Blizzard updated the official patch notes for Warlords of Draenor. In addition to the talent changes that I discussed here there were a few other additions such as dispel protection for Black Arrow. Here are the new notes.
- Wyvern Sting now has a 1.5 second cast time.
- Cobra Strikes now has a 20% chance to trigger (up from a 15% chance), but now only grants 1 charge each time it triggers (down from 2 charges).
- Lock and Load’s effects have been incorporated into Black Arrow.
- Black Arrow’s cooldown is reset if it is dispelled.
- Thrill of the Hunt now has a 6% chance to trigger for every 10 Focus spent (instead of a flat 30% chance).
- Survivalist increases Multistrike damage by 20%, and causes the Hunter to gain 15% health over 10 seconds after killing a target.
- Barrage now has a 20 second cooldown (down from 30 seconds), costs 60 Focus (up from 30 Focus), and its damage has been increased by 100%.
- Murder of Crows has been changed. Its duration, cost, and cooldown have been reduced by 50%. It no longer has a shorter cooldown when used on low health targets. Instead, its cooldown is reset if the target dies.
- Fervor has been replaced with a new passive ability, Steady Focus.
Steady Focus increases Focus Regeneration by 50% for 10 seconds after using Cobra Shot or Steady Shot twice in a row, or after using Focusing Shot.
The dispel protection for Black Arrow was requested by many players, and I’m glad to see that the developers were able to get that in. They stated that at one point Survival was looking really strong in PvP. Hopefully this helps it regain some of that status.
I guess having Wyvern Sting as an instant shot was too powerful in Warlords’ version of PvP? Dunno.
The Thrill of the Hunt change is interesting. Since it’s percentage based, the higher the Focus cost of the shot, the higher the chance for it to proc. Of course once it does proc, the Focus cost of your shots is reduced and thus the chance to continue proc’ing it while it’s active.
As I said in my previous post I think the change to Lock and Load is a good one. The update to Survivalist just means extra damage for Survival. That said, you’ll still be starving for Multistrike when patch 6.0 is released. Having some version of Haromm’s Talisman will help.
Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see how this all plays out when it’s released in an upcoming build.
One thing is clear, Blizzard really wants there to be a reliance on talents to affect and dictate the core rotations of our specializations. More thoughts on that another time.
Hey Dark,
I’m a longtime listener from the HPP, and I was wondering what your thoughts were on one specific part of the beta currently.
I’m looking over the beta patch notes (not in beta myself) and I’ve noticed that;
a) Cobra Shot no longer extends the duration of Serpent Sting.
b) The old version of Steady Focus has been removed, and this new one applies to Cobra and Steady
This makes me wonder… is there really any point any more to having both Cobra Shot and Steady Shot?
I’m not sure why these two, now seemingly functionally identical, abilities need to to exist.
The only thing I can think of is for adding a bit of difference and flavour to the “kit” of the 3 specs, which I know is something they’re shooting for in WoD…
Thoughts? 🙂
The big difference between the two is that Steady Shot does Physical damage and Cobra Shot does nature damage. Steady will be mitigated by armor, where Cobra ignores it.
That’s the key difference between the two. MM benefits more from physical and SV benefits from nature. For BM it may be a bit of a wash.
Thanks for the reply Dark,
It’s been forever since I played as Marksman, so I’m a bit rusty there. How does MM benefit from physical damage?
As you say physical is affected by armour, magic damage does not. So seems more like MM is handicapped by physical more than anything 😉
Additionally, Surv’s mastery increases the magic damage, so not only are they not handicapped by armour, they’re further buffed by their mastery.
I guess basically you’re saying it gives Blizzard another knob to tweak the overall damage of MM vs SV/BM specs?
As a survival hunter since Naxx (WotLK), who now primarily PvPs; hooray for BA dispel protection!
I have always loved SV and as soon as it was a viable raid spec, I switched and never looked back. I am so happy they put LnL and BA back. There was nothing wrong with it other than the dispel. It’s even better now with the guaranteed proc!
The change to Murder of Crows has me interested. When this talent was announced I loved it. Then I saw the focus cost and moved on to Blink Strikes.
I use ToTH because I prefer procs that change up the rotation over extra buttons. But I am insterested in Steady Focus now. I will have to see how they shake out in BGs.
BTW, love the blog and miss HPP!