Patch 3.3 has officially arrived, but what does this mean for you and your hunter? Here are the changes that will affect you.
Starting from the top of the patch notes:
Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.
I guess Onyxia will no longer be knocking our pets around. I don’t think they ever spawned whelps, but either way, good news for pets.
Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.
This is a nerf to all forms of AOE, not just Volley. To put it simply, they are capping the amount of damage AOE can do. So I guess no more huge DPS spikes on large AOE Packs.
Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.
Now pets may last 2 seconds instead of 1 in PvP. Seriously though, this is good news for PvP hunters. It’s also good for those Hunter’s that like to solo harder stuff with a pet tank.
Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
Swap pets more often! While this isn’t the great news ever, it does make playing with different pets for different encounters more likely. Maybe try a bear on AOE packs for Thunderstomp and Swipe. Or whip out a Crab for the Faction Champions. Then easily slip back into your Ferocity pet of choice. Fun times.
Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
This is our own little immunity field now. Now even other hunters can’t hurt us with Deterrence up.
Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
This is the shit. No more will you worry about hitting some low aggro shot and consuming a MD charge. When cause damage to the target, for the next 4 seconds, all aggro will transfer to the tank. That means you want to unload fast! When you’re starting an encounter, try placing an immolation/explosive trap and maybe even a snake trap (Snakes!) at the feet of your tank. Cast MD and when the tank (or you) pulls, even trap damage should count towards his aggro. What’s better, all hunters can do this, not just one. This is probably one of the best changes in the patch for us.
Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.
Basically it means quicker Intimidation. Which is good if you’re trying to interrupt a spell. Good stuff.
(Pet) Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
This gives us some more pet talent points to play with and doesn’t take away Avoidance. It does kind of suck for PvP hunters, but hopefully the resilience scaling will make up for this loss.
(Pet) Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
This is a welcome change as cower has been pretty useless for… well, as far as I can tell, forever. Going to be hard to manage it in some fights, but if you know there is a period in a boss fight where damage risks get high, it could be helpful. I see this mostly be useful for Hunters that like to tank with their pets.
(Pet) Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
This is just a straight up buff to hunters. While BM Hunter’s pets crit more often, the duration of the buff should make this good for all hunters.
(Pet) Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
This makes your Vultures pets more attractive if someone in the raid isn’t providing this debuff.
(Pet) Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
Not seeing a good reason for taking this, but it complements the new cower well.
Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
Getting new pets shouldn’t be as much of a grid anymore.
(Pet) Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
(Pet) Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
Mo range. Mo better.
(Pet) Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.
Damage buff to Cunning Pets.
Also, there were a number of Hunter Bug Fixes:
Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
Explosive Trap: The damage from this trap will now scale properly with the hunter’s attack power.
Glyph of Immolation Trap: Now properly increases damage by 100%. In addition, this glyph will now modify the tooltip of Immolation Trap correctly.
Glyph of Mending: This glyph will now modify the amount healed in the tooltip on Mend Pet.
Point of No Escape: It is no longer possible to gain benefit from this talent multiple times by having a target affected by multiple of the same hunter’s traps. In addition, Freezing Arrow will no longer incorrectly provide a critical strike bonus to players beyond the hunter with this talent.
Roar of Sacrifice: Corrected tooltip error.
Silencing Shot: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
Volley: The tooltip for this ability will now update properly from haste.
This is mostly just affect playing the Hunter class. There are ton of new changes and additions to the game. I’d suggest giving the full patch notes a read to learn more about Icecrown Citadel, other classes changes, and the new Dungeon Finder.
