Hunters and 4.0.1Follow

With the new patch projected to be released tomorrow there is a lot of updates happening to hunters that you should all be aware about.

1. Talent System - As most of you should know by now there is a new 41 point system system with 31 point trees. You have to put 31 points in a single tree before you can move on to a second tree. This pretty much prevents any hybrid builds, which is perfectly fine, I don't think you would want to dip half way down 2 trees anyways.

2. Focus - There is no more mana for hunters, we can now stop complaining about going oom half way through a fight and losing precious dps going into Aspect of the Viper. With that, any spells or abilities dealing with mana have been removed. Focus is what our pets have been using this entire time and it works just like energy does. It regens over time and we have 2 shots that cost no focus and give us 9 focus instantly, Cobra and Steady Shot.

3. Glyphs - A lot of glyphs have changed around. They have a new tier of glyphs called prime glyphs. These effect our damage dealing shots mostly. You also no longer have to buy multiple glyphs if you ever need to replace you. Once you learn a glyph you can replace it and go back to it later. All you need it a dust of disappearance from any inscription vendor.

4. Stats - Armor Penetration is no longer a stat. All arp gems have been replaced by crit. On gear if the piece already had crit it was turned to haste and if it already had haste it was turned to crit. Same goes for the trinkets like NES, Runestone, Banner of Victory, and so on.

There is also a new stat called mastery. Each spec is given a different mastery. They are unique to that spec and can be pretty beneficial. Gear found around level 78 will start carrying the mastery stats.

5. Gems - Agility gems are still red. Haste and mastery are yellow. Hit is now blue.

6. Reforging - This allows you to reforge a secondary stat to another secondary stat. You can reforge up to 40% of that stat. Meaning if you have 100 hit on a piece you can reforge 40 of that hit into another secondary stat.

For hunters that would be: crit, haste, mastery, and hit.

7. Pets - The new pet abilities will be available and ready to use. Along with the new Call Pet system which allows you to hold onto 5 pets for easy changing and allows you to hold 20 pets at the stable master.

8. Currency Changes - Currency is being converted to a new points system. As of 4.0.1 Frost and Triumph badges will be converted to Justice Points (JP) which will be used for the first tier of raiding. In raids you will acquire Valor Points (VP). Honor will also be converted into an Honor Points system. All points will have a cap. I know JP caps at 4000. I'm not sure about the rest.

All other emblems below triumph will be converted into gold.

9. Ammo - There is also no more ammo so you can vendor all left over arrows and bullets. Thanks Sandinmygum for pointing that out.

While there have been a lot of tweaking in numbers I believe you will now see a diversity in specs. With the changes BM and SV have become more in tune with the MM spec and you won't see every hunter running MM just to be the best in DPS. It will take a lot of tuning to get rotations/priorities down so be patient.

EDIT: Forgot currency changes, and ammo.

Edited, Oct 11th 2010 9:51pm by Hyolith

So, does Ammo DPS get added into Guns, or something?

What I enjoyed, is sometimes you can craft Ammo, and be able to use them at their minimum level.

For example, my 69 hunter has a whole slew of Mammoth Cutters he made while leveling his engineering in the bank. They are Lv72 and have quite a large boost over the ammo you'd normally buy at that level.

I'll just lose that when Cataclysm comes and my Lv70-ish quested gun will act like I'm using vendor ammo instead? That's part of what makes me nervous about the Ammo change. That's a decent DPS loss right there.

They could have made, instead, an Ammo Slot (that takes the place of a Relic/Libram/Sigil slot) that you equip a TYPE of ammo that is usually crafted or bought. Said TYPE of Ammo would be infinite, and still allow you to grind dungeons, etc, for it. Say, a "Mammoth Cutter" would be "Box of Mammoth Cutters" that never runs out.

I think that would have been a better way to do it IMO.

Are they updating hunter gears? I don't need intellect anymore.

I think enhancement shamans are going to be like ret paladins now. Where they still use mana but don't need or want it on their gear. Hunters and enhance shamans will probably still use the same gear.