Nov. 21, 2007

There's no such thing as a Night Elf Mohawk

As found on the WOW-European forums from Salthem (one of their Blizzard posters):

The following changes are planned for Hunters in the next patch, 2.3.2, which we hope will go up on the PTR quite soon:

  • Aspect of the Viper effect increased.
  • It will once again be possible for two freezing traps to be in place at the same time.
  • Pet leveling speed has been substantially increased.

Also earlier this week, Slouken posted again regarding the continued issue with Hunter /castsequence macros and their slated fix for 2.3.2.

So, in 2.3.2 we’re just advancing the sequence when we see a spell success with the name of the spell we’re looking for. Hunters will be pleased, since this means their Steady Shot, Auto Shot macro will automatically advance again. :)

Nov. 14, 2007

WTB Double Trapping

My instincts proved correct – the trap change was indeed intentional, albeit undocumented, according to Nethaera:

I was just about to get to this one. This was another bug fix that unintentionally didn’t get into the patch notes. It’s getting added in now in order to clear up the confusion. Here is how the note actually reads:

  • Fixed a bug in which Hunters were able to use Readiness in conjunction with Freezing Trap on two different targets.

Being able to double-trap was not intended to happen so the bug has been corrected. As always though, constructive feedback on changes are always welcome. What should happen is if you trap another target, the first trap should release much like what happens when a Priest Shackles Undead or a Mage Polymorphs a target.

Of course, Readiness wasn’t necessary to double trap, as many hunters already know. It’s a little difficult not to be frustrated. Supposedly, Nethaera is 'collecting feedback’ about this (which has been, so far, uniformly negative), so we’ll see if that impacts anything. And, FD/drink disabled and ALSO intentional? Yep, also from Nethaera:

Just so everyone aware, there was a bug fix that unintentionally didn’t make it into the release patch notes, but has been added into the bug fix listing on the forum as well as is being added onto the Web version of the patch notes.

  • Fixed a bug in which Hunters were able to disengage from combat using Feign Death during boss encounters.

Please note that this should only apply for when you are engaged in a boss fight and shouldn’t affect trash mobs.

Well, sort of intentional. This was done to prevent Hunters from changing gear/trinkets, which was confirmed with the following reply:

This is true. This was allowing more than just drinking to occur, such as the above, gear swapping. This wasn’t intended.

So, losing FD/drink was more of a side effect.

Nov. 14, 2007

No matter. Most likely lose it again anyway

Although not quite on par with the Shaman Resto T6 set, we do have some bugs or… depending on how pessimistic you are, undocumented changes with 2.3. Currently, you can no longer trap two separate NPCs at the same time, so if mob #2 blunders into a trap set for mob #1 (or if you’ve set it up to trap 2), one will immediately break (probably intentional). Lower ranks of Arcane Shot do not appear to be scaling with RAP (probably a bug). Varying reports about people being unable to feign death and drink during boss encounters (no idea on this one). Some people seem to be unable to see the new Volley animation (probably a blessing in disguise). And /castsequence issues persist. You’ve been warned.

Nov. 13, 2007

Awards, parades, and commemorative stamps!

Although we’ve been talking about it for over a month, here are the patch notes for 2.3 (as they relate to hunters, of course)!

  • Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise.
  • Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.
  • Dwarf: Gun Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.
  • Troll: Bow and Thrown Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with those weapons by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.
  • Aimed Shot (Marksmanship) now reduces healing done to that target by 50% for 10 seconds.
  • Arcane Shot (Ranks 6 and above) now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to their normal damage.
  • Explosive Trap: The initial damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  • Expose Weakness: The triggered effect from this talent will no longer use up charges of Misdirection.
  • Immolation Trap: The total damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  • Misdirection: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Hunters overwrite each other’s Misdirection.
  • Misdirection: If a Hunter attempts to use this ability on a target which already has an active Misdirection, the spell will fail to apply due to a more powerful spell already being in effect. This will not trigger the cooldown or cost any mana.
  • Readiness: This talent now finishes the cooldown on Kill Command.
  • Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap all gain additional damage based on ranged attack power.
  • Serpent Sting: The total damage dealt by this sting is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  • Steady Shot: Tooltip clarified to indicate base weapon damage is used in the damage calculation.
  • Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled.
  • Wyvern Sting (Survival) is now instant cast and has a maximum duration of 10 seconds in PvP.
  • Wyvern Sting: This ability will no longer be overwritten by lower ranks of Wyvern Sting.
  • Daily cooking quests are now available from The Rokk in Shattrath City! In addition to gold, you can receive random cooking reagents and new recipes as a reward for completing these quests.
  • Duration of wizard and mana oils created by enchanters has been increased.
  • Engineering potion injectors no longer require engineering skill to use.
  • Plans for a new arrow making device can be found from Sunfury Archers.
  • The plans for adamantite shells now create an Adamantite Shell Machine. The machine creates 200 high quality bullets at a time, with 5 charges per item.
  • New fish can now be caught in Zul’Aman and Deadwind Pass. Recipes for preparing these new fish are obtained through the daily cooking quests.
  • New recipes are available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to make 20 slot quivers and ammo pouches.
  • New recipes are available from the Honor Hold, Thrallmar, and Lower City quartermasters to create 24 slot quivers and ammo pouches.
  • Black Bow of the Betrayer: The triggered effect from this item will no longer use up charges of Misdirection. In addition, the triggered effect will no longer break crowd control effects.
  • Gladiator’s armor pieces of like nature from various seasons will now all meet the requirements for their shared set bonus. This means if you are using 2 pieces of Season 1 gear and 2 pieces of Season 2 gear of the same design you will now have your 4 piece set bonus.
  • Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets: The bonus damage on these gloves has been increased from 4% to 5%.
  • Merciless Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets: The bonus damage on these gloves has been increased from 4% to 5%.
  • Fixed a bug in the pet sheet stamina mouseover tooltip that showed an incorrect health increase value.

Although I pulled the above from the latest Test Realm patch notes, they APPEAR to be identical to the ones that I just downloaded at 4:00am (just now, in other words). If I missed anything, blame the lack of sleep. Not mentioned in the patch are the changes to the dead zone and the change in our Arena set bonus. There are some new tameable beasts in both Zul’Aman and the re-vamped Dustwallow Marsh.

Nov. 7, 2007

Bon appetite!

With 2.3 confirmed to be going live next Tuesday, we received one last Hunter update from Eyonix:

In patch 2.3, aimed shot will not only reduces healing done to the target by 50% for a ten seconds, but we’re also reducing the shot time by 0.5 seconds.

The original post wasn’t even a page long before someone mentioned that lowering the cast time from 3.5 seconds to 3 seconds wasn’t something to really write home about, and this was the follow-up:

Yeah, an already great 11-point talent that will now have a reduced cast time and a mortal stike effect. How completely useless…

Edited to add my follow-up:

I was quick to reply to be very honest. What I meant by “already great” is that even in its current state, players are still making great use of the talent. We wouldn’t have given this talent these two improvements had we been completely happy with its effectiveness.

With that being said, these ARE great changes. To those who flame that 3.0 is still too slow, lets be reasonable. We’re simply being conservative. We may lower it further (probably not before 2.3), but we want to see effective the ability is with these changes implemented. Keep in mind too, there were other changes made for 2.3 that improve hunter viability and effectiveness in PvP.

In short, we need to see how all the changes play out before making anymore changes.

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