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The Art of War(craft): Must-have PvP talents for hunters in 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Art of War(craft), covering battlegrounds and world PvP, and Blood Sport, with the inside line for arena enthusiasts. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Battlemaster Zach Yonzon, old-world PvP grinder and casual battleground habitué, rambles on about anything and everything PvP. We don't have much time before Cataclysm hits, so let's get down to business. We've talked about some optimal talents for death knights and druids for PvP, so now we turn our attention to hunters. Hunters have always had a tough time in arenas, not necessarily because the class was broken but because the format simply wasn't conducive to the hunter playstyle. It got so bad, in fact, that Blizzard designed an arena -- the Ring of Valor -- specifically to benefit hunters. On the other hand, hunters have always lorded it over in the open expanse of the battlegrounds. The good news is that battlegrounds will be cool again. Well, they've always been cool in my book, but soon they'll be rewarding cool gear, too. That means hunters will once again feel like PvP gods (without needing the help of an enhancement shaman). There's one big change to hunters in Patch 4.0.1 and that's the change in resource from mana to focus. The difference with the way focus behaves is that rather than a resource well that pays for spells and abilities (mana), hunters have abilities that generate focus in combat such as Steady Shot and Cobra Shot, and then a whole load of focus dumps. In a way it's like death knight runic power or warrior rage without the decay. This means you'll always want to have nearly full focus but never gain focus that will simply slough off because you're over your maximum. It's a careful balance of gaining and spending, although focus regenerates at a steady rate.
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.
Build Shop: Hunter 0/45/16
This week on Build Shop I'm checking out a possible Marksman PvP build for the hunters out there. Hunters have been underrepresented in the Arena until recently, but they've been a staple in battlegrounds for a long while, so it's nice to see them finally gaining a foothold. Today's build focuses on increasing stamina, survivability, ranged damage, and picking up a few nifty utility skills. This is definitely more of a PvP build, and as such you'll want gear that maximizes your ranged attack power, resilience, and stamina to support it. Once you're geared up though, this build should serve you quite well.One thing this build doesn't include that I'm curious to hear your thoughts on is Improved Arcane Shot. It seems like with the new dispelling power of this shot, you'd want to take this talent but I can't find 5 points to spare for it from anywhere. Perhaps that's why I haven't seen too many builds that have it, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Is it worth it, or is it more situational? Better in some brackets but not in others? These are some of the questions I'm hoping you can help me answer (because honestly, I don't PvP on my Hunter... I PvP with my Warlock). Read on for my dissection of the 0/45/16 build!
