As I stated in my “Grand Reopening” post, I've become a little more involved in the PvP community than I once was. I'm still working on getting my pvp gear together. Currently, I'm using the Swiftarrow gear that my wife made me on her druid. My total resilience is a whopping 299! Yes, I know that is a horribly low number, no need to point it out to me. If you've looked at my armory page you'll also notice that I'm in a 2v2 team now as well. The team consists of my wife's resto druid, myself and a night elf rogue friend of mine. We basically just take turns getting our 10 games in for the week. The first week I participated in the arena matches we ended the week with a score of 2-8. 2 wins, 8 losses. This is mainly due to our rating being higher than our gear range. The following week my wife and I did our 10 games and finished up 7-3, much better than the previous week. I'm hoping to get into a 3v3 and maybe even a 5v5 team to get more arena points. In a few weeks I should have enough arena points to start getting an actual pvp set together. It'll be much faster than grinding the massive amounts of honor needed to purchase the pvp gear with just honor points. I've currently got about 53k saved up.
Another interesting development, I've finally been all the way to Kel'Thuzad in 10man Naxx! This last run got me my Wraith Spear, and my T7 shoulders!! (I'm going to be overhauling the site soon so I should be able to get my item links and stuff working again...) I really need to do more heroics and try to get the rest of my emblems of heroism so I can get my t7 chest piece. At the moment I've got 51 emblems of heroism, and 10 emblems of valor. I'm seriously debating on trading in my 10 valor for heroism. I don't really get to do much 25man content, aside from Sartharion and Vault. Still on the fence about the trade off though.
Ok, the patch notes. Here is how I feel about the possible upcoming changes:
“Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.”
Wow. This reminds of back when I played EQ and finally got my Endless Quiver ability. I had one super arrow that I kept in my ammo slot and that was it. I had others that I carried for their elemental damage properties, but they rarely saw action. Prior to gaining this ability I had an item that allowed me to summon arrows, and it took forever. I'm interested to see how they implement the ranged attack speed increase from quivers/ammo pouches, but all in all I've got mixed emotions about this one. On one hand it will be nice to have that other bag space available, but I don't really miss it. Not once have I complained about my bag space compared to that of my DK.
“A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.”
I'm glad to see that Blizzard realized they tried to beat the BM hunters to death with the nerf bat instead of the usual love taps they typically passed out. The new tier of pet talents, which will really only benefit BM hunters with their 51 point talent is supposed to give pets a fairly decent DPS boost, no word on the tenacity tree though. Yes, I'm sure non-BM hunters will be able to get into the new tier, but it will take some serious point shuffling to get into it, and probably not enough to justify spending the points. They are more proposed changes to the BM tree, but this is the only consistent change I've seen, and I'd rather not post any more misleading information than necessary.
“Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter. Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.”
I'm not sure if the change to Hunting Party is going to be a buff or a nerf at this point. The passive benefit, depending on what exactly it is, will be interesting. Currently I've only got 2 points spent in this talent and I usually get about 75 mana per tick. I might just go ahead and max it out after the change and drop that point I've got in IAotH. The change to sniper training is definitely going to hit PvPers with this talent where it hurts. I rarely get the change to stand still for more than 2 seconds in PvP, especially arena matches. It may very well end up being an overall PvE nerf as well, as many boss fights don't allow you to stand in one place for an extended period of time. I guess it's a good thing I've been practicing my trap dancing.
Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
I haven't been deep enough into marksman in a long while, so I'm not really concerned about this one. Rogues won't like it, but then again rogues don't really like anything about hunters. I'm personally going to stick with my Wyrven Sting. It will however give MM hunters a nice boost in PvE as well.
I can only hope that the upcoming changes will actually balance out the class. I've never really liked the “one beat-all” spec. I'm enjoying my time as a Survival hunter, but I resented the fact that I had to spec that way to be a viable choice for raid DPS. If we actually get our Dual Specs in patch 3.1 I'll most likely have a BM build and a PvP build. Only time will tell. Till next time, take care and happy hunting!
