3.1 PTR NotesFollow

Also, neither Explosive Shot nor Viper sting is our most important tool.
While Explosive Shot damage is great and helps us kill quicker, a bit lower damage won't really change us.
And while Viper is great, I don't win by outlasting/draining... nobody does.

What makes a hunter great in arena right now is a -50% healing debuff, a solid stream of damage through Explosives aimed shots and the occasional auto/steady and most importantly: CC.
As a SV hunter I have the following CC's:
Scatter Shot (4 second CC, 30 second cooldown), Wyvern Sting (10 second CC, 45 second cooldown), Pin (4 second CC, 40 second cooldown) and a permanent ice slick from frost trap to kite over, which also happens to proc entrapment as well.

Edited, Feb 27th 2009 11:24pm by Aethien

I'm usually happy with hunter buffs, especially when they touch beastmaster (the reason I chose a hunter, I like pets in mmos) The nerfs that came to BM were no suprise, although the hit was pretty substantial and blizzard admitted that they nerfed hunters (Esp. the BM side) a bit too hard. However, my point now is the buff BM recieved. Getting the Beast Mastery Talent allows a ferocity pet to have 2/2 Wild Hunt and 2/2 Shark attack (without you can only have 1/2 wild hunt and 0/2 shark attack) Which takes my spirit beast from a self buffed resting (no combat buffed) live 370.0 dps to PTR 640.9 dps, let alone the bonus damage to claw and spirit strike and a +3300 hp gain (which i dont see them nerfing, but a strong buff as well). Buffing us with the wild hunt talent will scale, making it even more powerful, does anyone else see them making the 40% less? Blizzard knew pets scaled too well and nerfed the damage in the trees, then gave it back and now we are being buffed on pet damage as hard as we were previously nerfed. I for one am scared at blizzards dart shooting game at the numbers table.

I figured this would happen, i knew the numbers seemed too high, before if a hunter had 6000 AP the pet was getting over 2400 AP, the numbers were insane

EDIT: im confused though, 20% of 6000 is 1200, and they are saying its 1580, are they considering other numbers already?

Edited, Mar 3rd 2009 6:05pm by Dimion

holy, what? how did you get 22% and the 1.2 multiplier? I know there is some kind of logic to this madness but i fail to see it. I feel like im back in my algebra class in high school with that evil teacher whose name i will not mention.

ooooh, so what was the deal with the post ghostcrawler put out that the percentage was too generous and being counted twice? and thank you for the help on that math, i was starting to lose the remainder of my mind!

I'd probably go with the spec you listed. Your link is broken though, both links go to the same spec.

It appears that the 12.5% nerf to ES that was mentioned was in fact the un announced nerf that brought it from .16 to .14 earlier. This is from the game files in the latest update, from mmo-champion.

@isyris -> We have 5 stable slots and will soon have the ability so change pets every 1/2 hour. Get a solo pet and a raid pet. In a raid, that healing is really really nice.

Edited, Mar 4th 2009 12:18am by Xsarus

Druid's Swipe hits unlimited targets in a frontal arc, so I don't think it's a bug unless they specifically want the pet to be different.

Thats going to be some nice AOE damge. Swipe-thunderstomp. I believe bears will become the new AOEadin (tankadin/grinding) pets. I can't help but say pummel looks awesome? No one will every cast anything on a BM hunter between that and intimidate. Then oh man MM will be anti-caster too with Silencing shot.

I already have a bear named after my brother (feral druid).

Seeing as pets are now auto leveled to 5 levels under you, combined with the fact that the wolf will be a viable raid pet in 3.1 I'd drop the two you can get back if you feel like it.

Quivers will still be around, however they won't give haste or be really useful. A quiver was necessary due to the haste, but it also was bigger then a bag, which let you carry more ammo. With ammo now stacking to 1000 you really don't need more then 10 slots of ammo for any given encounter, and so without haste a 28 slot bag that can only carry ammo doesn't make sense. We'll just swap over to using regular bags.