More changes in beta

Courtesy of MMO Champion

Remember these are on the xpac beta, not PTR.  As usual, I'm in blue italics.

Beast Mastery

• Widow Venom now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.  Its now in line with all the other healing reduction type abilities
• Kill Command now deals 43% of Ranged AP + 848 damage. Up from 35% of RAP + 772 damage.  That's a huge and needed buff to that shot.  Its now on board with Steady and Cobra Shots.

Marksmanship

• Steady Shot now scales from 2.1% of Ranged AP, down from 10 of Ranged AP.  From what I understand this is how its working and the tool tip was wrong.  So not a nerf but a tool tip fix.
• Chimera Shot now deals 28.8% of Ranged AP + 973 damage. Up from 24% of Ranged AP + 401.  Um, yay!

Survival

• Explosive Shot now scales from 22% of Ranged Attack Power, up from 18%.
• Black Arrow doesn't seem to scale from Ranged Attack Power anymore, or maybe Blizzard just removed the scaling value from the tooltip.

Pets

• Demoralizing Screech no longer deals damage or reduces the attack power of enemies in range. Now reduces the physical damage caused by all enemies within 8 yards by 10% for 10 sec. No longer has a focus cost.
• Froststorm Breath base damage reduced from 244 to 41.
• Monstrous Bite now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.
• Burrow Attack now scales from 76.8% of Ranged AP and deals 1432 damage, up from 9.6% RAP + 257.  ← Hi2U sexy. 

Oh come on, really?

This is my Tier 11 set. 

I don't even know where to start?  The hat is just another in a long tradition of WTFISTHAT hunter helms.  But oh my effing god it looks like a gorloc skull.  Um, ew.

Lets not discuss the day-glo colors since everyone has essentially the same shades.

The rest of it is...I'm not sure what word I'm looking for to describe this.  What the hell are the rocks on the shoulders supposed to represent?  Uncut agility gems?  I see the giant gem slot in the middle of the chest and on the boots too.

This is what I will be stuck wearing for months and months.  I'm going to sit in this here corner and cry for a while.

Blizzcon and Hunters

My name is Greg, I'm one of the lead designers of World of Warcraft. I'm a Libra. I like long walks on the beach, drinking gin, and nerfing paladins.

Ghostcrawler is my new hero.  This is just the bit pulled out of the giant Q&A that relates only to hunters.  My fabulous running commentary is in blue.

Q: When the death frost enchant first came out, I died a bit inside. We're seeing all these chance to proc on a melee attack or a spell, and I'm just wondering are hunters ever going to get a fun melee enchant, or are we going to be stuck with an upgraded version of an enchant that we've had since like patch 1.5?

A: So I have some bad news, unfortunately. For a while, you're going to be stuck. But one of the things that we're looking at going forward is sort of evaluating the scopes, because those are pretty boring right now to be frank, and we want to make the scopes cool and interesting. So if you do get one of those proc enchants coming along the line that's going to be where it comes into the game. And it will be just yours, nobody else can use it, and it'll be that cool thing.

A scope with a real use.  Actually exciting

Q: OK, hunters, Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack -- it's been in the game for a long time now. This is somewhat of a credit to you guys, you've given all the other character classes wonderful tools where a lot of hunters now no longer feel it's necessary to have a gimp to a skill like this. We all feel it's antediluvian, you know; remove it from the game, please. That way it would add more dynamic to the hunter class. Aspect of the Pack would be used in other situations.

A:The reason why Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the pack aren't like -- or that they have the daze I guess is what you're referencing -- is that if they didn't have the daze then you could just kite stuff all day long in PvE and it's also used like --

Q:you put mobs on leashes, you cannot kite stuff all day long. That is no longer true. And mobs you can kite, it's irrelevant; you could kill it anyway. Who cares?

A:I don't know, I think I'd be able to kite stuff and kill stuff solo as long as the boss doesn't hit me.

Okay first  "we"?  You and the mouse in your pocket?  The rest of us aren't belligerent idiots.  I mean good god we all know that there's good reason for the daze.  Who the let this moron roll a hunter let alone ask a question?

Q: From a technical standpoint we seem to be the only ranged class in the game that has a minimum range. This seems to come into effect quite a bit in our raids where everybody in the raid -- ICC first couple of bosses -- everybody in the raid stacks up on the boss at max hit at the edge of the hitbox, except the hunter -- you stand about five feet back and die.

A: If your raid liked you more they'd save you.

You reading that guildies !  The devs blame you for my death on a spike inside cold flame because I can't get any closer to the boss and do damage.  

Question: My question is just -- mages, warlocks, priests -- they're all ranged classes but they can stand directly in front of you and repeatedly use what would be a ranged attack. Why have hunters been singled out? Why are we not allowed to do the same thing with our bows or our guns? It makes no sense.


A: It's part of the overall flavor of the hunter class unfortunately, and it goes hand in hand with using ranged weapons. That said I'm very sympathetic to the reality on fights like Lord Marrowgar, and other bosses that have very large hit boxes -- which works to the advantage of melee because it lets you spread out -- but effectively it's subtracting from the viable range for hunters. That issue in particular is something that we've discussed addressing because it is intended to make life easier for you, not harder, and life would be easier for you on Marrowgar if you were smaller and that's just not how it's ideally going to work.

Q: Is there supposed to be any form of a balance for the fact that it is a negative to the way our class plays is that we must be at that range or our DPS goes to pretty much nothing once you get into melee. Is there going to be something that cancels that out and makes us a slightly more viable ranged class than somebody who doesn't have that negative.

A: At the same you can shoot while moving and a mage can't channel his spells while moving, so there's trade offs right? Or a rogue or a cat they can't do anything when they have to run around the room, and you can. So there's different classes have different strengths in different situations.

Hunters also have a lot of abilities to get our of melee range, that's why disengage was made as a jump away from your target kind of ability, to get away from the shadow priest standing on top of you. But pretty much any ranged class if a melee's on top of you, you know, you're not doing your highest damage, right.

Okay so how I read this is yes we know the hit box is HUGE.  Yes we realize you get stuck way outside.  No we prefer that the melee dps be happier.   They didn't address situations where we have to be stacked tight inside a mob's hit box (the Lich King fight is a prime example).  I mean I could melee but I'm pretty sure Arthas would wet his pants laughing at me. 

Frostheim from WHU managed an interview with Ghostcrawler!  Oddly its only hunter related, no dwarf questions at all.  So very unlike him.  But he did get some answers on a few major issues.

Postcards from Azeroth

Not sure if many have seen this but this blog is pretty damn cool.

Postcards from Azeroth

They take screenshots from the game and post them up in postcard form.  Take a trip over there are some really amazing ones.

I think its okay to hate me now

I am now the Dinaer of the Horseman mounts.  My druid got the drop her first run last night. 

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful..

Hate me because the Horseman dropped the reigns to his mount in my backpack!

Emo Hunter is Emo

I started out this new patch very excited.  I ran around taming, naming and leveling new pets.  I took the pug ride on random dungeons and thought, hey this focus thing is sorta neat.  I even did some of 25 man ToC and I was very happy to see that I could manage my focus bar very well.  Oh it was going so well.  And then it happened.

ICC 25, or the land where hunter dps goes to die.  Some of it is my fault, I just cannot get past this priority shot mental block.  I also seem to have lost the ability to notice when Serpent Sting is about to run out.  But even more than that is the damage nerf to the class.  I'd heard about it and I thought everyone was just over reacting.  But damn.  I cannot break 7k DPS and (no offense to my mage friends and loved ones) casters are face rolling their way to 15k. 

The rational side of my brain knows that this will be adjusted.  It knows that the damage meters aren't everything.  It knows that I still have much to relearn about the class.  But damn I wasn't even in the top 10. 

Nothing to do but suck it up, retrain my brain on a priority list and wait for the changes.    I guess I'll head out and listen to the Smiths while I shoot at a target dummy.

Meh.  Wah.  Meh

Aspect of the Hawk has landed

So today is the day when the whole world changes for the Hunter class.  New specs, new stables, new stats, new mechanics.  Its like the first day of school without the "forgot my homework in my underwear" nightmares.

So what will I do when I get home?  Probably play Starcraft II till the servers are stable.  When I can log in what will I do first?  That's right I will make sure my addons are up to date and functional.  If Bartender is not up and running I will go back to Starcraft until it is.  Yeah that's right I'm a big loser and can't play without my addons.

Okay so when my UI makes me happy I will aspect of the pack it to a hunter trainer.

Hm should probably avoid training in Stormwind or Ironforge.

Once at the trainer I will train all the new and shiny things.  New stable!  I'm actually highly geeked up about the new stable.  I like pets and I always wished I could have more and now I can.

Next comes talents & glyphs.  I think I'm mostly settled on what I will start with and then tweak it from there.

Cheres 4.0.1

I decided to take the new Silencing Shot for raid utility and I picked up Marked for Death because anything that will keep me from blowing a global cool down in a long boss fight is a good thing.  My glyphs are mostly self explanatory, I'm still on the fence between the Arcane Shot and Chimera Shot glyphs and am going to punish myself accordingly for not testing it out more on the PTR when I had the chance.

I think this is a good time to take a moment to reflect on what we as hunters are losing.  Ammo and Ammo bags will no longer be part of Warcraft.

I've sort of, kind of, maybe figured out what to do with my gear in a general "I have a gear stat issue" sort of way.  I'm hoping to use the rest of my slacking off at work time to get a game plan for this.  If I'm a good girl and get all my homework done I can go out and play with the beasts to fill up my stable!

But Cheres what about focus?!?!   The whole world is different!!  When do we spam Steady Shot?!?!  I've heard many a comment that focus is a game breaker and "well I'll just go play my X instead".   "Hunters are broken I'm going to light up the world and Recount with my other characters!"

Please do go play your X instead.  You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.  Leave focus to those of us who have some.

4.0.1 Incoming

Hopefully not tomorrow because

What's my spec going to be.  No friggin idea for sure.  I know its MM but I'm really having a hard time settling on anything specific.  The target dummies are always at high health so getting a truly accurate test of DPS is only going to happen in a real raid situation.

BTW anyone wanting to go BM or SV for raiding, don't. Cobra Shot is not going to be in the game and your DPS will take a hit.  

I know and am prepared for a massive drop in my DPS.  Every reputable Hunter blog is mentioning this.  My ego will get over it eventually, I've played the class when we were lolhunterdps.  Its just sad that they felt it was important to hit us with the nerfbat to the tune of 1k dps when the other classes are seeing increases.  I'm sure it will be adjusted by the time I'm raiding in the xpac. 

No mana yay!  But I'm still very meh about the learning curve with focus.  I am bad and did not spend nearly enough time on the PTR and my raids will suffer as I try to figure out what goes where and when.  I'll just find a way to blame the rogues.

No more Ammo!  FRIGGIN YAY!  To prepare for this I've stopped getting arrows. With no more ammo means no more quiver!  YAY!  I await with much excitement my shiny new 24 slot bag. 

Pretty big gear change in store, no more intel, no more AP and no more ArP.  I will be sporting a metric butt ton of haste since I have a butt ton of ArP and a higher crit rating.  Gems change too.  ArP gems will turn into crit rating gems and so I'll be way over crit cap when raid buffed.   Reforging is coming so I'll be able to adjust some of my gear as well.  I really should have started reworking this a while ago so now and I'll pay the price when I'm crying in my DPS spreadsheet. 

I've tamed a raptor and I'll level him to 80 but otherwise I'm done with pets till the new stables arrive. 

I really hope the patch isn't tomorrow.

Oh I found something funny so I'll wrap this posting up with a totally not related picture.

Pets and Raids

I've managed to get quite dizzy thinking about all the pets and the raid buffs they bring.  I think I may wind up spending the first week of the new patch taming and leveling a ton of pets.

Here's the short list I'm looking at:

• Cat Str/Agil - Have
• Wolf 5% Crit  - Have
• Bear - Debuffs physical damage caused
• Raptor - Debuffs armor
• Hyena - Increased bleed damage taken
• Sporebat - Cast speed reduction
• Tallstrider - Attack speed slow
• Ravager - Physical damage vulnerability
• Dragonhawk - Spell damage taken

I have 1 free slot and 1 yet to be purchased stable slot left.  Not sure its worth it to spend the money to buy that last one or just wait.  

In the meantime I guess I will take some time and pick out pets and think of their names.  I mean that's just as important as anything else in 4.0.1 no?

Moments of Silence

Have had a few things going on in my non gaming life that made me put gaming on the back burner.  That's all ending and I'll be back to being annoyed that I never got into beta soon!