Arena 2200 Weapons (
Source)
They should be available now. We'll be watching just in case any further issues arise with these vendors.
Hunter
Recent hunter hotfixes (
Source)
That's mostly on target, but there's a little more to it. We actually
had a few different goals with these hotfixes. While it’s true that we
wanted to reduce Marksmanship burst in PvP, that’s only part of the
story; we equally wanted to make Survival and Beast mastery more
attractive choices in PvE. That involved bringing Marksmanship damage
down a bit in fights where little or no movement is required, and
reducing the amount of Aimed Shot spam once mobs drop below 80%.
Marksmanship's burst damage in PvP was indeed higher than we wanted, and
we felt that Aimed Shot was the best place to bring burst back into
line, so we've reduced its damage, including the Aimed Shot! generated
by the Master Marksman proc, by about 20%. To help compensate for the
loss of dps and improve Survival and Beast Mastery output, Aspect of the
Hawk should now provide 2000 attack power at level 85. This will also
make the talent One with Nature more powerful as well. The net effect of
the change to Aspect of the Hawk should result in a buff to Survival
and Beast Mastery in PvE and (in combination with the Aimed Shot nerf) a
slight reduction to PvE Marksmanship dps. The changes should also make
Aimed Shot less attractive once a target drops below 80% health and
Careful Aim no longer applies.
This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter
shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have
always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this
does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to
Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes,
Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in
reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds. Now that it is
listed at 2.4 seconds, the actual cast time is now closer to 2.9, which
is where we want it to be. We realize this caused some confusion (even
for us), and we’re going to see if we can make the 0.5 second delay more
visible in the future.
Finally, we also wanted to let you know that Deterrence is functioning
properly: Deterrence now provides 100% miss chance rather than 100%
parry chance and remains in effect even if the hunter's weapon is
disarmed, but it's still possible to temporarily delay a hunter’s use of
Deterrence with the judicious use of disarm effects. In combination
with some of the recent adjustments to melee mobility, Deterrence should
still be more effective overall. We'll continue to keep an eye on it.
Deterrence in 4.0.6 (
Source)
In the past Deterrence provided 100% parry, which could only be
performed with a melee weapon equipped. Now it provides 100% miss
chance, which means that your avoidance will still work.
The real issue is that some attacks, especially rogue attacks like Cheap
Shot, could not be parried. Therefore a rogue could Cheap Shot through
Deterrence, which totally countered the intent of Deterrence as a melee
defense. With this change, Cheap Shot should correctly miss a hunter
under Deterrence.
Wait, is that all ranged attack or ranged physical attacks?
It applies to attacks based on the ranged weapon slot. Those are not the
same as spells, and this largely applies to hunters. Other non-spell
ranged attacks in the game tend to use the melee weapon (like Shattering
Throw) or are instant (like Fan of Knives).
Aspect of the Hawk change and stance dancing (
Source)
Are you aware how the change to aspect of the hawk promotes stance
dancing for hunters again in PVP? This was a mechanic you wanted to
avoid in WotLK by introducing Dragonhawk, a combination of monkey and
hawk. Now its returned and its annoying.
Changing aspects appropriate to what you're doing isn't necessarily a
problem. With the old Aspect of the Monkey, hunters would swap only when
being attacked until they could make some space again. Ideally, a
hunter who changes Aspects intends to stay in that Aspect for a little
while, at least. Aspects cost a global cooldown, so using an aspect for
only a very brief period of time, then that may not be the best
decision.
We're okay with players making a tactical decision between a high
damage, but less mobile Aspect, and an Aspect that offers mobile damage
and focus generation.
Mage
Ignite munching (
Source)
Since the design of Ignite doesn’t allow us to resolve munching (defined
as multiple simultaneous crits that fail to properly proc Ignite)
directly, we’re thinking about a solution that would instead prevent
Ignite from proc’ing on periodic crits. This might be a minor dps loss,
but possibly no dps loss at all since it would stop most cases of
munching. If it turned out to be a dps loss, we could compensate for it
elsewhere. You're likely to see some experimenting in future patch PTRs.
This is a pretty good example of something we can't hotfix, or rather
wouldn't try. It’s the kind of change that would likely have
unpredictable side-effects.
