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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsScattered Shots: Hunting Mists of Pandaria talents
by Brian Wood 
Dec 8th 2011 at 7:00PM
Patch 4.3 has been out for over a week now, and that means that it's so old news. It's time for us to finally look forward to patch 5.0 and the Mists of Pandaria hunter talent preview that we first got a look at during BlizzCon.
The new talent system strips down the talent selections to a mere six talent choices. Every 15 levels, you are presented with three possible hunter talents, and you can choose only one of them. Then 15 levels later, you choose one of a different three talents, and so on -- only unlike many talents now, these talents aren't meaningless.
Now, the last time we talked about this MoP stuff, the comments got a bit heated. To assist you today, I have included the above video. If you're about to say anything stated in that video, you are about to become one of those people and are better off calling your mom instead. She hasn't heard from you in too long anyway. She worries.
The new system rocks
There are a lot of different opinions on the new talent system, and everyone's opinion is valid. Unless of course you think the new system is worse than we have now, in which case you're clearly wrong and probably play a rogue.
The goal of the new system is to get rid of a bunch of the old, boring talents and to move the must-have talents into spec abilities that you automatically get as you level in your spec of choice. In this, I think the new system is wildly successful. Most of all the goal was to provide meaningful choices, and on that count it's a bit hit and miss but certainly no worse than we have now.
Some people feel that making only six talent decisions is too few. There's some merit to that point of view; however, keep in mind that right now we make fewer choices than that. Despite having many more talent points right now, we have very few talent decisions. Almost all our talents have a "right" choice -- which is really no choice at all.
I also strongly disagree with the notion that this is where skill comes into play. If you can spend five minutes searching online for the cookie-cutter best talent build, then that's not skill. Skill is your ability to execute your rotation optimally in game, be aware of your surroundings, and make the right decisions about what ability to use at the right time when in the chaos of battle. If your claim to skill is knowing the best talents or gems, then you're probably not as good as you think you are.
Let's take a good look at the new talents and see how well Blizzard did at making meaningful choices. Keep in mind that all of the numbers (damage, duration, cooldowns) are subject to lots and lots of change.
Level 15 talents
- Frozen Arrows Your arrows and ammunition are chilled with frost, causing your Auto Shot to have a 30% chance to reduce the target's movement speed by 30% for 10 seconds.
- Arcane Arrows Your arrows and ammunition are infused with arcane magic, causing your Auto Shot to have a 50% chance to restore 5 focus when it deals damage.
- Venom Tipped Arrows Your arrows and ammunition are mixed with serpent venom, causing a stacking poison damage over time effect on the target, dealing nature damage. Stacks up to five times.
It seems pretty clear that for this tier we will not actually have much of a choice. Once we know the damage of Venom Tipped Arrows, we're going to do the math and see whether that or Arcane Arrows is best for each spec, and that will be the correct call for most fights. We may have the occasional fight where we change it up (because we want the slow effect for adds, or because it's bad to have DoTs up, for example), but this first tier is going to have a right answer. It is possible that this will be an interesting decision for PvP, however, depending on the state of hunter PvP in MoP.
On the other hand, these talents are all pretty darn cool.
Level 30 talents
- Silencing Shot 20-second cooldown; a shot that silences the target and interrupts spellcasting for 3 seconds.
- Wyvern Sting 1-minute cooldown; a stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 30 seconds. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the sting causes 2,190 nature damage over 6 seconds. Only one sting per hunter can be active on the target at a time.
- Intimidation 1-minute cooldown; command your pet to intimidate the target, causing a high amount of threat and stunning the target for 3 seconds. Lasts 15 seconds.
Level 45 talents
- Posthaste Your movement speed is increased by 60% for 4 seconds after you use Disengage.
- Evasiveness Increases your chance to dodge attacks and resist spells by 100% for 3 seconds when you use Disengage.
- Exhilaration When you Disengage, you are instantly healed for 15% of your total health when you successfully land.
I can imagine in MoP that the signature silhouette of the hunter in a raid is a kind of jumping bean, bouncing back and forth with Disengage all the time, whether we need to or not.
Level 60 talents
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera Whenever you are hit by a melee attack, the cooldown of your Disengage is instantly reduced by 4 seconds. Whenever you are hit by a ranged attack or spell, the cooldown of your Deterrence is instantly reduced by 8 seconds. These effects have a 2-second cooldown.
- Aspect of the Iron Hawk Your Aspect of the Hawk now also reduces all direct damage taken by 15%.
- Spirit Bond While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 2% of total health every 5 seconds.
Level 75 talents
- Fervor 2-minute cooldown; instantly restores 50 focus to you and your pet.
- Readiness 3-minute cooldown; when activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown on all Hunter abilities.
- Thrill of the Hunt You have a 15% chance when you fire a shot that costs focus to instantly regain 100% of the focus cost of the shot.
This is assuming that the right balance is struck, of course, because the possibilities of Readiness are massive, particularly that it will now be available to all specs. This means big red pet Readiness combo is back, as is using Readiness in combination with any other talent. More on that in a bit.
Level 90 talents
- Flash Freeze Your Freezing Trap no longer has a cooldown, but only one target can be afflicted by it at a time.
- Black Ice Increases the movement speed reduction of your Ice Trap by an additional 10% and when you move through your Ice Trap you gain 50% movement speed for 4 seconds.
- Transmorph Trap 30-second cooldown; place a nature trap laced with a special toxin that will transmorph the next enemy into a beast, reducing their movement speed by 60% and causing them to be unable to use any of their normal abilities.
When I was at BlizzCon, I got a chance to ask Ghostcrawler about an interesting situation with the new talents: "So can you Freezing Trap one target, then Wyvern Sting another, then Transmorph Trap another, and Scatter Shot a fourth? And then hit Readiness and do it all again to another four?" Ghostcrawler paused a moment and said that they may have to look at that. So no promises that the massive CC combo will make it through alpha and beta testing -- but even without the Readiness combo, that's a heck of a lot of hunter CC on demand!
So what do you guys think of the new talent options (ignoring the numbers for a moment). Assuming they were worked to be more balanced, do you think the choices are more meaningful than what we're making now? How would you change the tier options to make them more of a decision?
Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. From leveling your hunter and choosing the best patch 4.2 gear to learning the DPS value of skill, we've got you covered. If you're stuck in one of the nine support classes, why not move up to the big league and play a hunter?
Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
EaterOfBirds Dec 8th 2011 7:37PM
Had to watch the video AGAIN then find the WHU youtube and watch the 'sporebat' video AGAIN as well. they still totally slay me ^ ^
Now to calm down and actually read the article.
PocketFox Dec 8th 2011 7:54PM
I'm still confused by the Flash Freeze talent, tbh, and I feel like I'm missing something.
"Your Freezing Trap no longer has a cooldown, but only one target can be afflicted by it at a time."
But according to the spell tooltip on the MoP talent calculator, Freezing Trap can only affect one target -anyway-, and I haven't seen any skills or talents that suggest being able to spread it to more than one. Am I missing something here?
Evelinda Dec 8th 2011 8:46PM
I think that's just there so that you know that even though your trap will have no cd, you're still limited to using it on one target at a time. The base will be one target, and the talent won't change that; it just means you won't have to wait 30 seconds to trap your target again if it (or someone else) breaks your cc.
Harvoc Dec 8th 2011 8:01PM
I totally hate the MoP talent system. No, it's not any of the more common complaints but instead because of how Blizzard is implementing the new talent system. It just feels as if they're removing utility from each spec by putting in old talents/baseline spells in the talent list. I would go more in depth but I think I explain it much more eloquently in a thread on the official WoW forums (mine is the first post): http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3595346142?page=1#0.
Brett Porter Dec 9th 2011 6:04PM
Honestly, it does sound like a common complaint that even Frost addressed in his article.
Talents were meant to be interesting choices and they've gotten away from that because there have been so many levels and getting talents each level doesn't work for long. They made each individual talent choice more important (yes, some more than others, but the new ones are more so this than the old ones) and made talents be where you got a lot of your utility from.
I agree with alot of what the responses on the forum were saying, disagreeing with you, because having non-damage increasing utility is interesting, in my opinion.
What would you do differently? How would you fix the talent issue we've gotten into since Wrath?
Harvoc Dec 9th 2011 9:13PM
@ Brett Porter
Well, I never said that I disagreed with what Blizzard was doing. I am all up for making all the talents utility but not at the expense of each spec's flavor. I said what I think Blizzard should do in my original post: shrink the talent trees down and make each talent utility. I think you misread my intentions.
GabeCo Dec 8th 2011 8:19PM
"I hate this new system! does Blizz think were stupid? theyre dumbing the game down and making it Hello Kitty Island Adventure!!!!1!!!one!!! Theyre removing all the character customization and all the real choices! they wont let us think! Also, Pokemon and Pandas? seriously? this xpac will be horrible. This just shows that Wow is dying! I wish they could make a good xpac!" -The Support Classes
StClair Dec 9th 2011 3:40AM
"i am so smart."
MsMoo Dec 9th 2011 4:28AM
He didn't watch the video.
cmichaelcooper Dec 8th 2011 8:23PM
I think what is important to understand about the new talent system is that it is an exercise of game designers working through ideas in public. The fact that you get a new choice every 15 levels, resulting in your last choice happening at level 90- the highest level of MoP - is proof that they still haven't thought much past how the system will work beyond MoP. This system is further proof that they haven't hit upon a class customization/perk/benefit system that will function into future expansions, which will require large work-arounds every expansion. I think this will further frustrate the player-base.
Unfortunately this is the reality we may have to live with in games where every expansion introduces higher level caps that require the development of a new rule set. Games like DnD, which have historically been able to mostly plan for characters to hit a max level and stop progressing in innate abilities, don't suffer from this problem.
I like the direction of the new talent system, but I do wish there were more choices. It seems to me like the more WoW progresses, the more narrowly the playstyles of the classes become focused, when I feel like it should be the opposite. Higher levels of power should open up more varieties of possibility rather than fewer. For example, I see no practical reason why hunters can't make a choice between melee and ranged playstyles at some point, effectively turning one class into two.
Balancing problems are an unconvincing argument to me, as it feels like an excuse to limit possibilities within the game, to limit player choice and creativity. I would gladly give up the expectation of class balance for a greater amount of playstyle variety.
mibu.work1 Dec 8th 2011 9:33PM
I have to disagree with part of your argument there friend. I honestly can't express why, and I recognize the 15-level-system is a problem that needs to be addressed, but the body of the argument rubs me the wrong way. I personally look at the new Talent system as six points of potential, and loads and loads of room for experimentation with playstyle. More than that, I see the hunter one in particular as being as full of goodies as a goblin engineer's toolbox. I see endless opportunities to practice improved trap-kiting, testing enemies for first ice traps and then transmorph traps. To me, this system simply reeks of potential, and I feel somehow that you're missing that. When you say you wish there were more choices, I feel like telling you to just remember that we're standing on a planet that's revolving, and revolving at 900 miles an hour, etc. There is so much more to this talent system than six level thresholds and 18 choices, because it's really a much larger number of choices than that. Plot out the total potential combinations, and it's a HUGE number of choices, and some are better than others for certain things. Just think about how much variety there can be with this system alone!
tldr: In my opinion, there's more here than meets the eye, blizzard has outdone themselves with this one, and a Monty Python reference was worked in.
cmichaelcooper Dec 8th 2011 10:30PM
@mibu.work1 I don't entirely disagree with what you have said. I do like the new talent system, and I recognize the potential for many complex ability combinations by exploring different mixes of talents. The problem I'm trying to get at is that the game is so focused at the spec level, that no matter what you choose in the current system, you have a very narrow focus of function. As my character gets more powerful, I want to make huge sweeping decisions about my playstyle, such as whether I'm a melee hunter or a ranged hunter. Or an agility based warrior rather than a strength based warrior. Regardless of my personal feeling on this design decision, the playerbase will only continue to be frustrated as long as we have talent systems that have to be re-invented every time a new expansion comes out simply because the amount of points we get, or the interval at which we get our talents, gets awkward.
At least if we made a choice every five levels we would have a balance between making choices often enough to feel consistently engaged, and having choices at a multiple of 5 where we always know a new expansion's level cap will land so it all doesn't have to be re-arranged.
monotype Dec 8th 2011 8:27PM
I'll be honest, I can't see myself taking Iron Hawk unless they remove that direct damage modifier. Uh, I'm a hunter. I'm not _supposed_ to be taking direct damage. If I do, I'm doing it wrong. Unless MoP has more encounters with adds who randomly charge raiders (screw you, Blackhorn, and the dragon you rode in on), then looks like it's Spirit Bond all the way for me.
Matt Dec 9th 2011 6:05PM
I'm pretty sure this is for all of the fights where >unavoidable< damage is being dealt. Such as on The Spine of Deathwing when the tentacles grip random raid members. The charge you mentioned on the Blackhorn fight is actually a different form of damage which hawk wouldn't help much at all against - it's avoidable damage.
Rhüarc Dec 8th 2011 9:24PM
Last night I had a look at the new iteration of the MoP talent calculator and I must say I had quite the laugh over one specific talent.
Exhilaration When you Disengage, you are instantly healed for 15% of your total health when you successfully land.
I like how this talent has the wording "when you successfully land." It may have just been because it was late, or because I am a huge Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan. Or maybe a combination of both.
For those who aren't sure what I'm referring to, in Chapter 9 of the book "Life, the Universe and Everything" there is a quote about flying that goes as follows:
"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties."
So in my mind, I was picturing hunters suddenly getting the ability to fly, all because they managed to miss the ground when disengaging.
Please Ghostcrawler! Make it happen!
Luotian Dec 8th 2011 11:17PM
I think the main problem is that we're all thinking of this like the old talents. I know I do it all the time, because I've been an MM hunter since early BC and the idea of having to trade of Silencing Shot/Readiness/Rapid Fire when they are currently such stables for me is something I can't quite wrap my mind around.
We really need to play with it, in game, before I think the majority of us will be able to separate our mental picture from reality.
PS, Frost, I think they might be aiming for us to act/look like the rangers in the newest dungeons. Which, you know, would be kind of fun.
Brett Porter Dec 9th 2011 6:07PM
Honestly, I think leaving the term "talents" the same is an issue here. Folks are used to have tens and tens of talents to choose from; that's the MMO way.
How I look at the new talents of Mists is more like Feats in D&D. They are supposed to be important, you don't get them that often (every 4 levels, iirc) and they are supposed to be interesting choices. I like to think of the Mists talents as this way.
Some are better than others, yes, but they will most certainly change in some shape or form between now and when 5.0 drops.
totally Dec 9th 2011 4:20AM
"I can imagine in MoP that the signature silhouette of the hunter in a raid is a kind of jumping bean, bouncing back and forth with Disengage all the time, whether we need to or not."
You mean, this isn't how hunters work anyway? i've been doing it wrong all these years!
Disengage = best ability ever!
MsMoo Dec 9th 2011 4:23AM
Ive seen the current MOP spec tab and the talent tab and I have to say I like this new system. For those who may be iffy about all they are removing, think of it this way. When you spec your toon, how many of those talents did decide to take based on your play style? Now how many of them did you click because that's what makes your toon put out bigger numbers? Our talents aren't really choices right now if you want to be competitive at either pvp or pve. Blizz is making it less about the must have talent points and more about play style preference. The utility has not been removed just rearranged, instead of the common thing like only BM hunters get intimidate and MM hunter can have it now too. Survival with readiness? Yeppers. Just one more note on something that Ive seen confusing a lot of players still, right now our spec and our talent points are one and the same, that's changing we will now have a (spec)ialization BM MM SV, you will still choose one of those tree and get your niffy spec specific ability's AND the talents talked about in this article. Talents now enhance our specs not determine them.
rodmin Dec 9th 2011 4:54AM
That mega combo you mentioned, Frostheim. CCing 4 at a time (one of them for just a few seconds though), then another 4 CCs.
It would make the hunter an excelent flag carrier for WSG, if you include even the Disengage bonus (either the heal or the movement one) and the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera talents.
I believe that it may get nerfed due to that insane uberness. Although being weaker to physical damage due to wearing mail would counter that. But then again, with all that CC at a hunter's disposition, no mellee would be able to reach him (except a DSing paladin, but that can be fixed too, saddly).
Well, at least we know hunters are getting A LOT of love in MoP