Category Archives: Hunter News

Hunter News, Hunter Pets

Beast Mastery pet dual wielding to return in Battle for Azeroth

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If you were worried about losing Hati, worry no more. In today’s alpha build a new talent has appeared called Animal Companion:

“Your Call Pet additionally summons the first pet from your stable. This pet will obey your Kill Command, but cannot use pet family abilities.”

It replaces Way of the Cobra. It doesn’t seem quite as fully featured as Hati since it doesn’t mention Bestial Wrath or Beast Cleave, but it at least casts Kill Command. I suspect if they added all 3 it would be too powerful for a level 15 talent. As long as it still uses Dash with the main pet and they make a bit of an effort to improve the AI (simply forcing the /petattack command without having to macro it fixes 90% of issues).

This does mean it competes with Dire Beast, though. However, the wording on some talents and abilities has changed to imply Dire Beast is becoming baseline again, but that did not happen in this build. So I’m not sure what’s going on.

This makes the pet spec locking sting a little less since you’ll always be able to have at least 1 pet that’s purely a cosmetic choice. Also in this build, Kill Command’s range has been buffed from 40 to 50 yards which is pretty nice.

I’m still not in the alpha so I can’t test things out for myself. If I find any more details I’ll update the post.

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Hunter News, Opinion

These Battle for Azeroth Hunter pet changes aren’t so popular [Updated]

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I talked about some of these changes in my original alpha post, but now that people have seen the changes in-game, things have become a little more clear.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: You can no longer change pet specializations. Each pet family is locked to one of the 3 specializations. Mechanicals will always be Cunning, Ravagers will always be Ferocity, and — most peculiar of them all — Spirit Beasts will always be Tenacity. Those are just 3 examples, you can see the full list at Wowhead.

For the most part, the assigned specs of each family make sense, but I have no idea why they are doing this now. We’ve been able to change pet specs for over 5 years. Why take away this customization now? Was there something so terrible about a Hunter wanting to use a Ferocity Turtle?

The response to this has not been pretty, but I do think part of the uproar is because people think Ferocity pets will still do more damage than a Tenacity or Cunning pet. This no longer seems to be the case.

Update: Blizzard has made a post clarifying the new system.

Continue reading These Battle for Azeroth Hunter pet changes aren’t so popular [Updated] →

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Hunter News

Beast Mastery tier 21 hotfix buffs, the Aspect of the Wild build, and the start of BfA Alpha

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A couple of Beast Mastery hotfixes dropped this week, but they’re both pretty minor. I’ve had a lot of people ask about them and how it affects gearing, so here’s a quick post on them.

Hotfix 1: Increases all damage by 2.5%

This applies to every main ability and active talent, it doesn’t increase things such as pet auto attack damage (as far as I know). Beast Mastery is still going to be near the bottom on Warcraft Logs, but now we should no longer be in our own sad little tier at the bottom. That’s the most positive way I can spin this. I was hoping for more targeted changes, i.e. buffs to Beast Cleave, Thunderslash, and AoE talents. But a buff is a buff and this makes our single target a little better.

Continue reading Beast Mastery tier 21 hotfix buffs, the Aspect of the Wild build, and the start of BfA Alpha →

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Hunter News, Opinion

First look at Hunter changes from Battle for Azeroth alpha datamining

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The Battle for Azeroth alpha is up on the test servers, and datamining is in full swing. I’ve poured over every bit of Hunter info I could find. I have some opinions on what I’ve seen, but it’s hard to say anything definitively until I can play myself. Streamers and influencers will probably have access to play this any day now, and then hopefully I’ll find a way in during the next waves.

My initial reaction to BM is pretty disappointing, but I don’t think they’ve put much work into it yet. A lot of it looks the same as it did 3 months ago at BlizzCon, and there’s obviously some placeholder stuff still there (like having Way of the Cobra as a talent when we only have 1 pet now). Nothing jumps out at me as exciting so far, but there are some pet things to discuss.

My initial reaction to the MM changes is pretty positive. Marking Targets RNG is gone, Vulnerable is gone, Steady Shot is back, and the whole talent tree is full of new stuff to explore. Also, it appears that Lone Wolf is a permanent passive now. No pets for MM, period. But I’m hoping Blizzard can come up with a compromise there without locking out a whole talent row for it (as it is today). I have some suggestions there.

Survival looks like it has many more ranged abilities, and to me it feels like it’s becoming disturbingly similar to Beast Mastery. In fact, one could almost argue it has more hunter/pet interplay than BM does at this point. I don’t want to say Survival is “stealing” abilities or talents that would be better suited to BM (or even MM), but I do question this direction. They’re adding so much ranged capability that I wonder if there’s even a point of keeping the spec as “melee” for the sake of appearances.

Continue reading First look at Hunter changes from Battle for Azeroth alpha datamining →

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Hunter News, Opinion

BlizzCon 2017: Hunter changes, Battle for Azeroth and WoW Classic thoughts

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I kinda had a feeling after seeing the BlizzCon mounts that this expansion would go back to the faction war. My initial impressions of Battle for Azeroth are basically, “cool!” I’m not going out of my mind over this. It looks like more WoW. More WoW is good. Thus far nothing has stood out to me as an expansion defining feature on the same level as Legion’s artifacts and the class orders. I’m not sure if the island scenarios and warfronts are the same sort of thing. The Heart of Azeroth is basically a variant of the Netherlight Crucible except on armor pieces instead of relics. Cool, but not mind-blowing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the faction war. What I’ve seen so far has gotten me pretty pumped up to fight for my faction. Burning down Teldrassil? As a long time Alliance player, that genuinely pisses me off and I’ll gladly slay Horde by the thousands for that. I liked how the cinematic gave cool moments for both factions, but Sylvanas screaming “for the horde” is the only part that gave me goosebumps (even though I don’t really play Horde).

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Update: If you’re looking for more recent Battle for Azeroth info, go here. This post is from BlizzCon 2017

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Hunter News

On this day, 7 years ago, Eyes of the Beast was removed from the game

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Patch 4.0.1 was released 7 years ago today, on October 12, 2010. That was the day that Eyes of the Beast was taken from us. Eyes of the Beast was a damn cool ability that let you take control of your pet independently and play through its eyes. It was so cool I named this site after it!

No, it wasn’t used in actual raid combat or anything like that. It was mostly a flavor ability, but it did have some actual uses like pulling Baron Geddon in Molten Core. I enjoyed it mostly for the shenanigans you could get up to, like flagging unsuspecting players for PvP combat, or just going on a PvP server and sending your pet into towns like Gadgetzan to wreak havoc. You could also use it for scouting dangerous areas, or just having some fun while you’re in a battleground queue.

In Wrath, they actually added the Glyph of Possessed Strength which increased your pet’s damage by 50% during Eyes of the Beast, which was even more fun in world PvP. So, why did they remove it? Well, I’ll let Ghostcrawler explain.

Continue reading On this day, 7 years ago, Eyes of the Beast was removed from the game →

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Hunter Guides, Hunter News

Netherlight Crucible and buffs for Beast Mastery

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With this week’s maintenance, Beast Mastery is getting a “6%” buff. Cool, right? Well, don’t get too excited. For one, it’s not a true 6% buff since it leaves out some important things like Beast Cleave or any pet auto attacks — it just buffs primary abilities and most of the talents. Secondly, all this buff does is let us keep the status quo. Everyone is getting 15 ilevels on their weapon this week from the Netherlight Crucible, and Beast Mastery scales like crap with weapon damage while other classes and specs get tons of value from the weapon increase.

So this buff really just puts us back where we were, with maybe a tiny 1-2% extra. On top of that, we’re going to fall even more behind in AoE/cleave since that isn’t getting any benefit at all from the Crucible or this buff (except for Stomp, which is included in the buff). We need more than 1-2% relative to other classes!

Anyway, let’s get to the Netherlight Crucible. I updated my Wowhead guide with basic information on how to use the Crucible and determine upgrades and what traits to take. I’ll reproduce some of that here.

Updated Jan 2, 2018:

Modified values of the traits. The damage proc traits from Crucible tier 2 lose some value as our ilevel goes up in Antorus, so they are now more in line with the stat traits. I also removed the Dire Frenzy specific trait list since it’s proven to be an unpopular build, and the trait values are almost identical.

If your overall ilevel is still low (below 940), it’s likely that the damage proc traits are still highest on your list. But if your ilevel is high (approaching 960 equipped), you may find that traits are valued even lower than what’s listed here. As always with BM, you really need to sim yourself.

The general trend is moving towards getting the tier 2 stat traits (they’re all pretty good) instead of the damage proc traits, if you have that option. They’re just more useful at higher ilevels, and they also blow away the damage procs in any kind of multi-target scenario.

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Hunter News, Hunter Pets

Patch 7.3 for Hunters: New pets, Netherlight Crucible, and more

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Patch 7.3 is almost here so it’s time to take a look at what’s going on for Hunters. The answer is… not much. We’ve got some pretty cool new pets available to tame on Argus, but still no new stable slots to make room for them. I don’t know about you, but I’m at the point where every pet I replace isn’t such an easy decision. Either it’s a rare I wouldn’t want to have to hunt for again, or a pet I’ve had for a long time and just don’t want to get rid of. There are a few new pets on Argus that may be worth swapping out for, though.

Continue reading Patch 7.3 for Hunters: New pets, Netherlight Crucible, and more →

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Hunter News, Opinion

BM Update: The Aspect of the Beast build, more legendary talk, a need for buffs, and 7.3 set bonuses

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I’ve had a couple people ask me about this “new build” going around so I thought I’d touch on it. Since it was buffed a while back, Aspect of the Beast has always been pretty close to Killer Cobra when using the Stomp build, but up until now it was always enough of a gap to ignore (for me, anyway). Now, as people get upgrades (especially to their weapon ilevel), Aspect of the Beast is emerging as a competitive talent for the Stomp build.

The rest of the talents are the same — Way of the Cobra, Stomp, One with the Pack, AMOC — but Killer Cobra is changed to Aspect of the Beast. A lot of your Kill Command damage gets replaced by Cobra Shot damage, which is viable because of the higher weapon ilevel (Cobra Shot is based on weapon damage). Where this changeover happens depends on your gear, but to me it looks like around 930-940 ilevel for Titanstrike is where Aspect of the Beast can start to pull ahead — barely. It will vary from person to person.

Continue reading BM Update: The Aspect of the Beast build, more legendary talk, a need for buffs, and 7.3 set bonuses →

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Hunter Guides, Hunter News

Tomb of Sargeras gear for Beast Mastery

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I promised to do one of these, so here it is. This post will take a look at T20 set bonuses (and how they compare to T19, when to break the old bonus, etc.), trinkets, and other gear to try to get your hands on. Previously we took a look at the Stomp vs. Dire Frenzy builds for BM in this tier (and at how some of the best legendaries ranked).

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