Category Archives: Hunter News

There’s still some hope for a Survival cooldown

Ask any hunter who has played on beta, and they’ll probably tell you that survival feels a little empty without any baseline cooldowns or executes. We know Blizzard wants to push for survival to be the multidot/sustained damage spec, but many hunters feel it’s gone a bit too far. The good news is, it sounds like they are still mulling over the idea of survival having a cooldown.

Continue reading There’s still some hope for a Survival cooldown

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter Beta Feedback: Round 1

What follows isn’t going to written like one of my normal blog posts. It’s a copy/paste of a feedback post I made in the Warlords beta forums intended for the developers. I thought some of you may be interested in reading it anyway. I’ve added a few pictures to help with the “wall of text crits you for 9000” factor.

Continue reading Hunter Beta Feedback: Round 1

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Marksmanship mastery and Lock and Load changes, T17 Mythic armor

WoD beta build 18505 just hit the servers and with it comes some pretty substantial changes for marksmanship and survival hunters.

Marksmanship Mastery

  • Marksmanship’s mastery is no longer Wild Quiver, and is now Sniper Training.
    • When you stand still for 3 seconds, you gain Sniper Training for 6 sec, which increases your damage, shot range, and critical strike damage by 4%.

It seems like Blizzard is really pushing for marksmanship to be the turret spec. The synergy here with Focusing Shot has enormous potential if this style of play is something you’re interested in. The 4% value is the base mastery, it will be higher with mastery gear. On the beta I got it up to 10% with gear and buffs. Some of you may remember the old Sniper Training talent from back in the day, but that one was just increased damage. This new version adds critical hit damage and shot range. The shot range bit is pretty interesting. 50 yard shots? Very, very cool. I’ve done a quick bit of testing on the beta and it appears that it takes 3 seconds to activate. It doesn’t start counting down from 6 seconds until you begin moving.

aimedshotrange

The real question is if we’ll be able to give up our bunny-hopping, DPS-on-the-move freedom and revert back to turret style. What do you think?

After testing this for a bit on the beta, one thing it REALLY needs is some kind of visual to let you know you have it. Otherwise, it’s basically a “WeakAuras required” thing to get the most out of it.

Continue reading Marksmanship mastery and Lock and Load changes, T17 Mythic armor

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOCROAK

There’s a new type of mob to kill in Draenor. They’ve been dubbed “vignettes” and essentially they’re rare spawns a la the Timeless Isle, but they drop their special item (plus garrison resources) the first time you kill them. All subsequent kills will just drop junk loot.

You can find them everywhere in Draenor, some of them drop loot like trinkets or weapons, and others drop toy items. One such mob I found was the Hypnocroak. He is hidden up in a cave which, at first glance, seems unreachable without a flying mount, but then you see the little rocks jutting out of the cliff face and realize it’s actually a jumping puzzle.

Continue reading ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOCROAK

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

The best new Hunter Glyph: Glyph of Play Dead

Out of the handful of new glyphs being added for hunters in Warlords, the Glyph of Play Dead is definitely my favorite. It only takes up a minor slot, so you don’t have to worry about it clashing with anything important.

The pet not only plays its death animation but also drops aggro. This is only useful in some situations, as I quickly discovered when I feigned death to get a rare elite back on my pet. Since the pet also dropped aggro, the elite mob reset and started evading. Any time you want to be able to feign to drop aggro without resetting the fight, you’re not going to want to use this.

Continue reading The best new Hunter Glyph: Glyph of Play Dead

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

New hunter pets in Shadowmoon Valley

Shadowmoon Valley had a wider variety of tameable pets than Frostfire Ridge did (a lot of the ones in Frostfire weren’t yet flagged as tameable on the alpha). Some of the ones in Shadowmoon still can’t be tamed, but that’ll be fixed in time.

Is your stable full? You might want to make room for some of these guys, and this is only the stuff from a single zone… nevermind any rare spawns we haven’t even seen yet.

Continue reading New hunter pets in Shadowmoon Valley

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

WoD Alpha: Tanaan Jungle and Shadowmoon Valley screenshots

I’ve been playing a lot of alpha lately. Between the server instability, the crashes, and the constant bug report submissions it’s taken me quite a while to finish most of the quests in Shadowmoon Valley.  Then there’s all the new pets to tame, killing rares, working on the Garrison…

I have some more hunter-specific stuff in the pipe for over the weekend, but for now I just wanted to do a quick dump of some of my favorite screenshots from the last day or so. The screens are all 2560×1440 and there might be some good wallpaper material in here. 🙂

The Tanaan ones are from the Warlords intro/starting experience, and the Shadowmoon Valley ones were taken throughout my questing experience. As a bonus, I’ve included some screenshots taken in Blasted Lands from the pre-Warlords 6.0 patch stuff where the Iron Horde begin invading through the Dark Portal.

Continue reading WoD Alpha: Tanaan Jungle and Shadowmoon Valley screenshots

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

WoD Alpha build 18443: Hunter tier 17 armor revealed, new set bonuses

The vast majority of hunter changes in this build are tooltip changes for clearer wording, or to merge two abilities into one to reduce spellbook clutter. Piercing Shots is still listed in this build even though it’s supposedly getting removed, but I would wager that it’s just an oversight. The Enhanced Piercing Shots perk for marksmanship, which would have added Piercing Shots to Multi-Shot, has been changed to Improved Chimera Shot. Before we get started, keep in mind that some of these set bonuses could still change.

Beast Mastery T17 Set Bonuses
  • 2-piece: Kill Command has a 25% chance to increase the size and damage of your pet by 10% for 8 seconds.
  • 4-piece: While Bestial Wrath is active, one additional pet is summoned to fight with you.

These are much nicer than the old temporary ones. The 2-piece bonus lasts just long enough so you can apply its bonus to your next Kill Command.

The 4-piece sounds like it might just be an extra Dire Beast summon that pops during Bestial Wrath, which means probably only melee attacks and no specials. I hope I’m wrong and it pulls another one of your active pets with all its abilities intact (or at least claw/bite/smack). That would be very nice.

Continue reading WoD Alpha build 18443: Hunter tier 17 armor revealed, new set bonuses

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Shadowmoon Valley gallery

Shadowmoon Valley was open briefly on the alpha realms today. I got maybe 20 minutes of actual gameplay amongst the constant disconnections, but I was screenshotting constantly because it’s an amazing looking zone. In terms of visuals, Frostfire Ridge isn’t in the same league, if you ask me. These shots were only taken from a very small area of the zone. Unfortunately, the alpha is offline until Monday because of all the issues. I thought I’d share these screens in the meantime.

Continue reading Shadowmoon Valley gallery

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

WoD Alpha: Quick first impressions of the 3 hunter specs

I’ve spent some time with all 3 specs recently. Ran the dungeon at least twice with each, and did a little bit of testing (what little I could without a damage meter). Yesterday, I shared some more general impressions of the alpha as a whole.  Today, I’m keeping it short and to the point.  I’m sure opinions will change as I play it more, but for now this is what stood out to me after my extremely limited experience in a single zone and a single dungeon over the course of a couple of days.

Beast Mastery

I had Improved Arcane Shot and Enhanced Basic Attacks for perks.

  • Hardly anything has changed vs. BM on live servers apart from the lack of Serpent Sting. I don’t miss Serpent Sting for BM at all.
  • Kill Shot is nice. It hits harder and the cooldown reset when it doesn’t kill the target is much faster.  Oh, and the 15% heal ain’t bad either.
  • Pet damage is a little low at the moment, but a numbers tuning pass hasn’t been done yet.
  • Blink Strikes is too mandatory to give up. Seems weird I’ll seemingly never have a desire to use Stampede as a beast mastery hunter.
  • This applies to all specs, but I like that pet buffs are permanent auras now.

Continue reading WoD Alpha: Quick first impressions of the 3 hunter specs

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com