Class getting complicated

[Chickensoup23]

Hi guys,

Just to let you know a bit about my background (before you judge) I have been playing for roughly 5 years (I started mid-BC because I was simply very young before that) & I have seen many changes at the hunter class. Ive always been fine with them tho, as I got to experience most specs and got to know all of them. During WotLK I've had the chance to be a hardcore raider, and was in a top 150 US guild for quite a while and saw many heroic end bosses go down. Since then, I've been PvP'ing and I am currently in the 2100-ish level (3s) and 1900 (2s). As you figured -- nothing too amazing, but I think that im what you could call a "hardcore casual". Now, if many players relate to my history of playing, you may be able to understand what's below:

We have a fuckload of keybinds. I never realized it, actually, because every time I had to do my bars & binds I just added one here, and one there. But as I was making characters on the arena realm yesterday, I realize: "Holy crap, I have lots of buttons and things to worry about". Now, as it is not exactly the case, I'm reffering to back then, a couple years ago. Now, I have like 5 bars of 12 buttons each filled with macros, cooldowns, and whatnot, and I'm at the point where I use "funky" keybinds such as alt+mouseclick+Q or something. I got used to it, I like complicated actually, because when done right it gives you an edge over other players who don't bother with it. It is easy for me to imagine a fresh level 90, who dings it for the first time, (new player) and tries to get in PvP. He'll be lucky if he wins 5 times out of 50 by self-learning how to use his arsenal.

Even tho I'm fine with it, is anybody else deep inside thinking "I wish I had less buttons to press and worry about", such as in BC or even Wrath? I've never played vanilla during vanilla, but it can probably also apply.

Thoughts?

[Sarevoc]

They should start to consolidate things and also get rid of redundant things.

Things that need to be baked into other abilities are (examples):
- widow venom
- tranquilizing shot

[Ruzhyo]

I only started leveling a hunter during Firelands, and I was survival. I loved the feel of the rotation back then, it had a very synergistic style to it, where each of my spells kind of felt like it was building momentum towards each other spell. It made a logical sense and in that way was easy to follow, but there was still a lot of depth and complexity where a skilled player could pull ahead. Aspect switching was a pretty common thing for me then, because I wanted to squeeze every ounce of DPS out of the class that I could.

When I started to prepare my hunter to be my main when the MoP changes went live at the end of Cata, things were starting to get frayed at the edges. Focus regen was off and it made the rotation a little strange at times, and the addition of some extra cooldowns was something I had to get used to. A new ability in the form of Dire Beast wasn't too hard to work into the rotation. Since I was usually focus flooded and had all these new abilities, I didn't bother switching aspects much anymore.

Now raiding in MoP as survival, it feels like I am at my absolute limit. I have so many buttons in my rotation, and so many cooldowns to manage, that I have a hard time paying attention to fights. I have not touched my aspect bar except to go cheetah in town. I switched from dire beast to ToTH just because I literally don't have room on my bars for another button, and I don't know how I'd work it into the rotation anyways; I didn't even look to see which was the better dps option.
Now let me be clear, I'm managing it. I'm pulling top DPS in my raid on most fights and I have some stiff competition. I am having a blast as a hunter too, the fights are fun and I'm enjoying the class enough that I'm still playing it. But I just wish I could pay more attention to the fights and less attention to my bars.

As for BM, I use it for PvP exclusively. I actually like the BM rotation more, but its too bursty and I can't stand relying on my pet to do damage. Marksman I have literally never tried. MM seems like a lot of hard casting and standing still, and I prefer the mobility of survival. Perhaps after the 5.1 movement/casting changes I'll give MM a try, would be interesting to see if the rotation is any more forgiving than survival.

[OneSent]

I agree completely. Just about every class has become bloated, not just with more abilities, but with more to watch out for such as procs and buffs/debuffs they need to keep applied, etc. I've also had to resort to really whacky keybinds that I'm not really comfortable hitting, but are necessary in order to play effectively.

Personally, it really takes the fun out of playing the game when you have to stare at your action bars constantly, watching for several cooldowns and juggling a dozen different buffs. For the first time ever, I have had to go so far as to setup up a really intricate UI just to aid in this visual cacophony. I used to be able to get by just fine with the default UI and a few timer bars.

So yeah, I definitely wish I had less things to press. And as Sarevoc said, they could easily consolidate a lot of the abilities that are redundant or overly similar to each other.

I'm starting to wonder if Blizzard is now designing the game and classes around the existence of addons. While just about everyone uses them, when they become mandatory because the default UI isn't sufficient enough, then there's a problem with the game itself.

[Chickensoup23]

Ya, I have so many important buttons (especially in PvP) that I dont have enough room on the default UI to have them in front of my eyes. I need to put them on the side or whatnot (to the right), which causes me to "forget" or not see the CD of that ability as much, even though it is binded. I will have to move to a custom UI so I can follow everything.

[Deleted]

Yes its true... Hunter is realy easy to play on a basic level but if you realy want to maximize it you'll have over 40 keybinds and things to worry if you want to top perform.

Some people argue that "all" classes are like that so your mileage may vary... i personnaly think that hunter is one step ahead most classes in therms of keybinds but it's a matter of opinion i guess.

Personaly i'm not extremely bothered with it since i've been playing for 6 years now and i'm used to keybind SHIFT+ and ALT+ combinations but i do realise that for a most people that can be way too much hassle.

Some stuff could be optimized in the class, one of them is coming this 5.1 patch wich is removal of aspect of the fox, but still some traps could be merged and some cooldowns could be scrapped since we have (imho) too many CDs (readiness doesnt help either in the chaos of keypressing orgasm that is our rotation now).

One thing that i find absolutely mandatory is a VERY VERY carefull UI and VERY VERY well made power auras/hunter bar to check on stuff, and still, i find myself lost sometimes and don't pay 100% attention to the fight. It's just too much stuff sometimes.

[Bellatrex-Saga]

I do feel like BM has too many buttons... in the first 30 seconds of the fight it's pretty ridiculous all the things you have to push. I like to have all my abilities keybound and my bars hidden, but I've run out of convenient key binds for everything (and I have a Naga mouse with the 12 buttons on the side). I just ended up putting a few rarely used abilities on a visible bar to click if needed - scatter shot, widow venom, distracting shot - things that I pretty much will never be using in a raid.

I agree with the guy above who said a good clean UI will solve a lot of the problems with paying attention to the fight.

I recommend Weak Auras for keeping track of when you have abilities available to use or when CDs proc. There's a pretty steep learning curve to get it set up, but once you get the hang of it you'll wonder how you ever did without it.

There's a lot of good options for cool down tracking. I use one called Dot Timer - I like my CDs to be shown only as an icon in a vertical line on my screen and I want to see the time remaining counting down under the icon. I know there's a lot of other options out there, but I like my screen to be as clear as possible so I don't like all the bars counting down and stuff.

Also - we are losing Aspect of the Fox soon - so there's one keybind that gets freed up!

[Cyph3r]

The devs know this is a problem. Ghostcrawler specifically said in one of his tweets "we didn't do as good a job as we would have liked in pruning things down." Ya think? Hunters lost maybe 1 or 2 buttons and had like 4 more added in the form of new abilities and talents. It really has gotten to the point of ridiculousness.

[Deleted]

I recommend Weak Auras for keeping track of when you have abilities available to use or when CDs proc. There's a pretty steep learning curve to get it set up, but once you get the hang of it you'll wonder how you ever did without it.

I also use weak Auras and its freakin amazing. I was using power auras in the past but weak auras is much better imho and you can achieve a better customization. Alas, its slightly harder to configure as you said.

Also, if you want to go to a point that Weak Auras will only show what ability you should use next (example if Kill command is available and focus > 40 then activate kill command icon, deactivate arcane shot icon and desaturate cobra shot icon) or (if focus > 60 and kill command cooldown > 2seconds then activate arcane shot icon), you can get some brain help.

[Warrada]

Well, we already lost Fox, so its on the right direction, but more have to change... They should:


Redesign Focus Fire making it a passive ability.


Bake Widow Venon into Arcane Shot or signature skill. (Seriously, why the hell we got this in first place?? why we are the only class with a heal reduction-only skill ?? )


Bake Concussive Shot into something else.

[Cyph3r]

Well, we already lost Fox, so its on the right direction, but more have to change... They should:


Redesign Focus Fire making it a passive ability.


Bake Widow Venon into Arcane Shot or signature skill. (Seriously, why the hell we got this in first place?? why we are the only class with a heal reduction-only skill ?? )


Bake Concussive Shot into something else.

Completely agree with focus fire. It's not terribly compelling in it's current form, and I often find myself ignoring it because I'm busy hitting all my other buttons (and the damage increase from using it is miniscule, or even non-existent if used at the wrong time).

Concussive shot they actually did combine with arcane shot early in beta. Players hated it because it meant we needed to have focus in order to slow someone, and it was proving to be... problematic in those tense pvp situations where you really needed it. I don't mind conc being it's own button, because it's what I would call perfectly situational. It's a strong tool, but we don't need it all the time (and thus there's no reason it needs to be automatic), but when we do need it, we need it. And having a cooldown means you do actually need to be somewhat careful with it's use. It really couldn't get more simple, and is a prime example of a strong ability that requires smart usage, on a very basic level. If only all of our abilities could be so elegantly simple yet deep.

No, the big one that needs to happen is widow venom getting baked into serpent sting. I honestly don't understand why this hasn't happened.

[gulder]

My opening rotation as BM is absolutely bonkers.

What's worse is when we get attenuations first in HoF and I have to watch everything while running around x_x

[timoseewho]

I personally like the current state of Hunters a lot better, it really separates the better ones from the not as good ones. Back then for SV, a good Hunter only had to stagger his RF with trinket procs (exaggerated of course), but nowadays there's a lot more to do to optimize DPS. It's surprising how people complain when classes are too easy (before) and classes are complicated (right now) hehe.

[gulder]

I personally like the current state of Hunters a lot better, it really separates the better ones from the not as good ones. Back then for SV, a good Hunter only had to stagger his RF with trinket procs (exaggerated of course), but nowadays there's a lot more to do to optimize DPS. It's surprising how people complain when classes are too easy (before) and classes are complicated (right now) hehe.

It's fun in its own way. The old way was fun in that it was mostly afk XD

[Deleted]

Yeah, its getting ridiculous.
I had to redo everything for this expac as well cause it was getting out of hand, so I wanted to rationalize. I did a spreadsheet to assign easy keybinds to important stuff.
In the end I have 54 keybinds. Seriously. 54.
Btw hunters are not the only class with this problem. Shamans with all the totems are in the same boat.

[Deleted]

Well, we already lost Fox, so its on the right direction, but more have to change... They should:


Redesign Focus Fire making it a passive ability.


Bake Widow Venon into Arcane Shot or signature skill. (Seriously, why the hell we got this in first place?? why we are the only class with a heal reduction-only skill ?? )


Bake Concussive Shot into something else.

You want auto-slows as a ranged class? Get real.

And dont even think about bringing up frostbolt.

[Nemesis003]

My biggest problem with it is same as it was for ehancement in the days of ICC... You can be the best player in your raid, but a half assed fire made will do 60% more damage then you while being half the player.

THey said they have classes balanced, but if that was true why is it fire mages and affliction locks are miles ahead of every other class?? They need to ind people who understand what balance is. Stampede is a massive problem. That skill will hold us back for the bulk of this x-pac, it will get constant QQ in PvP thus you will see it get ruined in PvE, and we will be balanced around that for PvE as well as PvP. In doing so we will have crap for sustained damage because we have that burst in PvP.

[Rzarazor]

They should start to consolidate things and also get rid of redundant things.

Things that need to be baked into other abilities are (examples):
- widow venom
- tranquilizing shot

They had arcane shot combine with a dispel (tranq shot) a while ago.

[Deleted]

I personally like the current state of Hunters a lot better, it really separates the better ones from the not as good ones. Back then for SV, a good Hunter only had to stagger his RF with trinket procs (exaggerated of course), but nowadays there's a lot more to do to optimize DPS. It's surprising how people complain when classes are too easy (before) and classes are complicated (right now) hehe.

How can you ENJOY spamming buttons like that? Wouldn't it be more fun if what separates you from the other raiders is how you can maximize the dps with the boss and environment in question?

[MrWolly]

I do agree that we lack space for all of the abilities we use. The traps, the redundant yet mandatory abilities we are required to use. It's annoying. I have no issues playing my hunter, I just don't like having to make more keybinds to play him.