Well it’s finally here. New content, new stuff, and lots of changes. And in case you haven’t been keeping track of every little change on the PTR, let’s try to give you a brief run down of stuff you should know to help prepare yourself when you log on.
- Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built into the hunter’s Auto Shot.
Buy yourself a nice Frostweave Bag or something, stack those bullets and arrows high and love the new bag space. Sure, it’s not no ammo required, but it’s better than nothing. The haste from quivers and ammo pouches is getting removed and added to Auto Shot so there is no reason to keep them around.
- Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30-minute cooldown.
Make sure you hit up the trainer and pick-up this bad boy. It will be quite needed if you use dual specs and require a different pet for your different builds.
- New Talent: Black Arrow: Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and doing periodic shadow damage for 15 seconds. 30-second cooldown. Shares a cooldown with all other traps.
Another ability you make sure you hit up the trainer for if you spec into it. I was still unable to confirm whether or not there were more than one rank for it. I guess we’ll know soon enough.
Focused Aim will also now affect your pet’s chance to hit. If you had to go out of your way to reach that cap, breath a sigh of relief knowing that Focused Aim is now a viable option to covering that gap.
Also note that all Armor Penetration effects are having their effectiveness increased by 25%. Blizzard is trying to make it useful again, so we’ll see how that goes.
Many of the talent changes we’ve covered as the PTR progressed. We’ve talked about the damage reduction to Explosive Shot, we now know the mechanics of Explosive Shot refreshing Immolation Trap is not making it in-game either.
Piercing Shots is now a interesting bleed talent while Concussive Barrage is still crap for PvE. Multi-Shot with 100% Daze in Battlegrounds or something is sort of fun though. Wild Quiver damage is buffed, Chimera Shot mana cost is lowered, but not lowered enough in my opinion.
Lock and Load has been adjusted as well, unfortunately the change is most likely going to cause a lot fewer procs for this talent. It now reads as:
- Lock and Load redesigned: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
We know we cannot keep 100% up-time on Black Arrow or Immolation Trap. While the current Lock and Load provides 10% chance on Serpent Sting, which we can always maintain, the proc chance is down to 6% on abilities that have a 50% up-time or less.
Our pets are looking to have a number of changes too. Wolves are looking good for the MM or Survival fans, with Furious Howl being buffed to the equivalent of a second Blessing of Might (but for the Hunter and pet only). Since wolves still do not have a DPS focus dump they still won’t be the ideal choice for Beast Mastery Hunters. EDIT: Somehow I missed the fact that all pets should have a focus dump now. So rock those wolves if you love ‘em!
There are only a couple new glyphs coming out, and only a smaller portion of those really pertain to PvE content.
- The Chimera Shot glyph reduces its cooldown by 1 second
- The Explosive Shot glyph increases its critical strike chance by 4%
- The Kill Shot glyph reduces its cooldown by 6 seconds
You will have to decide if those fit into your glyph selection. Take into account that it still can only be used on the last 19% of a boss encounter. I think most of my glyphs are going to be my existing choices, such as Bestial Wrath, Steady Shot, etc, depending on the spec.
Of course Ulduar is out, which means new content. My guild is running contests for those who submit the best videos of our first boss kills. Combine that with showing everyone who reads this the new content as we progress and you can bet I have my finger on the record button.
The results of our guild meeting showed that there wasn’t enough people at this point to raid regularly on Sundays. And that’s a big sigh of relief for me.
One of our guild rules is accepting the fact that sometimes you might be sat out. It could be due to someone needing loot from a particular boss, it could be that while learning an encounter in Ulduar a certain raid composition might help with the progress. And that’s great. That’s what we are here to do. But as I stated, a big reason for joining RGATG was its raid schedule. Finding a guild that raided M-Th was great. Obviously it’s an aspect any person looking to raid has to consider.
I don’t want to sound like this is a “all about my needs” rant. But obviously if you are looking to raid and the guild changes when you raid to times you cannot, it defeats the purpose. But I know I am looking forward to burning flasks, repair money, and ammo to start tackling Ulduar tomorrow. Errr, today. I really should be asleep. :)
If you think there is some pertinent information for Hunters to know, post it here. And as always, any other comments, thoughts, etc are all welcome.
Regarding wolves, I thought that when they added in the talent trees, they equalized Claw, Bite, and Smack so that they were all equal in the focus dump area. From Petopia on Bite
Otherwise, I’m excited that the patch is finally here and I can hopefully keep up with the SV hunters on DPS now. :D Good luck in Ulduar, I’m probably going to miss out on the first few weeks thanks to changes in my work schedule. Sigh.
Asara’s last blog post..Quickie post day!
I seem to remember the BA confusion on the test realm, I want to say 2 or 3 PTR cycles ago they added in all the ranks(6 I believe it was)
Also, some of the Cunning pets could become more useful with feeding frenzy on burn fights, and roar of recovery for fights that have a mana burn.
I’ve always played SV and i think it’ll stay that way. But now when the patch hit i’m not too sure how to spec or how my new rotation will look like. I haven’t been playing on the ptr this time around.
I think my biggest question is, will Black Arrow replace Serpent Sting all together in our rotations or will we use Black Arrow and Serpent Sting combined with Noxious Stings for the +3% damage on the target?
Have been playing around a little with specs and come up with something like this:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=cbZ0eVoZe00i0cIheuNhsk
I’ll place the points in Noxious Stings elsewhere if Serpent Sting replaced by Black Arrow.
“Mana Regeneration: The amount of mana regeneration derived from intellect and spirit has been reduced by 40%; however, talents that allow for mana regeneration while in combat have been increased. As a result, in-combat regeneration for classes with those talents will stay the same, while out-of-combat regeneration will be lower.”
How does this 40% reduction from intellect effect our mana regen?
Anyone switching to Viper sooner than before?
Or not a huge deal to hunters.
@ Asara
You’re completely correct. EVERY PET has a focus dump, regardless of whether it’s smack, bite, or claw. They’re all teh same.
As a result, Wolves are a serious option for BM too. The damage increase should be really evident in the BM tree.
Not only that, but it gives me the idea to name my blog “Big Bad Wolf”. =D
Klinderas’s last blog post..Creature Feature: Wolf MK. II
So do we have any idea which spec/talent tree is going to be the best PvE spec/tree? Or is that still up in the air?
Wolves are the 2nd best pet for BM, behind a Devilsaur. Since Devilsaurs have many problems with their size, wolves are pretty much the best for all specs.
I give a rundown of the DPS of every Hunter Pet at the bottom of this page:
http://thehuntersrefuge.blogspot.com/2009/04/beast-mastery-hunter-pve.html
Shaedon’s last blog post..Hunter PvE 3.1
There are quite a few changes to pet talents as well so BM hunters will likely need to try out a few configurations and hit the training dummies to dial in that DPS.
No argent tourney for me tonight, just lots of pew pew in IF.
Work first, then play :(
Wow, not sure how I missed the Wolf focus dump change. Thanks for the heads up. Fixing it now. :)
Kill Shot now has a global cooldown, so you’ll have to take it out of any macros that had it combined with other skills.
They GCD’d Kill Shot? Hrm. That might make the Glyph a little more appealing then.
@Drotora
I would think you’d have known… that since 3.0 came out, every pet has a focus dump.
;)
Sad pandas. Grats on Flame Leviathan, by the way!
Klinderas’s last blog post..Wrath Of Windpaw II: The Windpaw Strikes Again!
One day into 3.1 live and not a single hunter blog mentioned the new spirit beast. Did Gondria not make it through the PTR?
I was looking up Drotara on the wow armory found a huge error I posted on my blog lol.
Abruzzi’s last blog post..I want this Talent Spec..
It isn’t an bug ;) You can pay 1K gold and get more talent points so you can change your spec anywhere without paying. Like you saw it sats Active: and thats the spec he gots right now ;)
@Axel 56/16/53 is a spec? Did you see that?
Abruzzi’s last blog post..I want this Talent Spec..
@Lis: Currently, Serpent Sting will not replace Black Arrow, so you will need to keep SS up for Noxious Stings and Glyph of Steady Shot. Black Arrow is there for LnL procs.
As for rotation and spec, It’s kinda hard to say at this point. Your spec seems decent. The only differences from mine is 3/3 trap mastery instead of Hawk Eye and 3/3 HuntP. I also took Aimed Shot and don’t have any points in Master Tactician… which I’m still debating. Rotation is most likely still based on Shot Priority, so it’s probably ES>AimS or MS>Steady and renewing Serpent and Black as needed.
I am in major need of a new Macro for your build Dro?
So is Armor pen. useful to hunters now, seeing how almost every other lewt has Armor pen on it. and how would it stack on the priority list with AGi, Hit, Crit…. etc.
Gankfiend
blackhand server