Itemization Changes
General
- New secondary stats added:
- Bonus Armor: Increases armor.
- Multistrike: Grants a chance for spells and abilities to fire an additional time, at 30% effectiveness (both damage and healing).
- Readiness: Reduces the cooldown of several class abilities with long-cooldowns.
- Hit and Expertise on all items have been replaced with a universally useful secondary stat.
- Stats that are not useful to your current class specialization will be grayed out in the tooltip rather than green, and will not be counted on your character stat sheet.
- Spirit for non-healing specializations
- Bonus Armor for non-tanking specializations
- Strength for Agility/Intellect-users
- Agility for Strength/Intellect-users
- Intellect for Strength/Agility-users
- For example, Agility on a cloak will be greyed out for all Warrior specializations and they will not receive an increase to Agility if equipped. However, if the same cloak is equipped by a Hunter, Agility will show up as green and they’ll receive the increase to their Agility.
- Mail and Leather Armor pieces will always have Agility and Intellect on it.
Ability Pruning
- Removed Hunter Abilities:
- Distracting Shot
- Hunter’s Mark
- Rapid Fire
- Rapid Recuperation
- Widow Venom
- Lynx Rush
- Stampede is now a level-75 talent, replacing Lynx Rush.
- Aspect of the Hawk
- Aspect of the Iron Hawk has been renamed to Iron Hawk, and now passively provides 10% damage reduction.
- Lock and Load
- Black Arrow now naturally has a chance to cause the Lock and Load effect.
- Serpent Sting and Improved Serpent Sting
- Serpent Spread has been renamed Serpent Sting, and remains a passive for Survival Hunters. It causes Multi-Shot and Arcane Shot to also apply the Serpent Sting poison, which does instant and periodic damage.
- Altered Hunter Abilities:
- Revive Pet and Mend Pet now share one button, which toggles based on whether you have a live pet.
- Kill Shot is no longer available to Survival Hunters.
- Arcane Shot is no longer available to Marksmanship Hunters.
- Thrill of the Hunt now also reduces the cost of Aimed Shot when active, to preserve its value to Marksmanship Hunters.
CC and Diminishing Returns
- Removed Hunter CC:
- Removed Pet CC:
- Blind
- Monkey: Bad Manner
- Invulnerability Stun
- Basilisk: Petrifying Gaze
- Incapacitation
- Porcupine: Paralyzing Quill
- Interrupt & Lockout
- Gorilla: Pummel
- Moth: Serenity Dust
- Nether Ray: Nether Shock
- Knockback
- Rhino: Horn Toss
- Root
- Silithid: Venom Web Spray
- Spider: Web
- Sleep
- Crane: Lullaby
- Slow
- Crocolisk: Ankle Crack
- Stun
- Bat: Sonic Blast
- Shale Spider: Web Wrap
- Wasp: Sting
- Blind
- Altered Hunter CC:
- Entrapment’s Root effect now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Root effects.
- Traps and trap launchers no longer have an arming time and can instantly trigger.
- Traps can no longer be disarmed.
- Scare Beast now has a 6 sec duration in PvP (down from 8 sec).
Movement Speed
"Previously, multiple movement speed modifiers on you were multiplicative, meaning that if you had two different +25% movement speed bonuses, they resulted in a total movement speed of 56% (1.25*1.25 = 1.56)."
"Movement speed bonuses have been changed to be additive. The previous example with two different +25% movement speed bonuses would result in a total movement speed of +50%. The logic governing which bonuses stack with others has been simplified as well."
- If a bonus is self-only and passive, it now stacks additively with everything.
- Aspect of the Cheetah (Inferred)
- If a bonus is temporary or applies to other players, it's considered exclusive, and the character only gains the benefit of the highest exclusive bonus.
- Aspect of the Pack (Inferred)
- Posthaste (Inferred)
Buffs and Debuffs
- Removed Pet Abilities:
- Cast Speed Slows
- Core Hound: Lava Breath
- Fox: Tailspin
- Goat: Trample
- Sporebat: Spore Cloud
- Melee and Ranged Haste
- Hyena: Cackling Howl
- Serpent: Serpent's Swiftness
- Weakened Armor
- Tallstrider: Dust Cloud
- Raptor: Tear Armor
- Weakened Blows
- Bear: Demoralizing Roar
- Carrion Bird: Demoralizing Screech
- Cast Speed Slows
- Altered Pet Abilities:
- Sporebat: Energizing Spores
- Now provides a 5% increase to melee, ranged, and spell Haste to all Party and Raid members
- Sporebat: Energizing Spores
New Glyphs
- Glyph of Deep Frost
- Victims of your Freezing Trap are now immune to any damage for its duration.
- Glyph of Play Dead
- Your pet also plays dead when you use Feign Death.
- Glyph of Quick Revival
- Your Revive Pet is now instant but costs 80 Focus.
- Glyph of Snake Trap
- Your Ice Trap is replaced with Snake Trap. Venomous snakes released by the trap will poison nearby enemies with a Crippling Poison that reduces movement speed by 50% for 12 sec.
Learned Glyphs
- At level 25, the following Glyphs are automatically learned:
- At level 50, the following Glyphs are automatically learned:
- At level 75, the following Glyph is automatically learned:
Overall Class Changes
"Hunters have lacked a strong distinction between the different specializations. What we mean by that is that the Hunter specializations all had rotations that felt similar, with Marksmanship and Survival having the most blurred identities (Beast Mastery felt well rooted in the pet). Hunters were also some of the most afflicted by button bloat. To address these problems, we opted to make changes to each specialization's rotation, primarily through removing abilities, and making some of them unique to each spec. This means things like Aimed Shot being the primary Focus dump for Marksmanship, instead of Arcane Shot or Serpent Sting being available only to Survival. Hunters also had a large number of cooldown abilities, which we've also cut down (some of which we moved to the talent tree, competing with other active buttons). For a full list of what was removed, please see Ability Pruning and PvP - Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns."
"One of the most difficult abilities to decide to cut was Aspect of the Hawk. It began to feel fairly meaningless, since it was used virtually all of the time in combat, so might as well have just been passive. We decided to cut Aspect of the Hawk, and bake in its benefit to the other abilities. The remaining aspect abilities are all utility only, and are being moved off the stance bar and made toggles."
"Overall, Hunters should see a drastic reduction in the number of active buttons, and have a clearer distinction between the different specializations. With some of these changes, you may find yourself favoring a different specialization. Keep in mind that Draenor Perks, earned from levels 91 to 99, will serve to further distinguish the different specializations."
- Aspect of the Pack no longer appears on the stance bar and is now on the global cooldown.
- Aspect of the Cheetah no longer appears on the stance bar and is now on the global cooldown.
- Glyph of Aspect of the Beast: The ability taught by this Glyph no longer appears on the stance bar and is now on the global cooldown.
- Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah: No longer triggers any cooldown on Aspects.
- Hunters may now tame beasts from 3 new pet families.
- Hydra
- Riverbeast
- Hook Wasp (Exotic)
- Abilities unique to each hunter pet family have been revised to provide a standard buff, debuff, or ability.
- Combat Resurrection ability: Crane, Moth, Quilen
- Mortal Wounds debuff: Carrion Bird, Devilsaur, Riverbeast, Scorpid
- Increased Spell Power buff: Serpent, Silithid, Water Strider
- Increased Strength/Agility/Intellect buff: Dog, Gorilla, Shale Spider, Worm
- Increased Critical Strike Chance buff: Devilsaur, Quilen, Raptor, Shale Spider, Water Strider, Wolf
- Temporary Haste buff: Core Hound, Nether Ray
- Increased Haste buff: Hook Wasp, Hyena, Sporebat, Wasp
- Increased Mastery buff: Cat, Hydra, Spirit Beast, Tallstrider
- Increased Stamina buff: Bear, Goat, Hook Wasp, Silithid
- Increased Magic Damage Taken debuff: Basilisk, Bat, Chimaera, Core Hound, Dragonhawk, Rhino, Wind Serpent
- Increased Physical Damage Taken debuff: Bird of Prey, Boar, Porcupine, Ravager, Rhino, Worm
- An ability that increases dodge chance of the pet by 30% for 10 seconds: Fox, Monkey
- An ability that reduces damage taken by the pet by 50% for 12 seconds: Beetle, Crab, Quilen, Rhino, Shale Spider, Turtle
- An ability that Reduces the movement speed of the target by 50%: Chimaera, Crocolisk, Silithid, Spider, Warp Stalker
- The following pet families provide an ability that puts the pet in stealth mode, but slows its movement speed by 50%. The first attack from stealth receives a 20% bonus to damage:
- Cat
- Spirit Beast
- The following pet families also provide an additional ability.
- Chimaera - Froststorm Breath: Causes Froststorm damage to all targets in front of the Chimaera over 8 sec.
- Core Hound - Molten Hide: Causes Fire damage to attackers.
- Devilsaur - Feast: The devilsaur feasts on a nearby Humanoid or Beast corpse within 5 yards, healing it for 20% of its maximum health and restoring 20 focus over 5 sec.
- Direhorn - Reflective Armor Plating: Deflects all spells cast in front of the Direhorn for 6 seconds.
- Hook Wasp - Flutter: Slows the fall speed of both itself and the hunter for 30 seconds.
- Spirit Beast - Spirit Mend: Heals the target ally instantly, and additional healing over 10 seconds.
- Water Strider - Surface Trot: Allows the Hunter and the Water Strider to walk across water.
- Worm - Burrow Attack: Deals Nature damage to nearby enemies over 8 seconds.
- Aimed Shot now deals 20% more damage and can be cast while moving.
- Dismiss Pet now ignores line of sight.
- Hunter Pets now have a 1 second global cooldown.
- Growl now has a 30-yard range.
- Black Arrow’s periodic effect now has a chance each time it deals damage to cause the next 2 Explosive Shots to cost no Focus and not trigger a cooldown. This effect is guaranteed to activate at least once.
- Explosive Trap now places a periodic-damage effect on each target within the radius of the explosion, rather than a persistent effect on the ground.
- Several raid buffs provided by pets have been changed into auras that are automatically applied to the Hunter's party or raid.