Cataclysm Beta NDA Lifted – Brain Explosion Inc

Okay, MMO-Champion is reporting that the NDA for the Cataclysm alpha has been lifted, and they are reporting on all the current info in the game. Incidentally, the closed beta is now starting, though it may be a few days before all the invites go out. You can see the full MMO-C hunter coverage Here.

I have to say that through various awesome sources, I’ve known about everything here for a while, and it’s been all I could do to hold it in. This stuff is awesome. It blows away the class preview we got a few months back, I think you’ll agree. So here’s the giant rundown of what we now know. For the talent sections I’m only going to list new or changed talents, and I’ll try to note what the change was; however, I’m running off the top of my head here, on pure memory, and it’s late, late at night and I’m tired. So please drop a comment with anything significant that I missed.

Disclaimer: this is still the beta, and in fact this is the very start of the beta. Everything is subject to change, and probably lots of change. None of this is final. Remember, the beta is just now beginning.

Hunter Ability Changes (all specs)

• Stings and Venoms
  Serpent Sting will be our only “sting” and it will work just like it does now. In addition to Serpent Sting, we’ll have various “venoms” and only one venom can be up at a time. So you can have Serpent Sting up, and one venom of your choice.
  • Scorpid Venom Reduces the targets armor by 4% for 30 sec. Subsequent Steady Shot or Cobra Shots increase the effect by 4%, stacking up to 3 times. Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.
    30 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
  • Viper Venom Increases the casting time of all spells done by the enemy target by 30% for 30 sec. Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.
    30 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
  • Widow Venom A venemous shot that reduces the effectiveness of any healing taken by 25% for 30 sec. Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.
    30 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
• Camouflage
  You camouflage, causing you and your Pet to blend into your surroundings. After 3 sec., you will enter a camouflaged state for 1 min, making you untargetable and providing stealth while stationary. While camouflaged, you and your pet’s movement speed is reduced by 30%, but the damage done by your next attack is increased by 15%.
  You can lay traps while under the effect, but any damage done by you or your pet will cancel the effect. Cannot be cast while in combat.
  45 Focus, Instant, 1 min cooldown
• Aspect of the Fox
  The hunter takes on the aspects of a fox, increasing your focus regeneration by 20% and allows you to Auto-shot while moving.
  Instant, 1 sec cooldown
• Aspect of the Monkey/Dragonhawk
  It looks as though Dragonhawk is gone entirely. Aspect of the Monkey looks like it’s only available as a BM talent, and works completely, radically differently (see the BM talents section)
• Kill Command
  This is going back to an instant pet attack; however, it costs a bunch of focus. There seems to be a bunch of talents that interact with it to make it more attractive, at least for BM.
• Cobra Shot
  Deals weapon damage plus [ 6% of RAP + 950 ] in the form of Nature damage and increases the duration of your Serpent Sting on the target by 3 sec. ( Aspect of the Hawk : Generates 9 Focus. )
  5-35 yd range, 1.5 sec cast

Okay, that’s a bunch of awesomeness right there. Let’s go through a few of them:

Cobra Shot
We knew about this, but what’s interesting now is actually seeing the Cataclysm coefficients of both Cobra and Steady Shot. Cobra Shot is 6% RAP + 950. Steady Shot in the alpha is currently at 10% RAP + 0. I have to assume that the “+0″ on steady shot is in error (it’s currently +252) but I’m sure the idea is that Steady Shot will be hitting for more raw damage; however, it’s a physical attack and will be reduced by armor. Right now it’s looking like probably only MM will want to keep using Steady Shot, with the additional armor pen they get through their mastery bonus. BM gets Cobra-specific boosts, and SV gets boosts to their elemental damage with their mastery, so will probably prefer the boosted armor-ignoring Cobra Shot.

Camouflage
We also knew about this, but seeing the actual wording shows it to be badass. It is, in fact, actual stealth when you’re standing still. In theory when you’re moving you’ll still be targetable and kinda able to be seen.

Stings and Venoms
Viper is now pretty much a pvp venom. Widow is also – mostly – a pvp venom with the new mortal strike debuff (all mortal strikes are now 25% healing reduction instead of 50%). Scorpid is probably our go-to venom in pve content; however, its armor reduction is exactly identical to that of the new Sunder Armor (3 stacks of 4%) which makes me think it’ll be considered the major armor debuff and won’t stack with Sunder Armor. This means that in raids, we may well not want to use a Venom at all, and save that focus for something else. The exception is that MM will occasionally want to use Widow Venom, because with Chimera Shot, it is awesome. But more on that later.

Aspect of the Fox
Pure super awesomeness. The 20% focus regen is, to me, the big aspect of this aspect. This is what helps us maintain our focus while on the move, while kiting, in movement heavy boss fight phases, and movement heavy pvp sections. Keep in mind this isn’t just buffing your base focus regen, but your total focus regen, including all the boosts from your haste.

The part of this that’s going to get more attention is auto-shots firing on the move. This is the section where other classes are going to scream that this is OP and broken and nerf hunters. But here’s the thing: we can already do this! If a hunter is skilled at movement-management, we are still able to get all our auto-shots off on the move by stutter stepping. This ability simply provides an easy way to do it, that doesn’t require skill, but lowers our dps as a result, since we won’t be in aspect of the hawk anymore.

Other Base Hunter Ability Changes

It looks as though the base BM abilities (trainable by all specs) Eagle Eye and Eyes of the Beast have been removed from the game. I have to say I’ll miss Eyes of the Beast, even though it was mostly only useful for pet tanking stuff, and then rarely, it was fun to play around with while waiting for raids to gather. It was like a toy.

Over in the SV tree it looks like Mongoose bite is gone, and good riddance I say. Serpent Sting is apparently now considered a SV base spell, rather than a MM one. No biggie there. Disengage not showing up on spell list at the moment (or I’m missing it) but I’m sure it’s there. We still have talents that affect it, and a blizz comment a while back that it’ll have no focus cost, as I recall. Freezing arrow gone of course, replaced by our trap launcher (which has a longer cooldown than freezing arrow, of course). Misdirection still there and working as normal, despite recent blue posts that it was going to change. My money says that it will still be changing.

Focus Cost and Cooldowns

One of the big changes is of course our movement from mana to focus. This means all our shots will cost focus now; however, since they have a real resource mechanic, that also means some of those shots will have their cooldowns removed. Here’s the way it currently looks with our shots:

• Cobra Shot: 0 focus  -  1.5 sec cast – no cooldown – generates 9 focus
• Steady Shot: 0 focus  -  1.5 sec cast – no cooldown – generates 9 focus
• Arcane Shot: 50 focus – no cooldown
• Multi-Shot: 60 focus – no cooldown – now instant shot
• Aimed Shot: 50 focus – no cooldown – now 2.5 sec cast
• Chimera Shot: 50 focus – 10 sec cooldown
• Silencing Shot: 0 focus – 20 sec cooldown
• Explosive Shot: 50 focus – 6 sec cooldown
• Kill Shot: 20 focus – 6 sec cooldown
• Distracting Shot: 0 focus – 8 sec cooldown
• Concussive Shot: 35 focus – no cooldown
• Tranq Shot: 35 focus – no cooldown
• Hunter’s Mark: no focus – no cooldown
• Venoms: 30 focus – no cooldown
• Serpent Sting: info not currently available
• Aspects: 0 focus – 1 sec cooldown
• Traps: 0 focus – 30 sec cooldown
• Mend Pet: 25 focus – channeled!?!?
• Kill Command: 50 focus – no cooldown
• Misdirection: 15 focus – 30 sec cooldown
• Deterrence: 0 focus – 2 min cooldown
• Feign Death: 0 focus – 30 sec cooldown

So most of this is going as I predicted back when we first heard about focus. Chimera and Explosive are keeping their cooldowns, but our standard shots have them going away — including arcane shot and multi-shot with no cooldown. It’s particularly fascinating to see that multi-shot is now an instant cast!

Silencing Shot looks like it’ll still be macrod in for most of our pve content, and Kill Command is crazy expensive for a pet damaging attack. I need to look more closely at it, but it’s beginning to smell like something that only BM will want to use, with their hard-hitting pets and talents that combo with the ability.

Kill Shot is also delightfully cheap at 20 focus and only a 6 second cooldown! That should substantially increase our back-weighted dps in boss fights, where we’ll really spike there at the end. Free traps are pleasant to behold, since currently they’re pretty spendy and if you use a lot you can actually go oom. Deterrence and FD both also happily have no focus cost, and we can hope that disengage will not either, as we’ve heard.

I am a bit disappointed to see the focus cost on Tranq Shot. That means that if we’re in a fight where we need to tranq enrages, we’re going to have to keep a 35 focus buffer at all times, which blows. I have a hunch they did it this way — focus cost and no cooldown — to make it an interesting choice in pvp. Just hurts in pve on enrage fights though. Maybe we’ll make the rogue take care of them from now on.

There are three things that I think are errors in the beta build. The first is Serpent Sting, which obviously is an error since it’s still listing a mana cost. The second is Mend Pet — I desperately hope they didn’t go back to making that channeled! Hopefully it’s still a HoT like it is today. Thirdly is the absence of Disengage, which I have to assume is in there and just got left out of MMO-C’s reporting.

Beast Mastery Talent Stuff

• Beastial Discipline: Increases the Focus regeneration of your pets by [6%/12%/18%/24%/30%] (nerf from 50%/100%)
• One With Nature: Increases the attack power bonus of your Aspect of the Hawk by [5%/10%/15%/20%/25%], and increases the amount of focus restored by your Aspect of the Fox by [2%/4%/6%/8%/10%].
• Improved Kill Command: Reduces the focus cost of your Kill Command by [5/10] focus.
• Fervor: Instantly restores 50 Focus to you and your pet.
• Frenzy: Your pet gains [1%/2%/3%/4%/5%] attack speed after attacking with a special ability, lasting for [15 seconds]  (nerf from 30% attack speed bonus after a crit)
• Animal Handler: Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by [5%/10%], and increases the duration of your Master’s Call effect by [3/6] sec. (change from 10% ap boost and Master’s Call duration increase)
• Focus Fire: When you use Kill Command, you consume your pet’s Frenzy stacks increasing your attack speed by [3%/6%] for each stack of Frenzy consumed. Lasts for 12 sec. (old focused fire was a 2% damage increase to you and pet, plus 20% crit bonus to pet special while kill command active)
• Invigoration: When your pet scores a critical hit with a special ability, you instantly regenerate [3/6] focus. (instead of mana regen)
• Aspect of the Monkey: Whenever you[ are/] critically hit by a melee attack, the cooldown of your Disengage is instantly reduced by [2/4] sec.
  Whenever you are cr[itically h/]it by a ranged attack, the cooldown of your Deterrence is instantly reduced by [4/8] sec.
• Envenomation: Reduces the focus cost of your Scorpid, Widow and Viper Venom abilities by [10/20].
• Beast Within: While your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing the focus cost of all shots and abilities by 50% for 10 sec. (focus reduction instead of mana reduction (which is much better, btw))
• Rhumba: When you cast two Steady Shot or Cobra Shot attacks in a row, your next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot will summon 3 Rattlesnakes onto the enemy target. If the enemy target attacks a friend or foe, a Rattlesnake will instantly strike the enemy dealing damage equal to [5%/10%/15%] of your Steady Shot or Cobra Shot damage.
• Kindred Spirits: Increases you and your pets maximum focus by [5/10]. (old version (5 ranks) increased pet damage by 20% and your movement by 10%)

Ooookay, there are a lot of changes in the BM tree, as we can see! I am now, however, officially falling asleep and this is going to be a crazy long post anyway, so I shall get into talent change analysis another day.

Marksman Talent Stuff

• Efficiency: Reduces the focus cost of your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Chimera Shot by [2/4/6/8/10]. (old version reduced mana cost of all shots by 3-15%)
• Rapid Killing: After killing an opponent that yields experience or honor, your next Aimed Shot, Steady Shot or Cobra Shot causes [10%/20%] additional damage. Lasts 20 sec. (nerfed to no longer reduce Rapid Fire cooldown)
• Aimed Shot: An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 5.
  50 Focus, 5-35 yd range, 2.5 sec cast (old version instant cast, did less damage, and applied the 50% healing reduction debuff – we’re seeing the return of the vanilla Aimed Shot (which was 3 sec cast and hit like a truck))
• Go for the Throat: Your ranged auto-shot critical hits cause your pet to generate 3 Focus. (nerfed from 25/50 focus regen)
• Barrage: Increases the damage done by your Multi-Shot, Aimed Shot, and Volley spells by [5%/10%/15%]. (buffed from 4/8/12%)
• Careful Aim: Increases the critical strike chance of your Aimed Shot by [20%/40%/60%] on targets at or above 90% health. (old version converted your int to AP. We no longer will have int on gear.)
• Sic ‘Em: When you critically hit with your Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot or Explosive Shot the focus cost of your Pet’s next 2 basic attacks are reduced by [100%/50%] for 12 sec.
• Improved Steady Shot: When you steady shot twice in a row, your ranged haste will be increased by [5%/10%/15%] for 8 sec. (buffed from a crappy talent to awesomesauce)
• Bombardment: Increases the critical strike chance of your Volley by [15%/30%], and when you critically hit with your Multi-Shot your next Multi-Shot’s focus cost will be reduced by [25%/50%]. (replaces Improved Barrage, which has been removed)
• Wild Quiver: Increases the damage done by your Wild Quiver attack by [10%/20%/30%].
  Concussive Barrage (changed – wild quiver is now a mastery bonus, and the talent boosts that bonus. Old version gave you the wild quiver proc (12% chance on autoshot to proc a 80% auto-shot nature damage shot))
• Resistance is Futile: When your marked target attempts to run, flee or move, you have a [10%/20%/30%] chance to cause your next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot within 8 sec to critically hit on them.
• Master Marksman: You have a [20%/40%/60%] chance when you Steady Shot to gain the Master Marksman effect lasting 30 sec. After reaching 5 stacks, your next Aimed Shot’s cast time and focus cost is reduced by 100% for 10 sec. (changed from 5% crit boost and mana reduction of certain shots)
• Rapid Recuperation: You gain [6/12] focus every 3 sec while under the effect of Rapid Fire, and you gain [25/50] focus instantly when you gain Rapid Killing. (changed from mana regen, new version looks about equivalent)
• Chimera Shot: You deal 125% weapon damage, refreshing your Serpent Sting and triggering an effect depending on the venom on the target:
  Viper Venom – Instantly burns 5% of the targets total mana.
  Scorpid Venom – Attempts to Disarm the target for 10 sec sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per 1 minute.
  Widow Venom – Instantly heals you for 15% of your total health.
  50 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown (changed for new venoms, and serpent sting damage bonus aspect removed).

Survival Talent Stuff

• Improved Serpent Sting: Your Serpent Sting also does instant damage equal to [15%/30%] of its total periodic effect.
• Lock and Load: You have a [33%/66%/100%] chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot abilities to cost no focus and trigger no cooldown. (no longer procs off black arrow ticks by default – T.N.T. talent (below) now does that)
• Toxicology: Increases the periodic critical damage of your Serpent Sting and Black Arrow by 50%.
• T.N.T.: When you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap or Black Arrow you have a [4%/8%/12%] chance to trigger Lock and Load. (changed from a 6% damage increase to explosive shot. Note the L&L proc chance is double the old lock & load chance)
• Resourcefulness: Reduces the cooldown of all traps and Black Arrow by [2/4/6] sec. (removed the mana reduction to traps, melee, and black arrow)
• Expose Weakness: After you shoot [5/4/3] consecutive Steady Shot or Cobra Shots in a row on a target, you expose a weakness in the target. The Expose Weakness effect is unique to the different creature or class that the enemy is. Lasts for 20 sec. (changed from ranged crits increase AP by 25% of agility)
• Hunting Party: Increases your total Agility by an additional [2%/4%], and your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have a [50%/100%] chance to trigger Replenishment when they deal damage.
  Replenishment – Grants up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 1% of the maximum mana per 5 sec. Lasts for 15 sec. (changed to only 2 ranks instead of 3 ranks at 1/2/3% agility increase & 33% chance/rank of arcane/explosive/steady crits procing replenishment)
• Thrill of the Hunt: When you critically hit with Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot or Black Arrow you instantly regain [10%/20%/40%] of the focus cost of the shot. (changed mana regen to focus regen)

There we go. More later when I am more conscious. In the mean time, what do you guys think? What rocks? What sucks? What crazy talent combos do you see that my sleep-deprived brain is missing?

Note that with mastery it’s very easy for blizzard to tweak the overall damage of each tree by any amount, so don’t worry about whether one tree is dps balanced against another — that’s not an issue, since each tree will get a different %damage modifier through their mastery.