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

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

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%.

Mage

* Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
* Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
* Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.
* Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)
* Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Arcane Missiles — Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old – Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)
* Glyph of Mana Gem — Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)
* Glyph of Arcane Blast — Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)

Paladin

* The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
* Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
* Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
* Glyph of Seal of Righteousness — Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old – Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)

Priest

* Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

Rogue

* Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
* Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
* Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
* Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Shaman

Glyphs

* Glyph of Windfury Weapon — Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)

Warlock

* Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.

Dungeons and Raids

The Obsidian Sanctum

Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

User Interface

* The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.
* A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.
* When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum .

Bug Fixes

* Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.
* Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.
* Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

taken from MMO Champion

If these changes are true then that means that we generally have a good mix of nerfs and buffs coming. Unfortunately the nerfs and buss aren’t spread out across the classes. But I guess hat’s ok since it’s not about the number of nerfs and buffs you get but about what Blizz thinks has to be changed. The winner here is hands down the Paladin since they didn’t get any nerfs at all and the buffs they got are pretty awesome if you’re playing a Ret pally. I guess everyone else will just have to wait for patch 3.1 to get their awesome buffs.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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…

Post from: WOW Obsessed