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Hunter PvP Glyphs

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WoW Hunter PvP Glyphs

Note: WoWHead seems to be experiencing technical difficulties at the moment, so no tootltips for you! Sorry… 🙁

Using the right glyphs is a pretty important part of the hunter pvp formula. Here is what I recommend for level 80 hunters:

Essential Hunter PvP Glyphs

The following glyphs are a key component to any hunter PvP build.

Glyph of Aimed Shot – This glyph reduces our Aimed Shot cooldown by 20%, which is huge. Apart from Kill Shot, Aimed Shot is our #1 shot in PvP. The 2 second cushion (i.e., reduced cooldown) that this glyph provides helps us to maintain the healing debuff uptime.

It also gives us 2 seconds quicker access to one of our insta-cast shots – another huge plus.

Glyph of Disengage – Disengage is a key tactical move for positioning and one of our primary escape abilities. Having access to Disengage every 20 seconds, as opposed to 25, is a tremendous advantage. Survival hunters have it even better… with this glyph and 2/2 Survival Tactics, SV hunters can pop Disengage every 16 seconds. Now that’s what I call slippery! [Read more…] about Hunter PvP Glyphs

Hunter Basics: Explosive Shot

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Explosive Shot

Explosive Shot is the signature ability of the survival tree. However, I often find that many hunters are unaware of how and when to properly use it, especially in the event of a Lock and Load proc.

Until Kill Shot becomes available (once the kill target is at or below 20% health), Explosive Shot is the number one priority shot. In other words, its cast should not be delayed for anything. Many players have the wrong impression, thinking that Black Arrow and/or Serpent Sting should be applied first in order to further buff the shot. This is incorrect. Delaying Explosive Shot for any shot besides Kill Shot results in a DPS loss. [Read more…] about Hunter Basics: Explosive Shot

My Survival Guide to Surviving in PvP as a Survival Hunter: Part Two

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Welcome to part two of my Survival Hunter PvP guide. The purpose of this two part post is to offer up some basic tips and suggestions for those new to Survival Huntering, a quick-start-guide if you will. After a lengthy career as primarily a BM PvP Hunter, I’ve made the transition to Survival pretty easily, and I’m here to help you do so as well.

In part one I covered my talent build, pet choice & pet spec, glyphs, enchants and gear itemization. The purpose of that post was to offer a brief overview of the spec and to help better optimize your toon for success in BGs or arena.

In part two, my goal is to provide you with a few tips and pointers on getting the most out of your new build and play style. This post will not be an all encompassing guide on “How to Own as a Survival Hunter”, but more of a primer to get you up and running. In this part of the guide, I’ll give you an overview of the basic PvP shot selection, Survival Hunter mechanics, as well as show you some useful addons and macros. [Read more…] about My Survival Guide to Surviving in PvP as a Survival Hunter: Part Two

My Survival Guide to Surviving in PvP as a Survival Hunter: Part One

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Say that five times fast…

I’ve specced Survival for PvP in the past, but never for very long. However, once BM was laid to rest last week, I decided to jump ship and become an explosives expert. Since there may be other displaced BM PvPers like myself, I figured I’d provide a glimpse at my spec, as well as share some of what little knowledge I possess concerning Survival Huntering in the realm of player versus player combat. 😉

Keep in mind that I’m not an elite PvPer. I’m decent and I’m competitive, but I am in no way an authority on hardcore Hunter PvP. I usually do pretty well in both BGs and arena, but I am always out looking for ways to step my game up. Although I’m feeling a lot smoother with it this go ’round, I’ve never remained Survival for more than a few weeks. If anyone has any advice or constructive criticism pertaining to this post, macro suggestions, tactics, and especially arena strategies, then please share.

Well let’s get started… [Read more…] about My Survival Guide to Surviving in PvP as a Survival Hunter: Part One

Recent Hunter Changes On The PTR

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If you haven’t been keeping up on what’s going on over on the PTR, well don’t worry ’cause I got your back. Here’s a summary of the most recent undocumented changes to Hunters:

Marksmanship

  • Viper Sting now Stings the target, draining 4% mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster’s maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on any one target.
  • Auto Shot now gives 15% haste to all attacks fired by a Hunter.

Survival

  • Explosive Shot damage reduced, rank 4 now deals [ 14% of RAP + 386 ] – [ 14% of RAP + 464 ] fire damage. (down from [ 16% of RAP + 428 ] – [ 16% of RAP + 516 ])
  • Wyvern Sting now has a 1.5 minute cooldown. (Up from 1 minute)

Pet

  • Pummel (Gorilla) cooldown has been increased to 30 sec (Up from 10 sec.) and silence effect duration lowered to 2 sec. (Down from 4 sec)

Overall, I’m pleased with the passive haste bonus and the thought of not having a quiver anymore. What I’m not happy about is… it took nearly half a bar of experience back in the day to grind out the quest chain to obtain this for my 19 Hunter. 😕 Oh well, no biggie. Most of you probably aren’t concerned with that silly twinking business anyway.

30 second cooldown on Pummel. Did I call that or what?! I predicted (and hoped for) 30 seconds. 30 seconds is more balanced, but if they were to increase it to say 45 seconds or more, then gorillas would be scarcely seen. The silence was cut in half which makes me sad in the pants, but my guess is that it must have been way too overpowered in initial testing.

Gorillas are going to be popular arena pets among BM and MM Hunters. Beast Master’s can stick the Gorilla on the healer with Pummel on manual cast, and have their own ghetto silence. MM will now have Silences on 20 and 30 second cooldowns. Imagine a MM with 11 points in Survival for Scatter Shot, Silencing Shot, Readiness, and then throw Pummel into the mix. Holy Schnikes!

There’s also ome noise being made about marksman’s mana efficiency and how it can be improved. No changes have been reported yet, but apparently it is something they’re working on.

Wild Hunt is going to see a slight nerf (10/20 down from 20/40). Here’s an official post from Ghostcrawler regarding the change:

Wild Hunt is being changed to 10/20% extra AP from the master. There was a bug where the talent was just applying the hunter’s AP to the pet twice, which is too generous.

If you have 6000 attack power, your pet probably gains 1320 attack power from you. With 2 ranks of this talent, it should gain 1580 attack power instead. Your pet’s attack power will be higher than this by a few hundred from other sources.

Two races available to the Hunter class, Draenei and Dwarf, are also seeing changes to their racials. These changes aren’t final however.

  • Gift of the Naaru now also removes 2 harmful magic effects from the friendly target.
  • Stoneform no longer gives a 8 second immunity to disease, poison, and bleed effects. Cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.

More news available at: MMO Champion