A couple weeks ago, Celestalon tweeted that survival hunters were getting a new ability called Bear Trap. I speculated it might be a DPS cooldown since survival was sorely lacking in that department, and it looks like it will be. Beast mastery has Bestial Wrath, marksmanship has Rapid Fire, and now survival will have Bear Trap.
@Amulrei Very large bleed + Root.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) May 13, 2014
Continue reading Bear Trap will be a Survival DPS cooldown
One of the questions I always had about Lone Wolf is whether or not you’d actually be sacrificing anything by taking it. The damage from your pet is replaced, but you don’t have to worry about your pet derping, so that damage is probably even greater than the damage lost from the pet.
Lone Wolf hunters can also still bring one of the 6 major raid buffs without a pet, so that aspect of pets is covered. Next on the list was our abilities and talents that play off the pet. We weren’t sure if Blizzard was going to retool those for petless hunters or not. Well, it looks like some of those simply aren’t going to work with Lone Wolf.
@Nogz__ Focusing Shot will trigger Master Marksman. Master’s Call and Spirit Bond will not work without a pet.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) May 9, 2014
Continue reading More Lone Wolf details, Kill Shot being improved
Leave it to Blizzard to release some new info mere minutes after I make a post about abilities I’m going to miss (one of them being Rapid Fire).
Birthday presents for Hunters! Currently planning to replace Flaming Shots, return Rapid Fire to Marksmanship, and add Bear Trap to Survival
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) April 30, 2014
Can’t wait to hear about Bear Trap and the Flaming Shots replacement. HUNTER NEWS! So exciting. I’ll be updating all the relevant WoD posts with this info.
Continue reading Rapid Fire is back, Flaming Shots is gone, and Bear Trap is coming!
Hunters are losing a dozen or so abilities in Warlords of Draenor. Depending on what hunter you ask, you’ll get a different answer to this question. I understand the reasoning behind most of these decisions, but there’s just some abilities I’m really going to miss.
I’ll admit this is not a button I used on a regular basis, but the number of awesome plays I’ve pulled off thanks to Distracting Shot will make me miss its utility. It could be as simple as saving a healer in a dungeon, or it could be something like taunting a Warshaman who got too close to General Nazgrim during the final burn, or preventing a Minion of Y’Shaarj from exploding inside a pack of other minions.
The Glyph of Distracting Shot let you do pretty interesting things as well, like positioning your pet far away so you could ping-pong a difficult enemy back and forth, avoiding a lot of damage.
Distracting Shot will be missed, but I’ll get over it.
Continue reading 3 Hunter abilities I’ll miss (and 3 I won’t miss) in Warlords
This new Hydra model was datamined from the latest Warlords of Draenor alpha build. I must say, these guys look pretty impressive. The first question many hunters had was… IS IT TAMEABLE? The answer is yes!
.@Bro_ketsu Yes it is 🙂
— Jeremy Feasel (@Muffinus) April 22, 2014
I found the pics and video on the Petopia forums and they were originally made available by InicoWc3 on YouTube. Below is a set of pictures for each color (I’m partial to the blue one myself).
Continue reading New Hydra pet models
Wowhead has updated their Warlords site to support the new character models in the 3D model viewer. So far the orcs, dwarves, and tauren male are supported. I’ve been having fun checking out some transmogs on the new dwarf model as I plan to race change my main hunter to that in 6.0.
The animations all seem very close to the originals with some slight tweaks. The biggest change, of course, is the facial animation quality. You can preview all of the various emotes and attacks for each character. The facial animations are in a completely different league compared to what we have now.
You can also preview some of the new armor and weapons, like this very strange looking gun below.
Continue reading Having fun with Wowhead’s model viewer (and new gun models!)
Update 8/22: This article is still mostly accurate but is slightly depreciated. It will give you a good overview of the overall changes but you may want to view more recent posts under the Beast Mastery tag for more info and recent opinions.
If you missed it earlier, Blizzard released the first version of patch notes for the Warlords of Draenor alpha. I’ve summed up all the relevant hunter info in this post if you want to catch up. I’ve already taken a closer look at both survival and marksmanship, but today we’re focusing on beast mastery.
Overall, beast mastery looks like it’s going to see the least amount of changes in Warlords. Blizzard’s goal with the hunter changes was not to revamp the class, but to give each spec a better identity. Beast mastery already had its own identity as the pet-focused spec, but it looks like Blizzard is aiming to reinforce that even further.
Continue reading A closer look at beast mastery hunters in Warlords
Wowhead just datamined a whole bunch of in-game music and sounds from the Warlords of Draenor alpha. Near the bottom of the massive post is a full listing of the ranged weapons sounds, which includes bows, crossbows, and guns. These sounds were split up into individual “reload” and “shoot” variations so I edited all of the variations together to give you a better idea of what it will sound like. Enjoy!
I think the sounds are a big improvement, especially the gun sounds. What do you think? Check the Wowhead post to see all the new audio.
Update 8/22: This article is still mostly accurate but is slightly depreciated. It will give you a good overview of the overall changes but you may want to view more recent posts under the Marksmanship tag for more info and recent opinions.
If you missed it earlier, Blizzard released the first version of patch notes for the Warlords of Draenor alpha. I’ve summed up all the relevant hunter info in this post if you want to catch up.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be looking at some of the individual changes in separate posts such as this one — my opinions on them, and what I think they mean for hunters. Previously, I discussed the survival changes, and today I’m going to look at marksmanship. A new focus dump, farther attack range, and potentially “fixed” AoE? Say it ain’t so.
Continue reading A closer look at marksmanship hunters in Warlords
I was just listening to the live interview with Celestalon on Final Boss TV, and he dropped a bomb in regards to Misdirection in Warlords of Draenor. Here is the new tooltip just posted by Wowhead:
Wow! You’ll effectively be able to permanently transfer threat to the tank (or your pet for soloing I would imagine). This was added to give hunters a little more raid utility, without that utility being a “mandatory” raid-wide DPS or survival cooldown.
I’m sure we’ll get more details soon, like if there are any restrictions, but I’m pretty excited about this. Not just for raiding but for keeping mobs on my pet while soloing. Finally I won’t have to use a major glyph slot to keep my pet permanently misdirected.
Updated 4/21:
Sorry for those of you who were excited for the change, but it looks like it’s not going to happen anymore. Blizzard has something else up their sleeve for hunters.
@Hawkseye20 We *have* mentioned this. The initial idea was a massively improved Misdirection, but decided to change that, but not done.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) April 21, 2014