Hunter changes in 2.4
by Amanda Miller 
Mar 25th 2008 at 11:20AM
When information began to trickle down about patch 2.4, hunters, like most classes, were groaning. Which nerf bat would we be hit with next? Fortunately, it seems that we have slipped under the radar. For now. Maybe Aspect of the Beast finally did us some good. Let's break down the changes and see how this is going to be affecting us. With no major patches between now and Wrath, we might be living with these changes for awhile.
Bug fixes:
- Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues. Since no one likes animation issues, I'm filing this under "win." Not that I've ever tried to equip a thrown weapon while already shooting, mind you.
- Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players. To me, this sounds fair. Also, I want to be invisible. Rogues can, so why not hunters? Right? No?
- Hunter's Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter's Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter's Mark cast by Hunters without the talent. This used to be, but then was not. Now, it will be again. While it might rub your ego the wrong way always reading the message "a more powerful spell is already active," it is better for overall DPS this way.
- The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase. Personally, I find that most of my tooltips on most of my characters do not reflect the changes made by my talent points. At least one more will appear correctly, and I will try not to be sad about the others.
- Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target. So this was a nice little bug we had for awhile, but let's face it; it wasn't fair. It also doesn't help the "huntard" image any when hunters are caught whining that now, we will have to learn to actually face our targets; and that's just too hard. What does this mean you ask? Do note that these are our two channeled shots, and as such, if another player sees us channeling, they need only run around us far enough to interrupt the channel. Prior to 2.4, we would have spun with the runner.
- Improved Mend Pet now has a 25/50 chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%. This is good news; as much as I enjoy the way my owl looks when she is purple, green, or even glowing, I ought not to torture her for pretty pictures.
- Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc. Now this is a lovely little safeguard that several classes are also getting. Now the inexperienced hunters will not lose as many friends, and the more seasoned hunters can find new ways to use Multi that would otherwise not have been advisable.
- Track spells will now persist after death. This is not bad, so it must be good. Granted, there are many issues I would like to see addressed before I would have requested this one, but here we are. It will be especially useful in battlegrounds, as it can be a bit of a pain to have to find the tiny little button on the minimap, use a dropdown, and pick your tracking. That little button and I have issues.
As for our Multi no longer breaking crowd control, while this is a buff, it is not hunter specific. Other classes with similar abilities will also stop upsetting the mages until Vent becomes unpleasant, or people begin to "disconnect."
Of course, Blizzard devs have not been the only ones hard at work. Check out BRK's preview of what addons will bring to the hunter class in 2.4.
Filed under: Hunter, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Classes, Talents, Buffs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mirina Mar 25th 2008 11:25AM
Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc. Now this is a lovely little safeguard that several classes are also getting. Now the inexperienced hunters will not lose as many friends, and the more seasoned hunters can find new ways to use Multi that would otherwise not have been advisable.
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This has been taken out...
Chris Anthony Mar 25th 2008 11:28AM
As always, it's possible that the change made it to the live realms while being omitted in the patch notes. Let's not come to any conclusions until the realms are back up.
Mark Mar 25th 2008 11:32AM
You can almost certainly take this one to the bank, Chris.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5463899193&pageNo=1&sid=1#3
Mirina is right.
Chris Anthony Mar 25th 2008 11:33AM
...but if Hortus confirmed that the change wasn't happening, then I guess it's probably not. (It's still *possible* that it will - deciding the change shouldn't happen, removing it from the notes, and then pushing the patch with the code intact. It's unlikely, but it's happened before...)
Mirina Mar 25th 2008 11:41AM
And I shall not be the one to test this in tonight's raid (if we can manage one--you all know how patch days go)--I'll leave that to some "other hunter" ;)
Mark Mar 25th 2008 11:26AM
They took back the multi-shot buff, along with several other of the CC-breaking abilities. As far as I know, the paladin shield-throwing ability (name is lost to me right now) is the only one that remained. I think cleave might be on there too, but I'm not sure.
I am sure; however, that multi-shot will still break CC. Hortus confirmed it on the PTR forum.
Chris Anthony Mar 25th 2008 11:31AM
"if another player sees us channeling, they need only run around us far enough to interrupt the channel. Prior to 2.4, we would have spun with the runner."
Has this been confirmed? The patch note seems to imply that the bug was that you could start the channel while facing away from the target, and that's no longer the case; if you use Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away, the cast will fail. But if you start casting while facing properly and the target moves, you'll still follow the target. Is that incorrect?
Hunter Mar 25th 2008 2:28PM
No nerfs??? The mana burn nerf!!! The drinking nerfs!!! Are mana burn is 20% less effective againts enemys with 400 resil. We can no longer drink in arenas and with are mana pool we will be OOM and useless in less then a minute if the other team has a mana burner. Being the least represented class in arena this patch will only bring hunters down. Good thing warhammers coming soon cuase I'm done with this fucking class.
ThorinII Mar 25th 2008 11:40AM
My first reaction to the bug fix for our channeled shots was "That it is a nerf!" It was a nice lazy-man's bug. Which I am a lazy man. However, it's IS a bug fix and how often do we really use them in PvP anyway? Most of the time we're getting pounded and can't get through the warm up time. Not a huge loss here.
I agree that only the hunTARDS should QQ about this.
Saido Mar 25th 2008 12:10PM
One other item in the notes caught my eye - most elementals are no longer immune to poisons (except those who have always been immune to nature-based attacks in general) - I'm eager to test if that will affect immunity to stings.
Br_other Mar 25th 2008 12:17PM
What about the other changes which affecting us? Resilience-Mana drain?
The combat log changes? Not the opponent can see in the log when we're dropping traps. There are already addons for arena which are alarming when hunter drops the trap.
Now we'll be even less present in Arena then before!
Josh Mar 25th 2008 12:17PM
"if another player sees us channeling, they need only run around us far enough to interrupt the channel. Prior to 2.4, we would have spun with the runner."
Aimed shot and Steady shot are NOT channeled. They are CAST. There is a difference. A channeled spell has a periodic effect while the timer drops, like arcane missiles or volley. If you are hit while channeling, the duration of the effect is decreased, rather than pushed back.
A cast spell has a duration where nothing happens and you can take no other action. At the end of that duration, an effect happens. This is aimed shot, steady shot, and spells like frostbolt and shadowbolt.
Single target spells which are channeled do home in on the target, and you turn with them, as long as they were a legal target when the cast began.
No Cast spells do this. This can be thought of as a bug fix because these spells were never channeled.
here is a thought Mar 26th 2008 7:55AM
don't forget the gear changes
Hunterlin May 2nd 2008 7:36AM
My thoughts about patch:
Bug fixes:
2. it was possible to shoot flare from shadowmeld.
PvP nerf to nightelf hunters. (I am dwarf hunter myself)
3. this is good PvE fix. I do not know why this was broken in last patch.
5. PvP nerf to steady and aimed shot.
Now just run past hunter and hunter will get message "need to face target" after cast is done. Running through hunter will not interrupt cast, hunter will have to do himself.
What I hope, that they have fixed jammed autoshot problem in patch or after failed steady/aimed cast our autoshot will be jammed for rest of arena fight...
(this is same problem with kill command)
Buffs
1. Buff that may make 1/2 talent choice usable. Until now it was all or nothing, 15% where not realy meaningful.
2. As others mentioned, multishot improvement was taken out.
PvP nerfs:
1) resilence affecting drain.
2) druid nerfs affects hunters with same nerfbat. Only top ranked 2v2 hunter teams where druid/hunter.
Good or bad patch?
While it looks like that now in PvP hunters will be weaker, actually this patch does what hunters suggested in forums: take out Viper sting to see real hunter problems. With hunters getting down from now famous "43%,50%,43%", we have chance for some nice buffs in future.
sabbah Mar 25th 2008 12:44PM
I'm sure I'll get yelled at for not making a useful comment, but I just wanted to say that I laughed so hard reading this. Especially the comment about Aspect of the Beast. I actually followed the link going what aspect is that? :D Anyway, your writing style is wonderfully amusing and ironic. Thank you.
Blackbird Mar 25th 2008 1:32PM
Didn't they nerf the Arena S3 Hunter Axe?
Bunkai Mar 25th 2008 2:20PM
It was buffed.
From the patch notes:
"Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe: The weapon delay has been reduced."
If I'm reading that correctly... "delay" means attack speed... so it's getting faster for melee (from 3.60 to 3.00)... no biggie for hunters.
However, they did reduce the damage of that axe(was 386-580 is now 321-483) , which brought the DPS down a negligible amount (from 134.2 to 134.0), even with the attack speed increase. DIDN'T MAKE THE PATCH NOTES.
2.4 version:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34014
Manatank Mar 25th 2008 6:07PM
That change is absolutely a nerf. Not one I care a ton about. If I have to use it, I want as much burst damage from it as possible. This change lowers the damage from a single hit. If I'm in range for the 3 seconds it takes to swing a second time, I'm already in trouble. I never want to take a swing more than once with this thing. This probably is a nerf to the damage from raptor strike as well (because it is based on the single hit damage of the weapon as far as I know).
It is still a fantastic weapon, but I did enjoy the grief I was causing mages as soon as 2.3 came out and they poped in my face and I smashed it in with this axe. It's still great as a stat booster, and still good as a face smasher.
Kheldul Mar 25th 2008 2:03PM
I wish they'd fix the Kill Command (and other instants) bug causing Auto-Shots to stop indefinitely. It's ridiculous and only showed up in 2.3.
Akussa Mar 26th 2008 11:04AM
You missed the shiny little bug fix about snake trap inconspicuously mixed in among the hundreds of all bug fixes.
Snakes from the snake trap will no longer go after non-flagged members of the opposite faction.