July 18, 2008

Cat, meet the bag

Wrath of the Lich King Alpha has ended and Blizzard has thrown open their doors for Beta testing. That also means the NDA has been lifted so we can discuss, talk over, debate and dissect to our heart’s content. These are the latest patch notes from the Beta server (hunter related anyway!):

  • All pet families now have one unique ability. New abilities have been added for families such as bears and sporebats.
  • Aspects now no longer cost mana.
  • Avoidance, Dash / Dive and Cobra Reflexes are now pet talents instead of pet skills.
  • Bite now has no cooldown, does the same damage and costs the same Focus as Claw, so works as a Focus dump.
  • Clever Traps (Survival) has been renamed “Trap Mastery.”
  • Concussive Barrage (Marksmanship) – Can now proc from Volley attacks.
  • Deterrence (Survival) – Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, and now also increases your chance to resist spells by 60%. Now has a new spell effect.
  • Every hunter pet can learn Growl, Cower and either Bite or Claw (never both).
  • Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family. Pets gain talent points starting at level 20 and earn an extra talent point every 4 levels.
  • If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath their own level, the pet will then have their level increased to five levels beneath the hunter’s own level.
  • Improved Feign Death (Survival): Now also reduces damage taken during Feign Death by 15/30%.
  • Loyalty, Training Points and the hunter Beast Training button no longer exist. Hunter pets can now learn all skills at their level. They will get new ranks automatically as they gain levels.
  • Master Tactician (Survival) – Chance to proc increased to 10%, up from 6%.
  • Monster Slaying (Survival) and Humanoid Slaying (Survival) has been combined into “Improved Tracking”.
  • New Talent – Improved Tracking (Survival) – Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 1/2/3/4/5%.
  • Steady Shot now uses ammo. In result, its bonus damage has been slightly reduced. Players can notice a damage increase based upon what ammo they use.
  • Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 10/20/30% (instead of resist % chance).
  • Trap Mastery (Survival) has been removed.

Too, the new Beast Mastery/Marksmanship/Survival trees are available for planning and play at MMO-Champion or Wowhead.

July 16, 2008

You should be running

2.4.3 went live yesterday. These are the hunter-y items you may have missed in your haste to login once the servers came up:

  • Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
  • Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
  • Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.
  • Placing an item in your bank will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress if the spell was cast by that item.
  • When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.
  • Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet’s Growl.
  • Pet Aggro: Pets will no longer generate threat immediately from being summoned.
  • The time available to accept the option to “Enter Battle” for a battleground has been reduced to 1 minute and 20 seconds (previously 2 minutes) in order to give each side more time to get a full complement of players before the battle begins.
  • Zoning into an instance on a PvE realm will now drop your PvP flag.
  • Rocket Boots Xtreme and Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite can no longer be used in the arena. These no longer have a failure chance.
  • For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, pets gaining/losing phase status will now properly break off combat from unphased/phased opponents.
  • Bow of the Verdant Keeper’s Aim: This item’s triggered effect no longer breaks the effect of Scatter Shot.
  • Thori’dal, the Star’s Fury is now Unique as intended.
  • Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.
  • Using an instant ability after Steady Shot will no longer lock out auto shot.
  • Snake Trap will no longer break players out of stealth if the snakes pass near the stealthed character.
  • Concussive shot will now properly have a chance to proc Bow of Searing Arrows.
  • Scare Beast will now be correctly limited to one target and has had its tooltip updated to display the proper cast time of 1.5 seconds.
  • Corrected an issue where the initial trigger or activation sounds for Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap could not be heard by some players.
  • Moving a quiver from one container slot to an empty container slot will no longer reset the ranged attack speed.
  • Fixed an issue where ravager pets had all available pet skills.
  • Pets will now properly attack mobs when out of phase with the real world.
  • Passive pets will no longer attack due to AoE taunt spells.

July 11, 2008

The sheep, or the wolf. The choice is yours

Thanks to Elois of Uldum for the latest addition to our Spreadsheets section, a statistical calculator for hunters intended to be a tool that can look past the gear and look to the hunter to identify how to improve DPS. Enjoy!

June 28, 2008

Ah, Paris...

The Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational has kicked off, lead by the announcement that Diablo 3 will be Blizzard’s next game. The panels were busy at work answering class related questions about Wrath of the Lich King as well – thanks to MMO-Champion and World of Raids for the following Hunter information:

  • Steady Shot will no longer clip Auto Shot, meaning it won’t have to be timed, just spammed
  • The skill point system of pets will be replaced with Pet Talents, one tree for utility, one tree for tanking and one tree for DPS. The skill points for each pets are being changed to the new “Pet talents” and will disappear
  • A new ability will make the pet deal extra 20% damage when on 20% health
  • Each kind of pet family will have its own talent tree and its own unique ability
  • There are going to be new pets in WotLK

I obviously wish I could be reporting live from Paris, but alas. Stay tuned for updates as they become available!

June 18, 2008

Gigantique

Patch 2.4.3 is currently on the Test realm which is also up and active. There are some hunter changes and some general things of hunter interest.

  • Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
  • Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
  • Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.
  • Placing an item in your bank will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress if the spell was cast by that item.
  • When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.
  • Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet’s Growl.
  • Pet Aggro: Pets will no longer generate threat immediately from being summoned.
  • Scare Beast: This spell will now be limited correctly to one target.
  • For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, pets gaining/losing phase status will now properly break off combat from unphased/phased opponents.
  • Bow of the Verdant Keeper’s Aim: This item’s triggered effect no longer breaks the effect of Scatter Shot.
  • Thori’dal, the Star’s Fury is now Unique as intended.
  • Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.
  • Using an instant ability after Steady Shot will no longer lock out auto shot.
  • Snake Trap will no longer break players out of stealth if the snakes pass near the stealthed character.
  • Concussive shot will now properly have a chance to proc Bow of Searing Arrows.
  • Corrected an issue where the initial trigger or activation sounds for Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap could not be heard by some players.

Not mentioned but fixed as well, is the Scare Beast tooltip – it now correctly displays the 1.5 cast time.

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