Patch Notes Rumblings
“ZOMG BRK!! The patch! Talk about the patch! Sincerely, Everybody on the Planet.”
Okay okay okay. Wow, y’all can be a pestering cult following, ya know?
While the entire Test Realm patch notes are linked here…
What BRK Cares About for All Hunters in the 2.3 Patch Notes:
Zul’Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including the Forest Troll Warlord Zul’jin. Bring it, baby. We’re totally psyched.
Dwarf/Troll: Gun/Bow Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns/Bows by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill. If we have to lose Crit to get our Hit back, it’s a moot point. If we can raise our Hit without losing Crit, this could rock. But this really seems to be a subtle maneuver to get more folks to go Survival for raiding. That’s where Surefooted gives the 3% Hit bonus and where Crit is King. Survival hunters are cheering this development, that’s for sure.
Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat. Now this is fascinating. Just how much melee-time will be lost as our pets reposition will have to be measured against the amount of damage they end up not taking by being behind mobs. Take Ramparts for example. A pet standing in the dragon boss’s flames dies quickly and does zero DPS. If he positions so that he’s behind the dragon, and thus totally avoids that fire AoE, he does a lot of DPS, and a heck of a lot more than if he were dead. We are cautiously very optimistic.
Arcane Shot (Ranks 6 and above) now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to their normal damage. An obvious attempt to boost hunter-use in arenas, this could be pretty spiffy. Now if a warlock throws underwater breathing on his team and this is what the Arcane Shot dispels, it’s either a pretty crappy addition to our arsenal or just smart play on the warlock’s end. Or both.
Explosive Trap: The initial damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
Immolation Trap: The total damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power. We are wary of the differences in the implementation of these bonuses. What strikes us as interesting is that these are RAP-based. Most hunters who use traps for damage are Survival. Had these been agility-based we would’ve appreciated the buff to traps more. As it stands, we’ll take a wait-n-see approach.
Misdirection: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Hunters overwrite each other’s Misdirection. We may actually miss having our Misdirection over-written by another hunter and watching the chaos ensue. Currently, this potential ‘whoopsie’ requires hunters to coordinate their Misdirection in raids. If this change comes to pass it’ll make Misdirecting less deadly, but maybe a little less fun.
Serpent Sting: The total damage dealt by this sting is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power. Another Marksman buff and yet another temptation to take Improved Stings. If your Serpent Sting does 660 damage over 15 seconds and you take 3/3 in Improved Stings and get the 30% bonus damage to stings, your Serpent Sting will do 858 damage over 15 seconds. That’s nice but not good enough to justify taking it over something else. Now take that Marksman hunter and his 2300 RAP and give his Serpent Sting another 230 bonus damage, boosting it to 1088 damage over 15 seconds. Perhaps the warlocks out there would even say that this constitutes a real DoT, (probably not, but they don’t usually cheer us on anyway.) We’re scared to say it, but we actually think this is pretty nice.
Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled. ‘Bout time. Next!
New recipes are available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to make 20 slot quivers and ammo pouches. Spiify. But we’re not going to get to make one because…
New recipes are available from the Honor Hold, Thrallmar, and Lower City quartermasters to create 24 slot quivers and ammo pouches. Why Lower City? Could there be a 24-slot ammo bag with a 15% haste rating from Honor Hold and Thrallmar at Revered, and a 24-slot ammo bag with, can we dream, an 18% haste rating from Lower City? We are looking forward to jumping on the PTR just to see these vendors.
New macro command to target by entire name: /targetexact Woohoo! Your “/targetexact Demon Chains” macro won’t target someone your raid named Doomilias or Demetria anymore.
New macro command: /petautocasttoggle Again, woohoo! Our Growl macros shall be halfed.
When you inspect another player, you can now see their talent choices as well as their equipment. Huntard examinations just got a lot more fun. And probably scarier; how many Pathfinding level 70 hunters do you think we’re going to find?
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first
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Don’t you have homework to do?
I’m looking forward to this patch… I’m very interested to see how the Arcane Shot is going to dispel a buff. The addition of bigger quivers is going to be nice, as well, although something tells me, at least in the beginning, unless you get a guildie to make one for you you’re going to get raped in the AH for one.
@admiral
Man. can we please start using a different descriptor for being ripped off or beaten down?
Marginalizing the word rape is a big deal. It is a very, very violent act of hatred and should not be casually tossed about.
When you know people who have suffered through it, it really becomes a big deal.
“Wow, y’all can be a pestering cult following, ya know?”
Why not?
Signed,
Pestering Cultist #2003
insufficiently said…
Dwarf/Troll: Gun/Bow Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns/Bows by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill…Survival hunters are cheering this development, that’s for sure.
There is an Amazingly Stupid Idea which is called “Priest Racial Spells”. This Amazingly Stupid Idea has led to a priest caste system in which any priest without a desirable racial spell has been told ha ha noob lrn2reroll a useful race lolz. [OT: Blizz is fixing this discrimination in 2.3 by making it WORSE.] I hope this new analogous development for hunter talents will not cause the hunter community to childishly point fingers at each other and say HA HA U DIDNT ROLL DWARF OR TROLL U R NOOB LRN2REROLL LOLZ. I certainly hope we have the maturity and the tolerance and…oh, who the hell am I kidding.
So, if my pet is going to try to get at the mob’s back but he has aggro, won’t they just spin like a top? Unless monsters now utilize deadly ass attacks, this could backfire (excuse the pun).
Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.
Now this is fascinating. Just how much melee-time will be lost as our pets reposition will have to be measured against the amount of damage they end up not taking by being behind mobs.
Look, don’t worry about lost damage time at all from this.
The reason this was changed is because your pet was killing the tank!!
When the pet is in front of the boss, the boss can PARRY the pet attack, which speeds up the boss’ swing timer, which makes the tank get hit more than he/she was expecting. (Especially bad with Warrior tanks, as it eats Shield Block and opens them up to Crushes before the SB cooldown is up)
The pet being behind the boss stops all of that.
Anyway, an extra half-second of running time to move behind loses much less damage than not having 5% dodge and (something)% parry being taken off the combat table, don’t ya think?
Now I’ll be the only one who gets free hit rating!
lrn2reroll a useful race!Draenei hunter ftw!
j/k
If they change that racial buff I hope they don’t decide to change the Draenei racial buff. I can see it now Heroic Presense now gives .5% crit chance to you and all party members.
“Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.”
Here’s what I’m curious about. Does this only happen when you’re in a group situation, or will it happen when you’re solo grinding/farming? I keep having visions of my pet and the mob frantically pirouetting around each other for a hundred yards, dragging dozens of other creatures into the fight.
“Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.” - Another way to say that we’ll be seing pet+mob dancing until they aggro a ton more of mobs while you’re grinding and something to hope for a fix by 2.3.3 or something…
“Improved Pathfinding”: Actually, it’s just “Pathfinding”!
Now, there are a few more interesting changes not only for hunters, such as those described by Mania here (check comment #8).
All in all, this looks like 2.3 will NOT be a major patch: it will be a whole NEW game! So, don’t expect to be playing half-way decently until a month and 3 or 4 “emergency” patches come out!
@BRK: BTW, will you SERIOUSLY consider using a decent theme for your blog? One that doesn’t waste half of most screen’s real-estate now? On lengthier articles I always end up using Aardvark (God sent add-on for firefox!) to be able to properly read them!
Oh yeah,
Dwarf/Troll: Gun/Bow Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns/Bows by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill…Survival hunters are cheering this development, that’s for sure.
Not likely, for PvE raiding types, at least.
You’re trading (3% hit + something near 0.5% crit) for (1% crit).
Nice buff, that. *chuckle*
This is a HUGE, HUGE nerf, not just to hunters but for melee Humans and Orcs as well (also changed to 1% crit). Check out the Rogue forums - total warzone over this change, and I can’t say that I blame them.
(To be honest, this is probably what it should have been all along - those racials were way way overpowered before for PvE)
@insufficiently:
How is the Fear Ward change making priest racial situation worse? The replacement ones for dwarves/draenai seem good, but Sharshards got a gigantic buff as well (and is probably OP at zero mana cost). Horde priest racials seem really bad in comparasion now, but that doesn’t play a factor in “LOL not dwarf priest we don’t want you” type of problems.
“Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.”
This would indeed be a disaster if pets do this when they have agro.
I’m guessing that this will work similar to the way Windserpents behave differently when a mob is stunned or rooted. As most hunters know, when a mob is stunned or rooted, a WS will try to fly to range to use Lightning Breath, otherwise WS cast LB while meleeing.
Blizz could use the same kind of idea for pets trying to get behind their target, except make it based on agro. It would be a simple function to add to the AI. If the pet has agro, it would not try to get behind. If anyone else had agro, the pet would try to get behind.
Why Lower City? Could there be a 24-slot ammo bag with a 15% haste rating from Honor Hold and Thrallmar at Revered, and a 24-slot ammo bag with, can we dream, an 18% haste rating from Lower City? We are looking forward to jumping on the PTR just to see these vendors.
It’s still 15% and costs a primal nether to make. The mats for the ammo pouch are actually quite steep while the quiver is pretty cheap.
Quiver of a Thousand Arrows
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34105
Netherscale Ammo Pouch
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34106
i’m hearing about a disarming shot as well is this just bs?
Cant check any links from work
Do we know anything about the drops from Zul’Aman? Will they follow the “logical drops” philosophy Blizz has been mentioning?
If so, does that mean Harrison Jones’s whip could be a ranged weapon? And if that is so, could it be used to disarm natives?
“What BRK Cares About for All Hunters in the 2.2.3 Patch Notes”
Isn’t it the 2.3 patch notes you are describing BRK?
i’m hearing about a disarming shot as well is this just bs?
Cant check any links from work
I haven’t heard anything about a disarming shot, but some of the hunters in my guild have been talking about a forum post that says our aimed shot is going to be given a mortal strike type debuff.
@jabari: “How is the Fear Ward change making priest racial situation worse?” - Easy: it’s now 3 min duration with SAME time cooldown, meaning only 1 application per priest!
IIRC, it was 10 min length with 30 secs CD or something, meaning 1 priest could FW 2 or 3 tanks easily and even give the buff to a few more rogues…
I don’t think the change to racials has anything to do with hunters and survial spec. Rather, they took weapon skill out of the game. It’s no longer a stat.
“Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise.”
“Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.”
From what I’ve been reading, it looks like expertise will end up being a big bonus for all tanking classes, as well as a bonus for melee. I think this change has less to do with a talent tree for hunters and more to do with the general buffs that tanks received this patch.
Addendum: Why races have +crit instead of +hit is probably due to the changes we’ve been seeing in racials lately. Considering the changes to the priest racials, I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard is trying to ‘normalize’ the racial bonuses. Given that a lot of characters were created with no idea how much impact racials used to have on end-game, I support this move.
Now take that Marksman hunter and his 2300 RAP and give his Serpent Sting another 230 bonus damage, boosting it to 1088 damage over 15 seconds. Perhaps the warlocks out there would even say that this constitutes a real DoT, (probably not, but they don’t usually cheer us on anyway.)
I’m a warlock… and I’d say that looks like a DOT to me. /cheer Hunters
wow, I can’t believe how potentially good some of this sounds… future nerf?
I do think they see how much more dps a BM spec can produce… and they are trying to level the trees with the trap and sting improvements… immolation trap or snake trap with trap mastery and the new RAP boost… wow! and a MM spec can have the improved stings and traps… could be very interesting… now all 3 specs can be on top the DPS charts together…
the pet getting behind targets helps the MM/SV pets too… since their survivability is very low compared to BM…
BOO primal nether!!! they seriously need to make it BoE at the least! and now I need it for new quivers?
@someone:
I understand the change, and FW is definitely worse than it was before, but that wasn’t his original complaint as I read it. *shrug*
Go back up to what he said - it reads to me that giving FW to everyone makes the “priest caste system” worse. Beforehand, Dwarf priests were much preferred solely because of FW. I can’t figure out how giving all priests FW makes it so that one race is far preferred to others. *shrug*
(Unless Starshard is now as totally broken as it seems)
And it’s about time you alliance types learned to deal with Fear anyway
“Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.”
Hmm… will be interesting to see what happens in PVP. Good players will still focus on you.. bad players might indeed spin around trying to get the pet, thus leading to death from your MQSRDPS (massive quantities of Sustained Ranged DPS)
Will have to see what happens when your pet does have aggro…
I will trade my NE Wisp Spirit AND Nature Resistance for 0.5% Crit
Is anyone else as excited as I am about the prospect of our pets annoying rogues by being in their field of vision?
It’s going to be amazing.
That’s an interesting point, Karl.
Now, perhaps, Bats and Owls won’t be flapping their wings in player’s faces. That’s almost a nerf.
Anonymous said…
I will trade my NE Wisp Spirit AND Nature Resistance for 0.5% Crit
Amen. Is there any benefit, any longer, to the NE Wisp Spirit racial? (Or was there ever a benefit?)
Survival hunters are cheering this development Well dwarf and troll survival hunters anyway.
Pet moving to behind: If I were making this change, I would have the pet decide on a position behind the mob and move to, and stay there. Thus if it gets aggro, it will spin the mob relative to the party (like some warriors do), otherwise it gets the behind bonuses. Isn’t that a win either way? ‘engaging’ would seem to indicate that this was a once only action.
Arcane Shot Is there a limit to how many buffs one can have? One fake buff out of 15 would be pretty marginal protection, 40 out of 55 would be something. Does this make any sense?
Misdirection Could someone explain what happens currently?
Quivers Not sure why this is a big deal (if the haste stays the same). If I need more arrows (and I do, what with a Hurricane, IAotH, Rapid Killing, and Serpent Swiftness) I can just store them in my other bags (since I as I collect loot I will be using arrows).
“Quiver of a thousand feathers” Let’s be generous and say you can get 2 arrows out of a feather (three fetches out of each side), a thousand feathers is 2000 arrows, or ten slots… Ten thousand feathers is probably much closer.
when you inspect another player, you can now see their talent choices as well as their equipment. How many people are going to get ganked, because the are inspecting, trying to gain some slight advantage? Cool. Wonder if tin foil hat works against this too?
@pelides: How about “will choose to pay a large amount”? Really, if the price is too high folks, don’t pay it; don’t make out like some forced you to do anything.
Thank You Kindly,
Corwyn
for Kafsha and Shaelee
@kestrel
Other than beating all your guildies back to the instance after a wipe and being able to tap your feet in annoyance as they slowly crawl back in, not much.
p.s. You better be bringing me back some Macadamias!
Wait. You mean my pet won’t get hit with cleave in a group situation because he happened to be in front of a mob? Win.
And I’m totally cheering the /targetexact thing.
The pet AI change scares me. Now we have to control our pets but we have learned to do this. If you want an easy mode pet that goes to the back you can use a warp stalker. Now we may have to fight the pet for control in situations. I have visions of pathing issues pulling extra mobs, or pets being useless on encounters that require you to send your pet in and then back out because of the time to travel.
To sum up let me micro manage, If I want easy mode I will play a warlock.
@Corwyn
for Kafsha and Shaelee
u need 11 spots for the gear u need to take off. right now i carry 1600 extra arrows and with all the pots(mana, health, agi, wisdom, oil, mage water & food), flasks(assualt), foods(dogs & burgers and snaks), fishing pole(lurker), crop, skinning knife, NR gear(Hi King), maybe a couple quest items and now u FD and hit the naked bind …. and nothing comes off …. last run i had 13 deaths @ approx 3.5g a death repair bill(i realize it’s nothing compared to a warrior but if i can avoid it i will) …. u want to get that gear off as fast as u can.
on MD, if one casts and another hunter casts also …they cancel each other out …. ie: no MD
One question I have with pets attacking from behind; what happens when the mob has an attack like tail whip? Does this mean my pet either gets punted every couple of seconds, or he has to sit out fights where the mob has attacks like this? Maybe they could make this something you could toggle on/off. At least if they added the toggle we could turn it off till they got the coding dialed in.
“…boosting it to 1088 damage over 15 seconds. Perhaps the warlocks out there would even say that this constitutes a real DoT, (probably not, but they don’t usually cheer us on anyway.) We’re scared to say it, but we actually think this is pretty nice.”
My lowest damage dot is Siphon Life which does 2000 damage.
Hunters that overwrite a Warlock’s dot in 25 mans will still be ridiculed.
What, no “hunter pets do it from behind” comments? This blog is way too mature.
@bachus
Any hunter worth anything really isn’t using serpent sting on bosses. It’s damage per mana rating is laughable! I can do as much damage with a steady shot in 1/10 the time and use less than half the mana.
So , in the time that the Serpent sting does it’s 660 damage for 275 mana, I could have gotten off 7 steady shots and 7 auto shots at a mana cost of 770 and do potentially 6k+ in damage.
Even if it does 1k+ in damage over 15 seconds, it’s still laughable as a dps skill.
At the end of a fight where mana is at a premium and your pots aren’t cooled down, that 275 mana you spent on serpent sting could cost you two steady shots which could be upwards of 1k damage with autoshots and chances for a kill command or 2.
All that said, I really only use it in PvP to get casters to waste mana dispelling it.
on disarming shot…
apparently there’s an idon for it at least….
http://www.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2007/october/23icons.jpg
maybe there’s something coming that they haven’t clued us in on yet?
–j
best coming change?..
BLUE POST from Kalgan
“We’re planning to shrink the min range on ranged attacks to reduce or eliminate the “dead zone”. The only point to the dead zone was to ensure the min range on ranged weapons was enough such that ranged weapon attacks wouldn’t be used while also being melee’d (at least by mobs… players have a bit of slush built in).”
No mention of if this is for 2.3 but it sounds encouraging, as he didn’t say it wasn’t for 2.3
Pelides, that’s an incorrect analysis. Compare Serpent Sting using the time it takes to cast it… ie, 1.5s for global cooldown (assuming the mob lives long enough for the dot to finish, a good assumption for a boss).
Basically, compare it head-to-head with Steady Shot. Currently, not worthwhile, but maybe after the patch. (Depending on what kind of rotation is being used, too.)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2366566665&sid=1&pageNo=15#281
Source verification of Kalgan post on Hunter Deadzone.
One more hunter related change is the new tracking menu, in the PTR you can now right-click the tracking icon for a pull-down menu with all tracking skills.
This will either save us a few buttons on our toolbars or an extra add-on. About time.
Wow, really good point, Anonymous.
“What happens when the mob has an attack like tail whip? Does this mean my pet either gets punted every couple of seconds, or he has to sit out fights where the mob has attacks like this? Maybe they could make this something you could toggle on/off. At least if they added the toggle we could turn it off till they got the coding dialed in.”
Fights like Nightbane might be a lot harder to keep em alive. >_<
-Silver & Obsidian
Well I’m sure most of you have heard by now but they are doing away with the hunter’s dead zone. So it’ll now be a direct transition from ranged to melee.
NOW:
|–M-|—DZ—|——Range——–|
After Elimination of the dead zone:
|–M-|———–Range————|
Pretty damn sweet for hunters in arena and for some close quarter fighting or near stairs/corners/etc.
Thank Elune!
It’s about time, all the other classes have a majority of their skills and abilities a 0-## yrds range. the field will now be even. Aim Shot a Mage while frostblock, Mages look out! Hunters now will be back on top of the HK’s list.
Wow, some of those are really nice. And I think /targetexact is pretty handy for the Bootarang quest. /targetexact Disobedient Dragonmaw Peon or whatever it is.