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Ghostcrawler adds to Hunter Q&A
As promised, there's a new version of the Hunter class Q&A up on the official forums. Very little has changed from the previous version, actually, but they did add the following question: Q: Do we have plans to increase the number of stable slots available to hunters? A:Obviously we increased it a lot in Wrath of the Lich King. We want to try and keep the pet as some kind of decision - they aren't supposed to be like mounts or titles where you just collect as many as you want. We expanded the size so that players could have say a Tenacity pet for soloing and a Ferocity pet for raiding, but we don't want every hunter to have every family available here. Now one potential problem are the Spirit Beasts, which are collected by hunters and not trivial to replace. We have also discussed expanding the Spirit Beast concept to have rare skins of other pet families (that otherwise don't convey a combat bonus). If we do that, we'd probably have to expand the stable slots. We've also considered a model where the hunter doesn't even need a stable and can work more like a warlock where they can just summon their pets whenever they want - with the remote stable ability from the dual-spec feature, we're pretty close to that already. If we went this route then maybe the stable could just become pet storage in the same way your bank has all those Invader's Scourgestones and Zul'Gurub bijous that you don't use often but can't bear to part with. That's all we can see that's changed with the Q&A.
BigRedKitty: Hunter-pets in 3.0.2
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. From: The Big Bossman at WoW Insider To: The WoW Insider peons Subject: Get to work! Write a post on each of your class's trees, or you're fired. Fired with extreme prejudice! Love, Dan O., aka The Punisher ... /gulp Holy crap, we're in trouble now. Why? Because not only do we have to write about Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival, but we've now we've got pet talent trees too: Tenacity, Cunning, and Ferocity! Six talent trees, are you kidding us? This is going to take a while. And we should probably start from the beginning.
Scattered Shots: Pet talent trees in the Wrath Beta
Welcome to another edition of Scattered Shots, the other WoW Insider weekly Hunter column. Daniel Whitcomb is your guest host again this week. So, we theorized about talented pets a bit quite a few installments of Scattered Shots ago, but now we have the actual trees live and testable on the Wrath Beta, and they seem to be firming up nicely. There's a few promised changes yet to come, such as the removal or lowering of focus costs on many major abilities and talents, and it's still very possible that Blizzard may make changes here and there before live, but I think they're solid enough at this point that we can look at each tree and make some solid predictions about how people will use them and how various talent builds might look.
More stable slots now available on Wrath Beta
You may recall a few days back that we told you about new stable slots coming with Wrath of the Lich King. It looks like Blizzard wasn't just whistling dixie, because they're in. When I was switching from my level 65 devilsaur to my beefier level 70 dire raven for a Nexus run over on the Beta server, I noticed that the stable boy was offering me two more stable slots! The stables slots costs 50 gold for the third one, and 150 gold for the fourth one, giving you a total of 4 slots. This means you have room for one pet from each talent tree, plus a spot for a specialized pet (such as a scorpid for PvP) or an exotic pet (and yes, devilsaurs will be exotic only) or two. Combine this with the abolishing of the need to tame pets simply to learn skills and auto leveling, and it continues to look like pet management should be easier, funner, and more efficient in Wrath.
New stable slots in Wrath? Updated
One of the biggest challenges that hunters face is the issue of only having three available stable slots. With all of the diverse pet choices, and Fluffy the pink Barrens raptor hogging all that space, most hunters would agree that another stable slot or seven would be handy. In fact, with all of the upcoming tameable Wrath pets, not to mention exotics, the stable situation is looking pretty painful. In a recent forum thread, Ghostcrawler hints that Wrath might bring additional slots, going against what Blizzard has said in the past. As a response to posters asking for an expanded stable, the CM responds with "okay." I can't express how excited I am about the possibility of one or more stable slots. Could this tie into the Achievement system? Will I be allowed to collect and house pets? Will we see a special "exotic" slot or slots? What do you think?Update: Ghostcrawler has confirmed that we will indeed be getting two new stable slots. In fact, Ghost points out that further testing may lead to the stables being integrated into the UI the way non-combat pets and mounts will be. In other words, summoning all pets would become spells, allowing the hunter to call whichever pet he or she wishes, without visiting a stable.
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.
