Updated August 11

This week’s Beta and PTR builds include some updates for Marksmanship Hunters, notably their generation and spending of Focus, and updates to some of the more problematic talents.

In Battle for Azeroth, Rapid Fire’s focus generation and the Master Marksman talent increase the amount of available Focus you have a by a decent amount, which almost pushes Steady Shot’s Focus generation away from being necessary at all. Now:

• Aimed Shot Focus Cost increased to 35 (was 30).
• Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot Focus cost increased to 20 (was 15).
• Rapid Fire duration lowered to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds). Total damage dealt by Rapid Fire should be unchanged.

The above changes should cause you to spend a bit more Focus, and passively generate less from Rapid Fire.

Several talent changes are also coming to both prop up some underused talents, and replace others:

Level 15 Row:

• Redesigned: Master Marksman (Passive) – Your critical shots cause your target to bleed for 15% of the damage dealt over 6 seconds.
• Serpent Sting’s duration increased to 18 seconds (was 12 seconds).

Level 25 Row:

• Careful Aim has had the low health benefit removed as it felt redundant with Kill Shot returning. Additionally, the high health threshold has been lowered to 70% (was 80%).

Level 35 Row:

• Redesigned: Steady Focus – Casting Steady Shot twice in a row now increases your haste by 7% for 10 seconds.
• Redesigned: Streamline (Passive) – Rapid Fire damage is increased by 15%, and Rapid Fire now also reduces the cast time of your next Aimed Shot by 30%.
• Chimaera Shot now replaces Arcane Shot.
  • Chimaera Shot’s cooldown has been removed for Marksmanship Hunters. It has a Focus cost of 20.
  • Chimaera Shot should work with everything that Arcane Shot works with, such as Precise Shots, or any Torghast Power, or Legendary effect.
  • Chimera Shot no longer causes both the Frost and Nature attack to hit a single target. This is a bug fix.

Level 45 Row

• Lethal Shots proc chance has been increased to 30% (was 20%).

Level 50 Row

• Lock and Load’s proc chance has been increased to 8% (was 5%).

The above talent changes should open up some diversity in talent choices, and Chimaera Shot replacing Arcane shot opens up some alternate 2-target cleave options without increasing your action bar bloat.

April 9

In this thread, we’re discussing Hunter class changes coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Read more about initial class changes in the World of Warcraft blog.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this class as they are made.

Thank you for your testing and feedback!

This week’s Beta and PTR builds include some updates for Marksmanship Hunters, notably their generation and spending of Focus, and updates to some of the more problematic talents.

In Battle for Azeroth, Rapid Fire’s focus generation and the Master Marksman talent increase the amount of available Focus you have a by a decent amount, which almost pushes Steady Shot’s Focus generation away from being necessary at all. Now:

• Aimed Shot Focus Cost increased to 35 (was 30).
• Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot Focus cost increased to 20 (was 15).
• Rapid Fire duration lowered to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds). Total damage dealt by Rapid Fire should be unchanged.

The above changes should cause you to spend a bit more Focus, and passively generate less from Rapid Fire.

Several talent changes are also coming to both prop up some underused talents, and replace others:

Level 15 Row:

• Redesigned: Master Marksman (Passive) – Your critical shots cause your target to bleed for 15% of the damage dealt over 6 seconds.
• Serpent Sting’s duration increased to 18 seconds (was 12 seconds).

Level 25 Row:

• Careful Aim has had the low health benefit removed as it felt redundant with Kill Shot returning. Additionally, the high health threshold has been lowered to 70% (was 80%).

Level 35 Row:

• Redesigned: Steady Focus – Casting Steady Shot twice in a row now increases your haste by 7% for 10 seconds.
• Redesigned: Streamline (Passive) – Rapid Fire damage is increased by 15%, and Rapid Fire now also reduces the cast time of your next Aimed Shot by 30%.
• Chimaera Shot now replaces Arcane Shot.
  • Chimaera Shot’s cooldown has been removed for Marksmanship Hunters. It has a Focus cost of 20.
  • Chimaera Shot should work with everything that Arcane Shot works with, such as Precise Shots, or any Torghast Power, or Legendary effect.
  • Chimera Shot no longer causes both the Frost and Nature attack to hit a single target. This is a bug fix.

Level 45 Row

• Lethal Shots proc chance has been increased to 30% (was 20%).

Level 50 Row

• Lock and Load’s proc chance has been increased to 8% (was 5%).

The above talent changes should open up some diversity in talent choices, and Chimaera Shot replacing Arcane shot opens up some alternate 2-target cleave options without increasing your action bar bloat.

A hotfix is on the way to remove an incorrect additional -50% Focus Regen modifier for Survival Hunters. After this change Survival Hunters should be back to 5.0 Focus/sec, before Haste.

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

This is a bug that will be fixed in an upcoming build.

What is not functional about it?

BM Hunters using Arcane Shot over Cobra Shot is not intended. Numbers will be adjusted in an upcoming build to fix this.

@Moofzy (and others) Thanks for the detailed bug reports. They have all been forwarded on to make sure they are tracked and fixed as appropriate.

Several fixes were made in the last week for harpoon. Where is it not currently working for you?
Focus regen should have been hotfixed last week, and the build that was pushed today should correctly have you at 5 Focus per second (before haste).

Which spells are asking for odd weapon requirements?

Will get Flayed Shot looked into. It should work with basically any weapon equpiped.

I don’t specifically know why these would not be on the vendor, but have forwarded it on.

Both of these will be fixed in some upcoming build.
edit: referring to Chimaera Shot and MM Mastery, and True Aim not working with Chimaera shot.

Regardless of who Flayed Shot’s bleed is on, it should be resetting the cooldown of Kill Shot when it activates. If the target is 20% or lower HP, it should just increase the frequency of available Kill Shots by resetting the remaining cooldown of Kill Shot. if the target is above 20% HP, it will make Kill Shot occasionally usable.

Somewhere along the lines, the old rank 2 of Cobra Shot (-10 Focus Cost) was lost. In the next build, Cobra Shot should just be 35 Focus cost baseline.

The Kyrian Covenant ability Resonating Arrow has received several changes in this week’s Shadowlands update. The radius has been increased, which should make it easier to use against targets who are near the pillars in maps such as Nagrand Arena. Additionally, when a target leaves the Resonating Arrow area, the effect that allows you to ignore line of sight towards them will last for an additional 4 seconds.

Flayed Shot has had a minor update that makes the bonus Kill Shot no longer cost any Focus, so it can be used more freely.

We’ve implemented many bug fixes to Death Chakram, and it will no longer chain to targets that are under crowd control effects that break upon taking damage.

The design of Wild Spirits has been simplified quite a bit. Now, when you cast the ability, all targets in the area now take some immediate Nature damage. Any ability you use, including Kill Command, will now cause up to 5 targets in the area to take extra Nature damage. This extra Nature damage will ignore targets that are currently affected by crowd control effects that break upon taking damage. There is no longer any difference in behavior when using single target versus area damage with this ability.

Wild Spirits dealing damage AoE damage multiple times from a single button press (rapid fire, volley, barrage, etc) is not intended, a hotfix will be sent for this.

What is actually happening in this clip?

Hello.

In this week’s PTR and Shadowlands Beta builds, the 5% bonus damage component has been removed from the Hunter’s Mark ability.

Hunter’s Mark is a cool Hunter class ability with unique functionality that we don’t want to get rid of, so we’re adjusting it to be solely for utility as its core functionality.

Hunter’s Mark will remain on the GCD, and it will still provide visibility against a stealthed target.

Hello.

We’ve seen a lot of feedback about the Trueshot ability and the lack of available Focus to use abilities. In this latest build of the Shadowlands Beta:

• While Trueshot is active, all Focus generated is increased by 50% from abilities such as Steady Shot, and your passive Focus regeneration is also increased by 50% for its duration.

There is a meaningful change that should be highlighted here, among the other adjustments from late last week. As you know, the Necrolord ability Death Chakram had its damage increased by 10% and the Night Fae ability Wild Spirits had its damage increased by 10%. At the same time,

• The Venthyr ability Flayed Shot had its chance to generate a free Kill Shot increased.

We saw a lot of feedback that Resonating Arrow’s ability to stack with and amplify other class cooldowns made it feel too much more attractive than the other Convenants, and this should somewhat address that.

Please note that we’re fixing a bug with the Night Fae ability Wild Spirits. It is not intended to deal area damage for each target hit by Explosive Shot. After this bugfix (very soon), it will deal area damage once per Explosive Shot cast.