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.

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.

MMO Champion tells of a patch 3.09 that could be coming out this week. Since I haven’t tried checking the PTR or even if it’s up at all and the PTR forum is currently out for me, I can’t really check if this is really true. There isn’t even a patch 3.09 PTR notes so that makes the situation a bit worse. In any case, there’s something out there and it’s going to change a few things, even glyphs. Some of the change entries I’ve seen before as legit changes for the future so that might lend some credence to this. As always, you can find the latest PTR notes here so you can check it out if it eventually shows up.

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
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The last installment of the class changes for patch 3.1 are here and like the first two parts, this one didn’t disappoint. In fact this final edition has some pleasant surprises that should be making a lot of people rejoice by now. In this final edition, we get to see the changes for paladins, mages, death knights and hunters. You can find the previous editions in the following links: Part 1 | Part 2

MAGE

# Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
# We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
# We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
# We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

PALADIN

# Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
# Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
# Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
# Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
# Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
# Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

HUNTER

# Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
# A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
# Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
# Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
# Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
# We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

DEATH KNIGHT

# Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
# Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
# Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
# The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
# Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
# Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
# Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
source

Probably the most surprising change of all is removal of consumable ammo, because while this affects hunters the most, this also affects rogues and warriors since they use ranged weapons too, but especially warriors since they use ranged weapons to pull. I have a warrior friend who uses a throwing weapon since he didn’t like carrying ammo. In the next patch, he won’t need to worry about it. The removal of consumable ammo and the fact that they’re preserving the haste bonus quivers and ammo bags will give means that they’ll finally have space for another bag. This makes locks the only class that still won’t be able to have all their bags assuming they use a shard bag.

Paladins also get some surprising good news with the change to blessing of kings finally being made a baseline spell. There’s still no word about what talent will replace it but I’m quite confident it’s going to be something cool even if it might not be something as amazing. I’m thinking it’s going to be like when they replaced the mage iceblock with icy veins. Another surprising but needed change is the one to Exorcism (I wonder if it’s the same for the AoE version, Holy Wrath). Making this spell affect all enemy types with a special 100% crit chance to demons and undead is something that’s really going to make grinding easier and will help their dps.

we saw destruction locks will be a replenishment spec in the next patch and now frost mages will too. I think that they’ve really defended their stance stance that replenishment is mandatory quite well now. instead of just getting a replenishment like effect while the water elemental is up, now they get it even while it’s not up. It looks like death knights are going to get quite a mess of talent shuffling but it seems like it’s all for the best. The changes seems to be all buffs and will allow for more versatility in spec building.

There it is! Your chnages for the next patch have been unveiled and we now have a lot of reason to be happy in anticipation. This should make your game time a bit more pleasant while waiting for the patch to come.

I’m not really familiar with the exact classes that sit at the top of the DPS meters right now but I guess that really varies from case to case and who you run with. I know Death Knights are up there and i guess Ret Pallies, Warlocks, and Mages are also frequent chart toppers. But it seems like certain specs of certain classes aren’t doing so well in their dps output and Blizzard has taken notice. Blizzard is currently monitoring how the classes are doing so that they can potentially make some changes to help boost the output of those they feel need to be buffed.

Patch 3.08 saw some changes to the Elemental Shaman tree that gave them a pretty big dps boost. Ghostcrawler already mentioned in the official forums that they’re going to take a look at Combat Rogues, Kitty Feral Druids and Beast Mastery Hunters as the specs that they feel might need a boost. I think the buffing of Elemental Shammies shows that Blizzard does listen to feedback and adjust accordingly if they feel that’s what’s needed. It might take some time but they get it done.

I haven’t had the time to check into all the glyphs and inscription stuff that has been coming out in the beta patches but from what I’ve seen, it really looks like another fun profession. That’s why I decided that I’m going to make the druid I’m leveling now and Inscriptionist when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out.

One of the things that caught my eye a few weeks ago while browsing through the new Inscription stuff that has been coming out is this nifty thing they can craft called Certificate of Ownership. Basically it’s something hunters can get to rename their pets every 7 days. I’m sure there are a lot of hunters who wish they could rename their pet. maybe you named it something silly and now you want a serious name or something. Maybe you want to turn Snuggles into Spike. Or maybe you want it the other way around, turning a serious name into something cute. Whatever the case, with Certificate of Ownership, it’s now possible. I’m sure this is something warlocks wish they could use for their demon pets but alas I don’t think that will ever happen.

Now if only this worked on player names, my druid could sure use a name change but I’m too cheap right now to pay for the paid name change service.

It seems like every pet hunters can tame so far have nothing that caters to players who love cute and cuddly things… at least no until Wrath of the Lich King comes out. The Artic Grizzly Cub shown in the videos above is such a cute little thing that it makes me think that’s what a gnome druid bear form should look like if only gnomes could be druids. I’m actually getting thoughts about playing a hunter because of this cub. Nothing beats the panda cub non combat pet in terms of cuteness but for me this takes the cake as the cutest tamable pet ever.

As the rest of the classes got a look at their cool new WoTLK talents, hunters and paladins were made to wait quite a while. But at last, they’re finally here, again thanks to Wowhead. The paladin trees got quite a bit of a shake up, which probably was one of the reasons why it look longer to come out.

Click here to see the WoTLK Hunter talents.

I’d have to say that the new hunter talents look really nice. I don’t play one but I understand enough about them to say that the new stuff will make a lot of hunters drool. Survival hunters will drool on the Hunting party talent, making them quite useful in raids by regenerating mana, rage, energy and runic power. This also helps their mana pool problems. Marksmanship’s Chimera Shot will allow the hunter to be a bit more versatile, consuming various stings to fit the situation needed. BM’s Aspect Mastery also improves on the hunter’s need for the situation by buffing the various aspects the hunter could use.

Click here to see the WoTLK Paladin talents.

The Paladin talents got quite a shakeup, especially for the holy and protection trees. Imp conc aura is now in the holy tree while divine strength is in prot. Various talents have shifted tiers within their trees too. I noticed a lot of focus on Judgements for the holy tree, which is strange because it’s something I don’t normally use a whole lot as a Holy Paladin. Beacon of light is quite interesting since it heals the whole raid but not for much considering it’s a small amount spread over 15 seconds.

Retribution’s most interesting new talents are probably Conviction and Divine Storm. With all the focus on the Judgements for the holy tree, some people are already speculating on going holy/ret for conviction since it’s assumed the increased crit chance will also apply to heals. Divine Storm is interesting since it not only affects more than one target but also heals the 3 raid members for 20% of the damage.

Protection’s most talked about talent in Divine Guardian, which is useful for paladins of any spec but most especially for tankadins and healadins. 15% of all damage taken by the raid within 30 yards redirected to the paladin while his/her bubble (divine shield) is up has a lot of applications and has a lot of paladins drooling over this talent. I can see this as one of the talents that will entice paladins to spec into the Protection tree, aside from Blessing of Kings.

Click here to see the WoTLK talent trees of all classes from Wowhead.

The new talent trees for WoTLK are out in Wowhead (still the alpha versions) but hunters and paladins are still left in the dark about theirs. Thankfully, Wowhead has a few new features for hunters to cheer about.

The most interesting new feature for me is the new talent calculator for hunter pets. As you might know, hunter pets will be switching from the training points system to the talent tree system in the next expansion. there’s a calculator for every pet type - raptor, cat, boar, ravager, you name it!

Wowhead also has two other tools in choosing the pet that you want. They care about your individual criteria in choosing your favorite pet so they gave hunters a pet comparison table to show how each pet stacks up with the others stat -wise and also a 3D pet gallery to let help you make the aesthetics choice. After all, we do want our pets to look the way we want them as much as possible.

These tools will definitely make choosing your pet and optimizing their utility easier. The best thing is that you can do all this even before actually doing them in game. This way you can show your choices around to some people and ask their opinion and make the necessary changes without any consequences in the game.

Now if only the new hunter and paladin talent trees could come out sooner…

Update: WoTLK Hunter and Paladin talents are out as well! Click here

Our friendly neighborhood WoW database Wowhead has been providing players with pretty much everything a player needs from quest information, loot information, maps, addon update info and even talent tree calculators and their very own forum. The latest Wowhead has for us are the talent calculators for each class (except hunters and paladins for now) from the Wrath of the Lich King Alpha.

Word about such talents especially the Death Knight ones have been circulating for some time now and finally we can see what Blizzard has in mind for the classes for the expansion. But since this came from the WoTLK alpha, I’m not so sure Blizzard wants this information out at this point. Anyway, while the information is still around this is your chance to see the cool talents! Click the link below to check them out.

My quick comments on seeing the new talents:

The new warlock talents seem to make an already overpowered (at least this is how the general public sees them) class even more so. If there’s something I can say about the final talents of eack tree, they look like they really deserve to be such and probably will be the subject of nerf threads in the future.

The new mage talents look kinda strange to me especially the last talent in the fire tree. it makes me wonder exactly how I might make great use of it in a raid other than in AoE encounters. The last talent in the frost tree looks like it’s not worthy of being such. At least at first glance, it’s not very impressive.

The new druid talents made me want to level my druid faster. All trees seem to have gotten some really cool talents but most especially Restoration. I just might be tempted to play a Tree druid along with my holy pally when the expansion comes out. *Still drooling at the druid talents*

The shaman, warrior and rogue talents also look great but I don’t really have much to say, since they really didn’t make me go “zomg!” or “eww”. The warrior protection talent Sword and Board made me laugh though.

Of course the Death Knight talents look so interesting not only because they are for a new class but also because they really do seem to make the DK a potentially fun class to play.

Those are all the comments I have for you!

The World Wide Invitation has just ended recently, giving us players more information to digest about the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Most interesting to me are the class changes the developers have planned for all of us. I’m going to comment on some that I feel like eye popping or even just cool below. You can see all the changes that were released at World Of Raids.

Death Knight

Well it’s not a change since these guys will be new. But anyway, as stated before all races can be DK’s. No matter what talent tree they specialize in, the DK will still be able to fulfill both tanking and dps roles. I guess that’s why they changed the descriptions of the trees on the DK page a while back.

Druid

It seems that some of the things that Druids have been asking for will be given to them in the next expansion. Entangling Roots will finally be usable indoors and you can use potions, items and on hit effects while in forms. Combine these with the still mysterious dire cat form and it seems like druids will feel the love in the next expansion. Now if only they can get a real rez spell then druids will have a lot to rejoice about.

Hunter

The pet skill point system will be replaced with a pet talents system. There will be one tree each for dps, tanking and utility. Wow, this means hunters can respec their pets! lol

This seems like a simpler way to deal with pet training, giving a more unified system for all hunters to use no matter what pet they are using.

Mage

Mages will have a new spell called frostfire bolt, which will be weaker than frostbolt or fireball but will end up stonger if the Mage puts talents into both frost and fire. This spell suggests that an elemental build (both fire and frost) will be a strong option as an accepted talent build once again.

Paladin

Paladins will receive a spell called Hand of Purity, which is supposed to be a new reactive healing spell. A new heal? Woohoo!

Priest

The most interesting priest change is the Guardian Spirit talent that basically dies in the place of its target This should be useful as a sort of mini wipe prevention tool. Let’s say put it on the tank to give him a life line in case he takes enough damage to kill him.

Shaman

Shaman totems will affect the whole raid instead of just his party. This means that there will be more totem goodness if there are more than one in the raid. Also flametongue weapon will increase spell damage and rockbiter weapon will be replaced by eartliving weapon which increases healing done.

Rogue

Sap will finally work on more than just humanoids. Based on the “everything that has a brain” statement, I guess that means beasts and maybe undead?

Warlock

Warlocks will have a talent that transforms him into an IIlidan like demon form. I’m guessing it’s the destruction tree since one of the abilities is an AoE shadowbolt.

Warrior

Warriors will have a talent called titan grip, allowing warriors to dual wield 2 handed weapons just like the barbarian of Diablo 2. ZOMG!