Hunter patch notes so far

[Aurorawind]

Patch notes, verified by multiple sources. http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=10360.0

Still no talent calculator :(

Survival getting a nice boost across the board. Improved Tracking sounds like a "Must Have" for raiding hunters in the future.

Hunter

All pet families now have one unique ability. New abilities have been added for families such as bears and sporebats.
Aspects now no longer cost mana.
Avoidance, Dash / Dive and Cobra Reflexes are now pet talents instead of pet skills.
Bite now has no cooldown, does the same damage and costs the same Focus as Claw, so works as a Focus dump.
Clever Traps (Survival) has been renamed "Trap Mastery."
Concussive Barrage (Marksmanship) - Can now proc from Volley attacks.
Deterrence (Survival) - Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, and now also increases your chance to resist spells by 60%. Now has a new spell effect.
Every hunter pet can learn Growl, Cower and either Bite or Claw (never both).
Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family. Pets gain talent points starting at level 20 and earn an extra talent point every 4 levels.
If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath than the hunter's level, then the pet jumps to five levels beneath than the hunter's level.
Improved Feign Death (Survival): Now also reduces damage taken during Feign Death by 15/30%.
Loyalty, Training Points and the hunter Beast Training button no longer exist. Hunter pets can now learn all skills at their level. They will get new ranks automatically as they gain levels.
Master Tactician (Survival) - Chance to proc increased to 10%, up from 6%.
Monster Slaying (Survival) and Humanoid Slaying (Survival) has been combined into "Improved Tracking".
New Talent - Improved Tracking (Survival) - Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 1/2/3/4/5%.
Steady Shot now uses ammo. In result, its bonus damage has been slightly reduced. Players can notice a damage increase based upon what ammo they use.
Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 10/20/30% (instead of resist % chance).
Trap Mastery (Survival) has been removed.

[Aurorawind]

Pet talents up.

http://www.maniasarcania.com/2008/07/18/wotlk-pet-talent-trees/

1) I hate the fact that each pet family only gets access to 1 tree

2) The resistance talents are now wortheless

3) The rest of it rocks, and the group (and possibly raid-wide) buffs are impressive! +10% health and dodge for 40 seconds (3 min CD) or +5% melee and ranged AP for 20 seconds (5 min CD)

There are a few I'm expecting to get nerfed HARD. Restore 40% of hunter's mana over 8 seconds with a 5 min CD seems WAY overpowered.

The tanking talents though really seem awesome. Pets can make effective off-tanks in non-heroic 5-mans I'm pretty sure now. And in heroics/raids, they can do a great job of saving a clothie with the right macro now I think. They have a taunt on a 3 min CD and can boost their dodge rating pretty high for short times. Get Haythan and I, with one of us having a DPS pet and the other a tank pet for the buffs, and it's looking great.

[Zhek]

Pet talents up.

http://www.maniasarcania.com/2008/07/18/wotlk-pet-talent-trees/

1) I hate the fact that each pet family only gets access to 1 tree

2) The resistance talents are now wortheless

3) The rest of it rocks, and the group (and possibly raid-wide) buffs are impressive! +10% health and dodge for 40 seconds (3 min CD) or +5% melee and ranged AP for 20 seconds (5 min CD)

There are a few I'm expecting to get nerfed HARD. Restore 40% of hunter's mana over 8 seconds with a 5 min CD seems WAY overpowered.

The tanking talents though really seem awesome. Pets can make effective off-tanks in non-heroic 5-mans I'm pretty sure now. And in heroics/raids, they can do a great job of saving a clothie with the right macro now I think. They have a taunt on a 3 min CD and can boost their dodge rating pretty high for short times. Get Haythan and I, with one of us having a DPS pet and the other a tank pet for the buffs, and it's looking great.

your just guna both be boring and use cats anyway

[Aurorawind]

Again, possibly not. I may bring Moonclaw out of retirement depending on how well the tank buffs scale or go to the raid.

[Nortibiry]

God I hope screech isn't any good in the expansion.

[Aurorawind]

From what I can tell, it's out of the game...but I'm not sure entirely. And Moonclaw is my White Bear I was using back in the Princes Huhu days for the HP to last more than 5 seconds

[Aurorawind]

So looking at this for the raiding build 52/14/5. http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=cEb00xxRwuMeot0xVoRZx

Close to what we have now, the big break will be the +2% mana regen every time our pet crits with a special ability.

I think there's alot of wiggle room on a few points or so, like between longevity and cobra strikes.

Not sure we'll need imp mend pet with ferocity pets for their 20% chance to heal themselves...we'll see how it goes. If so we can move a couple points from Endurance training for it.

And thinking this for new soloing build for starting at 70 http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=cVoG0gxRwzhxst0xV

Thoughts?

[Etrigana]

Wondering why youd skip something like Careful Aim and dump all 5 points into improved tracking. You currently have almost 300 intel unbuffed. Add
AI, gift and kings to that and your looking at like....400 AP? Thats almost 1/4th of what you currently have and seems like a very sizable increase to me.

For a pure raid BM spec, Id probably drop Aimed Shot in favor of maxing out Go for the throat. Eulindra's spec would probably be something similar but with a few changes (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=cEb00xxRquMeot0eVbMZb).

-Etri

[Raptace]

I think Etri is on to something there, I think I'd do something very similar with Pitfall.
And as far as Rap goes, I still have no clue what I'm doing, glad I have time for people to figure out good specs for me, lol, I'm never good at leading the charge with something like, I'll let the brainiacs go to work.

[Aurorawind]

Yeah, just bouncing things around. Don't mind me thinking out loud.

1st thing is I wouldn't transfer that point out of animal handler to frenzy because we run frenzy at 4/5 now and it's up pretty much 100% of the time as is. And the +hit is one of the rare places we'll get it.

Still used to Careful Aim being a "Marksman" talent so I skipped right over it, good catch.

I'm of 2 minds on losing aimed shot because I do love it as an opener and I'm not sure if the mortal strike part of it would be useful. Assuming that there are no fights based on MS or anything, I could lose it. Just people would have to be a bit easier when I MD initially since I love having it for that. And, on the off chance that won't clip Auto Shot (like Steady Shot won't and Aimed Shot used to not) then that'd be a huge plus to the DPS. But that's the only thing I think that would be a huge arguement for keeping it.

I want to try with only 1 point in GFTT at first because currently when it does proc, alot of the focus is wasted from when I'm watching Sable's focus. If they get focus starved then I'll move it back over from improved tracking.

So looking at ... http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=cEb00xxRwuMeot0eVoMZh

[Assault]

I always use wound poison on any fight where the boss heals anyway (Illidan, Anatheron, Naj'entus, etc.) so you guys should never need to use aimed shot for the debuff unless both rogues were dead.

[Aurorawind]

Like I said, just thinking out loud. Some of us were actualy tossing around ideas for boss fights a while ago and came up with something where the adds all cross healed so you had to keep MS up on all of them at once (that was actually a fun night of brainstorming.) But since blizz is getting more inventive, who knows. That's why I said "if" there was a reason that we needed it.

[Zhek]

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p-p2GoLIggc7xJFZegWVhDA if i was a bm hunter in a raid setting

[Aurorawind]

What were the boss mobs armor rating though? I thought it was only a couple of thousand points currently, give or take per boss.

[benseac]

God I hope screech isn't any good in the expansion.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f187/benseac/stupidCrap/screech9.jpg

What did Screech do to you?

[Aurorawind]

*snrk* Nope, screech appears to be out of the game from what I'm hearing from beta testers. And all but 2 of the flying pets are in the PVP tree and out of the DPS tree, so no real chance of having those in the middle of your screen too.

[Wenge]

What about crockalisks? They always sound like backfiring engines to me.

[Aurorawind]

Could still be. The annoying noise for flying creatures was actually a trained ability ( really awesome one too) Crocs just make that anyway.

[Aurorawind]

Been doing research with people in the beta and observing forum posts, and come up with a few things.

Aspect Mastery, as it is, is very under performing. The increase to aspect of the viper isn't useful since Viper is rarely used when specced with Invigoration. The increase to aspect of the hawk is a fixed amount of 150 attack power/30 AP per point. Nice, but not the greatest...especially in comparison to itemization.

Pet focus use is going up greatly with Longevity in the BM tree, and with Rabid as a ferocity talent or growling in a tenacity pet. So going back to full GFTT

Still not sure if I want to move a talent out of Improved Tracking to Cobra Strikes or not. But http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=cEb00gxRwuMeRz0eVbMZh

[Aurorawind]

Hunter talents updated: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html

Everything got some nice changes here and there. Survival got even more awesome changes, Beast Mastery got some good tweaks, while Marksman got some nice stuff for PVP and soloing, but not for any kind endurance in raiding.

That being said, the devs posted the push after the one last night will have alot of hunter changes. Already listed as coming up, or already in, include..



Pets (hunters and warlocks) getting their master's +hit%
Masters call and Deterrence will be trainable and not talented
Mongoose Bite doesn't need a dodge to work anymore
More damage to serpent sting
The dispel taken from Arcane Shot and put on Tranq Shot
Kill command change
New focus costs
Pet resistances (1 point per level)
and other stuff...



You can check out http://www.wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Hunter#tab=Upcoming_Changes_2 for alot of Blue posts on this.

I do like the reshuffle on the BM tree and look forward to what else they're pushing out next build.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html?tal= (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html?tal=55200001525012043102531301005305 2000000000000000000005000000000000000000000000000) 55200001525012043102531301005305200000000000000000 0005000000000000000000000000000 (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter/talents2.html?tal=55200001525012043102531301005305 2000000000000000000005000000000000000000000000000)
for now is looking very good for raid DPS. I think the 2 extra points in improved tracking for 2% more damage will scale better than reducing the 15 seconds of haste cooldown from 5 to 3 minutes

[Aurorawind]

Woah, even more as I was posting..

Intimidation - We'd like to make this instant instead of relying on the pet's next attack.

Disengage - This is being changed in a future build. What it will do is cause the Hunter to jump back instantly 10-15ish yards to gain distance. 30 second cooldown.

[Vand]

Disengage - This is being changed in a future build. What it will do is cause the Hunter to jump back instantly 10-15ish yards to gain distance. 30 second cooldown.
Finally! Another class gets to experience all the wonders of blinking, something Bliz has never been able to iron all the bugs out of. Maybe with two classes QQing about it, it will finally be fixed...

[Raptace]

Disengage - This is being changed in a future build. What it will do is cause the Hunter to jump back instantly 10-15ish yards to gain distance. 30 second cooldown.


All I gotta say is wow wow pvp fun!

[Wenge]

This could end up being the funniest spell in the game, if it's anywhere near as broken as blink is, only backwards!

Too bad they added that anti-cliff-blinking code back in 1.05 or something - you used to blink right off things all the time.

[Aurorawind]

More today....

We definitely do want to make traps more usable. We've discussed a lot of different options over the years (including throwing your traps, having them turn into shots etc.) but in the end we feel we'd like to retain the unique gameplay of traps, and improve them without re-designing what traps really are.

Some changes we are working on:

- Distracting Shot will now be a "Mocking Blow"-esque taunt (so it will taunt the mob onto the Hunter for 6 sec). This will allow you to "peel" monsters to you (and thus to a trap) a lot easier than it is now.
- Freezing Trap will no longer break on damage 100% of the time. It will still break on damage, but on x amount. So if the mob has a DoT on them, or the mob gets cleaved while in Freezing Trap, it won't just immediately break. Because of this, we're canning Bear Trap (since Freezing Trap will accomplish what Bear Trap was intended for, plus you guys have enough keybinds as it is). Note that we don't intend Freezing Trap to be a stun, so the tuning on how much damage will break it will be important.
- Camouflage - We'll be introducing this new spell at level 80. It will give you limited stealth capabilities. A bonus with it is that you can lay your traps while Camouflaged and it won't break the stealth, allowing you to setup your traps before a pull if desired.
- Trap Mastery - This talent will be a 1-point talent now, we've condensed a lot of the trap talents in the Survival tree. It will do stuff like increase damage of Immolate, root the dispeller of your Freezing Trap in ice, increase the number of snakes from your snake trap, etc.



That's just awesome. Glad bear trap is gone. "lets make ice trap all over again, but it does a teeny bit of damage like roots. And in exchange for that damage...it lasts 10 whole seconds!"

And distracting shot will really help getting past those paladin tanks and NPC groups like in hyjal.

[Zhek]

stealth and blink and a ranged taunt and the ability to trap things with deep wounds on them AND no need to time steady shot. wow

[Aurorawind]

The way Disengage is worded actually makes me think that it's not like blink. I think it will generate a knockback on the hunter to make them "jump" back from where they trigger it. So I think it'll not stop you at cliffs :) We'll see when it goes out (in theory the next push).

And it's not a "true" taunt, once that 6 seconds is up...if I'm not top aggro then it goes right back to who they were beating on before just like mocking blow does (I think). So very nice to pull them through paladins and keep pouring on the threat.

Oh, and the ability to solo Onyxia at level 77...great for gold farming.

[Raptace]

There are people now at 70 that can solo Ony isn't there? I know I've seen a video of a resto druid doing it.

[Aurorawind]

Don't know resto, just the 77 hunter that solo'd Ony.

[Raptace]

Off the subject I know, but here Rora, I think this is the video.
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=76343

[Aurorawind]

I've been doing BM in the beta, due to server issues I'm only level 75 so I can't give a comprehensive impression.

1st thing is threat has been completely reworked so take that into account in your thinking. When I first got there I ran to Dragonblight and tamed a level 69 polar bear cub (he's the cutest little thing). I'll take on elite mobs then and go all out, Beastial Wrath/Beast Within, rapid fire, aspect of the hawk, etc...and I could not pull aggro off him, he didn't even have the level 70 growl yet it's great.

I can do it off my nightsaber, Sable, so I do have to be a bit more careful but it's nowhere NEAR as touchy as live WoW.



I've picked Beastmaster for leveling because it does such a good job making me tank/healer/dps while leveling. The tenacity talents are very impressive IMHO to let your pet become a good off-tank.

Most the of Hunter talents that were good before are still, and the poor ones are also still poor or removed. One interesting note is that Spirit Bond has been made actually worthwhile for once with the bonus to healing your pet. Plus the regen seems to be affected by the +40% healing tenacity pet talents.

Most of what I went with is aimed at boosting my DPS, my pet's survivability, and my pet's DPS in meaningful ways. So I've skipped things like focused fire and ferocious inspiration since they're very insignificant when soloing, and since Kill Command was totally reworked into oblivion. Animal Handler is awaiting a rework since they plan on giving pets their master's +hit% bonus so I didn't take that. I also did not take invigoration because mana regen is not a problem with the new version of aspect of the viper (doing mana regen per shot hit fills me up in 12-15 shots or so).

Kindred spirits looks very attractive to me for soloing (but not endgame), but I'm saving that for later as I want Go for the Throat for more focus regen and to flush out my DPS with Mortal shots. Beast Mastery for the 51 point talent is lacking, I also haven't been wowed by any pets except the spirit beast, but those 4 pet talent points make a difference in my experience (but not enough for top tier talent, it really needs a buff)

Longevity is amazing. DPS wise that, and the Beastial Wrath glyph, bring Beastial Wrath/Beast Within down to a 1 min 10 second cooldown. It knocks the cooldown on growl and all other specials (like swipe) a great deal too...both are 3.5 seconds now. Combine 30% more growls along with the talent to increase growl threat, and there's your aggro holding. Then that lets you do more damage overall, go through things faster, etc. But with all these shorter cooldowns is more focus consumption, so I want both Beastial Discipline and GFTT ASAP.

So my spec for 70 is this for soloing (http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunter=350030015252120501305313010000000000000000 000000000000005302000000000000000000000)

My 71 and 72 point will go into GFTT, 73-75 will flush out MS, then 76-80 into Kindred Spirits.



Pet wise I've been soloing with a bear ( cute little ball of death that he is (http://members.cox.net/voiddancer/pics/wrath.JPG) ) and I couldn't be happier. His swipe is down to 3.5 seconds, so I can tank multiple mobs and not have them come for me on the first mend pet tick. He builds so much threat with it that I can hit hard right after killing a target and swapping to another.

I've focused on talents in tenacity to increase pet survivability and not damage, and I don't think I've been hurt anything by it. My pet is so good back when he was level 71 that he's let me tank 70+ elite and especially the elite giant mobs that do 2000 shadow damage every 2 seconds with no problem.

At level 71 he has 9623 health, 15714 armor/58.77% damage reduction, 71 for all resists, and still has 156.4 white DPS. And being able to survive 1000 shadow damage every second, on top of the 70 elite giant's regular hits, is how good the +40% healing talents and +10% healing from Spirit Bond is.

Tenacity Build (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?petcalc=0szG0rG0b)
I'm not sure where I'm going from there, I'll probably play around with talents to see how useful they all are. As of this moment though I don't really pull aggro off so I don't need taunt, and I don't take alot of damge so I don't need roar of sacrifice or intervene. So I'll probably grab Last Stand, then up resistances a bit.

Ferocity Build (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?petcalc=0Vdc0fc00h)
Pure damage with Avoidance since more instance bosses are fond of AOE stuff. And the damage is just awesome, though I don't have raw numbers on me. Heart of the Phoenix will be very useful in end-game but it's hard to get pets to die currently so I haven't bothered with soloing.

I have not tried out Cunning pets yet.

If you have 1 pet for soloing and another for grouping, I HIGHLY advise not swapping between them. Pet leveling is so annoying now that my bear can't keep up with me. I'm and he just hit 72 (but he's still holding aggro :) ) Just keep your 1 pet then level further ones later.


Some more changes...

Now, the good news.

- Aimed Shot - This shot will now be instant cast, its effect/cooldown will remain unchanged.**
- Scatter shot - This will now be an 11-point Survival talent.
- Readiness - This will now be the 21-point Marksmanship talent.
- Trap Mastery - This will now be the 41-point Survival talent. Granted, not very sexy for a 41-pointer but we'll do some changes there in a future patch (after WOLK ships).
- Surefooted is swapping places with T.N.T. (so Surefooted is now in tier 2)

These changes will be live in an upcoming beta build.

Edit: ** We'll most likely have to reduce Aimed Shots damage if it becomes instant, somewhere in the ballpark of more than arcane shot/multi-shot on a single target but less than what it is now.

So not sure if aimed shot, arcane shot, or serpent sting will be useful later on, I suspect that serpent sting will now that mana efficiency isn't as much of a concern. Kill Shot most certainly is and I'm going to try out a macro that has

/castrandom Kill Shot
/cast Steady Shot

to get Kill Shot off whenever its up and just keep Steady Shot going.

Oh, which brings me to the topic of haste....There's alot of it out there. and BM hunters have to be aware of it or we'll get too much. Steady Shot is up to 2 second cast and doesn't clip auto-shot anymore (WOO!) But once you get it hasted down to 1.5 second cast, so it matches the global cool down, we get very very little benefit from it. Just faster auto shots which no longer get the benefit of Mortal Shots anymore.

Unfortunately the Tier gear has so much haste on it that we're almost haste capped just from those 5 pieces, and alot of other weapons/items have haste too. MM will benefit the most since their white damage does more, but still suffers from that hard wall where returns diminish drastically. SV is more in the same boat as BM I feel though since they have more insta-casts and not stuff that benefits from haste.



I feel things are pretty solidified across the spectrum at this point with the reduction in beta patches. There's still going to be changes, at least we pray there are, but this feels close to final for me.

[Xyriin]

The change to Spirit Bond is rather interesting. I think instead of my standard two points in Improved Mend Pet I'll end up going a 1/1 split between Improved Mend Pet and Spirit Bond. I like the curing ability of Improved Mend Pet enough to probably keep at least one point in there.

I am curious to see how Animal Handler changes. In my opinion the BM tree is too spread out. I really feel that the talent breakdowns in the BM tree really prevent it from being a competative raid PvE tree. The kicker is that all the 2 and 3 point talents late in the tree require missing some nice abilities or skipping core low tier talents in other trees. I'd really like to see something like Longevity wrapped into Kindred Spirits or Beast Mastery to make those talents stronger and the talent choices more viable. I think the biggest flaw with the BM tree is the lack of an obvious late tier PvP talents that while vital for PvP would be easily skipped with a PvE build like a lot of other class trees.

The one potential to Aimed I see is that it could be used as a mobile dps shot like Arcane for movement on boss fights, however with the incoming Aimed damage nerf it probably won't be worth it and this would have limited use anyway. But then again it was designed as a PvP buff...lol

Haste is kind of hit or miss for me. To be honest I think its a stat that we'll simply have to work around. The big bonus compared to live is that while Steady Shot will cap at the GCD, Auto Shot damage will continue to ramp up with more haste. So effectively we'll have a 'soft cap' when Steady Shot hits 1.5, and while the dps gain will be minimized it will still be a gain which we'll have to take pains to calculate compared to other dps stats. But as you mentioned, with as much haste as I've seen on gear I really don't think there will be a viable gearing alternative.

And yes, I'm still very upset that Mortal Shots doesn't affect Auto Shots. Without a reversion yet, it would seem that this is an intended change and not a bug. To be honest this kind of drives the class in a direction I don't like. I personally liked the fact that our standard physical default shot was a large component in our damage. It lessened somewhat in BC, and looks to lessen even more in WotLK. The increase of mana using 'specials' is what drove our class to the edge in mana usage for BC and now it looks like hunter DPS in WotLK will be a game of mana management not gearing properly or shot rotation.

In summary, I really hope the BM tree gets an overhaul before release and Mortal Shots sees better days. If not we're getting a major pet overhaul, a crappy level 80 skill, and not much more for the ranged portion of the hunter class.

[Aurorawind]

Since Ghostcrawler (one of the Devs) said that Hunters are officially regarded as a caster class, I still have a bit of hope that all this haste means they will wind up giving us the GCD limit of casters and be able to get it down to 1 second, that'll go a long way to helping. Otherwise we're going to get left behind in DPS from gear since haste rating takes up so much of an item's bonus budget.

I haven't done the macro testing but Serpent sting is now definitely worth it, it's scaling much better with AP as a Beast Master. At 76 it's doing around twice the damage of a regular steady shot, for a bit more mana, and one less GCD.

I haven't found an elite yet that my bear can't handle, even when he's 1-2 levels below it. I can't get over how awesome the tenacity pets are now. Pet leveling is getting worse. I'm now 76 and my pet is still 73, a few bars from 74.

PVP hunters, more bad news. They've said they can't get the passive and active regen in the new AotV working, so it's going to be active only. If you aren't shooting something then no mana regen from Viper.

[Xyriin]

I honestly don't believe we'll see the GCD change. When we point out a problem they point at either physical dps or casters as an excuse not to do anything about it for the most part. Being a caster or not is determined by which way the wind blows most of the time. The caster GCD reduction was pointed out ages ago as something that would benefit us, but it hasn't even been tested for hunters yet which makes me feel they really intend to keep us locked to the 1.5 sec GCD despite the stupidity and even worse gear itemization in WotLK.

Hmm, Serpent Sting was good initially in BC if you specced for improved stings. Is it doing twice as much damage accounting for the fact you can get multiple Steady Shots off in the time the DoT ticks in entirety? The other catch is that stings don't crit and also won't proc the on crit stuff as a result. How is it going to scale with gear and ammo though? Those things quickly left Serpent Sting as a leveling/entry level ability only in BC. Of course Serpent Sting will see full time use for MM hunters with Chimera synergy so not a total waste of an ability.

Sounds like good news on pets. To be honest I don't have a major complaint yet about pets. Everything seems like we've finally got a solid system to work with after four years that will also scale better. Even logging on to the PTR the other night my pet was only about 1000 health below mine which shocked me greatly. There was a blue post in response to the lag in pet leveling. Hopefully that will be fixed soon. As has been posted in the beta forums..."Hunter, the only class that xp grinds after the level cap."

AotV is looking better than live at least. Personally I'd like to see talents in each tree drastically minimize the need for AotV as it really is a solid dps hit with the 50% penalty. The Chimera synergy with Viper Sting seems very viable. Yes you drop damage from using Viper/Chimera vice Serpent/Chimera but it is a much smaller loss than the 50% AotV loss even if you have to use it more often. Survival can certainly manage as well with multiple regen talents deep in the tree. BM is questionable currently with the way the later tier talents are designed. No matter what way I swing talents I have to skip Cobra Strikes or Invigoration. Imo these talents are synergy talents, yet they are pretty much mutally exclusive for a good dps PvE build. When you get to tier 8 you have to take 5/5 Serpent's Swiftness. Tier 9 requires 1/1 Beast Within and 3/3 Longevity. That leaves only one point between Cobra Strikes (3) and Invigoration (2) unless you completely bypass Kindred Spirits. Missing 20% pet damage would be fairly substantial to say the least and devalue all the other talents that boost pet damage. The MM tree really needs 18 points to do it justice which would only leave two spare points as filler.

[Aurorawind]

I can always hope though :)

Serpent sting seems to have much better scaling with Attack Power now than it did in BC, so it seems that it will hold it's own longer against other shots and may be able to stay slightly ahead.

For right now, 500xp into level 67, the comparison is...

220 mana (appx) for steady shot doing about 800 damage (non crit)
270 mana (appx) for serpent sting doing about 1600 damage over 20 seconds.

With the GCD cost being equal, I see it as definitely worth being put into the rotation at this point. We'll see how it holds up at 80 and with raid gear.

AotV I'm pretty pleased with in PVE as it is now and I don't find it hurts my DPS too much. I'm in it for 10-15 seconds then right back out, I usually save my rapid fire for then to really regen faster and that works well. I think we'll see a move towards people wanting slower weapons since it's based off weapon speed, and that will get a bigger benefit from all the haste we're buried under.

I do disagree with you on some of the talents. I feel the 51 points with longevity, cobra strikes, and invigoration is part of a mandatory framework for a BM raid build and the remaining 20 points are discretionary.

My planned level 80 raid build (http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunter=552000015250120431025313015000000000000000 000000000000005305200000000000000000000)

The 5 points you're looking at in Kindred Spirits I moved over to Improved Tracking. Pet scaling is a nice concept but falls behind incredibly quickly, we've all known that for a while, so as we get Naxx, and above, gear 5% of our damage will be way more than 20% pet damage.

I also skipped Rapid Killing because I don't believe it's worth it anymore. We're going to be against the wall on the hard GCD cap with haste already so the +40% (+48% with glyph) haste bonus will provide a marginal increase, at best, to steady shot and from there just increase out auto shot which doesn't get the crit damage bonus anymore. It has far, far less dps improvement for us in wrath than it does currently because of this.

[Xyriin]

Well, from the raid reports I've seen, pets are doing a rather substantial part of the hunter's damage. Much more than in BC at the moment. While a 20% pet damage buff is certainly not a 20% increase in total damage...20% of a pet doing say 30% of my damage would still be a 6% overall increase in damage. Granted kind of weak for a later talent (and a major reason the talent needs buffed), it is still on par with a lot of the tier 1/2 talents.

The Rapid Killing argument is very good considering the possible haste issues. I do agree that Rapid Fire has lost some of its effectiveness with a lot of haste gear. The reason I still like the Rapid Fire talent for BM is that in any event the Auto Shot damage will benefit and every minute cut off the cooldown means another chance to get use with BW. One thing I found on Brutallus was that timing my trinket/BW/Rapid Fire for all at the same time was almost a 100dps gain average across the entire fight compared to maximizing the cooldown to squeeze in an extra BW/trinket combo at the end. The multiplicative dps gain is surprisingly impressive. With the BW glyph you could go BW/Trinket/RF, BW, BW/Trinket, BW/RF, BW/Trinket, BW, BW/Trinket/RF and essentially keep up the rotation to be using BW with some kind of damage booster most of the time.

What I do know is that I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the target dummy at 80 testing builds out. The soft cap on haste is going to be a royal pita when comparing to other stats. :(

[Aurorawind]

This patch, pet leveling speed got increased appx 60%. Moonclaw made it from 74 to 75 in the time it took me to get 1/4 the way into 76.

Still pissed that the Arctic cubs won't be tamable in live, though.

[Amaryth]

This patch, pet leveling speed got increased appx 60%. Moonclaw made it from 74 to 75 in the time it took me to get 1/4 the way into 76.

Still pissed that the Arctic cubs won't be tamable in live, though.

Yay to increased pet leveling! I was getting very cranky about my pet being a couple levels behind me at all times.

And yeah, the Arctic cub thing makes me sad. I wish they had kept them and just not scaled the size as they leveled, so they'd always be little puffballs of doom.

I never even got a chance to tame one.

I had a wasp for a little while and he wasn't bad, but the non-stop buzzing noise finally got to me. Lately I've been running with a Core Hound who I love (except for the ground stomping noise). I've had similar experiences as you, Rora, as far as threat and tanking ability. I can go all out on a mob a couple levels above me and the puppy just hangs on. It's so much better than BC.

I'm actually anxious to try out a gorilla. I hear they're pretty amazing now.

As far as mana goes, I usually don't bother with AotV when I'm out questing/grinding and I still find that mana isn't really an issue.

Of course, I'm don't raid with my hunter, so everything I've seen is strictly from a soloing stand point. I'm not up to date with all the numbers and calculations etc. so everything is pretty much from a casual point of view.

Hunter things I hate:
1) GCD

2) Noisy pets - Devilsaurs, Rhinos, Core Hounds, Wasps, etc

3) The new pet mechanics when pet is set to "Defensive" - A real PITA

4) No more tamable Arctic cub

5) The shrunk my Core Hound. (and yes, the full-size CH with Bestial Wrath on it was AWESOME!!! :D)

6) Blighthounds are tamable but Beryl Hounds are not - why is one a beast and the other a demon???

7) Crappy hunter gear and/or lack of hunter gear - Srsly, I'm still wearing most of my greens from Outland.

Hunter things I like:
1) Pet leveling (as of yesterday)

2) Pet threat - Haven't used FD in a long time.

3) Cobra Strikes + Frenzy + Lethal Shots + GftT = Win

Misc. things I like (very random :p):
1) The "Bambi" quest! - Let's just say that you probably want to leave his mother alone. :p

2) Baby murlocs

3) Murloc suit

4) Druid changes - especially Mangle

5) Vanity pet/Mount storage

6) Almost daily free respecs. (Except when I forget to pick talents before I go grinding :eek:).

Misc. things I hate:
1) The price of everything in the AH - Seriously why do you need to horde money in the beta???

2) Lag/Server Crashes. Yes, I know it's beta and that's normal. Still gets frustrating when your two kills from leveling and the server dies.

3) General Chat - Actually, this is kind of a love/hate thing. It's fun to watch when you're bored (think Barrens Chat with snow), but a PITA when you're trying to find a group

4) The PvP & Normal server crowd - It's a whole different game when you're not on a RP server. Though I have to admit, some of the names they come up with are hilarious.

Oh, and one more annoying hunter bug that started in yesterday's patch (I assume you've noticed this too, Rora) - My pet has suddenly started attacking things that aren't there. I'll stop for some reason and the pet makes the attack sounds and starts hammering at thin air. Only lasts for a second or two, but it really freaked me out a couple of times thinking I had pulled something accidentally.

Ams

[Aurorawind]

I do run out of mana when soloing, but I'm usually going all out with serpent sting, steady shot, and kill command. Fortunately Viper fills me up on 1 mob or so.

I've come to like the new pet AI when set to defensive. Especially since Moonclaw just grabs aggro it speeds things up for me. I'm a bit torn between gorilla and bear for tanking. Bear Swipe is every 3.5 seconds but only hits 3 mobs, Gorilla stomp is 10 seconds but hits them all. If he could stun mobs by throwing barrels at them, it'd be no contest....

The pet size was awesome, especially the Devilsaur with his 3 stacks of his buff and the Beastial Wrath! Unfortunately you had no prayer of seeing the NPC/mailbox/corpse when a devilsaur, rhino, or core hound was anywhere close. And I can just imagine the melee DPS's reaction of having that thing cover up their view of the mobs....people thought the flapping and screeching pets were annoying, just wait.

Pet noise...yeah I hate it too. The non-stop stomping was the worse. Ghostcrawler piped in on this at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10535469189&pageNo=1&sid=2000#4
We try not to put in too many player options lest we baloon those pages even further, but this may just be the kind of thing that calls for an option. Even before the newer pets, it could be annoying at times. I once trained Dreadmire, the albino crocolisk, but had to let him go after a few weeks of heavy breathing. Most of the flappers get old too. Some of the warlock pet VO is cute the first few times, but then everyone but the warlock wants to disable it. Or maybe the warlock especially wants to disable it. :)

This would be an option for you to hear pets, not something where the pet owner would have to volunteer to mute Stompy.

We're discussing it.

And I've noticed that the DPS mail gear has like NO int on it for quest rewards, what's up with that? Great DPS stats, but no staying power >.< Fortunately Leatherworkers can make great BOE blues that people can wear at 77 for some pretty cheap mats.

The rest of the list I totally agree with you on.

I just noticed my little guy randomly doing things last night, but I play with the sound off in that zone since most of the music was blah (Howling Fjord's music is incredible!) I was showing Mayanna the Wrathgate quest line and cutscene so I had it on last night and noticed it. I thought it may have been something I just missed until now. The sound that FREAKED me out though was in Borean Tundra. The roars from the mammoths sound identical to the sand worms from the Sci-fi channel's version of Dune. And since they had quests with things erupting from holes in the ground already, I thought I was going to get taken out by a sand worm thingy that was the zone's version of the fel reaver.

[Aurorawind]

New Aspect of the Dragonhawk http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11228504361&pageNo=1&sid=2000#0


Aspects are now off the GCD. It's true. There will still be a 1 sec cooldown to switch from one aspect to another. It should feel a lot more like warrior stances or death knight presences.

We're also going to be putting a little bit of dodge (~10%?) onto Monkey. I'll update when we decide on a final number.

Just for consistency, paladin auras will probably get the same treatment.

These changes should go live before Nov 13.

As always, thanks for all of the feedback, and please keep it up now that many of the changes are live.

EDIT: After further discussion, we're not crazy about the "stance dancing" that hunters need to do to switch to Monkey when someone is in on you in melee. As we've said a few times, Disengage and Deterrence should be your go-to abilities at that time. If anything, removing Aspects from the GCD makes it feel like you are supposed to go Monkey every time you're in melee.

Rather than revert the change, we are introducing a new spell!

Instead of getting new ranks of Hawk at level 75 and 80, you now get the new Aspect of the Dragonhawk. This powerful aspect combines all of the effects of Hawk and Monkey. Any talent or glyph that affects either Hawk or Monkey also affects Dragonhawk the same way. The idea is that you retire Hawk and Monkey at level 75 and go to essentially two Aspects: Dragonhawk for combat and Viper for mana regen.

Enjoy.

[Xyriin]

New changes...
Ferocious Inspiration now affects your raid.
Animal Handler now increase your pet's expertise by 5/10. (Old - Increased the chance to hit by 2/4%)

Rake (Cat) focus cost reduced from 25 to 20. Damage lowered. (From 59-83 + 21-27 over 9 sec to 24-34 + 22-28 over 9 sec)
QQ! There goes my OP cat. :(

[Etrigana]

Now youll get something different, right?!

-Etri

[Xyriin]

Well, I'll see how the damage plays out between the pets first. I do have Kurken, just need to level him first.

Hunters, the only class that xp grinds after the level cap; ;)

[Aurorawind]

I'm actually looking at spirit beasts, when they put more in, with their arcane damage bypassing armor. Though cats are still doing well when there's a feral druid in the group amplifying the rake bleed damage.

[Assault]

Arms warriors have the same +bleed damage debuff now, too.

[Xyriin]

Biggest thing I've noticed on the core hounds is horrible AI on the lava breath when it comes to movement...by far worse than wind serpents with LB ever were. Also Rabid doesn't seem to be auto-casting with any of my pets so I've currently got a macro for spamming that and Kill Command whenever the cooldowns are up.