World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

The Public Test Realms (PTR) are seeing several changes for Marksmanship Hunters. Here’s some context on those changes.

One goal of ours for Marksmanship is proficiency in keeping targets at range in PvE and PvP situations. Marksmanship plays best when you have distance from your target, so we’re emphasizing some of the tools that help you either move a target away from you, or keep your distance.

• Bursting Shot has had its knockback range increased, can no longer be dodged, and snares targets for 6 seconds now.

• Steady Shot will now increase the duration of Concussive Shot on the target by 3 seconds. This will work on a Concussive Shot from any friendly Hunter, not just your own Concussive Shot.

Rapid Fire has had some usability problems in PvP. Most other channeled spells will continue to deal damage when your target runs behind a pillar and breaks line of sight, but Rapid Fire requires constant line of sight. We’re changing that, and now it will behave like almost every other channeled spell that players cast, and will continue to damage a target, even if the target is no longer in line of sight. We also think it’s cool to be able to use Disengage while channeling Rapid Fire, so now you can.

Aimed Shot is a driving force behind a significant amount of the damage a Marksmanship Hunter deals. There are a lot of different stacking bonuses you can get from various Talents and Azerite Armor that can swing the damage of Aimed Shot by a huge amount. Some of these bonuses are entirely uncontrolled, which made Aimed Shot an unreliable source of damage. We want Aimed Shot to feel like an impactful and more reliable source of damage, so:

• Careful Aim is now a guaranteed bonus to Aimed Shot damage against targets above 80% health or below 20% health.

Trueshot has changed a lot over the years, but it’s currently not a very exciting button, and it could feel much more impactful when you use it. We like that it makes your Aimed Shot cast time reduced, so we’re keeping that, and it now additionally causes your Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot abilities to recharge significantly faster while Trueshot is active. The new version of Trueshot is a significant pacing change for its duration, allowing you to cast multiple Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires during its duration. We’re also lowering its cooldown from 3 minutes to 2 minutes.

The changes to Resto Shaman in the PTR is CHAIN HEAL CENTRIC.

• Chain Heal Heals the friendly target for [ 105% [ 140% of Spell Power ], then jumps to heal the most injured nearby party or raid members. Healing is reduced by 15% after each jump. Heals 3 total targets then jumps to 2 most injured nearby allies. Healing is reduced by 30% with each jump. Shaman - Restoration Spec. Shaman - Restoration Spec. 25% of Base Mana. 40 yd range. 2.5 sec cast.
• High Tide Chain Heal bounces to 1 additional targets, and its falloff with each bounce is reduced by half Every 0 mana you spend brings a High Tide, making your next 2 Chain Heals heal for an additional 20% and not reduce with each jump. Restoration Shaman - Level 100 Talent. Restoration Shaman - Level 100 Talent.1% of Base Mana.

Just to avoid any confusion that may be occurring due to tooltips on PTR:

• Chain Heal's base functionality is unchanged, other than receiving a large healing increase (roughly speaking, baking in most of the value of the previous High Tide).
• High Tide is redesigned, but is still a passive--the mana cost in the tooltip header is an error.

Brief context: as a passive buff to every Chain Heal, High Tide was putting it in an awkward position where the base skill wasn't very prominent in the toolkit if you used other talents. The goal here is to both put Chain Heal back on the map while using Ascendance or Wellspring in any type of content, and also provide a talent option which allows for strong moments centered around very large Chain Heals.

Usual PTR disclaimers: still under iteration, open to feedback, not necessarily tuned.

BlizzCon Q&A
I havent watched the wow panel the last year because I was not playing much wow and didn't originally plan to come back (but the free weekend in June roped me in)

Anyway, usually they open to questions from the audience, do you think they will legit answer questions or beat around the bush more and give no real solid reply?

I don't play the classes or specs that are having issues but its so noticable the issues that marks hunters have and shadow priests. I know balancing so many classes has to be hard but come on now.
It's questions that attendees and submit via a box on Day 1, along with a post that we will put up on the forums where you guys can ask questions. Same as last year.

As for the curation, yes we obviously have to dig through and filter questions because we do have a limited time and we want to get to some relevant questions based on what we're talking about and the things that we know are up and coming. If you're watching that Q&A and expecting a mechanical deep dive of questions then you're going to be disappointed as those are just not easily answered on the spot like that in a live Q&A. I would recommend looking up a video of it from previous years in case you're curious.

I hope the duck guy finally returns and we find out the fishing lure wasn't good enough for him. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)