WoW Insider

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Just about everyone who plays WoW spends at least some time complaining about it and explaining their vision of how the game could be made so much better. For some players, this occupies more time than playing the game itself.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone, which was made evident when I was glancing back through a bunch of old columns. As much as I try to focus on mechanics and divining developer intent, I can't help but suggest ways that I think abilities could be better or pointing out imbalances.

Therefore, I think it's worth taking a moment to really look at what Blizzard is doing for hunters in Mists of Pandaria and realize that the devs are trying to give us just about everything that we as a class have been asking for -- something that can be easily missed in all the hunters complaining about the MoP abilities. And for once, we have a documented way to compare what hunters have asked for against what we were given: the class feedback thread.

Join me after the cut for the MoP scoreboard.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Blizzard listens to hunters, really

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Blizzard listens to hunters, really originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

One of the goals in Blizzard's revamp of the talent system was to take away "right" choices -- the kind of decisions in which we could calculate a mathematical correct choice -- and instead let us actually make a decision about what talent to choose for any given tier. For many of our hunter tiers, this more or less worked out, often resulting in one clear PvP talent and a choice between two PvE talents that are both potentially useful in the right circumstances.

But then we also have talent tiers like the level 75 choice, where every ability is providing us with some kind of DPS cooldown. No doubt we needed some DPS-boosting talents, but once those are in the mix, we are going to be able to calculate a right choice -- or at least a right choice for any given situation.

This bring us to Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows. I've done a lot of in-game testing both to measure the benefit of the abilities as well as to determine how they work and scale. And at this point in the beta, it's already looking like we have a winner.

Update: Since the time of writing, the beta has updated and the name has been changed from Call Beast to Dire Beast (updated in here) and the appearance of the beast is now based on the zone you're in.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Masses of hunter beta changes

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

As the Mists of Pandaria beta progresses we're beginning to learn more about how many of the awesome new hunter abilities will work, and of course we're seeing many of the inevitable changes to abilities, including happy news that the 2-second cast time on Black Arrow and lack of Serpent Spread is likely to be reverted to the current design (which also means the AoE component of the beta Black Arrow is likely going away, too).

We got a look at exactly what abilities the different pet specs will have in MoP. The design is very much in keeping with the plan we discussed last week and does a good job of helping make the different pet specs feel distinctly different (since you no longer have DPS talents for tenacity pets and tanking talents for ferocity), though there are a few abilities lost that hurt.

In fact, pets are a fantastic place to start. Let's take a look at exactly what abilities Blizzard assigned to each of the pet specs.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Masses of hunter beta changes

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Masses of hunter beta changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

What are WoW players searching for on Google?

(Brian Wood) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:00:00 EST

Google is the world's largest search engine by a massive margin, enjoying a nearly 70% market share. Google processes over a billion searches every day -- searches for everything from the fate of Firefly to where to buy RPG dice to the answer to the Kirk vs. Picard debate. It even handles searches for non-geeky stuff. And of course, some percentage of those billion daily searches are WoW searches.

Google has a tremendous amount of data about exactly what WoW players are looking for online -- and if there's one thing I can't get enough of, it's WoW data. With the search data that Google makes available, we can get a unique look into how WoW-related searches have changed over time with the changing popularity of the game and what kinds of topics WoW players are searching for more than others. The Google-eye view is a unique insight into the online interest and discussions of World of Warcraft.

Continue reading What are WoW players searching for on Google?

What are WoW players searching for on Google? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter pet plan in Mists of Pandaria

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Thus far in the Mists of Pandaria beta, we've seen and heard tons of sweet news about the hunter class, but we've had very little news about the second most important class in the game: hunter pets.

Historically, development around new and awesome hunter pets stuff tends to happen later in the beta process, but Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has made an appearance on the forums to let us know what the plan is with our beloved companions. As he suggested at BlizzCon, we will be able to take any hunter pet we want and choose whether to make it ferocity, cunning, or tenacity. So you can have DPS turtles and tanking kitties.

But in addition to confirmation of this awesome news is a plan that many hunters are far less thrilled about: no more pet talents at all. Here's what Ghostcrawler had to say about pet talents going the way of the manhood of the elven races.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter pet plan in Mists of Pandaria

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter pet plan in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter AoE in Mists of Pandaria

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Not to go all Grandpappy Frostheim on you guys, but wow, has hunter AoE evolved a lot since vanilla days! Back then we had in theory a few AoE abilities, but in practice, we had none. Explosive Trap did poor damage, couldn't be launched, and couldn't be dropped while in combat. Multi-Shot hit three targets and was on a cooldown (and was a core part of our single-target rotation). We also had Volley, which did incredibly crummy damage, couldn't crit, and was on a long cooldown.

By Wrath, volley was a monster of massive AoE DPS on no cooldown, but all we did in AoE situations was push the one button and sit back and watch the numbers tick. While this was great for DPS, it was also fairly dull and meant that there was no skill component to AoE DPS. The worst players could manage to click Volley and watch as well as the best. So Blizzard decided to make our AoE a bit more engaging in Cataclysm and turned it into what we know now.

In Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard is once again turning up the knob on our AoE, giving us more AoE abilities than ever before. In Mists there will be a very real skill component to hunter AoE.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter AoE in Mists of Pandaria

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter AoE in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: MoP hunter changes galore

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST

WoW Hunters Hall Tabana is keeping the WHH stocked with every tidbit of hunter info from everywhere on the web, including some videos of our new abilities she unearthed.
MMO-C Hunter Thread Ren is doing a great job on the MMO-C forums of maintaining an updated list of hunter changes in the beta. Just remember not to obsess about the damage numbers there. Don't worry about DPS balance right now; it's all changing.
WHU's Mists of Pandaria Hunter Changes I'm also collecting a much more detailed list of all hunter changes over at the Warcraft Hunters Union that goes in more depth and is being regularly updated.
Petopia's MoP Board The fine community at Petopia is cataloging all the tamable pets that have been found in Mists.

Now, join me after the cut for the awesome info splat of the sweet, sweet hunter life in Mists of Pandaria.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: MoP hunter changes galore

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: MoP hunter changes galore originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Moar boars -- Stampede Q&Q

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

During the recent Mists of Pandaria press tour event, Lead Systems Deisgner Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street gave an interview in which he revealed that hunters would be getting a stampede ability, letting hunters unleash the fury of a stable full of pets all at once.

Now, I don't want to imply anything bad about the interviewer in that segment, but in what world do you let a comment like that pass by? I know that there are some people who enjoy playing support classes, but when he wanders on talking about rogue nonsense, any good interviewer would stop him, pin him down, and start asking more questions about hunters! This is what MoP is all about after all -- hunter glory!

Stampede is the best and biggest news to come out of MoP since no minimum range, and we're left more questions than answers. In fact, when I started thinking about what I want to know about stampede, I realized it could fill an entire column. And then I realized that stampede is so awesome that it deserves to fill a whole column. So here is what we know about the ability, how I suspect it will work, and what we want to know about the ability.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Moar boars -- Stampede Q&Q

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Moar boars -- Stampede Q&Q originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Hunters to get Stampede in Mists of Pandaria

(Brian Wood) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST

As part of the Mists of Pandaria press tour, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has revealed that hunters will be getting a new level 87 ability that will let them bring out their stable of five pets all at once as a long-cooldown DPS burst ability. Here is the full quote from the MMO-C interview:

I don't think we have talked about what we are doing for the hunter yet. I think a lot of hunter players have guessed it but the hunter level 87 ability is basically you get all your pets at once for a short amount of time. So if you have 5 pets in your stable, they all come out and do damage for a little bit of time, and that's really fun cooldown for them. I think it increases Beast Master's damage by 80% while they're out, or something ridiculous like that. That's a pretty fun one.

This "Stampede" ability is one that the hunter community has been requesting for years and should provide a valuable burst DPS cooldown that will serve the class well in both PvE and PvP. We have yet to get confirmation that this ability will be available to all hunter specs, but since Ghostcrawler referred to it as a hunter ability rather than a beast mastery ability, it seems likely to be a class baseline ability that enables every hunter spec to unleash a frenzy of rabid death into their opponents' faces.

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

Filed under: Hunter, Mists of Pandaria

Hunters to get Stampede in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Mists of Pandaria raid buff changes and hunters

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EST

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Mists of Pandaria raid buff changes and hunters

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Mists of Pandaria raid buff changes and hunters originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter expertise in Mists of Pandaria

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST

In his most recent Developer Watercooler, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street talked about stat changes in Mists of Pandaria. Some of these changes only affect support classes, and there's a very interesting change to PvP stats that affects everyone, but what I want to focus on today is the big change to hunter stats that's coming: expertise.

In Mists of Pandaria, hunters' ranged attacks will be able to be dodged, which they currently cannot. This means that we're going to benefit from that expertise gear that is currently a sign of the rare "not-hunter loot."

Despite a lot of the initial fear and rage response that, let's be honest, tends to accompany just about any significant hunter change, expertise is not scary. In fact, it's almost exactly like having another hit cap. Join me after the cut as we look at what expertise is, how it will work for hunters, why Blizzard may be making this change, and what implications this has for hunter pets.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter expertise in Mists of Pandaria

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter expertise in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

Last week, Blizzard updated the Mists of Pandaria talent page, giving us a new look at what it's working on for class customization in advance of its mid-March press tour. We hunters got a peek at some awesome new stuff going on with the class, with improvements both in PvP and PvE.

The hunter news from this preview falls into three general categories:

Our three new level 90 talents were revealed.
We saw some meaningful changes to existing talents.
We saw some changes to other classes that could impact the hunter class.

While we're seeing a bunch of new hunter info in this update, Blizzard did go out of the way to point out that it is still working hard on the hunter class and it's not as far along as some other classes. In particular, we don't yet have any new class abilities or new spec abilities for level 90. We also don't know what route Blizzard's going to go with our pet talents.

With that in mind, let's take a look at all the new stuff we did learn!

Continue reading Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: What to do in-game when there's nothing left to do

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

We have entered the doldrums of the expansion, that period of time when the challenge of defeating new content is behind us, yet it's too soon to start planning for the next expansion. We don't even have the Mists of Pandaria beta to entertain us. Instead it's just the same bosses, the same loot, and the same miserable excuse for a raider winning the rolls that should go to you.

It's time to shake off those doldrums. This period of time is one of the best times of any expansion. Instead of raids that bleed away all of your time and blind you to the possibilities of the game, you are now free to go have fun. WoW is filled with challenges and adventure, but the endgame progression grind can trick you into thinking that it's the only PvE challenge available to you. It is not.

Today we're going to run through what you've been missing in WoW and how to tackle new challenges and have fun without picking up a lightsaber or waiting on pandas.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: What to do in-game when there's nothing left to do

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: What to do in-game when there's nothing left to do originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: 5 things other classes can learn from hunters

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

All classes have their secrets -- their little tricks of the trade that are passed from player to player in the hidden hangouts of the class. I can imagine the warlocks in their lush boudoirs explaining to eager-faced new 'locks about the real benefits to the succubus. Or mages in their mirrored enclaves admiring dresses and explaining to stricken young mages the real benefits to sheep.

Hunters are no different. When we gather in the wild, high places of Azeroth, we pass our own tricks around the campfire, the secrets that let us survive to see another boss.

Many of these tips are not specific to hunters, and every class could benefit from what we have learned the hard way. These are deeper truths and mechanical tips we've learned through the specific roles hunters often fill or through the hardships of our class design. In the interest of inter-class cooperation, we now share five of these secrets with you.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: 5 things other classes can learn from hunters

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: 5 things other classes can learn from hunters originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

This is not actually an interview with Ghostcrawler. I did not ask him any of these questions, and he did not answer with any of these answers.

But in a deeper sense, a more spiritual sense, Ghostcrawler and I are two lost souls reaching for each other across the vastness of the information superhighway, each seeking that other half to fill the emptiness within us. We are platonic life partners bound by the love of the hunter experience.

Because of this connection we share, this ephemeral bond, I am able to predict how he'd answer if we did in fact conduct an interview. If I happened to sit at a bar next to Ghostcrawler in the not-too-distant future and our eyes met over a glass of stout in a moment of magic, I think we can agree that everything in the following transcript is exactly as he would say it. The only thing that might possibly be different is the words.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Everything you need to know to top the charts in Dragon Soul

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

There are a lot of reasons hunters want to top the DPS charts: because the view is better from up there, because we're a DPS class and it's our job, because it makes killing bosses easier, or just because it makes your man parts appear larger.

We talk a lot here on Scattered Shots about optimizing your hunter and keeping track of the little changes that happen with every patch and hotfix, but after a while all those little changes add up into a very different optimization picture. Today, we're going to do a quick review of exactly what is the optimal way spec and play your hunter right now. We're getting a handful of minor buffs and changes in 4.3.2, and this optimization review will take those into account.

These 10 tips are the quick and dirty answers to the current state of hunter optimization. Bookmark this page and pass it along to that guy with a hunter alt as a one-stop shop for what he should be doing right now. As always, things change with gear and group composition, and there are often choices that are almost as good, but this rundown will get you where you need to go: the top of the charts.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Everything you need to know to top the charts in Dragon Soul

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Everything you need to know to top the charts in Dragon Soul originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Awesome patch 4.3.2 hunter changes and the bottom line

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Patch 4.3.2 is sitting on the PTR, and like fine wine, weapons, and women, it just gets better over time. This patch doesn't have any huge changes going on, instead holding a collection of small changes that are all little gleaming gems of awesomeness. And that's not even counting the fire mage damage nerfs.

From the hunter perspective, patch 4.3.2 gives a small survivability boost to all hunters, a small DPS boost to all hunters, a further smaller DPS boost to SV hunters, and a nice quality-of-life (and arguably wee DPS) bonus to SV as well.

Today we're going to dig into these changes and what they're going to mean for us. The short version is this: Hunter DPS will improve. SV benefits the most, followed by BM, meaning SV will remain the top DPS spec. Skilled players with legendaries will still be about to out-DPS us, but we'll now be competing far better with people without legendaries. How much better? Well, let's take a look.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Awesome patch 4.3.2 hunter changes and the bottom line

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Awesome patch 4.3.2 hunter changes and the bottom line originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST

Continue reading Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter predictions for a new year

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Another year of hunting is almost at an end, and that means it's time to dig into the vast past of December 2010, when Cataclysm was fresh and shiny and new and SV hunters were dominating every DPS chart, a time before aspect dancing and when pets still had a happiness system (kind of). That's right, it's time to dust off my 2011 hunter predictions and see how I did. It's also time to make new predictions for the state of hunters going forward in 2012 and take some guesses at what's going to happen with the class in the tumultuous year ahead.

Looking back at some of the changes, it's interesting to see the patterns and similarities in the class over time. SV is again the top DPS spec as it was a year ago -- only now instead of blowing away all comers with pretty demonstrably overpowered DPS, SV is at best middle of the pack. In practice, the hunter class is one of the poorest DPSers this tier.

SV got nuked to death in patch 4.0.6, much as an overpowered BM spec got over-nerfed into oblivion in patch 3.0.8 in early Wrath, except that while overnerfed, SV got it much gentler than BM did back in the day. The nerf bat is hitting a bit softer these days. Let's hope that's a trend that continues.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter predictions for a new year

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter predictions for a new year originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The state of DPS in early Dragon Soul, page 2

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST

Continue reading The state of DPS in early Dragon Soul, page 2

The state of DPS in early Dragon Soul, page 2 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The state of DPS in early Dragon Soul

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST

Patch 4.3 is well under way with all the buffs and nerfs that came with it -- including the extra 10% AP for melee classes from the raid buff improvement on top of all the class-specific changes. We've now had enough guilds do enough clears of Dragon Soul that we can begin to take a look at the DPS numbers that the classes are putting out and see just where they stand in 4.3. This is also a nice time to take a snapshot of the data, because the rogues do not yet have their legendary weapons, though of course more casters than ever have the 4.2 legendary.

As always, we draw our data for the analysis from the wonderful Raidbots.com, which in turn pulls its data from World of Logs, where raiders upload parses of their actual raids. This gives us the absolute best data source that we have access to. These numbers are exactly what thousands and thousands of real raiders are actually capable of putting out in the actual raid, averaged over all of the bosses this tier.

So did patch 4.3 bring about a new state of improved balance to the game, or are we going to see more chaos in the DPS spread? The only way to find out is to sort through all the data, and then make pretty graphs out of them.

Gallery: Early Dragon Soul DPS Analysis

Continue reading The state of DPS in early Dragon Soul

The state of DPS in early Dragon Soul originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Pet talent possibilities in Mists of Pandaria

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

We all know by now that talents are going to work a lot differently in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, but what we don't know yet is exactly what's going to happen with our pet talent trees. Not only that, but Blizzard itself isn't entirely sure what it's going to do about them, other than not wanting to leave them the way they are now. We do know that we will get to choose what family our pets belong to. If you tame a cat, you can choose to make it a tenacity, cunning, or ferocity pet. But pet talents are a bit up in the air.

There are currently two possibilities for pet talents. The first is to remove pet talents entirely, making your pet's special abilities and spec -- tenacity, ferocity, or cunning -- the only unique features of the pet. Thus, every ferocity cat is the same as every other ferocity cat. This option is dull and dreary with nothing interesting or engaging about it. Call it the Shaman Option, in other words, or the Blah Option.

The other possibility is to revamp the pet talent system so that it more closely resembles the new character talent system in MoP. In this system, we turn some pet talents into spec abilities, and then give an abbreviated tree of meaningful choices. I call this the Awesome Option -- or in other words, the Hunter Option. You're going to love it. Here's how the Awesome Option could work.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Pet talent possibilities in Mists of Pandaria

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Pet talent possibilities in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter trinket roundup

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

It's trinkets day here on Scattered Shots, back by popular demand. The number of emails I've been getting about hunter trinkets lately has made me suddenly realize that I have not posted my usual new tier trinket round-up and reevaluation -- and with the new tier of Raid Finder trinkets out, there the decision of when to upgrade is yet more complex.

Trinkets are a lot like the nine support classes in WoW: You know they're useful, but it can be hard to figure out exactly which one is worth using without doing some math. Only unlike the support class players, you always want to have two of them with you. And they don't smell funny, or refuse to heal your pet, or screw up your lovely execution of executions.

Maybe trinkets aren't much like the support classes after all. They're better.

Join me after the cut as we run down the new 4.3 trinkets, compare them to the best of the previous tier's trinkets, and give some thought to the new Raid Finder versions of the trinkets as well.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter trinket roundup

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter trinket roundup originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunting Mists of Pandaria talents

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

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.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunting Mists of Pandaria talents

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunting Mists of Pandaria talents originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: 4.3 bonus hunter changes

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST

Continue reading Scattered Shots: 4.3 bonus hunter changes

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: 4.3 bonus hunter changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter spec abilities in Mists of Pandaria

(Brian Wood) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Blizzard posted its Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, giving us a bit more of a peek into how things are going to play out with the new talent system. The talents that we're seeing are the same as what was revealed at BlizzCon (and we will get around to looking at those in depth soon -- just not today). But in addition to the talents, we also got to see the very first look at what our new spec abilities would look like.

Some of the support classes actually got to see what some of their new spec abilities would be in MoP, but as the premiere death dealers in WoW, they needed more time to refine the ultimate abilities of the hunter class.

If you'll recall, in MoP talents will be class-wide and not specific to each spec (and there will be far fewer of them). Many of what are now spec talents will become default spec abilities that each spec gets when it reaches the appropriate level. Others are going away entirely. Today we're going to take a look at what those must-have abilities are for each spec and which ones appear to be gone completely.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter spec abilities in Mists of Pandaria

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter spec abilities in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter changes

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

That magical time is almost here -- patch 4.3 is just around the corner. No, we don't yet know for sure when it's going to land, but we're expecting it any week now. We've been watching and testing on the PTR, and one Tuesday soon, we'll get to play with all the shiny new changes ourselves ... and cross our fingers and hope Blizzard slipped in some kind of awesome undocumented change, like removing elves or shaman from the game.

Last week, we covered most of the patch 4.3 hunter gear that's coming, and this week, we'll be looking into all of the hunter changes that the patch is bringing us. And it's a good thing we waited until this week too, as we got yet more hunter changes just in the past few days.

None of the hunter changes are huge game-changers this time around. Instead, what we're seeing is a collection of minor buffs and tweaks to BM and SV in an attempt to bring the specs up closer to MM DPS levels.

Join me after the cut for the roundup of the 4.3 hunter changes.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter changes

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter gear

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter gear

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter gear originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: BlizzCon hunter info roundup

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

BlizzCon this year was a very hunter Blizzcon indeed, filled with big announcements not just about the game in general but about the direction the hunter class is headed. The biggest news shouted around hunter circles was of course the fact that minimum range is finally being removed from the game.

This was one of the biggest points in the hunter class design feedback threads, and it's a nice indication that Blizzard is indeed paying attention to what the community has to say. (Either that, or the developers also just thought it needed to go, and it's a crazy, random happenstance that it coincides with community feedback.)

Join me after the cut as we round up all of the hunter news that came out of BlizzCon, very possibly including some news that you haven't heard from just following the BlizzCon coverage. We're going to focus just on the hunter-specific news rather than wider game-related news.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: BlizzCon hunter info roundup

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: BlizzCon hunter info roundup originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: A very hunter BlizzCon

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

I was going to write something today about the wee, tiny little BM and SV buffs that we saw on the PTR, but frankly I can't focus on that stuff right now. I'm too excited about Blizzcon.

As you're reading this, I spent the day getting up early and navigating airport security to spend too many hours on a plane only to navigate my way out of LAX and catch a taxi up to BlizzCon. If all goes well, there'll be just enough time to check into the hotel before running over to what will be the most epic WoW Insider party ever. If you're attending BlizzCon, you also don't want to miss the Great Hunter Meetup at the Hilton lobby bar on Friday night starting at 8 p.m.

The greatest part of BlizzCon is meeting and hanging out with all the awesome people, both hunters and support classes. But it's also when we get all sorts of news about the future of the game -- and the hunter class -- and a chance to ask questions to the developers directly. And of course, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) is there wandering the halls -- and as hunters, if anyone can track him down for a quick extra question or two, it's us.

Join me after the cut as we take a look at what we learned about hunters at last year's BlizzCon and what we might learn this year.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: A very hunter BlizzCon

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: A very hunter BlizzCon originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: State of hunter DPS

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EST

Ghostcrawler - Lead Systems Designer

Hunter DPS is fine, or even high in 4.2, so we didn't want this buff to extend to them, which is why the AP benefit is now 20% for melee attacks but still 10% for ranged.

source

When I was digging into the data, I looked at a lot more than just the eight charts that I posted in the DPS analysis article. The majority of the data sets I looked at supported just about everything Ghostcrawler said in his Watercooler -- including the state of melee DPS and fury warriors.

While I truly have a fondness in my heart for many of the hard-working support classes in WoW, I did not really do that research for them. I did it to learn more about where hunter DPS stands. So please join me after the cut today as we take a look at the state of hunter DPS.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: State of hunter DPS

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: State of hunter DPS originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

State of DPS in Firelands page 2

(Brian Wood) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST

Continue reading State of DPS in Firelands page 2

State of DPS in Firelands page 2 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

State of DPS in Firelands

(Brian Wood) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST

Patch 4.2 is winding to a close, patch 4.3 is on the PTR, and we've recently seen Ghostcrawler (lead systems developer) making some public comments about DPS balance in the Developer Watercooler -- in particular, discussing the increase of the AP buff for melee classes. All of this makes it a great time to take a look at the state of DPS among all of the specs.

Of course, we don't have nearly as much data as Blizzard has access to; however, we do have better data than ever before. In particular, the best data source we have comes from raiders who upload raid parses to World of Logs, which then makes these tens of thousands of parses available to all of us. Next, we have Raidbots, a site that automatically parses this data for us, letting us very easily sort through those massive numbers of raid parses.

One of the things that I think too many players get caught up on with this data is looking at the rankings -- and I've certainly been guilty of this myself. It's just so easy to look and say "Hey, my class is ranked 10 of the 22 specs." But of course, that's not terribly helpful -- after all, I don't care if I'm ranked 21 if I'm only 50 DPS behind number one.

Join me after the cut as we take a look at a different way of examining the data to see how all the DPS specs are performing in Firelands.

Gallery: Firelands DPS by spec

Continue reading State of DPS in Firelands

Filed under: Raiding

State of DPS in Firelands originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter tier 13 set bonuses

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST

Two-piece Steady Shot and Cobra Shot generate double the amount of focus.

Four-piece Your Arcane Shot ability has a chance to grant 30% haste to you and your pet for 10 seconds.

For all those hunters who were complaining about hunter focus regen in the hunter design feedback thread, now is your chance to see what your class would feel like with substantially more focus regeneration. Join me after the cut as we dig into these set bonuses, discuss the implications and run some initial numbers.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter tier 13 set bonuses

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter tier 13 set bonuses originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Patch 4.3 PTR: Hunters, do not be alarmed

(Brian Wood) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:10:00 EST

Within minutes of the release of patch 4.3 datamined info on Wowhead and MMO-Champion, hunters have been reacting with alarm at the increased cast time of Steady Shot, Cobra Shot, and Aimed Shot and gasping in awe at the change to nature damage to Chimera Shot.

Do not be alarmed -- these aren't really happening.

What you're seeing in the datamined files are tooltip updates. Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have always been 2-second casts. They are right now. Aimed Shot is indeed currently a 2.9-second base cast. And Chimera Shot does indeed do nature damage already. These are not changes to hunter abilities, but just the files finally catching up to report correctly on the way it's always been. Also the Kill Shot change is also a tooltip update rather than a buff.

The only change so far is the increased attack power for melee folks from our Trueshot Aura buff, as well as from all the other classes that provide it -- oh, and the addition of a nice endgame raiding gun, at long last. Assuming it doesn't later turn into a crossbow or daggers or something.

Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

Filed under: Hunter

Patch 4.3 PTR: Hunters, do not be alarmed originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunters and Brewfest loot

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

It's that magical time of year again when the thoughts of young hunters the world over turn to beer. Brewfest is a true Dwarven holiday filled with endless events like drinking beer, delivering beer, advertising beer, and fighting with beer mugs. Brewfest is, in fact, the one holiday that I participate in since I knocked off the painful What a Long Strange Trip It's Been.

With a new year of Brewfest comes new loot upgrades from the Brewfest boss, Coren Direbrew. I'm not really sure what Direbrew did to deserve our wrath, other than being Dark Iron. I mean, sure, his peeps started a big fight and tried to steal the beer, but really, who wouldn't if they weren't allowed to attend? It's not like he's the Mad Elf or anything.

Brewfest loot has never been the friendliest to hunters, with the totally awesome and upgraded Tremendous Tankard o' Terror being a silly mace that hunters cannot equip, and no two-handed drop (which is what we really want). However Brewfest does bring us a nice trinket option as well as a one-handed weapon that we could use.

Today we'll take a look at the Brewfest loot from a hunter perspective and perhaps take a wee peek at some of the nice generic rewards offered from Brewfest tickets.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunters and Brewfest loot

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunters and Brewfest loot originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Scattered Shots: Hunter class feedback

(Brian Wood) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Blizzard has recently put out the call for class design feedback on the official WoW forums, with a thread for each class. Hunters have stepped up in a big way, and the hunter class thread already has over 1,500 responses at the time of this writing (Wednesday night), which is more than any other class. Go, hunters!

The feedback thread is not just an open forums for people to complain but instead is a very focused set of questions looking at longer-term class design. This is not, of course, a promise to implement the will of the class (after all, game manufacturers have known for decades there's a big difference between what people want and what they will buy), but it is a clear request to at least understand the will of the class.

We've talked here on Scattered Shots about many ways to improve the hunter class, from removing minimum range to touching up the talent trees of BM, MM, SV, and pet talents, to pet stances, to the problems with haste design and some just plain awesome things we should get. Regular readers have a pretty good idea what I think should be changed.

So today, we're going to take a look at what the rest of the hunter population thinks about the hunter class and how they answered the class design questions. Join me after the cut for a look at the over 1,500 hunter responses to class design that the developers will be reading through.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter class feedback

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter class feedback originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments