WoW Insider http://wow.joystiq.com WoW Insider http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/feedlogobig.gif WoW Insider http://wow.joystiq.com en-us Copyright 2015 AOL, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. View our terms of service here: http://legal.aol.com/terms-of-service/full-terms/ Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/ <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Patch 5.3 buffs hunters]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/18/scattered-shots-patch-5-3-buffs-hunters/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/18/scattered-shots-patch-5-3-buffs-hunters/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/18/scattered-shots-patch-5-3-buffs-hunters/#comments Scattered Shots Patch 53 buffs hunters THURSDAY
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 or ask him on Google+.

Hunter changes are beginning to show up on the patch 5.3 PTR patch notes, and those changes are of the buff variety, assuring that they'll get the seal of approval from the hunter community. Certainly 5.3 is bringing the hunter love, with these buffs coming on the heels of 50 stable slots!

Hunters are getting a flat buff to their DPS, while BM and MM hunters are getting substantial AoE DPS buffs. It's still early in the PTR process, and we can expect to see more changes coming, but for the time being BM is the winner of patch 5.3, getting more benefit from the changes than the other specs.

Let's take a loot at what's changing, and how it will impact the hunter specs.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Patch 5.3 buffs hunters

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Scattered Shots: Patch 5.3 buffs hunters originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-5.3hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentspatch-5.3wow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter music]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/11/scattered-shots-hunter-music/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/11/scattered-shots-hunter-music/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/11/scattered-shots-hunter-music/#comments
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 or ask him on Google+.

It's well known that hunters have the greatest community in WoW -- a community whose awesomeness is disproportionate to the number of players (which is, of course, larger than any of the support classes). There is something about the hunter class that has a tendency to draw the helpful, generous, and uncommonly good-looking to it.

The extent of the hunter community is more than just some of the best theorycrafters and optimization tools and blogs and news sites. We also have a vast array of original WoW hunter music -- more, I dare say, than any other class can boast.

There is a wealth of hunter songs out there: some original, some parodies. Certainly there will be songs that you hate, given the breadth of genres, but I suspect you're also going to find several that you love. Let's take a look at some of the musical creations of the hunter community.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter music

Scattered Shots: Hunter music originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> (Brian Wood) Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Hunters get more pet slots: running out of things to complain about]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/03/27/hunters-get-more-pet-slots-running-out-of-things-to-complain-ab/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/03/27/hunters-get-more-pet-slots-running-out-of-things-to-complain-ab/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/03/27/hunters-get-more-pet-slots-running-out-of-things-to-complain-ab/#comments 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 or ask him on Google+.

In the very early incarnation of the patch 5.3 PTR, hunter stables have been expanded to accomodate up to 50 hunter pets. This awesome feature was discovered by a score of hunters almost as soon as the PTR was available, though I believe Kalliope reported on it first.

With this change hunters will now be able to collect up to 55 different pets, with 50 in the stable and 5 in the active pet slots.

In the comments to this news at the WHU, Arth made an apt observation:

Min. range is gone, our specs are fairly well-tuned and are all viable, we aren't terrible in PvP, and now this. What the hell are we supposed to complain about?

What indeed, hunters? Let's take a moment to look at why hunters need so ridiculously many stable slots, and why we got them.

Continue reading Hunters get more pet slots: running out of things to complain about

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Hunters get more pet slots: running out of things to complain about originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-patch-5.3hunter-petshunter-stablehunter-talentspatch-5.3wow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: How to play a MM hunter]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/03/21/scattered-shots-how-to-play-a-mm-hunter/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/03/21/scattered-shots-how-to-play-a-mm-hunter/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/03/21/scattered-shots-how-to-play-a-mm-hunter/#comments Scattered Shots How to play a MM hunter THURSDAY 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 or ask him on Google+.

With the awesome buffs to MM in Patch 5.2, MM hunter DPS is better than ever, just a theoretical wee bit behind SV DPS. Despite this, however, MM continues to be vastly under-represented in raid parses, often having so few it's impossible to make a statistical evaluation of their performance (and that's before even considering the selection bias).

Theories abound for the lack of MM representation: MM is harder to play; MM is technically a bit behind the others so everyone leans on the ones ahead; MM has no clear role in which they are superior (unlike BM burst and SV AoE); MM is associated with elves, and no one wants to have anything to do with dirty elven things.

It's been a long time since MM has been a popular spec, and most of the hunter optimization sites focus on maximizing your performance in BM or SV. So now seems like a good time to review how to optimize your MM hunter to take full advantage of all those juicy 5.2 buffs.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: How to play a MM hunter

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Scattered Shots: How to play a MM hunter originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Everything hunters need to know for patch 5.2]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/28/scattered-shots-everything-hunters-need-to-know-for-patch-5-2/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/28/scattered-shots-everything-hunters-need-to-know-for-patch-5-2/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/28/scattered-shots-everything-hunters-need-to-know-for-patch-5-2/#comments Scattered Shots Everything hunters need to know for MoP patch 52 of WoW THURSDAY
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 or ask him on Google+.

With MoP patch 5.2 due to be released in just a couple weeks, Blizzard has released several hunter buffs on the PTR that are designed to bring the hunter specs closer together in DPS output -- and from the looks of it, it may well bring the hunter specs closer than at any point in WoW history.

I'm talking insanity of biblical proportions here, BM and MM living together, mass hysteria!

While it's almost all good news, there were some nerfs to hunter PvP in specific -- though keep in mind that some of these are sometimes tied directly to abilities that are also being buffed. So lets take a look at the entire list of hunter changes for 5.2, both those from this past week and the others still around from earlier in the 5.2 PTR, and see what it means to the hunter class.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Everything hunters need to know for patch 5.2

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Scattered Shots: Everything hunters need to know for patch 5.2 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-5.2hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter 5.2 trinket rankings]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/scattered-shots-hunter-5-2-trinket-rankings/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/scattered-shots-hunter-5-2-trinket-rankings/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/scattered-shots-hunter-5-2-trinket-rankings/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter 52 trinkets THURSDAY
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.or ask him on Google+

Last week we went over the patch 5.2 hunter gear -- everything, that is, except for the most complicated slot. And as always, the roughest gear and most debated gear decisions revolve around trinkets.

The question of which of the hunter trinkets are best is further complicated by the fact that current trinkets can be upgraded (a feature that will not be available to us once patch 5.2 hits). So will the upgraded Relic of Xuen be a contender with the new trinkets? Or should you spend those valor points elsewhere in your remaining weeks?

So let's roll up our sleeves and do some trinket math! We're going to take a look at all the new hunter trinkets datamined in patch 5.2, and compare that against the upgraded forms of some of the top other trinkets.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter 5.2 trinket rankings

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Scattered Shots: Hunter 5.2 trinket rankings originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Patch 5.2 hunter gear]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/14/scattered-shots-patch-5-2-hunter-gear/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/14/scattered-shots-patch-5-2-hunter-gear/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/14/scattered-shots-patch-5-2-hunter-gear/#comments Scattered Shots Patch 52 hunter gear THURSDAY
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.or ask him on Google+
It looks like we're going to be seeing patch 5.2 land within the next couple of weeks, and now thanks to some datamining we have an idea of all the hawt new gear we're going to be seeing in patch 5.2.

Included in this gear is our new tier 15 set: Saurok Stalker's, which is a spiky looking set with a helm that bears a suspicious resemblence to a lizard is eating our heads. Fun Saurok Stalker's set activity: get to just the right depth in water and can make it look like a crocodile head floating on the surface. Then jump out and kill something.

On to the gear!

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Patch 5.2 hunter gear

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Scattered Shots: Patch 5.2 hunter gear originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-5.2hunter-5.2-gearhunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-gearhunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-5.2hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter taming challenges]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/31/scattered-shots-hunter-taming-challenges/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/31/scattered-shots-hunter-taming-challenges/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/31/scattered-shots-hunter-taming-challenges/#comments
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.or ask him on Google+.
As long as there have been hunters, there have been hunter taming challenges. These are the pets that combine the irresistible draw of being difficult to get your mitts on, combined with a unique look that other hunters don't have. Nowadays hunters really pursue these taming challenges for the look of the pet, but once upon a time there were mechanical benefits of some of the rare pets as well. Back in vanilla I spent weeks wandering the reported path of Broken Tooth in search of this 1.0 attack speed lion (this was before Zul Gu'rub and the 1.0 bats, and of course before normalization of pet attack speeds and before the 2 pushback limit to casting).

When I'm talking about taming challenges today I'm talking about pets that have a mechanical challenge or trick to the taming process, or pets that are rare spawns with unique models. There are of course scores of rare spawn pets that look identical to common pets, and even a lot of rare spawns that have a slightly different coloration but otherwise are identical to common pets (and you can see a list of these at Petopia).

While it might be hard to wait for a King Krush spawn, for example, it's not something that fills vast numbers of hunters with the need to get that pet. Spirit beasts on the other hand ... spirit beasts are like a plague of uncontrollable desire that spreads burning through the pet collecting loins of the hunter population, so I have to include them.

If you aren't the kind of hunter that is really into pet collecting, today's column is not for you. If, however, you are the other kind, then here is a list of all of the hunter pet taming challenges currently in the game.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter taming challenges

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Scattered Shots: Hunter taming challenges originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter patch 5.2 changes]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/24/scattered-shots-hunter-patch-5-2-changes/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/24/scattered-shots-hunter-patch-5-2-changes/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/24/scattered-shots-hunter-patch-5-2-changes/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter patch 52 changes THURSDAY
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.or ask him on Google+.

Patch 5.2 has been marinating on the PTR for long enough now that we have a fair idea of what all the hunter changes will be, as well as last week's revelation of new spirit beasts! So it's time (or past time) that we dig into it and see how the changes are going to affect the greatest class in WoW.

This patch is hitting at a time when the hunter class is doing pretty well. Nothing's ever perfect of course, but our raid DPS is pretty good, we can PvP better than we have in years and we can even launch our full-strength hail of death on the move for as long as we damn well please. And best of all we're not overpowered so we don't have to fear imminent nerfs. It's a pretty good time to be a hunter.

Nevertheless, we have some mechanical tweaks to our abilities in addition to the new taming challenges of the porcupine spirit beasts, so let's take a look at it.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter patch 5.2 changes

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Scattered Shots: Hunter patch 5.2 changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Hunter predictions for 2013]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/17/hunter-predictions-for-2013/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/17/hunter-predictions-for-2013/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/17/hunter-predictions-for-2013/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter predictions for 2013
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.or ask him on Google+.
Another year of hunting is beginning, and that means it's time to dig into the vaults of December 2011, when Cataclysm was about to wind down, a time of aspect dancing and the horrible anachronism of minimum range. That's right, it's time to dust off my 2012 hunter predictions and see how I did. It's also time to make new predictions for the state of hunters going forward in 2013 and take some guesses at what's going to happen with the class as Mists of Pandaria progresses and Blizzcon returns.

Of course last year was a pretty challenging year to make predictions, since we knew a new expansion was coming and while we had a couple of tantalizing hints, we had virtually no idea what hunter changes we would have. The expansion news flew fast and furious all spring and summer, bringing with it change after change; hunter joy and discussion as we got almost everything we asked for, followed by the inevitable buffs and nerfs of the expansion process.

After getting off to a bit of a slow start, hunter DPS is now rocking away as we start 2013 looking forward to patch 5.2. But before we look forward, let's take a look back and grade Frostheim's presentience to determine if what I predict has any bearing on reality...

Continue reading Hunter predictions for 2013

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Hunter predictions for 2013 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Grandpappy Frostheim on Why Burning Crusade Sucked]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/grandpappy-frostheim-on-why-burning-crusade-sucked/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/grandpappy-frostheim-on-why-burning-crusade-sucked/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/grandpappy-frostheim-on-why-burning-crusade-sucked/#comments Grandpappy Frostheim on Why BC Sucks THURSDAY Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways ... back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless -- but they were also men. You can ask him questions on Google+.

There is a small vocal group of WoW players who feel that Burning Crusade was the pinnacle of the WoW experience, an unparallelled beauty of game design, and that life has gotten progressively worse ever since. Those players are starting to piss me off.

The reason they like BC so much is the same reason most players like an expansion more than all the rest: because that's when they started playing. Vanilla players like to talk about how hard yet awesome life was in our day and Wrath newbies (who, appallingly, are old timers themselves now) like to talk about how the game has only gone downhill since their time.

All of us old timers have one thing in common: we look at our glory days of exploring WoW for the very first time through rose-tinted glasses, remembering all the great stuff and glossing over just how bad the bad stuff was. But these BC lovers have crossed the line into being just plain daft, and trying to claim the exact opposite of how things really were.

Because really, BC sucked.

Continue reading Grandpappy Frostheim on Why Burning Crusade Sucked

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Grandpappy Frostheim on Why Burning Crusade Sucked originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredgrandpappy-frostheimguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunters have too many buttons]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/06/scattered-shots-hunters-have-too-many-buttons/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/06/scattered-shots-hunters-have-too-many-buttons/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/06/scattered-shots-hunters-have-too-many-buttons/#comments Scattered Shots Hunters have too many buttons THURSDAY
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.or ask him on Google+.

There will always be some hunters who disagree with anything (believe it or not I recently read a hunter who thinks removing minimum range made the game no longer playable) but most hunters these days agree that we hunters have too damn many buttons. And it's not just us: in a recent tweet Ghostcrawler said so too:
Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot that can be done in the middle of an expansion -- frankly what needs to happen is a bunch of these abilities just need to go. But remove anything (even minimum range) and you'll hear complaints, not to mention making hunters learn new rotations mid-expansion is bad design move. But I think there are some things that can be done to mitigate the situation.

But first lets get into why too many buttons is a bad thing, because there are actually two important reasons.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunters have too many buttons

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Scattered Shots: Hunters have too many buttons originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter buffs in patch 5.1]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/29/scattered-shots-hunter-buffs-in-patch-5-1/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/29/scattered-shots-hunter-buffs-in-patch-5-1/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/29/scattered-shots-hunter-buffs-in-patch-5-1/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter buffs in patch 51 THURSDAY
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.or ask him on Google+.

Patch 5.1 landed on Tuesday and while there were no ground shaking changes that force every hunter to change everything about their playstyle, we definitely felt some nice quality of life improvements and some important DPS buffs and burst nerfs. It was a quiet kind of awesome, but still pretty awesome.

Blizzard is definitely handling these changes with very delicate taps of the turning fork. Very gentle buffs, very gentle nerfs, moving different areas of hunter play just a little bit in one direction or another. Certainly part of this lines up with Blizzard's assertion that "More players quit because of constant class changes than quit because of balance concerns." But a good chunk of it is probably also that hunters weren't in a very bad place, and small changes might be enough to get us where we want to be (as well as changes to certain other classes whose crazy DPS is fueled by their burning underpants).

So lets take a closer look at the changes we got and what the impact of those change is looking like.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter buffs in patch 5.1

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Scattered Shots: Hunter buffs in patch 5.1 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-5.0.4hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentspatch-5.1wow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Pet buffs and the best hunter pet]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/15/scattered-shots-pet-buffs-and-the-best-hunter-pet/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/15/scattered-shots-pet-buffs-and-the-best-hunter-pet/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/15/scattered-shots-pet-buffs-and-the-best-hunter-pet/#comments 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.or ask him on Google+.

Throughout Cataclysm I spent a lot of time explaining to hunters that the pet paradigm had changed and there was no longer one right answer to "What is the best pet?" Instead of being able to answer cat, or wolf, or whatever the pet of the moment was, the answer was: it depends.

Well, with the changes to hunter pets in Mists of Pandaria the answer is now that it depends even more.

The best pet to bring to your raid or heroic is going to change based on your group composition -- and in fact can even change based on the skill of your team members. Let's first take a look at which pets bring which raid buffs, then get down to how to select your pet.

But fair warning in advance: choosing the right pet isn't a matter of following a flowchart or plugging in an addon. You have to use your brain (in your head).

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Pet buffs and the best hunter pet

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Scattered Shots: Pet buffs and the best hunter pet originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/state-of-dps-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/state-of-dps-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/state-of-dps-in-mists-of-pandaria/#comments Mists of Pandaria Raid DPS Analysis Mists of Pandaria is well under way, and with patch 5.1 on the horizon. We've now had enough guilds do enough raid clears that we can begin to take a look at the DPS numbers that the classes are putting out and see just where they stand. It might also shed some insight into buffs and nerfs coming on the PTR.

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 raids, averaged over all of the bosses available.

If you'll recall, the DPS spread in Dragon Soul, while not perfect, was actually the closest to balanced we had seen in WoW history. So did Mists of Pandaria improve upon this balance? Or did we end up with boss mechanics and new abilities that widened the gap? The only way to find out is to sort through all the data, and then make pretty graphs out of them.

Continue reading State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria

State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> 5.0.4-dpsdps-analysismists-of-pandaria-dpsmists-of-pandaria-dps-analysismop-balancemop-dpsmop-dps-analysis (Brian Wood) Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria, page 2]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/state-of-dps-in-mists-of-pandaria-page-2/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/state-of-dps-in-mists-of-pandaria-page-2/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/state-of-dps-in-mists-of-pandaria-page-2/#comments Continue reading State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria, page 2

State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria, page 2 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> (Brian Wood) Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: What's wrong with Marksmanship hunters?]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/08/scattered-shots-whats-wrong-with-marksmanship-hunters/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/08/scattered-shots-whats-wrong-with-marksmanship-hunters/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/08/scattered-shots-whats-wrong-with-marksmanship-hunters/#comments Scattered Shots What's wrong with Marksmanship hunters THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

In every expansion there is inevitably one spec that is the red-headed stepchild of DPS and a host of hunters fond of the spec crying into their ale at the unfairness of it all. Right now MM is that spec, and MM-lovers everywhere are sloppy drunk on their own sadness.

Actually, if you look back far enough there was often only one raid viable spec, rather than one bad one. In the memory of Grandpappy Frostheim, it goes something like this:
  • Vanilla: MM is the only raid viable spec.
  • BC: BM is the only raid viable spec.
  • Wrath: BM Briefly on top, then nerfed to the stone age. SV briefly on top, then MM for most of the expansion. After the nerf BM never recovered and held DPS 20% behind the leader.
  • Cataclysm: SV briefly awesome and overpowered, then over-nerfed. MM on top with SV just behind and BM in third. BM wasn't so far behind, but was significantly so. The three specs were closer in DPS potential than any time in history.
Nowadays we have BM back in the lead with MM in last place. And if you look at the logs, MM DPS looks horrible. However, recent comments from Blizzard confirm what hunter DPS simulations show us: MM's dps is in theory very close to BM's.

So what the heck is wrong that we have MM so amazingly low in the logs -- almost always in very last place against every other DPS spec in the game?

Continue reading Scattered Shots: What's wrong with Marksmanship hunters?

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Scattered Shots: What's wrong with Marksmanship hunters? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter raid gear in tier 14]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/01/scattered-shots-hunter-raid-gear-in-tier-14/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/01/scattered-shots-hunter-raid-gear-in-tier-14/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/11/01/scattered-shots-hunter-raid-gear-in-tier-14/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter raid gear in tier 14 THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

We've already discussed the hunter pre-raid gear, so now it's time to start talking epics! Which hunter drops are the absolute best for your DPS? Which are worth a pass? And which four set pieces should you collect?

Here we're going to look at all the loots that drop from raid bosses, including world bosses. I'm also going to include the epics that can be purchased with valor points -- though these are slightly lower ilvl items and never make the top of the lists, sometimes they're only slightly worse than the top tier loot. For the sake of simplicity we'll be looking at the normal difficulty version of gear.

As always, it's worth stressing that the actual DPS difference of items of the same ilvl is very small -- though they certainly add up. And, as always, the actual value of stats changes not just with your spec but also with the rest of your gear. I'll be presenting all of the top gear choices, and then making my recommendations of which is the best, taking reforging options into account.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter raid gear in tier 14

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Scattered Shots: Hunter raid gear in tier 14 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Don't anger the tank or she will make you cry]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/18/scattered-shots-dont-anger-the-tank-or-she-will-make-you-cry/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/18/scattered-shots-dont-anger-the-tank-or-she-will-make-you-cry/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/18/scattered-shots-dont-anger-the-tank-or-she-will-make-you-cry/#comments Scattered Shots Don't piss of the tank or she will make you cry THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Mists of Pandaria has brought a lot of awesome stuff to hunters: minimum range finally dead and buried, the awesomeness that is Stampede, improved self-heals, better burst for all specs, and very clever new rare pet tracking challenges. It has also brought us so many flipping buttons to press when DPSing that we need a third hand to keep up with it all.

While the hunter changes in Mists have been overwhelmingly positive, they've also introduced new ways for hunters to make mistakes. And I'm not just talking about mistakes that affect the hunter -- like the tragedy of rolling an elf back when you didn't know any better -- I'm talking about mistakes that hurt your group.

There are also a lot of opportunities for the unwitting hunter to piss off the tank. That may be all good fun and games when you're running in a guild group, but when you're running Dungeon Finder you do not want to piss off the tank: she has all the power. You annoy her enough and she'll initiate a vote kick. No one else wants to be on the tank's bad side so they'll vote to boot your sorry ass. But not until the tank calls you names until you cry like a sissy little elf.

Here's what to look out for in Mists.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Don't anger the tank or she will make you cry

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Scattered Shots: Don't anger the tank or she will make you cry originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: MoP hunter enchants]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/11/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-enchants/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/11/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-enchants/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/11/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-enchants/#comments Scattered Shots MoP hunter enchants THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Greetings fellow hunters! So far in our quest to optimize our Mists of Pandaria DPS we've discussed the best pre-raid hunter gear and the best gems for your gear. Today we're going to go a step further and get into enchanting all that sparkly new gear.

The first question you have to ask yourself in the early weeks of an expansion is whether it's even worthwhile enchanting your gear. Certainly by the time you set foot in raids you want the best enchant on all your slots to ensure you're contributing as much as you possibly can to your raid's success, but there if frankly not much point in enchanting those non-heroic blues or gear you picked up while questing.

As a general rule of thumb, you only want to enchant gear from heroics (or equivalent gear of ilvl 463 or higher). You just don't need the extra edge of enchants to run 5-mans, especially when that gear is going to get replaced within a few runs. That said, if you've gotten unlucky on a slot or two and are preparing to walk into a raid with some lower level gear, then you should get it enchanted.

Okay, let's get into the best option per slot.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: MoP hunter enchants

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Scattered Shots: MoP hunter enchants originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: MoP hunter gems]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/04/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-gems/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/04/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-gems/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/04/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-gems/#comments Scattered Shots MoP hunter gems THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Now that most of you are at or almost at level 9o and working on putting together your pre-raid hunter gear, it's time to take a moment to discuss gemming for Mists of Pandaria. Like gear and enchants and talents, gemming is one of the areas where you can statically optimize your hunter's DPS.

While the benefit of choosing one gem over another might add up to an unnoticeably small DPS difference, once you add up the benefit of all your gems, and your gear, and every other tiny optimization opportunity, you suddenly have the difference between topping the charts or not; or the difference between downing a boss or not. Every little bit of optimization adds up into a big difference in DPS.

Mists brought us more than just upgraded versions of our gems: it also changed the itemization of gems to make some of our decisions more interesting.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: MoP hunter gems

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Scattered Shots: MoP hunter gems originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: MoP hunter pre-raid gear list]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/28/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-pre-raid-gear-list/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/28/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-pre-raid-gear-list/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/28/scattered-shots-mop-hunter-pre-raid-gear-list/#comments Scattered Shots MoP hunter preraid gear list DO NOT POST 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.or ask him on Google+.

The third significant step for all hunters in Mists of Pandaria is gearing up to become raid ready. (For those interested, the first step is race (and possibly faction) changing to dwarf, and the second is leveling up to 90). With that in mind here is a list of some of the top hunter gear to go after.

We're specifically only looking here at non-raid PvE gear that does not come from a raid or require raid mats. However, in Mists you are able to get valor points outside of raids, including by doing daily quests and some of the reputation gear requires valor points to purchase in addition to faction rep. Thus I am going to include some valor gear in this list. Odds are you won't have enough valor points pre-raiding to get all of these pieces. My recommendation is to run your heroics to get the best non-epic gear possible and then spend valor points to fill in the worst gear slots.

I'm also not including any gear that requires you to have a certain profession -- thus no engineering goggles even though they may be superior for engineers.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: MoP hunter pre-raid gear list

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Scattered Shots: MoP hunter pre-raid gear list originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter leveling from 85 to 90]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/20/scattered-shots-hunter-leveling-from-85-to-90/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/20/scattered-shots-hunter-leveling-from-85-to-90/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/20/scattered-shots-hunter-leveling-from-85-to-90/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter leveling from 85 to 90 THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

We're less than a week away from the launch of Mists of Pandaria, when overnight we'll have to start the short grind back up to the level cap, after which we'll replace all of our hard-earned purple gear with fresh greens and blues.

When it comes to leveling, hunters have it easy. You could go through and choose the worst possible optimization and still have an easy time of it. I should stress this at the outset: you don't need any special tricks to solo quest your way to level 90.

That said, by optimizing your hunter for leveling you can certainly make the trip to 90 a bit easier. What follows are my recommendations for preparing your hunter for optimal leveling.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter leveling from 85 to 90

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Scattered Shots: Hunter leveling from 85 to 90 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-levelinghunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-mop-levelinghunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Bugs, not bugs, and oddities of patch 5.0.4]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/06/scattered-shots-bugs-not-bugs-and-oddities-of-patch-5-0-4/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/06/scattered-shots-bugs-not-bugs-and-oddities-of-patch-5-0-4/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/06/scattered-shots-bugs-not-bugs-and-oddities-of-patch-5-0-4/#comments Scattered Shots Bugs, not bugs, and oddities of patch 504 THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

As much as the beta process eliminates hordes of bugs (but never the horde, sadly) there are always some that follow us to the pre-patch. Patch 5.0.4 has brought a handful of hunter bugs with it, and it appears that Blizzard is making some progress on stamping them out.

Here are the top bugs, strange things that might or might not be bugs, and things hunters thought were bugs but turned out not to be so buggy after all. It's worth noting that this is not a comprehensive list, but these are the things that are most likely to affect your game experience in some way.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Bugs, not bugs, and oddities of patch 5.0.4

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Scattered Shots: Bugs, not bugs, and oddities of patch 5.0.4 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-5.0.4hunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-5.0.4hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: 5 awesome 5.0.4 hunter things]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/30/scattered-shots-5-awesome-5-0-4-hunter-things/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/30/scattered-shots-5-awesome-5-0-4-hunter-things/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/30/scattered-shots-5-awesome-5-0-4-hunter-things/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter fun in 504 THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

According to WoW Insider's analytics department, 83.7% of you have now downloaded the giant patch 5.0.4, reforged yourself for hit and expertise, been momentarily dismayed at your DPS until you realized the target dummy changed, and then gone out to explore the post-patch world.

You may have noticed that there are still some bugs to be worked out -- like how the improved Kill Command is broken on Ultraxion and Madness, or how Snake Trap is a bit fussy about when to attack, or that Spirit Bond isn't working in combat. You may have noticed things you thought were bugs but weren't, like the target dummies or Explosive Shot ticks clipping on Lock and Load. You almost certainly noticed impressively huge DPS in 5-mans.

Today we're going to suggest five new awesomely fun things that you can do with your post-5.0.4 hunter. Regardless of what you think about the new mechanics, this list should get you excited about the changes.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: 5 awesome 5.0.4 hunter things

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Scattered Shots: 5 awesome 5.0.4 hunter things originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-.0.4hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Raid target dummies ding level 93 in patch 5.0.4]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/29/raid-target-dummies-ding-level-93-in-patch-5-0-4/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/29/raid-target-dummies-ding-level-93-in-patch-5-0-4/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/29/raid-target-dummies-ding-level-93-in-patch-5-0-4/#comments Raid Target Dummies Level 93 in 504 Along with the mass of pre-Mists of Pandaria changes that patch 5.0.4 brought to the game is an important change to the raid target dummies: They have leveled up to level 93.

The raid boss target dummies found in major cities are now the Mists of Pandaria dummies, set up for level 90 characters. This means that the boss dummies now have much more armor, so even if your level 85 character is hit-capped and dodge-capped, you will still miss and be dodged by the target dummy. It also means that your physical attacks will do vastly less damage.

You cannot compare your DPS to the raid target dummy before and after patch 5.0.4, alas. So if you thought your DPS went way down, don't worry. It may just be the target dummy change.

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Raid target dummies ding level 93 in patch 5.0.4 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> 5.0.4breakingpatch-5.0.4patch-5.0.4-dpspatch-5.0.4-target-dummiespatch5.0.4-changestarget-dummies (Brian Wood) Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter prep for 5.0.4]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/23/scattered-shots-hunter-prep-for-5-0-4/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/23/scattered-shots-hunter-prep-for-5-0-4/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/23/scattered-shots-hunter-prep-for-5-0-4/#comments Scattered Shots Preparing for patch 504 THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Patch 5.0.4 is landing on Aug. 28, bringing all of the mechanical changes of Mists of Pandaria to hunters, which we'll get to play with at level 85 for a good month before the expansion hits. The patch is bringing hunters a lot of changes -- everything from the removal of minimum range and melee weapons to expertise being a required stat and aspects going on the global cooldown.

WoW Insider has a good rundown of what to expect from patch 5.0.4. Here, we're going to focus on the hunter-specific stuff. And there's a lot of hunter ground to cover, so let's get started.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter prep for 5.0.4

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Scattered Shots: Hunter prep for 5.0.4 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-patch-5.0.4hunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentspatch-5.0.4wow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter racials in Mists of Pandaria]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/16/scattered-shots-hunter-racials-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/16/scattered-shots-hunter-racials-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/16/scattered-shots-hunter-racials-in-mists-of-pandaria/#comments Scattered Shots Hunter racials in Mists of Pandaria THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Of all the different optimization options for the hunter class, racials are the one that is hardest to change. Nevertheless, there are plenty of hunters out there willing to race-change to squeeze out a bit more DPS or to get a little bit closer to the rugged perfection the designers blessed on the dwarves. This means that there are plenty of people asking what the best hunter race is.

In Mists, we have the new racial of the pandaren, plus a few of the old racials changing. Add to that new abilities and new formulas for the old ones, and the common question of what the best hunter race is requires a new set of math.

Or if you don't have one of those cool glass whiteboards with neon markers like they have in TV to do your math on (I really want one of those), we can shortcut it with Zeherah's hot new beta spreadsheet.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter racials in Mists of Pandaria

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Scattered Shots: Hunter racials in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-mists-of-pandariahunter-mophunter-racialshunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Nerf train rolls in on the beta]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/09/scattered-shots-nerf-train-rolls-in-on-the-beta/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/09/scattered-shots-nerf-train-rolls-in-on-the-beta/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/09/scattered-shots-nerf-train-rolls-in-on-the-beta/#comments Scattered Shots Nerf train rolls in on the beta THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

The great shadow of the nerf bat has fallen over the Mists beta hunter, and it's hitting hard. Of course, it's not necessarily a bad thing -- sometimes numbers are too big, and they need to be smaller to keep things balanced.

For those of you who have not been keeping track of all the constant beta changes, here's what happened: A bit ago, we got a big wave of hunter buffs. Some of these were for the sake of buffing hunters, but others were intended to fix bugs or to adjust the comparative balance of shots or abilities. The end result was huge DPS buffs. Too huge.

Hunter DPS was over-the-top high, so much so that many hunters even started pointing it out. And there were other weird things too -- like Arcane Shot doing more damage than Explosive Shot, dogs and cats living together, etc.

With the volume of changes coming in this patch, you can be pretty sure that we're not done. If history is any indicator, it's likely that hunters got a bit over-nerfed and we'll see some compensating buffs in the near future. But as you'll see, it wasn't just nerfs; we got some buffs, too.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Nerf train rolls in on the beta

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Scattered Shots: Nerf train rolls in on the beta originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentsmists-of-pandaria-huntermop-hunterwow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 09 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[A closer look at the hunter rare tames in Mists of Pandaria]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/01/a-closer-look-at-the-hunter-rare-tames-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/01/a-closer-look-at-the-hunter-rare-tames-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/01/a-closer-look-at-the-hunter-rare-tames-in-mists-of-pandaria/#comments Scattered Shots Hunteronly rare tames THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

The Mists of Pandaria beta has been updated with an awesome treat for pet-loving hunters. Blizzard has introduced new rare hunter pet tames with their own unique taming challenge -- only this time, they did it in a way that prevents random ass-hats from wandering around slaughtering lovely, rare beasts that are destined to become your beloved companions.

Following a cryptic clue, the dedicated hunters over at Petopia scoured the beta to discover what these new pets are and how they work. These beasts leave unique tracks in the landscape that are visible only to hunters. If you follow the tracks, they will eventually lead you to the rare beast; however, you have to use your Flare to make it visible, and you can use your Hunter's Mark to keep it visible to you.

This is awesome -- a solution that provides rare pets to tame while radically reducing the odds of their getting butchered by non-hunters and at the same time giving us a neat challenge to find the pets by actually hunting! So let's take a look at what we have.

Continue reading A closer look at the hunter rare tames in Mists of Pandaria

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A closer look at the hunter rare tames in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> bloodtoothbristlespinefeaturedglimmerguide-to-huntershexaposhunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentspatrannacheportentrockhide-the-immovablesavagestompywow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: PvP Stampede and more beta hunter changes]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/19/scattered-shots-pvp-stampede-and-more-beta-hunter-changes/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/19/scattered-shots-pvp-stampede-and-more-beta-hunter-changes/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/19/scattered-shots-pvp-stampede-and-more-beta-hunter-changes/#comments Scattered Shots PvP Stampede & more beta hunter changes THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Another beta patch has landed, bringing with it a host of hunter changes, including the anticipated changes to Stampede. We are continuing to see the evolution of the Mists hunter experience, including some surprisingly big changes for this late in the beta process.

Leading the changes in this beta patch is the predicted change to Stampede, making it less bursty and generally worse for PvE but available in Arenas and generally better suited for PvP.

But Stampede is by no means the only change in this beta patch; we got a brand spanking new hunter talent and changes to a bunch of core hunter abilities. Join me after the cut for a full rundown of the latest changes and their ramifications.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: PvP Stampede and more beta hunter changes

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Scattered Shots: PvP Stampede and more beta hunter changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentsmists-of-pandaria-huntermop-hunterwow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Grandpappy Frostheim on dumbing the game down]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/12/grandpappy-frostheim-on-dumbing-the-game-down/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/12/grandpappy-frostheim-on-dumbing-the-game-down/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/12/grandpappy-frostheim-on-dumbing-the-game-down/#comments Grandpappy Frostheim on dumbing it down Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways ... back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless -- but they were also men. You can ask him questions on Google+.

I've said it before and you can bet on the balls of the Titans that you'll hear me say it again, but kids these days don't know how good they got it. In fact, they got it so good that after years and years of complaining about every little thing, these days the kids are actually -- get this -- complaining that they have it too good.

I know, right? Kids these days.

A complaint that's been getting louder lately is that the game is being dumbed down. That because life is easier for these young'uns somehow the game requires less skill than the miserable pain in the backside the game was for us back in my day.

Well, I got some good news for you kids: The only thing that's been dumbed down is the useless, soft mass inside your noggin. In fact, by many measures, substantially more skill is required now than years ago.

Continue reading Grandpappy Frostheim on dumbing the game down

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Grandpappy Frostheim on dumbing the game down originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredgrandpappy-frostheimguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Stampede me this]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/05/scattered-shots-stampede-me-this/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/05/scattered-shots-stampede-me-this/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/05/scattered-shots-stampede-me-this/#comments Scattered Shots Stampede me this THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

The most awesome hunter news from Mists of Pandaria is without a doubt the removal of minimum range. But next on the list is Stampede, an ability that has been requested by mobs of hunters throughout WoW's history.

But then as soon as Stampede was implemented in the beta, hunters started complaining about the ability. In particular, the 10-minute cooldown turned a lot of vocal hunters against the ability. This ensures that Stampede cannot be reset by Readiness and that Stampede cannot be used in Arenas.

Lately Stampede has been the subject of much discussion, with Lead Systems Designer Ghostcrawler chiming in on the forums on the topic, and it looks like Blizzard may be reconsidering the design to accommodate hunters who want it to work differently.

And I think that's a bad thing. I strongly suspect that the result of changes to Stampede to placate our class is going to give us a worse ability. Here's why.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Stampede me this

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Scattered Shots: Stampede me this originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Aspect macros and crows endangered]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/28/scattered-shots-aspect-macros-and-crows-endangered/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/28/scattered-shots-aspect-macros-and-crows-endangered/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/28/scattered-shots-aspect-macros-and-crows-endangered/#comments Scattered Shots Aspects and crows endangered THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

We've got some more good hunter news coming in from the beta with more buffs to hunter stuff. It's very important that you keep this in mind, that there are some interesting buffs to abilities including more hunter PvP buffs. Because there's bad news as well.

We've had both news of another beta patch and a handful of posts from Ghostcrawler on the hunter thread.

Though A Murder of Crows was nerfed in the patch just a couple of weeks ago, it's been nerfed again, and fairly hard this time. Furthermore, we also got news that all this crazy combination of hunters summoning extra creatures into combat is potentially too much for lower-end machines, and Blizzard may have to scale back on some of these abilities. A Murder of Crows is a likely suspect for that.

But remember, there are buffs too. So let's dig into all the changes and news, starting with A Murder of Crows.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Aspect macros and crows endangered

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Scattered Shots: Aspect macros and crows endangered originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Faster, stronger, and with fewer crows]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/14/scattered-shots-faster-stronger-and-with-fewer-crows/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/14/scattered-shots-faster-stronger-and-with-fewer-crows/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/14/scattered-shots-faster-stronger-and-with-fewer-crows/#comments Scattered Shots Harder, stronger, and with fewer crows THURSDAY 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.or ask him on Google+.

Every new expansion is a game developer's dream. Throughout the course of the expansion, they have to be careful not to make too many changes too fast, something that can quickly become too hard for players to keep up with. As new tiers of content come out, the developers' list of dream changes build up faster than they can be deployed.

But when a new expansion is in the works, they're free to unleash the torrent of ideas that built up over the years. They can take the hunter and rebuild it -- faster, stronger, and as it turns out, with fewer crows.

The latest Mists of Pandaria beta build brings several buffs for hunters with some raw DPS increases. It also limits the ability of hunters to leverage A Murder of Crows to bring out a bazillion crows at once.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Faster, stronger, and with fewer crows

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Scattered Shots: Faster, stronger, and with fewer crows originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-mists-of-pandariahunter-mophunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Beta changes to hunter self-heal]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/07/scattered-shots-beta-changes-to-hunter-self-heal/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/07/scattered-shots-beta-changes-to-hunter-self-heal/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/07/scattered-shots-beta-changes-to-hunter-self-heal/#comments Scattered Shots Beta changes to hunter selfheal 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.or ask him on Google+.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that we were talking about the hunter self-heal nerfs in the beta, and we're already seeing more adjustments: partial un-nerfs, other ability nerfs, and substantial reworking of hunter self-heals. This is clearly an area of a lot of testing and scrutiny in the beta right now.

In addition to the self-healing changes, we also saw more fun cosmetic minor glyphs and got some clarification from Ghostcrawler about our new Stampede ability. It all adds up to lots more news of what hunters are going to look like in Mists of Pandaria as things continue to settle out.

To begin at the beginning, we saw a lot of adjustments made to the hunter self-heal situation in Mists, including a couple that I predicted. Here is the complete list.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Beta changes to hunter self-heal

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Scattered Shots: Beta changes to hunter self-heal originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 07 Jun 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-mists-of-pandariahunter-mophunter-self-healhunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 07 Jun 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Top 10 things for hunters to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/31/top-10-things-for-hunters-to-look-forward-to-in-mists-of-pandari/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/31/top-10-things-for-hunters-to-look-forward-to-in-mists-of-pandari/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/31/top-10-things-for-hunters-to-look-forward-to-in-mists-of-pandari/#comments Image 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.

With the coming of summer with warmer and longer days and the return of green to the world, most hunters find themselves with little to do. After all, it's the trailing days of the expansion, and Cataclysm doesn't have much more to offer. The bosses have been slain, and we've gathered the gear we want to transmog to.

Dreams of the new expansion is about all we have to pass the time -- well, that and Diablo III, which is the current end-of-expansion pass time for a huge chunk of WoW's population

With that in mind, let's take a look at the top 10 things we have to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria. In addition to the new leveling and new gear and new scenery and a new cuddly hunter race, we also have the smexy new gifts of the expansion.

Continue reading Top 10 things for hunters to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria

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Top 10 things for hunters to look forward to in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 31 May 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-mists-of-pandariahunter-mophunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 31 May 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Beta nerfs to hunter self-heals]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/24/scattered-shots-beta-nerfs-to-hunter-self-heals/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/24/scattered-shots-beta-nerfs-to-hunter-self-heals/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/24/scattered-shots-beta-nerfs-to-hunter-self-heals/#comments 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.

The Mists of Pandaria beta giveth, and the Mists of Pandaria beta taketh away. The latest beta patch did a little bit of both, giving MM hunters some love while cutting back on some of the presents we saw early in the beta.

It's probably also worth noting that we saw the new minor Glyph of Fetch, which commands your pet to fetch loot from a nearby corpse. This way the hunters of the world can focus full-time on killing while our loyal companion dash around picking the pockets of the fallen and bringing in the spoils of war.

The big news this patch is the overall reduction of the new and boosted hunter self-heals that Mists of Pandaria is bringing hunters. At the same time, MM is receiving a substantial focus regen boost.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Beta nerfs to hunter self-heals

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Scattered Shots: Beta nerfs to hunter self-heals originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 24 May 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-beast-mastery-scattered-shotshunter-guidehunter-infohunter-marksmanship-scattered-shotshunter-mists-of-pandariahunter-mophunter-self-healhunter-survival-scattered-shotshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 24 May 2012 12:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Mists of Pandaria Beta: New hunter pets]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/17/scattered-shots-new-hunter-pets-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/17/scattered-shots-new-hunter-pets-in-mists-of-pandaria/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/17/scattered-shots-new-hunter-pets-in-mists-of-pandaria/#comments 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.or ask him on Google+.

If there's one thing that defines the hunter class, it's our smoldering good looks. But just behind the irresistable allure of our sculpted flesh, the defining aspect of the hunter class is our pets. There is nothing hunters love more than our pets, and the most common questions hunters ask about Mists of Pandaria are about our pets. What will the new pets be? What are their special abilities? Will we get more stable slots (because the extra 20 we got last expansion are already full)? And of course, what about spirit beasts?

Happily, we're far enough into the beta process that we can begin answering some of the questions about new hunter pets. Join me after the cut for the rundown of the new tameable pet types now available and what their new abilities are.

Continue reading Mists of Pandaria Beta: New hunter pets

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Mists of Pandaria Beta: New hunter pets originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 17 May 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-mists-of-pandariahunter-mists-of-pandaria-petshunter-mophunter-mop-petshunter-petshunter-talentswow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Thu, 17 May 2012 09:00:00 EST WoW Insider <![CDATA[Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification inspiration]]> http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/11/scattered-shots-hunter-transmogrification-inspiration/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/11/scattered-shots-hunter-transmogrification-inspiration/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/11/scattered-shots-hunter-transmogrification-inspiration/#comments Image 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.or ask him on Google+.

We're going to take a break from the tumult of Mists of Pandaria beta news and give some attention to one of the most popular end-of-expansion doldrums activities: preparing the new badass look that you'll be wearing into pandaland.

Transmogrification has become an immensely popular subject in WoW. WoW Insider has a transmog resource list for general transmogrification information, and Tabana has a far more hunter-specific and extensive hunter transmogrification resources compilation over at the WHH that collects all the hunter transmog info from across the web.

Today, we're going to take a look at some of the awesome transmog looks that hunters have put together, complete with where to get the gear you need to grab the look for yourself.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification inspiration

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Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification inspiration originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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]]> featuredguide-to-huntershunter-guidehunter-infohunter-talentshunter-transmoghunter-transmogrificationtransmogrificationwow-hunterwow-hunter-infowow-hunters (Brian Wood) Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:00 EST WoW Insider