ferocity
Latest
Guild Wars 2 dev blog explains critical damage changes
ArenaNet's Roy Cronacher has authored a new dev diary that deconstructs one of the balance tweaks heading your way in Guild Wars 2's April Feature Pack. "Ferocity is being introduced to make bonus critical damage easier to understand, more easily scaled across the whole game, and to help foster a healthy balance environment that encourages players to experiment with their builds," Cronacher explains. The post also delves into UI changes as well as how the update will affect Celestial Gear. Read all about it on the official GW2 website.
Scattered Shots: Pets for raiding
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skill, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be discussing which Ferocity pets perform the best in a raid environment. It's no secret (or shouldn't be!) that Ferocity pets are where it's at for raiding pets. They provide the most overall damage of the three pet types, and for Hunters there's no bigger priority in a raid environment than delivering dps like it's Dominos. There are a wide variety of Ferocity pets to choose from, though, and each have their own unique abilities. Which is the best type to give you the biggest boost to your damage? Let's do a quick comparison and find out.
Scattered Shots: Finding a unique pet
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be browsing the bestiary of Azeroth, Outland and Northrend to identify some of the most unique pets to be found in the wilds ready for taming. As a Hunter, your pet is an extension of yourself and a means of expression your (or your character's, for you RPers out there) personality, so finding the perfect pet can often be difficult. Today, I'd like to take a look at some of the more unique pets available in the game to help you pick out the perfect companion to set you apart from the crowd. Ferocity Because cats are arguably the most popular family of ferocity pets in the game, we'll start with them. All cats come with three abilities in addition to the standard Growl ability shared by all pets: Claw, Rake and Prowl. There are a number of unique cat skins available to help set your chosen feline apart. If you prefer the look of a sleek lion, Araga, a level 35 rare found only in the Alterac Mountains is an excellent choice. She's the only cat in the game sporting this particular skin, so if you favor the sandy coloring sans mane, she's the cat you want. If you're looking for that coloring but with a more manly countenance, The Rake, a level 10 rare in Mulgore is a great alternative. If you're unable to find The Rake, there are three other mobs found in The Barrens that share the same skin: the Savannah Highmane, the Savannah Prowler and the Savannah Patriarch. You like the mane, but not the color? Don't worry, there are other options available! Humar the Pridelord, a level 23 rare found in The Barrens and Pitch, a level 76 found in Sholazar Basin boast the same manly mane as The Rake, but with a much darker charcoal coloring. Not digging the black, either? Try Echeyakee, a level 16 quest spawn from The Barrens or Sian-Rotam, a level 60 quest spawn from Winterspring. Both feature a light white and gray coloring that's sure to set them apart.
Scattered Shots: Dual specs mean double the fun for hunters
Scattered Shots is your weekly guide to improving your Hunter skills, brought to you by Jessica "Lassirra" Klein of The Hunter's Mark, covering a variety of Huntery topics. Today, we'll be diving into what hunters will have to look forward to from the world of dual specs.So far the uproar about the dual spec feature coming to us in patch 3.1 has been predominantly from classes that are able to fill multiple roles in a raid environment, giving them more flexibility to swap between tanking, healing and dealing damage based on the needs of their group at the time. The 1000g price tag on this feature may seem a bit daunting to some, but the benefits of being able to swap between tanking and healing at a moment's notice without costly respec fees or inconvenient trips to the nearest not-so-nearby trainer are obvious. This all begs the question, though: what's in it for us pure DPS folks?The easy answer to that is being able to swap seamlessly from a PvP build to your raid build when invites start going out for the night. And lets not forget that Survival Hunters are the new Shadow Priest, right? If you're missing one of your friendly neighborhood mana batteries one night, you can swap into a spec for that at the drop of a hat. There are also plenty of opportunities for enterprising young Hunters looking to farm old world raid bosses solo, and there's a spec for that, too. There's plenty of fun to be had for us Hunters, and this new dual spec feature will make the transition from conquering the wilds of our world as a lone tracker to wiping the floor with the deadliest of raid bosses that much easier.
Shifting Perspectives: Patch 3.0.8 for Druids
Every Tuesday, or sometimes Friday when the writer's internet has gone AWOL between Sunday evening and Thursday afternoon, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we take a look at the upcoming patch 3.0.8. while penning an angry letter to our ISP.Greetings, folks. Patch 3.0.8 is coming, bringing a few significant changes for the Druid class. Feral attack power is disappearing from the game entirely alongside bonus armor contribution from non-leather items. Restoration is receiving a nerf in the form of a 6-second cooldown to Wild Growth but is otherwise getting some buffs. Balance is also getting a few buffs, including one that will make a big difference to PvP combat versus Rogues and Hunters. But I think, dear readers, we are overlooking the most important part of patch 3.0.8:Fixed a bug with a Wild Mustard plant that was under the ground in Dalaran. Oh, thank God. That drove me nuts.(Really).(I'd also love to see them do something about the underground Tiger Lily spawn in Sholazar).(It's just south of River's Heart).(Really annoying).(Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?).
Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2
Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb loves his Hunter Judgement, but wishes he got the cool looking shoulders too. So between 3.0.2, the Scourge Invasion, and Hallow's End, my Hunter's seen a lot of play as I've been going after the title and the undead armor and playing with all the new changes on a live server and all, and in that time, I've had some chance to see how stuff works out when it's thrown into the crucible of live server playing. Most of my observations have ended up focusing around pets, which is probably to be expected. After all, they've changed quite a bit. Here's what's I've learned from 3.0.2 in the last few weeks about managing your pet:
Scattered Shots: Getting started with talents in 3.0.2 as a Beast Mastery Hunter
Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb is doing a special happy dance over that whole Aspect global cooldown removal thing.Before we get into the meat of this week's column, I have a confession to make. I was tempted to make a very short column that consisted primarily of a recording of me making squealing noises that you would generally only expect to come from a giddy schoolgirl, punctuated by a bit of gibberish that might sound something like "Aspect of the Dragonhawk." But that said, there's a lot of other things I could talk about, and I won't leave you hanging. It's a busy time in WoW, and Hunters have a lot of stuff to do now that 3.0.2 is out. By now, hopefully, your server has calmed down enough for you to get on, play around with learning all your companions and mounts, and start trying to figure out talent specs. Hopefully by now, you've seen some of our articles on the subject, such as Big Red Kitty's Hunter and Pet Talent overviews, and David Bowers' guide to exotic pets currently available in game. They're great resources, so I'm not going to attempt to replicate them here. Instead, I'm gonna focus on a quick and pertinent question: You've finally found some time to play WoW, your server's stable enough to let you play WoW, and you've just logged on your Beastmastery Hunter for the first time since 3.0.2 went live. What do you do?
Scattered Shots: Pet talent trees in the Wrath Beta
Welcome to another edition of Scattered Shots, the other WoW Insider weekly Hunter column. Daniel Whitcomb is your guest host again this week. So, we theorized about talented pets a bit quite a few installments of Scattered Shots ago, but now we have the actual trees live and testable on the Wrath Beta, and they seem to be firming up nicely. There's a few promised changes yet to come, such as the removal or lowering of focus costs on many major abilities and talents, and it's still very possible that Blizzard may make changes here and there before live, but I think they're solid enough at this point that we can look at each tree and make some solid predictions about how people will use them and how various talent builds might look.
More stable slots now available on Wrath Beta
You may recall a few days back that we told you about new stable slots coming with Wrath of the Lich King. It looks like Blizzard wasn't just whistling dixie, because they're in. When I was switching from my level 65 devilsaur to my beefier level 70 dire raven for a Nexus run over on the Beta server, I noticed that the stable boy was offering me two more stable slots! The stables slots costs 50 gold for the third one, and 150 gold for the fourth one, giving you a total of 4 slots. This means you have room for one pet from each talent tree, plus a spot for a specialized pet (such as a scorpid for PvP) or an exotic pet (and yes, devilsaurs will be exotic only) or two. Combine this with the abolishing of the need to tame pets simply to learn skills and auto leveling, and it continues to look like pet management should be easier, funner, and more efficient in Wrath.
Devilsaurs tamable on Wrath servers, Chimeras may be next
As of the latest build, Beast Mastery, the 51 point Hunter talent in the tree of the same name that lets you tame "exotic" pets, remains unimplemented. However, it looks a sneak preview of the talent may have snuck into the patch all the same: Devilsaurs are now tamable! The devilsaurs do shrink quite a bit, but are huge all the same -- I'd estimate the one I tamed was at least three times as tall as my dwarven hunter after taming. They also make a satisfying stomping sound as they run around behind you. They use the Ferocity talent tree (minus Charge for some reason), and eat meat. They come with all the basic pet skills, use Bite for their focus dump, and have an extra family skill called Monstrous Bite. Monstrous Bite looks slightly unfinished, as there's only one rank, and it only hits for 4-6 damage. It's not completely bad though: It also has a buff on hit that increases the Devilsaur's damage done by 5% and stacks 3 times (It should be noted that Monstrous Bite's tooltip currently claims it boosts AP instead). In addition, the buff makes the devilsaur larger. %Gallery-28679% It should be noted too that Wowhead now lists chimeras as a pet category, complete with a family ability called Froststorm Breath. However, I could not personally tame the chimeras in Winterspring or Azshara. [Thanks for the tip, Homelessbird!]
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.
