We all knew Cataclysm would bring big changes to damn near everything in the World of Warcraft, but the latest bomb dropped by Blizzard regarding the complete overhaul of talent trees is some serious stuff.

This complete rework of the size and scope of the talents presents some great opportunities for Blizzard, but also some potential headaches and what I think will be delays for Cataclysm. Either that or we’ll just spend the first 3-6 months of the expansion being inundated with balancing patches. Regardless, it will be a lot of fun to play every character I have through the expansion.

So now what?
Since I’ve been incredibly bored playing WoW lately, but for some reason have the compulsion to play, I’ve tried to find other activities to take up the time I do choose to play. I don’t raid anymore, as I am happy where all of my toons are at, and I don’t care too much to gear them since the expansion will bring a whole new wave of gear.

I’ve been working on making some gold, but not Greedy Goblin style, just chipping away toward an OK nestegg. Right now I’ve got about 15K, which is a pittance to most people but works for me. I want to try and have 20K-30K by the expansion.

However, this afternoon in a fit of boredom, I’ve decided to embark on the Loremaster/Seeker achievement on Hesston. I figure this will do two things: A) Pick up a good chunk of gold after doing all of the quests, and B) Give myself a fine tour of the world before Deathwing tears it to shit.

So….

… I’ve got a long way to go.

Categories: Cataclysm
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MMO-Champ has tons of Cataclysm stuff available, now that the NDA has been lifted. Here’s one quick thing:

Yeah, my druid is totally becoming a troll. And the paladin will be a Tauren, no more BELF!

Categories: Cataclysm, alts
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So the guild is making good progress, but the problem as always is just being a person or two short. We killed (or healed rather) Dreamwalker on Tuesday and got damn close to killing Blood Queen Lanathiel tonight. We’d have killed her had if we had a full raid on, but severe weather, sign outs and some Internet outages took some of our raiders out. I’ve been trying to help with recruitment on the forums, but so far no luck.

Regardless, I’ve been having fun. My rogue is almost at 80 and I’m looking forward to gearing him out. Stab-stab DPS is awesome.

Raid changes
Honestly, I think it is pretty awesome if executed right. We often have 25 people logged on on our first raid night, then less and less the following two. If we could continue on the same level of progression on the nights without a full raid, morale would be much higher and I think people would enjoy the raids more. I wonder if 10-man strict guilds are going to be pissed though. Overall it seems like most people are stoked.

Cataclysm better come soon though, I want to start < Project Mayhem >, an army of goblins that level and raid together from 1 to 85. Who’s coming with me?

Categories: Cataclysm, guild, raids
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Ammo, as you’ve read in the preview, is most likely going the way of the dodo. I think this is too simplistic of a solution to the “problem” of ammo. I posted this suggestion on the hunter forums:

I’m sure others have talked about the removal of ammo, but I figured why not start another thread. But instead of just foaming over it and blasting Blizzard, why not be more constructive.

Personally, I don’t like ammo in its current incarnation. But to remove it all together seems like a missed opportunity for hunters to have a unique slot.

Paladins have librams.
Druids have idols.
DKs have sigils.
Shaman have totems.
Rogues have poisons.

You see where I’m going here. The biggest complaint about ammo has always been that it’s expendable, thus every shot of DPS cost a hunter gold. No other class has this and I don’t think those that have never played a hunter understand the frustration of having to spend gold directly on your DPS after every raid.

Even after the new ICC ammo started to have a trivial cost, it is still a pain in the ass. However getting rid of it all together seems like a lazy response to a problem and one that doesn’t make too much sense now that our ranged weapons will magically come with a standard ammo.

Why not have unique types of ammo for different situations instead of getting rid of the slot altogether? I know the folks at Blizzard are no scrubs, so I’m sure this idea crossed the discussion once or twice. So why not? What changed your mind from going in this direction?

Explosive rounds = fire dmg
Frost rounds = slow
Poison rounds = DoTs
Sticky rounds = snare for PvP
Tracer rounds = Increased AP for raid on target
Acid rounds = Decreased armor on target

To prevent an OP scenario where every auto-shot was one of these, you could add a new shot that is [Special Shot] or some less-lame name, that is your ammo shot. Regulate it by a CD or focus dump, and bam, hunters have a unique ability that they can modify for their playstyle just by changing the type of ammo.

Thoughts? Would this be too much work?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Categories: Cataclysm, hunters
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From Blizzard:

With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm many game elements will be changing, and each class will be receiving a number of tweaks. Here, we will explore the changes that are being made to the gun-wielding, pet-training hunter. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the new hunter abilities!

New Hunter Abilities

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

Resource Mechanic Change

Here we come to the meat of the upcoming hunter changes.

* Hunters will no longer use mana; instead the class will use Focus. Focus generates much like Energy, by building up. It will not be affected by Intellect at all. Haste will improve its generation. Hunters will generate roughly 6 Focus per second, slightly less than rogues’ Energy generation rate of around 10 Energy per second. Below, we have listed some examples of how we intend Focus costs to operate:
o Steady Shot/Cobra Shot: No cost. Generates 9 Focus per shot (or 12 per second instead of 6).
o Arcane Shot/Chimera Shot /Explosive Shot: 45 Focus.
o Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot: 60 Focus.
o Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
o Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the resource change and new abilities listed above, we intend to make adjustments to some of the other abilities and mechanics you already know well. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we’re going for with each spec.

* A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags — though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change — and we will not be making any additional quivers.
* Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.

* Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:
o Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
o Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy’s Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Rampage).
o Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).

* Stings and other periodic effects will now benefit from haste and critical strike ratings. Hasted damage-over-time abilities do not lose duration, but instead add additional damage ticks.
* Viper Sting will now restore 9 Focus every 3 seconds.
* We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. To this end, the class will now start with ranged abilities at level 1, and we will be removing some melee abilities, such as Mongoose Bite.

New Talents and Talent Changes

* Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.
* Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.
* Rapid Recuperation will cause Rapid Fire to give 20/40/60 Focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.
* Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, and Arcane Shot.
* Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.
* Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter’s Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Beast Mastery

* Ranged Damage
* Haste
* Pet Damage

Pet Damage: Many of the passive benefits to pet damage will no longer be available in the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, these will be provided through the new Mastery mechanic.

Marksmanship

* Ranged Damage
* Armor Penetration
* Double Shot

Double Shot: The hunter will have a chance to launch a free attack off of the global cooldown for 50% damage.

Survival

* Ranged Damage
* Ranged Critical Damage
* Elemental Damage

Elemental Damage: Hunter abilities such as traps, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot will do elemental damage of the following types: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind that what you’ve just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you’ll see these planned changes as well as others continue to develop in response to feedback and testing.

[...]

A clarification of Camouflage and what becoming obscured actually means:
Camouflage is *not* stealth. Your enemies will never wonder where you are. We’re trying to use the new Cataclysm water effect to put a shimmering PREDATORy visual on you. It’s protection from ranged attacks and it gives you some combat bonuses, but it’s not like Shadowmeld or rogue / druid stealth where players can’t find you.

The idea with it is that Hunters are only vulnerable to melee attacks or ranged AEs while they are in the obscured state. If you target a camo hunter or a rogue using Smoke Bomb, you will get an error message saying something like “Target obscured.” You can see them and target them, but can’t use your attacks. Imagine they are behind a pillar or something. You can try and get off an AE near them or you can move to melee.

As most of you know, we tried Camo once before, but because it was true stealth it was very hard to balance, plus it felt like we were just handing out the same cool abilities to every class instead of coming with unique mechanics. Hunters were so overwhelmingly excited about the basic idea that we wanted to try it again, but not as stealth.

Regarding Cobra Shot sharing cooldown with Steady Shot:
At this point in time it’s not actually a cooldown. Cobra Shot has a 2 sec cast time, but Beastmaster has a talent to reduce the cast time to 1.5 sec (as well as a few damage hooks). Both generate focus so there is no reason for BM to ever use Steady again.

Regarding focus and how much of it Hunters will have:
Hunters will get 100 focus

The focus costs mentioned in the preview are just examples, so it is a little too soon for you to try to min / max your rotations just yet. In general, the basic rotations of all three hunters work okay on live today. With focus you might hit moments where you don’t need to Steady at all, and you’ll never run dry again for long periods of time like you might with mana.

If the costs of some of the defensive cooldowns are too expensive or even need to be free that’s certainly the kind of thing we’ll consider.

Regarding Ammo in Cataclysm:
There is no ammo slot on your character sheet in Cataclysm. It no longer exists.

Yeah, pretty happy about most of this. I’ll to mull it over more before I give it a full thumbs up or thumbs down. So far, I’ve been pleased at the direction Blizzard is heading with most of the class changes and the new abilities they are introducing. How many of these make it through beta and to live servers is a bit of a crap shoot at this time, but I think they’ve done a good job of mapping out what they want.

Categories: Cataclysm
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The Cataclysm expansion is a long way off, however I’ve been thinking about a fun little experiment that I may throw out on the forums called “Zeroes to Heroes.”

With the two new races of the expansion, the new race/class combos and new features in the old world, tons of people are going to be leveling new characters. I imagine 90 percent of those will be of the new races, but I’m sure there will be a fair amount of folks wanting to get that dwarf shaman or tauren paladin to end content.

What would be awesome would be to get a group of 8-10 people, and perhaps pick up more on the way, and level all the way from starter zones to 85 together, as a group. It would be scheduled similar to a raiding guild, though less strict of course. The idea would be to level together, not only to speed it up, but also to tackle any of the lower-tier raid/dungeons along the way.

Now my attempt to start a 10-man horde guild pretty much flopped, but I think this idea has some legs and I think I could get some interested parties. To me this would be a lot of fun and make the monotony of leveling from start to end game less of a drag.

Either way, I’m going to document the life of Hesston Jr., a goblin hunter, as soon as Cataclysm hits.

Thoughts?

Categories: Cataclysm, guild
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