guide-to-hunters
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Scattered Shots: MoP hunter pre-raid gear list
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. The third significant step for all hunters in Mists of Pandaria is gearing up to become raid ready. (For those interested, the first step is race (and possibly faction) changing to dwarf, and the second is leveling up to 90). With that in mind here is a list of some of the top hunter gear to go after. We're specifically only looking here at non-raid PvE gear that does not come from a raid or require raid mats. However, in Mists you are able to get valor points outside of raids, including by doing daily quests and some of the reputation gear requires valor points to purchase in addition to faction rep. Thus I am going to include some valor gear in this list. Odds are you won't have enough valor points pre-raiding to get all of these pieces. My recommendation is to run your heroics to get the best non-epic gear possible and then spend valor points to fill in the worst gear slots. I'm also not including any gear that requires you to have a certain profession -- thus no engineering goggles even though they may be superior for engineers.
Scattered Shots: Hunter leveling from 85 to 90
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. We're less than a week away from the launch of Mists of Pandaria, when overnight we'll have to start the short grind back up to the level cap, after which we'll replace all of our hard-earned purple gear with fresh greens and blues. When it comes to leveling, hunters have it easy. You could go through and choose the worst possible optimization and still have an easy time of it. I should stress this at the outset: you don't need any special tricks to solo quest your way to level 90. That said, by optimizing your hunter for leveling you can certainly make the trip to 90 a bit easier. What follows are my recommendations for preparing your hunter for optimal leveling.
Scattered Shots: Hunter PvP after Patch 5.0.4
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, Euripides is filling in for Frostheim, who has taken a week to debate shaving his arm hair. Hunters are shaping up to be excellent in PvP this patch. We've always been sort of acceptable at very high skill levels, but now we have a bunch of new tricks in our toolbox. It's still too early to give a definitive guide to the best choices you can make, but with everything that's changed, it's worth going over where we are now. Beastmastery is the spec of choice Marksmanship was the most commonly played spec for the last two expansions, mostly because of readiness and silencing shot. These can now be learned by any spec, and since BM has the best damage of the three specs, it's the default PvP spec. In addition to the raw damage, BM also has an additional crowd control breaking effect with The Beast Within, a stun, and the ability to tame exotic pets, including one with a heal. On its own, that heal isn't much to write home about, but with glyphed Stampede, it can heal for a large portion of your health.
Scattered Shots: Bugs, not bugs, and oddities of patch 5.0.4
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. As much as the beta process eliminates hordes of bugs (but never the horde, sadly) there are always some that follow us to the pre-patch. Patch 5.0.4 has brought a handful of hunter bugs with it, and it appears that Blizzard is making some progress on stamping them out. Here are the top bugs, strange things that might or might not be bugs, and things hunters thought were bugs but turned out not to be so buggy after all. It's worth noting that this is not a comprehensive list, but these are the things that are most likely to affect your game experience in some way.
Scattered Shots: 5 awesome 5.0.4 hunter things
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. According to WoW Insider's analytics department, 83.7% of you have now downloaded the giant patch 5.0.4, reforged yourself for hit and expertise, been momentarily dismayed at your DPS until you realized the target dummy changed, and then gone out to explore the post-patch world. You may have noticed that there are still some bugs to be worked out -- like how the improved Kill Command is broken on Ultraxion and Madness, or how Snake Trap is a bit fussy about when to attack, or that Spirit Bond isn't working in combat. You may have noticed things you thought were bugs but weren't, like the target dummies or Explosive Shot ticks clipping on Lock and Load. You almost certainly noticed impressively huge DPS in 5-mans. Today we're going to suggest five new awesomely fun things that you can do with your post-5.0.4 hunter. Regardless of what you think about the new mechanics, this list should get you excited about the changes.
Scattered Shots: Hunter prep for 5.0.4
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. Patch 5.0.4 is landing on Aug. 28, bringing all of the mechanical changes of Mists of Pandaria to hunters, which we'll get to play with at level 85 for a good month before the expansion hits. The patch is bringing hunters a lot of changes -- everything from the removal of minimum range and melee weapons to expertise being a required stat and aspects going on the global cooldown. WoW Insider has a good rundown of what to expect from patch 5.0.4. Here, we're going to focus on the hunter-specific stuff. And there's a lot of hunter ground to cover, so let's get started.
Scattered Shots: Hunter racials in Mists of Pandaria
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. Of all the different optimization options for the hunter class, racials are the one that is hardest to change. Nevertheless, there are plenty of hunters out there willing to race-change to squeeze out a bit more DPS or to get a little bit closer to the rugged perfection the designers blessed on the dwarves. This means that there are plenty of people asking what the best hunter race is. In Mists, we have the new racial of the pandaren, plus a few of the old racials changing. Add to that new abilities and new formulas for the old ones, and the common question of what the best hunter race is requires a new set of math. Or if you don't have one of those cool glass whiteboards with neon markers like they have in TV to do your math on (I really want one of those), we can shortcut it with Zeherah's hot new beta spreadsheet.
Scattered Shots: Nerf train rolls in on the beta
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. The great shadow of the nerf bat has fallen over the Mists beta hunter, and it's hitting hard. Of course, it's not necessarily a bad thing -- sometimes numbers are too big, and they need to be smaller to keep things balanced. For those of you who have not been keeping track of all the constant beta changes, here's what happened: A bit ago, we got a big wave of hunter buffs. Some of these were for the sake of buffing hunters, but others were intended to fix bugs or to adjust the comparative balance of shots or abilities. The end result was huge DPS buffs. Too huge. Hunter DPS was over-the-top high, so much so that many hunters even started pointing it out. And there were other weird things too -- like Arcane Shot doing more damage than Explosive Shot, dogs and cats living together, etc. With the volume of changes coming in this patch, you can be pretty sure that we're not done. If history is any indicator, it's likely that hunters got a bit over-nerfed and we'll see some compensating buffs in the near future. But as you'll see, it wasn't just nerfs; we got some buffs, too.
A closer look at the hunter rare tames in Mists of Pandaria
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. The Mists of Pandaria beta has been updated with an awesome treat for pet-loving hunters. Blizzard has introduced new rare hunter pet tames with their own unique taming challenge -- only this time, they did it in a way that prevents random ass-hats from wandering around slaughtering lovely, rare beasts that are destined to become your beloved companions. Following a cryptic clue, the dedicated hunters over at Petopia scoured the beta to discover what these new pets are and how they work. These beasts leave unique tracks in the landscape that are visible only to hunters. If you follow the tracks, they will eventually lead you to the rare beast; however, you have to use your Flare to make it visible, and you can use your Hunter's Mark to keep it visible to you. This is awesome -- a solution that provides rare pets to tame while radically reducing the odds of their getting butchered by non-hunters and at the same time giving us a neat challenge to find the pets by actually hunting! So let's take a look at what we have.
Mists of Pandaria Hunter Pet Guide
Anne posted yesterday about the new hunter pet challenges, including exciting information on how hunters can track down their target tames using tracks on the ground that are visible only to hunters. The hunter then casts down a flare at the end of the line of tracks to hopefully reveal the rare pet. This is a really cool-sounding new feature that should hopefully also dramatically reduce the number of hunter tames lost to other marauding players. So why are we telling you about it again? Well, Kalliope over at Petopia has done a truly fantastic forum post that serves as a guide to hunting down these beasts of mystery. Kalliope has done a pet-by-pet guide showing you what tracks you're looking for, where the tames are likely to be roaming in Pandaria, and the family and names for each tame. Not only that, but Kalliope has a host of great tips for would-be owners of these beasts. The full tip list, after the jump.
Scattered Shots: PvP Stampede and more beta hunter changes
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. Another beta patch has landed, bringing with it a host of hunter changes, including the anticipated changes to Stampede. We are continuing to see the evolution of the Mists hunter experience, including some surprisingly big changes for this late in the beta process. Leading the changes in this beta patch is the predicted change to Stampede, making it less bursty and generally worse for PvE but available in Arenas and generally better suited for PvP. But Stampede is by no means the only change in this beta patch; we got a brand spanking new hunter talent and changes to a bunch of core hunter abilities. Join me after the cut for a full rundown of the latest changes and their ramifications.
Grandpappy Frostheim on dumbing the game down
Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways ... back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless -- but they were also men. You can ask him questions on Google+. I've said it before and you can bet on the balls of the Titans that you'll hear me say it again, but kids these days don't know how good they got it. In fact, they got it so good that after years and years of complaining about every little thing, these days the kids are actually -- get this -- complaining that they have it too good. I know, right? Kids these days. A complaint that's been getting louder lately is that the game is being dumbed down. That because life is easier for these young'uns somehow the game requires less skill than the miserable pain in the backside the game was for us back in my day. Well, I got some good news for you kids: The only thing that's been dumbed down is the useless, soft mass inside your noggin. In fact, by many measures, substantially more skill is required now than years ago.
Scattered Shots: Stampede me this
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. The most awesome hunter news from Mists of Pandaria is without a doubt the removal of minimum range. But next on the list is Stampede, an ability that has been requested by mobs of hunters throughout WoW's history. But then as soon as Stampede was implemented in the beta, hunters started complaining about the ability. In particular, the 10-minute cooldown turned a lot of vocal hunters against the ability. This ensures that Stampede cannot be reset by Readiness and that Stampede cannot be used in Arenas. Lately Stampede has been the subject of much discussion, with Lead Systems Designer Ghostcrawler chiming in on the forums on the topic, and it looks like Blizzard may be reconsidering the design to accommodate hunters who want it to work differently. And I think that's a bad thing. I strongly suspect that the result of changes to Stampede to placate our class is going to give us a worse ability. Here's why.
Scattered Shots: Aspect macros and crows endangered
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. We've got some more good hunter news coming in from the beta with more buffs to hunter stuff. It's very important that you keep this in mind, that there are some interesting buffs to abilities including more hunter PvP buffs. Because there's bad news as well. We've had both news of another beta patch and a handful of posts from Ghostcrawler on the hunter thread. Though A Murder of Crows was nerfed in the patch just a couple of weeks ago, it's been nerfed again, and fairly hard this time. Furthermore, we also got news that all this crazy combination of hunters summoning extra creatures into combat is potentially too much for lower-end machines, and Blizzard may have to scale back on some of these abilities. A Murder of Crows is a likely suspect for that. But remember, there are buffs too. So let's dig into all the changes and news, starting with A Murder of Crows.
Scattered Shots: Faster, stronger, and with fewer crows
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. Every new expansion is a game developer's dream. Throughout the course of the expansion, they have to be careful not to make too many changes too fast, something that can quickly become too hard for players to keep up with. As new tiers of content come out, the developers' list of dream changes build up faster than they can be deployed. But when a new expansion is in the works, they're free to unleash the torrent of ideas that built up over the years. They can take the hunter and rebuild it -- faster, stronger, and as it turns out, with fewer crows. The latest Mists of Pandaria beta build brings several buffs for hunters with some raw DPS increases. It also limits the ability of hunters to leverage A Murder of Crows to bring out a bazillion crows at once.
Scattered Shots: Beta changes to hunter self-heal
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. It was just a couple of weeks ago that we were talking about the hunter self-heal nerfs in the beta, and we're already seeing more adjustments: partial un-nerfs, other ability nerfs, and substantial reworking of hunter self-heals. This is clearly an area of a lot of testing and scrutiny in the beta right now. In addition to the self-healing changes, we also saw more fun cosmetic minor glyphs and got some clarification from Ghostcrawler about our new Stampede ability. It all adds up to lots more news of what hunters are going to look like in Mists of Pandaria as things continue to settle out. To begin at the beginning, we saw a lot of adjustments made to the hunter self-heal situation in Mists, including a couple that I predicted. Here is the complete list.
Top 10 things for hunters to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. With the coming of summer with warmer and longer days and the return of green to the world, most hunters find themselves with little to do. After all, it's the trailing days of the expansion, and Cataclysm doesn't have much more to offer. The bosses have been slain, and we've gathered the gear we want to transmog to. Dreams of the new expansion is about all we have to pass the time -- well, that and Diablo III, which is the current end-of-expansion pass time for a huge chunk of WoW's population With that in mind, let's take a look at the top 10 things we have to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria. In addition to the new leveling and new gear and new scenery and a new cuddly hunter race, we also have the smexy new gifts of the expansion.
Scattered Shots: Beta nerfs to hunter self-heals
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. The Mists of Pandaria beta giveth, and the Mists of Pandaria beta taketh away. The latest beta patch did a little bit of both, giving MM hunters some love while cutting back on some of the presents we saw early in the beta. It's probably also worth noting that we saw the new minor Glyph of Fetch, which commands your pet to fetch loot from a nearby corpse. This way the hunters of the world can focus full-time on killing while our loyal companion dash around picking the pockets of the fallen and bringing in the spoils of war. The big news this patch is the overall reduction of the new and boosted hunter self-heals that Mists of Pandaria is bringing hunters. At the same time, MM is receiving a substantial focus regen boost.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: New hunter pets
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. If there's one thing that defines the hunter class, it's our smoldering good looks. But just behind the irresistable allure of our sculpted flesh, the defining aspect of the hunter class is our pets. There is nothing hunters love more than our pets, and the most common questions hunters ask about Mists of Pandaria are about our pets. What will the new pets be? What are their special abilities? Will we get more stable slots (because the extra 20 we got last expansion are already full)? And of course, what about spirit beasts? Happily, we're far enough into the beta process that we can begin answering some of the questions about new hunter pets. Join me after the cut for the rundown of the new tameable pet types now available and what their new abilities are.
Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification inspiration
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. We're going to take a break from the tumult of Mists of Pandaria beta news and give some attention to one of the most popular end-of-expansion doldrums activities: preparing the new badass look that you'll be wearing into pandaland. Transmogrification has become an immensely popular subject in WoW. WoW Insider has a transmog resource list for general transmogrification information, and Tabana has a far more hunter-specific and extensive hunter transmogrification resources compilation over at the WHH that collects all the hunter transmog info from across the web. Today, we're going to take a look at some of the awesome transmog looks that hunters have put together, complete with where to get the gear you need to grab the look for yourself.
