This isn’t a complete list, but just some of the main things that caught my eye. The PTR continues to go through lots of changes. Documenting every single thing that gets changed would take more orcpower than I have lying around. But I do want to touch on some of the highlights that have caught my eye.
Glyphs
Glyph of Explosive Shot: For those still looking to be Survival come 3.1, we can take even more steps to make sure that Explosive Shot has a ridiculously high critical strike chance.
Glyph of Mend Pet: No longer, now known as the Glyph of Mending which increases the healing of your Mend Pet ability by 40%. That’s a solid change in my opinion, especially since pets have talents to regain happiness.
Glyph of Kill Shot: I think this is a very solid glyph for both PvE and PvP. A 6 second reduction on Kill Shot, bringing its cooldown to 9 seconds. I don’t think it will fit into my PvE glyph (depending on the spec I choose) choices but it’s not bad by any means.
Glyph of Raptor Strike: Blizzard’s way of making Hunters want to use Raptor Strike again? It’s certainly not a bad glyph for PvP by any means. Since you only get to use Raptor Strike in melee range, it’s safe to assume that if you are using it, you certainly don’t want to be in melee range. Save your healers and take 20% less damage.
Combined with talents like Survival Instincts and the damage reduction adds up.
Mechanic Changes
Rilgon found a great post on Elitist Jerks which he linked to on Twitter. You can find it right here. Here’s the basic premise behind it: Pet hit is being affected by Focused Aim. If that’s not exciting I dunno what is. You don’t have to avoid it when being concerned about pet hit. If this changes we will hear about it of course.
We are also seeing a reduction in the mana hog known as Chimera Shot with its cost being lower to 12% base mana, down from 16%.
One nice change to look at for Survival is the refreshing effect that Explosive Shot should have on your Immolation Trap. Similar to Chimera Shot refreshing your Serpent Sting, in most fights a single Immolation Trap should last you the entire duration of a fight, which combine nicely with Glyph of Immolation Trap.
There was also a also a rumor that I have not confirmed that the 30 second cooldown on Lock and Load has been removed. So with Immolation Trap and Black Arrow ticking all the time hopefully we will see Lock and Load proccing a bit more.
I think we are getting down to the last few weeks of the PTR being up before this goes live. My guess is 3 more weeks and the patch will hit. With Blue asking the focus to be moved to the Argent Tournament it makes me think that they are feeling confident in their current raid situation.
Thoughts, comments, opinion,s or interesting things I might have missed, be sure to share them in the comments.
the immolation trap refreshing thing is a dead end, currently not even on the newest patchnotes @blizz forum if i remember correctly. it got never into one of the ptr builds.
for glyphs i think that explosiv steady serpent or killshot will make it…i would really like to take kill shot but i really hate 15seconds sting :D
the new argent tournemant is really fun if blizzard makes some tweaks to the champions and stuff to make it doable as solo player – i hate to find groups for stuff like that.
i really like the things they did to mm and i cant wait to test it out with my guild on live to see how that works out. maybe i can turn out to be some robin hood in 3.1
@Whylde I know they were suppose to be fixing Piercing Shots too, so that weaker bleeds wouldn’t over-write the ones from your monster Chimera Shot crits. Hopefully the mana adjustment will be enough for MM.
erm they fixed piercing shots in the latest push as i heard so that it works just like deep wounds. dont know if that is true as i wasn’t on ptr for the last days.
Regarding the glyph of mend pet – this what I thought was happening:
1. Glyph of Mend Pet (minor)
The glyph that is on live servers now (increases happiness). I don’t think there will be any changes to it even when 3.1 patch hits.
2. Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey (major)
They tried nerfing it with the cooldown rule but they still don’t like it, so they decided to replace it and put Glyph of Mend Pet (major) in its place, which increases healing by 40%. However, the this shares the same name as the minor glyph, so now they are changing the name to Glyph of Mending (major) to provide less confusion.
So in effect, the minor glyph affecting happiness should still be in live, although that is only my interpretation of the change logs and I might be wrong.
I’m liking the new glyphs, it’ll make choosing glyphs for different specs more interesting. Right now you can slap on the Steady Shot, Serpent Sting and Hunter’s Mark/Viper glyphs and spec anything you want.
That pet hit change is also making BM look more and more viable for PvE. The recent 3.0.8 has helped push them up a bit, and if these changes go live it looks like we’ll see more variety between raiding hunters. I bet Pike and BRK are happy about that!
Tora’s last blog post..Several things…
On the glyph vendor on the PTR right now there are two different glyphs for mend pet; the original minor glyph and the new major “Glyph of Mending”.
The Glyph of Immolation Trap reduces the duration of the effect to 6s, but Explosive Shot has 6s of CD… Do you think that is possible to refresh the effect? I have my doubts.
(I need more practice with my english… definitely)
Well, if it’s only refreshed on the initial shot, that’s a tight synergy. But, if it’s refreshed per TICK of ExS, then that gives you a couple extra seconds to play with.
I’ve not tested this, just theoreticalirizeratiing.
Remua’s last blog post..I’m not so good at this
The glyph of Immo Trap says the duration is reduced by 6 seconds, not to 6 seconds, so the dot would still have a 9 second duration.
That’s true. Sorry I read it wrong. :/
About Explosive shot refreshing Imolation trap, is still in the patch notes when i log into the PTR this morning but it seems is not active. Are they going to implement this?
@Exkalibur I am hoping they do. Right now fewer people are looking forward to Survival in 3.1 compared to MM or BM. Something like that would go a long way in my opinion in generating interest in Survival again.
Drotara’s last blog post..Highlights from the PTR 3.1
There’s rumors that it’s issues with the technology to renew the ITrap DoT. I don’t buy it (because that’s how ChS works).
And yeah, Piercing Shots works perfectly. Rapid Recuperation is whacked, though.
And no, the ChS reduction wasn’t enough for mana when solo, although it might in a raid setting.
Rilgon Arcsinh’s last blog post..Slow news week…
” Right now fewer people are looking forward to Survival in 3.1 compared to MM or BM. ” (Quote from Drotara)
I understand why some would be looking forward to MM, but why would someone be looking forward to the changes they made to BM? I am a Beast Master-at-heart, that rolled Survival to keep up in my raids. I haven’t seen anything on any boards that would make me believe that BM can keep up with Survival in 3.1 (or even come close.)
Perhaps I’m missing something? Please let me know.
@Bernhard The pet scaling talent is a HUGE buff to BM Hunters. The amount of DPS your pet gains through it is monster. :) More than enough to make up for any other buffs the other trees got.
Drotara’s last blog post..Highlights from the PTR 3.1
Dro been waiting for that comment all day when is your post about it coming out lol.
I still like a complicated rotation it takes the mundane out of it. BM seems like now gonna have pet agro issues. Jumping in early, heroics (still need rep) can’t wait for more info.
Will Focused Aim be a mandatory talent for Beast Masters now ? Whats your opinion about it, Drotara?
@Trystan It’s not mandatory, it just allows Focused Aim to be a a viable option when gearing up to get your and your pet to the hit cap. The problem with it before was that since it didn’t affect our pets, in order to be most effective we needed lots of raw hit rating to have it carry over to our pet.
Now you can use Focused Aim as 3% of your needed hit rating in place of hit on gear and not be worried that it doesn’t count towards your pet.
Drotara’s last blog post..Highlights from the PTR 3.1
@Drotara – Thanks for the head’s up. Just to make sure – we are talking about the Focused Aim scaling correct?
I’m going to duel Survival / BM when 3.1 hits. I have built gear through 25man to test both specs equally. So, I’ll post the early results here.
I miss my Spirit Beast…
@Bernhard Yeah, we are talking about Focused Aim applying to our pets too. So it rocks.
Regarding the BM pet ap scaling…it got the hell nerfed out of it, BM is way below survival and MM currently on ptr, and those two seem about even.
About the immolation trap refreshing (if it ever makes it into the game)…the interesting thing I’d like to see is that since black arrow and traps share a cooldown, and both can proc LnL, will a refreshing of immolation also refresh the cooldown on black arrow/traps (I suspect so).