World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Droves of people are rushing to the Blizzard forums to post their grievances, while QQing abounds in trade chat, guild chat, and even on Ventrilo. Angry players threaten to delete their toons, change classes, or even pull the plug completely and quit WoW for [insert any other random game here].

Anyone who has played World of Warcraft for an extended period of time know that these signs can only mean one thing; a new patch has been announced and the rumors as to which class will get beaten with the nerf stick are abundant. Nothing serves to stir the World of Warcraft community into a frenzy quite like the announcement of a new patch.

Earlier this month Blizzard released the official Patch 3.2 PTR Notes which will introduce a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance, as well as a new 40 man battleground. Along with these new additions are big and small changes to every class. This week we will be taking a look at what changes will be made to the hunter.

• Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

With the announcement of mounts being available at level 20, I was more than a little concerned that Aspect of the Cheetah (and other movement enhancing abilities such as Ghostwolf and Travel Form) would be rendered useless only to be brought out for nostalgia. To avoid this happening Blizzard has decided to reduce the level requirement for the Aspect of the Cheetah and the like, which will allow us to leave those poor souls without such movement enhancing abilities in the dust at level 16. This can only make leveling that much less painful.

• Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.

Although not a major change, it is a welcome one nonetheless. Currently Deterrence looks oddly similar to a Warrior’s Retaliation ability. While it is understandable that Blizzard would choose to use the same graphics from time to time, I feel the abilities are different enough to warrant different spell effects. Let’s hope that this spell effect will be on par to the changes Blizzard made with the druid’s Moonfire spell effect.

• The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.

A hit from the almighty nerf stick, but a very small one in my humble opinion. If something has not walked into your trap within 30 seconds, I don’t really know if another 30 seconds is going to make any difference. This will mean that hunters trapping for any reason will have to pay closer attention to when their traps will expire, and drop them that much sooner.

• Traps now have separate 30 second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

This more than makes up for the small nerf listed above. Finally, the ability for hunters to fire Black Arrow, drop a trap from the Frost category and Snake Trap pretty much at the same time.  I for one can’t wait to test this myself.


Talents

• Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.

Blizzard dishes out some love for the Beast Mastery Hunters. Reducing the cool down of Kill Command is an amazing thing, and should help the Beast Masters DPS significantly.
 

• Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.

Another slight nerf, but once again nothing that I feel is overly serious. While Entrapment will no longer work with Immolation or Explosive Trap, it will still be useable with Frost Trap. Since Immolation and Explosive Trap both share a cool down with Black Arrow, you will most likely be using Frost Trap anyway.

• Lock and Load: Now has a 22 second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.

Survival Hunters should be pleased when they see the extra procs they will be getting when this change is made, taking the now 30 second internal cool down to 22 seconds. The fact that the effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used should be of little concern to PvE hunters, as they probably will be using very few Frost Traps, if any at all. However PvP hunters will notice the change and will have to play smarter, and be more aware of the immunities of their opponent..


Pets

• Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cool down increased to 2 minutes.

Wow, what an awesome change. The ability to cast this on a fellow party member could mean the difference between your raid wiping or not, winning your arena, or saving your own butt when the need arises. Place this on a healer, and by saving their life, save the raid, and probably yourself, cast it on your PvP buddy whom the other team as decided to zerg, and make your arena a win, or even cast it on the tank in a last ditch effort to allow the healers to catch up.  

Another added bonus to the change is the damage taken by the pet has been reduced ten percent, from thirty percent to twenty percent. Even with this change you may want to consider changing some pet talents around if you plan to use this ability, to give your little friend some more health in order to cope with the extra damage.

As with most everything there is a downside to this change, the cool down on this ability has been increased from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. This means PvPers will probably only get to use this ability once in the arena, and PvEers will probably only be able to use this once on the shorter boss fights, perhaps twice on longer fights, if timed correctly.

Overall the powers that be at Blizzard have smiled down on hunters this round, and we have little to complain about. Let us comfort our less fortunate friends, and try to keep our tempers in check if next patch we aren‘t so fortunate. Please bear in mind that while these patch notes are the official ones released by Blizzard they are subject to change up until the time (and even after) they become live.

Until we meet again, may your pet get extra heals, may your shots never miss, and when in doubt, every weapon is a hunter weapon.