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Hunter glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for hunters. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Hunters have one new minor glyph that won't appear automatically anywhere, Glyph of Marking. Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Dazzled Prey becomes Animal Bond Arcane Shot becomes Camouflage Concussive Shot becomes Distracting Shot Bestial Wrath becomes Endless Wrath Immolation Trap becomes Explosive Trap Wyvern Sting becomes Icy Solace Trap Launcher becomes Marked For Death Kill Command becomes Mend Pet Silencing Shot becomes No Escape Rapid Fire becomes Pathfinding Steady Shot becomes Scattering Explosive Shot becomes Tranquilizing Shot Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Aimed Shot becomes Aspects Raptor Strikes becomes Aspect of the Beast Kill Shot becomes Aspect of the Cheetah Feign Death becomes Fireworks Scare Beast becomes Stampede Serpent Sting becomes Tame Beast It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Improving the character selection screen
I really like this post over at Mend Pet -- after five years in a game's life, no part of the WoW interface should be remiss from getting the occasional update, and they mention possibly the only part of the game (even the login screen's been updated quite a few times) that's been the same since day one, the character selection screen. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with it, as you can choose your character and get into the game. But everything can be better, no?
A new animation for Feed Pet
Well I grabbed my own video of the new Feed Pet animation, but it turns out that Lougara on YouTube did it much better, so that's their video you can watch above. Yes, as hunters everywhere have noticed, Blizzard has added a brand new animation to the feeding of a hunter pet -- you can actually see your hunter toss a piece of grub to the pet, who then catches it and noms away.It would be cool to see it go a little further -- maybe have the pet claw and chew away at it for a moment -- but then again with so many different types of pets out there, it's probably tough for Blizzard to make them all look good. Still, it's a nice little touch for immersion, and it has the added bonus of showing other players when you're tossing food to your pet as well. Of course, with Bloodthirsty as a pet talent or the Glyph of Mend Pet going, you may not even need to feed your pet any more, but if you do, that's what you'll see.
Last week to join Mend Pet's SPCA charity drive
The last time we posted about Brajana and her SPCA charity drive over on Mend Pet, she'd only just started it and was revving up to get a nice list of prizes going. Nowadays, she's got a great list of prizes (including a free FigurePets set, a few good loot cards, some custom-made character artwork, and even a custom-designed UI -- you can make yours look just like Turpster's if you want), and she's rolling into the last few days of the drive. It all ends on Friday, July 31st, so if you haven't gotten your donation in to the SPCA International yet (the money will go to volunteer programs, including animal shelters all of the world, and help out with food, shelter, and vaccination costs), do so right away. And make sure to follow the instructions on Brajana's site -- for every donation you make, no matter how big or small, you'll get two chances to pick up some of that great loot, and you'll be helping out real-life pets all over the world.It's a great way to help out a worthy cause, give some back to the Warcraft community and the hard work that bloggers like Brajana do, and maybe even win some free stuff. Remember, she's asking for your donation before Friday, July 31st, so head over there and get it in as soon as possible.
Mend Pet sponsors an SPCA charity donation drive
Brajana at Mend Pet has kicked off a month-long donation drive and giveaway to support the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She says that since Blizzard has decided to finally give out some more stable slots to Hunters back in patch 3.0.2, what better way to celebrate than by helping some real-life animals. She has a link on her blog for you to give as little or as much as you'd like to support the SPCA and their cause, and if you choose to put the donation "in honor of" Mend Pet (just follow the instructions on her post), she'll enter you in a drawing to win some prizes. What prizes, you ask? Apparently those are still being worked out, but we're sure they'll be great. And it's a great cause anyway -- do you really need prizes to show some pet shelter love?If you do, just hang on -- the donation drive lasts through the 31st of this month, so Brajana has some time to get everything together, and even if you donate now, you'll still be entered for sure. It's always awesome to see the WoW community put its size and power to good use, and this is definitely a worthy cause to support.
The Daily Quest: There is nothing Nobel about Noblegarden
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.Everyone has something to say about this lovely little world event going on, and we've selected some of the best blog entries from around the net for you to enjoy today: Mend Pet has some good egg spots for Horde. BlizzPlanet has a nice Noblegarden guide. Be sure to check out ours too. Wobin writes over at WoW LJ about a great add-on to get your attention when finding an egg. Biker Bunny. And for the non-noblegarden related post today, Matticus knows why you're Frustrated by Ulduar. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Hunter solos Utgarde Keep
Tribunalx sent us this great video about something that's fallen out of fashion lately: Hunter soloing. Back in the day, when Mend Pet was still affected by plus healing (back when there was plus healing), Hunters would routinely take down Azuregos by themselves, but they've since had to sit on the sidelines while other classes stepped into the solo arena. But now, with Mend Pet and Bestial Wrath glyphs, a Hunter stacking Stamina in PvP gear, the new version of Deterrence, and pets with their own Tenacity talents, Hunter soloing is possible yet again.As Tribunalx says in the video, it's not really easy, and there's a lot you have to keep track of (and Hunters definitely aren't the only class that can do this -- there's probably a Paladin soloing UK and/or a Death Knight out there as well). But it is definitely possible, as you can see above. Maybe we're experiencing a renaissance of Hunter solo possibilities -- next up, The Nexus? Good luck with the Ormorok gauntlet.
Neutral Auction houses (and putting them in Northrend)
You've probably heard, by now, the reason why there are no auction houses (or class trainers) in Dalaran or Shattrath. Blizzard doesn't want the old world towns (like Ironforge and Orgrimmar) to become ghost towns. Ghost towns like, for example, Shattrath -- have you been there lately? But as Gnomeaggedon pointed out last week, there's another option: neutral Auction houses.We haven't talked about the Neutral Auction houses in the game for a long time -- they exist only in Winterspring, Booty Bay, and Tanaris, and pretty much have only served the purpose of trading items back and forth between the two factions (or scamming between them). But Gnomeaggedon has a new idea: why not reintroduce them to the newer cities, and create another option for people rather than having to go all the way back to the old world (and waste a hearthstone cooldown)? Not only would you bring people back to the Neutral Auction houses (they really are empty right now), but you'd bring the auction house back to the people, at a slightly higher cost.I like it, and so does Mend Pet, though she sees a few issues: even with the higher cost, you might still get people forgetting about the normal Auction houses and then you've just switched where the problem is (not to mention that people leveling wouldn't see anyone in the big cities when they went). And Dalaran is laggy and crowded as it is -- creating another mess of characters won't help. And finally, this is a solution without a real problem: we're getting the Hearthstone cooldown lowered anyway, so it's not that big deal to go back home occasionally (or just use a bank alt). Still, the Neutral houses are just sort of sitting there. Giving us more access to them might be worth it.
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:
Pets Scaling in Wrath: Hit percentage is in, resilience and xp bonuses are out
A while back, class designer Koraa told Warlocks that their pets would be getting their master's hit percentage. Today, he confirmed the same for Hunter pets. This should definitely be a godsend for raid level DPSers of both classes. Conventional wisdom is that reaching your personal hit cap is pretty much the single best way to increase your personal DPS total, and being able to do the same for pets should only provide a noticable increase to DPS, as well as keep any special buffs or debuffs said pets apply coming in with a minimum of interruption. Unfortunately, something else Koraa said on the same post is a little less exciting -- resilience is nowhere on the table for being shared. They believe that they currently have the right amount of survivability for pets. In a group situation, you or your group should be healing the pet, and in Arena play, any time spent killing the pet provides a benefit in the form "crowd control" while the DPS is focus firing your pet. Unfortunately, as the player of a level 70 Hunter and Warlock who have both seen extensive 2v2 Arena play, I'm not sure it's that simple.
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.
Scattered Shots: Levels 10-20 and the art of staying smart
Scatered Shots is for da inteligent peepul who knows what hunters is good at.We started off this column talking about the very first levels you go through as a hunter, from one to ten, and from there we got off onto other topics, such as getting your first pet, controlling it well, managing your threat, using crowd control, and other things all hunters must learn as we level up. But we talked about all these things in the abstract, not in the context of actually leveling up, the specific abilities you'll get, and how that'll change the way you play.So today I'll start up the leveling train again, from levels 10 to 20, and we'll have a closer look at how these general ideas fit in to that period of your hunting career. Except for the sheer time investment involved, the hardest part of hunter leveling is already over once you reach level 10 and get your pet, and that makes this the most dangerous time for a hunter, when we are most likely to fall into lazy hunting habits and neglect the opportunity for complexity that shows up later on. Whereas before you had to work hard to stay out of your enemy's melee range, now it's a simple three-step process: Send in your pet for the attack. Shoot. Profit. It is so incredibly simple that idiots can do it. In fact, idiots do do it, and therein lies the problem. We have to do something while leveling to keep our complex hunter brain synapses firing fast don't we? Just what can you do with all the abilities you get at this stage?
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.
