Category Archives: Hunter News

WoD Alpha Huntering: Day 1

I’ve been in betas before, but never in something as early as a F&F alpha. I’m used to betas basically being finished products, minus some balancing or minor issues. This is a lot different from what I’m used to. A good deal of my time is filling in bug reports or crash reports it seems, but I’m happy to do it as it’ll help make the final product better. There’s still lots of fun to be had too.

The alpha starts you right after the Dark Portal intro event. Your 90-91 XP bar is half filled, which presumably will be where it’s at once you’ve completed that intro event. I was basically thrown right into my garrison, and the vast majority of the questing in Frostfire Ridge is tied into setting up your garrison and gathering followers.

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I’m in!

I’ve safely landed in Draenor! Lots of huntery alpha coverage will be coming soon. I didn’t get things setup until very late tonight, but I did do a few quests and tamed my first two new pets (a savager ravager and one of the new boars) before I had to force myself to go to sleep.  Stay tuned for more. 🙂

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Latest alpha patch notes clean up the Hunter spellbook [Updated]

Updated: If you read this post earlier, there were some more hunter changes added to the notes. Updates are in red.

Blizzard just updated the alpha patch notes with a handful of hunter changes and an explanation of their philosophy on adding the new secondary stat attunements which were discovered in the previous build.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)
A new concept that we’re introducing is each specialization having an attunement to a particular secondary stat. These take the form of a passive ability that grants a 5% increase to the amount of a specific secondary stat gained. This provides a good starting point for where to focus your secondary stats. Usually, it will be your highest throughput stat (not counting Spirit for Healers, and Bonus Armor for Tanks, which is an optimal secondary stat in most cases). There are exceptions, and raw throughput may not even be the biggest concern in some situations. Treat this as a guideline, not a rule, about which secondary stat to favor.

Continue reading Latest alpha patch notes clean up the Hunter spellbook [Updated]

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Hunter weapons in Warlords of Draenor

I thought I’d put together a little post with pictures of all the datamined hunter weapons in Warlords of Draenor. This will be one of those posts I keep on the sidebar and I’ll update it any time new weapons are added.

I’ll link the appropriate items when I can, but some of them (like the questing ones) will be used for multiple weapons.

If you’re viewing this post long after Warlords has been released, keep in mind all of these are patch 6.0 models.

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Hunter changes in Warlords alpha build 18379

Not too many changes to report here, though Celestalon did say this build was created in the middle of them adding a lot of changes, which is why some classes got more than others. Hunters were one of the classes missing out for this build.

New passive abilities

All classes received these new attunement abilities with a different stat for each spec. I’m not sure what the point of them is. Either they wish for these particular stats to be stronger for their respective specs, or they’re worried that these particular stats will have less value so they’re trying to balance them out.

The chosen stats make me think it’s the former. Beast Mastery definitely values mastery more than the others, and Survival is all about lots of smaller individual hits and ticks so there’s more chances for Multistrike to proc. I would have expected a haste boost for Marksmanship, but I suppose crit plays well with Enhanced Aimed Shot.

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Lone Wolf: How to play a pet class without a pet

Lone Wolf is a new level 100 talent for survival and marksmanship hunters. It’s kind of a big deal. It lets you play a pet class without a pet. Whoa. It’s pretty simple: Dismiss your pet and get a 30% damage buff. Lone Wolf is undoubtedly the result of player demand. Demand from all of the players who want to play an archer class without having to maintain a roster of pets. Even more demand from raiders who were sick of their pet doing silly things like getting stuck in random places and not doing any DPS.

I’m not currently in the alpha, so most of what follows is just speculation. I’m just going by what I can see on paper and the limited amount of info I’ve been able to gleam from the handful of hunter streamers in alpha.

The following talents and abilities will simply not function if you spec into Lone Wolf:

Spirit Bond is something I’d have trouble living without, though the new self-heals from Kill Shot and Survivalist will help somewhat. The loss of Master’s Call is probably a deal breaker for a lot of PvP hunters.

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R.I.P. Bear Trap, 40-second Bestial Wrath, and 7-second Disengage

Well, that didn’t last very long.

R.I.P. Bear Trap, for the second time (it was originally slated to be added in Wrath before being removed in that beta).  It sounds like there isn’t going to be a replacement either. When Celestalon says it’s “not needed without Readiness” I think he means one of the reasons they added Bear Trap in the first place was so Survival would have a DPS cooldown affected by the stat. However, now that Readiness is kaput, they feel like there’s no need for it.

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More details on Black Arrow and Lock and Load in Warlords

Updated: The below post is now irrelevant as Celestalon tweeted there’s going to be another change to Lock and Load. Every time one of Black Arrow’s ticks multistrikes, it adds a stack of Lock and Load.

One of the changes coming in Warlords of Draenor for survival hunters is that every Black Arrow will guarantee at least one Lock and Load proc. Traps can no longer proc Lock and Load, which is why LnL itself has been removed and it’s now just a built-in component of Black Arrow.

Some hunters were wondering exactly how this guaranteed proc was going to work. Did it just mean that the final tick was always guaranteed to be a proc, or what? Turns out, that the guaranteed proc is randomly placed on one of the ticks, and it does this by determining how many procs you get on cast and then randomly placing them among the ticks.

Continue reading More details on Black Arrow and Lock and Load in Warlords

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Hunter Update for WoD Alpha build 18322

A new alpha build hit the servers today. There’s a couple of hunter changes to report, mainly in the self-healing category.

  • Kill Shot You attempt to finish the wounded target off, firing a long range attack dealing 550% weapon damage. Kill Shot can only be used on enemies that have 20% or less health. If the target dies, the Hunter will regain 15% of maximum health. If Kill Shot fails to kill the target, the cooldown is instantly reset, but cannot be reset more often than once every 6 sec. Requires Ranged Weapon. Hunter – Beast Mastery & Marksmanship Spec. 45 yd range. 10 sec cooldown.
  • Survivalist (New) After killing a target, you gain 15% health over 10 sec. (Survival Spec)

Marksmanship and Beast Mastery hunters will get a heal if the killing blow is made with Kill Shot, whereas it sounds like Survival hunters will get a HoT on every killing blow (since survival does not have Kill Shot anymore). If I had to guess, I would say the HoT won’t stack and if you get another killing blow, it simply resets the HoT. More self-healing is always good. This seems like a PvP buff more than anything, but it would also be helpful for leveling. Also remember that at level 100, Kill Shot can be used on targets with 35% or less health instead of 20%.

It also looks like the Glyph of Distracting Shot was added back into the build (Distracting Shot was put back in the build prior). Anything else being datamined so far looks like tooltip bug fixes.

Nothing much else huntery to report, but Wowhead has a nice summary of the patch, including a list of all the items (so far) that are going to be added to the Toybox.

 

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What would you like to see for Hunter raid utility?

Update: The raid utility has been announced. See here for details.

In the latest alpha patch notes, Blizzard stated they are currently working on adding a new “minor raid utility” ability for hunters in Warlords of Draenor. When asked on twitter, Celestalon replied that they are still open to suggestions.


I’ll get us started with a few ideas here:

  • The Hunter’s Focus: Reduce the resource cost of all party and raid member spells (mana/rage/energy/etc.) by xx% for x seconds.
  • Lay of the Land: Reduce AoE damage taken by raid and party members by xx% for x seconds.
  • Vicious Talons: Increase all party and raid member’s Multistrike rating by xxx for x seconds. (multistrike raid buff didn’t exist at the time of this post)
  • Hunter’s Mark: Expose a weakness on your current target, increasing the critical strike chance of all party and raid members by xx% for x seconds.
  • Pack Leader: All party and raid members can cast all spells while moving for x seconds.

Be sure to post your own ideas in the comments (or tweet them to Celestalon) and maybe we can get Blizzard to read them all. Just post whatever comes to mind. Even if it sounds ridiculous, it could spawn another idea. You may want to read the raid utility section of the official patch notes to learn more about their plans for it in Warlords. You’ll notice a lot of raid-wide damage buffs were removed, so something more defensive or utility oriented is probably more likely.

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