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Scattered Shots: BlizzCon hunter info roundup

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

BlizzCon this year was a very hunter Blizzcon indeed, filled with big announcements not just about the game in general but about the direction the hunter class is headed. The biggest news shouted around hunter circles was of course the fact that minimum range is finally being removed from the game.

This was one of the biggest points in the hunter class design feedback threads, and it’s a nice indication that Blizzard is indeed paying attention to what the community has to say. (Either that, or the developers also just thought it needed to go, and it’s a crazy, random happenstance that it coincides with community feedback.)

Join me after the cut as we round up all of the hunter news that came out of BlizzCon, very possibly including some news that you haven’t heard from just following the BlizzCon coverage. We’re going to focus just on the hunter-specific news rather than wider game-related news.

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Scattered Shots: BlizzCon hunter info roundup originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: A very hunter BlizzCon – Joystiq

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Scattered Shots: A very hunter BlizzCon
Joystiq
But very interesting is a new panel on Friday afternoon: World of Warcraft Class Talent System. Having an entire panel on this topic suggests that we're going to hear about some significant changes — probably in relation to the new expansion — about …

world of warcraft news – Google News

Scattered Shots: Improving hunter PVP

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hunter 3v3 pvp graph

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. This week, his evil twin, Basil “Euripides” Berntsen, is covering for him while he sleeps off the after-effects of the last Hunting Party Podcast.

Hunter PVP is in a bad state right now. This does not mean that you can’t get Gladiator with a hunter, but it does mean you have to be way better to do it than if you were to play, say, a warlock. You also have to do it in a very small subset of viable team compositions, where your warlock alt could succeed in a large variety of team compositions.

Before you burn a hole through that “add comment” button arguing with me about viability and how Arena representation isn’t worth the pixels it’s displayed on, remember that I’m arguing that it takes more skill to succeed in PVP as a hunter. I’m not arguing that you can’t do it, and I know that Arena class representation isn’t a perfect measure of class balance. The same way some specs (like BM) are underrepresented in the top 100 PVE raid parses, the highest-rated PVP players in the game tend to play classes they feel they will do best, which skews the representation farther away from some perfectly viable spec/class combos. Arena representation is, however, one quantifiable number we can look into for insight.

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Scattered Shots: Improving hunter PVP originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: State of hunter DPS

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

A couple days ago, I posted some 4.2 DPS analysis by spec, looking at how different specs’ DPS deviates from the median of all specs. This research was partially in response to a quote from Ghostcrawler in a Developer Watercooler where he talked about the change to the 10% AP buff:

Ghostcrawler – Lead Systems Designer
Hunter DPS is fine, or even high in 4.2, so we didn’t want this buff to extend to them, which is why the AP benefit is now 20% for melee attacks but still 10% for ranged.



When I was digging into the data, I looked at a lot more than just the eight charts that I posted in the DPS analysis article. The majority of the data sets I looked at supported just about everything Ghostcrawler said in his Watercooler — including the state of melee DPS and fury warriors.

While I truly have a fondness in my heart for many of the hard-working support classes in WoW, I did not really do that research for them. I did it to learn more about where hunter DPS stands. So please join me after the cut today as we take a look at the state of hunter DPS.

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Scattered Shots: State of hunter DPS originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter tier 13 set bonuses

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

While we hunters wait for the PTR to be updated to include the meaningful hunter changes that are no doubt coming (other than the awesome gun finally showing up), Blizzard has released the tier 13 set bonus mechanics to give us something to speculate about as we gaze upon the datamined tier 13 looks. While there’s still information that we don’t know about how the set bonuses will work, at first glance, the Wyrmstalker set bonuses look pretty awesome.

The hunter tier 13 set bonuses are very appropriate for the final set of the expansion, very likely giving us some nice DPS gains and two bonuses that work very well together. However, like our tier 11 set bonus, these puppies are going to change up our shot rotations, at least partially. Here is what we know:

  • Two-piece Steady Shot and Cobra Shot generate double the amount of focus.
  • Four-piece Your Arcane Shot ability has a chance to grant 30% haste to you and your pet for 10 seconds.

For all those hunters who were complaining about hunter focus regen in the hunter design feedback thread, now is your chance to see what your class would feel like with substantially more focus regeneration. Join me after the cut as we dig into these set bonuses, discuss the implications and run some initial numbers.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter tier 13 set bonuses originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunters and Brewfest loot

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

It’s that magical time of year again when the thoughts of young hunters the world over turn to beer. Brewfest is a true Dwarven holiday filled with endless events like drinking beer, delivering beer, advertising beer, and fighting with beef mugs. Brewfest is, in fact, the one holiday that I participate in since I knocked off the painful What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.

With a new year of Brewfest comes new loot upgrades from the Brewfest boss, Coren Direbrew. I’m not really sure what Direbrew did to deserve our wrath, other than being Dark Iron. I mean, sure, his peeps started a big fight and tried to steal the beer, but really, who wouldn’t if they weren’t allowed to attend? It’s not like he’s the Mad Elf or anything.

Brewfest loot has never been the friendliest to hunters, with the totally awesome and upgraded Tremendous Tankard o’ Terror being a silly mace that hunters cannot equip, and no two-handed drop (which is what we really want). However Brewfest does bring us a nice trinket option as well as a one-handed weapon that we could use.

Today we’ll take a look at the Brewfest loot from a hunter perspective and perhaps take a wee peek at some of the nice generic rewards offered from Brewfest tickets.

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Scattered Shots: Hunters and Brewfest loot originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter class feedback

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Blizzard has recently put out the call for class design feedback on the official WoW forums, with a thread for each class. Hunters have stepped up in a big way, and the hunter class thread already has over 1,500 responses at the time of this writing (Wednesday night), which is more than any other class. Go, hunters!

The feedback thread is not just an open forums for people to complain but instead is a very focused set of questions looking at longer-term class design. This is not, of course, a promise to implement the will of the class (after all, game manufacturers have known for decades there’s a big difference between what people want and what they will buy), but it is a clear request to at least understand the will of the class.

We’ve talked here on Scattered Shots about many ways to improve the hunter class, from removing minimum range to touching up the talent trees of BM, MM, SV, and pet talents, to pet stances, to the problems with haste design and some just plain awesome things we should get. Regular readers have a pretty good idea what I think should be changed.

So today, we’re going to take a look at what the rest of the hunter population thinks about the hunter class and how they answered the class design questions. Join me after the cut for a look at the over 1,500 hunter responses to class design that the developers will be reading through.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter class feedback originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification station

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the WoW Hunter Podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

As patch 4.2 is beginning to wind down, many hunters are looking for ways to fill some of the extra in-game time, and the coming of transmogrification in patch 4.3 is the perfect thing. Now is the time to start collecting the looks that you want to transmogrify into when patch 4.3 comes.

I have a full look at all the hunter armor sets on each race and where to get them, over here. Today, we’re going to take a look at the next most crucial transmogrification decision: our ranged weapon.

We can actually transmogrify one ranged weapon type into another, unlike any other weapon type, so we can make our bows look (and sound) like guns or crossbows. This gives hunters a host of options for what kind of weapon look we want to be sporting. Join me after the cut for a look at some of the most distinctive ranged weapons and where to find them.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification station originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter mailbag Q&A

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the WoW Hunter Podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Patch 4.3 info is starting to trickle out of the Blizzard PR department, and it’s looking like there’s going to be both a lot more news and a lot of big news. Thus far, we haven’t seen any big hunter info coming out, but I’m certain it’s on its way. So this calm before the storm sounds like a good time to clean out the ol’ mailbag!

From transmogrification to trinket math to haste plateaus, I’m going to be answering the questions that I’m getting most often in my email lately. If you’ve got a pesky hunter question that’s been tickling the back of your brain, there are decent odds that it’ll get answered here. If your question isn’t answered, feel free to email me.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter mailbag Q&A originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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