General

• Arcane Shot had its damage and focus cost increased by 50%.

Talents

• Aspect of the Iron Hawk now reduces all damage taken by 10%, down from 15%.
• Silencing Shot is no longer a talent and is now an ability for Marksman Hunters.

Marksman

• Binding Shot is no longer a Marksman Hunter ability and is once again a talent.

Notes and Thoughts:

• Arcane Shot is going to be the most discussed, because the recent hotfix to Arcane means that it’s dangerously close to being as good as our signature shots. Add that to the upcoming set bonuses, and the gap is even smaller. As I said yesterday, Blizzard has historically wanted us using our full rotation. If hunters suddenly switch to a Serpent/Arcane/Cobra or Steady rotation, changes will likely be swift.
• All the recent Arcane Shot changes may make Thrill of the Hunt a much better talent. Stay tuned as we learn more about that.
• The switch of Binding and Silencing is a nerf to PvP. I guess the silver lining is, hunters were quite good in PvP, so they needed nerfed. The bad news is, the nerfs are coming. I know it’s tough guys, but let’s hold out hope that hunters are still in a good place in PvP post-5.4.
• Aspect of the Iron Hawk isn’t a hunter-only nerf. Rather, it is, but lots of other classes are having their best damage mitigation talents nerfed as well. Iron Hawk was the consensus “best” for most hunters in both PvE and PvP, so it likely need to be brought in line with our other talents. More than anything, this seems to be a general balancing issue, but isn’t hitting us any harder than many classes.

Saurok Stalker’s Headguard

Saurok Stalker’s Spaulders

Saurok Stalker’s Tunic

Saurok Stalker’s Gloves

Saurok Stalker’s Legguards

Gear Notes:

Name and stats are subject to change, and may just be placeholder values at this point in the PTR.

Set Bonuses

(2) Set: Arcane and Multi-shot reduce the cooldown of Rapid Fire by 2 seconds per cast.

(4) Set: Explosive Shot casts have a 40% chance to increase the number of charges your next Lock & Load effect has. Instant Aimed Shots reduce the cast time of your next Aimed Shot by 50%. Offensive abilities used during Bestial Wrath increase all damage dealt by 2% stacking up to 15 times.

Set Bonus Notes:

The big question surrounding this is: will the 2-piece bonus make Arcane so good that we give up our signature shots? There’s a couple things to consider here. First, the upcoming patch notes (more in a day or two on this) have Arcane with a damage boost, but ALSO a substantial focus cost increase. Undoubtedly, the set bonus will make it more worthwhile to cast Arcane, but it remains to be seen whether it will replace signature shots. “Wait and see” is the correct response here, especially because there’s no way they’re done tweaking with 5.4

Also, in the past Blizzard has buffed signature shots to make sure hunters keep casting them. My prediction is that it will remain worth it to cast our signature shots, set bonus or not. This may require additional tweaking from Blizzard, but they won’t keep us with a simplified rotation for long.

Gear Levels

Ghostcrawler recently tweeted that ilvls aren’t set for 5.4 just yet, but that they’re leaning toward the following: 528 LFR, 536 Flex, 553 Normal, 566 Heroic. So the stats on the gear may fluctuate in the coming weeks.

Additional Thoughts

Ignoring the Arcane controversy for a moment (which I do hope gets resolved, and predict that it will), I love the idea behind both set bonuses. In the past, many of our set bonuses have been passive. In other words, there was a damage increase somehow, but we weren’t asked to do anything. But both of these bonuses imply a new or adjusted mechanic, that will allow us to alter our approach and rotation to get the most out of it. I can foresee hunters, for example, delaying Bestial Wrath by a few seconds and running off a few Arcane shots, so that Rapid Fire comes off of cooldown and can pair with BW. At that point, the extra shots will increase the damage buff of the 4-piece BW more quickly. Synergy like that, and the planning that goes into it, is VERY cool to me.

Yes, I know there’s 5.4 notes to get to. I’m holding off on those until Monday. We still have changes and additions coming in on the PTR, and there’s been several additions in the last few days, so I want it to be as close to complete as possible before we discuss it. In the meantime, enjoy the next installment of hunter poetry.

The Eternal Hunter Soul (by Orcha of Bloodscalp)

Mysterious and dark is the eternal hunter soul
Lurking and waiting for the sound of battle to call
When the screeches of dragons or exclamation of fear
Enters his consciousness, he will know the time is here

Armed to the teeth with his sword and his gun
He jumps into battle, the beginning of fun
Always by his side, his very loyal friend and pet
The most hideous killing machine you ever met

He puts ammo in his gun, pours a flask down his throat
With a wicked grim smile, he swears a blood filled oath
I will not eat or sleep, nor will I lay down my arms
Until the beast is dead or silenced are the alarms

Then he calls out his fearsome battle shout
He pops a misdirect and starts going all out
Arcane, serpent, chimera and then an aimed
Is followed by steady shot until the beast is tamed

True to his oath, he rests first at night
When death has come and ended the fight
At the fire place he’s resting with a beer and his pet
Telling stories about heroes and beasts he has met

The Uncommonly Hairy Arms of Frostheim (by Schkrulnik Jenkins)

Frostheim has hairy arm
We use more mats for bracelets
Please shave those things Frost

The Mighty Hunter (by Nephrolepis, Cenarius)

A mighty hunter here I stand,
Looking out and surveying the land.
I see the herds of animals graze,
I feel the wind, the snow, the rain.
I am the blood elf, swift and sleek,
I am the draenei with cloven feet,
I am the orc with victory and honor,
I am the dwarf with gold and lager.
I am the tauren making a stand,
I am the night elf attuned to the land.
I am the troll avoiding the voodoo,
I am the hunter inside of you.
My pack is full and my journey is long,
the howl of my companion a mournful song.
The thrill of the hunt, the fall of my prey,
the sound of the bowstring, my gun’s good aim.
All of these things are forever unknown,
to those without hunters; they must feel alone.
By fires at night, my wolf keeping watch,
I am a free spirit, never to be caught.
I fight for my people, I fight for my land,
I fight for those that can’t and I give them a hand.
The hunter is noble, the hunter is strong,
the hunter will live in the land’s memory ‘ere long.
For the hunter, the fight will never truly end,
but we’ll always be there, pwning noobs ftw.

Ode to the Ale Scented Beards (by Dansonsdorf/Hoghammer)

At home in a tavern, or cavern, or cave
We’re bearded, and armored,
Stout hearted and brave.
With Frostheim’s laugh, and a barrel of ale
We hunters are mighty and hearty and hale.
WHU is our banner, Ironforge is our home,
With boars, and bears, and turtles we roam.
We leave devastation wherever we’ve trod,
And can’t help but notice, that elves are just odd.
We level our cannons and lead with a sting,
Have NO use for bows and sticks that go “twing.”
A rogue tries to vanish, but never confesses,
And mages get pit sweat all over their dresses.
The pallys are dead, in their bullet holed plate,
We grin at the thought of all the ‘locks hate.
From stables we swap, and our spec we will switch,
To be long distance death from the Gulch to the Lich.
So in parting I say to the whole sorry lot,
you are a WHU hunter, or plainly you’re NOT.

Here are the official hotfixes that came through on June 10:

• Arcane Shot now deals 10% more damage.
• Cobra Shot and Steady Shots now deal 10% more damage.
• Hunter Pets summoned by Stampede now only use auto-attacks against their target.
• Blink Strikes now has a 10-yard minimum range, and the teleportation effect cannot happen more than once every 20 seconds.

Here’s the explanation from Blizzard:

Patch 5.3 resulted in Hunters feeling a bit stronger in PvP than in 5.2, where we feel they were in a much better place overall. Stampede in particular has been proving troublesome. We originally designed it with an “empty your stables” theme primarily for flavor–we wanted you to be able to see all of your favorite pets. In practice, it turned into more of a “deck building” mini-game, where Hunters were managing their entire stable to bring as much crowd control, raid buffs, etc. as possible. That’s opposite of our intentions with the Mists stable redesign; we want you to be able to pull out whichever pet you feel is ideal for your current situation. If you’re instead filling your stable based on whatever’s ideal for Stampede, you lose that entirely.
 
Furthermore, this min-maxing led to Stampede being a bit stronger of a DPS cooldown than we’d really like, especially for Beast Masters (who are already quite bursty in PvP). The hotfix lets us tone Stampede back just a little, and once again allows Hunters to keep whichever pets they like in the stable.
 
With Blink Strikes, our goals with the original 5.3 changes were to reduce Hunter burst for PvP as well as give them a passive talent option. Generally speaking, we prefer active talents to be slightly superior to passive talents in the same tier. No one will choose an active talent if it requires more work for the same reward. So, we wanted Blink Strikes to be DPS-neutral. Instead, it ended up being a PvP buff, hence the hotfix.
 
Regarding the changes to Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, and Steady Shot, we had originally only buffed Arcane shot, but there was some risk that it would change Hunter rotations, which wasn’t our intent. We simply wanted to compensate for the Stampede and Blink Strikes changes. Ultimately, our goal with all of these changes is simply to tone back some of the outlying behaviors that were causing Hunters to feel a little too strong in PvP in 5.3, without much impact elsewhere.

________________

  Ok, so let’s break this down:

• In terms of overall dps, the word that I’m hearing is that this actually increases sustained hunter dps. At worst, it’s dps neutral. PvE hunters, breath a sigh of relief.
• The downside is two-fold. One, it’s a nerf to PvP because the abilities nerfed (Blink Strikes and Stampede) contributed significantly to hunter burst. They still will, but not as much. Now, we have the statement from Blizzard that hunter PvP was a touch too good, and that BM was (and potentially still is) too “bursty.” I’m willing to take them at their word and hope this balances PvP a bit more, but that won’t soften the blow for many PvP hunters.
• The other downside, and to me the bigger long-term one, is that Stampede pets no longer have as much “flavor.” By that, I mean they aren’t casting their buffs. So there’s less buff customization for soloing, Brawler’s Guild, or situations where your raid is missing 2-3 buffs and you want to bring them all for a brief period of time. The other changes are balance related…balance comes and goes with each new patch. But this is a big decision that changes how we’ve used Stampede. And it removes some nuance from the class, which makes me sad.

Near the launch of 5.2 I wrote an article on spec viability in both PvE and PvP. General consensus was that we were middle of the pack in PvE and possibly a bit low. Since then we’ve received nothing but incremental buffs, so I have no reason to believe we’ve dropped. In PvP, we were weak overall but incredibly strong as BM in specific comps. Like, possibly TOO good compared to other classes and their representation at the highest levels. So from what we saw there, some burst nerfs aren’t a surprise, which has been the trend recently. In a competitive environment like PvP, I know it’s a tough pill to swallow to think we might have needed some burst nerfs, but it seems Blizzard thought we did. But it’s a still a shame, since it’s been a long time since huntesr had a spec near the top of PvP comps.

To me, the loss of customization in Stampede is the change that will outlast this patch, since the next hotfix or patch will alter balance once again. I LOVED the nifty stuff you could do with varied Stampede pets, it made the ability more than simply “press the big red button for teh l33t dps!” And now it’s gone. It’s hard to be too upset when the past months have seen us acquire 50 stable slots, no minimum range, more viability in PvP than past expansions, etc. But there’s still some sadness.

In-game hunter Banya regularly updates the site to include all kinds of interesting facts about the animals found in WoW, based on real-world animal facts. Even more fun, several animals in WoW don’t exist in the real world, and Banya attempts to categorize them based off their tendencies and physiological appearance, which gives us a sense of where they’d fit into the animal kingdom if they existed as they do in WoW.

My words can’t do the site justice – there’s TONS to learn on the site for animal and pet enthusiasts, and each page is accompanied with varied and cool pictures from both WoW and real-world animals. If you’re even remotely curious about your pets, or would like to learn more about them, you owe it to yourself to check out the site.

Banya was also recently interviewed on WoW Insider about her exploits. You can read it by clicking here.

She was also a guest on a couple recent Hunting Party Podcasts, notably Episode 170, where we interviewed her about her site and experiences in the game (as well as her irl job of tending to Rhinos).

Especially with the new stable slots available to us now, this is a great supplementary site to visit, possibly to get some ideas on what to tame, and to learn about the pets you do have.

And Sporebats get their own section. How cool is that?

VISIT THE SITE HERE

_____________________

Untitled (by Gilathor)

Defeat WHU? No one would dare!
When the smell of gun powder still hangs in the air!
We’re on the attack, theres no time to snooze!
So pick up you’re guns and down your last booze!

Untitled Haiku (by Gilathor)

Minibella is
the queen of hunter’s union
A haiku for her

Untitled (by Årth)

Frost was a very skilled hunter
But was a bit too fond of himself
He was a hearty dwarf
But was hairy and short
And so he became an elf.

Darkbrew’s Lament (by Årth)

The sun does not shine, though it was once mine
Before I sold Deathbringer’s Will.
The streets all seem grey, I lost to a mage in the raid
Because I sold Deathbringer’s Will.
The pain, it is wracking, Euripedes is cackling
Because I sold Deathbringer’s Will.
I had come so far again, I’d be pushing Kripparian
But then I sold Deathbringer’s Will.
I should give up, they say, re-roll a DK
Now that I’ve sold Deathbringer’s Will.
But cry not for me, it was my own stupidity
That made me sell Deathbringer’s Will.

*for reference, Darkbrew of Hunting Party Podcast fame actually accidentally sold DBW at the height of its ICC dominance. It was good times.

Feign (by Azurefire)

An angry boss
our tank has died
another man down
as fear abides

He looks at me
but I stay stout
as others scream
and try to run out

He comes at me
my time draws near
then I hit Feign
and I’m in the clear

Another near death
foiled by this skill
glad I’m a hunter
have fun with that bill!

However, many of these mechanics have gone neglected, and as a result, pet tanking is a clunky mess. What follows is some ideas for fixing it that, hopefully, we can all get behind.

The Balancing Act

Before we begin, there are two pitfalls to avoid with this line of thinking:

• We can’t make BM a tank spec instead of a dps spec. The hunter community would NOT be behind this, and it would limit our sweet, sweet dps options.
• There’s a realm between “raid tank” and “can’t tank,” and that’s the area in which we’ve always existed. We’ve always been able to pet tank 5M heroic dungeons, and right now is no different. Pushing us up toward raid tanking is dangerous territory, but I think it’s reasonable to want to be able to tank some bosses that are a tier or two below current-tier content.

Needs

Fix Growl

In-game GMs are notoriously, frustratingly vague about this, mostly because I think they’re not sure how to answer me. But, as close as I can gather, Growl should work on current-expansion bosses. And it doesn’t. Here’s what Blizzard needs to determine and/or fix:

• Does Growl work on raid bosses as a (true) Taunt? If so, make it actually work across the board.
• I’d actually be ok with an increase in Growl’s cooldown to compensate for this. Any working Taunt is better than none.
• If it’s not a “true” taunt, it still needs to apply properly.
• Should the cooldown be such that it allows pets to take part in most “taunt swap” bosses? The original incarnation of Taunt was too long a cooldown for this. Currently, we could swap with anyone if it worked properly.

Fix Aggro

Everyone knows by now that the Bestial Wrath Glyph messes with threat. That’s fine. I don’t mind that mechanic, because otherwise it would let us cheat our way to invincible pets during massive attacks. But pet aggro in BM needs to be consistent with good dps, meaning that tank pets may need a slight bump in aggro generation. The transition of Growl to a taunt means we lost out on some consistent aggro generation (it used to just generate lots of threat). We need a replacement ability, or higher threat quotients on current abilities, to be able to keep up.

To be clear, I don’t want true-tank-level threat. But pets should be able to sit just behind them as needed.

Lastly, I’ve personally experienced random aggro drops on raid bosses when pets have top aggro. I don’t think it’s an all-the-time problem, but it’s something to watch.

Armor

Pets get crushed by physical damage relative to true tanks. And their once-legendary magic resistances, while still good, aren’t as high as they were relative to past expansions.

Mostly, we just need an increased percentage of armor inherited from the hunter (for tenacity pets only). Not a monumental jump, but an incremental one that allows us to attempt fights with primarily physical damage.

I won’t throw out a number, because Blizzard is better at balancing these things than my napkin math ever could be. But it’s an area of need.

Wants

Health Pool

Once upon a time, tank pets could have more health than their masters. Not so anymore. Whether through a tier talent, or an increase in inherited stamina, pets could use a bump to their health.

Thunderstomp

In theory, Thunderstomp exists to hold AoE mobs. While this can work for soloing, where we have MD and Feign Death, in even 5-mans, T-stomp is woefully underprepared to hold off of other dps. Traditionally, T-stomp aggro has been damage x 2.5. I don’t know if that still holds true, but if Blizzard wants it to be a legit tanking AoE ability, we need a bit more.

Pet Movement

Here’s the problem: we can’t do kiting or complex boss movements with any degree of skill. It’s a complete mess, and none of our abilities (even the “Send to” function) are next to useless in a fight. Eyes of the Beast was an old talent that allowed us to become our pet, but even this was flawed because the hunter stood still (likely dying in a fire) and dps was nuked into oblivion.

Here’s my proposed solution: Give us an ability that allows us to jump on our pet’s back and ride them. Our action bar becomes our pet’s, and our control of them gives them a damage increase. This gives us the freedom that “Eyes…” used to, but without risking the life of our hunter. It would still be a dps loss compared to a traditional dps spec, but would come closer to the “tank spec” idea for BM without sacrificing the potential for BM dps.

————–

That last one is probably the most far-fetched. But it would also be a gigantic step forward in pet tanking.

What are your thoughts? Did I leave something out? Is pet tanking a pipe dream that we should discard?

So if you haven’t sat in on a recent podcast, I’d encourage you to check it out. The podcast happens (most) Saturdays at 1pm US Central time at www.huntingpartypodcast.com

Ep. 173

This is the most recent one, from just a few days ago. Darkbrew and I went over Patch 5.3 changes and hotfixes, and took suggestions from the chat room on what the next big Hunter “Cause” should be (like stable slots and Stampede, previously).

Listen to it here.

Ep. 170

This episode was awesome because we talked to Banya, creator of WoW Biology 101. It’s a unique show that’s all about animals…we reference it back to WoW as often as possible, but some of the discussion is interesting regardless of your gaming tendencies.

Listen to it or download it here.

…

As always, you can catch all shows on our Youtube channel, and via iTunes for easy download (or on the hosting site for an alternative direct download)

Recently Tabana announced she’s taking a break from WoW, which includes taking a break from maintaining the WHH. This means that we will need volunteers to take over the chores of maintaining the site. It requires watching all the hunter blogs out there and posting on the WHH every time a new article is posted — the job isn’t particularly glamorous, needs daily vigilance, but it makes a huge impact on the hunter community, and the ability of many of the smaller hunter sites out there to get exposed to the rest of the hunter community.

If you’re interested, please email me about it.

But, you won’t hear back from me for about a week. I’m moving across country (and setting that up is what I’ve been doing the past couple weeks): the moving truck shows up tomorrow, and I hit the road Tuesday morning. I’m supposed to have internet set up at the new place on Friday night, so it will be at least next weekend before I have reliable access to email again!