Animal-Handler
Latest
Hunter changes for patch 3.0.3
Is it Christmas already? It sure seemed that way when I opened up Patch 3.0.3 and saw so much Hunter love coming out from the box. Sure it's not all good, but it's mostly good. Sort of like Westley only being mostly dead. Let's get right to it... first off, we have Barrage and Improved Barrage now affecting Aimed Shot. This is an awesome buff because let's face it, ever since Steady Shot showed up at the party, nobody's asked Aimed Shot to dance. This also makes all three talents a hell of a lot more attractive, so they're now like some sort of hot mean girls triple play that's come to kick Steady Shot to the curb. Or something like that. I mean, come on, +12% crit to Aimed Shot.Aspects are now off the Global Cooldown and have a shared 1-second cooldown, which is excellent if you're on the ball with aspect switching. It will no longer interfere with rotations, although the only aspect we really switch up when we're sniping away is the, um, rebalanced Aspect of the Viper. The mana returned per shot is lower by 50%, but it now grants a passive regeneration of 4% of total mana every 3 seconds. Mana is also returned with melee attacks, which means we now actually have a sweet aspect to put up when a Warrior is Whirlwinding our butt.
Hunters get some major love in the Wrath Beta
It's been a busy day on the Hunter Beta boards, with Koraa delivering tidbit after tidbit of great news for Hunters. Here's the breakdown: Deterrence and Master's Call will become baseline. Animal Handler will be getting an overhaul. Serpent Sting will get a mana cost reduction and a coefficient buff with the aim of making it worth casting in your basic shot rotation. Silencing Shot will become a proper interrupt for PvE usage, and Trueshot Aura will go raid wide. Hunters will be getting a big push with lots of changes in the beta build after next. These are definitely welcome changes. In PvP, being able to stand up to focus fire or get back to range have long been weaknesses of the class. Having a non-talent way to break out of snares or add a bit of extra defense attacks will go a long way to making a bit tougher. It's not trainable Scatter Shot or pet resilience, exactly, but it's nearly as good as either, and may be better for us in the long run than the former option. Finally, we'll have a dependable way to get away from Hamstring or Crippling Poison that does not involve Beastmastery or being a Dwarf. Animal Handler has been looking more and more lackluster lately in the face of other mount speed talents that provide more speed and better benefits, especially now that pets will share our hit percentage, so hopefully this revamp makes it desirable again. Similarly, the state of Silencing Shot and its inability to interrupt silence-immune mobs has long been a sticking point with PvE-focused Marksmanship Hunters. So so far, all of the announced changes are definitely welcome news that should hopefully be nothing but useful to Hunters. We'll definitely be looking forward to this build after next to see the final state of Animal Handler, whether Serpent Sting will be useful for damage purposes again, and whatever other changes -- such as the promised counters to LOS -- Blizzard tests out.
Scattered Shots: Beastmastery in Wrath of the Lich King
Scattered Shots is for Hunters. Your host this week will be Daniel Whitcomb, who will continue his foray into the wide world of Wrath of the Lich King talents. Beastmastery has pretty much dominated the world of Hunters in Burning Crusade, with Serpent's Swiftness alone nearly singlehandedly allowing for the most efficient damaging shot rotations possible -- With a little bit of wrangling between haste and ranged weapon speed, of course. While the changes to Auto Shot clipping in Wrath will likely make shot rotations as we know them a thing of the past, Beastmastery is still looking to be a very viable tree in Wrath of the Lich King, thanks to some clever synergies and some amazing pet buffs.
Scattered Shots: A talent for leveling in Beast Mastery
The Scattered Shots hunter bears his or her teeth and says "RAAAWR!" to the mirror every morning in an uncouth, beastly manner -- thus affirming the beast within, which yearns for a way out to express itself.Which talents you should get as you level up is a tricky question with many different answers, many of which can turn out just fine or absolutely horrible, depending on how you play. Today I'll be taking you along on a journey through the first 40 levels of talent spending, and explaining why I think certain talent choices are better than others.One of the most important things to remember about talents is that, in spite of all their mathematical precision, they are open to poetic interpretation. Some talents give clearly superior advantages, while in other cases it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which one fits your play-style best. Sometimes the talents that look best on paper aren't the ones that will really help you the most when the going gets rough. Likewise, some talents are designed more for endgame use at level 70, even though they appear early on in the talent tree, while others are better for leveling up, and you may wish to drop them later on once you finish leveling.Most of my talent choices today are going to be in the Beast Mastery tree, for instance. Some people may say that they like Marksmanship or Survival best, and certainly that's their right. But from most of the people I've talked to, the general consensus is that Beast Mastery is best for both leveling and early endgame raiding, too. While talking about these talents, I'll list your level and the number of talent points you have at each stage, so that it's easier to keep track of your talent resources.
