Blue posts tell us that they’ll be doing a series of class change preview articles over the next several days. Hunters are scheduled for April 9th (just 3 days away!)
We’re in the last cluster of classes to get their info (well, not counting paladins, who have to endure the excruciating wait until the 16th — but who counts paladins anyway?), but at least the wait isn’t long. We can probably sneak a peek at some of the earlier classes to get an idea of the kind of information they’ll be giving out.
We already know our mana is going away (and a bit about how that will work), our ammo will be non-consumable, and we know what’s happening to our stats. So what are we going to learn on Friday?
They tell us that we’ll learn what our passive Mastery bonuses are for all three trees, and we’ll get to learn all the new spells currently planned. This is big news!
What else might we see? Here’s my best guess:
- What they’re doing with our ammo
- Some hunter design philosophy
- How some of our talents are changing, and how some of the dull (or useless) ones are going away.
- Some tidbits on how much focus certain shots might cost, as well as possibly more detail into how our focus regen will work with haste and stuff.
Who knows though — maybe it’ll be crazy amounts of info. Maybe it’ll just be another couple of dribbles and tidbits. Either way mastery bonuses and new spells is good stuff, and I’m sitting on the edge of my seat waiting!
What hunter cataclysm info are you looking forward to hearing about?
*Oooh — also, I finally caved and signed up for Twitter. I’m FrostheimWHU (Frostheim was taken, annoyingly). So I can apparently now Tweet. Though I have no idea what I would tweet about – I’m told it will become apparent.
If they’re removing some of the burst (30-60 costing shots on a 100 pool with 6/sec regen) then we need to be viable while moving like melee.
So my hope is freedom of movement: autoshooting doesnt stop while moving, can move while using steady shot and such.
That is probably a small step into keeping us viable on movement fights/pvp. Cause on 6/sec regeneration it would else mean that we get to fire once per 10 sec. Not exactly my definition of “fun’.
In addition, it would be nice to see that stealth skill from wotlk brought back. They’re containing burst trough limited focus(generation) so some form of stealth or high damage opener like ambush should be in order.
I’m actually a little sad to see the end of intellect as a ‘hunter stat’; I rather liked having a character who was quite rightly rated with a fair bit of intellect, as opposed to being in dipshit’s corner with the warriors, rogues, and death knights…
Myr — keep in mind the preview numbers of 6/sec also jumped up to 12/sec while using steady shot. And haste will increase the rate of focus regen, and we’ll probably have some talents that let us proc free shots or a bit of haste.
And of course those were some initial numbers from months back — I suspect we’ll see it adjusted as needed to keep our numbers okay, though the fear of not having focus to shoot on the run is one that I share.
Thats kinda my point frost.. steady requires us (in the current form anyway) to stand still, means you’re shafted on movement.
Being pvp or pve, that would just hurt one of the key hunter aspects: being free to move arround as if we’re melee dps as it barely effects our dps at the moment.
Well if steady require us to stand still it will mean we will regenerate focus slower in fights where we have to move. BUT, they also say they are removing crit rate so our crit will be lower. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a connection there. Lets say every time we crit we will regenerate 20 focus.
Just a thought
I can’t decide if I am looking forward to the announcement or scared of the possible demise of my favorite class, blizz just doesn’t lend itself to giving me alot of faith from past experience
You should just follow a bunch of hunters, and respond to them when you have something to say. That’s how I do twitter, at any rate. Or, you know, you could tell us all when you’re heading to lunch, and what you are having when you get there. You know, the important stuff!
I am actually very concerned with the expansion, especially with how the phazing will work and how it will affect anyone trying to help a lower toon in your guild. I mean if not everyone gets the expansion you will not be able to even see each other, and I know that right now there are problems with the phazing when in raids when trying to summon members do to phazing.
I am really looking forward to the info being released. I must admit however that I am somewhat worried about becoming a ranged rogue. I know I hated playing a rogue because it always seemed like I was stuck waiting on focus and stuck doing nothing. I like mana, I can control my usage and can keep pew pewing along without having to wait for it to recharge like focus will.
I have a feeling that, at least at the beginning, focus will destroy hunters. Then we will be stuck waiting 3 months for them to fix it so we become useful again.
I read this last night a couple minutes after they posted it and I am excited. Bonus points to them since Shaman are first and my primary alt is a resto shaman.
Hopefully we can walk away from this preview with a more solid idea of what our favorite class is becoming and what changes we will need to start taking into consideration. I for one, am always excited for change as long as it does not fundamentally alter the heart of our class. I am really most interested in seeing that moving to focus wont take us back to a set rotation, I really prefer the priority system as it makes the class a tad more involved and makes me feel like I am actually affecting my dps directly.
Unfortunately that wont be something we can know until Beta.
p.s. Paly’s can rot. I know some good ones (heck 20% of my guild is prot palys alone) but for the most part I have never seen a more whiny, self interested group of people… I think maybe Belfs. Coincidence?
p.p.s. For tips on using twitter, I refer you to the great John Gabriel;
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/
Looking forward to the new exotic pets to tame! Also if we only ever need to buy ammo once what will happen to the stack of one scam on AH?
You can tweet everytime Euripides betrays you. How many times your pets aren’t healed. What beers you are drinking in game. The armor pen cap number. All your loots and blow by blow boss battles. The possibilities are endless.
Ammo, might be my single biggest interest, and going back to an earlier post by Frost on the subject, the possibility of situational ammo makes me giddy. Of course it likley will not happen, but just imagine the possibilites. One for DoT’s, one for burst, one for crit, heck perhaps even one for HoT’s. The possibilites are endless, and interesting. Perhaps we’ll all be leveling up engineering come Cata.
I’m a twitter shitter! LMAO! I love Penny Arcade.
I too am looking forward to the focus change, for lore reasons, it just makes sense. However I am also terrified off the “Nerf Bat.” Situational ammo would be nice, however I suspect Blizzards change to ammo is only going to effect us engineers; ie: they will be removing the only way I have to make money. /sigh
Nerf bat is something you definitly dont have to be afraid for. With such an overhaul, blizz will be forced to make hunters ‘op’ so they can get along untill they’ve relearned their class. Else we’ll constantly be behind and get ignored trough cata.
Kinda like the dk: start OP to make sure people try it out and start playing, wether themselfs on trough grouping, then slowly nerf them to the level of the rest.
You’re probably right Myr, but I don’t put anything past the Bliz.
I’m really looking forward to the new talent calculators…theorycrafting win!
Bwahahaha, Twitter. Have fun with that.
“I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
While it’s fun to speculate, I don’t think we have enough info to make anything but wild guesses.
The timing is perfect for WHU. Our little Lv10 Rampage on Icecrown will be full of discussion of the changes. Running in a guild doing something silly with 500 other hunters while talking about our future sounds amusing.
I’ve been looking forward to the change for a while. Sure I fear mistakes but Blizzard is getting better at this. Hopefully we don’t become the 2.0 gods that we were before TBC.
I’m really looking forward to knowing more about the pet changes. I keep hearing rumors, haven’t found any straight up “they’re doing THIS” pages though.
I’m the most excited about learning about the ammo and the trees. I think there is a lot of potential for drastically improving the “fun of playing what you want” (like GC said it) that can be done with both of those revamps.
Here’s a preview at our newest and dumbest rotation:
KS, SS, SS, SS, KS, SS, SS, SS……. etc
Just saying, working on a project on Robert Frost for college and saying Frost so often brought me back to comment.
Frankly, I am worried about the loss of mana and the loss of interchangeable ammo. the ammunition aspect makes sense. If a gun or *gasp* bow is fired, SOMETHING has to hit the enemy, and it only makes sense to have us use ammunition.
For the mana, I will take what is given to me in terms of the way to fire my gun, as i must, but perhaps this switch could just be for Bm spec? It would make sense to have the more Feral oriented tree using the same format as other kitties
was just looking at the shaman changes and found this, wonder if we could get this for hunters too.
Spiritwalker’s Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks.
I really hope that they DON’T do something like situational ammo…..imagine having to switch ammo types between phases in boss fights….or worse again……having to dps the boss with one sort of ammo and then switching to another when ads spawn….UGH
Of course if ammo becomes “non-consumable” it’s basically just another “shot” on an action bar…and thereby just another part of your “rotation” ……physical damage for this sort of ad…magic damage for that sort of ad………yawn.
well provided it dosen’t cost a global cool down, I see no problem with swaping out ammo…of course, that’s a lot of key bindings.
Something I thought which was really interesting. It was posted about the warlocks, but could be hinting towards something they might do with hunters. We all know the 2t9 bonus is extremely strong. So strong it could be kept well into Cataclysm. But if they make the same change they made to warlock to hunters, we could see some pretty interesting things with Serpent Sting, Volley, Black arrow, explosive shot, even Viper sting. What do you guys think?
•All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT’s duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer “clip” the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.
As Far as what i am interested in seeing in the info release. All the talents changes and shots and focus. mastery, ect.ect. that will come. I want to know if they are doing anything about rare pets and if they will actually raise there damage and make them more of a sought after pet, not just for looks. I am looking forward to knowing if Blizz will let us hunters actually train mounts as well as pets. I have heard rumors about it and i have been wanting that ability since WotLK. Only time will tell, till then i am with you Frost. Sitting on the edge of my seat.
Besides that, how about the enhancement shaman skill. Casting while attacking/moving could be turned into attacking while moving for us, maybe even as core change rather then skill based.
Also, doubt we get the crit/haste change for our stings. If so, chimera shot will be altered or the scaling will become to good.
Given that all of the classes we’ve seen with dots, can have their dots crit and benefit from haste, I think it’s a fair bet that ours will as well.
The real question we need answered is how will steady shot function? Given prior statements about haste allowing us to do more, haste will have to enable us to use steady more often to allow us to recover more focus which in turn allows us to do more stuff.
With that in mind will we be casting more steady shots than we currently are or less? IE: will steady be on a cool down (say 5 seconds at base) and reward a significant amount of focus each time it’s used, or will it only be limited by the global cool down and give a small amount of focus per use?
The former requires that haste affects the cool down of abilities, the later requires that haste affects the global cool down.
Just out, crit/haste on stings is confirmed (for now anyway ^^). I know its based on the warrior info, but would be very surprised if ‘all dots’ doesnt include stings:
“Almost all dots will crit. The exception will be things like Deep Wounds and Ignite because those are already the product of a crit. Rend will crit.
We are really striving for scaling parity for the various specs and classes. This means that stats like haste and crit can’t be awesome for some characters and terrible for others. Most abilities need to benefit from haste and crit.”