During the class panel at today’s BlizzCon festivities, Ghostcrawler announced some of the major changes in store for Hunters with the next expansion, “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm”.
Mana will be gone. Hunters will now utilize focus.
Intellect will be a needless stat for Hunters.
Focus will regenerate at a rate of 6 focus per second.
Steady Shot improves the rate of focus regeneration to 12 focus per second.
Shots are estimated to cost between 30 and 60 focus.
Hunters will have fewer cooldowns on abilities.
Hunter ammo will be an item and no longer a consumable.
Ammo may possibly be purchasable via emblems or it could be a boss drop. This is undecided.
Humans, Undead, Goblins and Worgen will all have access to the Hunter class.
Agility will now grant Hunters and Rogues 2 AP per point. AP will most likely not be an itemized stat any longer.
Armor penetration is going to be removed.
Haste will also increase the rate at which Hunters regain focus.
This is just a quick highlight of some of the more notable updates that will be affecting the Hunter class.
On a side note, the Worgen racials look amazing for PvP.
70% movement speed increase for 6 seconds, on a 3 min cooldown.
They have a 1% passive damage bonus called Viciousness.
They have a passive ability called Abberation which reduces curse and disease durations by 15%.
The last racial is a +15 bonus to skinning which doesn’t really offer any benefits other than ease of leveling, but the fact that a skinning knife is not needed is pretty cool. Worgen skin their kills using their claws! That is pure win.
The Goblin racials are pretty great too.
A 20 yard Rocket Jump available every 2 minutes.
Fire a Rocket Barrage at any enemy within 30 yards, also on a 2 min cooldown.
Not to be left out of the profession bonuses, Goblins have a passive boost to Alchemy.
“Better Living Through Chemistry” gives Goblins a +15 bonus to Alchemy, along with a 15% bonus to health and mana regen from crafted potions.
Goblins will receive the “Best Deals Anywhere” providing the best possible prices on goods and services regardless of reputation.
Goblins will have a personal servant called a “Pack Hobgoblin” which can be summoned every 30 minutes, and will offer bank access from anywhere in the world.
Well, that’s all I have for now… I’m watching a rebroadcast right now of the footage I missed earlier this afternoon.
There were a ton of exciting announcements made today, so if you were unable to attend the convention or view the pay per view event, head over to the new Cataclysm site that just launched today.
All I can say… HEROIC LEVEL 85 DEADMINES..! Woot!!!
Viper Sting now Stings the target, draining 4% mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster’s maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on any one target.
Auto Shot now gives 15% haste to all attacks fired by a Hunter.
Overall, I’m pleased with the passive haste bonus and the thought of not having a quiver anymore. What I’m not happy about is… it took nearly half a bar of experience back in the day to grind out the quest chain to obtain this for my 19 Hunter. 😕 Oh well, no biggie. Most of you probably aren’t concerned with that silly twinking business anyway.
30 second cooldown on Pummel. Did I call that or what?! I predicted (and hoped for) 30 seconds. 30 seconds is more balanced, but if they were to increase it to say 45 seconds or more, then gorillas would be scarcely seen. The silence was cut in half which makes me sad in the pants, but my guess is that it must have been way too overpowered in initial testing.
Gorillas are going to be popular arena pets among BM and MM Hunters. Beast Master’s can stick the Gorilla on the healer with Pummel on manual cast, and have their own ghetto silence. MM will now have Silences on 20 and 30 second cooldowns. Imagine a MM with 11 points in Survival for Scatter Shot, Silencing Shot, Readiness, and then throw Pummel into the mix. Holy Schnikes!
There’s also ome noise being made about marksman’s mana efficiency and how it can be improved. No changes have been reported yet, but apparently it is something they’re working on.
Wild Hunt is being changed to 10/20% extra AP from the master. There was a bug where the talent was just applying the hunter’s AP to the pet twice, which is too generous.
If you have 6000 attack power, your pet probably gains 1320 attack power from you. With 2 ranks of this talent, it should gain 1580 attack power instead. Your pet’s attack power will be higher than this by a few hundred from other sources.
Two races available to the Hunter class, Draenei and Dwarf, are also seeing changes to their racials. These changes aren’t final however.
Gift of the Naaru now also removes 2 harmful magic effects from the friendly target.
Stoneform no longer gives a 8 second immunity to disease, poison, and bleed effects. Cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.