Oct. 11, 2007

Please don't attack the window treatments

2.3 is on Test realms but man, it’s getting slammed from here and back again, so if you can settle for just the notes, here they are, as they relate to hunters. Yes, Zul’Aman will be in, as will guild banks and experience required to level between 20 to 60 has been reduced:

  • Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.
  • 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 Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses.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.
  • Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 canceled.
  • Wyvern Sting (Survival) is now instant cast and has a maximum duration of 10 seconds in PvP.
  • 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. (Some Fruit or Fungus recipes would be nice)
  • Duration of wizard and mana oils created by enchanters has been increased.
  • Players can now track fishing nodes. This ability is learned from a journal sometimes found in crates obtained through fishing.
  • 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.
  • Fishing difficulty reduced for some areas in Nagrand.
  • 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.
  • All old world dungeons have had their loot revisited. Players will now find that all loot dropped inside instances will be of Superior quality.
  • 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.
  • Expose Weakness: The triggered effect from this talent will no longer use up charges of Misdirection.
  • 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.
  • Ogri’la Faction Vendor: This vendor now sells potions usable anywhere for a large number of Apexis Shards.
  • Players that complete the attunement quests for Tempest Keep and Coilfang Resevoir may now choose to display a new title, “'character name’ Champion of the Naaru.”
  • Items with Metagems in them will now display the gems required to activate the metagem and whether those requirements have been met on the item tooltip.
  • Many On Use items now display the cooldown in the item tooltip.
  • Fixed a bug in the pet sheet stamina mouseover tooltip that showed an incorrect health increase value.

If you have any additional notes that I might have missed or things that were changed but didn’t make it into the 'official’ patch notes, do feel free to mail them to me at fritti@tkasomething.com. I expect there to be further updates in the next few days as people get their characters copied over and jump into Zul’Aman (new beasts, perhaps?). Remember, all this stuff is subject to change, it’s not reality until it’s on the live servers, as Kalgan reminded us:

2.3 will be up on the PTR for quite some time. Several classes are likely to get more changes before 2.3 goes live, it’s just a question of which changes (ie: we’re still considering the mortal strike effect for aimed shot for hunters, among other possibilities). Yes, we’d be making several changes to aimed shot in the process if we decided to go with that change.

Also, MMO-Champion is reporting an undocumented new skill for Hunters called 'Disarming Shot’. No further details at this time but the name seems pretty self-explanatory. However, information coming in is saying that it is not found on any of the Hunter trainers as yet and there is speculation that it is either a NPC ability from Zul’Aman (when you mind control mobs to fight a boss there) or is potentially a Tome drop ALA old Tranquilizing Shot.

Oct. 2, 2007

If you have to ask, you can't afford it

Not really new news, since it was discussed at Blizzcon, but the legendary ranged weapon was again confirmed by Bornakk:

We were planning to implement a Legendary ranged weapon soon, while I’m not sure what class restrictions it will have, I kind of doubt many Rogues or Warriors are going to be able to say that they need it or will use it more than Hunters. Just my crazy thoughts though.

The 'were’ part scares me. Makes me think soon isn’t as soon as we hope?

Sept. 29, 2007

And such spirit is deserving of a sporting chance

I guess 2.3 can’t come soon enough, well… I can’t wait for it to get on the Test realm and see what ELSE is in store for Hunters (surely the teases we’ve been given can’t be everything, right? RIGHT?!). But, we can’t ignore the other updates just to salivate over something that’s not in the game yet. SO. Relentless Earthstorm Diamond is either fixed by now or will be soon. From Drysc:

It is not working correctly at the moment, the change wasn’t intended. It looks like it will be hot-fixable and we’re currently in the process of working on one.

Then again, Hortus followed up saying it’d be fixed in a future patch so maybe we will have to wait for 2.3. Who knows. Good news for those Arena junkies out there, too (I used to be one of them, but alas I freaking hate Arena!), there are some changes coming for the sets. Kalgan said:

As of patch 2.3 all items in the gladiator season 1, 2, and 3 sets will be part of the same set, so you can use those items interchangeably and keep the set bonuses (ie: you can wear the season 2 shoulders along with the season 3 helm, chest, legs) and retain the 4 piece set bonus.

And, when asked about the incredibly weak 4 piece set bonus we currently have (1 second Concussive cooldown), he replied:

Many of the set bonuses have been updated (including that one). The new 4 piece set bonuses are also retroactive as a result of the above change.

No word yet on what said bonus will be. Again, more hurry up and wait. And, remember how I talked about a Hunter tailored PvP melee weapon from my Blizzcon update on the forums? That’s also become a reality for next season:

Yes, there’s a Vengeful Gladiator’s Waraxe
62 Stam
46 Crit
33 Resil
15 Hit
92 AP
98 Armor Penetration
Cost: 1000 arena points (no rating requirement)

I think I missed reporting the latest on Trueshot Aura, too:

Trueshot Aura will be free to cast and is going to last until canceled.

Sept. 25, 2007

Hunter love overload

So, I leave the house for a few hours, and come back to even more hunter love posts. I’m starting to feel smothered by all this blue attention! You know those ammo carrying issues we’ve been having and how they were looking into giving us bigger pouches/quivers? Confirmed by Drysc:

How about 20 and 24 slot ammo pouches and quivers?

Well, 28 would be better but… I admit, at this point, I’ll take what I can get. Bigger really IS better (so feel free to up it to 30, 32 or even 34).

Sept. 25, 2007

They're not all nerfs even!

The latest patch is just barely a day old, when already we have news about what awaits us for the next one! From Drysc:

There are quite a few changes in 2.3 for all classes, even Hunters. They’re not all nerfs even! For example, Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap are going to gain additional damage based on ranged attack power. I think everyone enjoys scaling.

And:

Well it’s not going to hit everything you want, but we are planning to change Wyvern Sting so that it will be instant cast.

More still (don’t faint on me yet, I know, too much Hunter information at once!):

Ok, well you got me, I was trying to find a better place to discuss this and the reasoning but I’ll just post it and I’ll try my best to provide information on why the change is being made. Arcane Shot (ranks 6+) will dispel 1 magic effect in addition to the normal damage. Sorry.

To those people who were worried that this change would hurt us if we used Arcane Shot in raids (bye warlock dots?), we received clarification to make sure – it was asked if it will work as an offensive dispel, removing a beneficial effect from the enemy. Kind of like Purge, to which Drysc said:

Right.

I anticipate epic QQ from all casters with this change. Then again, in PvP situations, knowing that a hunter might be on the team, there will be more Unending Breath to get rid of (at least I’ll still be doing damage in the process). It will be interesting to see the new Serpent Sting but I hope this means more debuff space on boss mobs in a raid environment (if I missed them increasing the current limit, let me know). And what about the global cooldown, hmm? Also, I may have spoken too soon about the paladin buff issue (with pets being tied to warriors). Don’t get me wrong, in the ideal situation it won’t matter, because there are enough paladins that my pet will get what it needs by proxy and so, overall, there’s less hassling for buffs, which I and I’m sure the paladins appreciate. But here, too, we got another reply:

Hrm, interesting. I’ll pass it along, it may be that it is the only implementation we’re able to achieve at the moment, or there may be specific reasons this is wanted or required. We’ll see what we can dig up.

Am I jaded because I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop? Only a little. Call it cautious optimism. 2.3 isn’t on Test yet but you can hop on and get a preview of Brewfest if you are so inclined.

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