BC Hunter Talents Released

[oldmandennis]

This stuff looks like fun. I'm very interested to see the pet stuff. They have shot down the stuff that leaked earlier, which was way overpowered.

Heck I could see both of those already having a use in Razorgore phase 1 if you use a kiting strat. Lego spawns, hunter sends it to his kiting warrior. Lego gets on priest, paladin that is kiting as well does righteous defense to get the mobs on him.

2 min cooldown on misdirection.

[Kevin]

This stuff looks like fun. I'm very interested to see the pet stuff. They have shot down the stuff that leaked earlier, which was way overpowered.
2 min cooldown on misdirection.

So? Phase one is at least 3.5 minutes long, and you'll have more than one hunter and you won't need it for Vael so who cares if it's in cooldown. Sure you only get to snag one or two per hunter to add them to a kiter, but if that means you save one or two priests/druids/shaman/mages/whoever it helps. Of course since it's an L70 spell it means we won't see the fun stuff I was hoping for until the very end game instances. They can't design for it in the L60-69 stuff, which bums me out a bit. And of course it means that it will have no use at all on Razorgore since L70's will pwn that place if they ever go in there.

But the point still stands. I can alreadys see encounters that were designed without it in mind that it already has other uses on, besides the obvious stuff for pulling, getting that annoying person in the raid who doesn't listen to directions killed to prove a point, and to make sure if you want your pet to keep aggro that it keeps aggro. Heck it helps on broodlord type encounters as it will allow you to raise the aggro ceiling his knockbacks cause be now the warrior can generate more aggro than he could alone. Won't help raise it much, but it does allow for more aggro generation by the tanks. Not that you can't get around that in other ways, but it's yet another use.

But yeah you don't listen to the raid leader and suddenly you have lots of extra aggro and potentially a repair bill. :) (assuming of course that the rest of the raid can then move on without you and that you aren't a rogue or hunter). :)

[Luminon]

/delurks
I see noone's posted the mechanics changes yet.

Below is a copy of a forum post made by game designer Kalgan regarding Hunter mechanics in the Burning Crusade:
1. Attack Power and Crit related changes:
Hunters now get 1 AP per Agility rather than 2. This change helps us provide more interesting stat distributions on hunter items. Previously, Hunters valued Agi significantly above any other stat, such that it was extremely difficult for us to create variety among Hunter items. For example, before this change, we could have spent 1 stat point on an item to give you either 2 AP or 1 Agi (which gave 2 AP along with a small bonus to crit and a small bonus to dodge... clearly the better choice). However, several changes have been made along with this change in order to offset the AP loss.
Hunters now get significantly more crit per point of Agility than before (about 33agi/crit at level 60).
Hunters now get more dodge per point of Agility than before (about 20agi/dodge at lvl 60).
Ranged weapons have had their damage values significantly increased (and consequently the weapon's dps)... this also helps make weapon upgrades feel more meaningful for Hunters than it did previously (along with the other changes, this change is retroactive).
Most Hunter equipment has been updated to have a better distribution between +Attack Power bonuses and Agility.

2. Traps are now on a 30 sec cooldown, but can be used in combat (you no longer need to feign/trap).

3. When feign death is resisted, you are still reduced to 0 threat for any targets that did not resist feign death (although if any creature resists the feign, you won't be taken completely out of combat, you'll still be on the creature group's target list).

4. Aimed Shot related changes:
Aimed Shot now resets the Hunter's shot timer. This talent was always intended to be an "opening" shot, and not something that would be woven between shots. However, since Aimed Shot became such a core element for Hunter DPS, we didn't want to make this change until we were prepared to make several other changes to increase hunter DPS to offset it. Fortunately, this means that some of the odd side effects of the old Aimed Shot are no longer relevant, such as requiring hunters to use extremely slow weapons to maximize their DPS (weapons slow enough to be able to use Aimed Shot in between auto shots)
Arcane Shot now does substantially more damage than it did before, and scales with AP.
Steady Shot has been introduced as a core ability in the expansion, and provides much the same kind of gameplay as Aimed Shot did in the past (a shot you weave in between your normal shots), but to a much more managable degree (since it's a 1.5 sec shot, it doesn't require as slow of a weapon to take advantage of, and doesn't require to stand still for as long).

5. Other note: Wyvern Sting may now be used in combat.

For pvp it seems like the increased trap cooldowns and wyvern sting and traps no longer requiring out-of-combat will have quite an impact. I'd have to see it in action to know how that would work out though.

As for pve, it looks like the new shot rotation will exclude aimed shot in favour of arcane- and steady shot. IAotH and rapid killing may become must-have talents because of this.

Also note that it will be possible to get +4% stamina (or 6% damage reduction), +15% health and +10% armor through talents in the expansion, considering the abundance of dodge and mail's decent armor value won't this overdo hunter survivability?

Oh, and weapon skill still doesn't seem to play a role for hunters.

From looking over the trees, it appears that Survival is now the raid friendly tree with the advent of Expose Weakness. Survival Hunters were already getting close to 600 Agi buffed and with the increase in gear coming in tBC, a Survival Hunter is going to have the highest critical chance of any of the Hunter specs out there.

Doing a quick build, I was able to maximize Agi with a Survival/Markman build. This means that an unbuffed Hunter with top end gear seen at level 70 will probably be hitting 520 Agi and with the inclusion of Grace of Air (presently 77 Agi), Blessing of Kings (+10% all stats), Mark of the Wild (presently 12 Agi), Elixir of the Mongoose (25 Agi and +2% crit, presently) you would be looking at a Hunter with upwards of 720 Agi!!!:o This means that the base crit chance for a Hunter fully raid buffed would be around 21.8% on Agi alone, 29.8 just including Talents, 31.8 including the effects from Mongoose, and probably a further 8 to 9% effective from blue level 70 gear giving the Hunter a 40% chance of crit meaning 1 in 8 shots will proc Expose Weakness raiding overall raid AP by 180 for physical DPS. Simply put, the Survival Hunter is the new Raid build for maximizing physical raid DPS.

I disagree, blizzard seems to have added enough raid utility to each of the trees to warrant bringing a hunter of each spec along. One survival for the expose weakness proc, one beastmastery for the ferocious inspiration proc, and a marksman spec for improved hunter's mark and trueshot aura.

My BC spec, note the amount of attack speed increase and burst damage potential through BW+rapid fire.

[oldmandennis]

So? Phase one is at least 3.5 minutes long, and you'll have more than one hunter and you won't need it for Vael so who cares if it's in cooldown. Sure you only get to snag one or two per hunter to add them to a kiter

Yeah, the fact you can only grab 1-2 of them is what I was thinking of. Now that I think about it more, I'd also worry about positioning. I think the mechanic will be - Target warrior, cast misdirection, attack mob. If you wait until the lego pops, then try and pick a kiter out, cast the spell, then target the mob and start attacking I think it will take too long. If you just pick a warrior and then wait for the mob, you may send the lego after the warrior on the wrong side of his kite. I guess we used shamans (we kill all now) where getting one daze could be fatal - warriors with enough defense don't get dazed, do they?

and to make sure if you want your pet to keep aggro that it keeps aggro.

Ohh yeah, the pet, I hadn't thought about. Dang, level 70? That would have been great for BM leveling... not that BM's need help leveling.

Won't help raise aggro much, but it does allow for more aggro generation by the tanks.

It also might really help bears, whose aggro is subpar until they get a couple of maul crits in.

[vor_lord]

I guess we used shamans (we kill all now) where getting one daze could be fatal - warriors with enough defense don't get dazed, do they?

Warriors do get dazed... kiter healers must be ready to heal if that happens under the way we're doing it now. We tried killing all but... seeing as we are just beginning in BWL our DPS wasn't sufficient.

[NiteFox]

2. Traps are now on a 30 sec cooldown, but can be used in combat (you no longer need to feign/trap).

I can hear the screams of "NERFHUNTERPLZKTHX - A Rogue" from miles away. That bit of news sounds to me like a million gnomish backstabbers all cried out in indignation, and then were silenced as if encased in a block of ice.

The 30 second cooldown isn't too bad IMHO. When I'm running defense I tend to overtrap, so this means I'll be running out of my hidey-hole half as often, and thus being exposed half as often. Being able to drop a Freezing or Frost Trap in the middle of combat though... The way traps work now (You just click the skill and it activates - no need to even run through the placing animation) means that my survivability increases drastically. I tend to die in CC, and the times I manage to avoid that fate (after getting in melee combat in the first place) is to slow the rogue hitting me down as quickly as possible and then limp away. Before, this meant things like Wing Clip and Intimidation (Which I hate to use in close combat, since it means I can't stop a runner dead in their tracks for a minute), but dropping a trap... wow, that would give me plenty of time to limp away and prepare my attack.

I get the feeling that this won't stay as easily-usable as I think it is based on how traps work now. I can imagine traps being easily interrupted, for the player to actually run through the trap-laying animation before its placed, or something like that; but as it stands this makes even ranged/pet specced hunters very tricky to kill in melee.

I guess they really do need to nerf hunters.

[Luminon]

The 30 second cooldown isn't too bad IMHO. When I'm running defense I tend to overtrap, so this means I'll be running out of my hidey-hole half as often, and thus being exposed half as often. Being able to drop a Freezing or Frost Trap in the middle of combat though... The way traps work now (You just click the skill and it activates - no need to even run through the placing animation) means that my survivability increases drastically. I tend to die in CC, and the times I manage to avoid that fate (after getting in melee combat in the first place) is to slow the rogue hitting me down as quickly as possible and then limp away. Before, this meant things like Wing Clip and Intimidation (Which I hate to use in close combat, since it means I can't stop a runner dead in their tracks for a minute), but dropping a trap... wow, that would give me plenty of time to limp away and prepare my attack.

I think the point of this change was twofold:
1. Preventing chaintrapping
2. Reduce reliance on scatter shot (most pvp hunters specced around this ability)
For you as a BM hunter this is a pretty big buff, for most hunters though this simply frees them from scatter shot. The increased cooldown balances it out pretty well, any more and they'd need to buff the trap effects.

[Lissa]

I disagree, blizzard seems to have added enough raid utility to each of the trees to warrant bringing a hunter of each spec along. One survival for the expose weakness proc, one beastmastery for the ferocious inspiration proc, and a marksman spec for improved hunter's mark and trueshot aura.

My BC spec, note the amount of attack speed increase and burst damage potential through BW+rapid fire.

A Hunter that goes for Expose Weakness can still get Imp HM. And two Hunters with EW > one Hunter with EW and one Hunter with TSA. Even with the new skill level of TSA, the amount of +AP that TSA gives compared to having EW up at all times is lightyears difference in physical DPS. TSA will given a maximum of 750 AP while EW could easily give 2000+ AP to all physical DPS in the raid. Sadly, it looks more like Marksman top end now is ment more for solo play while high end Survival is ment more for raid play.

[Luminon]

A Hunter that goes for Expose Weakness can still get Imp HM. And two Hunters with EW > one Hunter with EW and one Hunter with TSA. Even with the new skill level of TSA, the amount of +AP that TSA gives compared to having EW up at all times is lightyears difference in physical DPS. TSA will given a maximum of 750 AP while EW could easily give 2000+ AP to all physical DPS in the raid. Sadly, it looks more like Marksman top end now is ment more for solo play while high end Survival is ment more for raid play.

True, ferocious inspiration works with casters as well though, perhaps giving a higher overall benefit.
What do you think blizzard intended as the 'function' of MM in BC? Beastmastery seems superior for pvp and solo play, so marksmanship is meant to be the tree for small group play perhaps?

Some more info from blue.
On snake traps:

1. Yes, snakes are mobs that can be targeted. There are 6 to 10 snakes that come out of the trap (oh $h1%, we've got Snakes on a Trap!) and attack random targets within 10 yards of the trap.

2. The snakes do physical damage and apply random poisons (ie: mind numbing, crippling, and a deadly poison).

3. They don't do a lot of damage individually, but in total the damage is meaningful.

4. The snakes will chase the same distance mobs normally chase.

5. The snakes move at normal mob speed (although their victims may be affected by crippling poison).

Snare and damage, sounds great, we'll have to see how reliable this is though.

Steady Shot does not have a cooldown. The AP scaling on Arcane Shot is 20% of AP.

Essentially steady shot works similarly to the way Aimed Shot works in today's game. If you're in the middle of a Steady Shot when your shot timer comes up, it won't fire until your Steady Shot is finished. So, it's to your advantage to get your steady shots in nicely in-between your normal shots.

Also, since Arcane Shot does a bit more damage than Steady Shot (unless the target is dazed), you'll generally favor Arcane Shot over Steady Shot when it's available.

Also, aimed shot and arcane shot now have seperate cooldowns. Aimed shot has had it's casting time increased to 3.5 sec and resets the shot timer.

This has already been posted by Brista: datamined pet skills.

[vor_lord]

This has already been posted by Brista: datamined pet skills.

The 'datamined' pet skills have been explicitly disavowed:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...No=10&sid=1#182

1. The pet abilities that have been "leaked" are pet abilities that have been in the database for at least 3 years now, but never went live because they were considerably overpowered. So, ignore those. More information on new pet types/abilities will come at a later time.

[Quark]

Oh, and weapon skill still doesn't seem to play a role for hunters.

Arguing about Hunter changes somewhere else, but I'll keep this simple here: This is a myth, propagated by the misapplying of known information to places it doesn't belong.

Weapon Skill affect to ranged:
+.04% Hit
+.24% Crit

+4 Weapon skill gives almost gives you 1% crit, in addition to the hit bonus. Ranged gets an additional crit bonus from weapon skill because they don't benefit from decreases in dodge/parry/glancing.

[Kevin]

Arguing about Hunter changes somewhere else, but I'll keep this simple here: This is a myth, propagated by the misapplying of known information to places it doesn't belong.

Weapon Skill affect to ranged:
+.04% Hit
+.24% Crit

+4 Weapon skill gives almost gives you 1% crit, in addition to the hit bonus. Ranged gets an additional crit bonus from weapon skill because they don't benefit from decreases in dodge/parry/glancing.

You've got them reversed. It's + 0.24% to hit and +0.04% crit for ranged. this thread shows much of the testing for that.

[oldmandennis]

The completly broken weapon skill mechanic is one big reason I hope the Xpac gets pushed back past the holidays. It is completly overpowered for melee, screws feral druids and to a lesser extent enhancement shammys and BM hunters, and shafts a bunch of people who didn't have logs of fights against raid bosses when they were picking a character race. There is a slight AvH imbalance because swords are generally more attractive then axes.

At the same time, ranged skill serves primarly to say "this time we mean it when we say hunter weapon".

They could also do something with magical skill... and while they are at it spell penetration.

[Quark]

You've got them reversed. It's + 0.24% to hit and +0.04% crit for ranged. this thread shows much of the testing for that.

Bah, your right, apparantly I'm still not awake. Oh well, point still holds that it's not "useless" like people keep claiming.

[oldmandennis]

Bah, your right, apparantly I'm still not awake. Oh well, point still holds that it's not "useless" like people keep claiming.

Well not useless, but a waste of space. The Eye of Nerub could just have a straight 1% crit and 1% hit instead without going overbudget.