Lethal Shots

Patch 3.2 is on the PTR, which means it is probably a little over a month from going live. Hunters are getting a handful of changes this patch, though not near as many as we saw in 3.1. Luckily there are no huge nerfs, but at the same time not much to get excited about. Below are the portions of the patch notes that pertain to Hunters along with my two cents on them. The complete patch notes can be found here.

Classes: General

• All pets now receive 40% of their master’s resilience and 100% of their master’s spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.

This is huge! How long have Hunters been asking for this? Now our PvP oriented brethren will be able to hold their own better.

• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

The way I read this, replenishment is taking a 20% hit in mana returned. While this only directly affects those of us that roll Survival, it indirectly affects everyone. I’m hoping that mana doesn’t start to become even more of an issue in 10-mans.

• Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3-second interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.

So the Marksman among us get a spell interrupt for boss fights. I can only see this as a good thing.

Hunters

• Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

Part of an across the board change for all travel forms. Will be great for new players and those leveling alts.

• Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.

Meh, I really could care less.

• The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.

Ok, a lot of people are up in arms over this one. Here’s some advice: Get Over It. This does not make chain trapping impossible, it simply makes it slightly more difficult. Less breathing room, but still easy enough to do with practice.

• Traps now have separate 30-second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

This is even HUGER!!!! I can finally CC again without gimping my DPS by not using Black Arrow. I can honestly see myself using traps a lot more once this goes into effect. And I can see the masochistic arena Hunters drooling over this one.

• Beast Mastery
  • Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.

Does anyone even take this talent? I mean maybe a PvP player, but I don’t know any Hunter that PvPs as a BM. Well, maybe those crazy guys that are out tanking with their pets take it, so yeah, they get a buff.

• Survival
  • Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.

A slight nerf to a PvP talent if anything at all. Nothing worth crying over.

• • Lock and Load: Now has a 22-second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.

We all knew that chain L&L procs were too good to last. At least it isn’t a full 30 second cooldown like last time, and maybe now they will up the proc rate slightly.

• Pets
  • Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.

Um, pretty much useless. No one uses a tenacity pet when they are in an instance. (Well, they shouldn’t be at the very least.) I don’t know, this might be another PvP thing, but I don’t see myself ever using it.

• Bug Fixes
  • All ranks of Sonic Blast now properly have an 80 Focus cost.
  • Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.
  • Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
  • The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.
  • T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.

Yay for bug fixes! Nothing too exciting though. Mostly just wording changes.

Most of the changes aren’t anything special. I am excited about the changes to pet resilience and the splitting up of trap cooldowns, and I’m not too happy about them adding a cooldown to L&L again. Of course everything is still on the PTR and subject to change, so I’m not going to get too worked up yet. But what about you. Anything in the notes that has you excited or upset?

Last week we covered choosing a spec. Next on the list is to pick a pet and get it ready for end-game.

I know that you already have a pet, but just because that pet was great for leveling and soloing does not mean that it will be great for end-game. Tenacity pets are great for solo work and Cunning pets can be fun, but they are far from optimal for heroics and raids. So leave the bears, boars, gorillas, sporebats, wind serpents, ect. in the stable and go out and get a Ferocity pet.

When looking for a Ferocity pet, you can choose from the following pet families. You can check either WoWHead or Petopia to see what skins are available and where to tame the different skins. The family skill is also listed after each family:

• Carrion Bird – Demoralizing Screech
• Cat – Rake
• Core Hound (Exotic – BM only) – Lava Breath
• Devilsaur (Exotic – BM only) -Monstrous Bite
• Hyena – Tendon Rip
• Moth -Serenity Dust
• Raptor – Savage Rend
• Spirit Beast (Exotic – BM only) – Spirit Strike
• Tallstrider – Dust Cloud
• Wasp – Sting
• Wolf – Furious Howl

One thing you need to keep in mind when choosing a pet is the family skill. Some, such as Furious Howl, provide a buff for the player and/or group. Others, such as Sting, apply a debuff to the pet’s target. Then of course there are the straight DPS skills such as Rake.

Once you have chosen and tamed your pet, you will need to level it to 80. If you don’t it will miss an insane amount of the time, seriously gimping its DPS, in turn gimping yours. And feel free to try out different pets. You have 5 stable slots, so there is no reason you can’t have different pets to suit your mood.

And Now you just need to spec your pet. As with your own spec, feel free to spec your pet however you want but keep in mind that some talents will be better for raiding. You are taking a Ferocity pet for their damage, so talents like Great Stamina and Natural Armor are not ideal, while Cobra Reflexes and Spiked Collar are. Here are a few example builds that you can use or modify to your liking:

• Build 1
• Build 2
• BM build (The 51-point BM talent gives your pets 4 extra talent points)

Also, one last thing. Don’t let some one tell you that you have to use a certain pet because it provides the highest DPS. Pick a pet you like, one that you enjoy playing with. After all, this is ultimately just a game. I raid with a Moth. When I first started raiding with my guild, they laughed at it. They absolutely could not believe that I had brought a Moth to a raid. But they stopped laughing when they noticed me and my Moth consistently come in no lower than third on the meters, if not top them completely.

I specced back to Beast Master over the weekend. Since I was doing some raiding with my guild, I wanted to bring the best I could. And despite what the theory-crafters say, for me that is BM. I’m just not familiar enough with the other specs to put out consistent DPS. Sure, I can do it on a training dummy, but in an actual fight I rely more on instinct and reflexes. Over time I hope to become proficient with Marks and Surv, but it is definitely going to take some time.

Tonight I was thinking of changing to Surv to give it a try. I might like it more, might like it less. One thing I do know is that I don’t plan on trap dancing. The whole idea of constantly running to melee range seems wrong for a Hunter. I think its also time to look into another pet. I like my moth, but I think I can do better for a non-exotic ferocity.

Any suggestion on spec or pet choice would be more than welcome.

That’s right. I gave in.

I tamed a Devilsaur.

This is something I have been resisting for the most part.

Why you ask?

Because it seemed cliche. Everyone went out and tamed a Devilsaur when 3.0.2 went live. I wasn’t too interested in them though. Except to extract petty revenge on the species by taming one and then letting him die while I Feigned Death and laughed. Repeatedly. As much fun as that was, it did grow tiresome and the pet was promptly abandoned.

Anyway, fast-forward 10 levels and a lot of content. I’m in Northrend questing and PUGing heroics with my Gorilla and Moth by my side. But I keep hearing about how Cats and Devilsaurs are the #1 DPS pets in the game. Now I am all about DPS. So maybe it is time to consider a change of pets. I’ll be damned if I am going to tame a Cat. Night Elf Hunter with a Cat for a Pet. How predictable is that? And they are getting nerfed anyway.

So I tamed a Devilsaur. Might as well right? I went 51 points deep into Beast Mastery (for the extra pet skill points mostly) so I might as well run with an Exotic Pet, right?

He is only at level 75 right now, but he looks promising. I think I’ll keep him around and see what happens.

And I promise not to let him die while I laugh. Much….