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Hunter glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for hunters. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Hunters have one new minor glyph that won't appear automatically anywhere, Glyph of Marking. Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Dazzled Prey becomes Animal Bond Arcane Shot becomes Camouflage Concussive Shot becomes Distracting Shot Bestial Wrath becomes Endless Wrath Immolation Trap becomes Explosive Trap Wyvern Sting becomes Icy Solace Trap Launcher becomes Marked For Death Kill Command becomes Mend Pet Silencing Shot becomes No Escape Rapid Fire becomes Pathfinding Steady Shot becomes Scattering Explosive Shot becomes Tranquilizing Shot Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Aimed Shot becomes Aspects Raptor Strikes becomes Aspect of the Beast Kill Shot becomes Aspect of the Cheetah Feign Death becomes Fireworks Scare Beast becomes Stampede Serpent Sting becomes Tame Beast It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Scattered Shots: Suggestion Box
Scattered Shots is here for you. As long as you're a hunter, you get to tell us what to write about, and we get to ignore you do whatever you say. I love these months just before the next expansion is released. There's such a sense of anticipation, where the whole game, including your own class, is in fluid motion, constantly changing. This is the time when the developers actually want you to give them your feedback, to tell them what they're doing wrong; and -- strange as it may seem -- there is actually a chance they will listen to you, take your advice, and actually implement whatever change you suggest!That's why the last few days I've had my eye on the beta hunter forums, looking for the latest ideas about my favorite class. Lots of the player suggestions they have there are really neat, but unfortunately there's also some of what we call "QQ" (which stands for whining because it looks like two little eyes with tears coming down). It's hard to get good suggestions on the forums without also getting bad QQ. Sometimes when forum-goers clash, they get into an annoying argument and the whole thing devolves into boring name-calling.So let's weed out all the muck and jumble, shall we? Let's just cut to the prime-rib-beef of what really good ideas are out there and skip all the blah blah blah about who's stupid, who's an idiot, and who's just dumb.
Hunter Glyphs found in Wrath Beta build 8820
With the newest Beta build that hit live servers last night, MMO Champion found yet another round of inscription glyphs in the build. In particular, I'd like to talk about the Hunter glyphs. They still seem half-finished, with some values that are most definitely placeholder, and a good portion of them are firmly in the PvP camp. Still, most of them are complete enough that they're worth analyzing, if only to know how to advise Blizzard to change them in future Beta builds. Not to say there aren't some good ones, but there's also some that no sane Hunter will use. Let's check them all out after the break.
Disengage and trap changes coming to Wrath Beta
With all the Hunter changes we've been promised in relation to PvP, one that has recently been announced may be the biggest yet. Disengage will be getting a new trick.In a future Beta build, Disengage will cause the Hunter to jump back from their target 10-15 yards. As a result of this buff, however, the cooldown will be extended to 30 seconds. This really is the change Hunters need, more that the recent Aspect of the Beast and Mongoose Bite changes by far. What we really needed is a way to get back to range, and between this and Master's Call, we should now have a relatively dependable non-talented way of doing just that. 10-15 yards may seem a bit low, but it should be more than enough to get off a quick concussive shot, set a trap, or use a talented crowd control ability such as Intimidation, which will become instant cast rather than on next attack. Another set of baseline ability changes has to do with traps, and should be very helpful in both PvE and PvP. Freezing Trap will no longer break on any damage, but will instead break on a set amount of damage -- meaning a stray cleave or a miscast DoT won't completely ruin you. With this new functionality, Bear Trap will be removed and replaced at level 80 with Camouflage, which is returning after being discarded. Since setting a trap won't break Camouflage, it will become incredibly useful for setting PvP ambushes as well. There's plenty of other exciting changes on the way for Hunters, including a talent tree revamp that's currently up on Blizzard's official Beta site. Look for analysis of that in the coming days on WoW Insider. It's looking more and more like Wrath's going to be a great time to be a Hunter, and we're looking forward to seeing how the class plays with all their new toys at level 80, in both PvP and PvE.
Hunter Pet News: New exotic pet families added, Kill Command changed
The latest Beta Build has hit the test servers, and there's a lot to report for Hunters. In particular, many of the announced changes we discussed in the last Scattered Shots went through. Aspect of the Beast now grants a melee AP buff, and Mongoose Bite is unlinked from dodge. Tranquilizing Shot now dispels magic effects, and Arcane Shot does not. Most of the big notable changes however, center around pets, and specifically Beast Mastery. The 51 point talent is now implemented, and 5 extra talent points work. Chimeras and Devilsaurs are now exotic only. In addition, two new exotic pet families have been found: Worms and Silithids. %Gallery-28679% You can tame both the Dredge Striker and Dredge Crusher type worms in Silithus and the Jormungar worms in Northrend. For Silithids, only one "warrior" skin seems tamable, while the worker, wasp, and heavy tank type silithids are not tamable. The worms are Tenacity pets who feed on bread, cheese, and fungus and have a family skill called Acid Spit that does nature damage and reduces, while the silithid is a Cunning pet who feeds on meat and fungus and have an ability called Venom Web Spray that roots the target for 4 seconds and does nature damage. I've added some screenshots of the new pets and their abilities to the gallery above. Also, if you're not impressed with any of the new exotic pet families so far, take heart. We've been told they're still working on the pets themselves. Unfortunately, the rest of the pet-related news is less than amazing.
Scattered Shots: The dev team takes on PvP
Welcome once again to Scattered Shots, WoW Insider's spot for all things Hunter, except for the stuff Big Red Kitty covers. Daniel Whitcomb will be your host today (a day late, for which he apologizes) as David Bowers tries to shake off some extra aggro. The state of Hunters in PvP is perhaps one of the most debated subjects in WoW PvP. Some call Hunters overpowered for their dispelling Arcane Shot (which is going away in Wrath, to be sent to the non-damaging Tranquilizing Shot), while others point to their low Arena representation and the ease of using line of sight to negate most of their DPS and Abolish Poison to get rid of their main PvP utility as proof that they need buffs. Regardless, even the devs acknowledge that Hunters probably need some help in PvP, and class designer Koraa recently spoke on the subject on the Beta forums. In his post, he covered the problems he sees Hunters having, and how Blizzard will be helping with those moving forward into Wrath. Unfortunately, his solutions seem confused in and of themselves. They involve giving Hunters more melee attack power (instead of more way to break from melee so they can use their ranged weapon) and a variety of talents scattered around many trees in such a way that it will be difficult for a solid PvP build to get them all. And, as I mentioned in a post yesterday, they still aren't giving pets resilience. Other Hunters such as Megatf have done an excellent job responding to some of Koraa's points in the thread itself, but I'd like to address and respond to the post myself in this week's column, and see how they stack up to the problems Hunters face in small scale Arena PvP.
