Tag Archives: Warlords of Draenor

Hunter News

Holy Misdirection Buff, Batman!

9 Comments

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:

Misdirection

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.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News, Hunter Pets

New Hunter pets and pet buffs in Warlords

20 Comments

More fun hunter stuff from the Warlords of Draenor alpha has been datamined! First up, it looks like all buffs will be able to be provided by non-Exotic pets, including bloodlust/heroism.  It appears that some exotic pets will be getting new special abilities instead of having access to exclusive buffs.

We currently know about 5 new pet families in Warlords:

  • Rylak (Exotic) — Haste, Stamina, and Slow fall
  • Riverbeast — Mortal Wounds (reduced healing)
  • Hydra — Mastery buff
  • Stags – Versatility buff
  • Clefthooves (Exotic) — Versatility, Multistrike, and damage reduction.

To learn more about the new pet families in Warlords, check out this video. 

Below is a handful of the new pets you’ll find in Draenor.

Continue reading New Hunter pets and pet buffs in Warlords →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

New hunter glyphs datamined

3 Comments

The fine folks over at Wowhead have been datamining the alpha client and there’s a few more huntery things to share, including 4 new glyphs.

New Glyphs
  • Glyph of Snake Trap (Major) — Your Ice Trap is replaced with Snake Trap. Venomous snakes released by the trap will poison nearby enemies with a Crippling Poison that reduces movement speed by 50% for 12 sec.
    • It looks like Snake Trap is being removed as a baseline trap, but for those who will miss it, you can turn your Ice Trap back into Snake Trap. The only difference is the snakes will only use Crippling Poison.
  • Glyph of Quick Revival (Major) — Your Revive Pet is now instant but costs 80 Focus.
    • I would have a hard time using up a major glyph slot on this one. With Heart of the Phoenix, and now that Revive Pet’s cast time is already below 2 seconds with haste… it just doesn’t seem that appealing to me, but it may have use in specific soloing situations.
  • Glyph of Deep Frost (Major) — Victims of your Freezing Trap are now immune to any damage for its duration.
    • Sooo… what if we want to break the target out early? In PvP its not as much of an issue, but the 1 min duration in PvE could be annoying. On the other hand, there are probably situations where it would be nice to lock down an add for a minute and not have to worry about it breaking.
  • Glyph of Play Dead (Minor) — Your pet also plays dead when you use Feign Death.
    • How adorable. Seriously, this is a pretty fun sounding minor glyph.
Glyph Changes

As a bonus, check out this BoP engineer crafted gun, Shrediron’s Face Shredder.

 

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News, Opinion

A closer look at survival hunters in Warlords of Draenor

15 Comments

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 Survival tag for more info and recent opinions.

If you missed it yesterday, 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.  Today I’m going to start with the survival spec changes as there seems to be a lot of discussion and concern over the removal of Kill Shot from survival’s toolkit. The news isn’t all bad though. Survival may actually live up to its namesake now.

Continue reading A closer look at survival hunters in Warlords of Draenor →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Off Topic, Opinion

The end-of-expansion doldrums

3 Comments

My WoW playing time has dropped off a cliff over the past few weeks. My motivation to gear up any further is mostly gone, though that isn’t anything new. I always feel like that at the end of an expansion when I know quest greens and dungeon blues are about to replace all my purples. There’s nothing wrong with that. I look forward to getting the new gear and starting fresh.

But for some reason this lack of new content just feels worse than previous expansions. I’m guessing this is due to a complete and utter lack of WoW news. I don’t want to say they promised it, but the way devs were talking at BlizzCon certainly implied that Warlords would be out sooner than normal. Now we know this is not the case and the lull in content may even be longer than Cataclysm’s. Dragon Soul lasted about 10 months, and Siege of Orgrimmar is going to have its 10 month birthday on July 10th. Judging by the estimate of a fall release, SoO is going to last a minimum of 12 months. Also, does anyone else feel weird using their Warlords mount and pet 6 months before the expansion actually comes out?

Continue reading The end-of-expansion doldrums →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News, Hunter Pets

Hydras confirmed!

2 Comments

In a time with so little WoW news being released, little tidbits like this really get me excited. WoW Designer @Muffinus tweeted a pic of a Hydra standing beside a hunter, and confirmed it is indeed a tamed pet. Earlier this month, he asked hunters what they’d like to see for hunter pets in Warlords. Several hunters (including myself) reiterated how much we want to see Hydras. It seems our wish has been granted.

Continue reading Hydras confirmed! →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Warlords of Draenor pre-order thoughts

8 Comments

Warlords of Draenor is now up for pre-order (at least digitally). The “free” level 90 character boost as well as the mount and pet are all available immediately. I, of course, bought it the first moment I could, but I was a little surprised that the price had gone up $10 over previous expansions. I think a lot of people (especially alt-a-holics) would be interested in a $39.99/59.99 expansion, like they used to cost, without the 90 boost option.

Price stuff aside, I was really disappointed to learn that the release isn’t expected until the fall of this year (which means September at the earliest). I was under the impression that MoP’s final tier would be shorter than previous expansions. A full 10 months of Dragon Soul was very… very tedious. Granted, Siege of Orgrimmar is ten times better as a raid tier, but with this news we’re looking at it lasting at least a full 12 months! Yikes. If there’s one good thing to come out of this, it’s that I’ll be enjoying the summer (outside!) a whole lot more.

Continue reading Warlords of Draenor pre-order thoughts →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

New Hunter Talents Revealed

22 Comments

A new video from February’s press event has been uncovered, and I am very happy to say it features some new information about the hunter talents in Warlords. They are a little different than they were back at BlizzCon. You can find the video below, but I’ve gone through frame by frame to pick out all of the tooltips and summarize it for you.

  • New Level 100 Talent: Flaming Shots – Your auto shots now deal 80% weapon damage as fire damage (Bola Shot has been removed!)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Focusing Shot – Deals 100% weapon damage and generates 75 focus. 2.55 sec cast. Replaces Cobra Shot and Steady Shot. Cannot be cast while moving. (This is very similar to Snipe from BlizzCon, but less weapon damage and more focus regen)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Versatility (beast mastery only) – Increases your pet’s combat experience to 70% increased damage (a 20% pet damage buff) and grants many specialization-specific abilities regardless of chosen spec. (This is the same as it was at BlizzCon)
  • New Level 100 Talent: Lone Wolf (survival and marksmanship) – Increases your damage done when you do not have a pet summoned. Celestalon tweeted that Lone Wolf is still in.
  • Stampede is now a talent. It replaces Lynx Rush in the level 75 tier.
  • Thrill of the Hunt now affects Aimed Shot in addition to Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot. As I reported earlier, Aimed Shot is now marksmanship’s only focus dump. Marksmanship no longer uses Arcane Shot.
  • Aspect of the Iron Hawk renamed to Iron Hawk. Due to hunter aspects being removed, this is now just a 10% damage reduction.

Continue reading New Hunter Talents Revealed →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Warlords of Draenor: Aimed Shot to be marksmanship’s focus dump

6 Comments

I don’t think you’ll believe where I found out this little tidbit of news, but it was in the Twitch chat for tonight’s Legendary show. While the hosts were talking about the hunter crowd control changes, Lore and Celestalon — who were both in the chat — chimed in with this news about hunter focus dumps:

twitchchat

So, to clarify, survival and beast mastery will continue to use Arcane Shot as their primary focus dump, but now marksmanship will dump their focus solely with Aimed Shot. And yes, Aimed Shot is still a casted ability. This is going to make marksmanship feel a lot different from the other specs. I for one am excited!

I do hope they make the Glyph of Aimed Shot baseline though (unless their plan is to remove the glyph entirely). Note that you can play the spec like this today, so you may want to give it a shot because you’ll have to get used to not having Arcane Shot as a marksmanship hunter.  Earlier this week, while looking closely at the video here, I noticed that Aimed Shot’s focus cost was reduced by 20 during Thrill of the Hunt. It all makes sense now. 🙂 Reminder: This is all subject to change.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hunter News

Warlords of Draenor: Game system changes & hunters

7 Comments

The latest WoW Dev Watercooler talks about some of the upcoming game system changes, but a lot of it seems to be stuff we already know (at least those of us who gobble up every morsel of WoD information we can find). The highlights, as they relate to hunters, are as follows.

Stat Squish and Items

Currently, gear and character power progress linearly from levels 1-60, and then exponentially from 61-90. In Warlords, they are changing this so power progresses linearly from 1-85, and then exponentially thereafter. The power curve will also be a lot less. They are confident this will not affect old world soloing, but in order to guarantee it they are implementing a system to further increase your power against lower level targets. If you’re critting for 450k now, you’ll probably be critting for around 30k when patch 6.0 drops. Spells will no longer have any base damage component (e.g. Aimed Shot) and instead will be pure weapon damage scaling or attack power scaling. The previously announced stats, Amplify and Cleave, have been put on the back burner (source). The main secondary stats in Warlords will be crit, haste, mastery, readiness, and multistrike. (Note that Readiness is the same effect of Assurance of Consequence and Multistrike is the same effect of Haromm’s Talisman — both of these trinkets will get converted to the new stats in 6.0).

Continue reading Warlords of Draenor: Game system changes & hunters →

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com