Eyes of the Beast

[Okacz]

You know what I miss? Eyes of the beast. My friends and I used to have so much fun with that spell.
We have mixed feelings about that one. (Source)
If we could convince players not to drag super situational spells onto their bar, then there would be room for more of them.

If we could convince players not to drag super situational spells onto their bar, then there would be room for more of them. Am I drunk or should I be to understand this? Eyes of the Beast was removed... because Blizzard was annoyed by the number of players actually having it on their hotbar?

Yes, I'm gonna play some Beast Mastery, this Kill Command looks cool, will be under 1, yeah, and Arcane Shot under 2... focus generator at 3... STOP! WAIT! Forgot to make room for Eyes of the Beast! Okay, now 1-8 is Eyes of the Beast. Uff. Close one.

Last time I've heard EotB was removed due to players overusing it to bug encounters and have too much fun in open world. But this bar thing is kinda confusing me.

[notorious98]

Why get rid of it at all? It was an extremely beneficial spell in BGs for recon. Maybe they should just fix the bug.

[Spiralphoenix]

Eyes of the beast was brought up in the 5.4 developer interviews as well. Under "Ability Bloat". Personally I thought it sounded a little more hopeful than that twitter post in terms of getting it back in our spellbooks. But who knows.

One of the mistakes made when doing a pass of abilities in Mists of Pandaria was removing very situational or fun abilities. For example, Eyes of the Beast doesn't take up a keybind or important action bar slot, but it is something that players miss now.

[foxHeart]

They were so sure those spells were so completely useless and needed removed. And now this. lol

[Tehterokkar]

Should have made EotB a minor glyph. Would have taken it 100%.

[Viradiance]

Would like to see this come back with, say, sentry totem and such.

Maybe give it a spell UI like Portals, Call Pet or Poisons get. Make it "Situational Abilities" or something. Put stuff like Eagle Eyes, Eyes of the Beast in there. Do it with other classes and add a few more fun stuff like that.

[Pengalor]

Wait, were they under the impression that people were binding EotB? >.>

[Drithien]

Last time I've heard EotB was removed due to players overusing it to bug encounters and have too much fun in open world. But this bar thing is kinda confusing me.

Welcome to the club. Sometimes it's as if we are playing an entirely different game from the developers...

They somehow think that for whatever reason most players either fill their bars with abilities regardless of usefulness, or that everyone and their step-mother has his/her bars filled with all kinds of macros, and not just a minority of players that really care about such stuff.

What is more they seem to think that anything that drives performance in PvE/PvP matters exlusively, and just fun/mostly fun abilities are useless... in a game that people play to have fun... and the majority of them are not even that concerned about their performance.

But, there seems to be a change in the way of the developers' thinking, and they start to finally realise that the game should not be developed just for high-performance, but also, and hopefully in time 'most importantly', for players to have fun. Hope it goes that way

[Magpai]

You can hardly blame Blizzard for this. The "community" is brimming with vocal players who are essentially too stupid to enjoy the game properly and blame Blizzard for giving them choices as a result.

[yetgdhfgh]

This shouldve been brought back as a glyph that way it is optional but i guess fun isnt aloud

[Tomec]

Why get rid of it at all? It was an extremely beneficial spell in BGs for recon. Maybe they should just fix the bug.

I don't really think it was so much a bug (though there probably were some encounters that acted odd with it) as "clever use of game mechanics". I remember in the past (before it was gone) I would sometimes use it to pull/reset a pack. I know you went into combat when pet attacked, but of course there was FD...

It's kind of like Drithien said, sometimes it feels like we and devs are playing two different games. Which in a sense we are. They know how the encounters are supposed to be done, can set up ideal conditions, etc. That's things that we can't do as players, and so we find our own ways to do things not knowing the "right" way to do something.

As for the ability bloat and putting things on bars... you have to admit that hunters had a lot of abilities in the past. They have been pared down a lot now, but if you've been playing since Vanilla (even on/off) you'd remember the days of like 5 aspects, tracking not being on the minimap, etc. Even now (well when I played in 5.0) my bars were more full than my other chars because of certain things... But they definitely weren't un-managable.

Now, that said, there is a lot of new tech/managing of spells and such (like tracking on minimap, portals for mages, etc) that could be used for minimizing things. Like what ViridianCC said, only maybe taken a different level such as "pet abilities" that included things like mend/revive pet and the others. Which could of course could be pulled out individually too. Or even allowing us to make our own "shelves" like that with whatever abilities we want.

[ATron52]

If we could convince players not to drag super situational spells onto their bar, then there would be room for more of them. Am I drunk or should I be to understand this? Eyes of the Beast was removed... because Blizzard was annoyed by the number of players actually having it on their hotbar?

Yes, I'm gonna play some Beast Mastery, this Kill Command looks cool, will be under 1, yeah, and Arcane Shot under 2... focus generator at 3... STOP! WAIT! Forgot to make room for Eyes of the Beast! Okay, now 1-8 is Eyes of the Beast. Uff. Close one.

Last time I've heard EotB was removed due to players overusing it to bug encounters and have too much fun in open world. But this bar thing is kinda confusing me.

The way I read that tweet, I can't imagine that they were talking specifically about EotB (with the putting it on the bar quote) but situational spells in general. Ability bloat is a huge concern in this game and (to me) it seems that hunters have it worse than most. I have a 90 Pally, DK, and Hunter (and in WotLK and Cata I had the same along with a Warrior and a Druid at max level) and my Hunter has had more situational abilities by a pretty large margin than most other classes. I use and have always used the default Blizz UI with every "optional" action bar turned on, and my hunter is the only one class I've ever run out of room with. (Bear in mind that I don't PvP at all - just solo stuff, raid, and other things like that.)

EotB was a "fluff" spell that was fun. I don't agree that it should have been removed, but something needed / needs to be done about the massive amount of abilities we have. Do I use distracting shot routinely? No, but if a mob decided to start smacking a healer I use it to pull them away while I take aggro. I hardly ever use widow venom, but if I'm soloing something that has heals more than every 24 seconds, I use it. I keep flare accessible since I'm on a PvP server. Eagle Eye is the only ability that I can think of (I'm at work and can't log in) that I don't ever use unless I'm just goofing off or something, and even then I haven't touched that in years.

That's not to mention profession abilities, engineering gadgets, bandages, pots, guild abilities....We have too many. I really wouldn't mind seeing us get to a place where we can cull some of the lesser used abilities without gutting the class or our identity. Eyes of the Beast, while fun, wasn't really needed. Though I'd definitely trade Eagle Eye in a seconds to have EotB back.

TL;DR - If you think that the quote is referencing people keybinding EotB, you're silly. Having something on an action bar ≠ having it keybound for routine use. Hunters, in my experience, have the most bloat and that does need to be addressed.

TL;DR Tl;DR - Eagle Eye is horrible.

[zenyatta]

Hey, hey! I use Eagle Eye to see if Oon is up! I use it 4 or 5 times every Tuesday!

[Hunterpower]

Hunters have very few minor glyphs that are worth taking.
if they made a eyes of the beast minor glyph, i'd take it in an instant.
and judging by how he said "and now players miss it" it might make a return next expansion

[Daetur]

I miss EotB, and I used to use it a lot in open world to have fun or scout areas that were otherwise too dangerous to just waltz through. That said, I never had it taking up space on my main hotbar, nor did I ever feel the need to keybind it. I just put it off to the side along with all the other very situational stuff.

[Okacz]

Hey, hey! I use Eagle Eye to see if Oon is up! I use it 4 or 5 times every Tuesday!

And it brings us to the conclusion - why the heck remove any of the fun, but rarely useful abilities?

You have a LOT of place on additional bars, and even if you don't want to mess them up to the borders, abilities like EotB or Eagle Eye are used so rarely that you can simply access them from the spellbook. Removing those abilities does not improve anything at all - rather makes the game lack fun.

[zenyatta]

And it brings us to the conclusion - why the heck remove any of the fun, but rarely useful abilities?

You have a LOT of place on additional bars, and even if you don't want to mess them up to the borders, abilities like EotB or Eagle Eye are used so rarely that you can simply access them from the spellbook. Removing those abilities does not improve anything at all - rather makes the game lack fun.

I also occasionally use it when in the Firelands daily area, since you can sit at one spawn point and Eagle Eye the other areas. I actually do have room for it on my bars, too, despite how little I use it. I used to have EotB on my bar and never had space issues. Agreed that I'm not sure what these guys are on, but that I want some.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

I remember using EotB to pull the boss of the gauntlet in the original ZA...ah the days back when I actually liked my hunter.

[Peacemoon]

Blizzard need to define 'ability bloat', and then we have a reasoned debate about where broadly the axe should land. At the moment there isn't much coherent logic and the axe seems to just swing quite randomly. Personally I hate that they got rid of EotB, which was quite a unique ability.

[Penguintamer]

If it makes anyone feel better, I'm going to Blizzcon in November and will be doing everything in my power to get into the Class Q&A and I am going to grill them about adding back Eyes of the Beast like there's no tomorrow. I plan on printing out 'EYES OF THE BEAST PLS' on a t-shirt for the occasion as well. I've been playin' since BC and that was my favorite ability :[