Cataclysm Class Preview: Hunter

[Mania]

As far as I can tell, we can summon one of our three active pets at a time. But we don't have to go back to a Stable Master to switch between them. (Oh, and note that Beast Masters may get 5 active pets.)

I asked that exact question about exotics -- as did others in the already-way-too-long official thread -- and I hope someone answers it eventually. Ghostcrawler seems to be taking a personal interest in the hunter thread, so that's good.

[Kastarakovski]

Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.


YES.

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES!!!!!!

*dances around happily*

Vermithrax, Maugrim, you're next on the agenda >=D

...and a Ghost Saber each...oh and Arcturis for Kas...and Olm...and Humar...and Echayakee...
*rambles on and on whilst searching for a champagne flute and a bottle of vintage*


((Clearly I also paid attention to the rest of it - but that stood out as the major news for my retardedly-hissy-protective pet collecting self. Also, it begs the question - what the hell is the Worgen Hunter starting pet gonna be? I'm praying it's a cat - alluding to the "Cats and Dogs living together! Mass hysteria!" Ghostbusters reference...then I can die happily in geekdom XD))

[Mania]

Clarification on focus costs:

The focus costs are just examples. I wouldn't obsess too much with trying to min / max your rotations just yet. In general, the basic rotations of all three hunters work okay on live today. With focus you might hit moments where you don't need to Steady at all, and you'll never run dry again for long periods of time like you might with mana.

If the costs of some of the defensive cooldowns are too expensive or even need to be free that's certainly the kind of thing we'll consider.

[Floplag]

looks like i may need to tryr BM for once.. at least until i get enough armor pen for MM.

I've been SV since BC. My gear score more than ample for MM but not enough armor pen quite yet to outdo my SV.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Hmmm. So does this mean that we are losing pet family tree distinction? After all, right now tenacity can't put out the single target damage of ferocity. And what about pet family abilities? Or will our pet's now just have these debuffs instead? I am a little antsy, to be honest. I don't want my pet's to just be debuff bots.

Also, armor penetration is going away when these changes happen.

[Vespias]

Excited excited excited....more stable slots, camo, cobra, more stable slots, focus, pets at lvl 1, more stable slots...and did I mention MORE STABLE SLOTS!?!?!?! Now I really can't wait to fire up that UD hunter.

[Floplag]

yeah i know on the armor pen, was thinking between now and then.

ive never tried beast at all and this is my second hunter after a re-roll server transfer back before that was an option. in reading all this i think i might need to change my secondary spec.

in all i think this is pretty good news for us.

[Dragon616]

Wow, I failed for not finding this >.< But yay this is all really great stuff! I hope the stable is big enough for 1 of each kind of pet(BM ones included)! Also glad that BM is finally getting its own semi-exclusive shot.

Oh and gonna take a guess at the level 1 hunter pets:
Human - Boar
Dwarf - Bear
Night Elf - Cat
Draenei - Moth
Worgen - Wolf

Orc - Scorpid
Undead - Bat
Tauren - Tallstrider
Troll - Raptor
Blood Elf - Cat
Goblin - Crab

[Rhyela]

Clarification on focus costs:

The focus costs are just examples. I wouldn't obsess too much with trying to min / max your rotations just yet. In general, the basic rotations of all three hunters work okay on live today. With focus you might hit moments where you don't need to Steady at all, and you'll never run dry again for long periods of time like you might with mana.

If the costs of some of the defensive cooldowns are too expensive or even need to be free that's certainly the kind of thing we'll consider.

Thank you for that update. Personally, I don't see what all the belly-aching is about. I may be a noob, but I don't see how focus will affect us at all. In fact, I see it as more of a boon. Rather than lose 50% dps when we switch to AotV, one of our main shots that we already use is going to be our resource replenishment! I think it's a great idea! Nevermind the fact that these are baseline numbers, without talents, without gear, without any modifiers whatsoever. I think people are seeing these "high" focus costs without stopping to think that we are not rogues. Steady/cobra shot is a damaging move that we already have in our rotation, except now it replenishes our focus, too. I just...really don't see why so many people are up in arms. I will eat my own words later if need be, but I really think people are making a big deal out of nothing, without even seeing it in action first. I think very little will change as far as our rotations go. I suppose people were wanting to see something like:

Arcane shot: 10 focus
Chimera shot: 5 focus
Explosive shot: 15 focus

That's just stupid. Those hard-hitting shots need to be expensive, or we'd be OP. I dunno, maybe I'm just a huge noob. I still think this focus change is a huge improvement over what we're using now.

[Zanidar]

Changes look great to me, level one pets will help a lot, and maybe with them there won't be so many melee hunters in dungeons


For the level one pets I think it should be:

Human - Boar or Wolf
Night Elf - Cat or Owl
Dwarf - Polar Bear
Draenei - Ravager or Moth
Worgen - Wolf?
Orc - Boar
Troll - Raptor
Undead - Bat or Undead Wolf
Blood Elf - Dragonhawk or Cat
Goblin - Not sure...


Edit : I forgot one
Walking Steak, err, Tauren - Plainstrider

[Mania]

Hmmm. So does this mean that we are losing pet family tree distinction? After all, right now tenacity can't put out the single target damage of ferocity. And what about pet family abilities? Or will our pet's now just have these debuffs instead? I am a little antsy, to be honest. I don't want my pet's to just be debuff bots.

It sounds to me like that damage-only family abilities will probably become more buff/debuff focused. Wind serpents, for example, seem to be going from damage-only lightning to an extra spell damage debuff.

They may also theme the buffs/debuffs to match the pet talent trees, since they did say that they want all pet's damage-increasing-ness to be about the same, and that will involve some changes to how we think about the trees now ... although that's just a guess on my part about theming the trees.

[Bulletdance]

oh and we can summon up to three kinda like the shamans wolves?

naw, you get to chose between three which you can switch anytime when not in combat. So says your in a group and your tank leaves, you can swap out in the dungeon for your rhino right away then clear trash until you get a new tank and switch out for your dps pet with no cooldown.

[Mania]

Ghostcrawler seems to have sloped off, and the Hunter Preview thread hit 500 posts and shut down automatically. Man, we hunters are a loquacious lot!

Edit: Nevermind, they upped the post limit. I do wish Ghostcrawler would come back and talk more about pets, though.

[Rhyela]

Ghostcrawler seems to have sloped off, and the Hunter Preview thread hit 500 posts and shut down automatically. Man, we hunters are a loquacious lot!

Yeah, because everyone is having a spaz-attack over the focus costs. It's a preview, for P. Dawg's sake! At least try it out in Beta and if it sucks, then you can complain about it! We have no idea how much haste, talents, etc. are going to affect our focus replenishment. I honestly believe that this will be more of a benefit than a detriment to us. At the very least, I'll at least wait until I see it in action before passing judgement.

I would really not want to be in the devs' shoes right now, dealing with all these nay-sayers and spazmonsters.

The only thing I'm worried about is pet homogenization. I really don't want my devilsaur = cat = wolf = wasp = turtle. I like how they all have special abilities, it's just that certain ones (*cough* wolf *cough*) had a little too much of a buff over others. I think they could tweak it all a little without totally making all pets the same. I want there to be a reason that I went and tamed an exotic, besides the prettiness.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

There are a lot of us, and this is a MASSIVE change. Everyone is curious and has questions about it.

Hadn't thought of that though, Mania. *Scratches his chin* Hopefully that means that every pet family will get some form of attack that applies said debuff, then. I can see two possibilities for pet families all dealing roughly the same damage. Either A: Pet families will now have selectable talent trees or B: Every talent tree will include the same damage increasing abilities, with just some 'themed' talents tossed in, like Bloodthirsty or Owls focus or what have you.

It's either that or all pet's will have ONE tree, but with more options. Hrm.

As for focus! These people really need to chill out. What they don't seem to be thinking about is that right now everything is cooldown based. Beyond the first volley, where nothing is on cooldown, this system will be massively more effective. Steady shot/Cobra shot is FREE for one, and actually effects focus regen, and we will never have to HALVE OUR DAMAGE TO REGEN AGAIN. The ONLY time that our old system will be more effective is during short, bursty fights, and even then I wouldn't hold my breath on the old system winning out.

Boo for ammo just being removed though, I was hoping for some cool little additional effect as an equip. Oh well, so long as weapon damage is tooled under the consideration of equal level ammo, it's fine.

[Nimizar]

Hmm, must have upped the limit in the last 15 minutes or so - it was still locked when I last looked (I made the mistake of checking for today's first class update before heading to bed... it's now 3:45 am...)

As for all of the QQ, a lot of people simply fail at reading comprehension (e.g. complaining about trap launcher being on the GCD, when the preview clearly says it *isn't*), fail to account for the impact of beta testing (e.g. complaining about high focus costs), fail to account for the talents we haven't seen yet (hunters have a *lot* of passive damage boosts that are going away in Cataclysm - there are going to be a lot of talents coming in to replace those), fail to account for Blizzard's preference to err on the side of slightly underpowered abilities that they later buff (e.g. doubling the Trap Launcher CD relative to the Freezing Arrow CD), etc.

Regarding pet normalisation, one thing they can do is give the different families passive damage boosts if they don't have a damage dealing special attack. It certainly sounds like they'll be putting more effort into equalising that though.

I'm really looking forward to levelling my new worgen hunter!

[Palladiamorsdeus]

OH yea! Already got all my heirlooms ready and everything!

[Nimizar]

I meant to mention one other thing: the steady shot regen mechanic they chose (a straight negative focus cost on steady) is one I thought they would never use because it is so unwieldy in PvP. A *lot* of the complaints in that thread are coming from people with a PvP focus, which tends to be a minority of posters around here (which is generally a more relaxed soloing/dungeons/casual raiding vibe).

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Pht, even from a PvP point of view I think the changes are great, just to be honest. Even more so when you consider the stated facts: Less burst, less healing, more hit points. Fights are going to last longer, and a hunter OOM in PvP is a dead hunter. This way you won't have to gimp your damage just to regain mana, because half damage in an PvP fight ((With anyone not five levels under you) is suicide.

[Sochi]

*blinks*
I am really loving what I see here. Levels 1 to 10 can be an absolute pain, especially if you've walked the path before. Having a pet right off would be an immense help, keep one out of bad habits and get one right into the feel of the class. Course, there's a wee tiny part of me that's gonna miss that feeling of achievement that level 10 brings, but I'll get over it.

I really, really want to jump for joy at seeing the increased stable capacity, but with my bad knee being, well, bad, I don't dare. Seeing this makes me very happy. The focus thing I am not going to worry about, sure it means a learning experience and an adjustment period to get the swing of the class, but I am willing to give it a chance.

*takes up a pen and begins to jot down what pets she'd like for her hunters. So let's see, Gondria, Arct, Jormungar, dark brown worg, owl, white warp stalker, and maybe something unexpected for Sochi....*