Patch 2.4: Tiny Changes in Hunter Stat Display
Completely by accident, I happened to be doing some testing (on caster pets) just before Patch 2.4 launched — which among other things means that I obsessively recorded Mania’s stats both naked and fully clothed. Since I haven’t changed equipment since that earlier recording session, I expected my stats to be exactly the same now as they were then (except for mana regen, of course). But today I went ahead and took a look just to be sure.
And indeed, my hunter’s stats are the same as they were in Patch 2.3 (again, except for mana regen) … but some of the display has changed in subtle ways. I doubt that any of this is important, but since I just wasted a small bit of time checking out this random minutia I figured I’d tell you what I found!
First off, on the Melee and Ranged sections of the Character Info (C) panel. the tooltip for Hit Rating has a new line. Now, in addition to giving your hit rating and letting you know that this “Increases your [ranged/melee] chance to hit a target of level 70 by 4.06%”, the tooltip also says: “Enemy Armor Reduced by 0.” I suppose it’s possible that it said this before, but I really think I would have noticed it and written it down. And is this a new side-effect of hit rating, or has hit rating always reduced enemy armor?
(Incidentally, I just love how (presumably) different developers use wildly different formatting and grammar for different portions of these tooltips.)
The second subtle change I noticed is on the Defenses section of the Character Info (C) panel, in the tooltip for Resilience. Previously the tooltip listed three separate effects of resilience: reduced chance to be critically hit, reduced critical hit damage, and reduced damage from periodic effects (DoTs). Unfortunately I only wrote down the numbers, so I don’t have the exact phrases this tooltip used before. (And note that although there were three separate numbers listed, all of mine are 0.00% — so it’s possible two or more actually displayed the same percentage.)
Now the Resilience tooltip reads: “Reduced periodic damage and chance to be critically hit by 0.00%. Reduced the effect of mana-drains and the damage of critical strikes by 0.00%.” So apparently these effects are tied together in that fashion, chance to be crit with DoT damage and mana-drain with crit damage. And I don’t remember hearing about mana-drain protection before, although that’s probably because I don’t pay much attention to mana-drain.
I’m also re-testing the base stats of pets, and I’ve found some interesting (although not particularly important) surprises there as well. But more on that when I’ve finished!
11 Comments
As a test, a friend of mine took off all her ‘armor piercing’ armor.
Hit rating 116, and not a lick of armor reduction.
So either you need some *horrifying* hit to be able to reduce armor or, more likely, what she suggested: that they wanted to put it somewhere it could be easily seen, and since the bar was getting kinda full, they lumped it in here.
For what it’s worth, friend is a Shaman.
No, hit rating never has given armor penetration, just now Blizz updated the tooltip because until 2.4 there was no way to see how much you had other than by adding it all up manually. They also did this to spell haste for casters, it was given a place on the character sheet so you don’t have to add it all up yourself.
The mana drain protection on resil is a new addition in 2.4. It didn’t previously do this, Blizz just implemented it to give people protection against drain teams.
The mana-drain protection is an addition of which the Hunter community has been aware of for a few weeks or so, now. And the arena Hunters have been complaining quite loudly about this nerf, which makes it even harder for Arena Hunters to get a competative spot in drain teams (I would assume teams that specialize in killing the mana of other teams). Supposedly, this nerf was supposed to be aimed towards the mana-draining casters and Hunters were coincidentally blind-sided, or would be if they didn’t pick this up right away. However, they were quick on the ball to be upset by this, opposite of the Spirit-based effect, which we’ve been aware of for some time now, but only now realized what a pain in the gear it will be as Hunters have no Spirit armor.
As for the armor reducion, that’s an interesting speculation. Will different classes get different penetration levels, or will it all be the same? It will be interesting if Blizz chooses to expand on this, especially since the hit cap between us Ranged and regular melee classes is quite different. (We’re 136, melee is up in 200-300’s or so, I believe)
Hopefully we’ll see something interesting!
For those who were wondering what kind of items gave armor penetration stats:
http://www.wowdb.com/search.aspx?browse=1.2&filters=74=1;75=500
There were dozens of unreported changes in this patch. Some of them very, very minor which are laying the ground work for 3.0. A lot of it was housekeeping in the same way the last big patch before 2.0 was.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_2.4.0/Undocumented_changes
I’ve grabbed the unlisted ones that effect Hunters.
“Ammo Pouches and Arrow Quivers can no longer be simultaneously equipped in your character’s bag slots.
Pet Boar’s Charge ability generates a lot less threat compared to post-2.4 threat lists.
Snake Trap itself and snakes summoned by its trigger no longer despawn as soon as hunter dies (similar to all others traps).”
And this just for the pet information-
“Many more Nethermine Ravagers have been added to the Netherwing Mines.”
However, I’ve noticed certain issues on a few of my other characters, especially with mana regeneration. That mana regen change really screwed up everyone.
Well I have not really been playing my hunter chars lately. Been working on getting my rogue to 70 (63 currently). Guess it is a good thing because it gives me something to report here. When I look at the tooltip for Hit rating it shows the armor reduction from my Serrated Blades talent. Which ignores X of target’s armor and increases with my level. I also have items with + to hit rating. Removing these items only affects the +X% to hit X level targets. So I know it shows the talent amount for armor reduction there and I assume it would also include any amount from weapons, items, enchants, etc.
Thank you for helping me understand these stats, everyone. Since I don’t pay that much attention to hunter stats, I really do appreciate it. :>
Hitrating requirement for a hunter is exactly the same as hit rating for Melee special attacks and for any non-dual wielding attacks. (2h, sword and board) The extra hit needed by some is to counteract the extra 25% penalty to hit while dual wielding.
Does anyone have a good add-on for the kill command proc. I miss it half of the time, also not as important but the mongoose bite proc woud be nice too. I seen one called Hunter Alarm, but wanted some sage advice before downloading. Gracias…
Just to let you know about the 3 seperate effects of resilience, you are right in your guess, 2 of them would always have the same value, so it looks like they saved some space and just displayed them as a single item now, along with the third one which was half the other 2.
Dreadlock, check your interface options for the checkbox named “Reactive spells and abilities” under Floating Combat Text options. As of 2.4.x this is now in the Combat Text section of Interface Options, but it’s always been available even in the previous version of the interface settings. I too frequently rely on Mongoose Bite and Counterattack (especially the latter for escaping to range), and this helps ensure that I see when they’re available.
Hope this helps.
~Qonos - Dark Iron/Horde (semi-retired)
~Kinkaide - Antonidas/Alliance
Leave a Reply