WotLK Beta Build 8820 - Hunter Notes
The beta realms are currently down while Blizzard gets them updated to beta build 8820. In the meantime, we have some early information on the contents of the patch via a patch note diff on a site called World of Warcraft - Mirrors, Patches, Files.
Keep in mind, however, that the patch notes are rarely completely up-to-date during beta. And since I haven’t been following the notes carefully, some of the may have already been true.
Presumably New Hunter Patch Notes:
- Animal Handler (Beast Mastery): No longer increases speed while mounted, but now reduces the cooldown of your Master’s Call ability by 5/10 sec.
- Aspect of the Beast: Now increases melee attack power by 10% for the hunter and the hunter’s pet.
- Disengage: This ability has been re-designed. Now leaps the Hunter backwards up to 13 yards. 30 second cooldown. Disengage now also only has one rank (rank 1).
- Distracting Shot: This shot now “taunts” the target onto the Hunter. The taunt effect will last 6 seconds. Distracting Shot now only has one rank (rank 1).
- Focused Fire (Beast Mastery): Now increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 10/20/30% while Kill Command is active. This effect can stack up to 3 times, but diminishes for each charge of Kill Command.
- Improved Stings (Marksmanship): Now a 3-point talent, down from 5-points.
- Kill Command: This ability now increases the damage done by your pet’s special abilities by 60%. Each attack will reduce the damage bonus by 20%. 1 minute cooldown.
- New Talent - Hunter vs. Wild (Survival): Increases you and your pet’s attack power and ranged attack power equal to 10/20/30% of your total Stamina.
- New Talent - Lock and Load (Survival): You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 10/20/30% chance when you sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.
- New Talent - T.N.T. (Survival): Your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Explosive Shot have a 5/10/15% to stun targets for 2 sec when they deal damage, and increases the critical strike chance of your Explosive Shot and Explosive Trap by 5/10/15%.
- Pathfinding (Beast Mastery): Now also increases the movement speed while mounted by 5/10%.
- Readiness (Survival): Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes.
- Spirit Bond (Beast Mastery): Also increases healing done to you and your pet by 5/10%.
- Steady Shot: Now has a 2.0 cast time, up from 1.5.[edit: This was apparently already true, if not obvious.]
- Survival Instincts (Survival): This has been moved to tier-2, up from tier 6.
- Survivalist (Survival): Now increases your total Stamina, instead of your total Health.
- The arming time has been reduced to 1 second, from 2 seconds for all traps.
- Trap Mastery (Survival) is now an 11-point talent.
- Trueshot Aura - This aura is now raid-wide.
Let me know which of these was already true and I’ll trim ‘em out!
22 Comments
Steady Shot now taking 2 sec to cast… hm, that’s definitely new.
does the new talent “lock and load” mean that after you trap a target you get 3 arcane/explodive shots in like 3 seconds?
Aspect of the beast sounds nice for PvP. My pet can always do with an extra boost.
With the new distracting shot, what happens if you were to Misdirect to a tank and then fire it? Would it taunt it on to the tank or onto the Hunter? and Yay! Finally, a Hunter and pet joint aspect, but only if it wasn’t Melee AP for the hunter, maybe a little damage boost(Less than aspect of the hawk of course) would be more useful
Hmmm….I wonder if those demon-like wolves are still tamable….I hope so
No one can say Spirit Bond is a useless talent anymore. XD Man, there is so much stuff I want. D: And I can’t have it all. :< Which makes me sad.
There’s a new pet family apparently. The Wasps in Sholazar Basin come with a new pet ability called Sting. I’ll have pics up here shortly.
Ceron, are the exotics or regular?
Regular surprisingly. They are ferocity too!
Wow, that I can get behind, Ceron. I’ve posted in the Forums some tweeks to the trees that I would love to see. I don’t like some of the pets that are assigned to given trees, and I thought I’d finally post my thoughts.
This one I agree with.
Rhinos are exotic tamables now. Again, instead of spamming this board, I’ll update a post with a bunch of pet stuff. Stay tuned!
Excellent! Just drop us a link when you’re ready!
Woah, Rhinos. RUN!
Sorry, I’m in a silly mood, watching a TV show online (well listening to it), and doing some of my own writing.
I’ve seen the new survival talents already but that doesn’t mean I’m any less happy/excited about getting them. And does anyone know what Trap Mastery does now.
But just out of curiousity, does aspect of the beast still have its anti-tracking effect or did it lose it?
That irritates me about the cast-time on Steady Shot.
And that’s cool about the wasps just being regular too. I thought it would be unfair for Blizzard to make the only ‘new’ pets tamable for just one group of hunters.
One more thing- if Blizzard made Master’s Call and Deterrence baseline, shouldn’t they make Aimed Shot baseline too?
I’d rather have scatter shot baseline, Yossir. And the steady shot cast time was made to help balance the lack of clipping. Don’t ask me how that makes sense in their heads, Kill Command already got changed because of that.
New Steady Shot… wow… so hard to wrap my head around that. Gonna feel weird!
Lovin’ the new Distracting Shot though.
Cast time on Steady has been 2 seconds since Wrath alpha - the only thing that is new in this build is that they mentioned it in the patch notes. It’s a consequence of the unlinking change: old 1.5 second Steady Shot cast time + the old 0.5 second Auto Shot cast time = new 2.0 second Steady Shot cast time.
Also, if they hadn’t increased the Steady Shot cast time, it would have been a major relative nerf to BM hunters (since keeping the old cast time with the unlinking change would have drastically lowered the value of Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Serpent’s Swiftness).
There is some not so direct news on Hunters via the Profession of Inscription. They have added a huge number of new Glyphs for Hunters. There are way too many to just cut, paste, and list though. Some of them provide synergy between different skills, or reduce cool downs.
Three I found interesting are:
Glyph of Hunter’s Mark- Increases your attack power bonus from Hunter’s Mark by 20%
Glyph of Arcane Shot- Your Arcane Shot refunds 20% of its mana if one of your stings is active on the target.
Glyph of Beastial Wrath- Decreases the cooldown of your Beastial Wrath by 20 seconds.
Palladiamors-
I’m assuming you’re a BM hunter, so if you really thinkg Scatter Shot should be baseline, then maybe Intimidation should be baseline too. >:)
I missed the glyphs. Interesting! Thanks, Seidouyumi.
You are most welcome Mania. There are a huge number of them out. From the looks of them, Glyphs will not affect Hunter Pet skills directly, but they will affect how Hunter’s and pets work together. There was one more that does affect Pets though-
Glyph of Aspect of the Beast- Increases the attack power bonus of Aspect of the Beast for you and your pet by 2%.
By the way, Ceron posted links to a bunch of great screenshots of new tamable creatures in a comment on (and I reproduced them with his permission in) the Liveblogging 8820 thread.
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