How I would fix Hunter ability bloat

[Deleted]

then whats wrong it means youve always got something to and are not bored which was my point?

If a boss is complicated and involves a lot of movement etc., you won't have to have an overly complicated rotation to keep things interesting.

[Deleted]

If a boss is complicated and involves a lot of movement etc., you won't have to have an overly complicated rotation to keep things interesting.

but tbh its not that complicated and i prefer it to an easy rotation. most fights rotation is same so only changes is boss fights these put strains on rotation and cause you to think what you should be doing instead of just tunnel vission.

I understand we have too many buttons but it shows that we are better players if we can master it.

[Tokas]

then whats wrong it means youve always got something to and are not bored which was my point?

I meant that rotation doesn't have to be complicated for you to enjoy playing, content must be appropriate difficulty with many things to do, other than watching 5 addons to track your rotation perfectly

[namelessone]

All these ideas are horrible and make for a braindead class.
Where does the argument of too many skills fall in to anyway...
"Help, I can't eat my Big Mac while raiding 25-man heroic?"

Having too many buttons =/= smart gameplay. Just the same as having too many talents. Smart gameplay is about making difficult decisions or solving problems. There's nothing smart about being inconvenienced by UI.

[Deleted]

I meant that rotation doesn't have to be complicated for you to enjoy playing, content must be appropriate difficulty with many things to do, other than watching 5 addons to track your rotation perfectly

i dont watch 5 addons to track rotation I have one addon that shows focus bar and FF stacks. what do you use?

[Penguintamer]

Gonna have to go ahead and disagree with a lot of those. Rapid Fire is fine, Aspects are fine (Especially Hawk), Readiness would only work like that if it DID also work on CC/utility, as well as defensive stuff, and also had its cooldown brought back down to 3 minutes. Camouflage is fucking awesome. If you think that this is an ability that should be removed then you're just not playing your class to its fullest. It's not even apart of the Hunter rotation, so I don't see why you bring it up.

The main perpetrators of our currently bloated rotation are Glaive Toss, Dire Beast and Murder of Crows. Glaive Toss and Dire Beast are in all 3 spec rotations which is just boring, and their cooldowns are so damn short. They're fucking talents. No other class has so many talents in all 3 of their spec's rotations. It's god awful. Murder of Crows needs its focus cost removed, as well.

I don't see why people are saying we'll be a brain-dead class if things get removed. Right now we're doing more than twice the work as other classes as BM. Has anyone SEEN the Shadow Priest rotation? It's a fucking joke. No cooldowns to manage, nothing to separate the good Spriests from the great Spriests, and not near as many buttons. If we had Dire Beast and Glaive Toss out of our rotations, we'd still be more complex then many other specs.

But seriously, if I'm playing BM or Survival, I want to enjoy THAT SPEC'S ROTATION. I don't want to use Glaive Toss and Dire Beast like all the other specs. That shit's fucking stupid and no other class has that much other shit forced into every single one of its spec's rotations.

[Woobels]

Gonna have to go ahead and disagree with a lot of those. Rapid Fire is fine, Aspects are fine (Especially Hawk), Readiness would only work like that if it DID also work on CC/utility, as well as defensive stuff, and also had its cooldown brought back down to 3 minutes. Camouflage is fucking awesome. If you think that this is an ability that should be removed then you're just not playing your class to its fullest. It's not even apart of the Hunter rotation, so I don't see why you bring it up.

The main perpetrators of our currently bloated rotation are Glaive Toss, Dire Beast and Murder of Crows. Glaive Toss and Dire Beast are in all 3 spec rotations which is just boring, and their cooldowns are so damn short. They're fucking talents. No other class has so many talents in all 3 of their spec's rotations. It's god awful. Murder of Crows needs its focus cost removed, as well.

I don't see why people are saying we'll be a brain-dead class if things get removed. Right now we're doing more than twice the work as other classes as BM. Has anyone SEEN the Shadow Priest rotation? It's a fucking joke. No cooldowns to manage, nothing to separate the good Spriests from the great Spriests, and not near as many buttons. If we had Dire Beast and Glaive Toss out of our rotations, we'd still be more complex then many other specs.

But seriously, if I'm playing BM or Survival, I want to enjoy THAT SPEC'S ROTATION. I don't want to use Glaive Toss and Dire Beast like all the other specs. That shit's fucking stupid and no other class has that much other shit forced into every single one of its spec's rotations.

So what should BM get then instead of Glaive/Powershot/Barrage?

They probably won't come up with a new talent and even if they do it's still a button you have to press, and they won't remove the talents and turn them into something passive, because there's people who enjoy and use those talents now.

[Tokas]

i dont watch 5 addons to track rotation I have one addon that shows focus bar and FF stacks. what do you use?

i meant timers, which is single addon ofc
I myself use tellmewhen

---------- Post added 2012-12-30 at 01:52 AM ----------

So what should BM get then instead of Glaive/Powershot/Barrage?

They probably won't come up with a new talent and even if they do it's still a button you have to press, and they won't remove the talents and turn them into something passive, because there's people who enjoy and use those talents now.

OR they could give us a choice, those who like passive can take passive, those who have 25 fingers on one hand can take all "push" abilities

[Deleted]

If this was implemented I would start playing my hunter again.

The only thing I would add is keep Rapid Fire as MMs burst CD, BW for BM, and maybe add something else for surv? Surv needs full redesign anyway, so lets just skip it.

[Woobels]

i meant timers, which is single addon ofc
I myself use tellmewhen

---------- Post added 2012-12-30 at 01:52 AM ----------



OR they could give us a choice, those who like passive can take passive, those who have 25 fingers on one hand can take all "push" abilities

Which will end up with one of them being better and everyone then complaining you have to pick that one and there being no choice.

[Lovestar]

Which will end up with one of them being better and everyone then complaining you have to pick that one and there being no choice.

I take TotH specifically because it saves a keybind. The fact it's fun and great for AoE is just a side perk. It would take nothing short of a gun to my head to make me take Dire Beast, no matter what sims say, because every time I see a large purple monkey or fat silkworm appear another small part of my soul dies inside. It is one of the worst abilities... ever... to me. :p

I like tiers that give you more of a mixed choice like that. I take Blink Strike for leveling / farming because an extra instant burst attack is so useful. But I swap to Crows for times where it's all the same and I'd rather have fewer things to keep track of.

Really, I think it's just T90 which takes things from "a lot of stuff" to "okay, that's too much". It really feels forced, not like it naturally has a reason to be part of the toolkit.

[bendak]

I find BM's opener to be relatively easy even with readiness. Survival's opener is just a clusterfuck with Readiness. It's about 30 seconds of pressing what seems like a dozen different buttons and checking timers before you actually settle into the normal rotation.

Survival is so clunky right now...it's just a mess. Its numbers are on par with BM though with the serpent sting change.

[Deleted]

i find BM to be smooth once you get used to it.

[Lovestar]

Ha ha, I feel like BM feels like a million annoying timers and Surv feels simple, direct, and smooth.

Helps show how a lot of this really does boil down to personal playstyle preferences and differences.

[EqualWin]

A. Aspects are not part of the bloat. You use it, and forget it.
B. Camouflage is a GODLY ability. You may not use it, but PLENTY of other hunters do.
C. Rapid Fire needs to stay. You may not use it as often as you should, but plenty of other hunters do.
D. Your fix to the bloat does nothing. I agree with removing Focus Fire and Widow Venom, but that's it. Rapid Fire, Camouflage, and AotH should never leave.

but you don't understand that rapid fire is shit? and boring cooldown, imo it's just good now cuz it add a lot of pvp power but if it wasn't for that.. it would be shit

---------- Post added 2012-12-30 at 02:35 AM ----------

Interesting ideas. Here's what I'd like to happen:

1- Merge Focus Fire and Bestial Wrath. Give the pet a flat haste boost during Bestial Wrath to compensate for the Frenzy stacks removed by Focus Fire.

2- Change Readiness to affect only defensive and utility abilities. Resetting offensive cooldowns only makes openers ridiculously complex.

3- Merge Widow Venom and Serpent Sting. It's not like either will stick to the target after a healer purgers them.

4- Keep aspects as they are. Aspect of the Fox was the troublesome one and now it's gone. Let us all rejoice and dance on its grave.

5- Camouflage: it's a neat toy, no need to cut it. Merge the glyph with the actual ability and give us full stealth for five seconds after standing still for five seconds, kind of like the old Sniper Training. Once the 5 seconds of stealth run out, return to the normal Camo behavior until standing still again.

6- Significantly increase the cooldown on Dire Beast and Fervor. Increase their effect to match so they are good 3-minute offensive cooldowns. For example: in Fervor's case, make it 50 focus now, plus double baseline focus regen for X seconds.

7- Change Glaive Toss. Either increase the cooldown (so it's not a rotational ability) and add a debuff to the target that makes it take extra damage from your attacks for X seconds; or remove the cooldown and change its damage so it's not a DPS gain to be used in single-target (but fine in 2+ target situations), and have it replace Multi-Shot. Trying to make the Tier 90 good for both single- and multi-target was its undoing.

8- Make Barrage a passive that gives you a chance on hit with every damaging shot (and Kill Command) to trigger short burst of fire with a similar effect to the current ability, with damage modified as required. Alternatively, make it an instant ability that may be used only after a certain proc.

9- Merge Tranquilizing Shot with the signature shots with a 15-second internal cooldown. Yeah, passive dispelling. I know. Not too keen on this particular idea, but a separate focus-costing button for dispelling stuff has to go.

10- Remove Concussive Shot. Yeeees, PvPers will want to have my guts for entrées for suggesting that, but now we can move and fire without penalty, and we already have traps for slowing enemies down. Being able to essentially keep someone snared forever is not necessary anymore. Alternatively, give it a hefty (say, 30+ second) cooldown and extend the snare duration to 8 seconds. Maybe make it affect an area around the target, who knows?

This went longer than I expected. Anyway, damage numbers would have to be severely tweaked so they remain similar to what they are right now. Yes, rotational abilities will have to do more damage to compensate for it and I'm fine with that.

wtf? most of these ideas are retarded

Merge Tranquilizing Shot with the signature shots with a 15-second internal cooldown. Yeah, passive dispelling. I know. Not too keen on this particular idea, but a separate focus-costing button for dispelling stuff has to go. wtf?
10- Remove Concussive Shot. Yeeees, PvPers will want to have my guts for entrées for suggesting that, but now we can move and fire without penalty, and we already have traps for slowing enemies down. Being able to essentially keep someone snared forever is not necessary anymore. Alternatively, give it a hefty (say, 30+ second) cooldown and extend the snare duration to 8 seconds. Maybe make it affect an area around the target, who knows?

^yep worst idea ever

[Deleted]

but you don't understand that rapid fire is shit? and boring cooldown, imo it's just good now cuz it add a lot of pvp power but if it wasn't for that.. it would be shit

---------- Post added 2012-12-30 at 02:35 AM ----------



wtf? most of these ideas are retarded

Merge Tranquilizing Shot with the signature shots with a 15-second internal cooldown. Yeah, passive dispelling. I know. Not too keen on this particular idea, but a separate focus-costing button for dispelling stuff has to go. wtf?
10- Remove Concussive Shot. Yeeees, PvPers will want to have my guts for entrées for suggesting that, but now we can move and fire without penalty, and we already have traps for slowing enemies down. Being able to essentially keep someone snared forever is not necessary anymore. Alternatively, give it a hefty (say, 30+ second) cooldown and extend the snare duration to 8 seconds. Maybe make it affect an area around the target, who knows?

^yep worst idea ever

Think the tranq is a good idea for pve point of view.

[Dracodraco]

Just to chime in - this is the direct quote from ghostcrawler, on the frontpage:

can you elaborate on the "hunters have too many buttons" thing? A lot of people enjoy it.. Do you intend to remove abilities?
But overall, we think hunters have too many situational abilities and cooldowns. # of rotational abilities is generally good. (Source)
I'm curious, whats your distinction between 1) situational abilities, 2) cooldowns and 3) rotational abilities?
Deterrence - situational. BW - cooldown. Arcane Shot - rotational. (Source)

now, what this means is - don't get your hopes up for any "rotational" fixes. We're fine as-is with the amount of buttons we have to press in a combat situation.
Breaking it down:

Signature shot. (Explo, KC, Chim)
Focus builder. (Steady, Cobra).
Arcane shot.
Lvl 90 talent. (Glaive, Power, Barrage).
Signature speciality. (Black Arrow, Focus Fire, Aimed Shot).
Kill Shot.
Serpent Sting.

That's a total of seven abilities. One of those we only have to fire once, another is only aviable for about 15% of the fight (as raid dps goes up after 35% due to classes slowly activating their OWN executes). You can add dire beast to the mix, but I imagine that's one of the things that'd go under "utility/cooldown", and is probably a valid thing to want "fixed". Same goes for the tier 75 talents.
The big thing is, as he says, the many extra utility and cooldown buttons, and management of those. Lynx Rush was chosen, even though it was inferior, by almost every top hunter before the "change" that made it into "AMOC with lower damage and no focus cost", both for the burst and the relative ease at which you could use it.

The utility buttons they might change in one way or another -
Tier 75 talents.
Tier 45 talents (TOTH is passive already, but fervor/dire beast is more "situational).
Beastial Wrath (25% uptime and need to build your focus around it, along with keeping up your normal cycle = very tedious. Grant either more passive focus regen from somewhere, or cut focus costs, then slap a bigger CD on BW and make it a "real" burst cooldown, instead of the pitiful 10-20% damage modifier it has now).
Explosive Trap (having to AOE-attacks is more than most other classes, and i's such a small amount of damage that removing it to ease up on bloat would not have a big effect, as long as AOE was made up for otherwise).
Aspects has already been "removed" (people suggesting its removal, I don't get it - it's already the only aspect you'll ever want, why would you need it removed? Just don't have a button for it <.<).
I disagree with doing anything about tranq short. It's fine as it is, bar the focus cost (why do shamans get to purge two magic effects for "no" cost, as mana is infinite, while we have to pay 10% of our resource that translates directly into damage, or suffer a 10 sec CD for ONE?).
Feign death and Misdirection are both hunter tools that helps combat threat, which in this day and time, is not even an issue anymore. I could see them doing something about it, as having two of these are deffo "utility bloat". Feign serves no real purpose in fights anymore either, except for easy resetting of bosses like Spirit kings. Gone are the days where you could feign Magmatron's flamethrower, in order to completly avoid the attack.
Hunters mark has already been removed from the bloat by making it "baseline".

This is all from a PvE point of view. From a pvp point of view, I really have no idea - but I imagine making serpent sting and widow venom into one sting wouldn't hurt too much, as it is an easily dispellable (and, due to its potency, SHOULD probably be dispelled) dot.

[Jazara]

I agree with a good bit that you put out there as well as some of the others. Right now, I feel like there way too many CDs, not just for Hunters, but also Shaman and others. Quick question: What was the purpose of removing Shaman's totem bar?

[Kyza]

Here's my take on it.

1. Combine Readiness and Rapid Fire, or completely ditch the haste and just give us focus gain from Readiness-ing
When you Readiness, all CDs outside of Stampede refresh. You gain 40% haste for 45 seconds after you Readiness.
-- -1 Button instead of 2. Pve-wise we save 2 gcds. PvP implications could be awful, though.

2. Merge Serpent Sting and Widow Venom
Obvious reasons, many posters have said such.

3. Ditch Focus Fire completely.
Roll it into Kill Command crits/proc if mandatory, but Focus Fire doesn't feel rewarding. When I use it, I feel like it accomplishes nothing and I wasted my time using it.

4. Make Silencing Shot baseline.
Even though this is a net +1 ability, I'd replace it with something in that we have that compares to the other two - Scattershot? Concussive Shot?

5. Make Explosive trap always do the glyphed knockback, and take away the LnL component.
Maybe tie it into Multi-shot at a low proc rate for AoE+LnL funtimes. Or something. This mechanic is just kind of clunky IMO.

6. Somethings got to go.
Mists of Pandaria introduced too many 'cooldowns' in form of 75, 90 talents and Stampede. This is the primary source of bloat. But the thing is - What has to go?
-Rolling the 90s into Passives would be fine, excluding Powershot, which needs to get reworked anyway.
-I personally think the 75s are fine, I'd like Blink Strike/Lynx to be better single target but no complaints.
-Stampede is great for soloing and pvp, but I can see why cutting it could be potentially healthy to the future of our class.

[Clockworks]

I play MM atm but i would love to return to my core spec BM but i cannot do it atm, and i blame Focus Fire for it, it feels so wrong to take pet stack for yourself, remove it and make bake the lost dps in somewhere, heck i even miss my good old Serpent Swiftness talent from way back.

I think Focus Fire feels so clunky and wrong, and we do have many things to handle as BM, getting rid of it is a good step in the right direction.