We’ve got a new beta build going on — it’s not even showing up on my launcher yet, but MMO-C has some starting notes. Here’s the skinny for hunters:
- Shots base range has increased to 40 yards (possibly ’cause we no longer have a talent to increase our range).
- Scatter Shot ranged increased to 20 yards (from 15)
- Rhumba BM talent (never implemented) removed
- New BM talent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera, 2 ranks: “Whenever you are hit by a melee attack, the cooldown of your Disengage is instantly reduced by 2/4 sec. Whenever you are hit by a ranged attack or spell, the cooldown of your Deterrence is instantly reduced by 4/8 sec. These effects have a 2 sec cooldown.”
- Marked for Death changed – Your Arcane Shot and Chimera Shot have a 50/100% chance to automatically apply your Hunter’s Mark ability instantly onto the target.
- Bombardment no longer increases the crit chance of Volley. Boo.
- Silencing Shot no longer deals damage.
- Camouflage (when we can actually get it) will not reduce movement, and will not increase damage done by your next attack.
- Volley appears to be missing entirely. I really hope they didn’t deliberately remove our AoE…
And finally we got this INSANELY teasing little note up on MMO-C….
Dead zone might be gone, but it might be just a rewording of the tooltips. Wait for in-game confirmation.
I’m just going to ignore the dead zone (by which they mean minimum range) thing for now. Don’t get your hopes up, just wait until we can get in game and find out. Aw, hell, my hopes are already up. I’ve been on this thing forever now. Must distract self from building hope further…
Marked for Death is interesting — it puts your Hunter’s Mark on the target when you fire one of your two main special shots, automatically. That’s great for 5-mans and target switching… but since you can only have one mark up at a time, you don’t always want your mark to drop off of a target when you switch briefly to another. I guess as long as you have enough focus for another arcane when you switch back you can get your mark switched. To me this is really a quality of life talent. In some situations it’ll be a nice bonus (keeping in mind that your mark does crazy high attack power now — 1,500 at level 83), but for boss fights it’s no problem to put your mark up before combat.
Bombardment… not pleased. Especially since that makes the strange absence of Volley look on purpose, which I hope it’s not.
BUT, I am still loving the beta changes, and the MM spec in beta. If the other specs (especially BM) can be brought close to the MM level of polish and interaction, I’ll be a happy camper.
So minimum range… they did just change the range on all the tooltips… it would make sense for them to just mess up and forget to put the minimum range on there… but damn they need to get rid of that. Makes balancing impossible. Maybe they did? Maybe?
Dead zone might be gone, but it might be just a rewording of the tooltips. Will wait for an in-game confirmation.
Marked for Death change is potentially *super* bad. That is unless
1) there are no talents for hunter mark – check
2) there are not going to be any glyphs for hunter mark – to be seen
3) they unbreak the 3.1.3 (or around that time) mark bug – to be seen
In 3.1.3 when they upped out AP bonus to 500, they broke the behaviour going back to vanilla that a lower hunter couldn’t overwrite a higher mark. First you’d just get a warning that a higher spell is active. In 2.4.2 they ‘imrpoved’ it that it would just refresh the higher mark.
Although well intended, that basicly allowed hunters to start bad behaviour and throw marks on everything wasting cooldowns and mana.
In 3.1.3 they by accident broke it so you could overwrite the higher mark. No patch notes, but when a bug was files the lame “this is working as intended”. Since since 2.4.2 hunters were stimulated to just throw marks around, the effects were bad. Especially since Blizzard didn’t put it in patch notes.
It took very long before the hunter comunity knew and let alone start behaving. Especially a lot of SV hunters refused to get potty trained for months.
Now, if there will be different marks and they keep the 3.1.3 behaviour, this will make any talent and/or glyph close to useless, unless you can depend on the talent and spec build of fellow hunters in your raid.
Of course if all marks are the same, I consider it a super talent.
Ok correct me if I am wrong but isn’t the change to Marked for Death just *super bad*?
As far as I can tell we are losing 3% dmg to all of our shots and pet specials, in addition to 6% critical damage bonus. Get a free mark seems just awful compared to that.
So, 30 seconds of semi-invisible and able to walk traps to where we could just shoot them, is our 85 level talent? Boy that sounds fun.
Increasing range and potentially removing the dead zone and/or minimum range sounds like compensation for ditching moving autoshots. I like it. a lot.
I have been watching Hunter changes, with great intrest. And I have got to be honest. I personally think, whilst blizzard will stick to the focus change no doubting that fact. They are buffing us, and changing us SO much, that I forsee many many changes to us, even when it goes live. We will either be insanely overpowered, or grossly underpowered. ( Sort of a DK kinda thing, at beginning of wrath ) It wont stop me playing a hunter. ( 4 years alliance hunter ) but I am starting to wonder, what direction is blizzard trying to take hunters in? Right now, I am not even sure, they can answer that.
Marked for Death has been marked for change for a while now — currently MM is doing a lot more dps than the other hunter specs, and this is probably part of the plan to address that.
If they have actually removed the minimum range, i will officially defecate building materials. That uneeded “flavor” has been an irritating thorn in the side of THE ONLY CLASS IN THE GAME WITH A MINIMUM RANGE for way too long. Screw all you bosses with a hitbox the size of texas stadium! (i’m looking at you Marrowgar.)
Serpent Spread does instant damage now. Interesting. Does that mean that it won’t actually apply the sting dot to other targets?
Poor Camouflage. I hope they don’t cop out on us like they did in Wrath beta. They promised it to us then and we didn’t get it. Maybe they should just give up and give us stealth.
Volley is gone? Is it a bug or am I missing something. I cant find Volley in SV or MM.
RHUMBA is gone!
BM is back to 2 buttons.
Im hoping they will replace Rhumba with something else they have in the works
I want to be a BM hunter come cata again, and I don’t want Blizz to use their old philosophy that an easier spec shouldn’t do as much dps as a spec with a more complex rotation to not allow them to have BM share an equal footing with MM and SV
This may change but right now Marked for Death is allowing multiple targets to be marked with Hunter’s Mark at the same time. I was able to fire off an arcane shot at 8 different targets and all 8 got a hunter’s mark on them.
@Kaccia, thanks for letting us know about marking multiple targets.
That will be nice for add swapping without wasting GCDs or focus though does mean raid marking or people actually using /assist macros will need to be relearned.
Really, I would have been happy just having them fix the hunter’s mark overwrite bug as I used to spec into improved mark for 25man raids and some nub, even after being told not to, would overwrite it.
Losing volley is hopefully a bug/not intended. It is a mainstay especially with the new MD in soloing older content.
Not really sure where Camoflage will get used if it a) has no damage bonus and b) no special shots require it. Pretty much a PVP suprise as PVE really could not care less with a 40yard max. range (very nice) and still having a minimum range to shoot. No point in hiding for all I can tell.
Anyone know how far down the BM tree that new Crouching Tigger talnet is? Looks to be a talnet destined for PVP greatness and I want to know if all 3 spec’s can grab it or only BM.
what the hell happened to Rhumba?!?! That actually sounded like one of the cool talents they were promising, is it me or are Blizz actually trying to reduce the total fun of WoW?
i really like that hunters mark is tied to chimera/arcane due to resistance is futile. Really makes that talent a lot more usefull if the mark is up 100% of the time.
With MD you’ll really want to ‘help’ the tank on adds xD.
But where’s the TSA selfish part already…. 2% agi like the hunting party might be nice, or a plain AP buff. Or maybe +2 mastery (no, not just rating..).
I’m puzzled as to why render Camouflage utterly useless? The whole point of the ability was the extra damage on the first shot, especially since MD is nerfed to completely drop all transferred threat after 30 seconds. The use of Camouflage was to MD the tank and hit the target with a big opener, like Aimed, to do extra damage from the Camo ability and make use of Careful Aim (one of the few moments in a boss fight where CA will be actually useful).
Now, it looks not even worth spending the gold on to train at 85.
Yeah, I’m not showing a whole lot of faith in Camo atm. =(. Watch them say it’s gone from the game like rhumba next build.
Thanks for the update Frost I didn’t understand the *nerf*
Well it’s just odd that they redesigned Camouflage when it hasn’t even had the chance to be tested in beta yet. So it’s a redesign based on internal testing, and it seems to me that redesigns they do based on internal tests are often poorly informed as internal testing rarely appears to reflect the actual game experiences of players.
Now if they decide to go and make Camouflage real Stealth, then I can see the changes but at the moment it’s only a possible slight PvP advantage.
Perhaps they’re changing the base skill and we can talent for opener damage or better Camo etc? They did say that Survival was still going to change, didn’t they?
Either way, I’ve wanted Hunterstealth or something like it for a long time. If even just for a pause button so I can park near a tree and AFK to bio/beer etc.
Dang Blizz, I wanted to Rhumba
. Camo was a useless skill when they announced it, it is even more now, and not even worth the gold cost at 85. So basically, were a getting a duplicate skill at 81, and a semi useful one at 83, and no skill at 85. Way to go Blizz !!! ):
Otherwise, our reworked skills and talents, are looking okay. Focus is not looking as bad as it was earlier.
Marked for Death needs to apply to Aimed Shot as well imo. It’s the MM “opener” so of course I want Hunters Mark up for it. Seems pretty obvious really.
@Barakdorin:
But Marked for Death isn’t useful for opening; there is plenty of time to put up Hunter’s Mark before a fight starts. The only time it is useful is in fights where you are switching mobs, or fighting for longer than Marks duration. Where it saves us a whopping one global cool down.
@Armin – “I consider it a super talent.”:
Why? Two points for saving one global cool down? Avoiding needing to think about Hunter’s Mark? I just don’t see the point. Why have Hunter’s Mark at all if it is automatic?
@Frosthiem – “currently MM is doing a lot more dps than the other hunter specs”:
Isn’t that what Masterries are for? (Forgetting for a minute that DPS for other hunter specs isn’t even set yet). Make the specs all PLAY well, then just twiddle the knobs to get them to be all the same damage.
Most importantly, why is it fun? Blizzard seems to think removing something vaguely frustrating makes the game fun. It doesn’t. It might be needed, (not the case with Hunter’s Mark or Ammo, in my opinion), but once it is gone, everyone forgets about it immediately. Why even HAVE Hunter’s Mark if it is automatic? Just make that AP part of MM base level DPS.
@ Xylakane – “I wanted to Rhumba”
Personally, I never saw the attraction to Rhumba. It was a passive DPS boost with an animation, and a bunch of complicated caveats. Meh.
First, Blizzard said that they couldn’t make 71 interesting, fun, talents, so they reduced it to 41. Seems now, that they can’t make 41 interesting, fun, talents. Not a good sign.
I’m guessing (hoping?) that they’re reworking volley to work more like the rogue FoK (ie one tick, no channel). The whole channeled spell doesn’t make a whole lot of sense with the switch from mana to focus
@Corwyn, isn’t it obvious?
This is important for adds. So many boss fights have adds, where the extra mark is just a pain to add. Result most hunters don’t do it as it hurts dps because of the GCD.
Let alone the big world outside raids, where this will certainly help. PvP comes into mind, where each GCD save is a serious issue. There is more than patchwork bosses, where you got all the time in the world to prepare, add a sting and venom and then have 5 minutes to fire at a pre-makred target.
Note also, that it only applied to MM, so the argument of why have it if it is automatic, is invalid already because of that. MM always had talents to improve HM, like reduce GCD or mana cost. This isn’t different.
Also it will cost you two talentpoints, so it has a cost to have it ‘automatic’.
If you don’t think it is usefull, you just got yourselves two free points
@Armin – “…as it hurts dps because of the GCD.”
Well if it is a DPS talent, then it can be evaluated on a DPS basis. I have no idea what it is worth in terms of DPS, but my intuition is that just isn’t very large. What do you think it is worth in terms of DPS; how does it compare with other Marksman DPS talents? Enough to rate a ‘super’? Please explain.
“If you don’t think it is usefull, you just got yourselves two free points”
Sadly, I have gone from looking at talents and finding the best ones to take, to looking at talents and finding the worst ones, to _not_ take. I have 7 possible places where I don’t spend points (3 or so talents), making another talent that I want to not put points in is not a help.