Any other Hunters out there feel like they just got kicked in the stomach?
I had high expectations for Patch 3.2 and how it was going to positively address the needs of Hunters in both PvE and PvP. While a couple of the changes are a step in the right direction, I feel like the devs took a few more steps backwards with the class as a whole.
Actually, after reading about all of the upcoming love we were supposed to be receiving and then reading over these patch notes, I feel more like Ned Beatty’s character in Deliverance. The Blizz Devs being representative of them hill folk.
Let’s examine some of these changes to the Hunter class, shall we…
General Changes: Pets
This change applies to all classes that use pets
- All pets now receive 40% of their master’s resilience and 100% of their master’s spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.
40% resilience inheritance is a slap in the face. I have 808 resilience while decked out in my PvP gear. That means my pet will be receiving 323 resilience. While some resilience is better than none of course, you really need about 500-600 before you start noticing a difference in survivability. 800 resilience is about the highest any DPS class would want to go anyway, because eventually you start to sacrifice too much in the way of DPS.
If I were to be grouped with a healer, then I’d probably want to swap out some PvP pieces for higher DPS PvE gear, thus lowering my resilience to about 600. 240 resilience for my pet at this level is practically worthless. Also, what happened to all of this talk about pets inheriting crit %..?!
This needs to be more around 60%, or at the very least they need to offer BM Hunters a way to obtain more PvP survivability for their pets. Since they broke Animal Handler, that may be a good place to start. Pets could inherit 10% more resilience and maybe have a 2% reduced chance to be crit per level. So, 2/2 in AH would give them say… 20% more of the Hunter’s resilience, a 4% reduced chance to be crit along with extending the length of Master’s Call to 10 seconds. This way it would be a pure PvP talent. I hate how some of these talents have a use for one aspect of play but not for the other.
The way hit % is apportioned now is a good thing, but a fairly negligible change IMO. It looks as if the only players that will really benefit from it are leveling Hunters who have not yet been able to reach the desired hit cap. I don’t intend on going 7.89% just because my pet will receive 7.89% too. I’d rather not miss at all ever… how about you?
Pets being expertise capped is nice, but what will become of Animal Handler? Without the expertise portion of it, Animal Handler now gives you just 6 additional seconds of Master’s Call which is absolutely useless for anything outside of battlegrounds or arena. I’m thinking they’re not done with this yet, so I’m just going to sit tight and wait for future patch notes.
Hunter Changes
- Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.
This will make leveling easier from 16-20. Woot..? If they weren’t lowering the Apprentice Riding Skill to level 20, then this would be a nice convenience buff for lower levels.
It does however add a bit of excitement for the 10-19 twink bracket though. But… does anyone twink 10-19 anymore..? Right, didn’t think so.
- Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.
Neat.
- The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.
Ugh… why’d they have to do that.
- Traps now have separate 30 second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.
This is the one change that is pretty cool. Well, for PvP at least. It’ll be nice to get a little added DPS in with a frost/fire or frost/snake combo. Plus it can buy us a little bit of extra time if the player chasing us tries to avoid the Immolation Trap by skirting around it.
Only thing I see sucking here is having to burn 2 GCDs to lay 2 different traps. I suppose if you were being LoS’d by a healer in Nagrand Arena you could drop a frost, along with some fire and snakes for a little extra DPS and interrupts.
However, it is nice that Black Arrow can now be used with Frost Traps in arena.
Beast Mastery Hunter Changes
- Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.
Yay. Another PvP/soloing talent linked with a DPS ability. I think a better use of this would be a 15/30 second reduction, and attach it to Animal Handler. Raiding BM Hunters are used to dumping two points in there ayway, so this would be like 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Plus, it would make for a nice buff for BM PvP.
This one is frustrating. Being that it’s the only improvement for BM DPS so far, why have it linked to a tanking talent..??!! Is it really worth 3 whole talent points that deep into the tree?
Survival Hunter Changes
- Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.
Lame. The unlinked trap cooldowns would have made for a nice PvP buff had it not been for this ridiculousness.
- Lock and Load: Now has a 22 second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.
Ouch. This is going to upset Survival Hunters. Why add a cooldown when the proc rate is so low to begin with?!
Hunter Pet Changes
- Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
Wow. I thought the idea was to make Hunters more viable and better represented in arena? What the hell is this crap?! 2 minuted CD… you gotta be kidding me…
Please make this go away. It’s making my head hurt. 
If you want to read about some of the more exciting and positive things being introduced with patch 3.2, including a new dungeon and battleground, head over to MMO Champion.
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