are about to replace all my purples. There’s nothing wrong with that. I look forward to getting the new gear and starting fresh.

But for some reason this lack of new content just feels worse than previous expansions. I’m guessing this is due to a complete and utter lack of WoW news. I don’t want to say they promised it, but the way devs were talking at BlizzCon certainly implied that Warlords would be out sooner than normal. Now we know this is not the case and the lull in content may even be longer than Cataclysm’s. Dragon Soul lasted about 10 months, and Siege of Orgrimmar is going to have its 10 month birthday on July 10th. Judging by the estimate of a fall release, SoO is going to last a minimum of 12 months. Also, does anyone else feel weird using their Warlords mount and pet 6 months before the expansion actually comes out?

Continue reading The end-of-expansion doldrums →

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Aotona

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This week’s pet is one of my favorite birds, Aotona. You can find this Bird of Prey in Sholazar Basin, so if you’re looking for King Krush or Loque’nahak, it’s definitely worth flying by Aotona’s spawn points as well.

Aotona is still the only bird to use the “blue parrot” skin. Like many other birds, she also has the Trick ability which makes her do a loop. See here for a gif of it in action. We need more pets with trick abilities if you ask me! Fox pets can dance for their trick, so why not give bears and cats the ability to dance as well? There’s already animations available from the druid forms!

Check Wowhead for the spawn point map if you’re interested in this birdy, and click here to see previous pets of the week.

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

Hydras confirmed!

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In a time with so little WoW news being released, little tidbits like this really get me excited. WoW Designer @Muffinus tweeted a pic of a Hydra standing beside a hunter, and confirmed it is indeed a tamed pet. Earlier this month, he asked hunters what they’d like to see for hunter pets in Warlords. Several hunters (including myself) reiterated how much we want to see Hydras. It seems our wish has been granted.

Continue reading Hydras confirmed! →

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Hunter Guides, Hunter News

Guide for new and recently boosted hunters

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Shortly after the 90 boosts went live, Wowhead asked me to put together a guide for players who are brand new to the hunter class. The guide just went live today and it looks great! If you’re new to the class, or just want to brush up on some things, you can check it out here: Wowhead Hunter DPS Guide.

Keep in mind it’s aimed squarely at new players (all those boosted hunters everywhere!) and was intentionally kept simple! I know a different reforge can squeeze out an extra percent or two of DPS for a BM hunter under certain circumstances, but the goal was to avoid the theorycrafting stuff and keep it to the basics. Wowhead also has similar guides for every other class written by other class bloggers, so if you recently boosted a non-hunter, you can check those out here.

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Hunter Transmog

Hunter Transmog: Black Scourgestalker

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This is a recolor of the tier 8 hunter set. Out of the 4 colors available (red, blue, green, black) I definitely think this one takes the cake. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Blizzard did not add the black version of the helm to the game. I couldn’t find a good match in my transmog collection, so I defaulted to my trusty eye patch, which goes with everything!

This armor itself is acquired mostly in 10-player Ulduar (only 1 hard mode) and is soloable by any level 90 hunter. The only one that you may need some help on is with Thorim. You need to… get creative… in order to do this by yourself. You can bring a friend to help, or check out Darkbrew’s video on how to do it here. Thorim will be made “officially” soloable in patch 6.0, but that is still a while off. The other bosses you need are straight forward burns, except you should be cautious with Freya. If you kill her too fast, she won’t spawn her chest and you won’t get any loot. Some of Mimiron’s abilities in hard mode can still hurt you, so don’t faceroll it too much.

Continue reading Hunter Transmog: Black Scourgestalker →

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