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Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification inspiration

Brian Wood — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

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Scattered Shots: Hunter transmogrification inspiration originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Blizzard listens to hunters, really

Brian Wood — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Just about everyone who plays WoW spends at least some time complaining about it and explaining their vision of how the game could be made so much better. For some players, this occupies more time than playing the game itself.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone, which was made evident when I was glancing back through a bunch of old columns. As much as I try to focus on mechanics and divining developer intent, I can't help but suggest ways that I think abilities could be better or pointing out imbalances.

Therefore, I think it's worth taking a moment to really look at what Blizzard is doing for hunters in Mists of Pandaria and realize that the devs are trying to give us just about everything that we as a class have been asking for -- something that can be easily missed in all the hunters complaining about the MoP abilities. And for once, we have a documented way to compare what hunters have asked for against what we were given: the class feedback thread.

Join me after the cut for the MoP scoreboard.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Blizzard listens to hunters, really

Scattered Shots: Blizzard listens to hunters, really originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline

Matthew Rossi — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Death Knight, Cataclysm

The folks at GuildOx have gone through their database and done some simple filtering that reveals some fascinating things about who is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. GuildOx started with level 85 characters, filtered for characters with ilevel 400 gear, and then filtered out anyone with PvP gear. What you see in the chart above is the result of that work -- a representative sample of who out of the over 13 million level 85 characters in the GuildOx database is raiding heroic Dragon Soul.

If you remember the post about the complexity of systems and player retention that I made a couple of weeks back, you'll remember that I mentioned Cynwise's excellent posts about the warlock decline. Well, here it is again reflected in GuildOx's data. Warlocks are the least played class in heroic raiding.

Warriors aren't doing much better, really. Most other classes seem fairly healthy, with classes that have healing specs doing fairly well and rogues absolutely ruling heroic raiding despite being one of the least-played classes in the game overall. It gets even more interesting once we get to look at the GuildOx spec-by-spec breakdown.

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GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows

Brian Wood — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

One of the goals in Blizzard's revamp of the talent system was to take away "right" choices -- the kind of decisions in which we could calculate a mathematical correct choice -- and instead let us actually make a decision about what talent to choose for any given tier. For many of our hunter tiers, this more or less worked out, often resulting in one clear PvP talent and a choice between two PvE talents that are both potentially useful in the right circumstances.

But then we also have talent tiers like the level 75 choice, where every ability is providing us with some kind of DPS cooldown. No doubt we needed some DPS-boosting talents, but once those are in the mix, we are going to be able to calculate a right choice -- or at least a right choice for any given situation.

This bring us to Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows. I've done a lot of in-game testing both to measure the benefit of the abilities as well as to determine how they work and scale. And at this point in the beta, it's already looking like we have a winner.

Update: Since the time of writing, the beta has updated and the name has been changed from Call Beast to Dire Beast (updated in here) and the appearance of the beast is now based on the zone you're in.

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Scattered Shots: Dire Beast vs. A Murder of Crows originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Masses of hunter beta changes

Brian Wood — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

As the Mists of Pandaria beta progresses we're beginning to learn more about how many of the awesome new hunter abilities will work, and of course we're seeing many of the inevitable changes to abilities, including happy news that the 2-second cast time on Black Arrow and lack of Serpent Spread is likely to be reverted to the current design (which also means the AoE component of the beta Black Arrow is likely going away, too).

We got a look at exactly what abilities the different pet specs will have in MoP. The design is very much in keeping with the plan we discussed last week and does a good job of helping make the different pet specs feel distinctly different (since you no longer have DPS talents for tenacity pets and tanking talents for ferocity), though there are a few abilities lost that hurt.

In fact, pets are a fantastic place to start. Let's take a look at exactly what abilities Blizzard assigned to each of the pet specs.

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Scattered Shots: Masses of hunter beta changes originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Check out this video of Mists of Pandaria's Stampede in action

Adam Holisky — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, Mists of Pandaria

Hunters are getting a great new spell in Mists of Pandaria called Stampede, where all the hunter's pets are summoned to go ape on a mob for 10 seconds. It's one of those cool abilities that'll make you want to level up your hunter again just so you can see the level 87 ability in action yourself.

Ghostcrawler was originally quoted in Curse's interview as saying:

I don't think we have talked about what we are doing for the hunter yet. I think a lot of hunter players have guessed it but the hunter level 87 ability is basically you get all your pets at once for a short amount of time. So if you have 5 pets in your stable, they all come out and do damage for a little bit of time, and that's really fun cooldown for them. I think it increases Beast Master's damage by 80% while they're out, or something ridiculous like that. That's a pretty fun one.

Brian Wood has talked a bit about the new Stampede too in our hunter column, including the initial announcement of the ability and some resulting QQ.

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

Check out this video of Mists of Pandaria's Stampede in action originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter pet plan in Mists of Pandaria

Brian Wood — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Thus far in the Mists of Pandaria beta, we've seen and heard tons of sweet news about the hunter class, but we've had very little news about the second most important class in the game: hunter pets.

Historically, development around new and awesome hunter pets stuff tends to happen later in the beta process, but Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has made an appearance on the forums to let us know what the plan is with our beloved companions. As he suggested at BlizzCon, we will be able to take any hunter pet we want and choose whether to make it ferocity, cunning, or tenacity. So you can have DPS turtles and tanking kitties.

But in addition to confirmation of this awesome news is a plan that many hunters are far less thrilled about: no more pet talents at all. Here's what Ghostcrawler had to say about pet talents going the way of the manhood of the elven races.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter pet plan in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter AoE in Mists of Pandaria

Brian Wood — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Not to go all Grandpappy Frostheim on you guys, but wow, has hunter AoE evolved a lot since vanilla days! Back then we had in theory a few AoE abilities, but in practice, we had none. Explosive Trap did poor damage, couldn't be launched, and couldn't be dropped while in combat. Multi-Shot hit three targets and was on a cooldown (and was a core part of our single-target rotation). We also had Volley, which did incredibly crummy damage, couldn't crit, and was on a long cooldown.

By Wrath, volley was a monster of massive AoE DPS on no cooldown, but all we did in AoE situations was push the one button and sit back and watch the numbers tick. While this was great for DPS, it was also fairly dull and meant that there was no skill component to AoE DPS. The worst players could manage to click Volley and watch as well as the best. So Blizzard decided to make our AoE a bit more engaging in Cataclysm and turned it into what we know now.

In Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard is once again turning up the knob on our AoE, giving us more AoE abilities than ever before. In Mists there will be a very real skill component to hunter AoE.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter AoE in Mists of Pandaria

Scattered Shots: Hunter AoE in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: MoP hunter changes galore

Brian Wood — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

The beta has been out for about a week, and as you might expect, we are absolutely drowning in ridiculously awesome hunter info -- and all this despite the fact that there's still tons of hunter design yet to be done. The developers have wisely decided to scatter a bunch of bones for the support classes in the first beta build to keep them distracted and out of the developers' hair while they get to the real work of polishing the hunter class.

Still, there is so much hunter news that there is no way it will all fit in this column. I'm going to hit a bunch of the highlights -- the really awesome stuff, and the stuff we've been waiting for -- but if you're the kind of hunter who wants to know every expansion detail coming out of the beta, here are a few places that hunter Mists info is being collected:

WoW Hunters Hall Tabana is keeping the WHH stocked with every tidbit of hunter info from everywhere on the web, including some videos of our new abilities she unearthed.
MMO-C Hunter Thread Ren is doing a great job on the MMO-C forums of maintaining an updated list of hunter changes in the beta. Just remember not to obsess about the damage numbers there. Don't worry about DPS balance right now; it's all changing.
WHU's Mists of Pandaria Hunter Changes I'm also collecting a much more detailed list of all hunter changes over at the Warcraft Hunters Union that goes in more depth and is being regularly updated.
Petopia's MoP Board The fine community at Petopia is cataloging all the tamable pets that have been found in Mists.

Now, join me after the cut for the awesome info splat of the sweet, sweet hunter life in Mists of Pandaria.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: MoP hunter changes galore

Scattered Shots: MoP hunter changes galore originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Moar boars -- Stampede Q&Q

Brian Wood — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

During the recent Mists of Pandaria press tour event, Lead Systems Deisgner Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street gave an interview in which he revealed that hunters would be getting a stampede ability, letting hunters unleash the fury of a stable full of pets all at once.

Now, I don't want to imply anything bad about the interviewer in that segment, but in what world do you let a comment like that pass by? I know that there are some people who enjoy playing support classes, but when he wanders on talking about rogue nonsense, any good interviewer would stop him, pin him down, and start asking more questions about hunters! This is what MoP is all about after all -- hunter glory!

Stampede is the best and biggest news to come out of MoP since no minimum range, and we're left more questions than answers. In fact, when I started thinking about what I want to know about stampede, I realized it could fill an entire column. And then I realized that stampede is so awesome that it deserves to fill a whole column. So here is what we know about the ability, how I suspect it will work, and what we want to know about the ability.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Moar boars -- Stampede Q&Q

Scattered Shots: Moar boars -- Stampede Q&Q originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hunters to get Stampede in Mists of Pandaria

Brian Wood — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, Mists of Pandaria

As part of the Mists of Pandaria press tour, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has revealed that hunters will be getting a new level 87 ability that will let them bring out their stable of five pets all at once as a long-cooldown DPS burst ability. Here is the full quote from the MMO-C interview:

I don't think we have talked about what we are doing for the hunter yet. I think a lot of hunter players have guessed it but the hunter level 87 ability is basically you get all your pets at once for a short amount of time. So if you have 5 pets in your stable, they all come out and do damage for a little bit of time, and that's really fun cooldown for them. I think it increases Beast Master's damage by 80% while they're out, or something ridiculous like that. That's a pretty fun one.

This "Stampede" ability is one that the hunter community has been requesting for years and should provide a valuable burst DPS cooldown that will serve the class well in both PvE and PvP. We have yet to get confirmation that this ability will be available to all hunter specs, but since Ghostcrawler referred to it as a hunter ability rather than a beast mastery ability, it seems likely to be a class baseline ability that enables every hunter spec to unleash a frenzy of rabid death into their opponents' faces.

Hunters to get Stampede in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Mists of Pandaria raid buff changes and hunters

Brian Wood — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

In the continuing news lead up to the big Mists of Pandaria press tour, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has recently revealed the current plan for the raid buffs in MoP. The overall design is continuing the trend of consolidating the raid buffs and debuffs that every raid is assumed to have, making it easier to get all of the buffs in 10-man raids.

This consolidation of buffs affects hunters along with everyone else, though Ghostcrawler revealed that the plan is still to have hunter pets bring many of the raid buffs so that we can fill in whatever holes may exist, as well as having a handful of buffs available only to exotic pets and therefore BM hunters.

Let's take a look at exactly what's changing on the raid buff front -- the buffs that we're gaining and losing, plus what role hunters will fill in the changed raid buff ecosystem.

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Scattered Shots: Mists of Pandaria raid buff changes and hunters originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Hunter expertise in Mists of Pandaria

Brian Wood — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

In his most recent Developer Watercooler, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street talked about stat changes in Mists of Pandaria. Some of these changes only affect support classes, and there's a very interesting change to PvP stats that affects everyone, but what I want to focus on today is the big change to hunter stats that's coming: expertise.

In Mists of Pandaria, hunters' ranged attacks will be able to be dodged, which they currently cannot. This means that we're going to benefit from that expertise gear that is currently a sign of the rare "not-hunter loot."

Despite a lot of the initial fear and rage response that, let's be honest, tends to accompany just about any significant hunter change, expertise is not scary. In fact, it's almost exactly like having another hit cap. Join me after the cut as we look at what expertise is, how it will work for hunters, why Blizzard may be making this change, and what implications this has for hunter pets.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Hunter expertise in Mists of Pandaria

Scattered Shots: Hunter expertise in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates

Brian Wood — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Last week, Blizzard updated the Mists of Pandaria talent page, giving us a new look at what it's working on for class customization in advance of its mid-March press tour. We hunters got a peek at some awesome new stuff going on with the class, with improvements both in PvP and PvE.

The hunter news from this preview falls into three general categories:

Our three new level 90 talents were revealed.
We saw some meaningful changes to existing talents.
We saw some changes to other classes that could impact the hunter class.

While we're seeing a bunch of new hunter info in this update, Blizzard did go out of the way to point out that it is still working hard on the hunter class and it's not as far along as some other classes. In particular, we don't yet have any new class abilities or new spec abilities for level 90. We also don't know what route Blizzard's going to go with our pet talents.

With that in mind, let's take a look at all the new stuff we did learn!

Continue reading Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates

Scattered Shots: New hunter MoP talent updates originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: What to do in-game when there's nothing left to do

Brian Wood — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

We have entered the doldrums of the expansion, that period of time when the challenge of defeating new content is behind us, yet it's too soon to start planning for the next expansion. We don't even have the Mists of Pandaria beta to entertain us. Instead it's just the same bosses, the same loot, and the same miserable excuse for a raider winning the rolls that should go to you.

It's time to shake off those doldrums. This period of time is one of the best times of any expansion. Instead of raids that bleed away all of your time and blind you to the possibilities of the game, you are now free to go have fun. WoW is filled with challenges and adventure, but the endgame progression grind can trick you into thinking that it's the only PvE challenge available to you. It is not.

Today we're going to run through what you've been missing in WoW and how to tackle new challenges and have fun without picking up a lightsaber or waiting on pandas.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: What to do in-game when there's nothing left to do

Scattered Shots: What to do in-game when there's nothing left to do originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: 5 things other classes can learn from hunters

Brian Wood — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

All classes have their secrets -- their little tricks of the trade that are passed from player to player in the hidden hangouts of the class. I can imagine the warlocks in their lush boudoirs explaining to eager-faced new 'locks about the real benefits to the succubus. Or mages in their mirrored enclaves admiring dresses and explaining to stricken young mages the real benefits to sheep.

Hunters are no different. When we gather in the wild, high places of Azeroth, we pass our own tricks around the campfire, the secrets that let us survive to see another boss.

Many of these tips are not specific to hunters, and every class could benefit from what we have learned the hard way. These are deeper truths and mechanical tips we've learned through the specific roles hunters often fill or through the hardships of our class design. In the interest of inter-class cooperation, we now share five of these secrets with you.

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Scattered Shots: 5 things other classes can learn from hunters originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler

Brian Wood — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

This is not actually an interview with Ghostcrawler. I did not ask him any of these questions, and he did not answer with any of these answers.

But in a deeper sense, a more spiritual sense, Ghostcrawler and I are two lost souls reaching for each other across the vastness of the information superhighway, each seeking that other half to fill the emptiness within us. We are platonic life partners bound by the love of the hunter experience.

Because of this connection we share, this ephemeral bond, I am able to predict how he'd answer if we did in fact conduct an interview. If I happened to sit at a bar next to Ghostcrawler in the not-too-distant future and our eyes met over a glass of stout in a moment of magic, I think we can agree that everything in the following transcript is exactly as he would say it. The only thing that might possibly be different is the words.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler

Scattered Shots: Frostheim's interview with an imaginary Ghostcrawler originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Everything you need to know to top the charts in Dragon Soul

Brian Wood — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

There are a lot of reasons hunters want to top the DPS charts: because the view is better from up there, because we're a DPS class and it's our job, because it makes killing bosses easier, or just because it makes your man parts appear larger.

We talk a lot here on Scattered Shots about optimizing your hunter and keeping track of the little changes that happen with every patch and hotfix, but after a while all those little changes add up into a very different optimization picture. Today, we're going to do a quick review of exactly what is the optimal way spec and play your hunter right now. We're getting a handful of minor buffs and changes in 4.3.2, and this optimization review will take those into account.

These 10 tips are the quick and dirty answers to the current state of hunter optimization. Bookmark this page and pass it along to that guy with a hunter alt as a one-stop shop for what he should be doing right now. As always, things change with gear and group composition, and there are often choices that are almost as good, but this rundown will get you where you need to go: the top of the charts.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Everything you need to know to top the charts in Dragon Soul

Scattered Shots: Everything you need to know to top the charts in Dragon Soul originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: Awesome patch 4.3.2 hunter changes and the bottom line

Brian Wood — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

Patch 4.3.2 is sitting on the PTR, and like fine wine, weapons, and women, it just gets better over time. This patch doesn't have any huge changes going on, instead holding a collection of small changes that are all little gleaming gems of awesomeness. And that's not even counting the fire mage damage nerfs.

From the hunter perspective, patch 4.3.2 gives a small survivability boost to all hunters, a small DPS boost to all hunters, a further smaller DPS boost to SV hunters, and a nice quality-of-life (and arguably wee DPS) bonus to SV as well.

Today we're going to dig into these changes and what they're going to mean for us. The short version is this: Hunter DPS will improve. SV benefits the most, followed by BM, meaning SV will remain the top DPS spec. Skilled players with legendaries will still be about to out-DPS us, but we'll now be competing far better with people without legendaries. How much better? Well, let's take a look.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Awesome patch 4.3.2 hunter changes and the bottom line

Scattered Shots: Awesome patch 4.3.2 hunter changes and the bottom line originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities

Brian Wood — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.

It's a new year, and 2012 promises to be a year of changes throughout WoW with the new Mists of Pandaria expansion. The new year is also a time of new beginnings and of resolutions, so now seems like a fantastic time to revisit the hunter raiding basics.

Over the course of time, our focus and our skills can degrade bit by bit, bringing with it the classic DPS obsession with meters and relative position, until we're looking at those meters with blinders on, ignoring the far, far more important things we should be paying attention to.

Today we're going to look at the basic hunter priority list of what's important for you to be doing in a raid and what is the most to least important. I'm sure just about everyone knows someone who could benefit from reassessing raiding priorities. Just send them over to this post for an explanation of what's most important and why.

Continue reading Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities

Scattered Shots: The top 5 hunter raiding priorities originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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