Sept. 3, 2007

Ring if there's anything else you want

Perhaps my Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina will now be able to find its way to the graveyard where all overused gear goes to die. Today, from Drysc, in response to a question regarding moving quivers/ammo pouches to its own slot (like the keyring):

Moving them off to their own slot isn’t something we’re looking to do at the moment, but we are looking in to helping with the … lacking quiver/ammo pouch sizes.

All I can say is – FINALLY!

Aug. 23, 2007

We're making a statement

The haste rating change seems official, as its made it into the Test Realm Patch notes.

• Haste: Haste has been rebalanced. It has returned to the ratios from the launch of Burning Crusade. Melee attacks and spell casts will now benefit at identical rates from haste. This change results in a reduction in the benefit of haste for melee attacks and an increase in the benefit for spellcasters.

Full credit to Curse for cornering Tigole at the Leipzig Games Convention and getting some answers about Hunter issues (more than I got out of Blizzcon!):

From there we asked him two questions directly related to Hunters, since the class has been somewhat neglected in recent interviews and discussions. Hunters rejoice; we asked about the possibility of the Woodworking profession being added to create arrows, and he says that it’s an idea that they’re seriously tossing around and it may see the light of day in the future.

Finally, Blizzard realizes that Hunters are a bit weak in arenas, especially in 5v5 when compared to other classes, so they’re toying around with ideas of ways to improve their desirability. One idea is to give them a Mortal Strike-like shot that will reduce healing effectiveness on the target of the shot.

Aug. 16, 2007

Who is the little one, a pet perhaps?

More PTR changes. Because I’m a glass half full type of person, I’ll note first that it seems like the Rift Stalker issue with Auto Shot has been 'fixed’ – so now all our shots work towards Health Link as well as traps and melee as mentioned in the previous update. Not really in the good category but just something to note, as well, is the fact that pets no longer receive 0 happiness when they’re 'full’, it will continue to tick 1 happiness. Just something to watch for in terms of overfeeding.

Now for the glass half empty part. Although I myself never jumped on the Scorpid bandwagon (they just weren’t my style, what can I say), it seems that Scorpid Poison was finally changed so it’s no longer turning out high poison tick numbers. This has been reported from numerous sources, and I jumped onto the PTR to test it myself. With full pet happiness (125%), Beastial Wrath, Bloodlust Broach (278AP for 20 seconds) and Ferocious Inspiration, the maximum I could get it to tick for on multiple trials on one of the Servants in Blasted Lands was 214 per at 5 stacks. Obviously, I wasn’t raid buffed, but this is well shy of the huge numbers it was previously putting out. If you want to look for an upside, Rank 5 Scorpid Poison now lasts 10 seconds and has had its damage upped to 55 (from 44).

Haste Rating, also, has been changed (unsure if this is intentional or not), no official word on that yet. Well, we didn’t get confirmation as intentional on the Scorpid Poison thing either, but honestly, you’re fooling yourself if you’re hoping Blizzard will change it back. Haste on the other hand… as an example, 10 Haste right now gives you 0.95% Haste, on the PTR it’s 0.63% Haste.

Aug. 8, 2007

What I'm about to tell you...

It’s still on just the Test server at the moment, but 2.2.0 has been updated to include the Voice Chat features and some other interesting tidbits (some we already knew):

• Voice Chat – The new Voice Chat feature is now available in game. Players will need to go into the options menu under Sound & Voice to activate it. Volume sliders are available for the microphone, speakers and game-audio fade (which automatically lowers the game audio when a voice communication is received), as is a “push-to-talk” setting. Right-clicking on a player’s name now includes the option to mute or un-mute that player. Muting another player blocks all voice chat from him or her; the ignore feature now blocks both voice chat and text chat from that player.
• A new feature for reporting players as being AFK in battlegrounds by right clicking has been added. When enough reports are registered, a 30 second debuff will begin to count down. Once the timer is up a new debuff will appear that will prevent the player from gaining any honor while it is on. This debuff can be negated as soon as the player engages in combat.
• Hunter Pets: Raptors can now learn Dash.
• The Hunter ability Kill Command no longer affects their current target (Don’t panic over this one – there was a bug on the Test servers that had NPCs reflecting/mimicing Kill Command back on their current target. Ouch!).

The Rift Stalker Leggings finally have their tooltip description changed to reflect the loss of Survival Instinct (they currently read 'Your pet’s attacks have a chance to heal your pet for 172 to 198’). They NOW read, on Test, 'Causes your pet to be healed for 15% of the damage you deal’. In the combat log, it reads 'Your Health Link heals X for X’. Health Link only triggers from special shots (Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Multi-Shot, Volley, Serpent Sting, Aimed Shot, Scatter Shot, Silencing Shot and Wyvern Sting), normal melee attacks (as well as Wing Clip, Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack), and traps (Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap). Too, I didn’t notice any critical heals, like you sometimes got with Survival Instinct.

July 31, 2007

Live from Blizzcon, 2007

That’s right, yours truly will be at Blizzcon, and I’ll be posting (mostly) up to the minute reports on the activities there. Will the new expansion be revealed? Is it Northrend? Are hunters going to undergo an Arena review? I don’t know the answers but if I find out, they’ll be posted on this thread. As soon as I know, you’ll know, so keep it tuned to TKA Something!