WoD Updates: Kurn's Corner and Stat Attunements

Over at Kurn's Corner,  she's got a great write up of first impressions of the Warlords of Draenor Alpha.

Of huntering importance, there's a new visual for Freezing Trap, which is awesome.  I'm not even going to admit how many times I've gotten confused whether someone was trapped or a mage was using Ice Block in a battlegrounds.

Be sure to check out the article if you're interested in a hunter's view of the alpha!

Stat Attunements
In other Alpha news, yesterday's build brought us a new feature in Stat Attunement, which gives each spec a bonus to a different secondary stat.  

Beast Mastery

• Mastery Attunement You gain 5% more of the Mastery stat from all sources. Hunter - Beast Mastery Spec.

Marksmanship

• Critical Strike Attunement You gain 5% more of the Critical Strike stat from all sources. Hunter - Marksmanship Spec.

Survival

• Multistrike Attunement You gain 5% more of the Multistrike stat from all sources. Hunter - Survival Spec.

This is an interesting new way to differentiate specs.   If it's unclear, this is a buff to the amount of the listed stat,  it's not a flat 5% increase to the total percent.  This means that while they won't do much starting off, they'll end up being much more useful toward the end of the expansion when we're seeing higher amounts of secondary stats.  

As hunter stats work now, they're close enough in value that this will most likely make the assigned Attunement stat the most valuable stat to get on gear, since it will give you more than the generally allocated stat.   I'll be curious how this will affect gear distribution in raid, especially in progression oriented mythic teams.   Will we be back to specific gear for specific classes, regardless of the changing primary stats?   Possibly,  though for hunters, at least, I can't imagine this could make a large enough difference that a secondary stat would cause a lower Agi (lower ilvl) item to be worth more than a higher Agi piece.