Warlord of draenor hunter ability changes expectations .

[Deleted]

So on the front page this statment shows up:

"About 20% of class skills and abilities have been removed to help address ability bloat."

At this moment, counting pet related skills and abilitys us hunters have about 90 spells and abilities.

Which do you think will go away, get merged or reworked?

Keep in mind that this most likely will effect passives as well.

[Deleted]

Widow Venom should be merged with something.
Same goes for Tranquilizing Shot.

I think these two would be enough for me to be happy.

[Keltas]

What I expect;

Serpent Sting - SV only

Arcane shot - BM _or_ SV only

Concussive Shot - gone

Beast Lore - gone

Feed Pet - gone

Aspects - gone (I really hope, that way no more bandaid hawk buffs)

Scatter Shot - gone (they're removing cc. It'll probably be gone.)

Tranquilizing Shot - gone (maybe baked in somewhere)

Scare Beast - gone

Widow Venom - gone (probably baked in somewhere)

Distracting Shot - gone

Snake Trap - gone

Masters Call - gone

Explosive Trap - gone

Rapid Fire - gone

[PuppetShowJustice]

I suspect that Focus Fire won't survive for BM.

[BergErr]

Aspects, focus fire, widow venom, traps gone imo.

[PuppetShowJustice]

I'm going to be bummed if they strip away Camo.

[Bullettime]

Focus Fire, Aspects, Widow Venom, Scatter Shot, Feed Pet, Beast Lore, Scare Beast, Tranq Shot, Distracting Shot, Explosive Trap, and Snake Trap.

[Daetur]

Aspects are probably gone, or Hawk simply turned passive. They're pretty much pointless anyway- Pack maybe turned into a CD like Stampeding Roar?

I don't think Concussive Shot can go away, because hunters need to maintain that kiting niche. Scatter Shot probably gone to address CC in PvP. Scare Beast probably gone. Distracting Shot I can see going away because it's such a niche PvE ability. Widow Venom really needs to be baked into another ability like other classes' MS debuffs. Snake Trap can probably go. Beast Lore, Eagle Eye, and Feed Pet can all be cut easily, but might escape because they don't ever need to take up a keybinding or action bar slot, and they regret removing Eyes of the Beast for that reason- took away a fun ability, didn't help with button bloat at all. Explosive Trap could possibly be cut.

Focus Fire should probably go for BM, I agree. Serpent Sting could certainly be made Survival-only, might help differentiate the specs.

They really, really, really need to be careful when removing abilities that they leave enough "fun" rewards for leveling up through low levels. It's already hurting because of the talent changes.

I also don't think they can remove traps entirely without having to admit that we lack raid-interactive utility in PvE. If they remove traps, we have no utility that the rest of our group can interact with, or that protects our group members. Every class has some access to that.

[PuppetShowJustice]

I was going to object to Beast Lore on the grounds that it provides an in-game way to tell at a glance if something is tameable or not but it occurred to me that they could just make that automatic when you mouse over a Beast or something so that isn't really a problem. Looking back on it, it's kind of a weird button.

I will HATE losing Distracting Shot. It's one of those rarely used but super, super helpful buttons when it is relevant.

[Skorpionss]

So on the front page this statment shows up:

"About 20% of class skills and abilities have been removed to help address ability bloat."

At this moment, counting pet related skills and abilitys us hunters have about 90 spells and abilities.

Which do you think will go away, get merged or reworked?

Keep in mind that this most likely will effect passives as well.

Why would it affect passives... my guess is they wanna get rid of active abilities and bring it eventually down to the number newer mmos have(5-8 active abilities)...

- - - Updated - - -

I was going to object to Beast Lore on the grounds that it provides an in-game way to tell at a glance if something is tameable or not but it occurred to me that they could just make that automatic when you mouse over a Beast or something so that isn't really a problem. Looking back on it, it's kind of a weird button.

I will HATE losing Distracting Shot. It's one of those rarely used but super, super helpful buttons when it is relevant.

yeah that's one I'm worried about too... saved from wipes a few times because of it...

[PuppetShowJustice]

It will also be interesting to see what happens to pet skills. I'm going to guess that pet related disarms and maybe even roots like web will be going away.

(5-8 active abilities)

I would quit instantly.

[mistahwilshire]

Aspects, Focus Fire, Feed Beast (seriously this should've been gone years ago), Beast Lore, Scare Beast.

Removing Scatter is arguable I think because scatter trapping is the iconic Hunter CC in PvP back before all classes CC got out of control. I know they're cutting back on the CC but personally I would avoid getting rid of something so well known and try to clean up elsewhere instead.

Another thing is that most of the stuff we've mentioned is stuff most Hunters generally don't bind. Focus Fire and Aspects I think are the most deserving going by their criteria for what they want to cut.

Also many people pointed out in that WoD gameplay video that the Hunter didn't have Arcane Shot on his bar. This could be for many reasons but it could also be related to this.

[Daetur]

I was going to object to Beast Lore on the grounds that it provides an in-game way to tell at a glance if something is tameable or not but it occurred to me that they could just make that automatic when you mouse over a Beast or something so that isn't really a problem. Looking back on it, it's kind of a weird button.

I will HATE losing Distracting Shot. It's one of those rarely used but super, super helpful buttons when it is relevant.

Yeah, there are a lot of niche abilities that I can see being possibly cut that I will actually miss. Ideally, once we get into Beta, we can give proper feedback about what is and isn't being removed. Until then, this is all totally speculation, and hopefully, we'll just be stripped of things we actually don't need, instead of things that are super helpful in some situations.

My ideal list/ things I'd actually like/ things that wouldn't be detrimental to me (PvE perspective, of course. I know PvPers surely see some abilities differently):

Widow Venom baked into another shot
Aspects removed, Hawk becomes passive, Pack becomes a raid movement CD (removes 3 buttons, adds one)
Beast Lore removed or baked into Tame Beast or even Track Beast as a passive (when Track Beast is active, you can see the tameable status of Beasts on their tooltip?)
Serpent Sting made Surv. only
Focus Fire removed from BM
Scare Beast
Feed Pet
It'd be nice to have another way to apply Mind-Numbing Poison, but Snake Trap could probably go without me missing it too much
Scatter Shot could go, and as much as I'd like to keep it, probably should go to address CC in PvP like they want to. Maybe just the removal of Scare Beast and the inability to fear beastform druids and shamans and other hunter pets would be enough?

I'd actually kind of like to see Kill Shot go away and a passive damage increase under x% take it's place. It's an extremely unsatisfying execute.

[clevin]

I think what you're all missing is that they want to reduce the number abilities that people have to actively use and which don't require judgement since those kind of things really are just bloat. For example, Glaive Toss - all you did was hit the button once every 30 seconds with a Weak Aura to tell you when it was up. /yawn.

Taking away, for example, Eagle Eyes* doesn't matter since very few people use it now. Beast Lore is the same bucket - people rarely use it so removing it won't matter that much if the goal is to reduce actively used ability bloat. Aspects... I can see either choice.

This means they probably won't take away any pet abilities since it's not really bloating what the hunter has to do - you can leave those to auto cast and it's fine (not optimal, but fine).

*i thought this was already gone, no?

[PuppetShowJustice]

This means they probably won't take away any pet abilities since it's not really bloating what the hunter has to do - you can leave those to auto cast and it's fine (not optimal, but fine).

The Warriors were saying in their forum that they didn't have Disarm anymore. I don't know how much truth there is to that but if they can't disarm then I find it impossible to believe that they would allow our pets to keep the capacity.

[clevin]

The Warriors were saying in their forum that they didn't have Disarm anymore. I don't know how much truth there is to that but if they can't disarm then I find it impossible to believe that they would allow our pets to keep the capacity.

interesting. I'm assuming that their goal is still what they stated a few months ago, to reduce ability bloat where the ability requires no thought (GT, etc). I don't track warrior stuff, but perhaps they're baking Disarm into another spell? I can see them combining things if they see them always being used together.

[Tehterokkar]

They have to keep Tranquilizing Shot, otherwise Hunters would lose their offensive dispel.

But things like:
-Feed Pet
-Scare Beast
-Widow Venom
-Scatter Shot
-Snake Trap
-Aspects
-Distracting Shot
-Beast Lore

are free to be deleted. Out of those abilities listed above, only 1 has a meaningful use in PvE. Snake trap is just a joke as usual, 50-100 hits per snake? what?

[Deleted]

serpent sting and widow venom merged with something, maybe serpent sting could just be built into steady shot

- - - Updated - - -

They have to keep Tranquilizing Shot, otherwise Hunters would lose their offensive dispel.

But things like:
-Feed Pet
-Scare Beast
-Widow Venom
-Scatter Shot
-Snake Trap
-Aspects
-Distracting Shot
-Beast Lore

are free to be deleted. Out of those abilities listed above, only 1 has a meaningful use in PvE. Snake trap is just a joke as usual, 50-100 hits per snake? what?

hah, i didn't even know we still had distracting shot, thought that got removed in cata, havn't had it on my bars for a long time. remove that.

[mistahwilshire]

Distracting shot is such a fantastic solo ability. I would be super sad to see it go.

[clevin]

serpent sting and widow venom merged with something, maybe serpent sting could just be built into steady shot

They're not going to bake an instant into a cast time shot. If they removed Serpent they'd bake it into an instant, like Explosive. Similar to what they did with Multishot applying SrS to the targets in SV.

They have to keep Tranquilizing Shot, otherwise Hunters would lose their offensive dispel.

But things like:
-Feed Pet
-Scare Beast
-Widow Venom
-Scatter Shot
-Snake Trap
-Aspects
-Distracting Shot
-Beast Lore

are free to be deleted. Out of those abilities listed above, only 1 has a meaningful use in PvE. Snake trap is just a joke as usual, 50-100 hits per snake? what?

Again, none of those achieve their goal which is to make required rotations less about mindlessly press the right button whenever the ability is off CD. Some they could eliminate because they're not needed at all (Feed Pet...) but doing that doesn't help much.