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  1. #1

    How I would fix Hunter ability bloat

    You see it everywhere; the sentiment that Hunters have too many buttons. Not everyone feels this way of course, but enough of us do that Ghostcrawler commented on the situation, and agreed that they didn't do as good a job on pruning down abilities as they would have liked. I agree that the class doesn't need a complete overhaul, but it certainly needs work. As fabulous as the new talent system is (and it is), I often feel like the class was more fun to play during Cataclysm than it is now, which is disappointing because I feel that Mists is a much stronger expansion on the whole.

    I feel like half of the problem is the number of abilities we actually have, while the other half is how many of those abilities we are expected to use rotationally or in combat in general. So here's a basic list of things that they could reasonably implement over the next few patches that would seriously alleviate the ability bloat we've found ourselves facing.

    Remove the following:

    Rapid Fire
    Focus Fire (frenzy can remain as a dps ramp up mechanic, maybe even incorporate it into future talents)
    Widow Venom
    Camouflage (possibly, this one is mildly useful but I'm not sure it would really be missed)
    Aspect of the Hawk - let's make it official and do away with aspects. Roll the damage into abilities, and turn the Iron Hawk talent into a passive aura.

    Modify the following:

    Serpent Sting - Roll the reduced healing effect from Widow Venom into this ability, can't believe this hasn't happened yet.
    Readiness - Now only resets the cooldown on defensive abilities; disengage, feign death, deterrence, master's call, and exhilaration. The result is it would VASTLY simplify the Hunter rotation (especially opening). This could also possibly include some utility like CCs, but that would require testing.
    Intimidation - Make it a talent or possibly an ability of cunning pets. This is strictly to balance CCs available to the 3 specs.
    Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack - I'd like to keep these, but just as a simple toggle ability, rather than the current aspect system. Remove the cheetah glyph so there's still some trade off to using it.
    Silencing Shot - Give in and make it baseline like we've been asking for for years.

    Next would be our talents. I still think they have a long way to go. Primarily the entire 90 tier needs to go, and get replaced with talents that augment our AoE, since that was apparently the original intent of the tier, without being rotational. I would prefer talents that augment existing abilities, such as boosting multi-shot or traps. I might even suggest moving the 60 tier talents to 90, and placing the aoe talents at 60, if they don't feel they're "awesome" enough for end tier.

    I started leveling (yet another) Hunter at the start of Mists, and I have to say that the class' toolkit really feels complete by about the time you're in your 60s. And yet they just keep throwing more abilities at you. For leveling, or even small group content, I often find myself ignoring many of the abilities I have, simply because I don't need them. You're never really challenged to maximize your damage output at lower levels, and the times when you do get in too deep, it's control that gets you out, not sheer damage output. And yet so much of what we were given in this expansion is just more attacks, more dps cooldowns. Though the reasoning's not hard to guess; we already have all the CC we could want, and they couldn't figure out what else to give us. You'd think that would have thrown up red flags during design meetings, but here we are.

    Anyway, I'm interested in feedback, I know there are those of you who think the class is perfect and wouldn't change a thing, I just don't feel the same.
    - The Hunter's Creed -
    "This is my pet. There are many others like him, but this one is mine. He is my best friend. He is my life. I must master him as I master my life.
    My pet, without me, is useless. Without my pet, I am useless."

  2. #2
    Honestly if they did what you suggested here we'd be one of the most simple classes around which I would not like.

    You also have not provided with any solutions to get our DPS up to par again with Readiness/Rapid Fire/level 90 talents-single target being gone, simply increasing the damage on other abilities doesn't always work.

    Coming from someone who only PvE's I think we are in a good spot there right now, I wish the level 90 talents were a little more creative but other then that I enjoy playing my class right now, can't comment on pvp.

  3. #3
    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.

  4. #4
    How would making silencing shot baseline fix the bloat? It would just add to it since we'd get another ability.

    I like the amount of buttons hunters have personally so I wouldn't like to see these fixes go through.

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  5. #5
    Agree with the removal of Aspects (really, why still have them at this point?) and agree with the changes to Serpent Sting and the baseline Silencing Shot.

    Not too sure about the rest - Camouflage is rather useful in certain situations.
    "Let's see. There are monkeys that evolved into men and monkeys that didn't. Just as well, there are men that remained men and men that evolved into something else. Do you really think humans are the ultimate form of evolution? How arrogant."
    --Kakurine, Evil Zone for PS1

  6. #6
    I'm sorry but you must not understand that the issue isn't with the amount of abilities we have but the issues some people have with the number of abilities we have in our rotation. Taking away 2 abilities one on a 3 min cd the other on a 5 min one will not fix the issue at all. I also find it rather odd you want to do away with the 90 talents cause you feel the are for our AoE but fail to mention that the damage of our other shots needs to be brought up since those abilities are used in single target rotations (maybe not so much barrage) to augment our dps. Really the only point I can agree with you on is Focus Fire, unless your pushing into progression and need to eek every bit of damage out of your spec you can pretty much free up your keybind for it and not lose much dps.
    Last edited by Xeraxis; 2012-12-27 at 10:38 PM.

  7. #7
    As far as balancing is concerned I didn't feel it necessary to suggest specific increases and such, as I just assume if they remove certain cooldowns like rapid fire, obviously they're going to rebalance us to compensate. I'm not concerned about max dps, I'm concerned with having 9 buttons to push rotationally, and having to rely on macros and addons just to have easy access to everything. I can only imagine how new players feel right now, looking at everything on our plate.

    Camouflage I was unsure about to begin with, as stated in my post, I understand the desire to keep it around.

    Aspects are a joke at this point. Cheetah is the only one you'll ever use actively, hawk is nothing more than a passive buff that you have to manually activate once in a while. Hawk has become what trueshot aura was, and notice what happened to trueshot aura?

    I still think rapid fire should be removed simply because it's the single most boring dps cooldown we have. It interacts with nothing, provides haste, which is and always will be a "meh" stat for us, and doesn't even offer an interesting visual. It's not rewarding, in other words. If it came down to losing Bestial Wrath, Stampede, or rapid fire, which do you think most people are going to pick? I'm just saying that between spec CDs, baseline CDs, pet CDs, trinkets, and talents, rapid fire is about the most boring of them all, and we don't need all that redundancy.

    Also, I will keep saying this until I'm blue in the face: Complexity does NOT equal depth. Having a lot of buttons doesn't increase the skill required to play the class well. What we need is fewer buttons, but those buttons need to require more intelligent use. Having 6 abilities that you just use on cooldown, with no other determining factors is easy. Any keyboard turning stoner could do it. Having 3 abilities, that you have to use at just the right time, or in the right order, or in certain combinations with eachother or with procs, that requires intelligent thought. In other words, skill. What we have right now is the former, not the latter.

    Also, no one has commented on the readiness change yet. Honestly, I feel this is the biggest one. Making readiness baseline was the single biggest mistake they made this time around, and if they don't want to outright remove it, I at least think giving it the same treatment as preparation would go a LONG way to fixing some of our problems.
    - The Hunter's Creed -
    "This is my pet. There are many others like him, but this one is mine. He is my best friend. He is my life. I must master him as I master my life.
    My pet, without me, is useless. Without my pet, I am useless."

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Cyph3r View Post
    Also, no one has commented on the readiness change yet. Honestly, I feel this is the biggest one. Making readiness baseline was the single biggest mistake they made this time around, and if they don't want to outright remove it, I at least think giving it the same treatment as preparation would go a LONG way to fixing some of our problems.
    Having an ability you hit once every 5 min really isn't bloat. It's a cooldown and one with a fairly long cooldown. The main issue alot of people have is with the number of buttons we have in our rotation (AS, KC/CS/ES, Cobra/Steady, GT/PS/Bar, DB, BS/LS/AMoC(possibly but it does have a rather long CD), KS, AimS/BA/BW)

  9. #9
    Deleted
    I would personally prefer less buttons and especially cooldowns (i hate you readiness) but can do with current ones. Though i specced to survival just because i don't like complexity lol.

    Anyway, it's true that rapid fire is kinda boring. Maybe they could implement it to speed up autoshot, like 3-4 shots per second for rapid fire's duration, with lesser damage or something. At least it would look "cool" and every clueless teenager would roll a hunter because of it.

    edit: never tried/saw barrage, maybe it looks like that.
    Last edited by mmoc64ace7a841; 2012-12-27 at 10:51 PM.

  10. #10
    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.
    Nothing ever bothers Juular.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Holtzmann View Post
    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.
    You know there is a glyph for a focus-less tranq shot. Also no player that plays their hunter well would want a dispell that you can't time. With your proposal in PVE you'd have to delay shots if you needed to dispell something or with PvP you'd only use the signature shots when there was something that needed to be dispelled right then.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Xeraxis View Post
    You know there is a glyph for a focus-less tranq shot. Also no player that plays their hunter well would want a dispell that you can't time. With your proposal in PVE you'd have to delay shots if you needed to dispell something or with PvP you'd only use the signature shots when there was something that needed to be dispelled right then.
    Fine. Remove Tranq shot altogether. Along with all other offensive dispels.
    Nothing ever bothers Juular.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Holtzmann View Post
    Fine. Remove Tranq shot altogether. Along with all other offensive dispels.
    I'm sorry but so far this thread seems to be full of people who want a class with only 8 abilities and no utility. You're going to have to accept that there are some buttons you have to press at times other than dpsing if you want to be competitive in any aspect of this game. Dumbing down the game will resolve the issue of bloat but if that's really what you want I'd really suggest playing another game instead of trying to change this one.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Xeraxis View Post
    I'm sorry but so far this thread seems to be full of people who want a class with only 8 abilities and no utility. You're going to have to accept that there are some buttons you have to press at times other than dpsing if you want to be competitive in any aspect of this game. Dumbing down the game will resolve the issue of bloat but if that's really what you want I'd really suggest playing another game instead of trying to change this one.
    I don't think spammable dispels take all that much skill to use. If they had a cooldown so you would have to choose what you want to counter, it would be alright. But automatically popping buffs off people as soon as they line them up is just annoying.
    Nothing ever bothers Juular.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Holtzmann View Post
    I don't think spammable dispels take all that much skill to use. If they had a cooldown so you would have to choose what you want to counter, it would be alright. But automatically popping buffs off people as soon as they line them up is just annoying.
    That would be why Tranq shot uses focus or if you don't want it to use focus it has a 10sec cd.

  16. #16
    Elemental Lord Spl4sh3r's Avatar
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    All I can really think of right now is Aspect of the Cheetah, remove the stupid Daze mechanic on it. The only reason I can see them adding the Daze mechanic in the first place was because of us kiting. However I see no Hunter ever actually using Cheetah anymore while kiting. We are more likely to kite with just Hawk/Iron Hawk especially now that Fox is merged into it. Then do something special with Aspect of the Pack and Daze.

  17. #17
    I admit, I just don't like dispels.

    But I concede. That's not a possible change I care strongly about.
    Nothing ever bothers Juular.

  18. #18
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    I was going to be fairly dismissive, because Hunters don't really have that bad a toolkit bloat compared to many other classes (or put another way, it's more of a 'WoW problem' than a specific 'Hunter problem').

    But to be honest, your list of changes is pretty reasonable. My only disagreements are:
    - Rapid Fire is a cool button and without it Hunters don't really have a 'signature' CD. Perhaps make Rapid Fire 1m CD, MM-only. BM keeps BW as a 1m signature CD. Surv gets something else (finally!).

    - Focus Fire seems like a neat part of BM, so it's odd to cut that. But then, I can't stand BM and don't play it, so maybe BM players see the ability differently. :p

    - Camo is cool, I don't think it should be dropped. Maybe modified to feel less gimmicky / more natural to use. It's a really cool part of that 'wild stalker' feel.

    Completely agree on Widow Venom, Aspects, Readiness, SiShot, talents, and Cheetah.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tehstool View Post
    How would making silencing shot baseline fix the bloat? It would just add to it since we'd get another ability.
    That would be a talent system improvement, so I can finally actually choose something on T30. I mean yes, every once in a while I'll grab Wyvern or Binding for 1 specific gimmick purpose, but at almost all times that row has SiShot locked in place. Nothing they're do in 5.2 so far will change that for me. But maybe other Hunters switch around more?
    Last edited by Lovestar; 2012-12-27 at 11:28 PM.

  19. #19
    Sorry to say OP but the only idea you had that wasn't completely awful was rolling aspects in to passives.

    Everything else you suggested would make Hunters terrible.

    Get rid of Widow Venom? Seriously? This is a must have PvP ability. Same with the other person that recommended cutting Tranq shot.

    It's like some of you have never played a Hunter correctly in PvP before.

  20. #20
    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?"

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