With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm many game elements will be changing, and each class will be receiving a number of tweaks. Here, we will explore the changes that are being made to the gun-wielding, pet-training hunter. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the new hunter abilities!
New Hunter Abilities
Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.
Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.
Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).
Resource Mechanic Change
Here we come to the meat of the upcoming hunter changes.
* Hunters will no longer use mana; instead the class will use Focus. Focus generates much like Energy, by building up. It will not be affected by Intellect at all. Haste will improve its generation. Hunters will generate roughly 6 Focus per second, slightly less than rogues’ Energy generation rate of around 10 Energy per second. Below, we have listed some examples of how we intend Focus costs to operate:
o Steady Shot/Cobra Shot: No cost. Generates 9 Focus per shot (or 12 per second instead of 6).
o Arcane Shot/Chimera Shot /Explosive Shot: 45 Focus.
o Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot: 60 Focus.
o Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
o Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
In addition to the resource change and new abilities listed above, we intend to make adjustments to some of the other abilities and mechanics you already know well. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we’re going for with each spec.
* A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags — though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change — and we will not be making any additional quivers.
* Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.
* Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:
o Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
o Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy’s Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Blood Frenzy).
o Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).
* Stings and other periodic effects will now benefit from haste and critical strike ratings. Hasted damage-over-time abilities do not lose duration, but instead add additional damage ticks.
* Viper Sting will now restore 9 Focus every 3 seconds.
* We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. To this end, the class will now start with ranged abilities at level 1, and we will be removing some melee abilities, such as Mongoose Bite.
New Talents and Talent Changes
* Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.
* Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.
* Rapid Recuperation will cause Rapid Fire to give 20/40/60 Focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.
* Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, and Arcane Shot.
* Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.
* Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter’s Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Beast Mastery
Ranged Damage
Haste
Pet Damage
Marksmanship
Ranged Damage
Armor Penetration
Double Shot
Survival
Ranged Damage
Ranged Critical Damage
Elemental Damage
Pet Damage: Many of the passive benefits to pet damage will no longer be available in the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, these will be provided through the new Mastery mechanic.
Double Shot: The hunter will have a chance to launch a free attack off of the global cooldown for 50% damage.
Elemental Damage: Hunter abilities such as traps, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot will do elemental damage of the following types: Improves the Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature or Shadow damage of abilities like traps, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind that what you’ve just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you’ll see these planned changes as well as others continue to develop in response to feedback and testing.
(Source)
I find it somewhat amusing that for years the hunter community (and several other classes) have been complaining that hunters with mana makes no sense and that Hunters should use energy like Rogues. Now that Blizz is going to do exactly that, everyone is QQing about how “Blizz” is stupid to come up with this.
I guess it only proves that you just can’t please people.
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Seriously, i want to know the stupid blizz employee who came up with the thought “Lets change the hunters’ mana into focus.” If they go through with this idea, im quiting my hunter and wow altogether, because if I spend hours and hours leveling another toon like i did my hunter they will prolly just nerf that too. Seriously Blizz this is not a smart idea and probably one of the worst ideas EVER!
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The focus thing pisses me off! we don’t need it, at lvl 80 you almost never go oom and when you do it’s after a long time of nuuking the hell out of it… this focus thing will remove the ability to nuke like hell for a shot while, druing bl etc…
but at low lvl it seems like a good thing, because you wonnt loose all your mana on one mob.
I’m realy happy whith hunters as they are atm, but the new ablitys seem cool.
just wondering didnt blizz say that they were removing arp? acording to this youll be needing arp in mm…
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right making hunters have focus is riducaluse its bad enough with hunters mana let alone engery/focus and also why not give them one more melee ability instead of losing one this is sooo stupid!!!!!!
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Use your ammo, stop the QQ, go shoot stuff it’s not like Cata is going to happen before I empty my 40 000 rounds into 251/264 bosses.
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DOWNSIDE:
I think these gains favor BM mostly the most none skill spec a hunter has…. Basically so huntards can raid and do little while geting more dps… Read that over mostly in BM talent tree.. Anymore people want to level up do little as possible and top DPS charts, start out in ICC after they buy gear. So yes some of these changes are bull.
If you want to be a hunter go through all the dungeon raids and learn the class like us hunters who have skill did!!
Either that or be a mage and mash 3 buttons and get top dps like they do. Very little skill needed….
Do not see much for MM spec and little for Survival. Sorry wanna to be Hunters the truth hurts.. There’s Hunters and Huntards us Hunters got where we are for a reason..
Likes:
I like the ideal of having focus and no more ammo. We’ll have to relearn a new rotation but after getting to higher levels in gear crits will take care of some focus regen. We usually start with rapid fire I don’t see why that would cost focus should help us gain focus if anything to get our rotations going. But hopefully it will be worked out.
Trap shooter sounds nice will keep us from doing all the running around we usually have to do on some of these bosses.
Pets I like as long as we keep some of the attributes that wolves have also. Again to much of a gain for BM.
Again most of the new Cataclysm seems to be just about one spec. Like to see more gains for us who grinded it out to learn the class and gained the skill to use MM spec and Survival but survival is a easy class as well can do more on the run VS MM Spec and we all know hunters have to do alot of switching and moving around for raids. Kiting and what not. Don’t make it all about the non skilled people crying they have to learn the class.
It’s what sets us apart!
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Well, I know we’re all Q.Q’ing about how we lose our Melee attacks, about how we’re moving to Focus, about how we should at least have our 8 yard dead zone removed, Q.Q, Q.Q, Q.Q. Well how about this?
in a standard hunter rotation, (I’ll use SV as an example) we open with our big shots, Serpent Sting, Explosive shot, Black Arrow, and Aimed shot if we’re spec’d into it. but what do we spam when everything is on CD? Steady Shot. and by Jove, there you go! you’re regenerating Focus at an increased rate so that when your shots get off CD you can do something! (Yes I know that just between Explosive shot and Aimed shot we’ve spent 105 focus not to mention the cost of Black Arrow, and I have a feeling all of our stings will be no cost shots)
Melee attacks: I don’t know about you guys but every time something gets too close to me I drop a frost trap and Disengage until I’m in a corner. you only really use your Melee attacks when your leveling and your pet is dead, (because you should be leveling in BM so you don’t really have to worry about your pet losing agro)Or PvP.
8 yard Deadzone: all I can say to this one is, if we want to lose the deadzone we’re going to have to lose something else as well, and that will probably be our vast array of instant cast ranged attacks. Because while a mage or lock may be able to cast at something he’s french kissing, he is CASTING, which brings up the possibility of pushback, so on so forth…
I personally don’t welcome these changes, I’ve been playing my Hunter since three months before LK was released. The only reason I’ve posted this is because I’m sick of everyone coming up with such weak complaints, Overall the framework of the system they are proposing is rather sound… at least as sound as one can hope something is, coming from Blizzard…
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I am with JR on this one, my hunter which I’ve worked hours upon hours on is going to be totally screwed if I am understanding this right. Just spent a large amount on ammo which is now worthless so gee I can sell it back for less than half what I paid for it, (sneer) isn’t that wonderful!
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I have a long history with my Hunter, maybe not as long as some people who has been playing since the beginning of WoW but my hunter has been the one and only toon I have leveled to 80 and transferred to different realms (from pvp 1-80 to pve at 80) since I began playing right before BC came out. I’ve had other toons but none have been as enjoyable to me as the Hunter has been. After reading the upcoming changes for my toon come Cat. I have some strong worries for my favorite character that I have invested years and money into. Generating focus before being able to use any of your effective shots makes it hard for us to deal effective damage right away, which has always been a strong point (one of very few) for a Hunter. To be able to use DoT’s before settling into your lower shots has always helped generate more DPS right away and sometimes can be the only chance at DPS you have til an imparing affect wears off of you. In the realm I play in its hard enough for a DPS to find a group because there are more DPS than heals or tanks… let alone Hunters, who (in most players eyes who play anything other than Hunter class) are the lowest DPS choice when it comes to raids. To know you have to wait til your focus fills up to use your effective shots makes us an even less desirable when it comes to choosing raid members. I am intrigued about the camouflage addition and from what I read I look forward to trying it out… after I completely redo both of my talent trees and figure out once again which talents will be the most effective in ranged DPS for me. Changing the pet management on us has some ups and downs. we already have the ability to call our pets at any time when we are out of combat when we hit 80 with a 5min CD. To be able to collect more than 5 pets is a cool addition, but I feel since you are nerfing Hunters in character attributes why not give them more through their pets? One of the biggest things I’ve had problems with is the fact that pets play a smaller role in the game than I think they should. If the pet dies its no big deal because the buffs they give you aren’t significant to the point you’re hurting without him. I fell in love with the rumor that you may be able to call more than one pet out, because to me it makes more sense to be able to use their attributes together and to call two pets with different attributes so that you can cover more areas of buffs and DPS. I agree with what Blaze said above, shamans can control numerous wolves for a given period of time and yet pets aren’t a key part of their character. Why not give that ability to the Hunter who HAS that key part in their character except make it so we can have two pets out full time. Yes I know that gives up way more DPS but its a higher minimum DPS that can be appealing to other players when looking for raid members. When redoing the mechanics of a character it should at least make it funner for the player of that character, not harder. I feel you are nerfing Hunters for the sake of other classes who complain about hunters in a pvp situation, and I don’t feel that to be right. When these changes come NO ONE will want a Hunter in their group for the fact they will see us as an even less desirable and lesser DPS class than we were before…. and on top of that we will have to spend a substantial amount of time and gold having to re-figure our talent trees so that our class is a functional Ranged DPS class once again… which means our main characters will be useless til we figure out what we are doing again. If you are going to change our favorite class at least ( and I urge this), at least give us something to enjoy about the change, like multiple active pets, the ability to have more than one pet out during play. I feel that is a reasonable request from us Hunter players, at least give us that after taking so much away from us. I truly hope you consider all that I have said and hope you take what I have said seriously.
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im just getting good with my hunter now im gonna have to relearn how to play this toon we already have a hard enough time keepin up with the priest’s mages and locks now way we’ll come close in dps with this focus crap i just paid out the butt for a quiver and have a shit ton of ice blade arrows that are gonna b worthless ive worked hard at getting this hunter up to where now i can run icc after this expansion i will b a libality again. this isnt fair this is my 1st toon the one i wanna play all the time but now i have to look at getting another toon as my main and all the time and effort i put into this toon was just a waist thanks alot for ruining my toon
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Blizz this is the worst idea in the long history of bad Ideas.
My hunter has been my main toon since I started playing after BC came out, and while I get better each and every day at playing my toon in either PvE or PvP you are going to make me at level 80 have to relearn how to play him, thanks alot! There goes 2 years (fun though) of my time working on him. The way it looks to me is that you are trying to (yes I know said above) fix something that is not broke, and by doing so I foresee that hunters are going to be the worst class to play simply because you are making us all relearn everything. If you want to help us or make us better why not give us more tools/shots, or make what we have better not force us to change the way we have palyed our toons for YEARS.
I do like the idea of range traps, but a rouge will disable it or warrior will just walk right thru them so that wont help in pvp
viper sting is going to give us focus, but is it going to drain mana our only tool against healers pvp
and how about this for out of the box thinking give us something that we can use to heal ourselves, go look at recount helaing done in any arenas our pets can get healed and heal themselves but nothing for us. hunters are the only class in wow that does not have at least some ability to gain life
but any way I will continue to play him and my other toons weather change be good or bad and will get him to 85 for endgame play but you read it first here patch 1.1.1.1.1 what ever hunters will get buffed because the changes you are making to them blow chunks and they are going to suck learning the quwirks that I have to forget come cata time
thanks blizz hope pallies are still fun
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You guys should nerf pallys instead of hunters…
Hot debate. What do you think?
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hmmm change to focus is going to kill hunter dps and with less focus regen then rouge well that just seems to me to be retarded you are going to cut the hunter dps by an insane amount i do not belive that the changes from mana to focus is a good idea i have played hunter for 3 years and the mana consumtion on my hunter is insane i blast threw 12k mana easy in a boss fight pulling upwards 12k dps w the focus i belive my hunter will be gimped so baddly that i will stop playing wow i do not like the idea i will try it once and if the focus gimps my toon bye bye WoW. if the focus is made to be it should be the same regen or more then the rouge the rouge have dge bosst from back attacks hunter does not have that advantange or poisons if your going to %^&* hunter at least kiss us first
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I’m not impressed, but it won’t disuade me from playing my awesome hunter. One thing that will change with Cata, that I’ve always enjoyed will be the Marksman initial ability to Spike DPS at the begining of an encounter before settling into a more controlled rotation.
Seems to me the need to be constantly replenishing ability resources instead of frantically try to empty them will cause a complete change in game play expierence, enough to kill what alot of people enjoy about there class.
Also, theres no Focus restoring buff’s coming from raid (other than Haste I suppose). All that good stuff that makes it harder to deplete my ability resources doesn’t (won’t?) apply to focus. Replenshment (which , yes is changing I know), Blessing of Wisdom, Mana Stream, Mana Tide, Arcane Intelect, Inervate (obviously, hunters aren’t a great choice but it “could” be used on one) Blessing of Kings all help maintain / increase ability resources for the current Hunter will be lost or need to change to include focus.
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First off the whole focus thing sucks in my opinion we are doing fine with mana i mean look at our pets they struggle using focus(unless u are bm) imagine us.
Second thing is i feel hunters should control more then one pet at a time like(two cats attacking the same target)i think it’s ideal for a hunter, hell u can even let a bm hunter control 2 exotic pets or 3 regular ones, dont know why an enh shaman can have multiple though?!?
We should also have a disarm move when stuck in melee situations. And if you are going to remove our melee attacks like mongoose bite at least lets us shoot em up close i mean a mage or warlock don’t have problems casting in someone’s face i think a hunter should be able to do the same.Jeez i can’t count the times that stupid 8 yard deadzone has screwed me over.But i do like the camouflage idea i’d like to hear more about that.
And another thing change the whole placing the trap on the ground idea have the launcher target a person and freeze his @$$ right there save us a whole lot of time.Or have a multi trap shot freeze multiple targets.If u wanna change hunters change em for the better not the worse, i mean your idea of a hunter should be able to do the same shit predator does in the movies minus the advance technology(keep the guns though).Think outside the box on this one guys,your playing around with the best class in the game when it comes to having fun.Give me a machine gun or a rocket launcher and call it a day =).
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yea if they give hunters focus im not gona be happy about it
Hot debate. What do you think?
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To the guy above me, if you’ve ever played a hunter you should know that we do have abilities that grants us the “sight beyond sight” to spot hidden enemies such as Flare and Track Hidden, which is all fine and dandy, but there’s not a hunter out there that is going to have Track Hidden going when he/she can have Track Beast, Dragonkin, ect… and do double the damage against that type of npc. As for the traps and running away and tanking pets, not true. The tanking pets we as hunters can get are Gorillas, Bears, and Rhinos, and they can’t hold aggro worth a damn.
Yes, there are some very enterprising ideas with the changes, but take ICC for example. A hunter’s main role in ICC 10 or 25 man is to rain down volley. Volley uses a lot of mana and after about 4 pulls we have to mana up. Change that to focus we can’t even fullfil that role even in Aspect of Viper, which that decreases our attack power in such a way it doesn’t even seem like we’re doing damage.
Trap Shooting is great and all, will be awesome in pvp, but when you’re out there questing by yourself and you’ve got a group of the opposing faction running towards you the only useful trap is freezing trap so that they are slowed.. guess what, mages, druids, deathknights, and every other freaking class has a movement impairing effect that lasts longer than freezing trap. Hunter’s need an assortment of melee attacks because we can never get away fast enough.
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Taking away melee abilities are gonna leave hunters as an easy target for melee classes and mobs. If someone sneaks up on a hunter, there is a smaller chance of him living than dying. With the removal of the melee abilities hunters won’t stand a chance. so personally i believe that these changes will make hunters completely defenseless against any close combat situation.
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this all seems pretty cool, but this all looks like is gonna make it harder to pick talents.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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i think focus would affect dps because aspect of viper takes care of mana loss so this would only be a waste
Hot debate. What do you think?
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If Blizzard wants to reinforce hunters as a ranged class, get rid of the friggen 8 yard limitations so we don’t have to resort to using melee abilities. =S
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I’m kinda worried about the whole focus idea unless they replace the intellect we find on mail already with strait up haste i think we hunters might just end up like a less effective ranged rogue and that whole idea has me worried.
Having said that though i’ve been playing a hunter since WoW came out and we’re already weak when people close the distance we don’t need to be even weaker in melee range. and i don’t see why mana is such a bad thing to have anyway it seems to work just fine for me and every other hunter i’ve ever talked to. but i guess i can’t do anything about it. Blizzard will continue to make changes to the game whether they be good or bad…
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I don’t like it at all leave us damn hunters alone
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I’m a Dedicated Warrior, a classmaster of my kind, but I can see how Hunters will lose some of their superior DPS. IMO they were the best DPS in the game, providing their range, and “Flesh-Tanking” ability (PvE or Questing).
Now some ppl are probably scratching their heads askig if I’m a dedicated Warrior, what am I doing in Hunter’s room…?
I have an alt hehe =) He is low level ATM, so not really much experience in hunting and stuff, but seeing what they intend to change, it will improve greatly the new player experience in the Hunter class. Haste related Focus regeneration seems like a great deal to me, and regaining some more focus when Criting is like warriors.
As for the removal of their melee abilities, hunters are not the most trained close combat martial artists, they focus on their bows and ranged shots. If you want someone who’s close, use your ÜBER two-hander/spear and whack them to consider getting close again.
In my opinion at the end these changes are cool, you just have to get used to it if you’ve played a couple years as a Hunter.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I also have some serious concerns about these changes and worry that it will result in a significant DPS loss.
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–I am a bit nervous about such sweeping changes, but look forward to testing it out. I have one concern about the proposed removal of mongoose bite, though. That is about the only melee defense hunters have.
–If anything gets up close the only thing hunters really have is mongoose bite. Freeze trap, wingclip, and scatter shot give us a little ability to increase range, but if 2 or 3 mobs attack in melee range a hunter needs a melee attack for defense.
–I’m sure this issue has been thought about. I look forward to seeing how it works.
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Removing Mongoose bite is a mistake, hunters still need limited melee ability when leveling and when in battlegrounds and arenas.
Having the Critical Strike increase focus the way it now does mana is consistent and should be incorporated into the new design. The hunter needs more melee ability, not less.
GET RID OF THE ORB VENDOR!!! He has destroyed the Herbalism market!
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im not sure if i like the idea of hunters haveing focus, to me it seems like it would hurt theyre dps more than anything unles you have a ton of haste stacked.
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