The eve of Patch 3.3

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The highly anticipated Patch 3.3 hits live servers tomorrow. Here’s a recap on what it means for Hunters, courtesy of MMO Champion‘s compiled list…

Spell and ability changes

  • Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
  • Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
  • Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

The Call Stabled Pet change is nice for Hunters who lack dual specializations. The Deterrence buff is nice too, as it will allow us to bubble when facing other Hunters.

The Misdirection change is fantastic. This will provide the tank with a huge threat lead, especially if there are 3 or more Hunters in the raid. Good stuff.

Talent changes

  • Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.

A nice buff for PvP.

Pets

  • Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
  • Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
  • Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
  • Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
  • Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
  • Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
  • Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
  • Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
  • Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

In addition to these changes, there’s also quite a few bugs that have been fixed.

  • Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
  • Explosive Trap: The damage from this trap will now scale properly with the hunter’s attack power.
  • Glyph of Immolation Trap: Now properly increases damage by 100%. In addition, this glyph will now modify the tooltip of Immolation Trap correctly.
  • Glyph of Mending: This glyph will now modify the amount healed in the tooltip on Mend Pet.
  • Point of No Escape: It is no longer possible to gain benefit from this talent multiple times by having a target affected by multiple of the same hunter’s traps. In addition, Freezing Arrow will no longer incorrectly provide a critical strike bonus to players beyond the hunter with this talent.
  • Roar of Sacrifice: Corrected tooltip error.
  • Silencing Shot: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
  • Volley: The tooltip for this ability will now update properly from haste.

Other items of note:

  • Arcturis
  • Pets will now inherit 100% of the Hunter’s resilience. This makes me oh so happy.
  • You won’t see it tomorrow, but epic ammo will be available in this patch.
  • The PvP set bonuses have been buffed. The 2 pc bonus will now grant 100 bonus resilience (up from 50) plus an additional 50 *attack power. The 4 pc bonus will retain the reduced trap cooldown bonus, plus an additional 150 *attack power. In short, I’ll have 200 more AP and 50 more resilience when I log in tomorrow. Of course, so will everyone else w/ the 4 pc bonus. 🙁 * Casters receive a proportionate boost to spell power (29/88).
  • Supposedly the Glyph of Steady Shot has been fixed and will now properly apply the 10% damage increase to target’s affected by Hunter’s Mark. This should now make Glyph of Steady Shot the third best option for MM Hunters.

So there ya have it. That’s a quick recap of what’s in store for us Hunters tomorrow.

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