Recent Hunter Changes

[3clipse]

We do care about and actively balance at lower levels. Our goal is to make the game as fun and balanced at possible at all levels, however, greater scrutiny from a design standpoint, as well as by the whole community, is placed on the end game. From a perspective of a systems designer, the end game as of patch 4.0.1 is now level 85.

That said, we will be making several balancing changes in patch 4.0.3a based on what we've been seeing since patch 4.0.1. With regard to lower level players, we plan to adjust damage and healing for all classes from levels 1-79. The base points of almost all spells and abilities are being reduced in order to bring combat times at low levels to a more acceptable length. Some specific spells/abilities are being reduced in damage even more, and in the case of most abilities that deal weapon damage, we're going to make the damage percent scale with level. So as an example, Sinister Strike is currently planned to do 42% weapon damage at level 1, with the percentage of weapon damage rising per level up to its maximum potential at 80.

I imagine these are level 1 values we're seeing in this datamine. Don't worry too much about it.

Marksmanship

* Kill Shot now deals 116% weapon damage, down from 150%.
* Multi-Shot now deals 40% weapon damage, down from 55%.
* Aimed Shot! now deals 65% weapon damage, down from 100%.
* Steady Shot now deals 62% weapon damage, down from 100%.
* Arcane Shot now deals 61% weapon damage, down from 100%.
* Chimera Shot now scales from 48.8% of Ranged Attack Power, up from 28.8%.


Survival

* Black Arrow base damage increased by 20%, from 3077 to 3685.
* Explosive Shot now scales from 42% of Ranged Attack Power, up from 22%. Base damage increased by 25%, from 558 to 697.


The SV buff confuses me.

[ASO]

This is just terrible. I can't even fathom what game they're playing where MM needs a nerf; not only that, but a lot of those skills are regardless of spec, so it's yet another nerf to hunters overall.

[kolixela]

It makes no logical sense, another nerf to Aimed Shot, our "premiere" skill and our current 3 talent point virus.

We get to waste 3 talent points to get a 60% chance to proc a random crit worth about the same as a crit with our 22 focus focus-dump Arcane shot. So glad we are forced to talent that to get Chimera Shot..

[jaimelannister]

Marksmanship

* Kill Shot now deals 116% weapon damage, down from 150%.
* Aimed Shot! now deals 65% weapon damage, down from 100%.

Wait, what? First of all, they better damn well change the name of "Kill" Shot.

And why the hell would anyone bother sitting there for 3 seconds to cast a shot doing far less than full weapon damage?

All of these changes make absolutely zero sense.

Edit: So will basically all of our "special" abilities do less damage than a typical Auto Shot now?

[Harléquin]

This is just terrible why nerf aimed shot it doesnt even deal more than chimera? i mean it should shouldn't it? what is the point of it, if it has a 3 sec cast time, and crappy dmg and a proc that rarely happens?

Also kill shot as well again? my 62 paladin does more dmg with HoW than my 80 hunter does with kill shot.

Unless Hunters were so overly insanely powerful in cata atm, then i can unserstand but if not wtf blizz? i finally decided to make my hunter my main for cata and you go and kill my class! I only like playing MM!!!

[ASO]

Wait, what? First of all, they better damn well change the name of "Kill" Shot.

And why the hell would anyone bother sitting there for 3 seconds to cast a shot doing far less than full weapon damage?

All of these changes make absolutely zero sense.

Edit: So will basically all of our "special" abilities do less damage than a typical Auto Shot now?

I'm *assuming* they still have a base +damage along with scaling from AP.

[Truesight]

* Kill Shot has had its name changed to "Slap-on-the-Wrist Shot."

* We don't want Aimed Shot to be used in a rotation, even if it becomes Instant Cast. May be removed later.

* Survival can now go "Yay! Our dps is still mediocre but less mediocre than before!"

Yea. What the fuck are they smoking?

[Gaskal]

I know someone is going to say "IT IS BETAH ! STOP FREAKiN OuT" so I have to tell you right now sir that you need to put your brain in the toilet and get a new one before you can say that.

BTW... Just stop playing hunters. I rerolled to a warrior a loooong time ago. Problem solved eh?

[Dhryke]

I agree this is totally uncalled for. Better be the huge nerf that they do before they start tweaking the numbers back up.

[Herecius]

Everybody who knows me on these forums knows I'm a Blizzard cheerleader.

These changes made me stop, and seriously wonder what manner of thinking was going behind these changes. Blizzard has stated - repeatedly, I might add, and from more than one Blueposter - that the design intent is to not make huge, sweeping nerfs or buffs, but rather tweaking knobs until it's just right. This is just confusing, and more than a little disheartening.

What the fudge, folks.

EDIT: I want to be clear, I'm not going to knee-jerk and go OMG BLIZZ SUCKS QQ THEY HATE HUNTERS, but I am seriously wondering what the thought process behind this is. I know it's 'just beta' but it's very confusing to see this without any context. There's no indication that hunters are miles ahead of everybody else at level 85; if anything, we're in the middle-top of the charts on most of the fights, from what I've watching in the raid videos. We haven't been the unstoppable ultra killers in PvP that we were in early beta ever since Kill Command was nerfed (and rightly nerfed, it was far too strong), so what is the intent here?

[Kayko]

Before we all go and scream nerf, lets all sit back and wait till we see the AP coefficients on our shots.
We knew long ago that they did not want hunter damage to be so heavaly favored by our ranged weapon and these changes are just to weapon damage.
This may turn out to be the buff that hunters were looking for. but then again, it may just put us below the tanks.

edit: do note that the buffs are AP coeficiants, just wait a little here. We just might scale better with each upgrade we get instead of waiting on the next iLvL bow/gun to drop. Hopeing AP scaling is the intention of these changes, I have excited to see whre we cane go now.

[tackklee]

It seemed like MM was really struggling in Cata, so reducing its damage further is an odd decision. Anyone who's actually in Beta have anything they can add to this? Like, maybe MM was actually really awesome and SV was meh?


EDIT: Although, looking over the patch notes, it looks like a lot of classes were heavily nerfed this build. Still makes me wonder why they buffed SV, though, since SV Hunters were already doing great.

On the beta servers MM is decent. It 'average' against other dps classes. But SV has it beat by several thousand DPS in all situations. SV is actually one of the higher dps specs atm. For blizzard to have nerfed MM substantially while buffing SV is beyond me.

[ImNot1337]

Every class bowed before the nerf hammer I think this go round, but the changes to MM puzzle me greatly. It looks like they simply nerfed all shots to make Chimera better within the rotation, when all they needed to do was buff Chimera (or perhaps nerf one shot, instead of many).

Wow, I'm confused.

[Herecius]

On the beta servers MM is decent. It 'average' against other dps classes. But SV has it beat by several thousand DPS in all situations. SV is actually one of the higher dps specs atm. For blizzard to have nerfed MM substantially while buffing SV is beyond me.

Remember that the nerf to Arcane Shot would also heavily effect every spec.

[Gribel]

Have a look at the front page, most dpsers got nerfed. You may think of that as a buff to health and healing without number inflation instead of a dps nerf.

[Herecius]

Also, looking at still more of the changes... WHAT was going on when they made some of these? Every spell for warlocks reduced in base damage by 12%? That's a subtle 'tweak' for class balancing in the way that a sledgehammer is subtle if you use it to open a door.

[tackklee]

Remember that the nerf to Arcane Shot would also heavily effect every spec.

SV hunter RARELY uses Arcane Shot. Enough that the nerf won't have any significant impact on SV's DPS.

[3clipse]

I mean, if you look at all the changes, every single class got majorly nerfed.

They apparently want everyone to do shit DPS xD

I just can't understand why SV got buffed.

[Niroshi]

We do care about and actively balance at lower levels. Our goal is to make the game as fun and balanced at possible at all levels, however, greater scrutiny from a design standpoint, as well as by the whole community, is placed on the end game. From a perspective of a systems designer, the end game as of patch 4.0.1 is now level 85.

That said, we will be making several balancing changes in patch 4.0.3a based on what we've been seeing since patch 4.0.1. With regard to lower level players, we plan to adjust damage and healing for all classes from levels 1-79. The base points of almost all spells and abilities are being reduced in order to bring combat times at low levels to a more acceptable length. Some specific spells/abilities are being reduced in damage even more, and in the case of most abilities that deal weapon damage, we're going to make the damage percent scale with level. So as an example, Sinister Strike is currently planned to do 42% weapon damage at level 1, with the percentage of weapon damage rising per level up to its maximum potential at 80.

I imagine these are level 1 values we're seeing in this datamine. Don't worry too much about it.

[marlunara]

Killshot will now be known as tickle shot