Patch 3.0.8 is apparently on its way to the Public Test Realms! As I write this, the Test Realm Forum is still locked (but the note about the last testing phase is gone) and the PTR 3.0.8 download is “not authorized”. But the patch notes are up and I was able to copy a character, so things are obviously in motion.
As always, you can find the complete latest PTR patch notes on Blizzard’s Public Test Realm Patch Notes page. I’ve just snipped out the hunter bits for interested parties.
Hunters
- All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.
- Aspect of the Wild – This aspect is now raid-wide.
- Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.
- Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to “deflect” spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.
- Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.
- Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
- The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered.
- Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
- Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
- Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
- Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
- Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
- Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).
Inscription
- Glyph of Deterrence: Now -10 seconds instead of -20.
In addition, there were a number of item stat changes. I’m not up on what weapons are used by real hunters, though, so I’m not going to try to guess which of these might affect us. Lemme know in the comments what important things I am missing out on.
There are also some welcome changes that aren’t hunter-specific in the official patch notes:
General
- Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.
- Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.
- We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
- The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.
Of course, keep in mind that the patch notes are rarely complete at this point, so there are undoubtedly other changes in this PTR build as well. (In fact, MMO Champion has already posted a list of undocumented PTR 3.0.8 changes gleaned from the client download earlier today. There’s some interesting stuff in there, but keep in mind that some of those changes may be in the client but not accessible to players.)
In particular, we know that the upcoming hunter changes mentioned by Ghostcrawler the other day should be in this PTR sooner or later.
Glad I’m not BM, this seems kind of rough. Survival is pushing out pretty good dps atm from my experience, in fact, I was out-dpsing BM hunters many times during raids. On a side note, I love the change to kill shot and improved tracking (laziness ftw!)
awww hunter nerf
ok I’ve always wanted a mechanostrider so… AWESOME! Still not happy about nerfs, but I think I’ll manage…
Was hoping theyd add some more spirit beasts. And I think I’ll copy a character too, didn’t know we could do that early.
TAUREN ON RAPTOR? OMG YES OMG YES OMG YES
I love whatever Blizz employee got this changed. I am still disgruntled over the nerfs, but I love this change to mounts if it stays :D
I was wondering when they would allow our cow bretheren to ride non PvP/rare drop mounts other than kodos. It made getting the 50 mount acheivement next to impossible for them.
I do know that the savage cobalt slicers are getting their stats changed to fit more with their item level. It’s sad when a level 74 crafted blue was being used over level 80 epics. The hunter nerfs, I’m not too worried about. I’m going to roll with the punches and figure out how to maximize my DPS without resorting to speccing into marks.
I am just that close (yup,that close) to getting Exalted rep with the undead… then I stopped for Taurens can’t ride undead mounts… dang, this is good news. Better than ordering pizza and finding you got 3 meats instead of 1 for the same price.
OH YES YES YES! Finally! I have a reason to get exalted with the gnomes now! I’VE WANTED A MECHANOSTRIDER FOR SO LONG! And now I have a reason besides the title~
I am a touch sad about the hunter nerf, but I take it as good news for my druid while she PvPs.
so wheres the buff to spirit beasts dmg? hope they aint forgetting that one =/
“Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.”
i think i can actually forgive the nurfs for something like that.iv got several tauren and frankly im sick of grinding og rep.my dk needs a green bony pony!it will match her fur…
Dude. Mechanostrider.
SO MUCH WIN FOR TINCHIKEN!
NO RACIAL LIMIT ON MOUNTS!? OH, PLEASE MAKE IT!!!!!! YES!!! (Tauren hunter who aspires to reach the 50 mount achievement, and sitting at 34 mounts.)
“Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.”
Does this mean that if i have a 55+ alliance on one realm that i can make a Death Knight on a different realm as a horde?
Interesting that they opted to put the 20% -> 15% damage reduction on Unleashed Fury instead of Kindred Spirits. Really though, it was bugging me that the two did the same exact thing– 5 points to increase all pet damage by 20%. Now I’m all for more pet damage, but really… “it’s all been done” to quote a song!
I sorta wish they’d changed Kindred Spirits to “Increases all damage done by pet specials by 20%” or something. It’s still a nerf like they want it to be, but it’s an interesting nerf. Ya know?
“Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.”
Hurray! I can finally get a raptor for my Tauren! It was so disappointing when the troll trainer said it was impossible.
Hey, if you can shrink Kodo down, you can certainly make bigger raptors.
Are they totally out of their mind?
Where are the fixes of all the pet bugs???
:/
The most important item change is on the preferred pre-raiding hunter weapon of choice: Savage Cobolt Slicer. Honestly these are way too good now (better than all pre-naxx epics).
As for Kindred Spirits vs. Unleached Fury (I saw someone commenting on this)… they’re changing both.
wow, bm gets the nerf bat swung over and over and over again, and no bug changes for pets and all anyone cares about is stupid mounts?????…………….sigh
@Pike: As Lindalas noted, according to the patch notes they’re nerfing Unleashed Fury and Kindred Spirits
@Snyped: If you were outDPSing BM hunters as SV spec, either you had much better gear or the other hunters weren’t very good.
I really am still confused at how they figured the damage/dps figures of hunters are so OTT to lame them.
Spent a couple of evenings of raids/heroics including a Ret pala, a Fury Warrior and a mage. Hunters are NOT overbalanced compared to these across a range of circumstances. When it comes to trash yes we are good at aoe killing. But when it comes to bosses we are comparable to the Fury Warrior and Ret Pala. Now Im not a slouch for playing my hunter and we all have a moderation of Epic gear, so how come the pure dps class is not being allowed to stay above the hybrids pure dps specs even though Blizz claimed they would be ~200-300dps higher.
They really cant be getting the correct information about hunters and obviously have some pretty crap group comparisons to look at for such a knee-jerk nerf bat!
I’ve been considering the magnitude of the BM nerfs, and I think the devs learnt something from the ret paladin saga where ret was nerfed 3 or 4 times in a row before the devs were happy with their damage output.
In this case, I think the devs decided to try landing a full set of nerfs to start with (removal of double-BW, Steady Shot scaling reduction, Volley base damage and scaling reduction, Serpent’s Swiftness pet haste reduction, Unleashed Fury and Kindred Spirits pet damage scaling reduction) so that any further changes from here will be buffs rather than nerfs.
@Mounts:
I assume that Alliance can’t get Horde mounts and vice versa though?
I would kill for a wolf-mount.
Still, this news is AMAZING. :)
Faulk_Wulf
im thinking theyre just going to add tauren to the horde mount tags and human/dre/nelf to the mechanostriders.
even if you could talk to the wolf vendor,you would have to fight through og to get to him,and you couldnt buy a wolf unless you were exalted with og.
they might add some wolf mounts as rare drops like they did with the others though…
^^I don’t really like wolf mounts… So about the hunter stuff, the only thing that i see that really upsets me is the damage decrease on volley… Gorilla soloing is no longer as awesome as it once was. Oh well, worse things have happened.
Ah, they are changing both, my bad >.> I thought I looked for both. It still bugs me that they are essentially the same talent, regardless… >.>
If it wasn’t for my super awesome chimera Pierre, I would’ve specced into MM or Survival prompto.
*Sigh* Ah well, the nerfs are probably not as bad as they sound.
Sig, you’ve made me hungry for pizza now… and HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!! *Coughs* Past that.
These nerfs….we’ll just have to wait and see. I think Nimizar is right though, they decided to do it all at once instead of one step at a time. It gets all the whining, swearing, and moaning out of the way at once, and then they can build it back up if they need to. Not a bad idea, just….rough.
Happy birthday, Palla!
So quick to take any positive advantage away from hunters.
Insanely slow to fix any hunter disadvantages.
Case in point: hunters were virtually a no-show statistically in all combinations of arena all last season. Any fix ever come? NO!
Hunters are a free HK in pvp now. People run to see who can get them first. Any fix coming? NO!
Case in point: RET Pally is a monster hack that can shield, stun, and kill before you can even fight back. Any “real” nerf coming for RET monsters? NO!
DKs are doing insane damage in pvp and eating hunters like candy. Any nerf coming for DK? NO!
Time to drop your hunters and play the OP classes that Bliz protects from nerfs, balance, and fair play.
Case in point: arena for money was played by only 3 classes at the top anywhere in the world (druid, warrior, warlock). Any fix come for the other classes at any time during the entire season? NO! Any nerfs come for those 3 OP classes anytime during the entire season? NO!
I agree that doing all the nerfs at once may seem fine but they are doing them out of context from at least the experience I have had.
MY dps is high when I look at an overall instance run and does beat all classes by 300-600+ dps. But that includes damage to trash and who gives a crap about trash.
When I compare individual bosses I vary between being up to 400 dps ahead to up to 400 dps below warriors, palas, ferals and mages. THIS is where our damage should be compared and what matters. I dont care if I have to throw stones and snowballs at trash as long as I can take on a boss competitively to hybrid pure dps specs or other pure dps classes. I can see these nerfs will gimp us where it is most important. Now I receive a slightly lower impact from the nerf as I am MM but this will really hurt BM.
If Blizz are concerned with not affect dps in pvp and want hunters to not be a one button macro steady shot then the way to do it is to buff arcane shot & aimed shot whilst nerfing steady. The instants are more useful in pvp and it will give more incentive to interweave them with steady.
Can Blizz take the blinkers off for once and look across all aspects of play!
And whilst it makes no diff to me, I love how Blizz are making all classes bring buffs then take them away again making hunters the selfish class of the game (e.g. Expose Weakness and now Call of the Wild)
As always can one of you kindly US PTR testers post my comments to the US test forums… many thanks
PS Happy Bday Palla
Did you see the change to Viper Sting in there? I know the current form is quite overpowered, but I like it.
@Think-
You apparentely think these are the Oboards,and that your whining about PvP is striking a chord amongst those who post here,and that you’ll see many posts agreeing with you and some that dis-agree.Sorry.Not here,not now,and unless Mania goes off the deep end,not ever.
The Oboards are that way.———->
<——– Or that way. (I’m terrible at directions.)
Either way,thank you for your post,now take your QQ’ing elsewhere.
Please,for the love of Elune,if your post is NOT about pets…THEN DON’T POST,PLEASE!
Unless it’s in the off-topic section,obviously.”lol”
Kitairra
Sorry for the double post…/sigh
Happy Birthday Palla!
Kitairra
Sorry, but I must agree with Zuckuss, if not in the form of his/her statement, at least with the background. We are getting the nerf-hammer down on us (the “call of the wild” one is specially painful for me, I liked bringing buffs to the parties) and some new mounts are not going to cheer me up (ooooh, shiny…). Kindred spirits is on its way to become a mediocre talent (for a talent so high on the tree at least).
Cool! :D
Tho there’s some annoying nerf going on here >_<
Racial restrictions removed?
Nice… but too bad the Faction ones are still intact – I’d LOVE for my Gnomish Engineer hunter Tauren to be able to ride a Mechanostrider…
Weren’t they supposed to buff Growl to compensate for the lost pet dps? Or did I miss it in the notes?
Has anyone seen what the new stats on the weapon listed (i.e. the ones used by hunters) are?
Drina: You forget that Survival hunters are now Mana regenerators for a party/raid.
Evidently Blizzard thinks Hunter = SPriest :s
@Palla hiya Palla! Happy Birthday to you! No, didn’t forget, just had to wait till I got back on :) Miss Omega is not doing to good right now and busy feeding her (by hand, don’cha know she is spoiled rotten!). As we use to say in Deutschland, “Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!”
@Anyone How does Blizz come up with what is going to be changed or not? I mean do they watch and compare data from BG’s, pve, pvp, arenas, etc, or listen to whiners about how overpowered BM hunters have become? Do they cruise sites like this and read the forums on what hunters are being overjoyed about? Or do they have GM’s who have premade lvl 80′s and just go by that? Or do they go by the elitest jerks who have everything and watch them mow down the enemy? I would really like to know their criteria is and how Blizz comes to it. And to keep Kitairra happy :) – dang, I finally got my brown chimy up to 70, whats next without Litch King?
As far as we can tell, a bit of all of thee above. At this point, I’ve seen some of the charts, and high end beast masters are stomping the snot out of everyone. EVERYONE. By large amounts. So nerfs are needed, I just have to wonder if they should have done them all at once like that. Just seems like an awfully nasty strike for just one patch.
On the flip side, I do have to agree that it is most annoying that we’re being nerfed before we’re being fixed, and its reducing one of the few advantages we do have, our damage. Specifically in my case, my pet damage. As far as PvP goes, there have been times when I just ran and semi-kited things, safe in the knowledge that my pet was tearing my target a new one. If they started attacking my pet, I turned and tore them apart. With hit point totals at end game being what they are, how badly is this going to effect my performence? *Shakes his head*
And danke everyone! I likes me birfday.
Ryai – I didnt forget I just ignored it as inconsequential. The ability just sucks! I spent a whole night raiding with a Ret pala who had his mana regen proccing constantly and it makes bugger all difference in a fight. I still have to switch to Viper at least once. If it is between fights or trash then its much faster to sit and eat/drink. If Blizz want us to use a variety of shots in our rotations this will become even worse. I probably go mana usage heavy already by combining Steady, Chimera, Aimed and Kill Shot and even with 11-12k mana pool I have to use Viper 1-2 times a fight.
With regards to the SPriest mana ability it is worse than ours as its quite buggy. The only reliable Mana regen is Judgement of the Wise from a Ret Pala who also brings Haste, a damage bonus and a stack load more dps (gotta love the balance there!)
I have also seen druids are more popular in dps spec for their ability to pop out and innervate the healers or combat res, then go back to dps. I really dont quite understand how deluded and blind Blizz are to the benefits of hybrids over pure dps classes and their commitment to make them better while gimping the few classes that have only 1 role.
In the rocky waves of emotions we got here, let’s remember the “bugs” we’re glad they aren’t fixing. Like our Oozes and Hydras!
@Sigrdrifa-
LOL!! Thank you,that made me laugh out loud…
Sorry everyone,that came off harsher than I meant it to be…have to remind myself that I’m not the “blog cops”. Sorry if I offended anyone….think I’ll just troll here from now on…lol!
And grats on your Chimy getting 70! No Litch King?…Dailies!! lol!
Kitairra
The patch news make it clear: there is not a single person at Blizzard who as the slightest clue about this game:
Hunters get the nerf stick – and Death Knights will get buffed, major!
@ Mirros
Yep. If you have a 55+ anywhere, then you can make a DK anywhere, on any server (though not opposite faction on the same server if you’re on a PVP realm.)
…Well its going to suck to be BM thats for sure… Outa curiosity, aren’t hunters a DPS class? Doesnt that mean that we should be dishing out the dps? I think ever since the mana regen nerf I haven’t taken aspect of viper off, since I use my shot rotations once and end up oom, with Aspect of the viper on I can atleast keep attacking, even if I’m doing less dps, now Blizz is lowering that dps, so…Hunters are headed down the road to being a dpsless dps class.
My lower lv resto geared boomkin dishes out more damage then my BM Hunter, which is really sad.
Hunters are still overcoming the huge handycap we have in the game and that is the fact that we have to be kept at a distance, DK’s can easily pull us in close and then its 1,2,3 dead hunter.
And yeah, you dont see hunters in Arena teams because 1)we dont have any real useful buffs to offer, 2)in arena we’d spend more time running away to get distance then actually dpsing, 3)as a dps class we fail, almost any hybrid class can do a much better job at it.
Face it, when it comes to Solo play hunters are the best, but other then that…theres hybrid classes that can offer more to a group.
glad thier finally taken off the racial restrictions for mounts, now I have a reason to get exhaulted with gnomer.
…Just a thought, but I occasionally play guild wars, done by some of the same people who did WoW. I play a ranger, which is essntially a hunter, and you know what, there are no distance restrictions. I can walk right up to a monster and still keep shooting it with my bow…why doesnt blizz just do something like that? Atleast this way we could actually participate in Arena, and 95% of our abilities wouldnt become useless when we enter close range combat…
Sweet, now I can make a DK on my nooby hunters realm and get some G. yay!
I agree with post 19… Hunters are PURE Dps now how are we being outdmged by some hybrid classes whose main purpose isnt dps. This is what I think… I think that hybrid classes were given dps specs for to quest an solo thats about it but when they start beating hunters who are “PURE” dmg class its kinda makeing me a little mad >.>
I also like post 28 they arnt nerfing any thing that really is OP so my basic point is hunts are already weaker in DPS compared to hyrbids so why weaken them more an make the hybrids stronger it makes no sense someone needs to do something for hunts