dwarf hunter

This switch to Focus come the expansion has me wondering about something though. With Hunters turning their back on the world of mana, what becomes of the mail attack power gear (at least the non-tier ones)? As you know hunters share their gear with enhancement shamans right now and while Hunters are losing their mana dependence, enhancement shamans aren’t. This is the reason why a lot of the mail attack power gear you see around have intellect on it. After all while enhancements shamans go all stabby with their daggers, they still need their mana to cast their totems, shocks and such stuff.

Right now it’s easy to see how the mail attack power gear can easily be interchangeable between hunters and enhancement shammies but this will no longer be the case come expansion. Unless Blizzard figures out a way to make Intellect useful for Focus using hunters then mail attack power itemization is going to be a lot harder because of the rift this change is going to cause.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

soul shards

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 and thus will be used more often. It will provide a combat boost but will not necessarily be a dps boost. That was a bit vague and confusing a few days ago but with the announcement of exactly how this works, it’s pretty clear now.

Turns out that soul shards will be a resource instead of an inventory item. This means that the soul shard bar will appear below your health and mana bar. This should also mean warlocks finally get a bag space free. A new spell called Soul Burn will be the only spell that costs a shard and will change the way many spells behave when used. For example, using Soul Burn with Fear will make it instant cast and using it with death Coil will add more healing and increased horror effects. Since soul shards will be a resource, it can regenerate out of combat and using Drain Soul will act like an “Evocate” to make it regenerate faster.

Hunter Focus and Ammunition Change

I expected the removal of consumable ammunition since this was announced a long time ago. So like the change to soul shards mentioned above, this change will free up a bag slot for hunters. As mentioned before, the haste effect that the ammo pouch/quiver gives will be made up some other way.

I never expected the change that relieved hunters from their mana dependence. Starting the next expansion, hunters will no longer be considered “casters” since they won’t use mana. The hunter npc in the Trial of the Champion sort was a clue but I never noticed. They will instead be like their pets, using focus instead of mana.

Focus works a little like the Energy resource that rogues and kitty druids use. Hunters will also have 100 focus and will generate at a rate of 6 focus per second while Energy usually regenerates at 10 energy per second. Steady Shot will be able to make this rate go faster, at about 12 focus per second. Shots will cost 30 or 60 focus (I guess depending on the shot you’re using).

Simplification of Stats

In one of the class Q&A’s, Ghostcrawler talked about eventually merging Spirit and mp5. Apparently that’s not just the only kind of stats simplification they had in mind for our gear. Below is the list of stats that are getting changed.

MP5 – It will be removed and replaced with Spirit. Healers will have an ability like meditation, allowing more mana regen while casting.

Spell power and Attack power removed – Intellect will now give spell power and mana. Does this mean that Enhancement shammies will get a spell power bonus from their spells like shocks based on their Int? Leather and mail wearers will get an attack power bonus based on their agility while plate wearers will get their AP bonus from Strength.

Haste – Will also increase the regeneration rate of energy, focus and runes. Enhancement shammies and Ret pallies will have a talent that makes use of this mechanic.

Armor penetration – It’s just too confusing and will be removed from the game. It will be replaced with Mastery, making you better at what you do.

Stamina – Since all these other stats will be removed from gear, players will see more stamina!

Defense – it will also be removed from gear. A;; tanks will be defense capped from talents.

Reforging

Reforging is a new feature that some professions will be able to use when the expansion comes out. Basically Blacksmiths, Tailors, Leatherworkers, Engineers and Jewelcrafters will be able to customize anybody’s gear (including their own). This is done by reducing a single statistic on applicable items (I’m guessing that since J/C is part of this, this applies to gems too) and converting them into stats not on the item yet. I can see how this is useful. Maybe you’re a healer and you have enough mana regen already. You can use this feature to convert some of that spirit on that new piece of gear into intellect for more mana and spell power!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

night elf hunter

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 is the fact that they have pets and traps at their disposal. Despite being a ranged class, they still have some tools for melee combat. All of this makes the hunter design tricky. Ghostcrawler said that they want to improve on the interface involving pet control and improving what hunters do when they get in melee range of an opponent (more on these below).

Ammunition has always been a pain in the butt since the start for hunters. It’s expensive and when you run out of it, the hunter is pretty much useless. Eventually they want to push through with the mechanic that will allow non-consumable ammo wherein the haste benefit from the quiver/ammo pouch would be made up elsewhere. It seems like they need more time, probably another expansion, to implement this because of the problems it could do to data storage. For now they want to fix this problem by lowering the cost of ammo and also by changing the way ranged weapons scale so that hunter dps will still increase even if you didn’t have the best ammo.

As much as they still don’t want Hunters to be very good in melee combat, they want to give them a mechanic so that Hunters don’t always have to run away when they’re in melee range. They’re thinking of maybe a punishing attack on cooldown that hunters can execute while in melee range to give him something worth doing. Like other classes,they would like hunters to benefit more from haste. The only problem is that hunters are a very cooldown oriented class and haste doesn’t benefit that situation very much. They’ll about this problem more at Blizzcon.

Ghostcrawler mentioned that they would like to make a change that will help pet survivability in PvE. They think that AoE damage avoidance isn’t enough to help pets stay alive especially when dealing with bosses like Mimiron. the answer is to just not let certain things damage pets so they don’t die from something ridiculous because of the pet AI. Hunters already can heal and rez their pets and that’s enough. they also want to give pets more action bars because players currently have to switch certain abilities in and out. they want pet action bars to feel more like character action bars.

Lastly the devs are thinking about doing away with stables the way they are used now, making pet summoning more like warlocks in that they can switch pets anytime they want. If they do this, stables will be used more for storage of pets Hunters don’t really use but can’t part with.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

hunter bow

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 are further plans to work on hunter damage, citing that the above mentioned change is not enough. He still doesn’t want to name any specifics but it should come within a few weeks and hopefully it’s something cool.

I’m still hoping that Blizzard will finally be able to implement the changes to eliminate consumable ammunition since this will really help hunters save some money by not having to spend on them anymore and also by having an extra bag to store more things. Hopefully at least a step towards that direction is part of their plans.

Post from: WOW Obsessed