Patch 3.0.3 is going live today during the normal Tuesday downtime! You can find the complete patch notes in their normal location (after they’ve been updated, anyway), but in the meantime let’s look at the hunter-specific bits.
Hunters
- Aimed Shot: Added to Barrage and Improved Barrage talent.
- Animal Handler: Now increases your pet’s expertise by 5/10. (No longer increases the pet’s chance to hit.)
- Aspects now have a shared cooldown category of 1 sec and no longer have a start cooldown.
- Aspect of the Dragonhawk: New aspect added that combines the benefit of Aspect of the Monkey and Aspect of the Hawk, available at level 75 and 80.
- Aspect of the Monkey: The Dodge chance has been increased from 8% to 18%.
- Aspect of the Viper: The per attack mana regeneration has been reduced by 50% but this ability now generates 4% of maximum mana every 3 sec. In addition, the per attack regeneration now also works on melee attacks.
- Disengage now fails if you’re rooted and is no longer on the global cooldown.
- Hunter vs. Wild: The attack power bonus from this talent now applies properly to Hunter pets. In addition, the bonus attack power will now be recalculated properly from equipping items.
- Improved Aspect of the Hawk: This talent no longer causes incorrect mana costs when interacting with the Rapid Recuperation and Improved Steady Shot talents.
- Mana cost of Disengage has been lowered to 5% of base mana, down from 14%.
- Thrill of the Hunt: The mana gained from using this talent with Explosive Shot is now 1/3 of the normal amount per critical strike (but gets 3 opportunities per cast.)
- T.N.T.: Explosive Shot can now only trigger this talent when it is initially fired.
- Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons no longer affect ranged haste.
Pets
- Rake (Cat), Scorpid Poison (Scorpid): Lowered damage of all ranks.
- Stampede (Rhino): Lowered the knockback to 10 yards.
- Raised the damage of exotic attacks: Spirit Strike, Lava Breath, Froststorm Breath, Acid Spit, and Stampede.
- Lowered the cost of pet specials from 25 to 20.
Professions
- Glyph of Trueshot Aura: Now increases Aimed Shot crit chance instead of increasing attack power bonus.
Bug Fixes
- Hunter: Ferocious Inspiration will now apply raid-wide, as intended.
- Hunter Pets
- Sonic Blast (Bat): Will no longer ignore LoS.
- Bad Attitude (Croc): Will no longer ignore the Longevity buff.
- Thunderstomp (Gorilla): Will no longer have a physical coefficient instead of a magical one.
- Gore (Bore): Fixed an issue where a wrong value was being applied.
- Savage Rend: Corrected typos in the tooltip.
Other Changes
I re-acquainted myself with my beta hunters last night before beta ended to verify the pet skill notes in particular. (Did you know that the zombie plague is still a problem on Murmur, the pre-made PvP beta realm? Neither did I ’til I was infected by the stable master in Ironforge!) While I was there, I also noticed a couple of interesting things that aren’t listed:
- Fire Breath now has a 20 yard range. (The graphic effect is unchanged, but the spell does take effect 20 yards away.)
- Furious Howl now specifically mentions that it boosts both ranged and melee attack power.
- Ravage and Swipe both seem to have gotten a damage increase that the notes don’t mention.
- Ferocity pets seem to have the Charge talent back in their tree.
It’s also interesting to note that Monstrous Bite and Venom Web Spray did not get a damage increase. Apparently they were already better than non-exotic skills. The other exotic skills all got a hefty increase that doubled their damage numbers — although note that this does not in any way double the pet’s total DPS.
Oh, and Petopia has now been updated with the 3.0.3 skill data.
[edit] Plus, of course, you can now tame Shattered Hand Warhounds.
(By the way, my thanks to Moiri for poking me a few days ago about this. I’d been neglecting the Public Test and WotLK beta realms lately in favor of the events on the live realms.)
Umm, Windfury Totem not affecting ranged haste is a bit of a bummer isn’t it??
Thank you Mania! As usual,a fantastic job! Much appreciated!
I really don’t know what to make of this “new” Viper Sting.Frankly,it looks like a
nerf to me…50% less mana…then it says 4% of maximum mana every 3 seconds.
I’m confuzzled!!
I like the Viper as it is…I don’t run out of mana at all anymore,unless I’m really going all out..which isn’t often.lol!
So can the more experienced hunters here explain this to me? Nerf? Or Buff? Thank you!
Oh! And charge back in Ferocity?!….SWEET!!
Kitairra
Woohoo! Was hoping most of these changes would go live. Especially cat and scorpid nerf. For too long cats have been up top, take that pesky felines! /forcefeedhumblepie
But seriously nice work blizz, ’bout damn time. Hopefully we’ll have no more complaints about exotics being worthless. ^^
So… no news that sporebats (bugged spore cloud) or wasps (low DPS) have been fixed then?
Bah.
@Kitairra
The problem with Aspect of the Viper was that in PvP, especially Arenas, Hunters were extremely susceptible to mana drains. Not being able to stand in one place and fire away, there was no good way to regen mana. PvP fights are far too mobile. This is an effort to rectify that. Even if you never PvP, it’s nice to know that the tools to be succesful are there. In theory. How well it actually works is still a bit up in the air.
Anyway, it gives you passive regen at 4%/3 secs. And then gives you 50% of your weapon speed back per shot. Not as optimal for PvP, and I firmly believe they need to adjust the damage reduction because of this, but we shall see what happens. Hard to make any real judgements when I haven’t actually used it yet.
Do we know if IAotH will carry over to this new Aspect of the Dragonhawk?
@Gelannerai-It’s been stated on the beta forums that any talents/glyphs that affect either Aspect of the Hawk or Aspect of the Monkey will affect Aspect of the Dragonhawk with no loss in bonus.
The Aspect of the Viper change is a bit of a PvE nerf but, if it makes our PvP brothers a bit more viable, then I’m all for the change.
At least Animal handler isn’t a useless talent anymore and it’ll be nice to see more variety in pets other than the 50 million cats I see running around Shatt/Org/UC every day.
@Mantis: Hunters of all specs were ending up well above even the other pure DPS classes in the level 80 (and level 70) raids. Taking ranged haste away as a raid buff was a good way for Blizz to nerf our raid DPS a bit without really impacting our soloing, small group or PvP damage. As a side effect, it unnerfs Improved Aspect of the Hawk and haste rating on gear for non-BM hunters (since MM and SV hunters will now need an additional 16% or so haste beyond their quiver haste in order to GCD cap steady shot).
@Gelannerai: Dragonhawk provides all the benefits of having both Hawk and Monkey up at the same time, including benefits from talents and glyphs. So for example, at level 80 with Aspect Mastery, Improved AotH, Improved AotM, Glyph of AotM (no glyph for Hawk as yet) and Aspect of the Dragonhawk active, you would get:
* +18% dodge (base Monkey effect)
* +6% dodge (Improved Monkey effect)
* 5% damage reduction (Aspect Mastery Monkey effect)
* +30% increased movement speed every time you dodge (Monkey glyph effect)
* +300 AP (base Hawk effect)
* 10% chance per auto shot of gaining +15% ranged haste for 10 seconds (Improved Hawk effect)
* +90 AP (Aspect Mastery Hawk effect)
@Kitairra: as Jester noted, the Viper change is to the Aspect, not the Sting. By shifting some of the regen to passive rather than active regen, it allows hunters to be smarter about when we regen mana – if we’re able to do so opportunistically during periods when we can’t attack at full strength anyway, then we will suffer less from the damage penalty (since it can’t reduce shots that are never fired). It also lessens the PvE vs PvP differences – in PvE, we’re firing auto shots plus a special every GCD, and gain full benefit from the active regen component. In PvP, auto shot often isn’t going off and neither is steady shot, greatly reducing the total number of shots fired (and hence the level of active regen from AotV).
“Thunderstomp (Gorilla): Will no longer have a physical coefficient instead of a magical one.”
Can someone explain what this means for the gorilla? So he has no physical or magical coefficient? huh?
Can anyone confirm that Fire Breath is no longer an AOE? I tried testing it myself last night and couldn’t get it to accidentally break ice trap, but it was hardly a conclusive test.
I’m not quite sure but my guess is that the way Thunderstomp’s damage is being changed, I’m not sure what determines it now on live but this is probably a nerf to the gorilla’s damage.
I think it means changing the coefficient from physical to magical.
That looks like it could be a gorilla dps nerf to me. By “physical coefficient”, do they mean “use attack power to calculate damage”? That could be their way to make it less overpowered, especially since they want people to branch out and get whatever pets they want instead of everyone get X pet because it’s so superior. There’s gonna be some angry tears over this one if I’m right.
You’re most likely right. The gorilla users are going to be up in arms when they see that their gorilla isn’t putting up the crazy numbers they were pre 3.0.3.
We’ve been discussing this on Manias forums for a while now: 3.0.3 Thunderstomp Change: Buff or Nerf?
No monstrous bite increase? I can kinda see that since it was already the king DPS skill, but no Venom Web Spray increase? Gah, my poor Silithid just can’t get any love. I know it wasn’t because it’s DPS is too high, it was already way down on the chain.
* Fire Breath now has a 20 yard range. (The graphic effect is unchanged, but the spell does take effect 20 yards away.)
Because the best way to address the problem of dragonhawks being the new wind serpent clone is to make them even more like wind serpents – taking away their aoe was a dumb idea and needs to be rolled back.
* Ferocity pets seem to have the Charge talent back in their tree.
Well that’s something at least (better late than never!)
Does anyone know if the ‘butt scoot’ problem with ranged abilities is finally fixed? Things like the chimeara and core hound where they move forward, stop, move, stop, etc until they finally get in range.
NP Mania. I was not sure if you were aware of it or not, so I decided to shoot you a message anyways just in case.
But notice how nothing is mentioned about the bug that keeps turning the pet attacks back on?
@Brian
Agreed, although I didn’t see that effect last time I pulled my chimeara out…hmmmm…
@ Brian and Bunky – on the butt scoop, aye, saw it last night with my chimy. Was looking for some prep h when I remembered it is only a game…. (besides, how do I explain the stuff on the back of the computer?). It was so bad while doing dailies, I put her back and took out the moth. I do hope it is fixed.
Now on the big monkeys – that hunter I saw last night using his is going to be in for a disappointment then? He was saying – watch this and I did. The BRM (big Red Monkey, lol) took on 5 mobs and the hunter was using volley to kill them and kill them fast. I admit the mobs were lvl 69 to his 70 and BRM lvl 68, but I was impressed. Will I be that same way today when the servers come back on line?
I’m willing to bet that they still have yet to fix the Hyena’s “Inverting-Butt” problem… But then, I imagine that balance issues will trump model glitches, most of the time.
I’m all for a gorilla nerf. That much damage in a huge AoE WITH a stun? GAH. I had a hunter totally -destroy- my deathknight on the beta realm; I couldn’t even get loose long enough to hit the damn monkey, much less get to her. Horrid. Anyway, balancing the families is always win, otherwise we’d be ass deep in gorillas instead of cats, and that’s not really an improvement.
Teeheehee – he said Ass deep in gorillas…
My bat’s swimming animation was nerfed in 3.0.2; he just flies around in the water. And he never stays on the target I tell him to attack, and when I redirect him, he doesn’t keep aggro! I’m just about to respec for Survival because I’ve been fighting in melee range so much! I’m not a warrior. >:(
Can someone tell me what’s going on? Did I give him the wrong talents?
As far as the Sonic Blast fix goes, I don’t even have a clue what LoS is.
On reading the changes, it seems that Blizzard is nudging people toward taming exotic pets (based on the huge buff to them and the nerfs to some of the others).
Personally, I’d rather not be stuck in one spec simply because of a pet. I was BM for most of TBC, I’d like to try out the other ones. Unfortunately, seems the best buffs are going to BM hunters with regards to overall DPS (hunter+pet).
I could be wrong on this, but that’s what it looks like to me.
I was also very much hoping on a fix for sporebats and wasps. =(
Do we have any numbers of how bad the nerf for cats and scorpids will be?
Tashi: Your pet now has a sort of ‘smart’ aggro management. Pets will switch targets to keep hate on itself, or attack another target that is targeting it. Which is at least what i have seen in my pets. I’m not sure exactly the mechanic that is in place though.
I love the fact that my pet takes it upon itself to change targets and do things on its own. It gives even more personality to pets, and has not hindered me in my playing.
On aggro and threat:
You might want to make sure to use growl (and turn cower off, it likes to turn itself back on currently) and also check your focus usage. I’m in mostly T5 gear and I know how much threat my pet can generate against my attacks, so I take that into consideration as I play. If you blast the mob first thing, and don’t hold back any- you’re pet can’t keep up with your threat. As great as they are- they can’t perform miracles. You as the hunter, have much more potential to generate threat through abilities and direct damage.
On LoS: This is short for Line of Sight. Meaning if your pet is targeting something behind a wall, the target is out of your pets line of sight- and therefor should not be able to be hit with a spell or ability. Bats had the glitch of being able to hit targets behind objects with their ability. This was merely a glitch fix, and nothing you would probably notice unless you have been exploiting it.
I also hope at some point bliz will take the time to fix the animation problems with the exotic pets. Anyone else ever notice how the core hound’s hind legs rarely move when it uses dash? also i’ve been blamed for my Core Hound’s AoE breaking Ice Traps when it’s actually a graphic flaw. I’ve tested it out several times and his lava breath does NOT AOE.
Blame the damn warriors and their Thunderclap!
I want some swimming and jumping animations on my Silithid!
Oh, and it’d be nice if Devilsaurs got an animation for walking that didn’t look utterly retarded. I might even consider using one if that got sorted out.
I’m happy Cats are getting nerfed. I hope they get nerfed into the worst pet in the game! Muhahahahaa!
Mania why didnt you add the Hellfire Ramparts armoured wolf as tamable yet?
Anyway i hope they continue to add pet familys, exotic or not.
OMG! Why did they nerf cats?! And Scorpids? They are like The pets for us non-BM Hunters(or atleast to me). I see where it’s coming from, but they could’ve left it as it was. It’s like they’re forcing us non- BM into BM if we want optimal pet damage and that’s just not my playstyle. I used to be BM, but even then I’d go melee, and please don’t call me a bad Hunter for that, I deal a lot of damage and I can work as a tank, plus i’m not as dependent on my pet as non-survivals are. For me, the joy of a pet is the company and the damage it brings, not it taking a beating for me. It just doesn’t make sense…first they took away my beautiful owl’s usefullness, now they are nerfing my Cat and Scorpid too -.- And even on my server(pre.patch), there are not as many “cat-people” as before, even though they deal a lot of damage. I’ve been seeing more Gorillas, Scorpiods and Bears…
It just sucks…
But, more importantly, are the auto-prowl/auto-cower bugs fixed?
Those are driving me bonkers.
Yeah, that’s right. Did they fix the cower / prowl bug?
I’m sorry it took me so long to answer this,but thank you Jester and Nimizar for answering my question!
I’m also sad that they took Fluffy’s screen-shaking and stomping away from her..it made her unigue.I can understand how some people would be bothered by it,but it never bothered me at all.I actually LIKED it when the screen shook! “lol” Let everyone know a face shredding,butt kicking,name taking core-hound was on the loose.lol!!
Anyway,thank you again for clearing that up for me.I love this site and it’s people who post here.Best damn hunters in the game!
Kitairra
“Double Post”—Sorry!
I just realized that I had made an error,and I wanted to thank Jester and Nimizar
for not blasting me…yes,I meant the Aspect,NOT the Sting…/facepalm
Thank you again.
Kitairra
um… this is way off topic but dos anyone know when the servers will be back online i wanana play lol
@Tashi
You might also want to check that cower wasn’t toggled back on. Blizzard SO needs to fix that. -_- CozyTea already covered the rest of what I was going to say. I’m only SLIGHTLY bummed about the fix to sonic blast; I think I’ve only seen that happen once with my bat.
What talents DID you give him, out of curiosity? Cunning pets don’t really have extra aggro generating talents, as most of them are meant for utility, so more than likely, you’ll have to have md/feign rotations going. You also might want to save sonic blast, taking it off autocast, to make sure your bat’s interrupting casts or stopping a mob from rushing you.
OH, also – if you have him on passive, you may want to put him on defensive so he stays in there. I’ve found myself putting more of my pets on defensive in the wild (AND RAIDS, ZOMG) and putting them back on passive around major cities and such.
(Sorry for the double; this is just a general hunterly observation.)
@CozyTea: Thank you for explaining that. I guess I have some practicing to do. I guess I’m just sick of redirecting my pet a hundred times. Perhaps I should respec him too, just to make sure. :D
Sooo.. Been hearing about the hounds in Ramparts being tameable. Any news guys? In this patch at least. I’ll get one faster than you can say “Hi-yah!” If so.
Do want!
anyone know if the cower bug is still borked?
Naztheros(Syrelil)-Sentinels, that is the question i kept asking, they should be tamable in 3.0.3 or when Wrath goes live.
I was on the test realm two days ago and my kurken no longer causes screenshake.
Did that change go live?
@Kalli: I always have my pet on defensive. That way, if I go afk and something gets me, he saves my butt. ^_^ And he auto-attacks when I shoot something. I’ll check which talents I gave him.
@Bloodgod, just call me Naztheros. :P
Hope they’re tameable now. Will be checking the second Sentinels goes up. You can ask me there. XD
Acid Spit ignores longevity as well.
Thanks for the reminder on the Shattered Hand Warhounds. They’ve been added to the post and to Petopia.
Regarding the origins of a lot of these changes: they did a big DPS pass on the pets to see where they were all sitting. Blizz wanted the exotics to be just above the comparable non-exotics (so the exotic will have a slight advantage over a non-exotic with the exact same pet DPS talents), but not so far above that taking the exotic was effectively compulsory for all BM hunters. They do want the idea of taking the 51-point BM talent purely for the extra pet talent points and then using a non-exotic pet to be viable.
They also wanted the overall variance in pet DPS (i.e. between the highest DPS Ferocity pet and the lowest DPS Tenacity pet) to be significantly lower than it was in TBC. Cats in particular were nerfed to bring their DPS more in line with that of other pets (rake was outright broken relative to the DPS of the other pet abilities).
I just tamed a new wolf from Ramps, and as far as I’ve seen, no one else has one. I’m half tempted to get the mount to match him now. :D Just trying to think of a good name for him. I got a screenshot, maybe I’ll upload it later.
Something is bothering me….. Blizzard is stating that they don’t like it when pet classes lose 25% of they’re damage when the pet dies. Personally, I’d rather take that chance as opposed to being stuck with a ‘voidwalker’ style pet.