Originally Posted by
Cyph3r
Comments like this only reinforce the argument that we have too many buttons. We shouldn't have to macro anything just to make it manageable.
The main problem I have with the new active talents is that they're basically all redundant. Dire beast is the weird standout here, since it's in a tier that focuses on giving us a new way to regen focus (which I like), yet it's the only one that does extra damage while returning focus, making it the clear choice for raw damage output, and I think that's wrong. As for the others, everything in the 90 tier is just aoe with a little bit of utility tacked on (that no one ever uses these spells for). We already have aoe. Several forms in fact, why did we need another? There's just several tiers in the tree where it feels like they didn't know what else to do, and gave us these things for the sake of giving us shiny new toys, not because we actually lacked anything.
I've been saying for years that the Hunter arsenal is pretty much full, the only real hole we had was a reliable self heal, which we finally got this time, sort of. This expansion has given us ability bloat, bad. I don't think it would be too hard to fix, though it would require some significant changes.
1. Remove readiness. We'll be fine without it, and it would vastly simplify a lot of things
2. Roll the healing debuff from widow venom into serpent sting, and get rid of that button. I still can't believe this hasn't happened yet.
3. Redesign the entire level 90 tier to augment our existing aoe in new ways. Use it to Buff multi-shot and explosive trap. Of course that's assuming that the tier is meant to improve our aoe. It if was just meant to be "fun stuff at level 90", well then pretty much anything goes as long as it doesn't add more buttons.
4. Reintroduce sniper training to counterbalance our new on the move dps
5. At least consider removing rapid fire. It serves the same purpose as several other abilities (a raw dps cooldown). If stampede is meant to be our big burst dps CD, do we still need this? (personally I'm not convinced we even need stampede, but it does carry more "wow" factor).
6. Finally, rebalance the direct damage of our rotational abilities to compensate for the above changes.
We've become too reliant on cooldowns, simply because we have so many, and we can string most of them together for some pretty serious burst. This is of course more of an issue with pvp than pve, but that's old news, and pve rotations will always suffer at the hands of pvp. Fewer CDs means each one can be stronger, and of course it means using them more carefully, especially without readiness there to bail you out of a bad choice. More complexity does not equal more depth, just as simple doesn't have to mean shallow. I don't just want lots of buttons to push, I want meaningful buttons to push, and only a handful of those. I want to be able to focus on the fight, not on my ability timers, and that goes for pve and pvp. It's so frustrating sometimes how often Hunter design rides just on the edge of perfection; like a basketball forever circling the rim but never falling through.