A lot of changes were added to the World of Warcraft Season of Discovery Phase 4 PTR. As per the dev team, Hunters would see tons of changes, given how SoD created the melee hunter playstyle. Given how undertuned ranged Hunters are, the community shared their feedback regarding the balancing decisions, which ultimately led to the WoW Classic team providing lots of insight into their design philosophy.
Having that in mind, we will take a look at all of the PTR changes that were added so we can have a better understanding as to how we can expect Hunters to perform in Season of Discovery Phase 4.
Advertisement
WoW SoD Phase 4 PTR Hunter Changes
Hunter
- All hunter traps are now usable in combat in Season of Discovery
- The Rapid Killing rune now also causes rapid fire to increase melee attack speed as well.
- Cobra Slayer has been redesigned:
- Mongoose Bite now has a 5% chance to activate on each of your melee attacks and a 100% chance when the enemy dodges. This chance accumulates, with the chance rising by 5% from each subsequent attack it does not reset. Mongoose Bite also deals additional damage equal to 40% of your Attack Power.
- The damage bonus for not having a pet with the Lone Wolf rune has been increased to 40%
- The Cobra Strikes rune effect may now also be triggered with critical hits from “strike” abilities (Raptor Strike and Wyvern Strike)
- The Cooldown of Wyvern Strike has been reduced to 8 seconds and the damage over time effect is no longer considered a sting and is now a bleed effect.
- The Chimera Shot interaction with Wyvern Strike has been removed.
- Carve has been redesigned:
- Carve now requires a target and deals 100% weapon damage to the Hunter’s Primary target and 65% weapon damage to secondary targets.
- Flanking Strike now increases all damage done by 5% per stack instead of 10% for Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike. It now has a 33% chance to reset from pet basic attacks instead of Raptor Strike hits.
- Kill Shot will now induce a 15 second cooldown on the ability when an item with this rune engraved on it is equipped.
- The Hit and Run rune now grants the hunter 15% additional movement speed for 8 seconds (up from 4 seconds).
- Trueshot Aura no longer grants melee attack power and now only grants ranged attack power.
- The melee attack power granted by trueshot aura is now granted by Heart of the Lion instead.
The following talents now also affect melee attacks and abilities for hunters:
- Efficiency – Reduces the cost of Shots, Stings, and Strikes
- Lethal Shots – Increases Ranged and melee critical strike chance
- Mortal Shots – Increases your ranged and melee weapon critical strike damage bonus
And that covers all of the Hunter class changes that were added to the World of Warcraft Season of Discovery Phase 4 PTR. As with all updates to the PTR, every adjustment is subject to change. The devs are working hard on making sure that every class gets to have fun in the final phase, so we might expect even more exciting changes in the near future. You can also check out the official development notes for more information regarding the thought process behind these changes, here.
Advertisement
