Hunter Patch Notes and Class Perks

[Kattii 40]

 

 

 

Hunter Patch Notes

 

Blizzard has stated that hunters lacked a strong distinction between the three specs and that we suffer from the biggest button bloat. These changes are meant to address those issues. 

 

Marksman's main focus dump will now be Aimed Shot.

 

Serpent Sting will now be available to SV hunters only.

 

Aspect of the Hawk will be removed. All other aspects will be on the global cd and a toggle.  

 

• Aimed Shot now deals 20% more damage and no longer interrupts Auto Attacks.
• Dismiss Pet now ignores line of sight.
• Hunter Pets now have a 1 second global cooldown.
• Black Arrow’s periodic effect now has a chance each time it deals damage to cause the next 2 Explosive Shots to cost no Focus and not trigger a cooldown. This effect is guaranteed to activate at least once.
• Explosive Trap now places a periodic-damage effect on each target within the radius of the explosion, rather than a persistent effect on the ground

• Arcane Shot is no longer available to Marksmanship Hunters.
  • Thrill of the Hunt now also reduces the cost of Aimed Shot when active, to preserve its value to Marksmanship Hunters.
  • Aspect of the Hawk has been removed.
    • Aspect of the Iron Hawk has been renamed to Iron Hawk, and now passively provides 10% damage reduction.
  • Cower has been removed as a pet ability.
  • Distracting Shot has been removed.
  • Hunter’s Mark has been removed.
  • Kill Shot is no longer available to Survival Hunters.
  • Lock and Load has been removed.
  • Black Arrow now naturally has a chance to cause the Lock and Load effect.
    • Stampede is now a level-75 talent, replacing Lynx Rush.
  • Lynx Rush has been removed.
  • Rabid has been removed as a pet ability.
  • Rapid Fire has been removed.
  • Rapid Recuperation has been removed.
  • Serpent Sting and Improved Serpent Sting have been removed.
    • Serpent Spread has been renamed Serpent Sting, and remains a passive for Survival Hunters. It causes Multi-Shot and Arcane Shot to also apply the Serpent Sting poison, which does instant and periodic damage.
  • Widow Venom has been removed.
  • Revive Pet and Mend Pet now share one button, which toggles based on whether you have a live pet

 

Warlords of Draenor Class Perks
Warlords of Draenor doesn't really add more abilities to the game but will introduce perks for your existing abilities! Each level, from level 91 to 99, you get a random perk (that you don’t already know). By 99, you learn them all, but different players will get them in a different order.

 

 

 

• All
  • Enhanced Camouflage - You heal 5% of your maximum health every 1 sec while Camouflage is active.
• Beast Mastery
  • Improved Focus Fire - Focus Fire now also grants 2% increase to attack power per Frenzy stack consumed.
  • Improved Kill Command - Increases damage done by Kill Command by 20%.
  • Empowered Pets - Increases all damage done by your combat pets by 20%.
  • Improved Beast Cleave - Your pet's attacks strike nearby enemy targets for an additional 25% of damage done while Beast Cleave is active.
  • Enhanced Basic Attacks - Your pet's basic attacks have a 20% chance to reset the basic attack cooldown and make the next basic attack free.
  • Enhanced Kill Shot - Kill Shot can now be used on targets with 35% or less health.
  • Improved Arcane Shot - Increases damage done by Arcane Shot by 20%.
  • Improved Cobra Shot - Increases damage done by Kill Command by 20%.
• Marksmanship
  • Enhanced Kill Shot - Kill Shot can now be used on targets with 35% or less health.
  • Enhanced Chimera Shot - Reduces the Focus cost of Chimera Shot by 10.
  • Enhanced Aimed Shot - Your Aimed Shot critical strikes grant you 20 Focus.
  • Improved Focus - Increases your maximum Focus by 20.
  • Improved Aimed Shot - Increases damage done by Aimed Shot by 20%.
  • Improved Steady Shot - Increases damage done by Steady Shot by 20%.
  • Enhanced Shots - Add an additonal 5 yards range to all your attacks with a baseline 40 yard range.
  • Enhanced Piercing Shots - Critical strikes with Multi-Shot now also trigger your Piercing Shots ability.
• Survival
  • Improved Arcane Shot - Increases damage done by Arcane Shot by 20%.
  • Improved Cobra Shot - Increases damage done by Kill Command by 20%.
  • Empowered Explosive Shot - Increases the duration of Explosive Shot by 1 sec.
  • Improved Black Arrow - Increases damage done by Black Arrow by 20%.
  • Enhanced Traps - Reduces the cooldown on all your traps by 50%.
  • Enhanced Entrapment - The root effect from your Entrapment requires 100% additional damage to break from taking damage.
  • Improved Camouflage - Camouflage no longer breaks from dealing or taking damage.
  • Improved Viper Venom - Your Viper Venom restores an additional 3 Focus.

Things to note, WOD is still in Alpha so things are subject to change.

 

I'm assuming Survival's and Beast Mastery's Improved Cobra Shot is a mistype and should read "Improved Cobra Shot - Increases damage done by Cobra Shot by 20%"

[Kattii 40]

My thoughts: 

 

There is a lot of change to get used to! Although nothing is set it stone yet. 

 

It is nice to see them address the button bloat issue. But have they gone too far? They are removing Rapid Fire and making Stampede a talent. There goes our dps cds. 

 

Why is kill shot being removed from SV? If anything it should be removed from MM seeing as how they get a buff at the start of the fight. 

 

MM will now have it's focus increased by 20, a good improvement to help balance out the rotation of the spec. 

[Kattii 40]

These pet abilities have been removed as well: 

Basilisk: Petrifying Gaze; Bat: Sonic Blast; Bird of Prey: Snatch; Crab: Pin; Crane: Lullaby; Crocolisk: Ankle Crack; Dog: Lock Jaw; Gorilla: Pummel; Monkey: Bad Manners; Moth: Serenity Dust; Nether Ray: Nether Shock; Porcupine: Paralyzing Quill; Rhino: Horn Toss; Scorpid: Clench; Shale Spider: Web Wrap; Silithid: Venom Web Spray; Spider: Web; and Wasp: Sting have been removed as pet abilities.

• Core Hound: Lava Breath; Fox: Tailspin; Goat: Trample; Sporebat: Spore Cloud
• Bear: Demoralizing Roar; Carrion Bird: Demoralizing Screech
• Tallstrider: Dust Cloud, Raptor: Tear Armor
• Cackling Howl; Serpent: Serpent's Swiftness

 

Pvp changes: 

• Entrapment’s Root effect now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Root effects.
• Scatter Shot has been removed.
• Silencing Shot has been removed.
• Traps and trap launchers no longer have an arming time and can instantly trigger.
• Traps can no longer be disarmed.
• Scare Beast now has a 6 sec duration in PvP (down from 8 sec).

[Brya 3]

They want surv to be the dot based/utility spec, Marks the frontloaded cannon, and Bm the balanced pet spec. They've stripped our cooldowns but havent completely finished everything. They said they want each has to have 1 primary dps cooldown so they may be having us decide it on the lvl 75 tree what this does for blink strike I have no idea. The most insane thing I see is the fact surv basically is getting their own second wind by combining the camo perks. 

 

Also multishot finally having piercing shots!

[Brya 3]

 

These pet abilities have been removed as well: 

Basilisk: Petrifying Gaze; Bat: Sonic Blast; Bird of Prey: Snatch; Crab: Pin; Crane: Lullaby; Crocolisk: Ankle Crack; Dog: Lock Jaw; Gorilla: Pummel; Monkey: Bad Manners; Moth: Serenity Dust; Nether Ray: Nether Shock; Porcupine: Paralyzing Quill; Rhino: Horn Toss; Scorpid: Clench; Shale Spider: Web Wrap; Silithid: Venom Web Spray; Spider: Web; and Wasp: Sting have been removed as pet abilities.

• Core Hound: Lava Breath; Fox: Tailspin; Goat: Trample; Sporebat: Spore Cloud
• Bear: Demoralizing Roar; Carrion Bird: Demoralizing Screech
• Tallstrider: Dust Cloud, Raptor: Tear Armor
• Cackling Howl; Serpent: Serpent's Swiftness

 

Pvp changes: 

• Entrapment’s Root effect now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Root effects.
• Scatter Shot has been removed.
• Silencing Shot has been removed.
• Traps and trap launchers no longer have an arming time and can instantly trigger.
• Traps can no longer be disarmed.
• Scare Beast now has a 6 sec duration in PvP (down from 8 sec).

 

They wanted pets to be cosmetic, here's hoping they spread the buffs out A LOT more. 

[Kattii 40]

"Blizzard has stated that hunters lacked a strong distinction between the three specs and that we suffer from the biggest button bloat. These changes are meant to address those issues. "

 

I get that, but stripping us half of our abilities to only give us back a dps cd seems a bit silly. Like when you punish a child for bad behavior by telling them they can't watch tv....only to change your mind and allow them to watch an hour of tv. That's even if they still go through with the new cds. 

 

Pets have to be cosmetic now that we can sacrifice them to the hunter gods like warlocks lol

[Orthios 271]

Holy crap this is........AWESOME!!!  Finally some spec distinction!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Black Arrow’s periodic effect now has a chance each time it deals damage to cause the next 2 Explosive Shots to cost no Focus and not trigger a cooldown. This effect is guaranteed to activate at least once.
• • Lock and Load has been removed.

 

Also, is this not what lock and load already is?

 

This makes me excited to play MM during WoD.  I do wish that they didn't remove Rapid Fire, as it is currently effected by the t16 2-piece, so I don't see Blizz removing it entirely.  

[Kattii 40]

Holy crap this is........AWESOME!!!  Finally some spec distinction!!!!!

 

Also, is this not what lock and load already is?

 

This makes me excited to play MM during WoD.  I do wish that they didn't remove Rapid Fire, as it is currently effected by the t16 2-piece, so I don't see Blizz removing it entirely.  

It's basically similar to what the current 4pc of T16 is already doing. You just dont get to spam Explosive shot till your fingers bleed XD

[Kattii 40]

More changes!

 

Primary Character Stats and Attack Power
The "primary" stats, Agility, Strength, and Intellect, are foundations of a character's power. But they have not been created equally, making it difficult to properly balance them against secondary stats. The leading reason for this is that Agility and Intellect also provide Critical chance, in addition to Attack Power or Spell Power, whereas Strength does not. In order to achieve better balance, we've removed the Critical chance increase from Agility and Intellect. Still, it felt like Agility-based characters should critically strike more often, so we've raised those classes' baseline Critical Strike chance to compensate.
 

• Agility no longer provides an increased chance to critically strike with melee and ranged attacks or abilities.
• Intellect no longer provides an increased chance to critically strike with spells.
• The base chance to critically strike is now 5% for all classes. There are no longer different chances to critically strike with melee, ranged, and spells.
• There is a new passive, named Critical Strikes, which increases chance to critically strike by 10%.
  • It is learned by all Rogues, all Hunters, Feral and Guardian Druids, Brewmaster and Windwalker Monks, and Enhancement Shamans.

We've consolidated the way that Attack Power and Spell Power function and scale, to make those values clearer and correct some scaling issues regarding caster weapons relative to physical weapons.
 

• Each point of Agility or Strength now grants 1 Attack Power (down from 2). All other sources of Attack Power now grant half as much as before.
• Weapon Damage values on all weapons have been reduced by 20%.
• Attack Power now increases Weapon Damage at a rate of 1 DPS per 3.5 Attack Power (up from 1 DPS per 14 Attack Power).
• Attack Power, Spell Power, or Weapon Damage now affect the entire healing or damage throughput of player spells.

[Brya 3]

I get that, but stripping us half of our abilities to only give us back a dps cd seems a bit silly. Like when you punish a child for bad behavior by telling them they can't watch tv....only to change your mind and allow them to watch an hour of tv. That's even if they still go through with the new cds. 

 

Pets have to be cosmetic now that we can sacrifice them to the hunter gods like warlocks lol

 

The changes they've made makes the specs completely unique now in their rotations:

 

-Beast mastery was changed the least, only removing serpent sting, Throw in the focus fire Dmg perk makes the spec feel like a Synergy spec more than ever.

 

-The change to Marksmanship focusing on aimed shot makes 80% of its abilties being casts will make it feel like no matter what you're taking your time to get a powerful shot off. Throw in the extra 20 focus total to alleviate the absurdly tight rotation to not be focus starved and you have a spec that can feel a bit slower and hit like a truck. Also finally making multishot have piercing shots will lets marks have a solid aoe that scales better with gear.

 

- Survival is basically dots and instant cast abilities, serpent sting is applied by arcane shot, and black arrow still does its thing. The removal of Kill shot sucks but it does help diversify the spec a bit and also theyll probably make explosive hit harder to compensate.

 

Compared to before where we could just replace each spec specific ability with another, The specs feel very different with these changes.

 

My big concern comes with rapid fire being removed is that the Readiness stat(cd reduction) is basically going to be worthless to us the way the class is designed now. So theyll need to give us something else in some way.

 

 

Also In before its a 5% damage loss to do lone wolf. 

[Kattii 40]

I stated in the very first sentence of the very first post that their goal was to make each spec feel differently and to bring down the button bloat. 

 

I wasn't speaking strictly about the dps rotation. A lot of our utility feels lost as well. If I am coming off negative I don't mean to be. It's just that there are a lot of changes being made. It will be interesting to see how things shape up in the Beta and when it hits live. 

 

My big concern comes with rapid fire being removed is that the Readiness stat(cd reduction) is basically going to be worthless to us the way the class is designed now. So theyll need to give us something else in some way.

 

 

Also In before its a 5% damage loss to do lone wolf. 

I think that will largely be determined on which abilities it affects for Hunters.

 

 

Also In before its a 5% damage loss to do lone wolf. 

Where is that number coming from? Imo taking Lone Wolf will be based off personal preference and the mechanics of a fight. They want talents to be a choice not a requirement and they've already had balancing practice with the warlocks. For instance, atm it would be really useful for running the belts on Siegecrafter. Pets get bugged all the time between the pipe and the belt. So much so that both myself and the hunter I run with had to switch from BM to SV last week even though we usually run it as BM. 

[Brya 3]

 

I think that will largely be determined on which abilities it affects for Hunters.

 

 

Where is that number coming from? Imo taking Lone Wolf will be based off personal preference and the mechanics of a fight. They want talents to be a choice not a requirement and they've already had balancing practice with the warlocks. For instance, atm it would be really useful for running the belts on Siegecrafter. Pets get bugged all the time between the pipe and the belt. So much so that both myself and the hunter I run with had to switch from BM to SV last week even though we usually run it as BM. 

 

First point: How many abilities do we have that affect our dps have a cooldown and wont make a complete mess of rotations? Stampede is a talent now, beastial wrath and black arrow? They need to add something more if they want readiness to be an actual stat we would use. They can't add the 90's at the cooldowns they're currently at and even if the utility is on there it wouldnt be worth it.

 

Second point: Look into what happened with Demonic sacrifice, there's a reason it was nerfed to the point where the other talents were worth more. They will not risk that mistake again, it'll be sub par compared to the flame arrows and snipe. It'll end up being an option but won't win out same as blink strikes, Hunters are a pet class and optimal dps will require using them. Also not even gonna touch the pet issues on the assembly line, you should know better.

 

Either way we'll see, beta will be soon enough and the math will roll in quickly.

[Kattii 40]

Crows too as well. Most likely we will have one or two readiness breakpoints.

I do hope Snipe gets reworked. I want to be a mobile killing machine, not a turret stuck in one spot for a 3 second cast.

And how would you know of pet problems on siege? You were exempt from that duty because you were the raid leader. Lol a nice perk for a fight that used to make me want to pull my hair out.

[Brya 3]

Being the raid leader doesn't exempt anything, if anything it would make me know better than anyone. I was the first of us to learn to disengage and figured out how to handle the pet issues on normal, whereas I remember someone saying they couldn't do it. 

[Kattii 40]

I was referring to our first few attempts on heroic.

Want and can't are two different things. Like how I wanted to stay down on Galakras instead of going into the towers, but I get to do that now lol.

[Aliensanta 1]

I think the Black Arrow tooltip and the "removal" of Lock N Load really means that Frost traps will no longer activate LnL procs but the Black Arrow functions the same as it has before.  Which is good because I'm already pissed at another hunter for dropping frost traps during Garrosh MCs.  Apparently you can be snared even after the MC wears off.  Also what I would like to see is how the "perma camo" perk and the heal while under camo perk will interact.  Out of combat I'll no longer need first aid, in combat a 5% heal every 1 seconds would be broken.

[Orthios 271]

I think the Black Arrow tooltip and the "removal" of Lock N Load really means that Frost traps will no longer activate LnL procs but the Black Arrow functions the same as it has before.  Which is good because I'm already pissed at another hunter for dropping frost traps during Garrosh MCs.  Apparently you can be snared even after the MC wears off.  Also what I would like to see is how the "perma camo" perk and the heal while under camo perk will interact.  Out of combat I'll no longer need first aid, in combat a 5% heal every 1 seconds would be broken.

The 5% per sec heal was changed to 3%, but still, with enough readiness it will be a very potent self-healing cooldown.  Also, the way I read it is that LnL is now baseline in BA.

[Brya 3]

For survival even a 3% will be still insane, with how the surv perk works you get six seconds to regen your health while taking 10% less spell dmg(with glyph) aswell as continuing to attack. It will be interesting to see how it works in pvp though.

[Fouton 266]

I was referring to our first few attempts on heroic.

Want and can't are two different things. Like how I wanted to stay down on Galakras instead of going into the towers, but I get to do that now lol.

 

I like the idea of hunters staying down. Their pets always mess up taking adds to the top =\

[Brya 3]

Seeing as adds bug out without pets it still doesnt solve that problem fouton!

[Fouton 266]

I've never had them bug out while not in Natural Order. I think its just people unable to control themselves

[Brya 3]

Control ourselves? pfft never!

[Aliensanta 1]

I've been doing towers on Galakras for a while and I've never had pets bug the adds.  Though I don't start attacking the adds until we reach the top in case things get out of hand.

 

On a side note I want to see how they handle entering combat with a 60 sec camo buff with the two perks regarding camo.

[Brya 3]

Celestalon tweeted that the second you enter combat camo will drop to its usual in combat 6 seconds. This should balance it pretty well for pvp aswell as make sure you dont need to be survival for everything.

[Aliensanta 1]

Cool, I'm looking forward to the changes then.  No more bandaids!