Filed under: Hunter

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

The Twilight Cult is on the move, the elementals are invading, and it's only a matter of time until the elven lands start burning while the dwarves giggle from their mountain strongholds. Cataclysm is coming.

It's time to start looking forward and planning our leveling experience. I want to stress as strongly as possible right at the outset that hunters are very easy to level. With our trusty pets at our sides, we're an unstoppable tanking/DPS/healer combo. Every hunter spec can level through solo content very easily. That said, we're going to be focusing on the absolute most efficient way of leveling from 80 to 85.

Join me after the cut as we dig into the talent spec, glyphs, pets, and what you need to know about gear to optimize your Cataclysm leveling.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Scattered Shots is brought to you by Grandpappy Frostheim, who spends his evenings in an Ironforge tavern telling young hunters how much harder things were in his day, when they had to kite mobs uphill, both ways ... back when men were men, and women were men too, and pets were next to useless, but they were also men.

All right, sit down lassies -- aye, and you lads, too -- and get yerself something warm to drink. Or maybe do that the other way around. It's time you had some more learning about what life was like back in my day.

I've been hearing a lot of talk about Ghostcrawler lately. For those who don't know who Ghostcrawler is -- or the big GC, as we call him -- he's the man behind every blue post that you care about. He's one of nine grand masters in a secret cabal of masterminds exerting global influence over developed populations in an attempt to uncover ancient artifacts that could lead to the apotheosis of mankind. But for his day job, he's the lead systems designer for WoW; it's kind of like being God, but without the good press.

Now back in my day, we didn't have any Ghostcrawler. Oh sure, we knew in a vague sort of way that there was someone behind the curtain, pulling the strings, dishing out the nerfs and continually striving to make us hunters so darned good-looking; that much was obvious. But for us, it was just a vague faceless form, shadowy and ominous. We didn't have any GC chatting us up with blue posts, explaining the process and cracking jokes.

You hunters today, you don't know how good you got it. Let me tell you exactly what patches used to be like, back in my day.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Cataclysm is still several weeks away, and for most of us, raid content is yet more weeks beyond that. But it's never too soon to start drooling over new gear, and what's more deserving of our drool than our very first raid set of Cataclysm?

The hunter tier 11 Lightning-Charged set gets us off to a killer start in Cataclysm with very nice and useful set bonuses right out of the gate. Of course, the set looks like you're wearing a skinned murloc, but whether that's a bad thing or a moment of sublime joy depends on your personal taste and history with murlocs. Personally, I'm happy to be wearing their hollowed-out head. Glrgl-murfl this, ya bastards.

Join me after a cut for an in-depth look at the new hunter set, including exactly how all the set bonuses work and some preliminary numbers of the set bonus DPS contributions to each spec.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Here at Scattered Shots, Inc., I sometimes talk about the latest hunter news, sometimes make guides for specific areas of gameplay, sometimes discuss philosophy and sometimes just have a good time. But every now and then, I like to spout off on what I think would be a totally awesome idea to improve the hunter experience. My track record on this is not terribly good. From pet collars to pistols, I don't think any of my brilliance has been implemented. But there's always next time -- and next time may just be this time.

I think we should be able to reforge our bows into guns, our guns into crossbows, and every variation thereof. Keep all the stats identical, but just let us flip a switch and change the ranged weapon type. Don't like the sound of guns? No problem! Want to actually make use of your racial bonus? Now you can!

Join me after the cut for some discussion of why it's needed, and how I'd implement it if I were named Lord High Tyrant and Awesomeness Master of WoW Design.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Among the host of new things patch 4.0.1 brought us hunters -- including new talents and rotations, new pet abilities and lower DPS -- was built-in spell alerts. Power Auras became such an integral part of so many people's gameplay that Blizzard finally gave us its own non-customizable version to warn us when proc-type abilities become ready.

Interestingly, this helpful addition has a lot of hunters confused. I've been getting a steady stream of emails and comments asking what certain icons mean or why they appear when they do (such as when an ability isn't ready). It seems a spell alert guide is in order.

Join me after the cut for a list of all the hunter spell alerts, what they're for and why they appear when they do. If you're totally familiar with all of them, then I have included the epic hunter video above for your day's entertainment.

From time to time, we find an interesting forum discussion that manages to elucidate how the past informs the present and future -- specifically, how the design of Wrath of the Lich King has inspired Cataclysm's systems. Poster Klissa asks an interesting question about four specs known to be the bottom-of-the-barrel DPS specs during most of this expansion: the arms warrior, frost mage, subtlety rogue and beast mastery hunter. Klissa asks why, since Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) has posted on the forums that Blizzard has known for a while that these four specs just weren't cutting it, that they weren't buffed to be made competitive.

As we've come to expect him to, Ghostcrawler responds with a fairly in-depth answer. He covers the difficulty of balancing two or more specs in a class that fulfill the same role and how this experience in Wrath of the Lich King helped guide Blizzard in its systems overhaul for Cataclysm.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Patch 4.0.1 brought a handful of changes to the way hunters experience threat. Our Misdirection was changed so that the misdirected threat fades away after 30 seconds, and tanks in general have had their threat production changed. The result is a lot of tanks learning for the first time to actually pay attention to threat production and doing less threat as a result.

Hunters remain one of strongest classes in the game for threat management, and you could even argue that patch 4.0.1 has made us even better. Yet I've been getting an increasing number of emails since the patch from hunters who are experiencing threat problems. They're pull aggro from their tanks, from their pets, from small orphans in the street -- wherever they can find it, they take it.

This seems like a good time for a remedial lesson in threat management, as well as a good time to discuss some of the new threat management tricks hunter have acquired. Join me after the cut, and never pull aggro again -- at least, not accidentally.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Each of the three hunters specs has a signature shot. This is the damaging ability that the spec is known for, its main shot that's on a cooldown that hunters can't wait to hit. It's how other classes like warlocks and mages know what kind of hunter they're dealing with, because at the bottom of our letters, they'll see, "Love, Explosive f'ing Shot in your face!" For BM, it's Kill Command; for MM, it's Chimera Shot; and for SV, it's Explosive Shot.

Our signature shots recently got a nice little buff after lots of complaints that they weren't actually worth using -- and then another nice boost in the latest beta build. Despite this buff, there are still a lot of hunters refusing to use their signature abilities, preferring the admittedly easier route of just spamming Arcane Shot.

Join me after the cut as we take a closer look at the signature shots and a few things that go into determining whether they're worth firing. There's a bit more to it than most forum posters are considering.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Art of War(craft), covering battlegrounds and world PvP, and Blood Sport, with the inside line for arena enthusiasts. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Battlemaster Zach Yonzon, old-world PvP grinder and casual battleground habitué, rambles on about anything and everything PvP.

We don't have much time before Cataclysm hits, so let's get down to business. We've talked about some optimal talents for death knights and druids for PvP, so now we turn our attention to hunters. Hunters have always had a tough time in arenas, not necessarily because the class was broken but because the format simply wasn't conducive to the hunter playstyle. It got so bad, in fact, that Blizzard designed an arena -- the Ring of Valor -- specifically to benefit hunters. On the other hand, hunters have always lorded it over in the open expanse of the battlegrounds.

The good news is that battlegrounds will be cool again. Well, they've always been cool in my book, but soon they'll be rewarding cool gear, too. That means hunters will once again feel like PvP gods (without needing the help of an enhancement shaman). There's one big change to hunters in Patch 4.0.1 and that's the change in resource from mana to focus. The difference with the way focus behaves is that rather than a resource well that pays for spells and abilities (mana), hunters have abilities that generate focus in combat such as Steady Shot and Cobra Shot, and then a whole load of focus dumps. In a way it's like death knight runic power or warrior rage without the decay. This means you'll always want to have nearly full focus but never gain focus that will simply slough off because you're over your maximum. It's a careful balance of gaining and spending, although focus regenerates at a steady rate.

Beta build 13221 went live on beta servers last night, pushing through many much-requested buffs to the hunter class as well as many bug fixes. Most classes received a slew of numbers tweaks in the latest build, and hunters were no exception. But in addition to the coefficient changes, hunters saw some significant pet changes that could have an impact on endgame gameplay.

The highlights of hunter changes include:

• damage increased for all hunter signature shots (Kill Command, Chimera Shot and Explosive Shot)
• hunter pets now capable of becoming boss crit-immune
• BM worm pet AoE buffed to a powerful level

Hop after the cut for a full list of hunter changes in the new beta build.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Every year, Blizzard holds the ridiculously massive BlizzCon to celebrate the hunter class in WoW, as well as provide some information about the various support classes that are in the game to enhance the hunter experience. I have returned from BlizzCon 2010 in one piece, loaded down with new hunter information and a renewed joy for the hunter class.

I have to say that meeting all the people was almost more fun than all the panels and information. I got to meet Aron Eisenberg, Felicia Day and cast members from The Guild, Michele Morrow, Chris Metzen, Ghostcrawler, Oxhorn, Cranius, Legs and approximately a thousand of you guys. And everywhere I went I got to talk about hunters, discuss with you guys your opinions of patch 4.0.1 and hunter changes. My sincere thanks to all of the readers who hunted me down during the con -- meeting and chatting with you was probably the highlight of the convention. It was awesomesauce.

But we're not here today to talk about how awesome you guys are. We're here to talk about what we learned at BlizzCon about hunters. So join me after the cut for a look at the class Q&A as well as some tantalizing other tidbits of hunter information gathered during the con.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week, Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Now that we've covered our basic 4.0.1 talent builds and rotations as well as glyphs and gems, it's time to take a step away from the raids and into our heroic 5-mans. Among the swarm of emails I've been getting have been a lot of reminders that raiders are, in fact, a minority. Our heroic-running brethren are experiencing the same radical changes, but these changes affect them in very different ways.

Even the hardcore raiders out there are probably spending more time in heroics than they do with their mothers (and really, is it so hard to pick up the phone once in a while?), with the sudden need to level a dozen new pets. Heroics make for fast and painless pet leveling -- you can usually get your pet up to 80 in just two to three heroics, depending on which ones you get.

It's like when Mania (of Petopia) said on the Hunting Party Podcast, "I think the sexiest female model in the Horde is the male blood elf" -- so wrong, and yet so true. So join me after the cut for a rundown on maximizing your heroic DPS in a crazy, post-patch 4.0.1 world.

If you play a hunter, you may be interested in what Zarhym had to say today about your DPS -- namely, that it should already have gone up. Yay for more damage!

Zarhym - Re: Class balance as of Oct 13, 2010

We have pushed a hotfix to improve hunter damage.

Specifically, we increased the damage of the signature abilities (Chimera Shot, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Kill Command) by 15-25%. This will both improve overall damage-dealing and make sure that these abilities are prioritized higher than other shots. We think this will bring hunters to a good enough state until they hit 85. Aspect of the Fox and Cobra Shot solve some specific issues at higher levels. Marksman hunters may still trump Survival and Beastmaster hunters until they're 85, since their rotations rely a little on Cobra Shot.

source

So just in time for Hallow's End, you hunters get 15 to 25 percent more damage on several signature abilities. I don't play a hunter myself, but I'm happy for y'all, as long as I don't end up in Sholazar with my wife camping some rare spawn parrot thing. I really don't understand you non-melee types, but I can't see a downside to more base damage here.

Every Monday and Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Each week Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

On Thursday, we discussed hunter talents and rotations for 4.0.1, and today we're going to get into gems and glyphs, as well as talking a bit about stat weights. But before we get into all that, a word of caution about rotations.

Many hunters have been playing around with rotations focusing on Arcane Shot only and ignoring the signature shot for the spec. I have to recommend against this. It is certainly much easier, and for some specs (like BM) may actually be a bit more DPS, but it is a bad habit to get into! Expect to see a slight boost to the damage of all hunter signature shots in the very near future that makes these shots clearly worthwhile. It is well worth your while to learn the correct rotation now rather than spending your time developing lazy habits. Be a hunter, not an elf.

With that out of the way, join me after the cut for more info on how to customize your hunter to optimize raid performance in the brief window before Cataclysm hits.

The fine folks at MMO-Champion once again peel back the layers and show us the future -- at least, the future of what we'll be wearing. While the hunter set is interesting, I'd have to say I actually really like that paladin set, shown above. It's no Judgement, but it's pretty solid nonetheless. They also revealed the death knight tier 11 set earlier, and it's very dramatic looking. The red set is pretty spectacular. (I restrained myself from saying it was hot. You're welcome.)

Head on over and take a look.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

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