If those are to be believed, then the item scaling is actually going to work quite nearly exactly as it did in TBC. The level 75 helm works out to be an ilvl 192 item (in terms of stats and armor value), or a 67% upgrade over an ilvl 115 blue. A level 65 blue is usually around ilvl 100, which is also a 67% upgrade over an ilvl 60 blue.

It's almost predictable to the point where it increases the probability that it's a hoax.

Hunters have many ways to escape because they can snare, immobilize, freeze, stun, sleep and confuse enemies, as well as run faster, fight at 41 yards and feign death. Other classes need getaway abilities perhaps slightly more than Hunters. Besides that Rogue stealth is not a good getaway to begin with.

The most recent PTR patch notes have this change in them:

Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.



Would this also work in reverse? Hunter Marks his target, Camouflages up and then sets up his attack on the marked target? I know once a fight gets big enough, I have a hard time keeping track of which Hunter is marking me out of the half dozen in front of me, but it would still give the Marked player a chance to see the impending doom and try to counter it.

I think your conclusion is in error.

It's plainly obvious to me that the people that did the work were given item budgets and.. never spoke to each other. The Kara epics were terrible because they were horribly underbudget vs. the dungeon blues. Once they were re-budgeted in The Great Item Fix (tm), they became quite fine. The dungeon blues were quite good out the gate. And, well, the tailored sets were obviously well done. It was hardly incompetent itemization across the board. It was incompetent budgeting of Tier 4 and Tier 5 epics. And, really, tier 6 to a large extent. Tier 6 was better budgeted so they decided it didn't need a rebudgeting. But it was often poorly itemized, especially after The Great Item Fix, which is why so much Black Temple and Hyjal gear was instant shards from the moment it dropped till now.

One would hope itemization would get taken much more seriously, but unless they hire some theorycrafters to actually test and measure the items for their true value, it's going to remain broken and you're going to have people using items from early content well into late game because the supposed "upgrades" aren't.

I'm not sure if they never spoke to each other; it seems more likely that they just had a different view of item progression than they do now. The initial ilvls were such that Kara items, as ilvl 95 epics, were basically equivalent to ilvl 120 or 125 blues. You could view that as a *very* gradual transition from 5-man dungeons to higher raid content. Of course, the difficulty of Karazhan was significantly higher than that of a regular 5-man, so it wasn't really fair, and they bumped the ilvl up to make it more enticing. Of course, that effort-vs.-reward reevaluation still didn't translate to heroic drops, but it looks like WotLK won't suffer from that so much.

The real problem was with sockets. Initially, the formula was such that sockets consumed some percentage of item budget. 25% of a high-end epic is considerably more than 25% of a dungeon blue (especially some if the ilvl 85 blues from early TBC dungeons), but basically the same gems were going into them. That didn't really make sense, so they changed it to be more of a static chunk of an item. That's one of the reasons why early 25-man raid gear seemed to be lacking.

I really don't think they need careful theorycrafting. What they do need is good tools that let visually identify how stats are being distributed on an item, and the magnitude that they're over or under budget. With tools that are sufficiently visual, then they only need a basic understanding of the priority each spec gives to a stat to figure out whether an item will be desirable or not. I still think that it took them a fair amount of time to really appreciate the change to stamina valuation, judging from sets like these:

Hallowed Raiment - Item Set - World of Warcraft
Righteous Armor - Item Set - World of Warcraft

Maybe they had visual tools and still screwed it up, I don't know.

I'm pretty sure what that actually means is "Invisible players with Hunter's Mark can see which hunter put the mark on them". In other words, the name of the hunter will be on the debuff most likely. The idea of being able to see a Shadowmelded NE Hunter just because they cast HM on you defies normal (not necessarily Blizzard) logic.

I'm pretty sure it just means that it is *possible* for the mage to see the hunter (not that they see the hunter if other effects prevent sight). Normal stealth rules should still apply.

One of the effects of mage invisibility is that it lets you see other invisible things, like the succubi in Arcatraz. And since camouflage states that you fade into an "Invisibility State" I would say it seems quite likely that an invisible mage will be able to see them, regardless of whether they're marked or not.

My take on Camouflage:

The use of the word 'invisibility' indicates that it's going to be similar to Mage Invisibility - you can only see other invisible players.

That is, if you Camouflage in the middle of a BG, the only other players you'll see are other Camouflaged Hunters and Invisible Mages.

But wait, if Camouflage breaks on dealing damage, how will you ever shoot anyone? Can't exactly count on an enemy Mage going Invisible, yes?

This is where the Hunter's Mark change comes in:
If you combine that with the Invisibility tooltip:
If a player with Hunter's Mark on them has 'Detect Invisibility' specifically for the Hunter that cast the Mark, then a Hunter in Camouflage can also see them back.

This allows a Hunter to set up his attack on a target - Mark them, Camouflage, then shoot when ready.

I suppose the question at this point is if a non-invisible player can attack an invisible Hunter or otherwise do something to break Camouflage.

Yeah, but that could all be thrown out the window by the use of the word 'improved' before the word 'invisibility.' What could be improved about it? Pretty much any one, or combination, of the following:

- Able to see non-invisible targets
- Other invisible players not able to see you
- Able to take more actions without breaking it
- No funky hey-mom-I'm-on-shrooms visual effect

We need getaways because we are entirely dependant on being at range, as our melee abilities are (rightfully so) very weak.

1) Snare - Concussive Shot is 4 secs with Diminishing Returns.

2) Immobilize - If you mean Wing Clip, that requires 3 points in a Survival talent to get a 20% chance to immobilize for 5 secs, again with DR. Total talents to get it are minimum 8 points.

3) Stun - Intimidate, 21 points into BM. Stun lasts 3 secs, ability has a 1 minute cooldown.

4) Sleep - Wyvern Sting, 31 points into SV. 12 secs sleep, broken by any damage, 2 minute cooldown.

5) Confuse - Scatter Shot, 21 points into MM. 4 secs disorient with DR.

6) Run Faster - Aspect of the Cheetah gives a 30% speed increase, yet a sneeze will Daze the hunter.

7) Fight at 41 yards - I've never understood why it's somehow unacceptable for us to fight at range as intended... Also, default range is 35, we spend three talent points in SV to get 41yd range.

8) Feign Death - Please tell me no one is fooled by this in pvp anymore...

So of all these listed, only 1, 6, 7, 8 do not require talents. 1 has DR, 6 has a Daze penalty, 7 is because we're weak in melee, and 8... again, I hope no one is actually fooled by FD anymore. The rest are impossible to have all simultaneously. Please don't post anything like this again, it's just shy of the trolling the official Hunter board sees daily.

It also cancels all offensive spells currently still channeling or being cast on the hunter.

Forgive my unfamiliarity with hunters, but is wing clip not a snare?

The problem with hunters is not so much a lack of CC as it is a very high learning curve.

As a warrior, I can basically faceroll mortal strike, hamstring and intercept on my keyboard, and do well in arenas.

As a hunter, you have to support your teamates, monitor and use your CC cooldowns at appropriate times (and coordinate them with your teammates), know about hunter rotations to do heavy burst for the few seconds you can get range and micro your pet to have a decent shot at winning.

Shamans, especially in small arenas, have the same problem as hunters.

I'd say all other classes have a shot at doing decent in arena by facerolling with just a few spells / tactics.

Wait, Concussive Shot is suffering from DR? I thought slowing effect don't have DR at all.

Not sure how interesting this is for most people here, but I figure at least some of us are into UI coding. And some of those of us that are into UI coding are probably wondering how their custom unit frames are going to handle Death Knights! So here's some juicy info on the subject:

- The UnitMana(unit) function returns the amount of Runic Power a Death Knight has.
- There's a new UNIT_RUNIC_POWER event, which works exactly like UNIT_MANA and similar events except for Runic Power.
- There's also the new RUNE_POWER_UPDATE event. This one fires when a rune is used or becomes ready again. It also provides "rune" and "usable" variables. "rune" is the location of the rune returned as a number between 1 and 6, "usable" returns a boolean value indicating whether the rune is usable or not.
- There's also the RUNE_TYPE_UPDATE event. This one fires when a rune is changed to a different type of rune. It returns a "rune" variable, indicating the location of the rune as a number between 1 and 6.
- For figuring out what rune is in a location, you have the GetRuneType(rune) function. This can be used with the previous two events to figure out which type of rune was changed. It returns 1 for a Blood Rune, 2 for an Unholy rune, 3 for a Frost rune, 4 for a Death rune.
- There's also a GetRuneCooldown(rune) function. This one returns start, duration and enable variables. Much like existing cooldown functions.
- The RUNE_REGEN_UPDATE event exists as well, but currently appears to be unused.
- There's a few new constants as well. iconTextures[RuneType] is for the textures runes have when usable, while runeTextures[RuneType] is the texture used when a rune is not currently usable. The numbers you use for RuneType are the numbers returned by the GetRuneType(rune) function mentioned earlier.
- Finally the frame used for runes, while it looks it's attached to the player frame, is actually it's own frame called RuneFrame. It'd need to be separately hidden when using a custom unit frame as it is not parented to the PlayerFrame. The Runic Power Bar is part of the PlayerFrame however, and would be hidden when using normal techniques to hide the PlayerFrame.

I'm not sure what you mean there. You are comparing a set that is quite strictly designed to healing and a hybrid set that has its main focus in tanking. Those doesn't compare very well...

It would appear the wikidot site has been shut down.

I'm not comparing them, I'm offering them as two examples of sets that have stamina in pitiful quantities compared to what you could reasonably expect, given the value of stamina. The priest set might as well have no stamina, and the paladin tanking set has as much stamina as INT. Those kinds of values might have made sense before the stamina devaluation, but not after. Hell, they've only recently started putting reasonable levels of stamina on feral sets.

I am in their IRC, and unless they are lying for some reason, it really is just maintenance.

Work is just being done on the site.

Oh come on, Wing Clip is a snare, so is Frost Trap. There are no dimishing returns on snares. Frost Trap with Entrapment is a brilliant getaway ability. Concussive Shot can be talented to Stun too. Hunters are loaded with ways to get away. Think about the options Warriors and Warlocks have and you'll see that Hunters don't need any extra options.