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
WoD beta build 18505 just hit the servers and with it comes some pretty substantial changes for marksmanship and survival hunters.
Marksmanship Mastery
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.
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
Taming Chimaeron is simple for a level 100 character, but if you want to tame him in patch 6.0 at level 90, it’s a little trickier to do solo, but still perfectly doable. I’ll start with level 100. It isn’t quite as simple as walking in and taming. First you need to show Chimaeron who’s boss (that means getting him below 20% health before you can tame).
Continue reading How to tame Chimaeron at level 90 and 100
Out of the handful of new glyphs being added for hunters in Warlords, the Glyph of Play Dead is definitely my favorite. It only takes up a minor slot, so you don’t have to worry about it clashing with anything important.
The pet not only plays its death animation but also drops aggro. This is only useful in some situations, as I quickly discovered when I feigned death to get a rare elite back on my pet. Since the pet also dropped aggro, the elite mob reset and started evading. Any time you want to be able to feign to drop aggro without resetting the fight, you’re not going to want to use this.
Continue reading The best new Hunter Glyph: Glyph of Play Dead
Shadowmoon Valley had a wider variety of tameable pets than Frostfire Ridge did (a lot of the ones in Frostfire weren’t yet flagged as tameable on the alpha). Some of the ones in Shadowmoon still can’t be tamed, but that’ll be fixed in time.
Is your stable full? You might want to make room for some of these guys, and this is only the stuff from a single zone… nevermind any rare spawns we haven’t even seen yet.
Continue reading New hunter pets in Shadowmoon Valley
These lumbering beasts wander the shallows of the Nightmarsh in Shadowmoon Valley. Hydras are one of the 3 new hunter pet families being added in Warlords of Draenor, the others being Rylaks and Riverbeasts, which I’ll feature shortly. Hydras bring the Keen Senses (mastery) buff.
There’s a little bit of a bug with these guys in the alpha right now. Instead of playing their run animation when they move around, they instead play their walking animation at superfast speeds. Oh, and they’re very stompy. Even more stompy than a regular hydra. For the sake of hunter ears everywhere, let’s hope they tone those noises down just a smidge. 😉
Continue reading Pet of the Week: Echidnian Hydra
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.
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
I recently spent some time outside Draenor to get my hands on a few exotic pets to test their new abilities. Today we’ll be looking at the new Quilen, Rhino, Devilsaur, and Core Hound abilities. Exotic pets in Warlords can have up to 3 special abilities or buffs. For example the Core Hound has a 5% multistrike buff, Ancient Hysteria, and the new Molten Hide. Exotics which only have 1 special ability bring double buffs instead
Stone Armor: When falling below 40% health, the Quilen’s skin will change to stone, causing it to take 30% less damage and regenerate 3% of its maximum health every 1 sec for 8 sec. This effect can only occur once every 120 sec.
This has a similar visual to the turtle’s shell shield, only its automatic whenever the pet’s health gets low. The turtle’s shell is arguably better since it’s 50% reduced damage for 12 seconds on a 1 min cooldown, but the benefit of this one is its passive nature and the healing. The Quilen also comes with its crit buff and the battle rez compared to the turtle which has zero buffs.
Continue reading Warlords of Draenor: New exotic pet abilities
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.
I had Improved Arcane Shot and Enhanced Basic Attacks for perks.
Continue reading WoD Alpha: Quick first impressions of the 3 hunter specs
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
