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WoW Hunter Guides, News, Resources and Musings

Cross-Battlegroup Battlegrounds?!

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I’ve just learned that come Cataclysm, battlegrounds will no longer be limited to servers from a particular battlegroup, but rather, a region. I mean… holy s**t!

From the Official WoW Forums:

We’re currently expecting both normal and rated battlegrounds to be cross-battlegroup (within a region) for the launch of Cataclysm. So, players queueing from anywhere in north america (for example) could play vs players on any north american battlegroup, etc. This applies to all regions, not just north america.

Also, read this post over at WoW.com.

That is freaking amazing!

This means that queues will be popping like mad and we’ll have opportunities to encounter players from all of the battlegroups within our respective regions. I can’t wait! [Read more…] about Cross-Battlegroup Battlegrounds?!

SC2 Beta invite update

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Seems as if my issue may be Mac-specific.

Here’s a thread in the official Blizzard Forums started by another person questioning the legitimacy of the e-mail.

Here’s the blue response:

Thank you for providing us with the header, Thewilly. This is a legitimate invitation; however, it appears as if the game was not properly applied to your account. Accordingly, I encourage you to e-mail beta.accountsupport@us.battle.net letting them know so that they can help get you into the Beta as soon as possible. 🙂

Well, hopefully it is a legit invite, but I still suggest everyone err on the side of caution when receiving any supposed beta keys.

New possible pet families in Cataclysm

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BlizzChat hosted an open dev chat on Twitter this past Friday. A couple of hunter related questions were fielded by BlizzChat. Here’s a quick transcript:

Swiper under Bestial WrathQ. Will there be any new pet families added, or will we simply see more additions to existing ones?
A: We’re not sure yet whether we’re adding new pet families or not. It’s possible. Expect to see some monkeys, foxes and other new pet possibilities though!

Q: Does the Marksman mastery (Double Shot) work like the Wild Quiver talent (provide a free autoshot) or like the Lightning Overload talent (a free whatever spell you just cast)? In other words, can Double Shot fire a second Chimera Shot?
A: Double Shot is a half-strength autoshot. Wild Quiver will increase the damage of the autoshot to 60-70% (or something similar). Lightning Overload (the talent) will likewise increase the magnitude of the Elemental Overload mechanic.

More pet possibilities! Woo hoo..! Last year, Blizzard had also mentioned making some existing non-hunter beasties tamable, such as Zhevras.

My initial reaction to the Masteries, is that Marksmanship’s is the weakest. The BM Mastery looks great, as does Survival’s. BM receives passive boosts to pet damage, plus faster haste regen. SV gets a buff to all “elemental” attacks, along with a higher passive crit rate.

Here’s  a quick recap of how the masteries are shaking out:

Beast Mastery

  • Ranged Damage
  • Haste
  • Pet Damage

Marksmanship

  • Ranged Damage
  • Armor Penetration
  • Double Shot

Survival

  • Ranged Damage
  • Ranged Critical Damage
  • Elemental Damage

Don’t get me wrong… I think the passive Zod’s effect for MM is pretty cool, it’s just my least favorite of the masteries. I prefer to have a mastery that’s not dependent upon RNG, or hindered by movement-heavy encounters.

As I always say though… Cataclysm’s a ways off, so we’ll just have to wait and see. No sense in getting ruffled just yet. Who knows… maybe the proc-rate on Double Shot will be quite generous, and maybe hunters will have more stand and shoot types of fights.

See the entire BlizzChat over at MMO-Champion. There’s some exciting stuff in there, including the mention of a new trainable 310% mount speed. 🙂

Back to the new pet possibilities… I expect to see quite a few new Doras running around trying for the Explorer achievement, with either a Swiper or Boots by their side. 😉

Cataclysm Hunter Class Preview

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Here’s the official list of Cataclysm hunter class changes that Blizz posted today. Below some of the announcements I’ve included a few notes of my own. In a little bit, I’ll bust out a follow-up post to this one with some additional comments.

With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm many game elements will be changing, and each class will be receiving a number of tweaks. Here, we will explore the changes that are being made to the gun-wielding, pet-training hunter. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the new hunter abilities!

Here we go… *holds breath*

[Read more…] about Cataclysm Hunter Class Preview

No More Mortal Strike for Hunters in Cataclysm?

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Looking over the Warrior class preview for Cataclysm, I noticed an interesting bit that suggests hunters may be losing their mortal strike.

  • Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players’ health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren’t considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.

It’s obviously way too soon to predict what sort of effect this will have in PvP, but it’s still noteworthy nonetheless. It appears as if healing will be a little less overpowered in Cataclysm. From a PvP standpoint, I think healers are a little imbalanced right now, so this looks to be a good change.

As a hunter, this talent looks a little scary…

  • The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.

Nothing like eating a Disarm for 5-10 seconds while getting your face smashed in by a Warrior. 😯

Oh man… I can’t wait to see what they have in store for hunters. Is it tomorrow yet..? 😉