Dual Talent Spec Details

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Even though this is already being discussed on our forums (thanks for getting that started, Ryna and Nimizar) and in comment threads there (thanks Palladiamors ) — not to mention all over the greater internet, of course — I wanted to call it out for anyone who, like me, has just woken up. *cough*

Blizzard today posted a detailed Q&A about the upcoming Dual Talent Spec feature in their Under Development section. I’m not going to quote the whole thing — so you should go read it! — but here’s a quick summary. And I’ll quote the bits that relate to pets below that.

Summary:

  • The complete feature may not be immediately available on the PTR, and the actual specifics are of course still open to change.
  • Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
  • In order to set up your dual specs, you visit your class trainer and pay a one-time fee.
  • To switch between specs, you visit a Lexicon of Power in a major city, or one summoned by an inscription item. Note that you must have a group to summon the Lexicon, and that you can’t use it in Arenas or in combat.
  • Talents, glyphs and hotbars all save at the same time, so when you switch one you switch all of them.
  • The same content patch will also include a gear system that helps you manage gear for different specs, and a talent configurator that let’s you set up your talent tree before you actually buy all the points, so you don’t mis-click and have to start over.

And hunters, of course, are special enough to have their own question in this Q&A:

Nethaera: What about hunters? Often their pet talents are set up to match the talents of the hunter. Will they be able to switch their pet specs as well?

Ghostcrawler: We will wipe the pet talents. However we are going to remove the respec cost for pet talents so that players won’t feel like they need to jump through an additional hoop to respec their pet. In addition, we are going to provide hunters a new core ability to let them remotely access their stable on a long cooldown. This way if their exotic pet heads off to the stable, they will be able to get a different pet. We hope to be able to discuss this new spell in more detail when we get a little further along.

Breaking out the important bits from that wall of text:

  • Respecing your pet will no longer cost money.
  • Your pet’s talents will be wiped every time you switch between your two specs.
  • You’ll get a new ability to access the stable remotely — on a long cooldown — so you can switch pets in the field.

Let’s look at an example. Say I have two specs: a full exotic-wielding BM spec and a nice Survival-with-a-touch-of-MM spec. I am in BM right now and I have Loque’nahak by my side. Oh, and I’m in the middle of the Storm Peaks for some reason.

I want to switch to Survival, so I get some friends together and we summon a Lexicon of Power. Then I use it to switch my specs. My talents switch over, as do my glyph and hotbars.

At the same time, Loque also respecs his talents. It doesn’t much matter, though, because he also disappears and I can’t call him back since he’s exotic and I no longer have Beast Mastery. But I can use my “Remote Stable” skill (or whatever it is called) to remotely open my stable and switch out the absent Loque for a lovely (and non-exotic) scorpid. Well, assuming I haven’t used that skill too recently, anyway.

This dual spec feature has a lot to recommend it, although I am slightly outside the target audience in many ways and therefore not nearly as excited as I know many of you will be. I do have a few snide comments I’d like to make, but my breakfast has just arrived from Pizza Hut. *cough* So we’ll talk about that more later. But very quickly:

  • I’d love to get my hands on this functionality starting at level 10. Okay, 20 at the latest. I hope they expand it to lower levels fast.
  • I’m glad that Blizzard specifically called out that solo players have to go into a city to switch specs, but I wish I understood why they thought this was necessary.
  • Similarly, I’m wary of exactly how long Blizzard thinks the remote stable access timer needs to be. And I foresee a lot of confusion as people switch out of BM and then realize that they still have 42 minutes left of that skill cooldown, and in the meantime they’re stuck with an unusable exotic pet.

87 thoughts on “Dual Talent Spec Details”

  1. I understand how throwing in dual spec at lowbies can add to confusion. Personally, I’d like to see it come in at, say, level 40 or 50. By then, even a new player has a fairly strong grasp of their character, how the game works, and what their spells do. However, I think Blizz’s primary, unspoken, reason to limit dual spec to 80 is their work load. Remember a non-80 is still leveling. So at, 47 if you saved 2 specs.. oops, you ding 48. You add a talent point to your current spec. What about the other spec? Blizz would need a system to keep resaving your two specs every time you level and earn more talent points. And realistically, it’d probably be a hassle for them, and perhaps not worth it because raiders and 90 heroic runers seem to be who they are trying to cater to with this.

  3. *Smiles* Your welcome Korzak. Unfortunately, PvP requires one thing that can’t be taught. Experience. You have to learn from every encounter. As you go you’ll learn how best to deal with each class you come across. Sometimes you’ll encounter players who either know their class inside and out, or are so heavily modded ((And playing a counter class)) that it won’t matter what you do. Sometimes you’ll just be out geared. But the right amount of knowledge and experience can turn what should be a clear loss for you into an interesting running battle. ((And come on, you can’t tell me you don’t giggle with glee to know that you just made some one work for their win! Beats standing there dying.))

    One thing to keep in mind, though. We are hunters. A good deal of our damage comes from auto-shot. If we encounter casters, or other hunters, thats fine. However, go count the number of melee classes in the game. Six of the ten classes currently in WoW either flat out are or can be melee. Of those six, all six have snares or roots. Of THOSE six, all are easily replinishable within ten seconds. Of the six melee classes, four have closers ((I am counting hammer of justice for this)) that allow the melee class to get close, two have stealth and stuns upon coming out of stealth, and one has a ranged snare((FROST SHOCK!!)). One has a talented closer ((Shadow step)) Hunters have masters call ((One minute cooldown)) and Disengage ((30 second cooldown, tosses you back so many yards. Seriously, this used to be better, at least twenty yards. Now it feels like ten, MAYBE fifteen?)) Wing clip and concussive are your best friends, as are other players. Remember, you do the most damage when you can stand still and unload! Hide behind other people! *Laughs*

  4. Oh, and something random that might be relevant. You’ll learn to hate army of the dead, mirror image, and spirit wolves real quick. Especially if you have managed to blow your feign death recently. Not fun.

    Speaking of which, two things that will seriously help you out. Use your cooldowns. Beast masters, beastial wrath, and focus your pets. You need your target to DIE, preferably five seconds ago. This is even more important if something is chasing you, since your out put is so reduced. MM and survival, sting and chimera or explosive every single cooldown, above everything else. I can stress the importance in this, since your pets can’t match Beastmasters in damage.

    The other tip you may laugh about, but will still come in handy. Feign death. Feign death drops you from targetting. One on one it is useful for a small breather, and disengaging from it can buy you a few precious seconds. Its in big group situations where it shines, since whoever is targetting you will probably aquire a new target when you get dropped. ((Except for the auto-targeting moders. Jerks.)) It can really save your tail. It also amuses me to let a caster get half way through a cast and then feign off, since it kills their cast.

  6. Ryai-
    Not to be disrespectful here… but it took you 5 deaths to start weaving in your Mend Pets/pet recalls? Also, I’m curious as to which boss/mobs were giving you issues – my spirit beast has little problems in there.
    Also (and pleeeeaase don’t read this as a knock to your pet/play style)- why not just bring a ferocity pet next time? A little self-healing, that “oops” HoP… useful stuff.

  7. Depends, Bestiarius. Ask any caster who has been up against a good hunter and they’ll disagree. However, as I stated, no less then six of the ten current classes have melee options that allow them to prey upon the hunters weakness. A smart caster even will move into melee range while using instant casts ((But only the first time, unless its a mage with blink and frost nova readily available, which requires the mythical ‘smart mage’.)) Hunters can counter to a degree, and pets help the burden, but eh…..

    At the end of the day, hunters really are nearly crippled by the need to stand still AT RANGE to do most of their damage. Beast masters get a little help on this end due to a higher pet damage output, but hunters really are the worst PvP class in WoW at the moment. That doesn’t mean a little skill won’t go a long way, however.

  8. The main use I’m going to be getting out of dual-specs will be being able to swap between BM and my spirit beast and MM and my moth. I love both specs equally and it would be nice to be able to raid as either depending on my mood.

  9. ‘Not to be disrespectful here… but it took you 5 deaths to start weaving in your Mend Pets/pet recalls?’

    Because I don’t use macros, I do everything manually and using a mouse to boot, so I, who’s never had to focus on ohcrap pet is nearly dead! Had trouble between noticing pet hp bar going down [as it's not right in my face] and the fact that NO ONE TOLD ME THAT AOE CLOUDS OF DEATH RANDOMLY APPEAR.

    ‘Also, I’m curious as to which boss/mobs were giving you issues – my spirit beast has little problems in there.’

    It’s the snakes; they were causing some deadly AoE cloud of poison or something.

    ‘Also (and pleeeeaase don’t read this as a knock to your pet/play style)- why not just bring a ferocity pet next time? A little self-healing, that “oops” HoP… useful stuff.’

    Because I’m ALWAYS bringing Jupiter, my Spirit Beast, I wanted to TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. It’s not that I’m tired of Jupiter, but I am getting sick of just going around with a cat all the time, and a bit sick of the multiple whispers of lul where did you get/how did you get, and not all of them have been nice.

    One person DEMANDED to know my ‘SECRET’ of ‘camping Loque’.

    And the self healing only works if I leave Growl on and I never leave growl on in a dungeon run unless my pet is going to OT a mob for a short time- and even then I rarely have to use it as pop intimidate PET EAT FACE and only the tank can pull it offa it.

    And the other reason I wanted to bring a cunning pet was cause of Roar of Recovery… I am so tired of being the only one to go oom or having to gimp my DPS during bossfights to recover mana.

    And I’ve had the unfortunate luck of no one waiting for me to recover mana via drinking :/

  10. Also @ Palla; use your epic comment skill to get Hydra’s tameable too D:

    I want the orange ones in Azshara so bad D:

    /offtopic

  11. *LAUGHS* Ryai, if I could use my powers for that kind of good, there’d be a whole lot of tameable things out there. And we’d still have ghost wolves.

  12. Ryai, if your using ferocity then bloodthirsty procs off of normal attacks. *Goes to make sure of that* Hrm, actually it just says attacks. Anyway,ferocity also have the amazingly useful lick your wounds and heart of the phoenix abilities to help them stay alive longer, so you may want to try that out.

    As far as mana goes, ugh. Consider invigoration in beast master, but I find that doesn’t help much until your critical starts growing. Glyph of arcane shot and glyph of aimed shot ((If you use aimed shot. I do because its cheaper then multi for single targets and its instant)) can help a bit too. It’s also important to almost always have mend pet up if your expecting any sort of AoE. I also can not stress the importance of avoidance in AoE situations. That one pet talent has kept my pets alive far longer then they should be able to survive for. ((I say pets, but I mean minions too. Warlock and death knights both have similar talents, except theirs are built into either the pet themselves or talents in the unholy tree.)) A combination of avoidance and constant mend pet is usually enough to keep my pet going, though I have to be very wary in heroics.

  13. Heh… sorry Ryai. That was kinda the reaction I was hoping to avoid.

    Back in BC I was rollin w/ a Silithid -exactly- for the same mana regen purposes (RoR FTW). Also – I’m no macro god or anything either… about as far as i get is macroing an autoattack/sic pet spell cause I’m too lazy to press ctrl+1.
    As to mana problems, I’ve taken to just poppin into Viper after evry pull while running to the next one: it usually builds up enough mana to keep me going for the next pull. And if no one lets you stop and drink – either start doing fights w/ no mana/ in AotV to -show- your group how much more useful you are when fully mana’d up… or find a new group.

    And I can 100% confirm that Bloodthirsty procs off of the normal pet attacks, no growl needed… can’t recall off the top of my head if it works on their specials or not.

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  16. Hence why I mentioned gear difference, Korzak. Sometimes, your just !@$#ed. *LAUGHS* I’ve had some very interesting dances against Death Knights before, involving multiple death grips and chains of ice…..

  17. For any hunters that have dabbed into the 49 bracket lately…

    I currently use a cat for pvp and a gorilla for pve. I have a rare spawned raptor in stable and I’m thinking of getting rid of it in order to make room for another pvp pet. I’m thinking a wolf because of its buff that it gives every 10 seconds.

    Is this worthwhile. I was thinking of using a wolf for bg where I knew I would be running around with a group. Is this AP bonus worth giving up my cats rake? Also… looking at other pets… I see that the gorilla, while tenacity, has way more base damage for its special ability than my cat. Not to mention its an aoe.
    Furthermore… Are MM and SV specs as viable 49 specs as BM. I will admit, I have only tried BM and I tend to rely heavily on my Pet related skills in tough spots. My question is, will MM or SV give me as much damage as losing BM will take damage from my pet?

  18. So… Have been looking at the forums and would appreciate a little guidance.

    Some post in the forum have said that raptors are as good dps as cats. is this at all levels or only 80? I hardly ever use my cat’s prowl and if my pvp effectiveness wouldn’t deminish I would consider using my Tekk over my panther.

    So main things I would like to know…
    Wolf’s AP bonus at 48. Worthwile PVP?
    Raptor vs. Cat at 48. Which is better for straight damage. If they are close I’m gonna use my cool looking raptor.
    BM vs SV or MM at 49. I have little experience outside of my BM spec. Are there any goodies hidden in MM or SV at my level? If so, should I consider a switch?

    BTW.. I love this blog. Already helped me with pvp. Thanks everyone for helping a lowbie smile.

  19. *Chuckles* This blog is a bit random. Some times some of the regular readers go off on tangents that end up being useful.

    Savage rip has potential, but that cooldown is way to prohibitive. When savage rip CRITICALS, then for the next little bit yes, raptors will do more damage. Savage rip itself does more damage and bleeds for more now, but again, a cat can get off its rake six times before a raptor gets its rake off twice. Cats definitely win that little DPS race. If savage rend ever gets its cooldown lowered to even twenty seconds then they’ll have the advantage in DPS though.

    As far as wolves go, I’ve been using a wolf for years now, as a personal preference. Furious howl, at max level, only grants a buff of 156/158 ((One of the two, its late/early.)) Course this is better then the zero you’d have normally, but is overshadowed in every way by blessing of might and battle shout. It is nice to have a round, and totally viable, but not nessecary, even if you don’t have a buffer in your PvP party or in your raid. I still dedicatedly use my wolf in PvP, but its fun to haul out a devilsaur or a cat every now and then.

    How rake caught a nerf to the face but thunderstomp didn’t, I’ll never bleeding know. Thunderstomp is currently the strongest pet family ability, hands down. For twenty focus you get an AoE nature damage, fairly HIGH damage for a pet ability WITH a built in threat modifier. On a ten/seven second cooldown. Gorillas are the best leveling pet around, and they are purposefully built that way. Go have a look at the ranks of thunderstomp if you don’t believe me. Just about every family ability doubles in numbers at 80. Except thunderstomp, which gets an increase of no more then ten damage. Oh and furious howl, since it scales. Okay, pretty much any non-damaging ability. I’ll leave this ramble here for amusements sake.

    Rant aside, tenacity pets are perfectly capable on the PvP field, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Trust me, the elitist and the occasional idiot will try. Gorillas in particular are able to put out some nasty damage, and in all honesty the only advantage the ferocity pets have over tenacity is rabid, which you won’t even have access to yet. The instant and fair sized damage of thunderstomp will honestly serve you better then the damage and DoT of cat, not to mention thunderstomp has a range of eight yards over kitty kittys five. Little things, but things none-the-less.

    In a word, yes. Both marksman and survival have some fun little things for you. Marksman is an overall increase to your shot damage and efficiency, while survival is an overall increase to, well, survival and now days damage. Aimed shot, true shot aura, careful aim, go for the throat, ranged weapon specialization, and combat experience to name a few in marksman are all really good talents. ((Note that true shot gets better with time, or as your gear gets better. It may start out kind of meh, but it ends up being pretty good.)) Wyvern sting, lock and load ((Just love the name of that talent….)) LIGHTNING REFLEXES ((Fifteen percent more agility? Seriously? Duuuuuuuddddddeeeeeee))scattershot, survivalist, hunter vs wild, improved wing clip……yea, survival has a lot going for it now. You’ll have to be a little careful with your talent point placement at 49, but work with it a bit and find a build you like. I strongly suggest respeccing if your curious, just to give it a shot. Go out, beat on a few equal level mobs. Have fun trying!

    Keep in mind though, you’ll lose beastial wrath, which sort of trumps true shot aura and wyvern sting. Keep in mind that your pet will lose its effectiveness, and not be as helpful for getting things off of you. That being said, your run’n'gun abilities will be a lot better as the other two trees. The joys of wyvern stinging a rampaging warrior off your tail are ones better left to personal experience……

  20. This is a long thread and I didnt have time to read it all like I normally would.

    Anyway just had to agree with Paldia’s initial rant.
    Hunters really are getting the shaft when it comes to pets and was a slap in the face when our pets got a nerf and warlock pets got buffed. I mean for god’s sake they have even made videos of fully buffed Void Walkers with 75k health actually tanking Sartharion with 3 drakes up!

    This whole Dual Spec crap is again another slap in the face to pure dps classes. Since WotLK Im sure other people have noticed the decline in pure dps classes. We dont even have any rogues in our smallish guild for 10man’s. In our guild alliance 25man raids we usually only have 0-2 rogues, 0-2 mages, ~2 warlocks and 2 hunters. The rest are made up of hybrids. With dual spec hybrids will have even more versatility in 10 & 25 man raids (especially 10mans). Pure dps classes are a dying breed.

    I would love to see Blizz give these pure dps classes a second role. After they seem determined to make each spec within hunters do the same damage so why bother having 2 different specs if the only difference is the graphics on how they damage. I like Mania’s idea of pets being viable tanks and its one I have suggested and been ignored with on the European Blizz forums. Alternately tweaking the BM tree to give a Beast form like Warlock demon form however Blizz have stated they dont want any more “forms” within classes. So yet again we miss the boat on that idea.

    Anyhoo enough of my doom and gloom rant for hunters. I love the class and wont change it from my main but would like to see some love again. We are given tantilising grasps of it only for it to be taken away or superceded by benefits to other classes which outweigh our former loving!!!

  21. Its not really gloom and doom, Drina. It is, sadly, just the truth. Hunters are a limited rescource pure DPS class with low mana pools who have to spend extended amounts of time in viper if replinishment isn’t kind to them, and even then viper will still call your name. Further, hunters feature instant cast shots to constantly and heavily drain mana on top of a cast ‘filler’ shot. Hunters are dependant on pets to deal a ranging portion of their damage, and Blizzard is as always going to toss in AoE fights that punish any class with a pet mechanic. One of hunters two main mechanics, traps, is extremely wonky, requiring not only an arming time but for your opponent to actually, ya know, STEP ON your trap. Hunter crowd control is the biggest joke ever. One of the hunters few redeeming abilities, misdirection, was given in an improved version to rogues. Hunters are the only class to feature a full on weakness, or the inability to deal the brunt of their damage in melee range. ((I wouldn’t factor this, but considering my oft stated fact that pretty much every melee has a way to get you in melee range and keep you there, I think it is important. Not only that, but hunters are, for all technical purposes, a ‘caster’ class, yet the only one that can’t deal their specialty in melee.)) Hunters ((for now)) rely on arrows, or an expendable rescource that has to be replinished. Hunters are the only class that relies on a stat for damage to only garner one AP. ((Shamans still garner AP from strength, which comes into play mainly for buffs.)) Hunters survivability stat, dodge, scales horribly with hunters primary stat, agility. ((Other classes literally get double the effect of agility to dodge.)) Hunters are the only class that must tame and then level their primary/second form of DPS, whom gather no experience from rested, quests, or the bonus’s conferred by area buffs like Wintergrasp. Said resource must also be kept happy. ((This one isn’t a huge deal anymore, mind, since all three trees have some way of doing that sans food.))

    Thats probably not all, but you get the drift. The class is full of holes, and those have only gotten worse through the years. Way back in vanilla WoW, hunters could fairly reliably kite targets, but with the coming of TBC and later Wrath, that was more or less nixed. We’ve got our strong points, mind you, but I feel that of all the classes in WoW, the hunter is overall the one with the most holes.

    Fixes…..hrm. One I can think of off the top of my head is to get rid of traps. Traps had a chance to be more viable when Camoflauge was a possibility, but that skill was axed before it even saw the light of day. So turn traps into ‘shots’ or ‘arrows’, with the same effect. Lower the cooldown on explosive and immolate, up the co-efficients on them and on serpent stings DoT, give freezing shot back its ‘damage to break’ effect, and make frost aimable. Maybe make snake trap aimable too, though the thought of firing off a shot that explodes into itty bitty ((Admittedly useless anymore)) snakes amuses me.

    Make shot and stings useable in melee. We should NOT be the only class punished for being in melee, period, end of story. I don’t mean our ranged attack, I just mean all of our special abilities. Again, we are the only class that CAN’T fight in melee range worth a flip.

    Adversely, increase our melee abilities. Make melee an actual option for hunters. ((It hurt to type that.)) Give us a specialized aspect that increases armor and parry. Maybe fold it into aspect of the beast, and make that stupid thing useful. Give us more melee attacks with different effects. If some one is going to beat me in the face, I want to beat back.

    Consider a two fold system for damage. Mana for things like healing and reviving your pet and for certain abilities, and an energy type system for pure attacks and or damage. Turn steady shot into a ‘sinister strike’, up the mana cost for mend pet and similar abilities. I’m not a huge fan of this idea, mind you, but it would help us like whoah in longer fights.

    Two pet family abilities. Yea, TWO. Cats have them, though prowl is lackluster. ((As a side note, you should be able to talent prowl so that it doesn’t have that speed decrease, and make it so that charge doesn’t interupt it.)) One ‘special’ ability, ala prowl or ferocious howl, and one damaging ability, ala rake. I’m pushing it on this one, since we only now got every pet family to HAVE an ability, but I think it’d go a long way to help with pet diversity. Further, even.

    Well, its eight AM and I am out of ideas. Sorry for the long ramble!

  24. Heh, you can do some interesting things from a protected position with the Eyes of the Beast Glyph, but….it isn’t like its a big deal to die in WoW. I’d personally rather be in the thick of the action, instead of perched behind a wall making my pet do all the work. Course you can get your pet out of effective range, then cancel it if they take to much damage, for an effective and relatively safe assault. It just…..doesn’t feel good to me.

  26. @ Palladiamors:

    ramble on please, I actually get to learn a thing or two while you are at it :)
    (first post here ftw, love stalking mania’s blog and petopia site is worshiped as a pet bible)

    -wit

  27. *Laughs* Well, as long as my rambling helps people out sometimes, I guess thats okay.

    And your welcome, Korzak, and good luck!

  29. I can honestly say that untill I had to respec from BM hybrid to survival for my raid group (they needed the replenishment from a survival hunter and I am the only hunter in the raid) I wasent overly interested in the dual specs for my hunter, but now that I have two spec. one for raiding and one for soloing I am looking forward to it purely from the cost of two respecs a week now.

  30. Palla- you mentioned possibly making hunters have melee abilities. while this typically invokes giggles or scorn, it is an interesting idea, primarily to help the pvp challenges. One tree (since they are so similar right now anyway) could be changed to make your fighting style melee with very little range. It sounds crazy, but Beast Mastery seems the most viable talent tree to change. It lacks an intelligent shot rotation anyway when compared to the other two trees, and obviously “marksman” should by no means become melee. Some other games have classes where your character has a wild beast pet (i’m thinking everquest, and that other game (war?) where you have a white lion knight or whatever). Long story short, they could consider a very radical change, where deep in the BM tree, there is a talent which CHANGES your shots/abilities range from the usual up to 30 yards to something like 0-5 yards. Basically,your damaging shots, stings, ect, would become melee range. A few things could remain distance I suppose, such as concussive shot if you wish to flee battle. (I think making all shots work in melee AND range is overpowered and should not be done.) With the “new” BM spec, you love your pet so much, you charge right in beside them, meleeing mobs with your pet.

    /end book. Ok,so that’s a pretty radical change, which may be disliked by many. But it could make one of the trees quite different from the others, and perhaps mend our pvp woes. Just tossing ideas, Palla’s comment got me thinking. :)

  31. I hope I haven’t missed someone saying this earlier, but a question that comes to mind is this: Let’s say you have already chosen your 2 builds that you want to have “set” as your dual specs, but you want to change one of them? I’m curious as to how the interface for choosing or setting your builds will work, and haven’t really seen any information/guesses on that yet…

  32. Gitsom: As far as I can tell, it works like this:

    Think of a two-sided whiteboard. You spend 79 levels working with your talents, glyphs, etc on one side of the whiteboard (in multicolored pens, of course).

    When you hit level 80, you have the option of flipping to the other (completely clean) side and working with a completely empty whiteboard … er .. talent tree. You can draw something similar to what’s on the first side (say, BM with a twist) or something different (say, SV) or nothing at all (I plan to leave one of my specs untalented for testing purposes). And at any time you can flip the board again, back to the first side, and keep working there.

    Once you are on a side, you can erase and rewrite (respec) or do whatever you normally do with your whiteboard/talents. So there’s no special UI involved in ‘setting’ or ‘unsetting’ the talents within each of the two specs — that’s all like it’s always been. There is only the UI of flipping the whiteboard to the other side (which is that whole Lexicon of Power thing).

    Hmm … no idea if that’s helpful, but clearly I have been working too much with whiteboards this week. :>

  34. Rather than see us get melee abilities, I would rather they just made it so hunters can do EVERYTHING on the run. Everything. If we have to keep range to use those abilities, then let us keep moving constantly. Shorten the cooldown on Evasion. Give us a Reverse Death Grasp, where we can bounce our target away from us (but not off an edge).

    I do not mind being ranged only and sucking at melee, if there are as many ways for me to escape melee range and stay there as there are ways for melees to suck me in and keep me there.

  35. Other changes:

    Remove the range limit on Kill Shot. Why give us back that horrible deadzone on one ability?

    Fix Evasion so that it removes you the max distance regardless of terrain! Nothing is worse than hitting Evade with your back to a slight slop and only hopping back three feet. It’s useless.

  36. One other idea:

    Let our movement speed bonuses stack. There’s like four of them or something, and none stack. if they stacked, we could be fast enough to get the heck out of range.

  37. I think the problem with hunters is that they don’t perform very well with soley the talents from any one tree. A hunter needs some talents of each tree in order to be just a regular average hunter. That’s BM, MM, and SV improvements. Even with a good build if you do only 51 pts. in one tree and have 20 pts. left to toss around here and there, you’re going to miss out on some abilities that are somewhat needed to be a good regular plain jane hunter IMO.

    What the tweak is, I’m not sure. Some of the abilities need to be moved down lower in the trees, some things like Hunters sucking at Melee, could giving them more armor make a difference in this? And yeah, sure it would, but for PvE their armor is fine, cause the pet growls the hunter feigns and the mobs are back on the pet, but for PvP they suck. Silencing Shot/Tranquilizing shot are good if they are taken quick enough, but the warlock sneaking up behind me fears me, DotS me and I’m dead before I even get two shots off. arggh! Beastial Wrath/Beast Within still have to cast before trauma occurs. PvP as a hunter is really frustrating. I think improving the traps and making a talent for aimed traps would be amazing for hunters, and why can’t MM Hunters learn cower or something? disengage launching me over cliffs >.< feign death with it’s lengthy cool down sheesh. my pet who I almost ALWAYS want to have threat has cower on automatic *rolleyes* so I have to turn it off, but I can’t have cower? O.O and who decided to take away scatter shot and give it to SV? can’t that be a trained learned ability for hunters in general? sheesh. And if I critical on some shot, and it grants me 15% attack power for 10 seconds, then why not let my pet share it? or if my devilsaur monsterous bites, and it stacks 3 times can’t it also share that with me and automatically stack my ranged damage up to 3 times? Hunters are a great PvE soloing class I think, but that’s about it. In raids/dungeons they seem to generate too much threat with their shots, when meanwhile the pet is often taking threat off the main tank (which nobody likes) or it’s side-lined on passive (ineffectual), but of course it’s not good enough to tank by itself normally, and oh yeah they do pretty poor at pvp. *sigh* Things like that could be better balanced and resolved by the pet tree / families I think. With a BM spec i feel like I can sick my pet on most things 1,2,3 mobs and sit back and just autoshot and not do a thing *yawn* with MM *aspect of the hawk* I pull too much threat from my pet and disengage/feign/trap *aspect of the monkey* wingclip/raptor/mongoose constantly (survival skills i’m not spec’ed for). And survival I’ve not tried for soloing but I don’t think soloing is really what survival is made for. So I dunno. I think some tweaks and balancing could definitely happen for the Hunter class. :-/

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