I wonder if the lvl 1 pet assignment will be automatic, or you’ll have to go out and tame something, hopefully they won’t drop the lvl 10 Hunter quests, I love those quests! I’m thinking that to preserve the thrill of the lvl 10 pet acquisition, your lvl 1 pet should just have a generic name “Wolf” “Cat” etc. and just have very basic attacks. Sort of like the loaner pets you get when you do the Hunter quest line.
My guess at the lvl 1 pets, taking in to consideration what is already in game:
Human – Diseased Young Wolf (are there even any other Beasts in the Human starting area?)
Dwarf – Ragged Young Wolf (but should be Bear or Cat ie. Snow Leopard “Cub” IMO, or even a “Young” Small Crag Boar)
Night Elf – Young Nightsaber or Young Thistle Boar
Draenei – Vale Moth
Worgen – I’m hoping for Fox
Orc – Mottled Boar
Undead – Duskbat, Young Scavenger or Spiders if they lowered the lvl of a couple of the Young Night Webs.
Tauren – Plainstrider (or a cougar type Cat if they lowered the lvl of a couple)
Troll – Mottled Boar (but could be a Scorp if they lower the lvl of a couple of the Workers)
Blood Elf – Sprngpaw Linx (I’d make twenty BE if they gave them Mana Worms!)
Goblin – Crab or Croc (I feel that from the few shots of the Goblin area I’ve seen, the Beasts around them will be aquatic types)
Maybe it’ll be a spell, at least I hope it’s a spell, it’s hard enough managing bag space at low lvl’s without adding some trinket like “Pet Leash/Harness/Collar” – Allows the Hunter to control [Beast Name]… Actually I kinda like that idea, makes it seem more substantial, more novel. And I’m all about the novelty! I can’t wait! I’ll probably roll a new hunter of each race just to try out all the lowbie stuff!
Sorry for the wall of text, just one more gush… now I can get all the pets I want without sacrificing old friends for new!
My guess is that the level 10 quests will remain in place, since hunters still have to learn how the taming process works. Also, it says somewhere in the blue post that these starter pets won't be "real" pets, so I'm guessing that we won't get a choice in pet or get to name them.
I know we won't get a choice in start pet, but I wonder if they'll remain or not. It might be a good chance to teach people how to use the stables as well. Hrm.
Ryai wrote:The only thing is I never really figured out how to manage focus/energy on feral cats or rogues.
That's the point!
It's got nothing to do with energy from cat form or rogue. Nothing. Not at last a bit.
Or did you have attacks that actually GAVE you energy? No, you didn't.
But just like our crits give focus to our pets, our attacks will give focus to us.
A 100% different way of mechanic behind this, believe me!
That's also the problem- when do you really have time to stand around and spam steady shot/cobra shot? In WSG/AB/AV/etc really I rarely get the time to spam it. Mean not only is there the gear difference, but there's that as well. That's why I don't like it, yes we get energy back but we can't run and shoot. GC didn't say; oh like real people you can run and shoot now. Sure accuracy might go down- which means we still have to stand and shoot to regen our focus quicker.
So this is why I am not accepting it readily with open arms until I see everything.
Hell it's bad enough they want to make Tree of Life form a bleeding transformation like metamorphis for Warlocks.
Ryai... Crocoslime, hydralisk, sholazar hive queen... 3 retired pets. loque... one very had to acquire pet... and one wasp that is easlity replaced... i know all about retired and rare pets.
Ghanur wrote:This makes engineering a bad joke - besides the flying mount theres nothing usefull or fun left.
Yeah, I guess I'll just have to throw away my Jeeves and my Moll-E and my cloak with Flexweave Underlay and my Gyro-Copter and Wormhole Generator and Everlook and Area 52 transporters, and never again talk to the auctioneer in Dalaran. I'll also have to forget about those super-schmick goggles and guns that served me well until after the ICC 5-mans and the dungeon finder landed. Oh, wait, no I won't...
Making my own ammo is certainly very convenient (20000 arrows in one stack of saronite), but it's hardly the whole reason I like engineering.
Kalliope wrote:You can run and regen faster than you could before for PvP. I'm sure it won't be a problem.
I'm not (yet). The currently proposed regeneration system sounds an awful lot like one of the early incarnations of AotV which had no damage penalty aside from the loss of AotH, but only regenerated net mana from auto shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot and Multi-Shot on more than one target. It was tolerable in PvE, but didn't work in PvP because PvP hunters are far more reliant on instant shots than PvE hunters due to line-of-sight and range issues. There are ways Blizzard can make focus regeneration in PvP work through appropriate talents, but it is going to take some fairly significant playtime to get it working right (hopefuly not as long as it took them to sort out AotV).
cowmuflage wrote:i wouldnt want us non bm hunters to get told to go bm just for the pets and i hope that does not happen. I dont find the exotics that nice to look at.
Even if the exotic buffs/debuffs are "full strength" while the other pet debuffs are slightly below that, this is only potentially going to be a factor in serious 10 man guilds.
25 man guilds will have all the critical buffs and debuffs covered anyway. 5 man dungeons are always missing so many buffs/debuffs that one more won't make much difference (nobody really bothers min/maxing a 5-man group).
Casual 10 man guilds don't bother min/maxing their raids in the first place - they just take whoever wants to go that allows them to get the basic tanking, healing and DPS assignments sorted out. A smart hunter will still look at the group composition and figure out the best buff or debuff that can supply with the pets they have tamed, but that will be the hunter's choice.
It's only in the serious 10 man guilds that a hunter will be expected to fill any key gaps in the buff/debuff roster. And even there, I expect Blizzard to cover all the major buff and debuff categories through non-exotics, with exotics overlapping with non-exotics so that hunters won't be obliged to go BM to cover a gap. E.g. currently a Rhino can already provide a full Mangle equivalent, but in the preview they suggest that Hyenas will gain a slightly weaker effect that doesn't stack. The difference should be small enough that an experienced MM or SV hunter may be asked specifically to bring a hyena, but wouldn't be asked to go BM in order to bring a rhino.
Kalliope wrote:You can run and regen faster than you could before for PvP. I'm sure it won't be a problem.
I'm not (yet). The currently proposed regeneration system sounds an awful lot like one of the early incarnations of AotV which had no damage penalty aside from the loss of AotH, but only regenerated net mana from auto shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot and Multi-Shot on more than one target. It was tolerable in PvE, but didn't work in PvP because PvP hunters are far more reliant on instant shots than PvE hunters due to line-of-sight and range issues. There are ways Blizzard can make focus regeneration in PvP work through appropriate talents, but it is going to take some fairly significant playtime to get it working right (hopefuly not as long as it took them to sort out AotV).
Except there's one glaring error with this logic: our mana never regenerated horribly quickly from AotV anyway. Focus is going to regenerate faster than mana, but slower than energy. Energy regenerates pretty damned fast, so I don't think we'll be in trouble.
Plus if viper sting drains mana AND adds focus, we're going to be the only pure physical class with a mana drain. Whee. Stealing mana without any loss of mana ourselves. Badass.
Kalliope wrote:You can run and regen faster than you could before for PvP. I'm sure it won't be a problem.
I'm not (yet). The currently proposed regeneration system sounds an awful lot like one of the early incarnations of AotV which had no damage penalty aside from the loss of AotH, but only regenerated net mana from auto shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot and Multi-Shot on more than one target. It was tolerable in PvE, but didn't work in PvP because PvP hunters are far more reliant on instant shots than PvE hunters due to line-of-sight and range issues. There are ways Blizzard can make focus regeneration in PvP work through appropriate talents, but it is going to take some fairly significant playtime to get it working right (hopefuly not as long as it took them to sort out AotV).
Except there's one glaring error with this logic: our mana never regenerated horribly quickly from AotV anyway. Focus is going to regenerate faster than mana, but slower than energy. Energy regenerates pretty damned fast, so I don't think we'll be in trouble.
Plus if viper sting drains mana AND adds focus, we're going to be the only pure physical class with a mana drain. Whee. Stealing mana without any loss of mana ourselves. Badass.
Not to mention I have a strong feeling that we'll still have talents such as Go for the Throat that will allow us to gain focus on a ranged critical hit. I really, really don't think that all we get is Viper Sting and Steady Shot for regen (aside from the base regen). I wholly believe there will be talents in at least one of the trees that will give focus regen without costing us our mobility. I wouldn't worry too much about it just yet. Like I've said before - if we see the trees and notice that there's little to no help with focus regen, then we can maybe worry but until then, this is all base line stats and costs, no modifiers or talents or anything of the sort built in. I think it's too soon for any kind of concern.
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Slickrock wrote:Given their current trend, we'll probably get a spirit toucan that farts loops.
Rhyela wrote:I think it's too soon for any kind of concern.
I'm not concerned as such - it's just that the balance between PvE sustained DPS (where we can generally spend a lot of time standing still outside melee range) and PvP burst damage, kiting DPS and stationary DPS (with the latter being more frequent in battlegrounds than it is in arena) is something I expect Blizzard to take a few iterations to get right. They eventually ended up doing a reasonable job of it in Wrath, but they have to start that balancing process all over again when it comes to focus. I trust that they will get there eventually, but it may be a bit of a bumpy road (and may still have a few rough edges even by the time 4.0 goes live).
Here's my interpretation of the news regarding Cataclysm's hunter changes, as well as my concerns.
(Background: I've been playing since launch, and I've leveled every class to 80. My main is currently Punctuation, a female draenei hunter on Stormrage.)
First, pets and raiding. It seems that Blizzard is aiming to normalize pet damage, thereby allowing most hunters to choose whichever pet they'd like to take to a raid. The sole exception here may be the hardcore min/max 10-man hunter, who may need to choose a pet based on which debuff/buff his group needs the most. Obviously, my reasons for this assumption are primarily the lines about the damage increase of any single pet will be "no greater than any other pet."
This trend to normalize pets brings up some concerns, though. First, will this remove the idea of ferocity, cunning, and tenacity pets? I'm not so worried about the potential disappearance of ferocity and cunning, because Blizzard has already stated they'd fold damage talents into the mastery bonuses, and I'm assuming a lot of the utilities of the cunning tree will be provided by particular classes. But I'm worried that the disappearance of tenacity will basically destroy pet tanking, thereby annihilating one of my favorite roles -- the "extreme solo" hunter.
Now, for those of you who complain that your devilsaur, which is large and obnoxious, should not do the same dps as your cat, which is small and agile, I question your application of so-called "real world logic" to the game. I mean, consider the fact that we tank monsters so large that they could quite literally stomp us beneath their foot, and this never happens. So for those of you who nay-say pet normalization based on real-world logic, Pshaw!
Next, I have to assume that, if Blizzard truly wants to normalize pets and free hunters to choose what they want to bring, exotic pets limited to beastmasters must be removed from the game. As the game stands now, they're something of an anomaly, because these exotic pets aren't any better than non-exotics. When I'm soloing on my hunter, she runs as beastmaster, but she uses a turtle. Virtually every raiding beastmaster I've seen uses a wolf. So for exotic pets to make any sort of budgeted sense, they have to bring something else -- something more substantial than appearance! -- to the table. And that goes against the very idea of normalization that Blizzard seems to have embraced for Cataclysm. Ergo... so long, exotics!
Now, stable slots! Finally! I cannot tell you how long I've wanted more than five slots, and I look back in horror on the days when we hunters had even fewer than that. I laud the distinction between active and stored pets, and I can't even justify complaints about the relatively small number of pets allowed to be active. I do wonder, though, just how large our stables will become. If Blizzard truly intends to make pets act as weaker raid (de)buffs, and if Blizzard wants hunters to be able to fill any role, we'll need quite a few slots. I know the number 10 has been bandied about, but I think that's too small, and I hope for quite a few more.
I also hope that Blizzard effects the stable changes before the actual launch of Cataclysm, preferably in the pre-Cataclysm Wrath patch. Why? Because I'm worried that we'll lose the opportunity to tame some of the beasts now, particularly in old school Azeroth. Think about the gorgeous white lion that spawns only from a quest in Winterspring. Or the ghost saber of Darkshore. Or the pink scorpions in Tanaris, the white gorilla in Un'goro, or virtually all the wind serpents in Thousand Needles. I want these guys, but I don't have any free stable slots, and I can't bear to part with some of my pets... like the spirit beast that took me hours to farm or the wolf I've raided with through all of Wrath or the pink devilsaur from Un'goro that may disappear with Cataclysm.
As far as the other changes, I think they're all acceptable, but I also think actual experience with them will be the only way to tell whether or not we approve. The three new spells suggested seem relatively underwhelming -- steady shot hiding under a pseudonym, a launcher with a longer cooldown than the traps, and a second-class stealth that seems to have more uses in PvP than PvE. Simply removing ammunition seems a bit like a dropped ball, since Blizzard could've done some interesting things with the ammo slot, and I really can't say much about focus until I see how it works in action. (I was originally worried that they were turning hunters into ranged rogues, but it seems like focus and energy will work differently enough that each feels unique, thanks in large part to steady shot's/steady shot 2.0's regen action, and as long as they remove the focus cost of defensive spells like deterrence and disengage, it seems like a viable, exciting change.)
Ultimately, besides the changes to pets and stables, I'm not as excited about the hunter preview as I was when I read some of the others, like druids or priests. I do realize this is just a preview, and Blizzard most likely has many more changes in store for hunters, but I wanted more. I mean, everything they've given us so far feels like improvements on already-implemented skills and structures. Where are our shadow orbs, our magic mushrooms, our walls of fog? I'm not planning on deleting my hunter, obviously, but I'm still not entirely certain, once Cataclysm hits, if the first thing I do will be hunter leveling. If hunters don't receive more changes, the allure of a worgen shadowpriest or restodruid may just put Punctuation on the back burner.
I agree with the early parts of Punctuation's post, but the rest, not so much.
There's TWO white lions, so that skin isn't endangered (except maybe for alliance hunters, who would have a harder time taming it again).
That said, there WILL be a big pre-expansion patch which the stable changes will hopefully be a part of.
Our new abilities aren't as underwhelming as you think:
Cobra shot IS exciting. Even if it appears to be a copy of steady shot, it does NATURE damage, not PHYSICAL damage. This is amazingly exciting. We will be able to unload heavy dps on magic immune AND physical immune targets. Very very few other classes can do that (ret pallies come to mind; that's about it).
The launcher cooldown may be long, but it opens up endless possibilities. We'll be able to offer a second AoE ability for packs (explosive trap) - and chances are, whatever we're killing will be dead by the time the trap cd comes up again, let alone the launcher. I love the idea of being able to range a frost trap too.
Camo isn't a stealth (I can tell I'm going to be saying this a lot before it's implemented). It's more like deterrence for ranged attacks, only we can still shoot. Yes, it's got more PvP uses, but I can imagine that it would also serve as a nice backup for feign against ranged mobs.
I'm glad to drop the formality of ammo. It's a flat upgrade for hunter dps and there's really no way of implementing it that doesn't involve rep (ugh, even with a one-time cost, that just sucks) or a boss dropping it in some limited supply (so we'd have to double-upgrade our primary weapon? no thanks!). Engineers still crafting ammo would be lousy because they'd still have to get the pattern somehow, so obtaining new ammo would either be incredibly easy (everyone gets it with a patch) or incredibly annoying (rep, pattern drop, etc.).
As for how focus will actually work, we'll have to give Blizz a chance to actually test things. My guess is that a LOT of decisions will be made based on the focus regen rate, including whether or not abilities like deterrence and disengage still cost focus.
Also, this may not mean much, but they're taking away our level 80 ability (freezing arrow) and mixing it into trap launcher. They're probably going to give us a new level 80 ability to replace it, and it could have missed the preview. (PURE SPECULATION; I COULD BE TOTALLY WRONG.)
i still want to see a skill that features new mechanics like the one rogue got or mage or even priest got ... we got 3 skills that if u can call venom shot a skill .... trap launcher should have come looong time ago and camoflage ... why even name it like that.. i wont be able to pass the mobs if i want to solo an instance
anyways:
Focus is the only big dramatic change we get and im happy for that.
Since cooldowns are beeing removed from most the shots like chimera and such its gonna be ok
Cobra shot IS exciting. Even if it appears to be a copy of steady shot, it does NATURE damage, not PHYSICAL damage. This is amazingly exciting. We will be able to unload heavy dps on magic immune AND physical immune targets. Very very few other classes can do that (ret pallies come to mind; that's about it).
They're saying they're gonna make talents into the BM tree to make it our 'shot' when it's still accessable to the other speccs, meaning all hunters will benifit. Does this mean SS buffs are being removed? And if so, where are they being put? Or is the SS buffs being removed completely- along with SS glyph.
The OTHER THING.
Demo warlocks got an ability, if I remember right, that's Demo only that BUFFS pet damage on a target- yet BM hunters who are pretty much a Demo lock [dependant upon pet to an extent] only get a SHARED shot that gets some buffing, I bet to the extent or a bit more, than SS does atm.
This is why I am not pleased- well it's partly why I'm not pleased and why I am still not welcoming the changes with open arms. As i said I am going to be skeptic until I get to test drive these changes.
