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Is it time to kill the global cooldown?
OK, so I was playing some Diablo III beta last night. Since this is a site that covers World of Warcraft, I'll just say that the little snippet I managed to play through before passing out was such that I could describe it in superlatives. But one of the things I noticed when playing was that the barbarian class plays absolutely perfectly to me. There are attacks that gain you the resource (fury) that you then spend on larger, more punishing attacks. You can spam those fury-gathering attacks; there's nothing limiting you from making them. You could hammer the keyboard all night if you wanted to. And it felt good. This is when I realized that I hate the global cooldown. I guess it's double kudos to Blizzard that it got me to accept the global cooldown for seven years and then got me to despise it with another of its own games. Looking over the list of class abilities not affected by it, I find myself starting to wonder if it even serves a purpose anymore. Or is it just a holdover from the game's original design?
Disengage buffed, raid damage nerfed for hunters
It's good news/bad news time for Hunters in the Wrath beta. I'll give you the good news first. There are some upcoming buffs to Disengage, primarily for PvP: The cooldown is being lowered from 30 seconds to 25 (16 with talents). It no longer requires you to have a target selected; now you can slam it as soon as you see someone getting close without pausing to click on them. It does require you to be in combat, to prevent this becoming some kind of crazy Hunter Blink. Bad news: you're getting nerfed for PvE. It seems that hunters were simply doing too much damage in level 80 raid situations, so the following steps are being taken to address that: Raid boss armor is being raised by 10%. This will affect all physical damage dealers, though Ghostcrawler says classes will be buffed back up as necessary (like the recent Fury buffs). Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons will no longer benefit ranged attacks. If that's what they had to do to get Hunter DPS in line, fine. But I'm not really happy to see increased separation of what works on melee and what works on ranged; I'm still irritated about when ranged AP and melee AP were split and no-one knew what items and enchants affected which classes.
Scattered Shots: New and improved abilities
Scattered Shots: noun. 1. (Scatter Shot, singular) An ability used by Marksmanship hunters, especially to annoy other players in PvP. 2. (Scattered Shots, plural) A column at WoW Insider about anything even loosely related to hunters, except for high-level raiding and completely improper, sometimes libelous personal commentary.Hunters are getting quite a few changes in Wrath of the Lich King, but so far haven't covered them all. Today I'd like to go through the newest abilities and discuss them in greater detail.New Baseline Hunter Abilities:Nope, no Camouflage. We talked about this before, but it looks like the devs read our article, "Do hunters need Camouflage?" and decided the answer was no. So, instead we have a couple other new abilities to look forward to:Kill Shot: This is the new level 80 hunter ability, and it provides us with a bit of utility that help us to stand out and perform better in various situations:
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.
Wrath Beta Patch Notes: Hunter
By now, I am sure you've heard that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is going live and the patch notes are up. There's a rather extensive section devoted to Hunters on this iteration. We have a few more insights into the pet talent trees that were announced at the Worldwide Invitational, as well as a few changes to existing talents and a nice Steady Shot buff.
WWI '08 Panel: Hunters
The first WoW panel has come and gone at the Worldwide Invitational. It was focused on class abilities in WoTLK, and there was some absolutely juicy stuff, especially for Hunters. As the proud player of a 70 Hunter, I'm feeling amazingly awesome about my class right now. Two of the biggest, most universal Hunter complaints have not only been answered, but answered in a way that I think a lot of Hunter players are going to be incredibly excited about. Steady Shot ClippingFirst up, it looks like Shot Rotations as we know them will soon become a thing of the past, or at least be incredibly simplified, as Steady Shots will no longer clip Auto Shots. This is actually an issue that has gained some blue post love in the past, but it's nice to see it so directly confronted and dealt with. There may still be a shot rotation of a type for fitting in Arcane Shot and various stings, but it looks like Hunter DPS will no longer be a complicated dance of weapon speed, haste rating, macros, and server latency. That in itself is amazing news. Pet Talent Trees and Uniqueness One of the other major complaints of Hunters is the lack of pet diversity. It is generally expected that if you are min-maxing, you will go for a Cat, Ravager, or Scorpid and nothing else, because they are the only pet families that have the right combination of ability and DPS to get their jobs done. Some pet classes, like Sporebats, languished due to a complete lack of useful family skills.
Scattered Shots: Leveling 20-30
Scattered Shots = hunter stuff Two weeks ago we covered some of the new abilities you get from levels 10 to 20 while you progress as a hunter, as well as how to use them to keep your skills sharp. The journey from 20 to 30 is a bit less topsy-turvy. At level 20, of course, you get to start playing with Aspect of the Cheetah and Freezing Trap, which can be a lot of fun, but other than that the new skills you get don't totally change the way you play until you get to level 30 and learn Feign Death. Nonetheless, they deserve a mention.If you're following the Beast Mastery talent path I laid out last week, then reaching level 20 doesn't give you any super-exciting new abilities either. Your pet will be able to run a bit faster, and will start doing more damage. Once you get the hang of using your Freezing Trap for crowd control, it's pretty much just a straight shot till you reach 30. It may feel a little boring sometimes, but it's really better than a lot of classes have it -- often many classes feel that the 20s are the levels at which the going seems roughest and the class seems weakest because it still lacks a major portion of its abilities. For hunters, it's just more of the same stuff we've been doing up till now.
Scattered Shots: Auto Shot
Scattered Shots is for hunters. 'Nuff said.One of the most confusing things about a hunter's repertoire of spells is the exact use of Auto Shot. This ability is unlike the abilities of any other class, quite different from a warrior's swing timer, or a caster's wand shooting. Auto Shot is like a metronome, and the music of hunter DPS requires that we play according to its beat.We've discussed Auto Shot a little bit in last week's introduction to Shot Rotation, but Auto Shot is much more complex than is first apparent from simply reading the ability's tooltip. First of all, there is a discrepancy between what the interface shows you of Auto Shot and what is actually going on. If you don't use any hunter addons, you may have great difficulty getting a feeling for any of what this article is about, because Auto Shot doesn't have any representation in the default UI. If you use an addon like Quartz or ZHunterMod, however, you'll be presented with a timer that looks something like a regular casting bar -- and while this Auto Shot bar will help a great deal, it is still not complete. No matter what, your imagination and inner sense of timing are going to have to do a good bit of work in getting your shots timed right.
Scattered Shots: Shot rotations
Scattered Shots is for hunters. 'Nuff said.Once you reach level 62 and learn Steady Shot, it's time to start getting a firm grip on this thing hunters must learn called "shot rotation." If you don't - just casting your shots willy-nilly, as soon as they come off of cooldown -- you'll end up wasting a lot more mana and doing a lot less damage than a hunter who has his or her shot rotations timed right.The video embedded above is a handy example of two basic shot rotations which we'll look at in more depth here, and it can give you a basic sense for how the timing of all this is supposed to work. But if it still looks a bit confusing, fear not: today's Scattered Shots will help you to make your shots less scattered and more organized, with helpful charts and fundamental knowledge about how to do this rotation thing. It really ain't that hard -- just a bit of info can get you pointed in the right direction, determining the rotation which is best for you.
Scattered Shots: Addons for shot timing, threat tracking, and pet training
Last week, Scattered Shots hit the bull's eye on which professions are best for a hunter. Today, we take aim at some interface problems hunters have, and the addons we can use to eliminate them.A user interface is an ever-evolving work of art. You can use it one way for a long time and then suddenly find one simple addon that lets you change everything and make it much better. Especially with all the problems that show up every patch, I've begun to look at my interface as a constant work in progress. As such, I'm usually in a constant state of getting rid of old addons, enjoying the ones I use now, and looking for new ones that might help me even more in the future. Every choice of what to put in or what to take out is a conscious decision about what will help make my game play smoother, more successful, and more visually interesting. As hunters, there are a number of needs that we have which other classes don't have - and special hunter addons are there to help in many of those cases, while in other situations, one of the more generalized addons might fit our needs best. Today I'll cover three of the most glaring interface problems for hunters and show you how I deal with them at the moment. In the comments section, feel free to share your own different interface issues, as well as your own solutions, for the benefit of our readers. Keep in mind that a user interface is an extremely subjective thing, and one solution may not work for everyone. Nonetheless, often times just sharing your idea will inspire someone else to vary it a little and make their own thing out of it, which is even better.
An "insightful and thoughtful" look at Hunter DPS from the forums
Despite the fact that my level 70 Hunter isn't technically my main, she's probably my favorite character. A lot of people will tell you that a Hunter is an overly easy class: sic your pet, turn on Auto Shot, and you're done. While having a built-in tank that you can even heal a bit gives you a pretty strong advantage when going it alone, I'd have to say they oversimplify things a bit. The largest area where the complexity of the Hunter class shows is in end-game DPS. If you want to be the most effective DPSer possible, it takes quite a bit of work. The way that you must weave shots in between your auto shots is a complicated dance that requires split second timing that can mean vast differences in DPS totals between Hunters. Cheeky of the Khadgar-US server (author of the famous Cheeky's Spreadsheet) posted a very concise and well-stated summary of some of the problems with Hunter DPS on the official US forums here a few months back. The post was originally written by Lactose of the Talnivarr-EU Server, who posted it on the EU forms here, where it got some blue love today a while back.
Scattered Shots: Basics of pet control
This week Scattered Shots comes to you barking and growling, hot on the heels of an overview about some of the cool complexity involved in being a hunter. Today we turn toward our animal half to get a look at how we can start making some of that complexity work for us.I love hunter pets. I love thinking about pets and writing about pets, and most of all I love managing my pets. I love that yo-yo feeling you can get when you tell your pet to go do something and then it does it well, coming back to you alive and healthy.But controlling your pet isn't necessarily easy or intuitive at first, and it can take a lot of practice to get used to. Below I've outlined some of the techniques I use to make the most of my pet, and described a way to practice controlling your pet by taking on multiple enemies at once.
Hunter changes in 2.4
When information began to trickle down about patch 2.4, hunters, like most classes, were groaning. Which nerf bat would we be hit with next? Fortunately, it seems that we have slipped under the radar. For now. Maybe Aspect of the Beast finally did us some good. Let's break down the changes and see how this is going to be affecting us. With no major patches between now and Wrath, we might be living with these changes for awhile. Bug fixes: Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues. Since no one likes animation issues, I'm filing this under "win." Not that I've ever tried to equip a thrown weapon while already shooting, mind you. Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players. To me, this sounds fair. Also, I want to be invisible. Rogues can, so why not hunters? Right? No? Hunter's Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter's Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter's Mark cast by Hunters without the talent. This used to be, but then was not. Now, it will be again. While it might rub your ego the wrong way always reading the message "a more powerful spell is already active," it is better for overall DPS this way. The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase. Personally, I find that most of my tooltips on most of my characters do not reflect the changes made by my talent points. At least one more will appear correctly, and I will try not to be sad about the others. Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target. So this was a nice little bug we had for awhile, but let's face it; it wasn't fair. It also doesn't help the "huntard" image any when hunters are caught whining that now, we will have to learn to actually face our targets; and that's just too hard. What does this mean you ask? Do note that these are our two channeled shots, and as such, if another player sees us channeling, they need only run around us far enough to interrupt the channel. Prior to 2.4, we would have spun with the runner.
A guide to Hunter badge loot in 2.4
So 2.4's going live, and I know your first question: What's in it for me? If you're a Hunter, let me enlighten you, at least on the subject of badge loot. There's a couple pieces of mail armor and a few new weapons that Hunters should have their eye on once Smith Hauthaa is open for business, and I'll give you the breakdown on how they stack up for Hunters after the Break. Just to note, I will mostly be comparing these to T5 and T6 drops, and will assume that you won't be attacking the Sunwell immediately.
