2.3 Official patch notes

[Calantus]

The Aimed Shot MS-component is weird -- it's probably OP'd in BG's (where Hunters generally CAN get off a 3.5 second shot on a healer) but it's pointless in Arena (where only against the World's Shittiest Opponents will a Hunter have 3.5 seconds of alone time at range). The dispell on arcane shot must be a bitch and a half for everyone. That thing has teeth.

My understanding is that they changed it to 3.0 seconds base and that quiver speed affects the shot such that with a good quiver you're looking at ~2 second cast.

[Fordel]

I understand one particularly unusual aspect of arcane shot is that it can dispel Ghost Wolf. :) Takes rank 6+ to get the dispell, so it won't change the 10-19 twink WSG setup, but later WSG's might find Druids in travel form a better runner now.

Ghost wolf was always dispelable by Priests and Other shamans, it's just a magic buff. Hunters are just the first dispel class with a real opportunity to actually do it in a match.



A top end druid can cast lifeblooms till the end of time, the spell is ridiculously efficient. It's pretty much the primary pvp purpose of the spell. Pre-Lifebloom, fighting a priest or a shaman was nearly futile for a druid, post lifebloom its a lot different.

[Ironwood]

The Aimed Shot MS-component is weird -- it's probably OP'd in BG's (where Hunters generally CAN get off a 3.5 second shot on a healer) but it's pointless in Arena (where only against the World's Shittiest Opponents will a Hunter have 3.5 seconds of alone time at range). The dispell on arcane shot must be a bitch and a half for everyone. That thing has teeth.

My understanding is that they changed it to 3.0 seconds base and that quiver speed affects the shot such that with a good quiver you're looking at ~2 second cast.

Rapid shot affects it too, doesn't it ?

So, it's not as useless as you might think.

[Merusk]

It's so completly not useless I feel bad for using it.  I was in a guild group last night doing some BGs and I was using Aimed shot on the warriors/ pallies.  Since my BG seems to suffer from a lack of warriors (while horde always has 3-4 + healers..)  my 50% mortal strike meant that the warriors were actually dying.  In fact, I destroyed a better geared warrior from Illidan last night on my pve-geard hunter.   The ability to dance around the edge of frost trap and still get off shots while simultaneously staying within his intercept dead zone was amazing.  The buff to serpent sting also means it's not-as-useless anymore. (mine's doing 850 damage not a ton but it ignores armor and resil...)

I'm honestly expecting a nerf, because right now life's just too good.

[Morat20]

It's so completly not useless I feel bad for using it.  I was in a guild group last night doing some BGs and I was using Aimed shot on the warriors/ pallies.  Since my BG seems to suffer from a lack of warriors (while horde always has 3-4 + healers..)  my 50% mortal strike meant that the warriors were actually dying.  In fact, I destroyed a better geared warrior from Illidan last night on my pve-geard hunter.   The ability to dance around the edge of frost trap and still get off shots while simultaneously staying within his intercept dead zone was amazing.  The buff to serpent sting also means it's not-as-useless anymore. (mine's doing 850 damage not a ton but it ignores armor and resil...)

I'm honestly expecting a nerf, because right now life's just too good.

I think we're just so used to sucking......:)

If we shoot past about 15% rep in the Arena Bracket's, we'll take the nerf-stick. Thankfully, it appears the deadzone is gone for good. I don't see them nerfing that back after admitting it was effectively a crap patch to AI behavior that they then claimed was a 'feature'.

[caladein]

Yeah... my 5v5 is an Arms Warrior/Marks Hunter/Frost Mage/Holy Paladin/Disc Priest (me). Both the Warrior and I respec'd (he picked up Endless Rage, I switched from BR to Pain Suppression) because of the patch and the changes our Hunter got can go without saying. We shot up about 150 points last night from mid-1700 to ~2k.

Our Hunter's fantastic on the assist train now since they can get BoP off without me, and he's a lot more self-sufficient when we need to split damage up. Team's still try to steam-roll him but it just seems like in most situations where we'd wind up trading kills early on, our DPS takes care of their guy and we're able to squeak our Hunter through the initial burst.

[Morat20]

Yeah... my 5v5 is an Arms Warrior/Marks Hunter/Frost Mage/Holy Paladin/Disc Priest (me). Both the Warrior and I respec'd (he picked up Endless Rage, I switched from BR to Pain Suppression) because of the patch and the changes our Hunter got can go without saying. We shot up about 150 points last night from mid-1700 to ~2k.

Our Hunter's fantastic on the assist train now since they can get BoP off without me, and he's a lot more self-sufficient when we need to split damage up. Team's still try to steam-roll him but it just seems like in most situations where we'd wind up trading kills early on, our DPS takes care of their guy and we're able to squeak our Hunter through the initial burst.

I've noticed an odd streak about Hunter "surviveability" because of the mail armor. It's been my experience that mail over leather doesn't mean jack fucking shit for a hunter. We don't have a shield.

We have only piddling little dodge boost (Aspect of Monkey), but mail armor simply doesn't mitigate that much damage. Ironically, the class that mail over leather gives us the most noticeable edge on is probably other hunters.

I honestly suspect the only reason we have mail over leather is so that we're not fighting the rogues constantly for gear. :) Surviveability wise, it's diddly-squat.

[Merusk]

I'll wager you'd be correct in that assumption, Morat.  They split everything up farily evenly for classes in the beginning of the game, making sure that no more than 2 classes were competing in an armor category.  In hindsight I'm sure they'd like to split the casters up a bit more but that's a late game development.. early on it was "healing and spirit is for priests, damage is split between locks & mages" 

Fuck, itemization is so complex these days it's no wonder they screw it up or it feels like you don't get that many upgrades.  They need 6 different types of plate alone between the specs.   Probably why it feels like they get to mail and say "put spelldam/int on it, if it's a shaman item and agi/ap on it if it's hunter and be done with it."

Not for the rogues to pipe-in with "we should get mail, hunters should have stayed leather..."  Not that I disagree, as the whole "rogues are sneaky so they must wear leather" thing seems like an oldschool D&D holdout, but I'm not complaining since it means I can drop-down to leather if need be for a nice item.

[Morat20]

Not for the rogues to pipe-in with "we should get mail, hunters should have stayed leather..."  Not that I disagree, as the whole "rogues are sneaky so they must wear leather" thing seems like an oldschool D&D holdout, but I'm not complaining since it means I can drop-down to leather if need be for a nice item.

Fuck if I care -- rogues would find out pretty damn quick that the survivability boost from mail over leather is, in fact, nada. Swapping out wouldn't really affect me at all. It'd be a nerf, sure...but not much of one. Hell, give me leather AND a shield. I'ld pay for that. :)

PvP, it doesn't matter that much.

[ClydeJr]

The shaman buffs are pretty impressive. As an enhancement shaman, I always had mana issues. I could either use my shocks often and spend a lot of time drinking, or not use them and spend a lot of time eating. Now I can almost kill endlessly. Water shield was buffed (no longer costs mana to cast, each globe buffed from 80ish to 200 mana) so if you get it up non-stop its supposedly around 50 mps. My crit chances is around 20% so when I dual wield, I'm almost always in a Shamanistic Focused state (all shocks cost 60% less mana), have Unleashed Rage (+10% AP), and am quite often Flurried (+10 attack speed which means more crit chances). Mental Quickness boosts my spell damage by 30% of my AP (which is boosted by Unleashed Rage) and Stormstrike boosts nature damage (Earth Shock) by 20%. Spirit Weapons reduces melee threat by 30% which means I won't be pulling aggro from the tank all the time.

Some shaman friends who are elemental also say their changes are great.

[Simond]

I was going to post something like that enh shaman thing myself - pretty much word-for-word, actually. Logged on as my shaman for the first time post-patch on Saturday, respecced, and spent about two hours just churning through Netherstorm quests more or less non-stop. It's quite interesting when it's actually quicker and more efficient to just heal myself at the end of combat instead of bandaging or eating.

Suddenly going from one of the worst levelling/questing/grinding classes to, at least, a decent one is pretty 

[Zetor]

Yeah, I respecced enhancement on my shammy for kicks, and tried to play the minigame of "burn as much mana as possible in every fight" (using only abilities that make sense, ie. not spamming a high mana cost totem) in instances... I have yet to need a mana potion or even drink (unless I had to spam heal someone or rez people after a fight, neither of which being optimal circumstances, kek).

It's pure <3 as restoration, too. I'm in unenchanted greens and blues, and I solo healed arcatraz, botanica, shadow labyrinth and steamvault without needing to drink once (heck, a lot of the time I ended up throwing a few lightning bolts during pulls). Mana Spring + the new Water Shield is just craaazy.

Edit: On the other hand, hunters can eat me. Aimed shot followed up by an arcane shot dispelling my ES (and then possibly a silencing shot and/or a scatter shot) touches me in my no-no place. I know they needed a buff, but it's annoying! :P


-- Z.

[Chimpy]

If quiver speed is affecting Aimed (and by that note, it would affect steady as well) I am sure it is a "bug" and blizzard will "fix" it.

Quiver haste has not worked on cast times as long as I can remember. Quick shots and Rapid did (though I still remember when rapid did not).

I used Aimed a few times last night in Eye of the Suck, and did not notice a shorter than 3 sec cast time, but I also was scratching my head trying to figure out why it wasn't showing up on my target's debuffs. I figured out that whatever they did to pitbull over the last couple of days messed with the target buff/debuff display.

Blizzard flat-out saying that they are unable to re-create ANY of the pet pathing issues shows me that they obviously don't test their game on a system that is comparable to the live servers. If they test it at all and aren't just lying through their teeth.

[Merusk]

You're the first person I've seen mention pet pathing issues.  Granted, I avoid the official forums like the plague, particularly when a new patch comes out and the mass-delusion problems set in.  (i.e. "They nerfed Feign Death it gets resisted more now!" followed by 20 pages of "yes they did" and "no, actual data shows they didn't."  "but my anecdotal...")   I haven't noticed any particular issues, except in The Mechnarr, where my pet wouldn't cross a door line to attack a mob, unless I also crossed it. 

[Chimpy]

You're the first person I've seen mention pet pathing issues.  Granted, I avoid the official forums like the plague, particularly when a new patch comes out and the mass-delusion problems set in.  (i.e. "They nerfed Feign Death it gets resisted more now!" followed by 20 pages of "yes they did" and "no, actual data shows they didn't."  "but my anecdotal...")   I haven't noticed any particular issues, except in The Mechnarr, where my pet wouldn't cross a door line to attack a mob, unless I also crossed it. 

On Tuesday it was horrendous doing Ramparts. Pet was running around like a retard, would not attack when commanded, would take weird paths to mobs. Luckily Ramparts is linear so there were no adds to pull from elsewhere in the room. I have had my pet not attack mobs in skettis, or run backwards before going towards the mob.

Now they may have hotfixed some part of the auto-behind AI that made it better before they did their "we could not recreate this issue" tests, but I will see tonight in Kara if I am still having issues or not.

I have not played much except to do the cooking daily since wednesday, so some things have probably been hotfixed. I do know that they made a lot of undocumented changes, and the pet attacking from behind thing was a poorly thought out "solution" to a major problem with their parry mechanics. I am not a gloom and doom, blizz hates hunters kind of person. But it is becoming increasingly obvious from the way they make changes that they appear to have a fundamental lack of understanding into how the class is actually played on the live realms. Or even an idea of what the class should be.

[Merusk]

Well, yeah, the lack of "exactly WHAT does a hunter do" has been obvious for years.  It was also confirmed once, about a year ago, that nobody on the design team plays a hunter as their main, which compounds the problem.

At this point I've just resigned myself to the fact that they won't ever know what to do with the class.  However, it's popular enough that the next iterations of Fantasy MMOs are bound to have them and will, hopefuly, flesh-out what to do with them a bit better.  (I'd point to LoTR, but they weren't ever going to have mages, so Rangers there are the only option to even BE a 'nuker.')  Other thought on the issue stray into design/ wishful thinking land and don't belong here.   

[Fordel]

There are definitely some pet pathing issues in kara. On the ramps between levels in the library sections. If the mob is on the ramp, they'll path to it just fine. If the mob is on the floor/platform above the ramp, the pets will go the complete opposite direction and just keep on going.

Where?


No one knows.

[Mazakiel]

Yeah, pet pathing is hosed at the moment.  One of the hunter pets on our SSC run somehow pulled the next group of naga as we were finishing off a giant.  The hunter was not amused.  Neither were we, granted. 

[Chimpy]

Had sporadic pet issues in kara tonight, most notably him heading to the basement when I told him to go up the stairs leading to Moroes.

Not as bad as I expected, but he was still not attacking very effectively, probably did about 20-30k less dmg than normal tonight.

Though a lot of it could have been me trying to figure out what was wrong with my steady rotation....went from the BBW gun to Serpent Spine tonight (gotta love getting in on a "bought" Vashj kill and no one needing the bow). I eventually went back to just weaving steady in manually. /castsequence is mildly borked atm.

[SurfD]

Also on a note, the Pet Pathing issue isn't just a hunter thing either.

Was playing my Lowbie warlock for a while the other day, and noticed that my voidwalker has a distinct aversion to crossing various surfaces / structures.  Two prominent examples spring to mind from Fenris Isle (Silverpine Forest):

The Door Leading into the keep (with two Gnolls standing guard on either side of Door at the stone area with the stone rails on either side). The VW would simply not cross the line from dirt to stone to attack the gnolls.

The Raised platform where Thule Ravenclaw stands with his imp and the 2 gnolls.  VW just sits there gazing blankly into space when i tell it to attack Thule.  However, if i pull thule so that he runs OFF the raised platform, the VW immediately jumps on him.

And yeah, i also noticed a lot of the "WTF do you think you are going, the mob is THAT WAY" Pathing issues also, when telling the VW to attack a mob.

[Fordel]

Yup, its all Pet AI in general, not just hunters.


Had a mage water elemental wipe a Skethic Halls Heroic run because it decided the best way to gain LoS was by going AROUND the far side of the room 

[ClydeJr]

With the changes to heroic dungeon access (need only honored), there's a lot more undergeared/clueless people trying to pug heroics. I could definitely do without that...

[Ironwood]

Gripping Hand, there's a lot more of your clueful guild who don't have the time to grind who can now run them with you and make them a roaring success.

We got the Ramparts bug last night (Infinite Hellfire Guard Spawn) and managed to figure out how to beat the bug.

It involved using Romulus and Juleanne tactics.  Those were the most earned Heroic badges ever...

[Merusk]

Screw heroics.  I got 20 badges for a 4 1/2 hour Kara run that only took 4 1/2 hours because healers kept having DC problems.

[HaemishM]

The new experience curve is super-quick. Going from 49 to 50, I noticed that from 50 to 51 is only 5k more exp. than 49 to 50. I may actually have time to run alts.

[Nebu]

Last saturday I quested pretty casually on my rogue and went from 51-53 in a couple of hours.  It was surprisingly fast. 

[Teleku]

Have they shown any sign of budging on the stupid 'cant transfer characters from a PvE server to a PvP server' yet?  My first char was a Hunter who sits alone by himself on Proudmoore.  If I ever get a chance to jump back into wow again, I really would like to transfer him over to the current server my guild and my many other characters actually play on.  I want to try my hunter again.  I had alot of fun with leveling him up to 60 in his release day form.  I stopped playing him before the first hunter talent change patch went in.  Should have a blast with him now from the sounds of it.

The logic behind not allowing the transfer is mind bogglingly stupid.

[Chimpy]

Have they shown any sign of budging on the stupid 'cant transfer characters from a PvE server to a PvP server' yet?  My first char was a Hunter who sits alone by himself on Proudmoore.  If I ever get a chance to jump back into wow again, I really would like to transfer him over to the current server my guild and my many other characters actually play on.  I want to try my hunter again.  I had alot of fun with leveling him up to 60 in his release day form.  I stopped playing him before the first hunter talent change patch went in.  Should have a blast with him now from the sounds of it.

The logic behind not allowing the transfer is mind bogglingly stupid.

No they haven't.

And with the levelling changes, it would probably take you less time to level a new toon up to 70 than it would to wait for the 25 dollar transfer to go through.

[Chenghiz]

I think leveling a priest would still take longer. :P

[SurfD]

Screw heroics.  I got 20 badges for a 4 1/2 hour Kara run that only took 4 1/2 hours because healers kept having DC problems.

Yeah, if you can steamroll Kara it is by FAR the best heroic badges per time invested in the game.  I usually manage to get in on the Guild runs with some of our tier 6 equipped people.  Kara from start to finish in around 2 hours, for 23 badges total (21 if you get Romulo and Julianne cause they currently dont drop badges)

[Merusk]

It's only 22.  Attumen only drops one badge.. or at least he did for us.  Maybe he's bugged or something.   We skipped netherspite due to folks having to bail.

[Fabricated]

Gripping Hand, there's a lot more of your clueful guild who don't have the time to grind who can now run them with you and make them a roaring success.

We got the Ramparts bug last night (Infinite Hellfire Guard Spawn) and managed to figure out how to beat the bug.

It involved using Romulus and Juleanne tactics.  Those were the most earned Heroic badges ever...

We got that same bug too on a recent ramparts run. We thought it was hysterical because you get rep for each kill and the guards are really really weak compared to the regular mobs. We ended up just getting annoyed and DPSing them really hard so they died too fast to respawn.

and I think it's intentional that attumen only drops one badge because he barely qualifies as a boss.

[Chimpy]

I can only assume that the "bosses" in the basement that no one ever bothers trying to find (bat/wolf/spider guy) probably drop 1 badge too.

But their loot is all random enchantment crap, so they might not drop a badge.

Attumen may barely be a boss, but he does drop the best piece of loot in the zone, my firey horse. Though I am tempted to stop using it in BGs because of all the tells I get asking where I got it.

[Ironwood]

Screw heroics.  I got 20 badges for a 4 1/2 hour Kara run that only took 4 1/2 hours because healers kept having DC problems.

Fucking Great.  That presupposes that A:  You have 10 blokes attuned and that B: Running Kara on farm status is something you do first time round.

I also have to ask :  if you're doing Kara at that level, what the fuck do you need the badges for ?

In other words, shut up and go polish your armor with some tears.

[Chenghiz]

I also have to ask :  if you're doing Kara at that level, what the fuck do you need the badges for ?

The new T5-ish equivalent gear that's purchasable with badges, for one.