Tag Archives: Survival

Hunter Guides, Hunter News

WoD Beta: Lone Wolf and Adaptation talent previews

10 Comments

This is second in a series of posts about the new level 100 hunter talents as they currently exist on beta. The first post was all about Exotic Munitions. Today, it’s about Lone Wolf and Adaptation. This talent changes based on your current spec: Lone Wolf for marksmanship and survival, Adaptation for beast mastery.

These talents couldn’t be more opposite if they tried. One removes your pet, the other turns your pet into a superhero pet. If you’ve read my posts before, you’ll know I am not really down with the whole Lone Wolf thing. I play hunters because of the pets. I still think it’s cool they’re giving the option to those who want to play a pure archer, but the BM version of this talent appeals to me more.

Continue reading WoD Beta: Lone Wolf and Adaptation talent previews →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

There’s still some hope for a Survival cooldown

5 Comments

Ask any hunter who has played on beta, and they’ll probably tell you that survival feels a little empty without any baseline cooldowns or executes. We know Blizzard wants to push for survival to be the multidot/sustained damage spec, but many hunters feel it’s gone a bit too far. The good news is, it sounds like they are still mulling over the idea of survival having a cooldown.

Continue reading There’s still some hope for a Survival cooldown →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News, Opinion

Hunter Beta Feedback: Round 1

9 Comments

What follows isn’t going to written like one of my normal blog posts. It’s a copy/paste of a feedback post I made in the Warlords beta forums intended for the developers. I thought some of you may be interested in reading it anyway. I’ve added a few pictures to help with the “wall of text crits you for 9000” factor.

Continue reading Hunter Beta Feedback: Round 1 →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Marksmanship mastery and Lock and Load changes, T17 Mythic armor

15 Comments

WoD beta build 18505 just hit the servers and with it comes some pretty substantial changes for marksmanship and survival hunters.

Marksmanship Mastery

  • Marksmanship’s mastery is no longer Wild Quiver, and is now Sniper Training.
    • When you stand still for 3 seconds, you gain Sniper Training for 6 sec, which increases your damage, shot range, and critical strike damage by 4%.

It seems like Blizzard is really pushing for marksmanship to be the turret spec. The synergy here with Focusing Shot has enormous potential if this style of play is something you’re interested in. The 4% value is the base mastery, it will be higher with mastery gear. On the beta I got it up to 10% with gear and buffs. Some of you may remember the old Sniper Training talent from back in the day, but that one was just increased damage. This new version adds critical hit damage and shot range. The shot range bit is pretty interesting. 50 yard shots? Very, very cool. I’ve done a quick bit of testing on the beta and it appears that it takes 3 seconds to activate. It doesn’t start counting down from 6 seconds until you begin moving.

aimedshotrange

The real question is if we’ll be able to give up our bunny-hopping, DPS-on-the-move freedom and revert back to turret style. What do you think?

After testing this for a bit on the beta, one thing it REALLY needs is some kind of visual to let you know you have it. Otherwise, it’s basically a “WeakAuras required” thing to get the most out of it.

Continue reading Marksmanship mastery and Lock and Load changes, T17 Mythic armor →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

WoD Alpha build 18443: Hunter tier 17 armor revealed, new set bonuses

11 Comments

The vast majority of hunter changes in this build are tooltip changes for clearer wording, or to merge two abilities into one to reduce spellbook clutter. Piercing Shots is still listed in this build even though it’s supposedly getting removed, but I would wager that it’s just an oversight. The Enhanced Piercing Shots perk for marksmanship, which would have added Piercing Shots to Multi-Shot, has been changed to Improved Chimera Shot. Before we get started, keep in mind that some of these set bonuses could still change.

Beast Mastery T17 Set Bonuses
  • 2-piece: Kill Command has a 25% chance to increase the size and damage of your pet by 10% for 8 seconds.
  • 4-piece: While Bestial Wrath is active, one additional pet is summoned to fight with you.

These are much nicer than the old temporary ones. The 2-piece bonus lasts just long enough so you can apply its bonus to your next Kill Command.

The 4-piece sounds like it might just be an extra Dire Beast summon that pops during Bestial Wrath, which means probably only melee attacks and no specials. I hope I’m wrong and it pulls another one of your active pets with all its abilities intact (or at least claw/bite/smack). That would be very nice.

Continue reading WoD Alpha build 18443: Hunter tier 17 armor revealed, new set bonuses →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

WoD Alpha: Quick first impressions of the 3 hunter specs

7 Comments

I’ve spent some time with all 3 specs recently. Ran the dungeon at least twice with each, and did a little bit of testing (what little I could without a damage meter). Yesterday, I shared some more general impressions of the alpha as a whole.  Today, I’m keeping it short and to the point.  I’m sure opinions will change as I play it more, but for now this is what stood out to me after my extremely limited experience in a single zone and a single dungeon over the course of a couple of days.

Beast Mastery

I had Improved Arcane Shot and Enhanced Basic Attacks for perks.

  • Hardly anything has changed vs. BM on live servers apart from the lack of Serpent Sting. I don’t miss Serpent Sting for BM at all.
  • Kill Shot is nice. It hits harder and the cooldown reset when it doesn’t kill the target is much faster.  Oh, and the 15% heal ain’t bad either.
  • Pet damage is a little low at the moment, but a numbers tuning pass hasn’t been done yet.
  • Blink Strikes is too mandatory to give up. Seems weird I’ll seemingly never have a desire to use Stampede as a beast mastery hunter.
  • This applies to all specs, but I like that pet buffs are permanent auras now.

Continue reading WoD Alpha: Quick first impressions of the 3 hunter specs →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

WoD Alpha Huntering: Day 1

9 Comments

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.

Continue reading WoD Alpha Huntering: Day 1 →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Latest alpha patch notes clean up the Hunter spellbook [Updated]

11 Comments

Updated: If you read this post earlier, there were some more hunter changes added to the notes. Updates are in red.

Blizzard just updated the alpha patch notes with a handful of hunter changes and an explanation of their philosophy on adding the new secondary stat attunements which were discovered in the previous build.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)
A new concept that we’re introducing is each specialization having an attunement to a particular secondary stat. These take the form of a passive ability that grants a 5% increase to the amount of a specific secondary stat gained. This provides a good starting point for where to focus your secondary stats. Usually, it will be your highest throughput stat (not counting Spirit for Healers, and Bonus Armor for Tanks, which is an optimal secondary stat in most cases). There are exceptions, and raw throughput may not even be the biggest concern in some situations. Treat this as a guideline, not a rule, about which secondary stat to favor.

Continue reading Latest alpha patch notes clean up the Hunter spellbook [Updated] →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News, Opinion

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

11 Comments

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.

Continue reading Lone Wolf: How to play a pet class without a pet →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

More details on Black Arrow and Lock and Load in Warlords

8 Comments

Updated: The below post is now irrelevant as Celestalon tweeted there’s going to be another change to Lock and Load. Every time one of Black Arrow’s ticks multistrikes, it adds a stack of Lock and Load.

One of the changes coming in Warlords of Draenor for survival hunters is that every Black Arrow will guarantee at least one Lock and Load proc. Traps can no longer proc Lock and Load, which is why LnL itself has been removed and it’s now just a built-in component of Black Arrow.

Some hunters were wondering exactly how this guaranteed proc was going to work. Did it just mean that the final tick was always guaranteed to be a proc, or what? Turns out, that the guaranteed proc is randomly placed on one of the ticks, and it does this by determining how many procs you get on cast and then randomly placing them among the ticks.

Continue reading More details on Black Arrow and Lock and Load in Warlords →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com