beast-mastery
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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.
Star Wars Galaxies Beast Masters getting a revamp in Update 5
Thomas "Hanse" Eidson, designer on the SOE title Star Wars Galaxies, has released another developer diary detailing his latest efforts to improve the game. The upcoming Game Update 5 will tackle the Beast Master expertise system, a sort of alternate advancement path every class can use to tame and train fearsome beasts. It was introduced in Chapter 6, and in this newest patch will see a number of usability and game design tweaks. Many of them are simple quality of life issues; you'll be able to call you beast in combat, for example, and there's a new dye system in place the will allow you to recolor your pet even after it leaves the cloning vat.Eidson also notes some major 'under-the-hood' revamps. The way a beast's happiness worked was arcane and hard to understand, both from a player perspective and in the code. Beast happiness has been refactored, with the end result being that beasts can be made happier, more easily. From the player perspective, this will result in beasts doing more damage and earning experience more quickly - a much requested feature. Additionally beasts can now be stuffed, their movements should be more in-line with player expectations, and eggs and enzymes are more informatively named. An interesting look behind the scenes - expect Game Update 5 on the live servers soon!
Scattered Shots: Hunter problems and predictions
Scattered Shots is for hunters. 'Nuff said on that topic. The Freezing Trap David was stuck in last week also wore off a little bit, thanks to Daniel, permitting him to write once more without his fingers snapping off from the cold.In the wake of the recent confusion regarding Scare Beast, once again some hunters have gotten to complaining a lot about the state of their class. While on one hand, there are certainly problematic issues hunters are having, it's really not fair to say that the class is broken. It isn't -- being a hunter is more fun than its ever been, and it looks like this class will only get better in the future.Nonetheless, looking at the problems we do have might give us a clearer sense of where we're going in the future. With more and more information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King, and especially since Blizzard started asking for feedback from hunters, it's worthwhile to have a look at what holes do exist for our class, and how future changes might seek to plug them up.
2.4 leaves hunters low on mana
Since patch 2.4, hunters have been having some problems. Aside from the outrage over the fact that our traps are now announced, we seem to be having issues with mana. On the forums, hunters are not seeing much love from the non-hunter crowd, but I suppose that is to be expected. It is important to note however, that our mana efficiency is an intended attribute of our class. We are useful, not solely, but arguably primarily, because we can provide sustainable, long-term DPS. No, we don't crit like mages. In a boss fight though, we can keep going after mages short out.Why are hunters all of a sudden having issues with mana? There are a few theories floating around, but we have yet to be graced with a blue response. Take the jump to learn more about why this might be happening.
Build Shop: Hunter 41/20/0
Hello talent fans, both new and old, and welcome to another Tuesday edition of Build Shop! It's been awhile since this column examined a Hunter build (a heavy Survival build way back in June), and I think it's high time we changed that. When it comes to grinding, farming, or straight up sustained DPS, there's arguably no better build for a Hunter than Beast Mastery. If you're new to the Hunter class, at first glance there doesn't seem to be much in the Beast Mastery tree that looks appealing. A lot of the talents in the tree seem to affect your pet more than you... and for the most part, this is true. BM hunters sacrifice increasing their personal DPS in order to buff their pet's. As such, pet choice matters a little more than it does for Marksman or Survival hunters. But it's not all about the pet -- there are some significant buffs to the Hunter (and the Hunter's party) further down in the tree. Read on, and take a closer look at a standard Beast Mastery build.
