When Blizzard announced the Cataclysm expansion at Blizzcon ‘09, one of the things they also announced was the redesign of Hunters so that they use the Focus resource like their pets use instead of mana. This is a cool announcement especially because hunters have been complaining about their mana consumption and the mechanics of abilities like Aspect of the Viper to deal with this problem. The shift to focus will break their dependence on mana altogether and instead use something more reliable since Focus works something like the Energy resource that rogues and kitty druids use.
This switch to Focus come …read more

Blizzard managed to get the World of Warcraft community more excited again by their announcement of the next expansion, Cataclysm. But it looks like it’s not only Azeroth that gets blown up by the Cataclysm. Blizzcon ‘09 announced some major changes that will make you ask “Mommy, what happened to Soul Shards, Hunter mana and the gear stats?” Well in a sense they got blown up!
New Soul Shard System
Just the other day Gjhostcrawler made a comment that the new soul shard system they’re working on will be cool and interesting. Shards will be a core mechanic of the Warlock class …read more

Blizzard is almost done with the Class Q&A feature which started with the Shaman class and now it’s time for Hunters to take the spotlight. As you may know, the Q&A feature is there to find out what the development team is thinking about the classes for patch 3.2 and beyond. They go through things like design philosophy and changes they want to make or are thinking of making.
Hunters are unique in that they are the only ranged damage dealers that rely on the mostly physical damage of their ranged weapon rather than spells. But what also makes them unique …read more

Ghostcrawler has just admitted that the developers think hunter dps is still too low. Since Ulduar is the latest raiding dungeon, Blizzard decided to immediately implement changes concerning that range of progression. A change has been implemented to all level 226 guns, bows, and crossbows (Kel’thuzad, Ulduar and Furious Gladiator pieces) so that they will do 30 more dps, resulting in an increase to overall dps done.
Before you complain that this change only affects people who have that gear, it seems Ulduar isn’t the only thing in Blizard’s mind when it comes to hunter damage. Ghostcrawler also revealed that there …read more