Crazy Like a Fox

The official Warlords of Draenor patch notes were updated to include the long awaited Hunter Raid cooldown – Aspect of the Fox.

Aspect of the Fox: Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells for 6 seconds. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 3 minute cooldown.

You may remember the first iteration of this back in Cataclysm that allowed Hunters to fire their own abilities on the move. This takes that concept and applies it to your entire raid.

This hasn’t been added to beta yet, so I haven’t had a chance to see it in action. Aspects tend to stay active until you remove them, or something causes them to be removed. If it’s treated as an aspect versus an ability then this is how I think it will work.

You cast Aspect of the Fox and your raid has six seconds to cast while moving. The Aspect drops off the Hunter and goes on a three minute cooldown; well the CD starts once it’s cast, you get the idea. Once it comes off cooldown you can cast it again.

I like the fact the raid wide cooldown is an Aspect. Aspects have been part of the Hunter toolkit since the beginning, and it would feel strange not to have them.

If you think about it, the only real issue we had with them is that you were force to sacrifice DPS for utility. With that now gone, Aspects have the potential to be viable, and this opens the door to having more of them in the future.

Now as far as having a bona fide raid cooldown, all I can say is be careful what you wish for. Hunters now have a responsibility to the raid that extends beyond just shooting the boss in the face.

Expect to be relied upon to push that button when the raid leader calls for it. Given the nature of Aspect of the Fox you can expect to want to use it during heavy movement portions of a fight. I know that goes without saying, but I am pointing it out because that isn’t necessarily on the pull, or something coincides with Heroism or general burst phases.

It’s highly situational, and could require coordination if you have more than one Hunter in the group, which is likely to be the case.

Raid sizes are going to be bigger in Warlords. Mythic has a set size of 20, LFR is set at 25, and Normal/Heroic can range from 10-30 players.

Three Hunters working together could turn a 6 seconds of casting on the move into 18 seconds.

I thinks this is a nice change for Hunters. It’s a lot better than the old Aspect of the Wild which provided nature damage reduction and was rarely used.

While still somewhat situational, I expect this to be used every encounter.

I’m eager to see how it plays out.

5 Comments on “Crazy Like a Fox”

  1. I guess it should allow us to tame beasts on the move, but we’ll have to test that once it goes live.

    For MM it may end up as a (slight) DPS loss in case you have to interrupt your aimed shot cast to activate AotF but overall it’s a nice ability.

    The name doesn’t make it clear it’s raid-wide (like Aspect of the Pack) but i guess Aspect of the Skulk doesn’t sound too great either.

  2. it looks interesting.
    i cant see blizz letting us chain a heap together.
    i expect a cd of some sort, like when you use a lock portal

    just wondering .. how is it a dps loss? we dont have aspect of the hawk anymore so…… i dont see a downside atm.

    1. I you have to interrupt a non-instance shot (like focusing/aimed/cobra/steady/power shot or barrage) it would be a (very) small personal dps loss.

      Blizzard could perhaps allows us to activate it while we’re casting , and not have it trigger a global cooldown, but this could cause problems with the other aspects. In any case it’s a very minor problem.

  3. Aspect Dancing coming back? Time will tell. This is going to be a huge in the right raid situation for raid Guilds. I do not see it as very useful in LFR. Half the time now Hero gets popped on trash.

    I would suspect there is going to be a Global CD so that Darkbrews situation does not happen. 3 AoF’s back to back to back.

  4. Looks like it’s implemented in the next beta build. Once the servers come up on the 25th, we’ll get to see it in action.

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