Tag Archives: Survival

Hunter News

Seriously? Changes on the way for talents and Lock and Load

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I could have changed a few things in the large feedback post I published just a couple of hours ago if I would have known this was coming, but Celestalon and his impeccable timing posted this update for hunters about an hour afterwards. Thanks, Celestalon!

At least my post wasn’t all for naught. These announced changes are definite improvements in several areas but still leaves a lot of the marksmanship problems unanswered. Here we go…

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Opinion

Another expansion of BM? The state of the hunter in Warlords

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There’s a problem with survival and marksmanship on the beta right now: no one seems to be happy with the two specs. I know that may sound a little hyperbolic, but I’ve looked for positive feedback all over the place — blogs, twitter, forums, even in game — and I struggle to find any.

Beast mastery is an example of successful ability pruning. Serpent Sting gone? Fantastic. It added no complexity to the gameplay, you either kept it on or kept it off. Rapid Fire removed? I accept its loss as part of the overall cooldown/burst damage reductions, and we still have Bestial Wrath. Beast mastery still has great synergy with the pet and all of the passives that work so well in the background.

Before we start, I want to go on the record that I spent a good deal of time looking for some positive feedback on these specs to give this article some balance. I simply couldn’t find anyone who was like, “I’m happy with the direction MM and/or SV is taking in Warlords!” If you are one of these people, please speak up. I think the forums could use some balanced discussion. I did find this one person who liked the spec differentiation, but mentioned MM not being as fun to play.

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Hunter News

WoD Beta 18764: Hunter number tuning, round 2

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Updated with a Thrill of the Hunt change coming in a future build (bottom of post).

Not much to report regarding hunters in this build, just some small number tuning and a few other tidbits.

  • Arcane Shot (BM/SV) now deals 100% weapon damage (down from 114%)
  • Aimed Shot (MM) now deals 350% weapon damage (down from 385%)
  • Explosive Shot (SV) now deals 42% attack power damage per tick (down from 46%)
  • Serpent Sting (SV) now deals 175% attack power damage over 15 sec (down from 225%)
  • Cobra Strikes (BM) now has a 20% chance per Arcane Shot to grant 1 charge of Cobra Strikes, causing your pet’s next basic attack to crit (Old: 15% chance to grant 2 charges)
  • Enhanced Basic Attacks (BM perk) now has a 15% chance to reset the basic attack cooldown and make the next one free (down from 20%)

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Hunter News

WoD Beta 18738: First pass at hunter number tuning

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The first round of beta number tuning is in. Beast mastery is nerfed, survival is buffed, and marksmanship is sort of buffed. There’s very little else going on hunter-wise. No new abilities, mechanics, glyphs, pet changes, or anything else I can see. 😕 I was kind of hoping for more. I really don’t like the prospect of SV and MM going live as-is (mechanically).

Beast Mastery
  • Kill Command now deals 240% of attack power damage (down from 283%)
  • Cobra Shot now deals 60% weapon damage(up from 42%)

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Hunter News, Opinion

WoD Beta: Number tuning is almost here, but is that all?

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Survival and marksmanship are in need of some help in the damage department, and it’s coming soon.

This is both good news and bad news. Good news because numbers will start to become balanced. Bad news because it means most of the actual design is done. I’m personally most concerned about survival right now, but marksmanship has problems too depending on who you ask. The other specs have both a cooldown and execute. Survival feels strange without either. There is, however, some good news about Black Arrow.

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Hunter News

WoD Beta 18689: Perks on the chopping block

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The Draenor perk system has been changed to only grant 4 perks on your way from 90-100 (down from 9 perks). Most of the damage boosting perks have been baked into their respective spells, but some perks have been removed outright.

I’m not sure why this was done to be honest. After leveling a lot on beta (one hunter to 100, one to 96, at least four to 92), I have to say that getting a perk every level was a lot of fun. I enjoyed watching the perk slot machine spin up and went “hell yeah!” when I received a perk I was hoping for. It was a nice reward for dinging a new level, and it was also a noticeable power increase in most cases. The power increase was great because it counteracted the feeling of getting less powerful as your haste, crit chance, etc. plummeted with each level.

There are a few other minor changes and additions we’ll cover before tackling the perks. I’m skipping the datamined ability scaling changes since they’re all related to the perks going away (no actual change).

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Opinion

WoD Beta: Survival PvP concerns

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Survival isn’t in the best shape for PvP as it stands. Its damage is based around sustained DPS — which is already a downside for PvP — and its only source of burst damage (Lock and Load) can be negated entirely with a simple dispel of Black Arrow. No Black Arrow = no Lock and Load procs. This would be remedied somewhat if Ice Trap was still able to proc Lock and Load as a fallback, but it doesn’t anymore.

It seems like at one point in time they were aware of the problem because the original WoD 4pc survival PvP bonus used to give Black Arrow the ability to trigger Lock and Load instantly (and presumably removed the subsequent proc chances as a tradeoff). This was later changed once they added the Multistrike behavior to LnL.

Here are some potential solutions I hope the devs will take into consideration. Consider all these numbers as just examples to illustrate a point. I don’t presume to know how to balance them.

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Hunter News

WoD Beta 18566: The new Chimaera Shot (and more!)

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The amazing header image for this post was created by Draven aka SpiritBinder of WarcraftMounts.com. Unfortunately, Chimaera Shot doesn’t look quite that cool in the game!

Another build, another round of hunter changes. The biggest is the newly updated Chimaera Shot (formerly Chimera Shot), but there are also some new perks, some updated visuals, and several bug fixes.

Chimaera Shot
  • Renamed Chimaera Shot (old: Chimera Shot)
  • Now hits 2 targets, one for frost damage, and one for nature damage.
  • On a single target, it randomly chooses nature or frost damage.
  • Still does the same damage as old Chimaera Shot, there seems to be no penalty for the new cleave component.
  • Each Chimaera “head” independently crits and multistrikes.
  • Seems to choose the closest target for the second shot.
  • Currently it’s not “smart” and will break CC on the secondary target.
  • The visuals might be temporary since they are using a Dragonhawk head rather than a Chimaera!

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Hunter News, Opinion

WoD Beta: Improvements to Lock and Load and Chimera Shot on the way

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Celestalon has been tweeting more about hunters, and we have some good news for both survival and marksmanship to talk about. None of these changes are in the build (or patch notes) yet, but they should hopefully make it in soon so we can test them.

Lock and Load

We’ll start with the survival changes. One is a nice quality of life change (and opens up some new gameplay avenues), and the other will help survival at lower multistrike levels. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news, Black Arrow now procs 1 charge of Lock and Load every time it multistrikes.

Patch 6.0 at level 90 would have been really awkward without this baseline chance. If you have Haromm’s Talisman, you should be able to get around ~20% total multistrike with the appropriate raid buff (more if they add level 90 versions of the multistrike flasks and food) when patch 6.0 launches.

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Opinion

WoD Beta: Missing the Mark

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Editor’s Note: If there’s one thing most hunters will agree with on the Warlords beta, it’s that marksmanship and survival are simply missing “something” in their current state. I thought Jademcian articulated the reason for this better than I ever could, so I asked him to do a guest post for the site. Hopefully this will spark some more discussion and help improve these specs before release. -Bendak

A few days ago I made a four part post on the beta class forums for a discussion regarding Marksmanship. Many of the posters seemed to  enjoy Beast Mastery while feeling Marks and Survival were hollow by comparison. In my post I made a few remarks on Marksmanship based on the discussion then went into a comparison between it and Beast Mastery, why I thought one felt more complete than the other and an example of what could be done to make Marksmanship feel the same ‘completeness.’

Bendak asked if I would write about that post here, on his site, and I happily obliged because I think it’s something the hunter community may be able to use to fuel player/developer conversation. The first step is identifying that something feels missing, the second step is figuring out what that thing is, and the third step is in Blizzard’s hands. So, whether you like Beast Mastery or not, or what was axed from Marksmanship, I hope you find my thoughts a useful tool for communicating your own.

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