My take on the new Hunter Class

These past few days, the WoW community has been a bit edgy with all the news about changes to every single class. And we're still waiting on the pally changes..., they've taken so long to publish them that I fear/hope they will be major ones....

Even though Blizzard has already published all other class changes, I feel like I can't give me honest opinion about all of them, since I haven't played all classes, and yes, the only class I've taken up to 80 is my pally, but I feel like I'm getting to know the hunter class pretty good, so I thought I would post my own take on what I think the new changes mean for us hunters.

And here we go, the changes:

We've all read them at this point, but if you haven't, here is the complete list, and here is the short story:

1. No more mana, focus is our thing now.
2. No more ammo. Don't ask where the ammo comes from... 
3. Three pets to carry around, even more to store at the stables.
4. A pet at level 1
5. Several talents changed
6. Mastery system for every tree announced
7. Three new abilities:
1. Cobra Shot
2. Trap launcher
3. Camouflage

So, lets go over this points one by one, and see how they will affect us:

1- No more mana. I consider this one a major change, for several reasons. For starters, it's one of our two main resources, we consume mana like it's the air we breath. Our dps is actually very dependent of our mana pool (at least while leveling) and now it's all going to disappear. All things considered...., I think it's a great change. One thing all mana users have in common (again, at least while leveling) is the downtime it produces. We can't kill if we have no mana, so while questing (or even dungeoning - that's right, I just invented that word - ) how fast we go from one kill to the next one depends almost entirely on how much mana we have left.  Yes, eventually we learn a new aspect that helps us in that front, giving us super fast mana recuperation, but still, we have to suffer a damage penalty, which makes us kill everything slower, which in turn, makes us wonder wether we were better off stopping for a drink instead of killing doing half our normal damage. 

Now that problem is going away, since our main resource (the other one being removed - ammo - ) is turning into focus, which we know so well, from watching it under our pets health bar. It basically works like the Rogue's energy although Blizzard hasn't said much about any actual difference with said resource.

In the end, I don't think focus is going to be a magical solution, since they're not taking away Aspect of the Viper, which makes me think, we'll still have situations where we'll need it. Still, I consider this  a big blow on the downtime problem.

2- No more ammo: This change right here, I really don't know how I feel about it. I know a lot of hunters out there hate the fact that we're the only class that needs to shot money (almost literally) in order to kill things.  We need to buy our ammo, which at first is not that expensive, but once you hit 80 and depend on every little upgrade you can get to maximize your dps, this expense becomes one of your major ones. But then again, I actually enjoyed that, to me, having to buy my own ammo (or make it if you're an engineer) makes the hunter a unique class, it sets it appart from all others. Yes it can be a pain, but I've always seen it as a small price to pay for being unique, now that's going away, I guess I'll have to wait and see what it feels.

3- Three pets to carry around, even more to store at the stables: This change really comes in handy. I won't lie to you, I do feel like with every change, the hunter is becoming more and more like a Pokemon Master, running around the world, collecting exotic creatures and training them to fight, now also having the possibility to swap them between combats? That just sounds too familiar, doesn't it?

Leaving the jokes aside, I do like this change. It does break the suspension of disbelief just a bit, I mean, where am I getting my other pets from? Errr..., lets keep that a retorical question, shall we?

Gameplay wise, it does give the hunter even more flexibility in the battle field, be it on a PVP encounter or a PVE situation, you are now pretty much covered (at least, pet wise).

4- A pet at level 1:  This one, right here, is a smart change. Blizzard probably got all his database admins and ask them, what class gets deleted the most or abandoned the first few levels? And they all went to their database consoles and started typing in queries until they all came to the same freaking conclusion: The hunter. Why? Because it's a class that's designed to be played alongside with a pet and for the first 10 freaking levels you don't get one! It's really frustrating..., really. Why the hell would I play a pokemon mas... hunter if I can't have a bloody pet to send and die for me!? Uh?! Well, that's all being taken care now, even if you can't really tame the one you want until level 10, at least now you get a pet to run around with you and help you kill things.

So, what am I trying to say with this? I approve of this change.

5- Several talents changed: This has been a common scenario for all classes so far (and I expect nothing less for the Paladins), since they're changing so many things around, some of the old talents are pointless now, and others are being improved. Lets see what we hunters can expect:

- Beast Masters: This guys appear to be the ones who get the new stuff, since Blizzard intends to make Cobra Shot their signature shot. So they get a couple of talents to improve it:

• 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.
• 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.

- Marksman: Nothing too fancy here, just a rework of the old Rapid Fire to grant focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.

Also, Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of abilities, instead of the mana cost.

- Survival: Same as MM:

• 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.

6- Mastery system for every tree announced: Same as the talent rework, this has been announced for every talent tree on every class. And in our case, there is not much to be surprised about, they're basically using the masteries to differenciate hunters of different trees (which is basically what the whole Mastery system was meant to do.. so.. they're doing it). Lets see what bonuses we're getting:

Beast Mastery 
Ranged Damage
Haste
Pet Damage 

Big surprise here, if you go BM you get a Pet Damage bonus! 

Marksmanship 
Ranged Damage
Armor Penetration
Double Shot 

If you go MM, dammage is your thing, not your pet's, so you get and extra Shot, for 50% damage and off the GCD.

Survival 
Ranged Damage
Ranged Critical 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.

7- Three new abilities: And for the final point in my list, the thing that probably most of us were waiting..., new abilities!

Lets see:

• Cobra Shot: Woohoo! A new shot! As if you didn't have enough already >.<. But is not bad at all, lets break it down:
• Does nature damage: So, as they said, it's great for targets with a lot of armor.
• It does share a CD with Steady Shot, but then again, it's meant as an alternative to the latter.
• Beast Masters are expected to make this their signature shot, so they'll have talents to improve it.
• Trap Launcher: Interesting ability. It will allow you to launch any of your current traps. I see this as a great oportunity to lay out some havok in the mist of a great pvp battle, and throw from far away our explosive trap, or even our snake trap and see our enemies cower in fear! I also see it as a great oportunity for an extra AoE from out AoE traps in PVE situations, when we're far away on those big pulls and all we can do is volley them down, now we have one more shot/trap to use. The only problem with this, is that it will replace our Freezing Arrow, but 3 levels later, so what exactly is going to be our new lvl80 ability? They didn't say....
• Camouflage: Lets read the whole post about it, because it does seem interesting:

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).

First things first..., where exactly do we take direct ranged damage? Not on PVE right? That's the tank's job..., so that part I see it being really useful on PVP situations, when you're hiding from other casters or even other hunters.
Still, the bonus damage from being camouflaged will be useful anywhere, no matter what it is that you're killing, so basically I see this ability being used in conjunction with our opener shot (since after shooting we lose our camouflage), to give it a little extra juice.
All in all, not the uber/super/hyper new ability one would hope to learn at the new level cap, but then again, neither was Freezing Arrow at first and then they all wanted us to start CCing with it :) So fingers crossed.


And here ends my take at the new and upcoming changes to this great and fun to play class. Lets stay tunned and see what changes between now and release date, because you know, some things will change once they hit the PTR and all the QQ starts coming down :)

Anyways, in the mid time, have fun and keep playing! :)