Tag Archives: featured

Hunter News

WoD Alpha Huntering: Day 1

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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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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Arcturis

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Most people think that Loque’nahak is the most difficult spirit beast to tame, but I’d argue that honor goes to Arcturis. At least Loque has multiple spawn points, so you could always get lucky and find him at one of the spawns where no one is currently camping. Arcturis, on the other hand, spawns at a single location and almost always has at least 1-2 hunters camping that spawn point.

One of the problems with this is hunters will fight over the spawn and Arcturis ends up dead in the process. If you’re taking the camping approach, it might be best to befriend any other hunters who are camping. Perhaps you can come to some sort of agreement where neither of you will be jerks and kill the bear after someone starts taming it. If that doesn’t work, you might need to become a little more dedicated.

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Hunter News, Hunter Transmog

Hunter weapons in Warlords of Draenor

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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 News, Opinion

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

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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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Hunter News

Hunter patch notes from Warlords beta

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Below is a consolidated list of hunter changes from the Warlords of Draenor beta.

I will be updating this post every time new patch notes or major revelations from blue tweets are released (the latest updates will be in red). I’ll also bump it to the front of the blog when any major updates happen.

Last updated: August 22, 2014
Probably one of the final updates.

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Hunter News

First look at Hunter quivers and ammo pouches

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The latest Artcraft post takes a break from showing off the new race models and gives us a sneak peak at hunter quivers and ammo pouches. They’ve been dubbed “class accessories” and it sounds like they are going to be placed in a new cosmetic-only gear slot. Paladins will have librams, Shaman will have totems, etc.

These quivers and ammo pouches likely won’t make it for the release of Warlords of Draenor, but hopefully they’ll arrive in a subsequent WoD patch. They suggested that these could be rewarded for anything from leveling up to defeating a raid boss.

I know it’s a tall order, but I think it would be awesome to have one themed per-expansion or per-tier. Think about a dragonscale quiver for the vanilla sets (it could even drop in there), a frost-themed quiver with icicles hanging off it for Wrath sets, and so on. My other hope is that these quivers will also modify the visuals of your basic shots so we could have flaming arrows, frost arrows, poison arrows, etc.

As a transmog junkie, I’m pretty excited.

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Hunter Pets

Pet(s) of the Week: Wolves that bark, growl, and howl

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That there is my Oil-stained Wolf named Void. They are no longer tameable with their oily coat intact — I thought I would get that out of the way first (sorry about that 😛 ). Aside from looking really cool, this wolf has a neat little feature of barking/growling when he is clicked.

It turns out there are a handful of wolves available in the game which will do this — some rare, some easy to find. Why is this such a big deal? Because when you click on them, you gain a stacking 1% damage buff from each bark (up to 20 stacks). Not many people know about this hidden buff as it doesn’t appear in your list of auras and…

Alright, I’m kidding. There’s really no point to this. I just like pets that make sounds when I click on them, OK?

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Hunter Transmog

Hunter Transmog: Black Scourgestalker

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This is a recolor of the tier 8 hunter set. Out of the 4 colors available (red, blue, green, black) I definitely think this one takes the cake. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Blizzard did not add the black version of the helm to the game. I couldn’t find a good match in my transmog collection, so I defaulted to my trusty eye patch, which goes with everything!

This armor itself is acquired mostly in 10-player Ulduar (only 1 hard mode) and is soloable by any level 90 hunter. The only one that you may need some help on is with Thorim. You need to… get creative… in order to do this by yourself. You can bring a friend to help, or check out Darkbrew’s video on how to do it here. Thorim will be made “officially” soloable in patch 6.0, but that is still a while off. The other bosses you need are straight forward burns, except you should be cautious with Freya. If you kill her too fast, she won’t spawn her chest and you won’t get any loot. Some of Mimiron’s abilities in hard mode can still hurt you, so don’t faceroll it too much.

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Hunter Pets, Opinion

Revamping the hunter stable in garrisons

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Pets are, without a doubt, the primary reason I play a hunter. I think Blizzard has been pretty good to us over the years, putting a lot of development time and effort into something that serves only a single class. We have 45 pet families and, if you count all the different skins and color swaps, about 600 pets to choose from. Every expansion brings dozens of new pets to tame, and they continue to give us attention like the recent bump to 50 stable slots.

At least one developer over at Blizzard has their thumb on the pulse of hunters. But, like any WoW player, I will never be completely satisfied. I’m always wondering what they can do next to improve the best class in WoW. Stables, as a system,  have remained more or less unchanged since launch. With the announcement of Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor, I think there’s a pretty great opportunity to give hunters the pet stable they deserve.

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Hunter News

New Hunter Talents Revealed

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A new video from February’s press event has been uncovered, and I am very happy to say it features some new information about the hunter talents in Warlords. They are a little different than they were back at BlizzCon. You can find the video below, but I’ve gone through frame by frame to pick out all of the tooltips and summarize it for you.

  • New Level 100 Talent: Flaming Shots – Your auto shots now deal 80% weapon damage as fire damage (Bola Shot has been removed!)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Focusing Shot – Deals 100% weapon damage and generates 75 focus. 2.55 sec cast. Replaces Cobra Shot and Steady Shot. Cannot be cast while moving. (This is very similar to Snipe from BlizzCon, but less weapon damage and more focus regen)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Versatility (beast mastery only) – Increases your pet’s combat experience to 70% increased damage (a 20% pet damage buff) and grants many specialization-specific abilities regardless of chosen spec. (This is the same as it was at BlizzCon)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Lone Wolf (survival and marksmanship) – Increases your damage done when you do not have a pet summoned. Celestalon tweeted that Lone Wolf is still in.
  • Stampede is now a talent. It replaces Lynx Rush in the level 75 tier.
  • Thrill of the Hunt now affects Aimed Shot in addition to Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot. As I reported earlier, Aimed Shot is now marksmanship’s only focus dump. Marksmanship no longer uses Arcane Shot.
  • Aspect of the Iron Hawk renamed to Iron Hawk. Due to hunter aspects being removed, this is now just a 10% damage reduction.

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