Does the freezing arrow take into account travel time of the projectile, and have an arming time once it lands? Or does it spawn armed, similar to a flare effect? Beta testers help here please, this would be a powerful addition to the PVP arsenal, I am merely trying to figure out how to use it right.

It's placed on the ground via a targeting circle. It does have a travel time, kind of like flare, and when it lands a trap appears. The trap does appear to have an arming time. So you're talking 3-4 seconds until the target is actually frozen.

Meta gem. That's almost exactly 3%.

Roar of Sacrifice got hit pretty hard for an ability that as far as I know has never actually worked as intended. Would have been nice to seen a cooldown or duration change to go with the nerf.

Thank you Dralmoo.

thanks, I knew i was forgetting something. I'll update my original post.

So without the metagem, I can confirm mortal shots DOES NOT affect auto-shot at the moment.

Autoshot hit avg: 382.
Autoshot crit avg: 764

Arcane shot hit: 767
Arcane shot crit: 1765

Yep which is a nerf to auto shots damage contribution to hunters, and an indirect nerf to our gains from haste making haste an even less appealing stat for hunters making all that haste on our raid gear even worse.

On the PTR you the highest trainable rank of Hunter's Mark was already at 300 RAP initially and said it went up to 1500 RAP. Did they change it with this patch?

Also, I really want to hear what Blizzard thinks they're doing to us with haste. It just doesn't make ANY sense now.

Would still have been worth it if blizzard hadn't changed all the RAP % multipliers to crit chance. Now the talent has lost 1.1 (master marksman) * 1.04 (survival instinct) or 14.4% of its value.

Edit: An unmentioned change to Feeding Frenzy. It now works at 35% mob health (previously was 20%), so it reads as follows: Your pet does 6/12% additional damage to targets with less then 35% health. Less of a nerf then I first thought but still a slight nerf imo.

Yes, it no longer goes up to 1500.

Keep in mind that this patch is extremely far from being a nerf to hunters; with all builds, my self-buffed dps has at least more than doubled at level 70. Survival dps dropped from ~2600 to ~2200 on the Theramore AOE dummies with the new Explosive Shot ranks, but I'm very cool with that. It'll be interesting to see if the fix to Chimera Shot will make Marks the highest dps build (as arguably it should be since it is the most mana-intensive.)

*update* Hmm, Chimera Shot appears bugged on the PTR; it's only hitting for ~650 damage on the level 1 training dummies.

You are far from the only one.

But I might have an answer, a bad answer I know, since I think it is less than outright brilliant. But, all that Haste could be an intended curb to Hunter DPS. If we scale too good, then something needs to go. And since they appear to have given up on BM, that leaves the other specs. Haste will offer very little, especially with the Mortal Shots nerf, so it can be used to make sure Hunters don't go too far in DPS. Apparently they don't want a rerun of Hunters ruling the charts unless a Rogue gets a perfect group.

Personally I think that would be the most horrible way to affect our DPS. Firstly it impacts on spec more than the others. Secondly it might have a detrimental effect on our scaling overall. Who is to say Hunters are going to do well in T8 and onwards? And lastly, there is still non-Haste out there for us to pick up, sidelining this attempt to slow us. In fact it would be directly bad since presumably we would then do more DPS than expected.

Hunter's Mark can't possibly be finished like this... Can it? I heard people talking about it giving the full benefit from the start. Giving the base value is just not very impressive, and using three talentpoints for a non-scaling number of such low value is just backwards.

I'm also finding my crits to be slightly higher then expected. I think it has to do with Improved Tracking. Without the talent my auto-shots were all just dealing 200% on crits. With 2 points in Improved Tracking it went up to about 204%. I was using the Fine Light Crossbow so there is virtually no damage range on the shots. Non-crits were 360, crits were 733. After putting another 3 points into Improved Tracking my shots were hitting for 366, and crits were 778.

Also, my Explosive Shot is hitting the main target the usual three times for full damage, but now the small AoE effect is also hitting the main target. I assume this is a bug?

Edit: No, I don't have a meta gem with 3% critical strike damage.

I think it's the other way around. Prior to this change, crit was better than haste pretty much all the time. It costs the same in terms of item budget, and it affected both crittable specials and auto shot. The kicker of course that a 1% damage increase from crit was actually a 1.x% damage increase, where x is the additional amount that comes from mortal shots.

With this change, a 1% damage increase to auto shot damage from crit is the same as a 1% increase to auto shot damage from haste. By removing a portion of hunter damage from being affected by mortal shots, it closes the gap between crit and haste in terms of desirability. Granted, I don't think the gap is closed just yet, but that is the direction in which this change goes. Crit (as a stat) got hit harder than haste did.

Similarly, this closes the gap in terms of spec damage as well. MM and SV both have a higher percentage of their damage come from crittable specials, so mortal shots gives them more of a benefit than it does to BM hunters, particularly that their special shots hit harder than BM specials.

Weren't MM and SV both higher dps than BM in beta prior to this change? All TC suggests that if any spec is lagging behind in beta, it's BM and not SV or MM.

They were in some tests (although part of that could have been due to bugs) but some other tests have shown BM ahead (it should be noted that some of those tests were conducted against the near-armorless level 1 test dummies, which would favor BM). Still, a lot of the scaling talents got changed this patch, so that could have lowered MM/SV enough to warrant some more gap-closing in Blizzard's opinion.

This is a quick reminder that their numbers pass isn't done. They're still focusing on sqaushing bugs right now and not how all the numbers play out. I expect more changes in the next few builds.

Also, on the defacto pet post a few back, Raptors and Wolves both look pretty solid as far as DPS pets go, but I wouldn't count out Cunning pets just yet. This holds especially true now after the devs "baked" in the armor bonus Tenacity and Ferocity used to have into all pets which reduced the bonus deficit Cunning pets had. For one, Spore Cloud should be a minor armor debuff on the same level as CoR. That means it'll stack with Sunder/Expose Armor. For another, with MM's mana longevity in the air, Roar of Recovery could possibly be worth it.

From WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> [Discussion] Warcraft: Devs and Hunters GC quotes:

It looks like Camo died before ever taking it's first breath. I find GC's response hypocritical at best considering TotT was just given to rogues.

I was more put off that she failed to say anything about the overwhelming amount of haste we have on gear and the lack of our LoS abilities they mentioned before.

On another note, I didn't feel it was cruddy at all when I thought we might get stealth.

Well, they said they were adding 2 abilities to baseline. They added deterence and master's call.
That they're not really LOS abilities dosn't mean that they don't feel they've added the promised abilities.

Shame master's call is a gimmick...

Wolves will be next to useless in raid environments if FH doesn't stack with other AP buffs and according to GC it is not supposed to stack.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> 8962 Pet Improvements

I was really looking forward to having a wolf be a superior raiding pet. I don't know how they intend to balance dps when the pet's core ability is not only a non-dps ability but is also useless in most raid settings. Are wolves only vialble for 5-mans now?

Edits for spelling.

I seem to recall them specifically saying that the two abilities were to help combat LoS problems, and neither Master's Call or Deterrence come close, especially after being nerfed.

So far all set items have Haste, isn't that enough of an indication? We have to assume that each set has been looked at with serious eyes. Meaning it has been designed for that spec/class. Now being designed for doesn't mean it will be best since it can also mean the developers get the option of reigning heavy DPS classes/specs in with some creative statjumbling.
Now, I'm not saying that is how it is, just that is how it can be. I also argued why it would be bad. But so far we haven't seen any comments on Haste at all. And it hasn't been exactly quiet about it, either here or the official forums. That is indicative of the devs holding on to Haste because it offers them something we don't know yet. I tend to hold onto the balancing point as we have seen no moves towards better Haste scaling, in fact the opposite.

Trev, you are correct. Crit took a bigger hit than Haste, but so did AP and practically every other DPS stat. That is if you look at it from an ultimate perspective. Crit got hurt of about 30% of 35% of its value, Haste got hurt with 30% of 100% of it's value (more or less, but you get my point). In raids that is. In solo the values are more even. So in actual effect crit got more valuable compared to Haste now by putting more emphasis on specials over Autos. It should have been the other way round if they had wanted to help Haste. Especially considering talents like Cobra Strikes and Marked for Death which really tilt towards crit over Haste (specials only remember).
Remove Mortal Shots completely and make Steady hit harder but cast slower, something like 2.3 seconds. That would make Haste interesting again, and on an even footing with Crit and AP. But I doubt anything that far reaching will happen.

http://wotlkwiki.info/up2/a/models/8962/mobs1.jpg
If that cat thingy is a Spirit Beast then I am pretty certain it will be a popular MM/Surv pet. It's special doesn't fit Longevity very well, making BMs waste some of it's potential (or make it a horribly attention intensive pet). But it is certainly a stunning pet. I would like one when I go Survival.

Btw, TotT isn't MD. It is less effective at pulling, but that doesn't mean it can't be used that way. It just requires the target to run to the position needed after the application. It will still be useful in cornerpulls, and it will be great in 5-mans. MD is practically wasted after pull and it has no damage increaser. They aren't the same, but then again Stealth and Camo was far from the same either.
That was indeed hypocritical by GC, and I lost a little of the respect I have for her. At the very least she could have worded it differently and said "well we didn't think it was very Hunteristic to stealth about and besides it turned out to be OP combined with X ability." People would have ranted anyway, but there wouldn't have been this feeling of being robbed of classdefining aspects and get nothing in return.


That is a rather funny comment given how BM Hunter with BM the talent are basically funneled into using Devilsaurs since that is what there is. Perhaps it means a nerf to Devilsaurs so we can finally all agree that the talent is just a glorified Minor Glyph? That might in fact further the cause of BM a little... one can hope.

Well, that's not considering the problem that according to Wowhead, the spirit beast is EXOTIC.