So Blizzard has started to talk about patch 3.3. Here’s what we have so far for hunter info:
Beast Mastery
- Mend Pet, Scare Beast had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.
- Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.
Marksmanship
- Silencing Shot additional tooltip text – Non-player victim spellcasting is also interrupted for 3 sec.
- Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Serpent Sting, Volley, Hunter’s Mark had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.
Survival
- Explosive Trap now burns all enemies for [ Ranged AP + 900 ] additional Fire damage over 20 sec. (Up from 900)
- Point of No Escape now increases the critical strike chance of all of your attacks on targets affected by your Frost Trap, Freezing Trap and Freezing Arrow. (Old – “Increases the critical strike chance of all attacks”)
- Misdirection redesigned – The current party or raid member targeted will received the threat caused by your next damaging attack and all actions taken for 4 sec afterwards.
- Lock and Load now has a 22 sec cooldown. (Down from 30 sec)
Pets
- Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
So far the news isn’t particularly exciting on the hunter front. A handful of minor changes is about it so far.
The avoidance change is nice to see; however, I have to say that my pet has never really had problems surviving aoes with the 75% avoidance. The problem comes from raid damage that’s really an aoe but instead applies a dot or tracks as direct damage.
I kinda don’t care about the misdirection change, though I have to concede that it could increase initial threat on the tank in 25-mans.
Mostly, however, I’m disappointed not to see any reference to all hunter stats transferring to pets. That’s what I was really looking forward to. However, this is just the first PTR build, and there’s lots of unfinished stuff (I’m particularly a fan of one of the reagents for the new crafted gear, “Icecrown Thing of Crafting Things”).
So we can still have hope!
I know I don’t post here a lot. I mainly just lurk and take all the advice you guys give out..
I Really like the misdirection change. even in our 10 mans we sometimes have 2 or 3 hunters all trying to MD to the same tank. It’s not a huge deal as we can mitigate aggro other ways but I tend to get a little disheveled when I see “a more powerful spell is in affect”.
I am left to wonder now about a run with 8 hunters, a tank and a healer keeping the tank up
I dont know about the MD change, butt for soloing and tanking multiple adds, combined with a volley would be very intresting.
I think that MD change would be sweet soloing. I’m about to give Remus (my wolf) a ton of threat… but, raid, not sure. We’ll have to see I guess. I usually use my explosive shot with MD, allowing another hunter to hit theirs pretty much right after (another hunter and I in raid work in conjunction very well that way). We usually end up giving the tank about 20k threat, like right away. If we’ve got to wait for 4 actions?! It might not be as sweet.
You don’t have to wait 4 actions or 4 seconds. The way MD will work is once cast for the following 4 seconds, all threat is redirected to the tank. It can also be stacked, so that at the start of the pull even the terribad tps DK tanks will be WAAAY up the charts with 3 or so hunters in the group. It’s a fantastic change that will allow me to cast MD, pop silence shot, serpent sting, Chimera, maybe get a few sting crits along the way, and maybe even an Arcane or Aimed shot all on the tank. No more will MD be consumed by your Auto attacks, thus letting the hunter pull aggro on their second button press. And no longer will I have to MD, shoot, FD, then get into my rotation because auto-shot ate up my MD. Now if they would only take it off the GCD I’d be in love, but that’ll never happen.
Bah, wtb edit button. Also, the way it reads, and we’ll have to confirm on the ptr, but the 4 seconds of threat transfer appears to not start till the first shot is fired. A well timed hunter may even be able to stack two md’s at the pull for a total of 8 seconds of pure dps with zero threat!
Yeah exactly, the 4 second countdown doesn’t appear to start until the first threat producing action. At least, as it is currently worded.
I’m not sure what’s not to absolutely love about that change; it’s better in every way, no?
Also, @Fawatam…
I used to be that terribad DK tank on my alt when I was stubbornly staying Unholy for tanking. Frost really does help frontload DK threat, especially on multiple MoBs. As Unholy, it took 3 casts and GCDs to get any threat on a group.
I like the MD change. Like Thundar said this makes volley part of the picture which is awesome. I think this will be good in 10 mans and even 5 mans with only one hunter. I bet I can put out more threat in four seconds than in three shots.
The buff to explosive trap is mostly useless, but still cool I guess. Instead of 900 damage over 20 seconds you’re looking at 6000 damage over 20 seconds. Am I reading that wrong? WTB Explosive Trap Arrow!
And I agree. I’m very disappointed in the lack of mention surrounding pet stat changes. I have been drooling over that thought for a while.
I have to join the others in disagreeing about misdirect. In my guild, we typically have 3 or 4 hunters along on 25-mans. Even in a worst-case misdirect (4 seconds starts immediately and misdirect is still on the GCD), you can get off an explosive shot and a couple auto shots in that 4 seconds. When multiple hunters can all stack on the same tank, that means a MONSTER threat boost for the tank right at the pull.
The practical application is that raids don’t have to hold DPS while the tank builds threat anymore. The tank gets 3-4 hunters worth of threat in the first 5 seconds of the fight, plus his own. No single player is going to out-threat the tank at that point.
Let’s say your raid was holding DPS for 5 seconds at the beginning of boss fights, and your raid can do 100k DPS. That’s half a million additional damage you can do to a boss before it enrages. For some guilds, that’s the difference between a kill and a wipe, all thanks to us hunters.
Oh yeah, and I didn’t even think about the fact that the new misdirect would work for Volley based on the info so far. Coordinated hunters as AoE crowd control is a brand new tool in the raiding game. Nobody else can do that.
The MD change is immense, I fail to see how you cannot think it is a major improvement.
I guess I’m not excited about the MD change because I don’t really have threat problems.
MD Change: Multi-Shot + Volley on trash = Happy PUG. PUG PUG PUG. This change will not affect guild and raid groups but come on, everyone PUGs once in awhile. This is going to make us much more valuable in PUGs with undergeared tanks. It will also make pet tanks more viable! This may be in response to the decreasing population of Rogues, particularly PvE Rogues. Tricks of the Trade is still far and away superior, after all.
Intimidation Change: Nice tweak from a PvP standpoint; there have been times when I’ve cast Intimidation only to have my pet CC’d. Otherwise not a major mechanical difference, as far as I can tell.
Point of No Escape: Is this just a tooltip change, or did it really allow every raid member increased crit?
Avoidance Change: Huge PvP nerf; I may need to put points back into Revive Pet for PvP, now, or just finally give up and go full Survival.That Plainstrider has been looking at me for awhile, after all.
I believe I read that the Hunter Stats transferring to the pet was slated for Cataclysm, but have no reference to back up this belief.
Darn, Was still holding out hope for them buffing BM back up or giving MM that extra boost to fully match SV.
I wanna raid with my exotics again, no fun having them sit in the stables. They are getting lonely.
I actually like that people aren’t raiding with exotic pets. They’re cool to have but they annoy the crap out of me in big groups because:
A) They’re bigger and obscure my gnome buddies. It’s just annoying
B) They’re loud when they walk. It’s also annoying
Back to the MD change: I’m not sure why this wouldn’t still be great even if you don’t have threat problems? I don’t care how nasty your tank is you still need to wait to let them get aggro at least once in a while. Plus.. in the Ony fight you have to wait for the tanks to round up all the whelps. Don’t worry about it: Me and my other Hunter buddy will do it for you!
Meh. Wake me when there’s pet stats. Although I’m not entirely displeased with essentially no big changes. It’s refreshing to go for a while without having to rearrange the theorycrafting for the class.
saw the new weapon pics from mmo-champ, i gotta say the gun models from 3.3 look absolutely fugly. being a dwarf hunter, i cried a little inside.
There is nothing not to like about the new Misdirection. If you do not currently have threat issues, nothing will change, but if you do the new ability is fantastic.
Bozanimal’s observations that it will be primarily beneficial in a PUG are very accurate. With your regular raid you’ve probably got a solid tank and threat is all managed and all is well, but in a PUG you never know what your MT is going to be able to handle so this new Misdirection is a massive boon here.
I rarely use MD with my regular raid, usually only to help focus spread out mobs onto the tank, but in PUGs I use it constantly and sometimes with raid 5 mans (depending on who I’ve managed to rope into tanking).
Have to say, from what I am reading, I think the changes to MD look brilliant. I can currently out aggro our tank without even thinking about it, so being bale to dump so much more aggro is going to make life much easier. Also, when raiding, the guild I am in does have quite a few hunters, so not having to cycle MD between is also going to be a huge bonus as well.
I also wish that Blizz would sort BM out and make it raid viable again. Currently running SV with a wolf. I want to go back to BM with Gondria!
First of all; where does the patch notes say anything about MD being able to be stacked on a target?
Secondly; my biggest use of the new change, considering we will only get 2 GCDs in before the effect runs out, will be on something like the Onyxia whelps. I’m pulling 8k on the fight because I’m getting up to 13k on those many high-hp whelps. Imagine if we could MD -> Volley on that fight? I’ve found that it takes about 2 applications of Volley along with normal raid dps to down them, and one application (even the first) will not pull aggro off a tank. This allows me, as a Hunter, to do my job even more efficiently!
But I see nothing saying about MD being stackable?
-Daddydwarf (Stonemaul)
Daddyodwarf:
Hunters
* Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
Thanks! Much appreciated. Even better!
Looks like MD will be back in fashion if you have a terrible tank, i MD alot anyway just incase it always makes good practice and sets a good example for the up coming hunters in our guild but now being able to stack it will make things easier to.
Daddyodwarf:
hunters should not be using volley to bump up their dps on the onyxia encounter, ranged dps needs to stay on onyxia to get through phase 2 as quickly as possible
Well, it all depends on your strategy. I’ve done ony with a group where the ranged were in charge of all whelps and ony in p2 because there wasn’t enough melee dps to handle the guardians and have any time left over.
The important thing is to do the job the RL has assigned you. Ony is a *horrible* test of dps — too much going on to skew the numbers.
Ghostcrawler feedback on Avoidance changes:
It is likely we will just replace the hunter pet Avoidance talent with one that increases pet dps. It is too situational to have as a talent now. Hunter pets will just take 90% less damage from creature AE the same as other pets do (meaning “for free”). We offer that avoidance as recognition that Fluffy doesn’t have the AI to get out of the fire on boss fights and likes to go in straight lines between you and a target, even if that means crossing fire.
Ninety percent avoidance should be enough to survive almost all boss AE attacks for a second or two — enough to get a heal or move your wolf (or sporebat). It isn’t intended to let your pet just ignore AE completely and stand in void zones. If you’re a pet class, you are going to have to manage the pet a little in dungeons and raids.
It was never our intent that pets just shrug off AE in PvP situations. In fact, it’s a little goofy if you think about it. We just technically couldn’t distinguish between creature and player AE before. We only go to that distinction as a last resort, since we like for PvP and PvE to work similarly. However we thought it was necessary in this case, since the complexity of boss encounters just doesn’t always leave pets with a way to avoid the AE damage. We think PvP AE damage often is avoidable (dude isn’t literally Bladestorming the entire arena at once), but we still understand that this is a PvP nerf to pets and we may buff them in other ways to compensate.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20122258460&pageNo=1&sid=1#1