Book 10 (Hunter) (2007-08-17)

Book 10 (Hunter) (2007-08-17)

Book 10: The City of Kings - Hunter Summary

There’s a lot going in for the Month of the Hunter; here’s the big picture and a few tantalizing details of what’s new for the #1 ranged damage class.

Travel

Fast travel has always been a specialty of the Hunter. Anyone can learn the way home. For the right price, a very fast horse can take you from point A to point B. However, no class but the Hunter has such broad and versatile knowledge of the land of Middle-Earth—or the ability to guide his fellows on their journey.

With the Month of the Hunter, this staple of the Hunter class improves with new and improved skills.

• Return to Camp
  • A new, floating bind point group travel skill
  • Get your group to (and out of) instances and major landscape camps fast
  • Look for new map notes to locate these camps around the world
• Group Travel Changes
  • Several of the existing Group Travel skills are available at lower levels
  • Five new Group Travel Skill Locations have been added
  • Four of the new travel skills are learned through class quests… find the quests!
• Find The Path
  • The bonus only applies when you are out-of-combat, but the skill is always on
  • Press the button once, and never worry about toggling it back on after combat
• Traveling Ration stack size increased to 50

Tracking

Hunters (and through them, their fellowship members) know the joy of tracking to find just the target you want. New improvements to the experience of tracking give the Hunter more information about their quarry… and even allow them to share that information more readily with their fellows!

• We now display more information on tracked creatures, and you can sort by any column
  • Monster name has level-relative conning coloration (like you’d see over its head)
  • The challenge level of the monster, such as Normal or Elite, is now displayed
  • The approximate distance at the time of tracking is displayed in a third column
• Sharing Tracked Targets
  • Advanced Hunters can share the location and name of their tracked targets with other members of their fellowship on their mini-maps
• “Passage of Nature” can now track Dragon-kind
  • Now, find your worms, salamanders, and drakes… in addition to beasts, insects, and creatures of nature!
• “Passage of Foes” can now track Giants
  • They may not be as evil or mean as Orcs, but they can still be trouble…. Oh, and they leave really big tracks!

Traps, Oils, and Bow Chants

Ever resourceful, the Hunter can make use of many different tools wrought by the hands of skillful craftsmen. Improvements and new additions to the line up of consumable items allow the Hunter to push harder and focus their skills.

• The duration of Fire and Light Oils has increased dramatically
  • The shortest duration oil now lasts for 5 minutes (yes, minutes!) not 10 seconds
  • Oils will now last for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, up to 15 minutes at the highest tier
• The clever Weaponsmiths of the world have devised new kinds of traps
  • The Quick Trap drops without any induction
  • The Strong Trap doesn’t trap as long, but it isn’t broken by damage
  • The Lure Trap draws the aggro of animals until the trap is destroyed
  • The Tripwire gives you a chance to open a Fellowship Maneuver on a target (it won’t do it every time, and it will only be usable out of combat)
• There are also new tiers of existing traps
  • Lower tier traps have always had a higher chance of being resisted by monster of higher levels, the new tiers give you a better chance of success against higher level monsters
• A new kind of Hunter-only consumable item crafted by Scholars: Bow Chants
  • 5 new items which empower your ranged weapon in different ways—pick the right Chant for the right job!
    • Foe-finder – Reduced chance for targets to evade bow skills
    • Shield-bane – Reduced chance for targets to block bow skills
    • Breach-finder – Bypass some of target’s damage mitigation
    • Wind-rider – Reduced power cost of bow skills
    • Whisper-draw – Reduced threat generated by bow skills
  • These buffs last for 20 minutes so each one goes a long way

Bows and Crossbows

Long has the debate raged over which implement was the superior weapon. With the Month of the Hunter’s changes, we have decided to make the crossbow a weapon with consistent damage and the bow one with more variability but with the possibility of bigger numbers. What does this mean in game terms?

Damage:

• Bows have a greater variance in damage: the highs are higher, the lows are lower
• Conversely, crossbows have a narrower variance

Speed:

• Bows now exist at both extremes of speed, both the fastest and slowest ranged weapons are bows
• Conversely, crossbows have a narrower range of speeds

The biggest damage numbers will come from bows rather than crossbows—call it the power of the archer’s art. However, if random number generators hate you, the crossbow limits your lows as much as it does your highs.

If you want the fastest possible weapon, or the slowest possible weapon—both will now be bows. This represents that bows may be fired very fast, or that you can take your time. Crossbows are simple to use but are less flexible, and therefore have speeds more toward the middle range of bows.

Ultimately, you may find the special properties of a particular weapon out weighs preferences you may have for speed or damage variance. Then again, maybe you’ll steer clear of one or the other because of personal preference.

New Skills

As mentioned above, the Hunter is getting a bunch of new travel skills:

• Return to Camp – Travel with your fellowship to your current campsite bind point
• Guide to Michel Delving – Instant fellowship travel to Michel Delving in the Shire
• Guide to Ost Guruth – Instant fellowship travel to Ost Guruth in the Lonelands
• Guide to Evendim – Instant fellowship travel to Evendim
• Guide to West Angmar – Instant fellowship travel to a safe haven in Western Angmar
• Guide to East Angmar – Instant fellowship travel to the Eastern reaches of Angmar

In addition to the travel-skills mentioned above, we’ve made new combat-oriented skills:

• Heart Seeker – A large damage, long cooldown, long induction “mega-nuke” attack
• Strength of the Earth – An In-Combat Power Regen Channelling Skill
• Set Snare – A new “free” trap skill which slows and applies sizable damage over time

Tweaks and Changes

We also made a number of smaller changes to existing skills, traits, and more:

• Lowered the level where Hunters acquire the Dual-Wield trait (from 20 to 15)
• Increased power restored by Intent Concentration when the relevant Trait is slotted
• Increased the duration of the Beneath Notice skill when the relevant Trait is slotted
• Train “Rapid Recovery” grants a greater reduction time to your recovery (from 1.2s to 2s).
• Normalized the “Focus” point costs of skills, Rain of Arrows went from 4 to 3, Merciful Shot went from 5 to 6
• Reduced the frequency that the “Enduring Precision” trait allows you to gain Focus pips from one every 5 seconds to one every 10 seconds
• Some traveling skills now require more rations than others. Traveling to Angmar is a more perilous and taxing journey than visiting the Shire!
• Updated category listings in the Auction House to put “Oils and Chants” in a category under class items, also moved the “Traps” category under the class items group
• Placing a crafted trap whose effect breaks on damage will now disable the Hunter’s auto-attack to help avoid freeing newly trapped targets!