During this past weekend’s BlizzCon, Ghostcrawler announced an exciting but somewhat controversial change to the Hunter class which will be implemented in the next expansion, “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm”. This revolutionary change is of course the removal of mana as the Hunter’s source of energy, and the introduction of focus as a usable resource for attacks and spells. This change will essentially cause the Hunter class to behave almost like a “ranged Rogue”.

Ghostcrawler also divulged some vague details about how focus will work for the Hunter, including:

• Focus will regen at a rate of 6 focus per second, which unfortunately is a bit slower than the Rogue’s energy regen rate of 10 per second.
• However, Steady Shot will play an important role in the Hunter’s shot priority because it will up focus regen rate to 12 per second.
• Attacks will most likely cost somewhere between 30 and 60 focus. Ouch.
• Hunters will have fewer abilities on the global cooldown.
• In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, haste will also affect how quickly focus regenerates.
• With the removal of mana as a resource, intellect will now be an unnecessary stat for Hunters.
• Aspect of the Viper… gone!

This change is obviously the biggest and most controversial bit of Hunter news that was announced over the weekend at BlizzCon 2009. [Read more…]