Tag Archives: Warlords of Draenor Beta

Hunter News

News Bits: Chimaeron guide updated, Robo Hunter on Final Boss, 6.0 PTR stuff

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Have you been on the 6.0 PTR yet to test the hunter changes? If you weren’t in beta, I’d highly recommend it! You can test out most of the new hunter stuff except the level 100 talents. The new pet families are tameable except for Riverbeasts and Rylaks which only exist in Draenor.

One of the first things I did was head on over to Chimaeron and see how it was to tame him at level 90 since I’ve previously only done it at level 100. It’s a bit trickier to do solo at 90, but perfectly doable. I updated my original Chimaeraon post with details on how to do the tame at both level 90 and 100.

Continue reading News Bits: Chimaeron guide updated, Robo Hunter on Final Boss, 6.0 PTR stuff →

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Opinion

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

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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!

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Toucans! (aka Axebeaks)

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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.

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Hunter Guides, Hunter News, Hunter Pets

How to tame Gara the Spirit Beast

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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!).

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Hunter News

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

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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 →

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Hunter News

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

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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.

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Hunter Pets

Pet of the Week: Talador Ridge Prowlers

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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.

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Hunter News

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

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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.

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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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