Feb. 8, 2008

Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury

MMO-Champion has the skinny on the legendary bow of Sunwell, which is called Thori’dal, the Stars’ Fury.

353-540 Damage Speed: 3.00
(148.7 damage per second)
+17 Agility
Durability 110/110
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves your critical strike rating by 16.
Equip: Increases your attack power by 34.
Equip: Your attacks ignore 112 of your opponent’s armor.
Equip: Increases ranged attack speed by 15%. Does not stack with quiver or ammo pouch haste effects.
“The energy of the Sunwell courses through Thori’dal.”

It is also being reported that it comes with the following spell ID which is not mentioned in the item description:

46699 : Requires No Ammo – Thori’dal generates magical arrows when the bow string is drawn. Does not use ammo.

No ammo costs AND anyone lucky enough to get this bow gets a bag slot back!

Feb. 8, 2008

Was the wait worth it?

PTR everything is jammed but my download is finished so I get to peek at the notes, but man, they’re a lot smaller for hunters than I honestly expected (no mention of feeding pets in combat). I’ll list some of the general ones that apply to hunters as well, sort of:

  • Spell Haste: Spell Haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
  • Spirit-Based Mana Regen: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
  • Equiping 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.
  • The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.
  • Moongraze Stag Tenderloin can now be consumed by hunter pets that eat meat.
  • Winterfall Firewater: The tooltip no longer specifies only melee attack power.
  • Spell Haste and Armor Penetration will now display on the character sheet (Armor Penetration displays in the hit rating section).
  • Pets are now able to properly attack mobs near the walls on the ramps in Zul’Aman, Bear Wing.

Some interesting raid changes as well, the attunement requirement for Hyjal and Black Temple has been removed AND you can just head straight to Kael’Thas or Lady Vashj without killing the other bosses before them. This is the Sunwell patch too, just a heck of a lot going on. More hunter changes on the horizon? Your guess is as good as mine, guess we’ll find out as 2.4 progresses on the Test realm.

Feb. 6, 2008

Je ne parle pas francais!

Or do I? From one of the WOW-EU posters, Thyvene, about the legendary bow that’s been rumored/discussed for patch 2.4:

A few more details on this legendary weapon : it will be a loot like the Warglaives of Azzinoth, not a reward from a quest like Thunderfury.

No gathering 500 bars of Eternium. That makes me so glad. Also, don’t expect sweeping class changes immediately upon the PTR release, since Nethaera said:

I’m going to be a bit cautious in what I say in this regard. Will there be some changes to classes? Yes, there will be some. We’re not rushing into a bunch of class changes for this patch at this point. Consider the patch to be a bit more progressive in nature. As we go along, the developers are going to be keeping a close eye on the results of any changes and additions and then making changes as they feel they are necessary. How many changes occur are going to be based on testing over time. This is why it’s important for players to get in and test it as much as possible.

We want to make sure that the changes we are making are viable and practical for continued balance of the classes and don’t want to put in too many changes at once and essentially skew the results too much one way or another.

Supposedly, we may be only hours away from 2.4 being on the PTR, so I guess we’ll know when we know.

Jan. 15, 2008

Yes, no, maybe so

Although we were told back in November of 2007 that the Grimtotem Spirit Guide, while not a beast that was intentionally able to be tamed, it would remain tameable because it was a “fun use of in-game mechanics”. Unfortunately, it was apparently too good to last and Hunters can no longer tame them. We received this explanation from Drysc about it:

Through a hotfix we’ve recently removed the ability to tame a Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Players who have already gone through the trouble of taming the creature will be able to keep them unchanged. This hotfix only removes the possibility to tame this creature from here on.

The removal of the spirit guide has been debated within design discussions for a while now as to what impact the pet and its precedent has on the game. The unintended nature of the taming, the undead status of the guide, appearance of the wolf in relation to the feel of the hunter class, and the complex processes of taming were all issues touched upon and discussed.

Ultimately the discussions brought us to the conclusion that this should not be a permanent addition to the pet selection available to hunters; however, those that have already tamed them should be allowed to keep them due to their efforts in obtaining one.

This, of course, has sparked a hot debate about the decision – more that it was hotfixed and not announced in, say, the 2.4 patch notes that it would be changed and thusly allow any remaining players who wished to tame them to do so. I have to agree that a warning, especially in light of the fact that it had previously been stated that they would remain tameable, would have gone a long way in stemming the tide of negative backlash that has occurred as a result.

Jan. 9, 2008

Lock up the lions, or they will eat you

Patch day, long overdue. Here are the Hunter related notes, in case you missed them. Since it was on the Test server for so long, nothing really comes as a surprise (so far, anyway):

  • Arcane Shot: Ranks 1-5 will once again deal bonus damage based on attack power.
  • Aspect of the Viper effect increased.
  • Freezing Trap is no longer limited to one target at a time.
  • Pet leveling speed has been increased.
  • Fixed various problems with /castsequence getting stuck.
  • /cast will toggle spells again unless the name is prefixed with an exclamation mark, e.g. /castsequence Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
  • Fixed “Spell/Ability is not ready yet” message when clicking quickly at the beginning of a cast.

Personal note, I could have done without the change to the Halloween broom mounts. Running that event 5+ times a day, I thought I’d stockpiled enough brooms to last until Wrath of the Lich King but alas.

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