Beta Hunter Changes Incoming
Hunter skills and talents isn’t really my beat, but there seems to be a lot going on this week in that area. Koraa has been posting like silly in the WotLK Beta Hunter forum and there’s a new set of talent changes up on WorldOfWarcraft.com. Drotara has a nice round-up of many of the changes.
[Edit] And MMO Champion has a very long list of the changes up today.
(Incidentally, my apologies for being a bit of an absent host this week. My exploding database is fixed but I’m still neck-deep in secret project, and I’m trying to get Petopia updated as well.)
50 Comments
Take yer time, Mania, don’t feel like you always have to make an appearance, or a post. We’ll be here.
I agree with Palla! You have been updating like crazy and any new findings is great to hear, but don’t hurt yourself!!! Take your time, enjoy your ride, post when you want not because you HAVE TO! :)
I second that! I mean third… um… you know what i mean. we all value you here so don’t over do yourself!
Pff, Mania. :D The Arcania is for fun, not your full-time job! ♥ Take the time you need and don’t worry about us.
(The new talent tree changes are making me SQUEAL with joy. Aspect Mastery being dropped to one point and the new Separation Anxiety are AMAZING boosts to BM. ehgshgheyskghs)
According to the official Beta Talent Calculator they changed quite a few of our talents in all three trees. Some for the better, some are quite interesting new talents replacing old ones. While some are just plain dumb.
Focused Fire- Now improves pet special attack crit rate by 20% for the duration of the new Kill Command. (So we can now assume that this ridiculous nerf to KC is a done deal and the Rank 2 is just a bug.)
Aspect Mastery - Is now where Master’s Call was in Tier 3 and is a 1 point talent for a 10% mana increase to viper and a 50% increase to Hawk AP. (Huge upgrade to this talent by moving it and condensing it into a single point talent.)
Spirit Bond - Now also increases healing done to you and your pet by 10%.
Animal Handler - No longer has mounted speed increase, instead decreases the cooldown on Master’s call by 5/10sec.
Pathfinding - Now has the mounted speed increase that belonged to Animal Handler in the past. It was a completely worthless talent, now has the mount speed, every BM hunter says hello to their riding crop once again.)
Separation Anxiety - The new 46-50 point talent that replaces the mediocre version of Aspect Mastery. 20% pet damage increase when farther than 20 yards away from its master and a 10% movement speed increase when pet and master are within 20 yards of each other. (I am not convinced of the viability of this talent over using said points in Efficiency or Improved Tracking in a 51/x/x BM build. 20% pet damage seems like an improvement, but I am going to say this is more of a pvp talent than anything.)
MM Tree–
Rapid Repurcussion - Reduces the mana and focus cost of all shots and abilities by you and your pet by 20/40/60% while under the effect of Rapid Fire, and you gain mana equalt to 50/100/150% of the damage you do under the effect of Rapid Killing. (A huge upgrade from the old version. Mana conservation for the win.)
Chimera Shot - Now does 125% of Weapon damage and refreshes the sting instead of consuming the sting. (A definite upgrade to the ability, but its still not where it needs to be in my opinion.)
Survival Tree -
Removed Deterance.
Oh god… too many changes to list here. Hopefully MMO Champ will be stop slacking.
Biggest things are, GC’s statements that Deterance and Master’s Call would become trainable are now true. They are really working hard to make Survival better. MM still has alot of bloat. They removed a good chunk of Survival’s bloat with Deterance, and added some to BM.
Chill Mania
You’re still my favorite blog to read
=O
^_^
I sure hope your secrety type project is a new calendar for next year…. I lvoed your last one.
:)
Just wanted to say that improved stings in the MM tree was reduced in points needed. Instead of needing 5 points for a 30% increase its now only 3.
OMG survival roles all!
Holy S***…
The addition to Survival like Lock and Load, Hunter vs Wild and of course the extremely awesome Explosive Shot are so cool!
Shortening the CD on Readiness is just as neat and so is the fact that Deterrence and Master’s Call are universal skills.
Moving Survival Instincts up to the second tier isn’t a big deal to me though.
I’m really curious about Trap Mastery since the old verison and Clever Traps are gone, so maybe the new version will combine both of the old.
I love being a Survival hunter now, and I know I’ll love it even more once WLK goes live.
FD was also changed, the dmg reducing effect on it was removed & replaced with a lower cd for disengage.
All of the changes seem amazing, especially the change to disengage
“Disengage - This is being changed in a future build. What it will do is cause the Hunter to jump back instantly 10-15ish yards to gain distance. 30 second cooldown.”
i feel this will definetly help hunters vs rouges and warriors, for instance if a warrior charges, you can simply use masters call and disengage, no more slowly crawling away getting smacked in the face with their mace. I think i can hear megatf’s brain exploding from here from sheer glee!
the best part is that TNT…ppl gonna use their traps ALOOOOOT when they hit 80 LOL
Deterence is being made baseline.
Since they turned Chimera shot from a dud to a deaddealer, anyone else feel BM is a bit stiffed now?
“I think i can hear megatf’s brain exploding from here from sheer glee!”
Oh! So THAT was the explosive noise I heard earlier! Hehehe =P Well this is a good change! Disengage was pretty much never used anymore, most hunters don’t have it on their bars. I never thought we’d be given a jump back type move to get back in range. Come to think of it, I think I better go take a cold shower before my brain explode too.
brb
<.<;
One of the best things for SV hunters is that readiness is a lot more useful because you get more useful things back immediately - traps, deterrence, master’s call, disengage, wyvern sting.
Oh, regarding the KC change - I expect this to be buffed to be a true burst damage ability in order to justify its new 2 minutes cooldown. I’m fine with that, since our sustained DPS has long been fine, but our burst DPS has been quite lacking (especially as BM).
Savage Strikes lost the 20% crit increase to Counterattack. :(
Nissi: I think SA is going to be awesome for raiding, given it will be another 20% bonus damage buff all the time for most boss fights (since the hunter will be at max range with the pet in melee)–and it means that your pet will get back to you faster to stay out of AEs, and you AND your pet will be kicking ass on mobility fights if you stick together.
Not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but Separation Anxiety is 10% damage boost not 20, and it’s pet only. So, I’ll still be skipping it.
You forgot the speed increase when its closer to you, Nayana, and the faster I can get the hell out of somethings reach, the better. Giving it two effects was very nice, though.
Rapid Repurcussion - Reduces the mana and focus cost of all shots and abilities by you and your pet by 20/40/60% while under the effect of Rapid Fire, and you gain mana equalt to 50/100/150% of the damage you do under the effect of Rapid Killing. (A huge upgrade from the old version. Mana conservation for the win.)
I do not see this as even being worthwhile. Rapid killing is merely the proc you get after you have met the killing blow on a mob. In raiding that it not going to happen very often. So for a raiding Marksman, if there is such a thing, this talent should be viewed with a grain of salt.
Good point about the movement buff… lol, sometimes it’s hard to not think strictly in terms of “what will this talent do for my raid DPS?” ;)
Regenald: Ehm no its not. Yes it’s the proc, but there’s also the rapid fire skill, which you should use every time its off cooldown. Thatll be a very nice mana returning boost right there during any boss fight.
Where do I go to see the brand-new Hunter Talent Trees “build”?? I go to http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html and it has all of the old Talents. I see no “Separation Anxiety” or no “changes” to “Animal Handler”, ect.
Okay, never mind. They FINALLY updated the brand-new “Wrath” Hunter Talent “build” in my area. hehe
We all appreciate the time and effort you go to for us. You deserve a break though too!
Thanks for the news, as always, but “secret project” is the only thing making me oooh and aaah at the moment. I do love a good surprise! :D
@Nayana … Yeah my bad, I looked at it wrong and must have read what I thought it SHOULD be and not what it is. I was actually alright for this to be a 20% pet dps boost for 5 talents. While I was not sold on 20% pet dps being worth more than 5% hunter damage, I could actually see people taking this to raid with. At 10% pet damage, that is a drop in the pond. The mobility aspect of this is nice and all, but get Cat’s Swiftness or Boar’s Speed and none slightly less fast, but faster than normal, for the cost of some primals and shards. The 10% pet damage increase is going to be probably more like a 1-2% overall damage increase (if that) in a PvE setting. Making this talent an underwhelming PvP only talent. Now if only they could put Improved Tracking in the Marks tree and just buff Hunter’s Mark to be “Improved” then all will be right with the world.
i made both pve and pvp talent.
pve:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000053052010050000000000000005300002500033330502135000340
PVP:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000053050010000000000000000002303322503033331522130031031
Regarding Separation Anxiety: assuming a 33%/67% percent DPS split between pet and master for PvE raid DPS without SA, the damage boost from SA will match that from Improved Tracking on trackable targets and obviously exceed it on untrackable targets (which is basically only mechanicals and unclassified mobs) and be weaker when the hunter is forced to stand close to the pet (e.g. to avoid boss attacks with a minimum range of 8 yards). So the relative effectiveness of the two talents from a PvE DPS point of view will actually depend heavily on what changes are made to pet scaling with gear, and how the overall combination of hunter DPS boosts (such as steady-auto unlinking) and pet DPS boosts (spiked collar, rabid, devilsaur with Monstrous Bite) will affect the relative proportions of hunter DPS vs pet DPS. The relative effectiveness of the two talents may also vary on a raid-by-raid basis, since the pet provides a proportionally larger fraction of the hunter’s DPS the more the hunter has to spend time running around instead of standing still and firing. If SA was buffed to 20% (or even just 15%), it would become a fairly clear winner for deep BM hunters.
Regarding seeing the “old” talents on the Blizzard talent calculators: the Blizzard talent calculators typically don’t invalidate your browser cache correctly when they get updated. I find that right clicking on the calculator and reloading the frame generally updates me to the latest version.
Regarding Rapid Recuperation: given that the wording of the tooltip on the calculator is otherwise nonsensical, I’m pretty sure the ‘Rapid Killing’ in that tooltip is meant to say ‘Rapid Fire’ again (so you get mana back based on the damage you do during the first 6 seconds of Rapid Fire).
I am excited for SV, and yet scared. I liked having the “unique” hunter spec. At least the 3 trees are looking to be pretty equal now, so expect to see alot of all types.
Nimizar - it makes perfect sense to me. You fire off your shot under rapid killing, and it does say 1500 damage. You then (with 3/3) get back 2250 mana over 6 seconds.
Very, very nice solo’ing talent.
Nimizar, thank you for the tip. Stupid Blizzard. They should really fix that.
And I like Separation Anxiety. DpS increase for your pet IS DpS increase for your pet. I am gonna put 5 Points in it.
Ketaro, he means the text for it might be an error right now, and that rapid recuperation might effect the first six seconds of rapid fire, as opposed to rapid killing. Either way, though, it’ll provide a total lack of down time when soloing as a higher level marksman, very nice.
We definitely do want to make traps more usable. We’ve discussed a lot of different options over the years (including throwing your traps, having them turn into shots etc.) but in the end we feel we’d like to retain the unique gameplay of traps, and improve them without re-designing what traps really are.
Some changes we are working on:
- Distracting Shot will now be a “Mocking Blow”-esque taunt (so it will taunt the mob onto the Hunter for 6 sec). This will allow you to “peel” monsters to you (and thus to a trap) a lot easier than it is now.
- Freezing Trap will no longer break on damage 100% of the time. It will still break on damage, but on x amount. So if the mob has a DoT on them, or the mob gets cleaved while in Freezing Trap, it won’t just immediately break. Because of this, we’re canning Bear Trap (since Freezing Trap will accomplish what Bear Trap was intended for, plus you guys have enough keybinds as it is). Note that we don’t intend Freezing Trap to be a stun, so the tuning on how much damage will break it will be important.
- Camouflage - We’ll be introducing this new spell at level 80. It will give you limited stealth capabilities. A bonus with it is that you can lay your traps while Camouflaged and it won’t break the stealth, allowing you to setup your traps before a pull if desired.
- Trap Mastery - This talent will be a 1-point talent now, we’ve condensed a lot of the trap talents in the Survival tree. It will do stuff like increase damage of Immolate, root the dispeller of your Freezing Trap in ice, increase the number of snakes from your snake trap, etc.
^^^Koraa
that camouflage looks like it will be interesting.i wonder what the limitations are gonna be?
First look we got at camouflage it was either a three or five minute cooldown, it was basically vanish for hunters. It put the hunter into an advanced stealth state, usual attacking breaks stealth. Might be fun to see it made into a more consistently usable stealth option. Gonna be a LOT of fun when coupled with a cat in PvP.
Mania, you have nothing to apologize for in putting your work first. And there is so much to digest right now, that a few days to mull over what we already have seen is good anyway.
Hope everything goes smoothly from here.
@Ketari: ah, you’re right, that interpretation would make the current description in the tooltip make sense. Unfortunately, it would also put RR right back in the “soloing talent only” bucket. Nobody doing end-game raiding or PvP takes rapid killing for the buff- they take it for the two minute CD reduction on Rapid Fire.
Ooh, I hadn’t seen the additional info Jeg posted - yes, that will be a huge buff to the effectiveness of Prowl.
I’m definitely going to be switching over and trying out SV once the new talent trees appear in a beta build (my devilsaur and worm will have to kick back and relax in the stable for a while).
Link to Koraa’s post that Jeg quoted above:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8765641671&pageNo=1&sid=2000#16
woops sorry i didnt link the post my bad…
Im worried about the new 51 bm, sure i get to have imba exotic pets and thanks to increased stable slots they wont go away but… how can i choose what exotic pets to keep and what normal pets ? <.< ideallu i´d want at least 2 of each talent tree, one exotic and one normal. but with 5 slots i will have to choose one pet tree i cant have should it be a normal tank ? or an exotic tank i just cant decide what class i dont get to stick around with…
With the way the new SV tree is shaping up, I may actually end up going SV in the expansion instead of BM. Lock and Load looks like it will be incredibly fun. If that happens, I’ll probably use all 5 pet slots for a variety of pets (nether ray for the interrupt, hyena for the snare, a raptor for DPS, a bear to tank, and something else in the fifth slot).
And if I do stay BM, then I’ll probably commit to it and use most of the slots for exotic pets, only keeping the normal pets with utility abilities that don’t have an exotic counterpart.
Heh, have you agree with you, Nimizar, Survival, for the first time in nearly four years, actually looks GOOD. I am impressed. However, since the moment I got my first talent point as a hunter I have been a beast master, and I am happy and content to stay just that. Its not the idea, misbegotten or not, that beast master is the strongest spec, I’ve been that way since it was bad. I simply love my pets, and I like having a pet that can handle itself, and maybe even make me look bad every now and then. *Laughs*
As for pets, I’m not making any calls ahead of time. My wolf, Lu, will be staying with me, and I’ll probably use her for leveling. Of course I’ll go out and tame EVERYTHING in the first week to test all the new things ((And to get away from having an undead as a pet)) and in that time I’ll probably develop a feel for what I like best. In the mean time, though, I am excited about the exotics in general, and nether rays and spore bats in the normal families.
And don’t even get me started how much it pleases me to be getting rid of casters.
Hmmm is it worth it, to put 2 Points in Path Finding for the mounted speed increase or no?
“And don’t even get me started how much it pleases me to be getting rid of casters.”
They’re fixing those pets to have normal stats? Sounds great! But where did you read this from? I haven’t seen it yet. o_o;
Ghostcrawler posted something about getting rid of caster stat pets, but it may have been during the alpha. I’ll ask again on the beta forums.
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