Here’s another list of recent undocumented changes made to the Hunter class on the Patch 3.1 PTR:
Beast Mastery
- Aspect of the Pack is now raid wide, and radius increased from 30 yards to 40 yards.
- Animal Handler: No longer reduces the cooldown of Master’s Call, instead increases the duration of the Master’s Call effect by 3/6 sec.
Marksmanship
- Chimera Shot: Mana cost reduced from 16% to 12%.
- Rapid Recuperation re-designed: You gain 2/4% of your mana every 3 sec while under the effect of Rapid Fire, and you gain 1/2% of your mana every 2 sec for 6 sec when you gain Rapid Killing.
Survival
- Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%. The periodic damage from this ability no longer triggers Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Light.
- Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.
Pets
- Great Resistance increased to 5/10/15% magic damage reduction, up from 3/6/9%.
- New Talent: Shark Attack: This new two-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.
- New Talent: Silverback: This new two-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.
- Turtles and Crabs now dwell in waters of and off Eversong and the Ghostlands, giving Blood Elf hunters access to local Tenacity pets.
- New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. Increases the contribution your pets get from your Stamina by 20/40% and attack power by 10/20%.
Hunter Glyphs
- Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey: No longer works while under the effect of Aspect of the Dragonhawk.
The Aspect of the Pack change has been a long time coming in my opinion. That’ll be nice for getting your group back in a hurry after a raid wipe, or escorting your Flag carrier down the tunnel quickly in Warsong Gulch.
I like the change to Animal handler. Having a total of 10 seconds (with 2/2) of immunity to root and movement impairing effects is much nicer than shaving 10 seconds off of the cooldown. You could actually use it as a preemptive ability vs certain classes when you know they’re going to try and snare you or your pet. This + TBW = 28 seconds of neener, neener, neener… you can’t catch me.
The update to Chimera Shot looks to be one of the early changes which will help MM with their mana issues. The Rapid Recuperation change looks like a DPS nerf if they remove the effect on pet focus, but maybe not. The amount of mana regen during Rapid Fire may offset that.
Here’s something to ponder which is somewhat off-topic… How come the 51 point MM talent is called Chimera Shot, while the exotic pets are known as “Chimaeras“? Also, why do “Chimaeras” drop “Chimera Leather” when skinned? Hmmm… I smell a tooltip update in the future. Alright… enough of the trivialities.
So far it doesn’t seem like Survival will be losing too much ground in the DPS department. ES damage is being lowered, but the introduction of Black Arrow should compensate for that.
The additional pet talents are going to be fantastic for BM Hunters. Now if only we could get it back to 5 extra points instead of 4 with our 51 pt. talent. Please Blizzard. 5 additional pet talent points just sounds so much better. 😉
New information about 3.1 is being reported daily on MMO Champion, so check it out.