Okay, we have some blue posts. First of all, it’s masteries!
- Beast Mastery - Increases the damage done by your pets by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Marksmanship – Grants a 16% chance for your ranged attacks to also instantly fire an additional ranged shot for 80% normal damage. Chance increased further by mastery rating.
- Survival – Increases all elemental damage you deal by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
So these are all the 3rd tier old mastery bonuses. I have to say I’m a bit concerned that we aren’t seeing the flat % damage mastery bonus that was the old first tier one. That was what I was most pleased about — since it was the easy way for Blizz to tweak the dps of each spec to keep them in line. I thought it was a genius idea and I really, really hope they keep it in the game. Also, I’m a bit sad to see no mention of the old 2nd tier mastery for MM — the armor penetration percentage — as that seemed far more defining of MM than the uninteresting and frankly pretty weak wild quiver.
Note that these are not yet in the game — when I look at my Mastery stat in the beta, it says Not Yet Implemented.
We heard a bit ago about raid buffs and that SV would be getting the 20% melee haste, though we didn’t see any indication of this in the beta. We finally got an answer on what’s going on, and it’s lovely news all around:
The “20% melee attack speed” is in fact melee and ranged attack speed. That was just developer shorthand on my part.
The effect for Survival will probably get tied into Hunting Party since Replenishment alone doesn’t do anything for hunters and longer.
So that’s a 2nd raid buff that SV will be supplying, tied into a talent they’ll already be taking. Very nice 
Forgive me if I have this backwards.
I thought I remembered you talking about how it seemed that BM was going to become a sort of “machine-gun” spec.
This being the case, wouldn’t it make more sense for the attack speed buff to belong to BM, with the %damage increase (Ferocious Inspiration, I think) belonging to one of the other specs?
I was hoping they’d tie us back into the windfury buff when they dropped our +15% haste from the old quiver bonus. I am a bit concerned with two “mandatory” buffs in one spec, but mandatory is a subjective term, and we’ll see the reality of it when the bugs die and the numbers are shored up a bit. As for the armor pen mastery, seeing how that stat has -never- balanced well, i’m not sad to see it go, although trading a sure fire +x% ability for a random and uninteresting proc is irritating.
I’m pretty sure the flat damage increase parts of mastery are now baked into the Specs, and not the mastery system.
Good news for hunters, let’s see what’s Beta bring us in the future
so BM and SV both get a 20% boost, and MM get a 16% chance at doing a free 80% shot…………yeah that seems fair…….
@Luna
They’re still tweaking it, but I hope to see them in there in SOME way. As Frost says, the flat damage buff is a spectacular way to easily tweak the damage of any spec without making a mess of talents.
@Oun
Remember that the 15% haste from the quiver got tied straight into Auto-shot, we never lost it. I think this 20% “melee attack speed” IS the new Windfury effect, but I can’t check at the moment, unfortunately. As far as the Armor Pen goes, the stat itself is gone, but Frost is referring to the old “2nd tier” Mastery bonus that Marks was getting of a flat 10% ArP. This was not alterable in any way. I think I’d prefer an ArP mastery over the Wild Shot thing anyway. Both are essentially passive, but the ArP bonus would have more interaction with our shots instead of just a dull “proc” shot that will be difficult to notice anyway.
It’s strange that SV will have 2 useful raid buffs in replenishment and 20% haste buff and MM is left with a buff brought by 3 other classes (now that the pally BoM is a flat 10% AP increase). I was kinda hoping they’d put something else in MM or a baseline hunter ability all specs could bring. As it stand now, looks like SV will be the preferred raid spec for many 10 man groups.
@ skarn
While not in the beta myself, most sources i’ve ben able to check show that the old 15% from the quiver is -gone- in the beta, perhaps frost or some other lucky bastard could confirm/deny this. And as for the mastery bonus, i’m quite aware of what he was talking about, i wasn’t aware that bonus was non-scalar.
I agree with Dis: it DOES look like SV will be the preferred raid spec for many 10 man groups with the buffs they have. I really don’t wanna play SV. I really hope they make MM better.
Frost, you’re mixing up Mastery stat with Specialization.
Mastery has always been whats noted above, only exception is that the MM one is not 80% rather than 50% damage on the bonus shot.
The bonus you’re talking about was never part of the mastery stat but plain tree bonus for investing talents (51 talents gave the maximum benefit). This dps bonus is now made into the specialization stuff you get for picking your primary talent tree. For hunters those are still undecided so we’ll likely see that back again later with ArP back for MM.
I do however hope ArP is lost so we can bring arcane back into the rotation.
The original mastery system had 3 tiers of bonuses, the last of which was affected by the mastery stat.
The new system there is only the third tier, affected by the mastery stat. “Specialization” has kind of quasi-replaced the first two tiers; however, without the flat percentage damage boost that was the first tier (instead we get pushback reduction, of all things). I have a feeling that hunter specializations are not yet done.
The 15% haste that we used to get from quivers, and is now baked automatically into our attack speed, is gone entirely in Cataclysm at the moment.
I’m sorry my beloved Survival, I’m coming back! Please forgive me for ever doubting you!
I’m a little confused why anyone would be sad to see ArPen gone from Mm. It’s just a stat you stack that gets exponentially good, and is the best DPS with endgame gear. ArPen gear and builds never seemed like a “flavor” to me, the kind of thing you’d want in a mastery bonus. The big “flavor” of Mm (for me anyway) is rapid fire and readiness.
That being said, the wild quiver bonus is pretty dang boring, unless they make it so that it procs a free shot of our choosing, or at least give it a flashy animation or SOMETHING.
I like to see all the new hunter related stuff of cataclysm in this blog, thank you for your hard work, you definitely pay your dues
As for the news, I’m hoping that BM tree gets good for raiding, if not, i hope for MM to get better (in my point of view there isnt much awesomeness about MM so far) because i dont like much SV, BUT if that implies more dps, i have to learn how to play as SV and enjoy it cause after all, hunters place are on top in dps and sexyness!
Let’s see what the future bring us!
I don’t mind loosing ArP, because I really think Hunter’s are generally just addicted to it at this point. And I love that Survival spec is getting a Windfury Buff with free Mana Crack for the raid. I agree with everyone regarding the Wild Quiver-like proc. It is boring, but it has also been beefed up quite a bit.
All and all though, I’m pretty disappointed with the Hunter tress altogether at the moment. It looks like Blizzard lost sight of the “choice” concept they were aiming towards, because I see nothing but Cookie-Cutter builds in the current plan. I’m sure this will be changed… At least I really hope they are.
Note to all:
The 20% attack speed buff that Survival will now bring is NOT haste. The buff only affects our attack speed, whereas haste affects much more including focus regen and dot ticks.
@Oun
Aaah, I see! I’d missed the loss of the 15% to auto-shot. On the other hand, the 20% buff survival now brings is indeed the Windfury buff and according to the blue post there, it does affect us again!
@alittledrunk
The three Mastery bonuses are all unique and affect different aspects of each spec. There is no reason to assume they should all have the exact same flat numbers. It is far more likely that they would each have a different number. Let’s compare BM and Surv to illustrate this.
The BM Mastery bonus buffs the damage of the pet. To understand how helpful this is, we need to know how much of our damage the pet is doing. Of course, since this is beta, we don’t KNOW yet so we’ll make up our own numbers. Let’s say the pet makes up 50% of a BM hunter’s damage. Meanwhile, the Survival hunter will be doing even more elemental damage in Cataclysm, since he will no longer have access to Aimed Shot and will be replacing Steady Shot with Cobra Shot. That leaves only Auto-Shot, the pet and Kill Shot as physical damage for a Survival hunter. So we’ll say those 3 sources are 40% of a Survival hunter’s damage, leaving the other 60% as elemental damage that is buffed by Mastery.
Both of the two Masteries for these specs are a 20% boost, but they are affecting different portions of damage. Even though they look equal on the surface, according to the numbers I have pulled out of thin air, they are NOT equal. Since 60% of Survival’s damage is getting a boost from Mastery as opposed to only 50% of BM’s damage, the Mastery ability and stat is a better boost for Survival. So as you see, just comparing the numbers in the Mastery description isn’t enough, there is more to consider to see which bonus is better. Depending on how it all plays out, the Marksman boost at 16%/80% may be a better Mastery then the other two. We just don’t know right now and can not tell from those short descriptions and early numbers.
@Skarn
Given your guesstimated percentages of SV and BM damage sources, it only makes the current MM mastery look even worse. In order for the 16/80 to be adding as much dmg as the SV boost, 93.75% of the MM hunter’s damage would have to be from autoshot. Somehow I don’t see that being very likely. If they choose to leave the wild quiver proc as mastery it with either have to work on autoshot and steady shot, or they’ll have to bump the base % to at least 30.
Am I the only who understood : “Replenishment alone doesn’t do anything for hunters and longer” .. so we replaced it by 20% haste?
@Ottanok
They didn’t replace it, they added 20% melee and ranged attack speed so hunters can benefit from Hunting Party
The recent changes made Survival to look better…
@Solaryn:
Grants a 16% chance for your ranged attacks to also instantly fire an additional ranged shot for 80% normal damage. Chance increased further by mastery rating.
Sounds to me like ranged attacks, so also attacks like chimera, steady, arcane… Especially since the warrior effect also increases special attacks occasionally by 80%, same as the MM mastery. Except ours is fully random while theirs is (somewhat) controlled.
If it is in fact ALL ranged attacks, it’s by far the greatest contribution by mastery, just the previous wild quiver mastery bonus was just white damage. Hopefully you’re right because that would bring its contribution to 12.8% dps increase base, presuming the 80% shot is based off the damage of the shot it procced from. Would put it about in line with the 12ish percent increase SV will get.
I just created random numbers to illustrate the point, but I do think they are possible. I’m certain all the numbers still need tweaking. Since I doubt Survival’s elemental damage with be the same as BMs pet damage, it seems like those two mastery numbers need to be different. Also, I agree, it sounds like the Marks one means ALL ranged, not just auto-shot. Hard to tell from the description and last I heard, it’s still NYI in the beta.
@Solaryn The way i understood it, the free shot can proc off any shot, and it does 80% of your auto-shot damage, not based off what it procced on. I see this as a good mastery since it is in line with the Rapid Fire aspect of MM, while not being weak or OP.
The wildquiver proc to me seemed as if it would just proc another one of the shots that caused it to be procced (whether it’s an auto shot or instant shot doesn’t matter, a shot is a shot.). So, maybe if an opening aimed shot gets it…. But I may have this wrong because I think I read something earlier about people having the same conclusions.
The typical wording they use for abilities that are based off autoattack (for melée anyway, this is sort of new territory) is 80% weapon damage. In the mastery description, they list it as 80% normal damage, which could either mean normal white damage, the original damage the attack generated, or the normal damage the attack would have generated(non-crit). Not saying it’s not 80% autoshot damage, just that if it is they chose a new way to word it this time. Nothing shocking there, “20% melée attack speed” anyone?
This is slightly off topic to this particular post, but in case no one noticed, it looks like the current mechanic of refreshing your sting when you get procs will officially be null and void in Cata. At least according to a recent GC post about Priests…
“SW: Pain — Pain and Suffering refreshes SW:Pain with your current haste, crit etc. values. All damage-over-time refresh mechanics and talents should do this now. You shouldn’t have to recast a dot to benefit from a temporary buff or proc or whatever.”
Found here;
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/26262987070/shadow-priest-concerns-for-cataclysm/
Unlike Frost, I’m exited that we don’t get boring flat % of damage or ArP, but a beefed up wild quiver. 16% chance! That is huge. Note that this also affects all proc chances!
The only weird thing of course of MM not having ArP is that other than talents, there is no reason to use either Steady vs Cobra for BM and MM. On the other hand with Arcane and CS both not benefitting from ArP, having ArP as mastery was a recipe for PvP disaster scaling to happen for MM anyway.
@Solaryn – For the MM hunters in my guild, Auto Shot accounts for 25-30% of their total damage.
Oh and @Solaryn, you miss that it now procs of *all* ranged attacks and its damage – I presume – is still nature damage. Using the same calculations as skarn, you can see the MM bonus is actually easily on par in that case. Also like stated, it will beef up (potentially) all procs, focus gens and stacks build ups!
I have to agree on that point as well Armin, that those extra shots likely mean better uptime/more procs on stuff as trinkets.
I do however doubt on the nature part, it seems more logical for it to be physical since they want SV to be about elemental damage. Especially since nature wild quiver was 60% and this is 80% which seems logical if it now has to compete with armor.
@Armin, several of the Marksman talents encourage using Steady Shot. It’d be a rare case when Cobra Shot would be the better choice. Imp Steady Shot, Piercing Shots, Marked for Death and (most of all) Master Marksman are all Steady Shot only. Using Cobra as Marks would typically be a nasty DPS loss. Chimera will refresh Serpent for us. I’m not seeing much in the BM tree to encourage Cobra Shot. Only Cobra’s innate extension of Serpent Sting.
@skarn, that is wat I said “other than talents” …
As I see it MM will steady, and SV and BM will likely cobra. SV will likely use cobra due to mastery. And BM very likely also use it, as – as you state – it will refresh the sting. So it would be a waste to steady for them (unless steady will be a lot stronger which I doubt).
Oh. Hah! Missed that.
They’re some pretty hefty talents though! Master Marksman for free instant Aimeds and Piercing Shots are good stuff.
@Skarn, Yeah those instant Aimed Shots can be killer since I’ve seen them crit for 25k+ which is almost equivalent to nowadays kill shots.