5.4, hunters in PvE - concerns, etc.

[Kurgosh]

It's not that the devs hate hunters, it's just that they have no idea how to solve our problems without making us absurdly powerful in PVP. A lot of it started when we can do everything on the move.

Except even when hunters are 'absurdly powerful' in PVP they're only as good as the other top classes. And we're just not allowed to be on the top tier for PVP, so we get nerfed into the ground, and it always, always, always crushes our PVE play as well.

[Kaeth]

I've also heard that they're considering making a Scatter Shot glyph to make it interrupt, and that's obviously going to become a mandatory PvE glyph if so.

Which, once again, goes against the stated purpose of the whole glyph system. But that's what we'll probably be stuck with, if they even decide to throw us that bone. Let's at least hope the glyph increases the range of Scatter Shot and decreases its cooldown, or our new interrupt is almost as bad as the existing pet-based options.

We originally designed it with an “empty your stables” theme primarily for flavor–we wanted you to be able to see all of your favorite pets.

... that clip through each other in combat, resulting in a hideous pet-blob aberration that isn't anything pleasing to look at even if you do select all of your pets purely on an aesthetic basis. Hmm, I might actually have to experiment with setting up my stable to produce the most ridiculous looking beast pile possible.

Which will still be hidden in the crowd of melee behind the boss and further obscured by constant particle effects.

Blizzard's tastes must lean toward the more subtle flavors.

OT:

Excellent post, Draco, that sums up just about every concern I have with the hunter class at present. Unfortunately, I'm too jaded at this point to risk any optimism that it'll receive any serious dev or even CM attention. They seem to prefer to post snappy comebacks to unconstructive whine posts while ignoring serious feedback.

[Deleted]

There's a way to fix Stampede AND give us a raid cooldown:

Stampede
40 yard range
Instant 5 min cooldown

Summons a pet for each raid member from your stable to assist in their current specialisation for 20 seconds.


So, you stampede, and one of your pets runs up to each of the raid members. A DPS attacks, and it charges in to help them (i.e. contributes to their DPS, not yours) - this would be ferocity spec'd. A tank takes damage, and your pet runs in to intervene - tenacity spec'd. A healer heals, and the pet (spirit beast?) also chucks a heal or a shield out on their target - cunning spec'd.

[aHeeRo]

Dem Feels. Honestly one the of best posts I've seen without QQing imo. Really Hope Blizzard sees this and makes some changes. Great Job Draco Honestly.

[Megazorrd]

Great post will spread around. You have my bow, sir.

[Kalcheus]

That's a great idea, I didn't think of it. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9377367946#1

Thanks! I'm gonna tweet this badboy to all the blues I follow

[Conando]

The one thing that I'd add (which I've been saying over and over) is that arcane shot is too strong. It kind of ruins how the class plays when our signature ability (kill command) is only marginally better than our filler. That ruins any skill cap that was ever on the class (along with Stampede and Readiness usage).

[Deleted]

The one thing that I'd add (which I've been saying over and over) is that arcane shot is too strong. It kind of ruins how the class plays when our signature ability (kill command) is only marginally better than our filler. That ruins any skill cap that was ever on the class (along with Stampede and Readiness usage).

I wouldn't say that Arcane Shot is too strong, I'd say that Kill Command is too weak. KC should do an additional 50% of it's damage as a bleed for 5 seconds. That would make it stronger without making it too bursty in PvP.

[bewsh]

Saw this in the US Hunter forums crossposted but it needs to be crossposted to Damage Dealing and maybe PTR though maybe that's not the appropriate place for the discussion yet. Either way, it will go unnoticed on the class forums. If it's not already crossposted when I'm off work tonight I'll do it cause I dont have time to format it over 3 posts until then -.-

[Deleted]

It's nice to finally have a thread showcasing what I've been lacking words to describe.

[Kalcheus]

Saw this in the US Hunter forums crossposted but it needs to be crossposted to Damage Dealing and maybe PTR though maybe that's not the appropriate place for the discussion yet. Either way, it will go unnoticed on the class forums. If it's not already crossposted when I'm off work tonight I'll do it cause I dont have time to format it over 3 posts until then -.-

We've cross-posted it to PTR.

[Beoren]

Totally agree with the op, At least if we don't have any Raid-CD give us some dps. Hunter is scaling poorly they need to make the secondary stats give another benefit to hunters for example- Haste makes SS tick faster. i would really like to see SS buffed so we can compete with multi-dotters as SV..

[Deleted]

we should make as much noise as possible like the warlocks who manage to revert a nerf one week ago!!!

[Decimus]

Great post will spread around. You have my bow, sir.

AND MY.....er shit we don't get off-hands anymore do we...

[jax]

Nice post.

Why can't we have "specialised" specs? BM for cleave (the most melee-oriented of the specs), MM for singletarget, Surv for AOE? That'd make me happy, personally.

What I was thinking is:
BM single target or 2 target (cleave) with pet
SV take BA off cd so we can spam it, give us another dot shot and make SV the Multidot spec we so badly need to keep up with casters.
MM would be the single target with no pet spec... the sniper in other words.

3 completely different play styles and covering every contengency that a raid can have.

[Libertarian]

I agree mostly with you and feel the same way about many things

Stampede - This annoyed me the most. I don't really understand what blizzard was thinking. I was honestly hoping they changed this to something like army or bloodlust. I run in a 10 man group, and sometimes we don't have the perfect buff setup because we keep a 13 person roster and rotate frequently for optimal gearing. I would always keep my suite of 5 pets so we could at least get some of the buffs missing for a duration (example: we have a rogue, but it's nice to immediately put up sunder with the tallstrider). This also completely nerfed our soloing, brawlers, dungeons, etc.

Arcane shot - I don't agree at all with what they're doing here. While it's nice we're getting a buff to damage output, we're also getting a huge cost increase. Arcane shot was always that spell you could use when low on focus right after using a high focus ability. But instead for some reason they want to make arcane shot almost equal to our signature shot. I see this causing some issues with "burst target switching" on fights where you need to kill things really fast, and they don't live long enough for cobra shots.

Pets - Pet survival, seems like a relic from vanilla when developers had no idea what they were doing. Ever since the start of MoP I have been praying for some sort of mechanic to help our pets swap better, or more efficiently because we are so behind in terms of target swapping, dotting, cleaving, etc. We finally got the answer with blink strikes, but it was immediately nerfed weeks later. So fights coming up where we have single target swapping, we are going to be behind again and most likely sat for classes like mages, locks, priests, moonkin who can easily damage multiple targets at once.

Silencing Shot - Their argument is that we have so much utility everywhere else, including a pet, that we don't need an interrupt. I think what it boils down to is that blizzard realizes the game revolves around casuals, and casuals do pvp because organizing groups for pve is harder-core. I would like a 24s interrupt (not silence - give that to MM), but I can somewhat see why they won't.

Marksmen - The way I see this spec is just a problem waiting to happen given blizzard's track record. They're either going to keep it the same and buff damage, or make it easier and not buff damage (or do absolutely nothing and wave their hands saying it's fine). It really doesn't fill a role. Survival for target swap and aoe, BM for single target. Marks is like that pre-wotlk survival spec nobody took because it made no sense and filled no roles.

Class of Mid-tier Hotfixes - I'm the author of the original post, and it literally pisses me off because we have gone through this every single tier since tier 11.

[asdfsaf]

stopped reading on arcane shot. have you honestly not visited a school in your life? how can you be so terrible at math?

really?

[Shoot-]

This is really well written and addresses just about everything I can think of that anyone playing competitively PvE wise on a hunter should really worry about. I may have missed it as I skimmed your post but I don't feel their reasoning behind our Aspect of Iron Hawk nerf is justified.

They said in a blue post;

"We did lower the passive reduction from Aspect of the Iron Hawk a bit, but since it's a talent, it wouldn't make much sense to remove it entirely. We're okay with the passive effect in this case since it's a choice (and we're hoping that this change will help make the other talents in the tier more attractive). "

I responded;

I don't know any hunter that raids that is going to pick either of these talents as opposed to Iron Hawk because even with the nerf they are not any more "attractive" than before for PvE. Your argument that you are trying to make the other talents more attractive has no weight considering the following from a PvE standpoint; Hunters don't use exhilaration because of healthstones/deterrence/personals etc in a raid setting and hunters don't use spirit bond in a raid setting due to a trading off a decent passive damage reduction which will save your life in a number of cases where you may have died had you not had the reduction for a very small heal that will basically never increase your survivability from a practical standpoint. Even increasing spirit bond healing from 2% to 3% wouldn't make that talent any more appealing for PvE over the tradeoff of losing the damage reduction; nerfed or not. The only circumstance I see the word appealing is you've made spirit bond slightly more useful for solo'ers; and when I say slightly I mean "ever so slightly" in the world of solo'ing and leveling.

[Libertarian]

stopped reading on arcane shot. have you honestly not visited a school in your life? how can you be so terrible at math?

really?

Are you really that close minded? I understand fully it's a 50% focus increase for a 50% damage increase. Hell it could be 100 focus and equivalent damage. That doesn't mean it's ideal. We shouldn't have two abilities so close in damage and focus cost. We need variety for different situations. Go crawl back in your hole.

---------- Post added 2013-06-27 at 02:12 AM ----------

The only circumstance I see the word appealing is you've made spirit bond slightly more useful for solo'ers; and when I say slightly I mean "ever so slightly" in the world of solo'ing and leveling.

That's basically how it is. If you have a healer, take iron hawk. If you don't have a healer, take spirit bond. Except for the very few times spirit bond may pull ahead due to a dot spell.

[asdfsaf]

according to you, doing the damage of three arcane shots in three globals is better/burstier than doing the damage of three arcane shots in two globals

:-)