[9.1.5 PTR] Announced changes to the Hunter class

Classes Hunter
1

General

  • All cooldowns of 2 minutes or longer now reset at the end of raid encounters or when starting a Mythic+ dungeon (was 3 minutes or longer cooldowns). This does not apply to Shaman’s Reincarnation or Warlock’s Ritual of Doom.
  • Freezing Trap now removes active Murder of Crows debuffs on the target when it is applied.
  • Mend Pet Heals your pet for 35% of its total health over 10 sec.
    Magic Dispel type removed
  • Revive Pet Revives your pet, returning it to life with 100% of its base health.
    Cast Time changed from 4 sec cast to 3 sec cast

  • Changes to AoE, Target Caps

Source: https://ptr.wowhead.com/news/patch-9-1-5-ptr-development-notes-aoe-cap-changes-class-tuning-weather-in-cities-324002

More details

Developer's Note

  • Developers’ note: With the launch of Shadowlands, we reduced the maximum number of targets that several abilities could hit specifically to address a few gameplay problems related to pulling a large number of enemies in dungeons. Players often refer to these changes as the “AOE target cap.” Our intention was to reduce the effectiveness of burst AOE buttons against large target counts (i.e. 15-20 enemies) while also increasing their effectiveness against fewer targets (e.g. 3-5 enemies) and communicating that strength clearly in the tooltips. The abilities that remained “uncapped” were generally ones that offered lower damage over a longer period of time (e.g. Blizzard or Consecration).

    Along with other changes, we set out to move away from “pull as many enemies as possible, use all your cooldowns and delete them” as the predominant strategy across various forms of content. We’ve received a lot of feedback that these abilities not hitting enemies in their range in any way creates a feel problem for WoW combat but is also an issue for trivial encounters like farming legacy content.

    For many of the abilities that underwent the change from uncapped to a strict target cap in 9.0, we’re converting the damage to “reduced damage beyond 5 targets.” This means that the ability will deal full damage against 5 targets, then reduced damage to each additional target beyond 5. This means that while the overall damage done by the ability increases with the number of targets, the individual damage done to each target will decrease. This solution means these abilities and their relative classes will still have a very strong niche against packs of 4-6 enemies. As always, tuning will change as a result of this shift over the next few weeks based on your feedback from the PTR

The following area-of-effect abilities are no longer maximum target capped and instead deal reduced damage beyond 5 or 8 targets.

Specialization

  • Beast Mastery

    • Bestial Wrath Sends you and your pet into a rage, instantly dealing [Attack power * 0.65 * 1 * (1 + Versatility) * 1] Physical damage to its target, and increasing all damage you both deal by 25% for 15 sec. Removes Fear and Horrify effects from your pet.
      Beast Mastery (Level 34)
      Bestial Wrath’s remaining cooldown is reduced by 12 sec each time you use Barbed Shot.
      –

  • Marksmanship

    • Fixed an issue that caused Marksman’s Advantage (Conduit) to remove stealth from targets when Hunter’s Mark was cast.
    • Fixed an issue that caused a player’s Marksman’s Advantage (Conduit) to be removed from targets when another Hunter applied Hunter’s Mark with the Marksman’s Advantage conduit.
      –

  • Survival

    • Fixed an issue that caused Coordinated Assault to require line-of-sight to your Hunter pet.

Player versus player

  • General

    • Fixed an issue where Hunters could capture flags in Battlegrounds while under the effects of Feign Death.

    • Arcane Shot A quick shot that causes (62.7% of Attack power)% Arcane damage.

      • Effect #1 School Damage
        Value: 0 (AP mod: 0.627)
        (Pvp Multiplier: 1.21.3)

  • Beast Mastery

    • Fixed an issue where Burrow Attack’s (Exotic Ability) cooldown was unintentionally reduced by Kindred Beasts (PvP Talent).
    • Bestial Wrath Sends you and your pet into a rage, instantly dealing [Attack power * 0.65 * 1 * (1 + Versatility) * 1] Physical damage to its target, and increasing all damage you both deal by 25% for 15 sec. Removes Fear and Horrify effects from your pet.
      Beast Mastery (Level 34)
      Bestial Wrath’s remaining cooldown is reduced by 12 sec each time you use Barbed Shot
      • Effect #1 Apply Aura: Add Modifier - % Modifies Damage/Healing Done
        Value: 25%
        Affected Spells:
        (Pvp Multiplier: 10.8)
        Effect #4 Apply Aura: Add Modifier - % Modifies Periodic Damage/Healing Done
        Value: 25%
        Affected Spells:
        (Pvp Multiplier: 10.8)

  • Marksmanship

    • Aimed Shot A powerful aimed shot that deals (273% of Attack power) Physical damage.
      • Effect #1 School Damage
        Value: 0 (AP mod: 2.73)
        (Pvp Multiplier: 1.11.15)
    • Rapid Fire Shoot a stream of 7 shots at your target over 2 sec, dealing a total of [7 * (38% of Attack power)%] Physical damage.
      Marksmanship (Level 28)
      Each shot generates 1 Focus
      Usable while moving.
      • Effect #1 School Damage
        Value: 0 (AP mod: 0.38)
        (Pvp Multiplier: 11.1)

Covenants

  • Flayed Shot (Venthyr Ability) Fire a shot at your enemy, dealing (50% of Attack power) Shadow damage and then causing them to bleed for (112.5% of Attack power) Shadow damage over 18 sec. Each time Flayed Shot deals damage, you have a 15% chance to gain Flayer’s Mark, causing your next Kill Shot to be free, and usable on any target regardless of their current health, and deal 25% increased damage.

    • NEW Effect #3 School Damage
      Value: 0 (AP mod: 0.5)

  • Death Chakram - Throw a deadly chakram at your current target that will rapidly deal (31.6% of Attack power) Shadow damage 7 times, bouncing to other targets if they are nearby. Enemies struck by your Death Chakram take 10% more Physical damage from you and your pet for 10 sec.
    Each time the chakram deals damage, its damage is increased by 15% and you generate 3 Focus.

Torghast

Hunter - Anima Powers

  • Hunter’s Spoils
    Name changed from Hunter’s Spoils to Ashen Hide
    Range changed from None to 100 yd range
    The damage of your next is increased by 20% when you break an Ashen Phylactery. Stacks up to 100 times.Your primary pet takes 50% less damage from all sources.

  • Mawrat Scent Gland When your pet is within 10 yds of a mawrat, your pet will immediately kill the mawrat and increase your pet’s damage by 100% for 10 sec.This can only occur once every 30 sec.

  • Petrified Pet Food Damage now correctly increases with each stack of the Anima Power.
    Ashen Phylacteries have a 10% chance to contain some Petrified Pet Food when destroyed. Consuming Petrified Pet Food will increase your pet’s size by 100% and damage by 20%100% for 30 sec.

  • Stuffed on Mawrats When your pet is within 10 yds of a mawrat, your pet will immediately kill the mawrat and increase your pet’s damage by 100% for 10 sec.This can only occur once every 30 sec.

Pets

1 Like
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The Flayed shot change will help with SV single target, as well as BM and MM I would think. For SV, this is a boon.

2 Likes
3

I’m going to switch to barrage….pull all the raid trash……misdirect to my RL and feign death. Lol.

6 Likes
4

You spelled healer wrong

2 Likes
5

Lol. I love my healers. I would never endanger them. My RL, however, we all like to torture him. :wink:

4 Likes
6

Breathes heavily
Blizzard please remove the cdr cap of carve

5 Likes
7

nah just make guerilla tactis baseline and open up more options for players with either butchery or a playstyle around viper venom and hydra bite

2 Likes
8

Too bad that MM’s trick shots is excluded from this, which means that MM is not going to benefit from this change much, it is huge for BM since Beast Cleave is not uncapped.

2 Likes
9

Wildfire bombs are not getting upcapped either. If carve cdr goes unchanged it wont make much of a difference.

MM still gets uncapped multi-shot and Explosive shot.

Beast cleave getting uncapped is good but it wont put BM ahead of marks currently strong aoe.

10

Good thing they aren’t capped to begin with!

5 Likes
11

I wonder if the explosive shot uncap will apply to the necro leggo, too.

I’m guessing it would.

1 Like
12

I was also wanting to point this out. If they don’t uncap trick shots, MM will utterly wither in M+ content…

1 Like
13

Totally agree. I don’t think they need to be with wfc being uncapped already.

I was just pointing out that Trick Shots wasn’t the only thing not being uncapped cause of its potency.

I think MM will be fine with Trick Shots still being capped. Their aoe is currently incredibly strong without it and they are still getting some abilities uncapped.

1 Like
14

I hope you’re right. I remember towards the end of BFE, BM hunters were straight up superior in every way. People would reject me from groups just for being MM.

I guess we’ll see. Nothing I can do about it.

2 Likes
15

Remember too that beast cleave damage is proportional to pet melee hits which is not close to the burst damage Trick Shots+Explosive Shot can do. This buff will help BM in long aoe fights but its not a huge numerical damage boost with burst.

16

I hope they rethink the flayed shot changes. It is already turning out to be the best single target covenant ability and now they are buffing it further. Why not buff the other covenants and give us an actual choice. Venthyr vs Necro will be no different than +5 crit vs improved sap for a vanilla rogue. It is not a choice if one ability is way ahead of all others.

1 Like
17

“currently”

2 Likes
18

How much further behind is M+ BM going to get left behind after these changes?

MM is already solidly ahead.

1 Like
19

Edit:

More changes announced for the PTR

Source: https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-9-1-5-ptr-datamined-class-and-spell-changes-for-build-39977-necrolord-324021

General

Spells (2)

Note: The Death Chakram tooltip says 3%, but the spell data indicates that the buff is 10%.

  • Death Chakram Throw a deadly chakram at your current target that will rapidly deal (31.6% of Attack power) Shadow damage 7 times, bouncing to other targets if they are nearby. Enemies struck by your Death Chakram take 3% more Physical damage from you and your pet for 10 sec.
    Each time the chakram deals damage, its damage is increased by 15% and you generate 3 Focus.

    • NEW Effect #5 Apply Aura: Mod Damage From Caster % Modifies Buff Duration
      Value: 10

    • NEW Effect #6 Apply Aura: Mod Damage Taken From Caster Pet % Modifies Damage/Healing Done
      Value: 10

    • NEW Effect #7 Apply Aura: Mod Damage Taken From Caster % Modifies Damage/Healing Done

Duration changed from 0 ms to 10 sec

+Some stuff with anima powers.

20

The Death Chakram change would be more exciting if it was just damage and not classified. It has the biggest prospect for Survival Hunter AOE and multi DOTing combined with its legendary but the problem is Wildfire Bomb and Explosive Shot are both Fire damage and Serpent Sing is Nature damage. This might end up being substantial for BM hunters who apart from a couple talents (Spitting Cobra and Chimera Shot) do all our damage as physical.

I expect a lot more changes before this patch hits live servers as we haven’t seen Blizzard touch on a ton of aoe spells. They also noted in there initial blog post that they are going to be looking at a number of talents and legendary powers. Hopefully they will realize how many Hunter Legendries just don’t add much value even if we were allowed to equip a second.

That is not necessarily the case. Trick shot has been target caped at 5 for as long as I can remember. It is also likely that Multi Shot will have its cap removed and fallow the new rule set. This will benefit MM heavily because of Precise Shots which buffs Multi shots damage. Right now both BM and MM have a number of struggles when it comes to AOE. Right now I want to see some sort of AOE legendries implemented for both MM and BM. For MM something like " Multi Shot Fires and additional arrows and Trick shot dose additional damage" For BM I would like to see “Beast Cleave lasts 100% longer and dose slightly more damage.”

1 Like