WotLK Hunter Changes – Aspects and Pets

Mastery Changes

Aspects are now off the GCD. It’s true. There will still be a 1 sec cooldown to switch from one aspect to another. It should feel a lot more like warrior stances or death knight presences.

We’re also going to be putting a little bit of dodge (~10%?) onto Monkey. I’ll update when we decide on a final number.

Just for consistency, paladin auras will probably get the same treatment. These changes should go live before Nov 13. As always, thanks for all of the feedback, and please keep it up now that many of the changes are live.

EDIT: After further discussion, we’re not crazy about the “stance dancing” that hunters need to do to switch to Monkey when someone is in on you in melee. As we’ve said a few times, Disengage and Deterrence should be your go-to abilities at that time. If anything, removing Aspects from the GCD makes it feel like you are supposed to go Monkey every time you’re in melee.

Rather than revert the change, we are introducing a new spell!

Instead of getting new ranks of Hawk at level 75 and 80, you now get the new Aspect of the Dragonhawk. This powerful aspect combines all of the effects of Hawk and Monkey. Any talent or glyph that affects either Hawk or Monkey also affects Dragonhawk the same way. The idea is that you retire Hawk and Monkey at level 75 and go to essentially two Aspects: Dragonhawk for combat and Viper for mana regen.

Enjoy. (source)

New Hunter Pets?

Now that we have a better system for introducing pets, I have no doubt we’ll add more per family and more families over time.

Issues with Exotic Pets

On the exotic pets issue, I have said before that we want to be very careful with the balance here. If the pets are immensely better, then the talent becomes a non-decision (which isn’t so bad) but the exotic pets also becomes a non-decision, which means that the tree that is supposed to be all about pets has fewer options to choose from.

At a slight dps increase, the particular pet you choose is still up for debate. On a boss where you need to go all out and the pet’s debuff isn’t important and survivability isn’t important, then yeah maybe you take the devilsaur or core hound. But when farming, running heroics, PvP or in other situations you still can bring which pet you want.

We did a big pass at pet dps and found that while some exotics were near the top, others were near the bottom. We made a big numbers pass to consolidate things a little better, and make sure the exotics were all near the top or at the top. Cats and other pets without a strong debuff should also do good dps as well.

WotLK Hunter Pet Changes

Good news for all you hunters out there. The guys over at Manias Arcania discovered a host a undocumented hunter pet changes appearing the most recent patch update. Check out the new hunter pet stuff below.

• Exotic pets do not seem to be implemented yet.
• The talent points were all refunded but the pets were not.
• The pet talent trees now have an obnoxious background.
• The bug with the tooltips that said they required too many talent points has been fixed.
• And there are a bunch of pet talent changes, although most are pretty small. Let’s list those by tree …

Shared Pet Talents

• Dash/Dive now says it works for 16 seconds and has a 32 second cooldown.

Cunning

• Mobility now reduces the cooldown of Dash/Dive by 8 seconds per rank, which means that you can bring the cooldown down to 16 seconds — exactly the length of the effect.
• Wolverine Bite now says it does 330 damage instead of 5 damage.
• Owl’s Focus has a greater chance of a free special ability: it’s now 15%/30% instead of 5%/10%.

Ferocity

• Loyalty has been renamed Bloodthirsty (and has a new icon). It now increases happiness by 5% when it triggers instead of 10%. (Health is unchanged at 5%.)

Tenacity

• The Stamina boost of Blood of the Rhino has been increased slightly (to 2%/4% instead of 1%/2%).
• Improved Growl has been renamed Guard Dog and now generates 10% happiness in addition to 10%/20% additional threat when your pet Growls. This gives the Tenacity tree a way to regen happiness without food.
• Roar of Fortitude has been replaced by Roar of Sacrifice: Your pet absorbs damage from the friendly target up to a maximum of 50% of the pet’s total health. Lasts 12 sec. (60 Focus, Instant, 40 yd range, 3 sec cooldown)

Pet skills changes
Boar – Gore

• Was: Gores the enemy, causing damage. This attack has a 50% change to inflict double damage, or triple damage if used during a Dash.
• Now: Your boar gores the enemy for damage. Causes double damage if used during a Dash.

Cat – Prowl

• Was: 40 Focus
• Now: No focus cost

Crab – Pin

• Was: Pins the target in place, and squeezes for damage over 6 sec. (20 sec cooldown)
• Now: Pins the target in place, and squeezes for damage over 4 sec. (1 min cooldown)

Crocolisk – Bad Attitude

• Was: Snap back for damage at any target that strikes you for the next 2 min.
• Now: Snap back for damage at any target that strikes you for the next 45 sec.

Nether Ray – Nether Shock

• Was: Instantly lashes an enemy for Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 1 sec. (30 sec cooldown)
• Now: Instantly lashes an enemy for 35 to 47 Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. (1 min cooldown)

Tallstrider – Dust Cloud

• Was: Kick up an obscuring cloud of dust, lowering the chance for enemies to hit by 30%. Effects last 8 sec. (20 sec cooldown)
• Now: Your tallstrider kicks up an obscuring cloud of dust, causing all enemies within 10 yards to miss their next attack. Lasts for 8 sec. (40 sec cooldown)

Warp Stalker – Warp

• Was: 25 Focus
• Now: No focus cost

Wind Serpent – Lightning Breath

• Was: No cooldown
• Now: 10 sec cooldown

All Pets – Growl

• Was: Taunt the target, increasing the likelyhood the creature will focus attacks on you.
• Now: Your pet growls at the target, generating threat and increasing the likelihood the target will attack it.