WotLK Talents & Abilities Discussion - Page 72

TheWicked22 · 08/21/08, 4:10 PM

Windfury totem has been changed to be a raid-wide buff.

Also...

Originally Posted by Wryxian

As you've probably noticed from our comments here and there about raid buffs and "what stacks with what," we're currently doing a big review of raid buffs at the moment. Our intention is simple: we want raids to be comprised of many possible combinations of classes and specs and we want people to be in your raid group because of their skill and camaraderie. We don't want you to feel you have to bring some particular class just because they've got some kind of amazing buff that you just can't raid without. We're still deep into working on this review, and you might see some of the changes coming out in upcoming patches but it isn't quite done yet.

Source

Hopefully within the next few pushes they'll have a decent idea of what buffs they want to make raid-wide and what will remain group only so we can see exactly what an ideal group comp will be, or if such a thing will still exist.

Galred · 08/21/08, 4:13 PM

I see the SV hunter in with either the rogues and/or the tanks, depending on how regeneration of rage/runic power turn out (as well as how many fights wind up threat capped due to lack of rage/runic power to drive threat generating abilities).

Unfortunately, unless Battle Shout was changed, the downside to being in the "rogue" group or the "tank" group is that the hunter gives buffs but receives nothing from rogues, receives only a pet damage buff from warriors (whoo-eee, buff that SV pet), receives only pet buffs from an Enh shaman's Unleashed Rage, and from the DKs receives ... whatever a DK gives its group. So you won't get much help on your personal DPS from your group, and after all who doesn't like to see the big numbers tick by?

I'm very curious to see how strong Hunting Party winds up being, as well as whether a raid stacking classes that only HP can buff would consider bringing a 2nd SV hunter. (I doubt this - you'd have a truly strange spec without EW in it - but the min/maxer in me is willing to consider weird stuff if it's an improvement.)

Aerynlore · 08/21/08, 4:17 PM

Originally Posted by Harwin

Will the rogue group be such a bad place to be? Windfury will at least be a buff now.

Something I found interesting (when thinking about your post) is that Hunting Party does not specify a range, just "to all members of your party." Ferocious Inspiration has similar wording. Whereas Raid-wide buffs (totems, auras, etc) have specific ranges.

Now, being in the Rogue group has no effect on whether Windfury will touch us, or not. With the HP wording, we can be on the other side of the fight and still buff our party, however WF still needs to be within 30 yards of us.

Does anyone else notice how Paladin auras are 30 yards, talented to 40; True-shot Aura is 45 yards. And yet totems are still sitting at a lackluster 30 yards. Any chance Blizz will at least expand the range of party-buffing totems to 40 yards (45 would be even better)?

I agree that it does seem that hunters are the runt children of the physical DPS classes. AP and Haste buffs are all short-range buffs that make it hard for hunters to take advantage of them. It may just be best if all beneficial raid-wide 'auras' are 40 yards, and all party-wide buffs (shouts, procs, etc.) have no range limit. Would this affect PvP that much? I admit to not being heavily invested in the arena, so I don't quite know what the full implications of this would be.

• Crowbite · 08/21/08, 4:20 PM

Originally Posted by Galred

Unfortunately, unless Battle Shout was changed, the downside to being in the "rogue" group or the "tank" group is that the hunter gives buffs but receives nothing from rogues, receives only a pet damage buff from warriors (whoo-eee, buff that SV pet), receives only pet buffs from an Enh shaman's Unleashed Rage, and from the DKs receives ... whatever a DK gives its group. So you won't get much help on your personal DPS from your group, and after all who doesn't like to see the big numbers tick by?

So? All the buffs we care about are raid wide anyway. GoA/SoE, Windfury, Unleashed rage and battle shout for the pets. Only one I can think off is FI which is a small loss considering we're going to be giving each rogue and feral close to 5%-8% extra dps.

Also, I think a couple of you guys are thinking of the TBC rogue group setup. The group I'm talking about is Survival/R/R/R/Feral. You might switch the feral or a rogue with a DK depending on how their damage scales and whether or not the feral is in cat or bear.

Eurytos · 08/21/08, 5:28 PM

Yes... most of the buffs we care are raid wide. Same goes for melee. Totems, Shouts, AS/UR, TSA, all raid wide. Still waiting on word about FI and Leader of the Pack.

We will most likely be in the melee or tank group. Call of the Wild, Ferocious Howl, and maybe Hunting Party get more benefit from being paired with melee.

Mikari · 08/21/08, 6:27 PM

The patch that should have the Hunter changes is coming tonight it seems.

We will be taking down the Beta realms at 2:30PM Pacific time today August 21th 2008 to update to the latest build.

We expect this process to take from six to eight hours.

Thank you for your patience!

Catalept · 08/21/08, 7:05 PM

Originally Posted by TheWicked22

Windfury totem has been changed to be a raid-wide buff.

Also...

Source

Hopefully within the next few pushes they'll have a decent idea of what buffs they want to make raid-wide and what will remain group only so we can see exactly what an ideal group comp will be, or if such a thing will still exist.

The key difference between buffs like Windfury, TSA, Devotion Aura et. al. is that they don't stack. Ferocious Inspiration, Hunting Party, Vampiric Foo do stack (or compound or whatever verb you like

). I would expect that all abilities that stack will remain party-only... conversely, I expect that Blizzard may well be making things like FI no longer stack. Bah. Can't see how they'd do that with VT/VE or HP, though.

• Grogzor · 08/21/08, 7:11 PM

Originally Posted by Catalept

The key difference between buffs like Windfury, TSA, Devotion Aura et. al. is that they don't stack. Ferocious Inspiration, Hunting Party, Vampiric Foo do stack (or compound or whatever verb you like

). I would expect that all abilities that stack will remain party-only.

Before, FI was better then TSA because FI scaled. How would making TSA raid wide compare to leaving FI party wide in terms of raid benefit? I understand that a raid of 14 BM hunters, 1 enhancement shaman and 1 feral druid would be kind of overpowered with FI raid wide, but will FI be lacking now?

Catalept · 08/21/08, 7:19 PM

Originally Posted by Grogzor

Before, FI was better then TSA because FI scaled. How would making TSA raid wide compare to leaving FI party wide in terms of raid benefit? I understand that a raid of 14 BM hunters, 1 enhancement shaman and 1 feral druid would be kind of overpowered with FI raid wide, but will FI be lacking now?

From a balance point-of-view, you'd expect that the specs with high personal DPS would have weaker raid buffs, and conversely that the weaker DPS specs would have the strong raid buffs. Given that Ret pallies only get a 2% non-stacking DPS boosting effect, it would be incongruous to give BM hunters a 3% stacking one.

Galred · 08/21/08, 7:22 PM

FI is still pretty good, I just think the BM hunter will be using it in a caster group instead of in a physical DPS group (SV hunter gets the physical DPS).

Even if FI were changed to be a raidwide buff there's no way Blizzard could allow it to stack; too much potential for abuse there. Plus a raidwide FI seems like it would become a requirement, and the devs are indicating that they don't want certain classes/talent builds to be an absolute requirement.

As before, I'd like FI to be buffed with the option for the raid of either more DPS from the hunter + a kickass group buff versus raidwide TSA.

Mikari · 08/21/08, 7:31 PM

Changes from the new patch, this is just the patchnotes I'm sure there will be undocumented changes.

# Animal Handler (Beast Mastery): No longer increases speed while mounted, but now reduces the cooldown of your Master's Call ability by 5/10 sec.
# Aspect of the Beast: Now increases melee attack power. 10% for the hunter and the hunter's pet.
# Disengage: This ability has been re-designed. Now leaps the Hunter backwards up to 13 yards. 30 second cooldown. Disengage now also only has one rank (rank 1).
# Distracting Shot: This shot now "taunts" the target onto the Hunter. The taunt effect will last 6 seconds. Distracting Shot now only has one rank (rank 1).
# Focused Fire (Beast Mastery): Now increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 10/20/30% while Kill Command is active. This effect can stack up to 3 times, but diminishes for each charge of Kill Command.
# Improved Stings (Marksmanship): Now a 3-point talent, down from 5-points.
# Kill Command: This ability now increases the damage done by your pet's special abilities by 60%. Each attack will reduce the damage bonus by 20%. 1 minute cooldown.
# New Talent - Aspect Mastery (Beast Mastery)
# New Talent - Hunter vs. Wild (Survival): Increases you and your pet's attack power and ranged attack power equal to 10/20/30% of your total Stamina.
# New Talent - Lock and Load (Survival): You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 10/20/30% chance when you sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.
# New Talent - T.N.T. (Survival): Your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Explosive Shot have a 5/10/15% to stun targets for 2 sec when they deal damage, and increases the critical strike chance of your Explosive Shot and Explosive Trap by 5/10/15%.
# Pathfinding (Beast Mastery): Now also increases the movement speed while mounted by 5/10%.
# Readiness (Survival): Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes.
#Spirit Bond (Beast Mastery): Also increases healing done to you and your pet by 5/10%.
#Steady Shot: Now has a 2.0 cast time, up from 1.5.
# Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 16/25/50% (instead of resist % chance).
# Survival Instincts (Survival): This has been moved to tier-2, up from tier 6.
# Survivalist (Survival): Now increases your total Stamina, instead of your total Health.
# The arming time has been reduced to 1 second, from 2 seconds for all traps.
# Trap Mastery (Survival) is now an 11-point talent.
# Trueshot Aura - This aura is now raid-wide.

• Grogzor · 08/21/08, 7:36 PM

Disengage, it says up to 13 yards. First I am wondering why 13...seems like an odd number. Also, up to? I hope that means if terrain gets in the way it will reduce it, not that there is a % chance to go certain distances.

I like the fact they realized the crit increase to Kill Command was a little lack luster and how they reduced the cooldown. I would still like it if it affected all attacks instead of just special but we will have testing to see how well it does.

Reduced trap arming makes me kind of excited. Now if only we could find out what exactly the new Trap Mastery does.

Mikari · 08/21/08, 7:41 PM

Originally Posted by Grogzor

Now if only we could find out what exactly the new Trap Mastery does.

This was said a while ago about it

Trap Mastery - This talent will be a 1-point talent now, we've condensed a lot of the trap talents in the Survival tree. It will do stuff like increase damage of Immolate, root the dispeller of your Freezing Trap in ice, increase the number of snakes from your snake trap, etc.

• Grogzor · 08/21/08, 7:43 PM

Originally Posted by Mikari

This was said a while ago about it

Trap Mastery - This talent will be a 1-point talent now, we've condensed a lot of the trap talents in the Survival tree. It will do stuff like increase damage of Immolate, root the dispeller of your Freezing Trap in ice, increase the number of snakes from your snake trap, etc.

I was referring to numbers and such...

KraxisSingular · 08/21/08, 7:51 PM

Was that the big push for Hunters?

1 sec arming on traps is nice. Aspect of the Beast giving pet 10% AP is sort of nice too, but it isn't that impressive still. Kill Command change is still not good. It remains weak and just not interesting to boot. If the old one is too much DPS then remove it alltogether and give the Hunter a comparable DPS boost, this skill is just poor.

Honestly I see little change worth mentioning outside the trapchange.

Mikari · 08/21/08, 7:55 PM

Originally Posted by KraxisSingular

Was that the big push for Hunters?

1 sec arming on traps is nice. Aspect of the Beast giving pet 10% AP is sort of nice too, but it isn't that impressive still. Kill Command change is still not good. It remains weak and just not interesting to boot. If the old one is too much DPS then remove it alltogether and give the Hunter a comparable DPS boost, this skill is just poor.

Honestly I see little change worth mentioning outside the trapchange.

Those were just the changes listed in the patchnotes, we all know how much Blizzard leaves out of patchnotes, especially the beta ones.

Catalept · 08/21/08, 7:59 PM

Originally Posted by Grogzor

Disengage, it says up to 13 yards. First I am wondering why 13...seems like an odd number. Also, up to? I hope that means if terrain gets in the way it will reduce it, not that there is a % chance to go certain distances.

I suspect 'backwards up to 13 yards' is the same qualifier as 'attempts to dispel'... i.e. an implicit 'unless it's impossible' clause. You jump 13 yards backwards... unless there's a wall in the way.

Originally Posted by Grogzor

Reduced trap arming makes me kind of excited. Now if only we could find out what exactly the new Trap Mastery does.

... I suspect even Blizzard isn't sure right now

After all, with spell and melee hit being one and the same, resist-reduction is off the table. With any luck, it'll increase the tigger-radius... /fingerscrossed

# Distracting Shot: This shot now "taunts" the target onto the Hunter. The taunt effect will last 6 seconds. Distracting Shot now only has one rank (rank 1).

MUSTDO: Find out how this works with Misdirection.

# New Talent - Lock and Load (Survival): You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 10/20/30% chance when you sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.

30% per sting now... that's about one proc per minute. Still doesn't look like anything other than a PvP talent for random on-the-move burst damage... unless multiple ES dots can stack?

# Readiness (Survival): Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes.

I didn't notice the cooldown reduction on the talent page... but this meshes nicely with 2/2 Rapid Killing to reduce Rapid Fire to 2 uses every 3 minutes.

steamrice · 08/21/08, 8:15 PM

Hunter glyphs are in.

* Glyph of Aimed Shot: Decreases the cooldown of Aimed Shot by 1 sec.
* Glyph of Arcane Shot: Your Arcane Shot refunds 20% of its mana cost if the target has one of your Stings active on it.
* Glyph of Aspect of the Beast: Increases the attack power bonus of Aspect of the Beast for you and your pet by an additional 2%.
* Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey: While Aspect of the Moneky is active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.
* Glyph of Aspect of the Viper: You regenerate mana from Aspect of the Viper as if you had 15% less mana in your current mana pool.
* Glyph of Bestial Wrath: Decreases the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by 20 sec.
* Glyph of Deterrence: Decreases the cooldown of Deterrence by 20 sec.
* Glyph of Disenegage: Decreases the cooldown of Disengage by 5 sec.
* Glyph of Freezing Trap: When your Freezing Trap breaks, the victim is afflicted with a 40% snare, recovering 10% per sec. for 4 sec.
* Glyph of Frost Trap: Increases the radius of the effect from your Frost Trap by 1 yards.
* Glyph of Hunter's Mark: Increases the attack power bonus of your Hunter's Mark by 20%.
* Glyph of Immolation Trap: Decreases the duration of the effect from your Immolation Trap by 6 sec., but damage while active is increased by 100%.
* Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk: Increases the effect of Improved Aspect of the Hawk by an additional 6.
* Glyph of Multi-Shot: Decreases the cooldown of Multi-Shot by 1 sec.
* Glyph of Rapid Fire: Increases the haste from Rapid Fire by an additional 8%.
* Glyph of Serpent Sting: Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 3 sec.
* Glyph of Snake Trap: Your Snake Trap creates 2 additional snakes.
* Glyph of Steady Shot: Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when your target is afflicted with Serpent Sting.
* Glyph of Trueshot Aura: Increases the attack power bonus of Trueshot Aura by an additional 2%.
* Glyph of Volley: Decreases the mana cost of Volley by 20%.
* Glyph of Wyvern Sting: Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 15 sec., but decreases the damage it deals by 1%.

Seems mostly for pvp but looks like having a marks hunter in raid will increase all of our steady shot damage with the steady shot glyph.

Antorylis · 08/21/08, 8:17 PM

# Focused Fire (Beast Mastery): Now increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 10/20/30% while Kill Command is active. This effect can stack up to 3 times, but diminishes for each charge of Kill Command.

Did Focused Fire become a 3-point talent in this build? The bolded text suggests so. That would resolve the loose point that often gets sunk into Endurance Training while climbing deeper into the tree.

Aerynlore · 08/21/08, 8:32 PM

# Distracting Shot: This shot now "taunts" the target onto the Hunter. The taunt effect will last 6 seconds. Distracting Shot now only has one rank (rank 1).

Not only testing this on Misdirection, but testing to see if this is a "Taunt" or a "Mocking Blow".
For those that are unfamiliar, Taunt brings the tank's threat to equal the highest player's threat on the mob and forces that mob to attack the player. However, it does not force a time-limit beyond that instant target switch.
Mocking Blow, however, does a fixed amount of threat and forces the target to attack the player for 6 seconds. After those 6 seconds, the mob goes back to his normal threat tables.

So, does DS "taunt" the mob like this description states? Or is it a "Mocking Blow" that just forces the mob to attack for 6 seconds, then goes back to the normal threat table?

Or, in practice, if I DS a mob off of a healer and into a trap (and no one builds any extra threat on that mob) does it go to me after it breaks, or does it go back to beating on the healer?

Mikari · 08/21/08, 8:41 PM

Originally Posted by Antorylis

Did Focused Fire become a 3-point talent in this build? The bolded text suggests so. That would resolve the loose point that often gets sunk into Endurance Training while climbing deeper into the tree.

Unless I'm reading it wrong it also indicates a stacking buff on the player, otherwise I'm not sure how it can increase the crit chance of kill command whilst kill command is active.

WarTotem · 08/21/08, 8:45 PM

Originally Posted by steamrice

Hunter glyphs are in.
**massive quote**

Wow, those look interesting.

I'ld say for PvE:
* Bestial Wrath (BM)
* AotV (non-iAotH specs)
* Hunter's Mark (the one with iHM in raid)
* iAotH (~BM)
* Serpent Sting (MM, assuming Chimera will benefit from this as well)
* Steady Shot (will very much depend on the bonus)

Which means per spec:
BM: BW/iAotH, possible Steady Shot as third.
MM: Serpent/Steady, possible iAotH or HM depending on what spec
SV: probably AotV/HM when doing Scorpid, Steady/HM with Serpent Sting I guess.

Most other Glyphs are either PvP oriented or buff cooldown & mana costs on abilities you don't use because of their DPS.