latest hunter changes

[Slickrock]

So to get a bit of a fresh thread here with the new patchnotes...

Hunter

General
Arcane Shot had its damage and focus cost increased by 50%.
Counter Shot is now a baseline interrupt ability learned by all Hunters at level 22.
Deterrence now has 2 charges.
Disengage now has 2 charges.
Explosive Trap had its overall damage decreased by 30%. Proportionately, more damage has been removed from the initial damage than the periodic effect.
Hunter's Mark now has a duration of 20 seconds while in PvP combat (down from 30 seconds).
Readiness has been removed.
Revive Pet no longer requires the Hunter to have line-of-sight to their pet.
Stampede damage dealt by pets when the ability is used outside of an Arena or Battleground is no longer reduced by 75%
Talents
Aspect of the Iron Hawk now reduces all damage taken by 10%, down from 15%.
Narrow Escape's root effect is now a nature spell (was a physical spell).
Silencing Shot is no longer a talent and is now an ability that replaces Counter Shot for Marksman Hunters.
Spirit Bond now regenerates 3% of total health every 2 seconds while the Hunter's pet is active (up from 2%).
Wyvern Sting now has a range of 40 yards (up from 35 yards).
Glyphs
Glyph of Mend Pet now has a 100% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the Hunter's pet on each tick (up from 50% chance).
Glyph of No Escape now increases the ranged critical strike chance against targets affected by the Hunter's Freezing Trap by 100% (up from 20% chance).
Marksman
Binding Shot is no longer a Marksman Hunter ability and is once again a talent.
Survival
Explosive Trap no longer shares a cooldown with Black Arrow but can no longer activate Lock and Load.

So.. Readiness is gone, Stampede damage buffed.

I tweeted at GC and Devlore, asking if the Stamede buff was the PVE compensation for the Readiness removal, no response yet.

[Quiv]

I tweeted at GC and Devlore, asking if the Stamede buff was the PVE compensation for the Readiness removal, no response yet.

I hope not! I think the Stampede buff should be the compensation for the PVE effect of the Stampede nerf. Surely... surely... there will be other dps compensations.

Edit: BTW are these notes from the latest patch? Disengage/Deterrence doesn't have charges as of the latest build.

[Kurasu]

With the 'extra charges', it looks as if they're trying to balance the removal of Readiness with keeping other abilities useful for as often as they would comfortably have been. Probably, they considered removing other abilities from Readiness, but just decided the 'charges' would be easiest.

I admit, I'm a bit confused as to how 'charges' would be used on these abilities.

[Slickrock]

These notes were posted on WoWhead..

[Funk]

They are up on the official patch notes also: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/101588 ... e=2#hunter

Deterrence now has a 3-minute cooldown (up from 2 minutes) but has 2 charges.
Disengage now has a cooldown of 20 seconds (down from 25 seconds).
...
Readiness has been removed.

The charges should be like how it is with monks rolls - meaning you can pop back to back deterrence still for defensive reasons. At least, that's how I'd imagine it to be. We can check once its up on the PTR.

I expect there will still be compensations for the Readiness nerfs for you raiders out there - don't give up hope yet! We got our interrupt, after all.

[Quiv]

These notes were posted on WoWhead..

Ahh I missed them due to the new stuff on store announcement. I hope the charges are in the next push, I am curious how they are being implemented in terms of CD and recharging.

[Kurasu]

I see nothing in those notes about Disengage having 'charges'.

Hopefully you're right about deterrence having charges in that way! I just had scary images of one 'charge' being used up with each thing it dodged. I doubt they'd nerf it *that* much, though. Especially with making it an even longer CD.

[Quiv]

Now that disengage has charges, I wonder if it will still require you to be in combat. Always hated that part, especially in light of blink and roll. Oh well, used to it by now I suppose.

[Lisaara]

I'm quite happy with these changes.

[Slickrock]

I tweeted at GC and Devlore, asking if the Stamede buff was the PVE compensation for the Readiness removal, no response yet.

I hope not! I think the Stampede buff should be the compensation for the PVE effect of the Stampede nerf. Surely... surely... there will be other dps compensations.

Edit: BTW are these notes from the latest patch? Disengage/Deterrence doesn't have charges as of the latest build.

Well, the previous basic shot buffs were supposed to be for the original Stampede nerf, so this could be for the Readiness..

But it is starting to get hard to keep track...

[Sar]

These notes were posted on WoWhead..

Ahh I missed them due to the new stuff on store announcement. I hope the charges are in the next push, I am curious how they are being implemented in terms of CD and recharging.

Roll a monk (literally).

Roll has 2 charges, you use it once, the first charge goes on cooldown, but it still has a second charge to use, which you can use, and that then puts the 2nd roll on charge. If both charges are on cooldown you can't use it until at least the first charge comes off cooldown.

[Harvoc]

These notes were posted on WoWhead..

Ahh I missed them due to the new stuff on store announcement. I hope the charges are in the next push, I am curious how they are being implemented in terms of CD and recharging.

Roll a monk (literally).

Roll has 2 charges, you use it once, the first charge goes on cooldown, but it still has a second charge to use, which you can use, and that then puts the 2nd roll on charge. If both charges are on cooldown you can't use it until at least the first charge comes off cooldown.

Doesn't this mean that this is a major nerf for Deterrence? The cooldown got bumped up to 3 minutes so that means unlike before, where we could get 3.5 Deterrences every Readiness cooldown (assuming we used it on cooldown and we didn't have Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera, that's 2.5 plus the extra from Readiness), we can only get 5/3 Deterrences every 5 minutes except we get one "free" Deterrence whenever we want because we start with two. It's not like whenever the cooldown comes back up, we get two charges. Each charge is separate so they have separate cooldowns. Personally, being able to occasionally use two Deterrences in a row doesn't really compensate for the longer cooldown.

Also, if we took Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera before, we could use 6 Deterrences every Readiness cooldown but now, we can only use 2.5 plus one "free one" whenever we want.

Respectively, that's about a 52% nerf without CTHC and a 58% nerf with it.

[Shay]

I'm really pleased with stampede buff as it's quite a weak dps cd nowadays.

[Gelannerai]

The buffs are a strong step in the right direction, and it was certainly a breath of fresh air when Lore gave us that extremely detailed post last week (defused a lot of tension on the official forums). I'm curious if Stampede is now viable compared to other similar CD's, or if we'll see some additional changes to it before the patch releases. I'm also hoping we'll see some of the spitballed ideas for the signature shots. I would personally love a bleed effect attached to Kill Command.

[Danielfboone]

As a BM devotee, I like the change to Stampede and the addition of Counter Shot. I'm not happy with the complete removal of readiness. Rapid Fire is a nice dps booster, especially for the MM spec.

I don't get why Counter Shot changes for MM but still does the same thing. Why not just call it Silencing Shot for everyone and have done with it? Counter Shot more implies an automatic retaliatory shot when you get hit by something.

[Quiv]

I don't get why Counter Shot changes for MM but still does the same thing. Why not just call it Silencing Shot for everyone and have done with it? Counter Shot more implies an automatic retaliatory shot when you get hit by something.

The main difference is Silence shot prevents them from casting ANYTHING for 3 seconds, while Counter shot prevents them from casting anything in that school of magic for 3 seconds. For example, if you interrupt an Arcane Mage's Arcane Blast, they can't cast arcane spell for 3 seconds if interrupted with Counter shot, but they can cast Frost or Fire spells.

that being said, I wasnt sure if this has been tested/announced here yet, so I have tested counter shot against a mage, Hutia, and a Pandaren race rare.

The arcane mage had arcane blast interrupted, but still frost nova'd me.

Hutia's heal was interrupted and it wasnt cast again until well after counter shots CD was up.

The Pandaren rare was interrupted but there was one point where they casted the heal within counter shot's CD. I have noticed this is a little wonky in terms of timing even on live.

[ashdawn]

overall we arnt losing that much I can live without readiness, its not a huge part of my rotation, they could change it to be:

readiness removed from pvp but what are you gonna do.

love the charges thing, thats gonna save me from a lot in pvp and pve

[Quiv]

Roll a monk (literally).

Roll has 2 charges, you use it once, the first charge goes on cooldown, but it still has a second charge to use, which you can use, and that then puts the 2nd roll on charge. If both charges are on cooldown you can't use it until at least the first charge comes off cooldown.

Yup, and that is precisely what I was wondering. On the monk, it works like you stated, but I just wonder if that is how they are going to implement it on the hunter. I kinda hope, as the idea of having 2 charges and THEN the full CD is invoked, and both charges reset after CD comes up seems wonky. Maybe if they changed the CD's on these abilities too. Just not enough info at the moment, really.

[peanutbuttercup]

I hope Deterrence / Disengage will still be glyphable in some form, as it stands right now it's a Deterrence every minute for me plus I was using Readiness in certain fights to get an extra Deterrence in. In encounters like heroic Jin'rokh and Ji-kun I can use all the mitigation I can get.

[Nevish]

Ambivalent on these, but I hope this'll be a smoother gameplay transition than other severe readjustment "flying by the seat of our pants" patches we've dealt with.