April 23, 2008

2.4.2

Pre-patch notes for 2.4.2. Here comes the hunter stuff.

Dire Ravens in Blade’s Edge Mountains now tameable.
Tamed Drywallow Snappers now will know Bite 5 (instead of Claw 5.)
Bow of Searing Arrows and Red Whelp Gloves will no longer break crowd control effects.
Most Main-Hand weapons are now One-Hand weapons.
Troll Male off-hand items are now the same size as the main hand item.
Tauren weapons while sheathed have had their graphic readjusted to their pre-patch (2.4.0) state.
The Vengeful Gladiator’s Rifle will now play the proper sound when used.
The Cursed Vision of Sargeras now gives the buff, “Sense Demons” which can be canceled normally. Additionally hunters and druids are able to track two things at once while using the item.
It is no longer possible for pets to get stuck in place after exiting the Spectral Realm in the Kalecgos encounter.
The hunter pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.

To follow up about the Growl change, we received this comment from Nethaera:

Growl was scaling incorrectly before so it’s been changed to scale with the hunter’s AP starting at around 1200 AP. Other pet abilities such as bite, claw, etc will still scale with pet AP. Please keep in mind this isn’t changing the normal amount of threat that pets produce.

Of course, claw and bite don’t scale with AP currently and preliminary reports suggest that they still don’t, so… take that bit with a grain of salt.

Not in the patch notes but on Test realm is an additional change to Aspect of the Viper. Previously, it regenerated mana equal to up to 55% of the player’s intellect. On Test now, in addition to that, it is up to 35% of the player’s level, as well.

April 9, 2008

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

I was actually surprised that there wasn’t a follow-up 2.4.2 patch on Tuesday, as there are quite a few 'known issues’ that seem in desperate need of fixing (ask anyone who has an Exalted neck from Shattered Sun with the Scryer proc – Arcane Strike anyone, yuk!) But, there wasn’t one. However, there are things that need mentioning, so let’s get to it!

First, from Hortus, regarding Improved Hunter’s Mark and Hunter’s Mark:

This is working correctly, once improved hunter’s mark is on a target any Hunter’s mark (improved or not) will refresh the duration of the existing mark (not overwrite it). The buff does not change in any way just the duration remaining.

And, about Boar Charge, also from Hortus:

I have confirmed with the developers that Boar’s growl ability getting such a large bonus to attack power based on charge is a bug. Growl should only benefit from the hunter’s attack power and get no benefit from buffs to the pet’s attack power.

Expect this to be changed in a future patch. If you disagree with this change please post about it in the suggestions or class forums.

Although this somewhat answers the questions about boars, it doesn’t especially address the growl issue which was touched on earlier in the week and seem to be still ongoing, but, are working as intended according to internal Blizzard testing done by Hortus. Nimizar of Proudmore has done quite a bit of testing, you can read his findings here. The issue may or may not be re-addressed.

All that’s left are the known (bugged) issues to cover. They are (as they relate to Hunters):

Initial trigger or activation sounds for Immolation Trap (rank 6) and Explosive Trap (rank 4) cannot be heard by Classic WoW players.
Swapping your current pet for a stabled pet while mounting will cause you to receive an error (“You do not have a pet to summon”) when you use Call Pet.
Zoning after a pet has died or has been dismissed can cause an “Internal Pet Error”.
Players are able to have pets out while mounted by logging out.
Pig pets are not making footprints.
Hunter’s Mark does not appear above Shield Orbs.
(User Interface) The hunter’s spell Dismiss Pet “fades” from player 1 minute after dismissing pet.
(User Interface) Pet skill damage appears on the screen while Pet damage option is disabled.
(User Interface) Dying and disconnecting causes you to be unable to release.
Abilities/trinkets that trigger after killing an opponent that gives experience or honor are being activated after killing mobs during bombing quests.
Several procs from items are breaking crowd control effects such as Scatter Shot.
Vengeful Gladiator’s Rifle (34530) is using a inconsistent sound.
Bow strings are not being lit in 2.4.0.
The Arcane Strike proc from Shattered Sun Pendant of Might is breaking crowd control effects such as Scatter Shot.
It is possible to dodge, block, and parry the proc Arcane Strike from the Shattered Sun Pendant of Might.
The Brutal Gladiator’s Rifle is emitting a Bow sound effect upon use, despite the item being a Gun.

April 1, 2008

April Fool's

Well, I was certain that the two-headed ogre April Fool’s Day prank might not be able to be topped but I was wrong. Blizzard has, in my opinion, outdone itself with the Bard Hero class and a console release of Molten Core. HAS SOUND!

Also, they snuck 2.4.1 in on us with a single Hunter note:

Tranquilizing Shot no longer incorrectly restricts use of other Hunter abilities in specific situations.

I will be the first to say, I must not have been watching the Bug Report forum closely enough because I have no idea what this refers to.

March 25, 2008

Fury of the Sunwell

2.4 is now live! Before everyone goes all frothy about buying the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes or epic gems, remember that those vendors aren’t immediately available in the Shattered Sun Offensive. So start plugging away at those daily quests! The patch notes for hunters aren’t anything we don’t know, but I’ll re-summarize:

Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
Improved Mend Pet now has a 25/50 chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.
The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.
Track spells will now persist after death.
Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Notice that the change to Multi-Shot (where it wouldn’t break CC effects) did NOT make it to the live patch.

March 7, 2008

It's like the Titanic but with bears

More updates to the patch notes. Mend Pet has been changed again, along with this interesting change to Multi-Shot:

Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Track spells will now persist after death.
Improved Mend Pet now has a 25/50 (was 50/100) chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Also, we have a post from Kalgan that, while doesn’t directly talk about Hunters (early on in the discussion anyway), has stirred up the community quite a bit. Initially, it started out a discussion about the Warlock changes to Lifetap which had been put in and then reverted, in which was referenced class representation in the Arena:

No other warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4. One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we’d expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we’d expect, a value below 100% means they’re represented less than we’d want (obviously this chart doesn’t include a spec breakdown in any way).

Two charts were then provided, one for the 2200+ (2v2, 3v3 and 5v5) Arena brackets and another for the 1850 (2v2, 3v3 and 5v5) brackets. Here’s where Hunters are falling on that chart:

Hunter (2200+) 43.0% 50.2% 43.0%
Hunter (1850) 50.2% 50.2% 50.2%

When asked specifically about the low hunter representation, Kalgan replied:

As far as hunters go, yes, we do feel as though they’re still represented less than we’d like. I think that’s safe to say. That being said, we have seen some meaningful improvement.

I would recommend giving the entire thread a read.

The TKA Something Forums have had two new discussion categories added in the last couple days – Damage Per Second and Dungeons & Raids. Enjoy!

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