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Filed under: Hunter

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

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 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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: 5 things other classes can learn from hunters

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

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

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

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

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities

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 a new year, and 2012 promises to be a year of changes throughout WoW with the new Mists of Pandaria expansion. The new year is also a time of new beginnings and of resolutions, so now seems like a fantastic time to revisit the hunter raiding basics.

Over the course of time, our focus and our skills can degrade bit by bit, bringing with it the classic DPS obsession with meters and relative position, until we're looking at those meters with blinders on, ignoring the far, far more important things we should be paying attention to.

Today we're going to look at the basic hunter priority list of what's important for you to be doing in a raid and what is the most to least important. I'm sure just about everyone knows someone who could benefit from reassessing raiding priorities. Just send them over to this post for an explanation of what's most important and why.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter predictions for a new year

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Pet talent possibilities in Mists of Pandaria

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter trinket roundup

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunting Mists of Pandaria talents

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: 4.3 bonus hunter changes

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.

At long last, patch 4.3 is live, bringing with it the great hunter balancing buffs (and the pesky melee buff that we don't benefit from -- but the video above demonstrates pretty clearly that hunters need no melee buff). At the outset, the patch is looking like a good thing for hunter spec balance, boosting BM and SV up to levels that are nearly indistinguishable from MM DPS.

We also got a nice little surprise buff to SV that alters the base SV rotation -- and actually has the potential to give SV that last little push into first place, possibly slipping ever so slightly past MM in the DPS charts.

Join me after the cut for a quick recap of what we're seeing in patch 4.3 and the T.N.T. cooldown change that looks like it's going to change the SV hunter shot choices.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scattered Shots: Hunter spec abilities in Mists of Pandaria

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.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Is it time to kill the global cooldown?

OK, so I was playing some Diablo III beta last night. Since this is a site that covers World of Warcraft, I'll just say that the little snippet I managed to play through before passing out was such that I could describe it in superlatives. But one of the things I noticed when playing was that the barbarian class plays absolutely perfectly to me. There are attacks that gain you the resource (fury) that you then spend on larger, more punishing attacks. You can spam those fury-gathering attacks; there's nothing limiting you from making them. You could hammer the keyboard all night if you wanted to. And it felt good.

This is when I realized that I hate the global cooldown. I guess it's double kudos to Blizzard that it got me to accept the global cooldown for seven years and then got me to despise it with another of its own games. Looking over the list of class abilities not affected by it, I find myself starting to wonder if it even serves a purpose anymore. Or is it just a holdover from the game's original design?

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Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Analysis / Opinion, BlizzCon, Death Knight, Monk, Mists of Pandaria

Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter gear

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.

If there's one thing gaming geeks like, it's new toys. Whether it's a replica Frostmourne, a shiny new set of D&D dice or a sweet lightsaber app for our smartphones, there's nothing like new toys to get us excited. And the best toy of all for a WoW gamer? New gear!

Patch 4.3 is moving along, and while it's probably still a bit away, the background downloader is doing its thing and the final content patch of Cataclysm is undeniably coming soon. And that means that it's time to take a look at the new hunter gear that will soon be available to us!

Join me after the cut for the new Wyrmstalker hunter gear, an endgame gun for real this time, and all the other delightful little toys we'll get to play with until the pandas come.

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Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Class Balance Q&A: Hunter


Phoenix asked:

Hello Blizzard! Will the hunters be able to parry with bows in MoP? :O

Ghostcrawler answered:

No. Hunters will lose parry as part of the trade-off for losing minimum range.

Guest asked:

Will hunters be able to equip melee weapons instead of a ranged weapon in MoP, even if just for show ?

Xelnath answered:

Yes.

Sweep asked:

Hello, for the hunter Talent; Transmorph Trap. Can more of a description be given on it? Is it the same as a hex effect, or can you also fear the target after while they're turned into a beast?

Celestalon answered:

Transmorph Trap is a nature trap (and so can be placed at the same time as Freezing Trap), and allows you to cast Scare Beast on the transmorphed target. It will have a similar duration to Freezing Trap.

Nicholas Gates asked:

As a hunter I love collecting the odd pets that only a BM can but I dont get to use them much while raiding because to max my DPS I raid MM. I spend the time and effort to get these pets but noone sees them very often. Will we in the future see hunters be able to use these pets in any spec?

Celestalon answered:

We're actually excited to see how spec balance for Hunters turns out in 4.3. We're pretty confident that their raw damage is competitive between all 3 specs now, and so hope to see more exotic pets in raids, as well as survival hunters, and specs chosen based on the situational utility that they offer. We definitely want to reserve exotic pets as a BM-only perk though.

Smarty asked:

Considering the remove of melee weapons for hunters in Cataclysm, will the currently existing utility spells that require a melee weapon be replaced. (especially Raptorstrike Glyph)

Wradyx answered:

Removing melee weapons from Hunters and removing their minimum range on their attacks will have many different balance implications. We will carefulyl evaluate all their defensive abilities to make sure they don't become too survivable, or conversely too easy to kill. Mechanics on glyphs will be kept in some form if we feel they are valuable to the design, but some glyph mechanics may go away as no longer necessary.

Timothy asked:

im saying this for most hunters but y hasnt the snake trap damage been increased i have used it at max lvl a few times but the trap when the snakes attackk each one only does like 25 damage each is there a way you can fix this trap so that it does more damage

Koraa answered:

Snake Trap is intended to be utility, not damage. The damage on it is just there for flavor, really.

Alexander Howell asked:

Aspect of the cheetah/pack have seemed a little outdated with the daze on hit mechanic and can't really use them effectively in raids or pvp. Are there any plans to change these aspects to more a cooldown spell like stampeding roar or a self run speed for aspect of the cheetah?

Koraa answered:

Yes, we plan on it not dazing you but turn off the speed bonus for a short while when you get hit in those aspects (or at least Cheetah).

Chris Kramer asked:

Have you considered having a pet stampede spell where our 5 pet stable rushes our enemy for a 5min cd? Too epic for GC?

Xelnath answered:

Yes.

Zarhym:

Haha. It appears it was considered then. :)

Xelnath:

There's no such thing as too epic. Just ask Thrall






Filed under: Hunter

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