In less than a week, the hunter class (along with every other class) will see the most radical overhaul to date.
I’m neither worried nor excited, but I am a slight bit bummed about a few things…
First off, I may be the only hunter in the game that is going to miss my melee weapon(s) and abilities, but I’m a little sad over this. Ever since I installed the game and decided upon hunter as my chosen class, I’ve always enjoyed being able to equip and utilize melee weapons.
Over the past few years, Blizzard has gradually diminished our melee viability to the point where this loss will hardly be missed by most players, but I’ll be lamenting this change – mainly for nostalgic reasons. I recall back when our melee abilities could actually account for a bit damage, if needed, especially at the lower levels. Back when I used to be active in the 10-19 bracket, my Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite macro used to devastate opposing players.
But oh well…I’m sure I’ll be alright without my polearm. 😉 Losing our dead zone will be a very nice trade-off.
Pets will have gone through quite an evolution as well. Swappable dual talent specs..?! That is just nuts. It’s certainly going to allow for more class personalization and expression, though.
Then there’s the new talent system, limiting us to only six choices. While I do see the merit in this – in terms of streamlining the talent system and preventing sub-optimal builds – I enjoy choices. I liked having 71 talent points and deciding how to spend them.
One thing will remain unchanged though…hunters will still kick ass and BM will always be the best spec. As long as our play style remains the same, you can be assured that I’ll still be out there having fun, and doing my best to demonstrate to the support classes why hunters reign supreme. 😉
As far as the work I’ll be doing around here…
I’ll definitely be updating my UI package. I haven’t been on the beta much at all, but I can already see that I’ll be needing to update my Power Auras and re-configure a few things in Raven.
I don’t see too many changes concerning hunter macros, but I’ll be sure to update the guide as soon as possible — hopefully the first part of next week.
Beyond that, I’ll likely plan on discussing PvP build(s) once I settle upon my glyphs and choose how to spend my six talent points.
Well, that’s about it for now. I just wanted to pop in and say hello, and let everyone know that I’m still around – I just have been a bit quiet. I do plan to be more active throughout this expansion (especially now, since Diablo 3 sucks so bad), so be sure to check back from time to time, as I’m sure I’ll have some things to talk about in the months ahead. 🙂
Ok. This may not be the proper place to say this but Garwulf, could you please check out this macro?
/cast [pet:Core Hound] Ancient Hysteria <—- can swap for Rapid Fire or Focus Fire
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Intimidation
/cast Blink Strike <—- can put Kill Command, Murder of crows or something else.
/use 10 <—- if you have engineering
/petattack
Nothing like having a big rep animal furiously treating you like a chew toy,
Glad to see you back Gar! Currently Bm looks like the best spec, at least for patch 5.04. Marksmanship looks over nerfed in the beta right now.
Yeah, once 5.0.4 drops, I’ll be switching my PvE and PvP specs from Survival and Marksmanship, respectively, to Beast Mastery for both. The higher damage is just too good to pass up. Marksmanship’s damage has become really low so I doubt that it’ll be viable in PvP anymore and SV still suffers from the same problems it does now: easily dispellable dots and lack of survivability. Beast Mastery is looking pretty good though! I’ve never played the spec before so we’ll so how it goes. One question though. Do Beast Mastery hunters use a Spirit Beast for the heal or a Monkey for the crowd control? I know that with Beast Mastery, your pet needs to be on the target so it’s going to be hard to use a Monkey to crowd control, but losing the crowd control seems like too big of a loss. Also, the new crane pets have the Lullaby ability that’s EXACTLY the same as Bad Manner except it’s a sleep I believe. Is there any reason to use a Crane instead of a Monkey and vice versa? If they don’t share the same diminishing returns, then a hunter could switch them around based on what crowd control their partner(s) bring. As for Stampede, I envision having 5 Spirit Beasts in my active pets, popping Stampede when I’m low on health, and get healed back to full because my Spirit Beasts have Spirit Mend on autocast. Also, Gar, do you have any idea what happens to pet abilities that aren’t on autocast during Stampede? Something like Horn Toss from a Rhino? Do they just not get used?
Keep Your SV spec until MOP hits at least. There are pet pathing issues for Kill Command On deathwing including ultraxion, spine and madness where you cannot use kill command.
Also Crane shares DR with your other abilities. Monkey is still a better pet for hunter arena cc.
Hey Gar, I’m glad to hear you’re still around. I got bored with WoW and left in early March. Recently tried Diablo 3 and was not impressed. Perhaps I’ll try MoP out. If I do, I’ll be looking to you for advice on how to dominate PVP as a BM hunter! Go kill some players, and tell us what you think of the new expansion…
Great to hear from you again, Gar!
While you will, understandably, be somewhat bummend out by the elimiation of the melee weapons, I’ll tell you what’s got me bummed out….
NO SPIRIT BEASTS TO TAME IN MISTS!!!!
I LOVE the new tracking/flare system to find and tame the rare spawns!
I LOVE that we can tame a goat!
I LOVE that I can have Arcturis tank for me now! (like he should have been able to from the get-go)
I HATE that there will be no SBX Club to join when Mists drops! (although I’m going to hold out hope that we get at least ONE SB in a patch down the road).
I’m gonna miss my weapons too. Especially my “Giganticizer” as I call it 😉
Admittedly I haven’t messed around with BM too much on beta, but we have a month to figure it out. Unless I misread, there is also a BM pet family which has a combat rez (Quilen)
Miss my weapons? heck some of them I put alot of time and trouble in getting. Another reason I play so little now days.
Yep. They have a skill called Eternal Guardian which can res a friendly player within 20 yds, with 20% health. The CD is 10min, but I’m assuming it’ll be 7min. in reality since it’s a BM-only exotic, benefitting from the passive shorter CDs of the BM tree. Pretty sweet ability.
“First off, I may be the only hunter in the game that is going to miss my melee weapon(s) and abilities, but I’m a little sad over this.”
im with ya, i have always played my class to be ranged, but that doesnt mean i didnt enjoy seeing my hip huggers on.
ill miss the days of slapping my gnome friend in the face with my dual 1h swords while i run forward and he tries to keep up behind me, good ole twitching draenei butts rofl.
Great to hear from you Gar! Get your Beastmastery spec on and kick some ass! I doubt I’ll be raiding much anymore, maybe not even continuing my sub beyond its current exp date in Oct, but I may jump in-game to see all the changes before I call it quits. Hope you’re well!
Oz, say it isn’t so… 🙁 At least wait a few months to decide. Hit me up on RealID and let me know how you’re doing. 🙂
Silly Gar, Marks is the best spec.
No way, man. My big red pet disagrees. 🙂