Category Archives: Hunter News

Hunter news from day 2 of BlizzCon 2015

For the most part, Blizzard focused on broader topics rather than specific class information. That doesn’t mean we didn’t learn nothing about Hunters though! I’ve picked up this information from various sources over the course of today. Just a reminder that a lot of this isn’t confirmed and can change.

The Hunter Class Hall

  • We got further confirmation that it is located in Highmountain (a new zone in Legion).
  • Again, referred to as a “hunting lodge” so you can guess what kind of environment it will be.
  • Classes get unique bonuses from their class halls. The Hunter bonus is an exclusive (and presumably faster) flight path network in the Broken Isles. We fly around on eagles.  This should be a sweet bonus before we get flying later in the expansion.
  • We have this bonus because of a special relationship the Hunters have with the eagles of Highmountain.
  • The “hearthstone” to send us back to our class hall is an eagle that swoops down and picks us up. We can then use the same eagle to instantly return to our original location (just like Death Gate).

Continue reading Hunter news from day 2 of BlizzCon 2015

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A new look at the Hunter Artifact Weapons in Legion

The lore behind the Hunter artifacts was recently revealed by Blizzard. Marksmanship gets a bow/crossbow, Beast Mastery a gun, and Survival a spear. If you don’t like the looks of these weapons, keep in mind that you can transmog them even though they’re artifacts. However, you cannot transmog into another spec’s artifact.

Here is how they envision the three Hunter specs in Legion along with their weapons:

Originally Posted by Blizzard

  • Beast Master Hunters are uniquely bonded with the beasts they hunt, blurring the lines between predator and prey. To offset the dangers they face in the wild, they wield the rifle Titanstrike, a techno-magical engineering marvel, perfect for staying on target.
  • Marksmanship Hunters are at their best killing from afar. Having a trustworthy weapon in hand is vital, and no finer bow exists than Thas’dora, Legacy of the Windrunners.
  • Survival Hunters are masters of enduring in the wild, using traps and snares to bleed their enemies. With the Ancient-touched Talonclaw, Spear of the Wild Gods in hand, they can finish their foes with one final thrust.

Continue reading A new look at the Hunter Artifact Weapons in Legion

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Patch 6.2.3: Hey, something to write about!

Hey, Hunters! Yeah I am still here. Just fresh out of stuff to talk about in this downtime and complete lack of news… until today! Patch 6.2.3 was announced today and it adds quite a bit for a minor patch. Here’s some quick thoughts on the main features:

Valor points returning

Valor is coming back purely for item upgrades. It looks like you can do two upgrades of 5 ilvl per item, for a total of 10. This isn’t something I am going to grind at all. I know I’ll get some incidentally from doing stuff and I’ll use those on my weapon, then a trinket (won’t bother using it on Mirror of the Blademaster since the on use doesn’t scale with ilvl), then the highest ilvl/stat budget pieces from there.

I don’t like that you can’t get the points from doing regular raids. I mean, I get that they want to give people a reason to do dungeons again, but it seems weird. Especially since LFR is going to reward some too. They mentioned some kind of bonus event. This may be a new event, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it just replaced the Apexis event. Apexis is almost entirely irrelevant with this patch with better Mythic Dungeon rewards, and the fact that Baleful tokens can proc ilvl 695 without using an empowered fragment.

I get why they’re doing this, but it is not an incentive to me. I’ll be happy to upgrade my 720 gun to 730 and call it a day from there basically. I would probably grind these if I were still raiding regularly, of course. That’s the benefit of taking a break from raiding. No more worrying about that ilvl number.

Continue reading Patch 6.2.3: Hey, something to write about!

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New bits of Legion info, and going casual

It sure has been slow on the news front ever since the Legion announcement, eh? Blizzard wasn’t kidding when they said they’d be more tight-lipped about things this time around (can’t say I blame them after Warlords). We did get a few new tidbits of info today, and when I say “tidbits” I really mean that. This is all sourced from a live-tweeting of an unofficial WoW panel at Dragoncon.

It’s a bit of a silly way to disseminate information like this IMO, though I won’t complain about getting some new info. Here’s a rundown of the cool stuff. Keep in mind this is all obtained from secondhand tweets and can’t be taken as a promise or official information.

Continue reading New bits of Legion info, and going casual

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Legion: New Hunter roles confirmed

I speculated on this yesterday, but it looks like we have the official word via a developer interview at Icy Veins.

  • Survival: Melee spec that utilizes a pet
  • Beast Mastery: Ranged spec that utilizes a pet
  • Marksmanship: Ranged spec that has NO pet

This means the Lone Wolf talent should be no more. Blizzard is fully committing this time and giving each spec a clear identity. It’s bound to ruffle some feathers, but my initial thoughts are that it will be good for the class.

My only real concern is balance now. If Survival is the top spec (by the same kind of margin Marksmanship is now in Hellfire Citadel), every hunter will feel forced into completely changing roles after they’ve been playing a ranged class for 10 years. Not good. Blizzard has an obligation to make sure all 3 playstyles are viable.

There was also some updates regarding the artifact weapons:

  • Beast Mastery’s artifact is a gun, Marksmanship’s is a bow, Survival’s is a spear.
  • There are no weapon drops in Legion. Instead, you will power up your artifact by killing bosses and doing other things in the game (PvP, dungeons, raids, dailies, whatever).
  • Your artifact will be obtained very early on.
  • Artifacts can be transmogged, so if you’re not happy about your weapon type for your chosen spec, you at least have that. You cannot transmog into another artifact though.
  • Still not sure how Survival is going to operate in the weird transition period of 7.0 when they have no melee weapons.

We should have more details soon from the dev panel on Sunday. Shortly after the dev panel, at 1:30pm ET on Sunday, we will be recording the next Hunting Party Podcast on Twitch and talking all about this stuff.  Follow me on Twitter and I’ll be posting before we go live. Should be a fun show!

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LEGION: The melee hunter returns? [Update: Confirmed]

Update: Survival is definitely a melee spec. Updated details here.

*Breathes deeply*

OK, that was exciting. After being at an all time low with my general WoW excitement, I have to say that LEGION gives me some hope for WoW’s future. I am beyond excited, but I’m going to have to force myself to not get TOO hyped after the disappointments in WoD, because that expansion had much better intentions (I feel) than it ultimately delivered.

That being said…

Apparently, Survival is now a melee spec.

Melee. Hunter. Confirmed.

Continue reading LEGION: The melee hunter returns? [Update: Confirmed]

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Survival and Beast Mastery hotfix buffs compared

Last night, after a month of patch 6.2, Blizzard finally threw some table scraps at poor old Survival hunters. Of course we told them how broken it was time and time again on the PTR, but I guess these buffs are better late than never. Beast Mastery also received a smaller buff, which is more beneficial to it in older T17 gear than it is in newer T18 gear (boo).

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

  • Beast Mastery
    • Bestial Wrath now lasts 15 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
  • Survival
    • Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting damage increased by 25%.

I’ve seen a lot of hunters ask if this means Survival and Beast Mastery are “viable” again.

Here’s the short answer: Beast Mastery has always been “viable,” it’s just not been ideal for Hellfire Citadel because of fight mechanics. The fights simply favor Marksmanship. Survival, on the other hand, was not viable. These buffs don’t really change that, but they do make it “less wrong” to play at a non-progression level.

Simulation Craft recently put out an update with the hotfixes so I ran some numbers. Please don’t use these numbers as the sole basis for choosing what to play in HFC. I’m simply using them to illustrate the change these hotfixes have.

Update: The T17 4-piece bonus pet still only lasts 10 seconds even though Bestial Wrath is lasting 15. This will reduce BM’s buff in old T17 gear slightly.

Continue reading Survival and Beast Mastery hotfix buffs compared

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There’s an undiscovered Hunter pet in 6.2, win a prize if you tame it first

Update: The pet has been discovered!

Apparently there is a special hunter pet coming in patch 6.2 that no one has discovered yet! Petopia, in partnership with Warcraftmounts.com, is currently running a contest on their forums for hunters to discover this new pet on the PTR.

Whoever discovers it and is the first to post screenshots and details for where they tamed it will win a TCG mount, the Corrupted Hippogryph!

Mania from Petopia had the following to say:

<tap tap tap>
Is this thing on? Yeah? … Excellent.

So … I learned something fascinating the other day. You guys have missed something – something veeeery interesting. See, there’s a certain tameable beast with a cool new look on the 6.2 PTR that nobody has reported yet.

Now we could tell you what it is and how to tame it … but we aren’t going to. Instead, we’re going to run a little contest with Petopia’s sister site, Warcraft Mounts, sponsoring the prize. The first person to find this new tameable on the 6.2 PTR and report back with all the necessary details on how to tame it, here on this thread, will win a Corrupted Hippogryph loot code, from the good people at WootLoots.

So here’s what you need to do: First, go find the beast! We’re not going to give you any hints about this creature other than it’s new to patch 6.2, it’s not a look that has been tameable before, and it’s not a simple ‘see beast, tame beast’ kind of tame. Next, get some screenshots! Post a full screenshot of you with the tamed beast on this thread, including your PTR character name and PTR realm (in the unlikely event there’s a dispute and we need to get in touch with you on the PTR realm to verify the tame). Also keep in mind that in order to be eligible for the prize, you must also have an active WoW account on an EU or US server (including Oceanic and Latin America), so we can give it to you.

It’s possible that someone on some other site will report the tame before one of us Petopians does. In that case, we’ll have to declare the contest void and save the loot code for another day. Let’s avoid that, though, by beating them to it. So go forth. minions, and tame!

Good luck!

As you can see, there’s no hints at all. Is it in Tanaan? Is it a rare? Is it a challenge tame? Is it an existing beast that was previously untameable? If you find and successfully tame the pet, you need to be a registered member of the Petopia forums and post your find in this thread in order to win the mount. 

It’s not one of the beasts featured on the front page of Petopia, or the new Diresnout Felboar (not on their site as of now).

Good luck!

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Patch 6.2 PTR: Tranquilizing Shot, armor and weapons, and set bonus updates

It’s been a fairly uneventful PTR since my last post about patch 6.2, at least for hunters. I’m starting to get a bit worried that Survival still has no compensation for its significant DPS nerf. Surely something is still on its way because this is how things are looking as of today: Beast Mastery is just as good as it is on live servers, Marksmanship is looking like it’ll be the best single target spec, and Survival is in the dumps. I keep waiting for a build with more tuning changes.

Tranquilizing Shot

The big news is that Tranquilizing Shot has been changed to the current glyph form as a baseline, meaning it will cost no focus but have a 10 second cooldown. The new version of the glyph removes the cooldown but adds a 40 Focus cost.

I approve of the change because its current form on live is unusable without the glyph (at least in PVE). It was originally hotfixed to the 50 Focus cost on live as a PvP nerf to a single spec (BM). Delirium has a post about the change with some input from PvP hunter Dillypoo. There probably could have been a better way of handling this whole situation, such not allowing its Focus cost to be reduced by Bestial Wrath or not allowing it to remove player HoTs.

Continue reading Patch 6.2 PTR: Tranquilizing Shot, armor and weapons, and set bonus updates

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Patch 6.2 PTR is here: RIP Aspect of the Fox

So the big news you probably already know about is that Aspect of the Fox has been completely removed from patch 6.2. I certainly expected some kind of nerf, perhaps a short debuff to prevent the chaining of foxes, but I did not see this coming.

Here’s the list of changes from Blizzard:

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

General

  • Aspect of the Fox has been removed.

Marksmanship

  • Aimed Shot now deals 15% more damage.

Survival

  • Mastery: Essence of the Viper has increased in effectiveness by 19%.
  • Explosive Shot now deals 15% less damage.
  • Serpent Sting no longer deals an initial “tick” of damage when the periodic effect is first applied.

Talents

  • A Murder of Crows now deals only 80% of normal damage against player-controlled targets.
  • Barrage now deals only 80% of normal damage against player-controlled targets. Additionally, the ability no longer hits invisible or stealthed targets.
Undocumented Changes
  • Mastery: Master of Beasts has been increased in effectiveness by approximately 20%. I gained 10% extra pet damage on the PTR (with my mastery buff).
  • Kill Command was buffed slightly (288.9% of RAP to 297.3% RAP)

OK, make sure your safety harness is secured. We’re back on the Warlords of Draenor Hunter Rollercoaster.

Continue reading Patch 6.2 PTR is here: RIP Aspect of the Fox

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