- Iceblade Arrow has been added to the game – Creates Iceblade Arrow x 1000. / Reagents: Crystallized Shadow x 2
- Shatter Rounds has been added to the game – Creates Shatter Rounds x 1000. / Reagents: Crystallized Earth x 2
The new ammo adds 91.5 dps, up 30 dps from the current engineering ammo.
So this looks to me like Blizz is completely abandoning the idea of ditching consumable ammo until Cataclysm. At first they tried the temporary stall of boosting the dps on our ranged weapons to compensate for our lack of scaling while they worked on non-consumable ammo idea, and now it looks like they’re just providing new ammo after all 
On the bright side, the reagents for this ammo is super cheap (especially for bullets!) so while the ammo is much better, the cost may actually be lower!
I do find it interesting that this is engineering crafted ammo, rather than vendor ammo available with the ICC faction. While it’s possible the schematic will be a drop or require rep it will still be available to everyone on the AH.
Previously Blizzard has made an effort to limit the highest ammo to hunters that were at the level of content progression — basically the ammo is part of our scaling and is needed to keep pace with higher end gear (where hunters start to fall behind). However this makes it look like every hunter will have access to it, even if they’re in all blues – which is a significant boost for lower-end hunters.
[Update: comments report something I missed: the ammo required rep of honored with Ashen Verdict -- that makes a lot more sense now!]
I’m content with this change. Should give all hunters a nice and easy DPS boost, but your probably on the right track with the pattern being a drop or rep reward (which means that at first the ammo will be expensive for those not in guilds with the pattern).
FINALY some cheap(er) engineering ammo, and another good reason to swich to it but from what (I’m mining/skinning)
Hmm, I honestly doubt that the schematic will be a drop or a rep reward. My hunch is that they’ll make it available to everyone with 3.3 — either from trainer or a drop that anyone can get their hands on.
If they wanted the ammo to effectively be a part of the new gear tier, they’d either have gated it with rep, or given it a reagent that’s easy to obtain but only available in the new raid.
As it currently sits, I think you can buy it once Honored with an Icecrown faction. My issue with them, as an engineer, is that they currently sit as needing to be gnomish engineering for one and goblin for the other (gnomes get arrows, goblins get bullets). This would be the only profession where spec makes a different for high-end WotLK items.
It would make more sense from a progression standpoint to require reputation to use the bullets/arrows. Think about it: Why not just buff Mammoth Cutters and Saronite Razorheads? There must be some sort of “gateway” preventing use of these bullets/arrows unless a certain condition is met. Maybe they will only be usable in Icecrown Citadel, or once of a certain rep with a particular faction, or after a particular achievement has been made or questline completed. Otherwise they’re straight-up buffing every Hunter.
That might be it, too. I’m interested to hear thoughts.
Per the tooltip it requires Honored Rep with AV: see below and Gnomish makes the Arrows and the Goblins make the bullets.
Plans: Shatter Rounds
Binds when picked up
Requires Engineering (450)
Requires Goblin Engineer
Requires The Ashen Verdict – Honored
Teaches you how to create Shatter Rounds.
Shatter Rounds
Bullet
Projectile
Adds 91.5 damage per second
Requires Level 80
Requires Crystallized Earth (2)
Personally, I find this disappointing. There are so many aspects of the game that can be justified by “it’s a magical world–it’s a game”. What’s wrong with saying ammo magically appears at the tip of every bow and gun and just shoots? I carry at least 10-12 stacks of ammo in my bags plus food for the pets. I also have to carry around my pvp set, extra food for my buffs, and all the standard equipment (trinkets, profession tools, etc.). Which means I’m left with 12-15 slots in my bags. Do other classes also face such bag space issues? Or is it just me?
I’m actually OK with this. I’m one of the “old farts” who thinks that ammo should be a consumable. To me it’s one of the things that “defines” a hunter. I’m lucky I guess, I mine and there are a couple of engineers in the guild so Mammoth Cutters are basically free for me. The new mats are so easy to get …I guess I’ll start stocking up on crystallized earth
I just chalk this all up to more advantages for engineers, though I’m not sure if the *massive* dps increased compared to the current engineering ammo warrants the whole being available to the masses. I’m all for it, obviously, but I could see where it’d be a point of contention.
Next thing you know the ammo/mats on the AH will be 10x the price today. Which will probably happen =[
The quick answer is that Mammoth Cutters and Saronite Razorheads become leveling ammo – would bet the new ones have a minimum level of 80. Back in BC, the engineered ammo was great – until you got access to the higher-end rep ammo.
Don’t care where the schematic starts, so long as both versions are available to all Engineers. I’ve been Goblin from the start, and strongly prefer the silence of bows. Arbitrary assignments should not prevent me from crafting my own ammo.
Here’s hoping they also give us new seaforium.
I saw it on ptr’s tonight, engineers buy it via badges from a vendor inside icc, 2 seperate recipes.
But they must be honoured (i think it was) with the icc faction before they can buy them.
Im sure the greedy will be charging an arm and a leg to make them and the prices of said mats will sky rockets on ah, ive started farming both already as when its becomes known to all the other nubs they will be camping elemental spots in wg etc to charge stupid prices for them.
Thankfully one of the other raiding hunters is an engineer so
I think you might find that the mats for these ammo’s are placeholders at the moment.
Allllrighty. Who wants to do the math and tell this lazy hunter how nice that +91.5 dps boost is gonna feel?
As a Gnomish engineer since…day 2 or 3 of the Engineering 1-450 grind, the bullets being available to gobbies only makes me sad
I hope this doesn’t stay. It’s a totally arbitrary binding that serves only to make them both harder to obtain. I haven’t used anything that required arrows since I upgraded from my Drake-Mounted Crossbow. I’m using the Rifled Blastershot Launcher from Ony 25, and it’s a sweet gun that I’ll probably be using well into ICC when 3.3 drops.
I really don’t want to give up my Gnomish X-ray goggles in order to make my own bullets =/
On the other hand, I’m remembering that our engineer bear tank is a goblin engineer…
Looks like I can keep my x-ray goodness
Regardless, I don’t see any reason for binding the ammo production capability to one specialization other than the one I mentioned above.
@Vael: it depends on your actual gear. For me, according to Zeherah’s DPS Analyzer, it would be some 160 DPS increase compared to Mammoth cutters (this is on level when this tool shows me that I should be pulling 7800DPS fully buffed on stationary 5 minutes long bossfight…)
this is pretty cool, tho im not to keen on having to switch engineering gnome/goblin everytime i get an upgraded ranged weapon.
on side note, has there been any more blue word about pet stat transfers? ive tried to keep up to date and noticed very little about hunters as of late so im curious if i missed something.
I found this over on http://huntsmanslodge.com/, so I don’t know how true it can be.
The one thing that’s rather unusual, is these items require either Gnomish or Goblin specializations. These two paths have been irrelevant for the most part since TBC, but it seems that Blizz may be moving back towards specialized professions heading into Cataclysm. To craft the arrows you have to be a Gnomish Engineer, and to craft the bullets you must be a Goblin Engineer.
Zoom, I play a warrior tank as well and they have even more space issues, depending on their level of dedication. Gear carried usually includes a full dps set, full tank set and a lot of offset pieces to create max health, max avoidance and max threat tank sets. I usually have 8-10 empty bag slots on raid night.
Being a non-engineer hunter, I’m a little pissed off at this news. it’s bad enough we’re the only class that has to expend gold to play the game. Now, to ‘fix’ the problem, they finally add more ammo that allows us to be assraped by AH jerks if we don’t have faction or a specific profession. It’s the same problem with mammoth cutters. wtf blizz. It’s a consumable that we HAVE to use.
Ashen verdict? Is this a new faction specific to ICC? I’ve been out of the WoW loop for a couple weeks (damn console games). Can this rep only be attained via raid progression or are there dailies that non-raiders can do to earn rep?
blizzard always say one thing and do another, ghostcrawler said in the hunter q&a that fire and poison arrows are a distinct possibility, as for fresh 80 hunters using better ammo with poor quality gear it makes no sense, i just hope its a thing where ull be able to buy em but need certain rep to use em jus like certain gems etc. im not happy with some of the ‘imp’ blizz are making to us especially the change from mana to energy, 100 energy over 19k mana is looking like we gonna do less shots until we oom (ooe) maybe thats why we’ll need new ammo to help our dps?
It says it’s an upgrade of 30dps
“The new ammo adds 91.5 dps, up 30 dps from the current engineering ammo.”
isn’t 67.5 (The current amo) to 91.5 a 24 point increase? xD
@ Zoom,
Why do you need 10 to 12 stacks of ammo? You will never go through 12 stacks in a night of progression. Why do you carry PvP gear with you 24/7…L2 use bank. I have my two 22 slot bags, 2 20 slot bags and the backpack. I carry enough consumables, including ammo, to raid for 5 hrs at a time and never have space issues. Your comment is outdated. I would agree with you if we were still in the land of the quiver, but we are not. Stop being such a pack rat.