Opinion

Thoughts on the current state of hunter talents in Warlords of Draenor

16 Comments

I’ve been playing around with hunter talents lately to see how things are shaping up for each spec. Before I get started, keep in mind that this information is only up to date as of today. Number tuning is still in progress, but this will give you a good idea of how things are shaping up so far.

These are my personal opinions on the “best” talents for each spec. I’m not claiming them to be perfect choices, but I came to these conclusions through my own testing. I also played around quite a bit with Esoth’s Hunter Tools and the Simulation Craft beta. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments. Remember that even if you’re not in beta, you can test most of this (sans the 100 talents) on the 6.0 PTR!

Continue reading Thoughts on the current state of hunter talents in Warlords of Draenor →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Toucans! (aka Axebeaks)

4 Comments

Don’t ask me how the physics work here or how those tiny wings can support such a front-heavy bodyweight which is apparently 90% beak, 10% feathers. Let’s just hope your group or raid needs a versatility buff at some point so you have more excuses to use these adorable freaks of nature.

Toucans (officially called Axebeaks, a fitting name) are part of the Bird of Prey family. They bring Tenacity (not to be confused with the pet spec), and Trick, which you can use to make them do loops at your side.

They come in four colors. Here’s a short video.

Continue reading Pet of the Week: Toucans! (aka Axebeaks) →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Hunter PSA: Esoth’s Hunter Tools

Leave a comment

Still upset over the news that FemaleDwarf.com will no longer be updated in Warlords? Have no fear, Esoth’s Hunter Tools has risen to take its place! It is a web-based DPS analyzing/theorycrafting tool designed for hunters in Warlords. You’ll be able to import your character to modify stats, talents, and rotation options to see how it affects your single target and AoE DPS. It will also compute scaling values for stats.

If you want to learn more about how it works, you can check out this post on Thrill of the Wild where Esoth explains the tool.

One thing to keep in mind is that it’s all based on 6.0 class mechanics (including the stat squish). It’s not meant to be used for pre-6.0 theorycrafting. For patch 5.4.8 stuff you can continue to use femaledwarf.com until patch 6.0 comes out.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter Guides, Hunter News, Hunter Pets

How to tame Gara the Spirit Beast

404 Comments

A couple of nights ago, a bunch of hunters banded together on Twitter and the Petopia forums to try to solve the Gara mystery on the beta. Those I recognized from the forums or Twitter were right beside me in game trying to figure out the same problems, coming up with crazy theories, and just having fun. After a massive group effort and a little bit of luck, Gara has finally been solved.

Just how do we tame her? It turns out that it’s become more complicated than any of us ever imagined. Thanks to some clever datamining of some spell IDs by someone on the Petopia forums, we received enough clues to get past our 4-day rut of no progress beyond the Shadowberries step.

Taming Gara takes you across all of Draenor, and to me it’s basically a mini class quest without actually calling itself a quest. It’s not on the same level as say the warlock green fire quest, but make no mistake, a good deal of effort went into creating this event for hunters!

Basic Requirements:

  • Level 90+
  • Horde or Alliance
  • Beast Mastery spec

What follows contains spoilers, so stop here if you want to discover everything for yourself (and good luck with that!).

Continue reading How to tame Gara the Spirit Beast →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Monday Update: WHU is back, Femaledwarf.com is no more, Gara still a mystery

4 Comments

Last week was pretty busy for me, both inside and outside of WoW. Let’s hope this one is a little less hectic. I wouldn’t mind enjoying the last shreds of summer while there’s still time. I just wanted to update you all on a few bits of news from the hunter community.

WHU is back

Warcraft Hunters Union is going to be receiving updates once again after an extended hiatus! Artemishowl (previously interviewed here) will be taking over the reins of the website. You can see her introductory post here.

Frostheim: It’s been about a year since I retired from hunter blogging, and as you may have noticed, the WoW hunter world has continued in my absence (though Ghostcrawler just couldn’t bear to go on without our deep platonic bond). As always, the hunter community remains strong and new hunter voices have stepped forward to take the reins: new hunter podcasts, new hunter blogs, and new all-hunter raids.

One of those new voices is Artemishowl. If you’re in the WHU Facebook group you no doubt know her from the hunter raids she has been organizing. She recently asked about taking over the WHU to keep this venerable tradition going, and I have great confidence in her abilities and am excited to see the updates and changes that she brings to the site. So we’re clearing out the mothballs and you’ll be getting regular posts on the WHU once more, now from Artemishowl and others that she badgers, cajoles, and intimidates into helping out.

Welcome to the hunter blogging world, Artemis! I look forward to seeing the content that the next-gen WHU will be putting out.

Continue reading Monday Update: WHU is back, Femaledwarf.com is no more, Gara still a mystery →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

WoD Beta 18816: The hunt for Gara begins, talent changes, and more

41 Comments

The talent changes mentioned earlier in the official patch notes all seem to be active in this beta build. I’ll go over those again, but first there is some news on Gara the Spirit Beast. You can read up on Gara here, but the TL;DR is that it’s a new spirit beast with some kind of quest/event/challenge required in order to tame. According to Muffinus, it has been fully implemented as of this build.

If you want to avoid anything Gara related and discover it for yourself, you’ll want to skip down until the talent changes section.

The picture above shows a group of us hunters searching for clues, trying to find out what the next step was after scratching her behind the ears. We… haven’t made much progress yet. There’s been one new dialogue option with the wolf, but that’s all I’ve discovered so far. When you have a Shadowberry in your inventory it gives you an option, but nothing seems to happen other than another hint. The image below shows the progression in dialogue.

Update on Gara: For the latest info on Gara, see this new post. Most of the speculation below has been ruled out.

Continue reading WoD Beta 18816: The hunt for Gara begins, talent changes, and more →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter Transmog

Hunter Transmog: Shado-Pan Beast Lord

10 Comments

Today’s hunter transmog was submitted by Jaeger on Drak’thul-US. He calls it “Shado-Pan Beast Lord.” I love how the mount’s armor matches the Beast Lord stuff, and how the cats also match. Nice job, Jaeger! Thanks for submitting. Most of these items are obtained in Burning Crusade dungeons with the obvious exception of the Shado-Pan hat acquired by getting exalted with the Shado-Pan.

Helm: Replica Shado-Pan Helmet
Shoulder: Beast Lord Mantle
Chest: Beast Lord Cuirass
Shirt: Ebon Filigreed Doublet
Gloves: Beast Lord Handguards
Belt: Girdle of Ferocity
Legs: Beast Lord Leggings
Feet: Boots of the Endless Hunt (Alternative: Boots of the Renewed Flight)
Weapon: Coilfang Needler

I’ve put this set together in a Wowhead item comparison so you can quickly view it on other races in 3D (click the little triangle above the item icons).

Continue reading Hunter Transmog: Shado-Pan Beast Lord →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Eyes of the Beast Hunter Gallery (and giveaway winners)

18 Comments

The first Eyes of the Beast screenshot giveaway has concluded and it was a huge success! We had 75 people take the time to submit screenshots for this hunter gallery and for a chance at an Iron Skyreaver mount. There was also 3 bonus prizes of a TCG item, the Paper Flying Machine Kit.

The mount was chosen at random, and the 3 TCG items I chose based on my 3 favorite screenshots. I didn’t anticipate that last one being so tough. To give you an idea how hard it was to pick just 3, my preliminary list of candidates was composed of 30 of the entries, and then I had to narrow it down from there. There wasn’t any specific criteria I was looking for, so don’t feel bad if I didn’t pick you. All the screenshots were awesome. You can check them all out in the gallery below.

Let’s take a look at the winners…

Continue reading Eyes of the Beast Hunter Gallery (and giveaway winners) →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Talador Ridge Prowlers

9 Comments

This week’s pet of the week is a bit late because my big video preview on the new pet families was posted in its place. Now we’ll get back to looking at individual hunter pets found in Draenor. Even though you can’t tame these yet, you’ll be able to look back on previous pets of the week and have a bunch of taming ideas when Warlords is released. If you’re like me, you’ll already be looking in your stable and figuring out which pets you’re willing to abandon to make room.

If you’re a fan of cat pets, I think you’ll like these new colors being added in Warlords. I’m partial to the white one myself. They can be found right smack dab in the middle of Talador. The white ones can also be found elsewhere in the zone. Some of them will be stealthed, others will be sleeping. There’s plenty of them to tame though.

It looks like Draenor isn’t getting any new cat models, which isn’t surprising considering they were just updated in Mists.

Continue reading Pet of the Week: Talador Ridge Prowlers →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Hunter Patch Notes Update: Black Arrow dispel protection, talent changes

10 Comments

The official patch notes just received an update. Lots of hunter changes to report. Some of it we already know from the previous build, but there’s a few new bits in here.  If the tooltips don’t make sense, it’s because some of these changes are not in the build yet.

Survival Changes
  • Black Arrow‘s cooldown is reset if it’s dispelled.  🙂
  • Lock and Load has been reverted to the previous version. It’s similar to the live version, but you will get at least one proc per Black Arrow, with chances for additional procs on each tick. It also no longer has a 10 second internal cooldown.
  • Survivalist now increases multistrike damage by 20%. (Old: increases multistrike chance by 10%)

Yay! Black Arrow dispelling was something i was really concerned about, so I’m glad they added something.

While I was originally pretty excited for the Lock and Load multistrike proccing version, it ended up having several problems. When multistrike was low, it was extremely underwhelming (that is why they added the 10% baseline chance in the first place) and it was common to have Black Arrows with zero or just one proc.  When multistrike was high, the rotation devolved into nothing by Explosive Shot with hardly any focus available for Arcane Shot. Lastly, Lock and Load just didn’t feel as fun when it was no longer free or didn’t reset the cooldown. So, I’m on board with this.

Survivalist’s 20% multistrike damage is just there so survival will favor multistrike and benefit from its multistrike attunement.

Continue reading Hunter Patch Notes Update: Black Arrow dispel protection, talent changes →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com