MMO-Champion posted some more Warlords of Draenor game play videos from the recent press events. You can view their post here. One of the videos was from a Hunter and it shows an update of the Hunter talents. There are some interesting changes here.
Under the specializations, Arcane Shot was shown under Beast Mastery and Marksman, but not Survival. That seems a little odd since Survival gets a bonus for Magic Damage so it’s a better fit for Survival than Marksman. Also it was stated by Celestalon that Arcane Shot would not be part of the Marksman specialization. Keep in mind that all of this is preliminary and not everything may be implemented yet for beta.
Looking at the talents here are some of the key changes.
- Aimed Shot is now affected by the Thrill of the Hunt talent.
- Stampede is now a level 75 talent and competes with Blink Strikes and A Murder of Crows, and Lynx Rush is gone.
The level 100 talents are all different from what we’ve seen before. Bola Shot has been changed to Flaming Shots. Snipe is now Focusing Shot, and With or Without You is now Versatility. Here’s what they do.
- Flaming Shots – 40 yard range, passive. You light your basic auto shots on fire. They now deal 80% weapon damage as Fire damage
- Focusing Shot – 40 yard range, 2.55 sec cast. Carefully line up a shot at the target that deals 100% weapon damage and focuses you, generating 75 focus. Cannot be cast while moving. Replaces Steady Shot and Cobra Shot.
- Versatility – Increases the effect of your pet’s Combat Experience to 70% increased damage. Your pet now gains the following abilities, regardless of it active spec.
- Spiked Collar
- Roar of Sacrifice
- Boar’s Speed
- Last Stand
- Blood of the Rhino
- Great Stamina
Regarding the level 100 talents, it looks like Flaming Shots is a good choice for some straightforward extra damage that you don’t have to work for. Focusing Shot will likely be the talent of choice for raiding, as it will probably offer the best DPS if you can stand still long enough to fire it. It’s probably what I’ll choose initially. Versatility is a nice solo talent, and may have uses in PvP.
It also looks like Blizzard is abandoning the idea of the petless Hunter. Maybe they’ll revisit it, but for now it looks like that’s not going to happen, and I’m just fine with that.
You can check out the video for yourself, and remember beta hasn’t even begun and this is all subject to change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_3ftOlBpqY#t=47
It could be that versatility is the BM version of “With or Without You” and SV/MM get a different spell option. Blizzard mentioned that talents might be different for different specs.
I’m assuming that Flaming shots does an extra 80% of weapon damage as Fire Damage (not do 80% fire and 20% physical damage), which might be a nice boost for SV, but is sounds not really interesting for MM and BM.
Apart from magic vs physical damage it looks like a very bad talent since it increases our auto-shot damage instead of an active ability so I hope it doesn’t make it. One of the suggestions of The Hunter Project was specifically to decrease passive damage.
Focusing Shot still looks like a bad talent as well since it makes specs more similar not diffrerent.
Moving Stampede to a talent is another move in the wrong direction. Hunters asked for the ability for years and it has become one of the unique hunter abilities. It also decreases our ability for burst dps, especially since Rapid Fire will likely be removed as well.
Seeing these changes doesn’t make happy since it looks like Blizzard is moving in the opposite direction of what I would like to see.
Stampede as a talent is that one I think most people won’t like, for the very reasons you pointed out. Plus people like Crows and Blink Strikes.
I think that tier will consume many a tome of clear mind or whatever they put in for WoD.
I honestly don’t think making Stampede a talent is a bad idea. Sure, the ability is nice for adding a little bit of extra damage, but it requires almost no thought. You can hold it back for a little while to try and line it up with trinket procs / bloodlust / potions / etc, but it’s not a particularly interesting ability, all you do is try and stack it with other cooldowns, which is something Blizzard have said they want to reduce. Now the choice across that tier will be centered around having either a constant, passive damage increase; a short, more bursty ability; or a long CD, higher damage ability.
Something I am interested about though is whether making Stampede a talent will mean that the other talents in that tier are influenced by Readiness. Assurance of Consequence currently reduces the CD of Stampede, but has no impact on Crows or Blink Strikes, so if Readiness continues to reduce the CD of the same abilities it does at the moment, Stampede will still likely be the best talent to take.
Yeah, my understanding is we see Versatility in the video because the character is BM. As much as I would like to declare With or Without You dead, we just don’t know yet.
I’ve heard that now too, and that does make sense. It also makes you wonder if there are other talents that behave the same way.
Indeed. I definitely ready for some official info.