How I would fix Hunter ability bloat

[Prokne]

The situational abilities are

Deterrence
Feign Death
Traps
Disengage
Master's Call
Concussive Shot
Silencing/Wyvern/Intimidation
Scatter Shot
Tranq Shot
Scare Beast
Flare
Camouflage
Widow Venom
Mend Pet
Revive Pet

So looking at these the first I would remove is snake trap. Its really only useful to distract mobs while soloing. Widow venom should be part of serpent as people have said. You pretty much never use scare beast, its not on my bars. As a hunter that would like a pet free spec, not having a pet gets rid of a few buttons. Flare could also go if Track Hidden worked better. Scatter shot could be put into a glyph to augment another shot, not sure which one, or you could have a Scatter/Tranq/Something else talent tier.

If they were to remove a talent tier I would prefer it was the one with MoC in it. The class needs less pet abilities. I would also probably change the tier before that to be the "pet" talents but it would be something like stampede/dire beast(extra pet permanent but no focus gain)/No pet. It would get rid of a lot of the short term CDs that make our rotations ridiculous.

[Tokas]

Which will end up with one of them being better and everyone then complaining you have to pick that one and there being no choice.

then those people are either super hardcore players if they care for 0,5% damage increase or they are full morons.

[Deleted]

then those people are either super hardcore players if they care for 0,5% damage increase or they are full morons.

tbh most people take the same build because of this anyway.

[iggie]

If this was implemented I would start playing my hunter again.

The only thing I would add is keep Rapid Fire as MMs burst CD, BW for BM, and maybe add something else for surv? Surv needs full redesign anyway, so lets just skip it.

Aside from removing readiness and re balancing ability damage, I like the idea of a signature CD for each spec. Of course, they'd need to re balance it anyways due to all specs losing dps CDs in the long run.

[Kuul]

You pretty much never use scare beast, its not on my bars.

Agree on everything else except this. Scare beast is great in PvP since it's important to keep the CC on enemy hunter's pet especially when they have BW on.
And it works on Druids also when they are shapeshifted.

[Deleted]

Agree on everything else except this. Scare beast is great in PvP since it's important to keep the CC on enemy hunter's pet especially when they have BW on.
And it works on Druids also when they are shapeshifted.

yeah so usefull in PvP not so much PvE

[Lovestar]

The problem with Scare Beast is it's one of those buttons the devs want to clean up, because it's useful in very, very specific situations but in general is just button clutter.

The counter-argument is "Who cares, it's useful to me — if you don't use it, don't bind it, and let me keep the ability".

That's valid enough, but it's not the direction the dev team looks like they want to move in. Each xpac they're making increasingly aggressive effort to simplify the number of specialty abilities, presumably to reduce confusing/overwhelming new players.

Again, this issue is not specific to Hunters, there are still many classes with oddball abilities that could stand to be pruned if you're being really mercenary about it. Another recent casualty of this is Priest's Mind Soothe, joining the pile of axed skills like Eyes of the Beast. An alternative approach is to convert the skill into something more widely-useful (like Druid's Soothe Beast → Soothe), but that still leaves people with lots of stuff on their keybinds.

GC himself has said that they end up cutting less skills than they want to, because each time it feels like they're "removing somebody's favorite ability". So assume that there's a lot of stuff (across every class) that's on their hit list, but they hesitated to remove this time around. :p

[Prokne]

GC himself has said that they end up cutting less skills than they want to, because each time it feels like they're "removing somebody's favorite ability". So assume that there's a lot of stuff (across every class) that's on their hit list, but they hesitated to remove this time around. :p

That must be why we still have feed pet. Some people must still use it and like it for RP reasons even though its unnecessary.

---------- Post added 2013-01-02 at 03:46 AM ----------

Agree on everything else except this. Scare beast is great in PvP since it's important to keep the CC on enemy hunter's pet especially when they have BW on.
And it works on Druids also when they are shapeshifted.

I see how it can be useful but its way more situational than other abilities. You can just use a trap in these situations even though you might want to cc 2 targets.

[Steliios]

not agree with u
maybe i agree with merging widow venom & serpent sting

[Cyph3r]

My goal with this was to get people talking about specific ideas regarding the current Hunter design. I'd seen a lot of "we have too many buttons" without many specific suggestions on how to fix it. I think I succeeded in that regard.

And I want to clarify that I think our core rotation is fine. Focus builder, focus dump, signature ability, dot. That's nice and simple, but also boring, so that's where the spec flavor comes in in the form of procs or cooldowns. Again, that's all fine. Things start to get complex with the late tier talents, then get way out of hand once you throw in readiness.

Personally, I definitely wouldn't remove things such as tranq shot or scare beast, simply because I think they're actually pretty good ability design. Specifically, spells that are exactly what you need, every once in a while. If an ability is too broad in it's use, it becomes rotational, and risks cluttering things up. The tier 90 talents are a perfect example of this. I don't think they were intended to become new rotational abilities, but they're so broad in use and such short CDs that that's exactly what happened. On the flipside, if you make a spell too specific, people don't even bother to put it on their bars, and just forget it's there. Things like scare beast can see a lot of use in certain types of play, such as questing/leveling, or soloing dungeons. I use it in pvp against druids and the occasional Hunter pet enough that I'd be seriously bummed if we lost it.

The other possible solution that recently occurred to me would be to change the way they design and implement active talents. Instead of just having them give us new abilities, they could REPLACE baseline stuff with the new one. For example instead of just adding glaive toss to our spell book, maybe it replaces multi-shot (it would have to be cooldown free like MS to work of course). That's just an example, so don't bother arguing about the specifics of that change, I'm just pointing out that might be a more effective way to give us more spells, more options, without giving us TOO many spells and options. I think it might even further enhance the idea of talents being the way we customize our playstyle, which was their intent all along.

[warex00]

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.

That right there would simply destroy hunter pvp. But I do agree on the rest tho

[Deleted]

And I want to clarify that I think our core rotation is fine. Focus builder, focus dump, signature ability, dot. That's nice and simple, but also boring

If you're bored play SV on multitarget fights or SK HC.

All I see hunters complain about in this tier is how they can't collect 200pets in a stable and how they have too many skills in their spellbook to drag them all on their vanilla ui.

[Asrialol]

Just to chime in - this is the direct quote from ghostcrawler, on the frontpage:

can you elaborate on the "hunters have too many buttons" thing? A lot of people enjoy it.. Do you intend to remove abilities?
But overall, we think hunters have too many situational abilities and cooldowns. # of rotational abilities is generally good. (Source)
I'm curious, whats your distinction between 1) situational abilities, 2) cooldowns and 3) rotational abilities?
Deterrence - situational. BW - cooldown. Arcane Shot - rotational. (Source)

now, what this means is - don't get your hopes up for any "rotational" fixes. We're fine as-is with the amount of buttons we have to press in a combat situation.
Breaking it down:

Signature shot. (Explo, KC, Chim)
Focus builder. (Steady, Cobra).
Arcane shot.
Lvl 90 talent. (Glaive, Power, Barrage).
Signature speciality. (Black Arrow, Focus Fire, Aimed Shot).
Kill Shot.
Serpent Sting.

That's a total of seven abilities. One of those we only have to fire once, another is only aviable for about 15% of the fight (as raid dps goes up after 35% due to classes slowly activating their OWN executes). You can add dire beast to the mix, but I imagine that's one of the things that'd go under "utility/cooldown", and is probably a valid thing to want "fixed". Same goes for the tier 75 talents.
The big thing is, as he says, the many extra utility and cooldown buttons, and management of those. Lynx Rush was chosen, even though it was inferior, by almost every top hunter before the "change" that made it into "AMOC with lower damage and no focus cost", both for the burst and the relative ease at which you could use it.

The utility buttons they might change in one way or another -
Tier 75 talents.
Tier 45 talents (TOTH is passive already, but fervor/dire beast is more "situational).
Beastial Wrath (25% uptime and need to build your focus around it, along with keeping up your normal cycle = very tedious. Grant either more passive focus regen from somewhere, or cut focus costs, then slap a bigger CD on BW and make it a "real" burst cooldown, instead of the pitiful 10-20% damage modifier it has now).
Explosive Trap (having to AOE-attacks is more than most other classes, and i's such a small amount of damage that removing it to ease up on bloat would not have a big effect, as long as AOE was made up for otherwise).
Aspects has already been "removed" (people suggesting its removal, I don't get it - it's already the only aspect you'll ever want, why would you need it removed? Just don't have a button for it <.<).
I disagree with doing anything about tranq short. It's fine as it is, bar the focus cost (why do shamans get to purge two magic effects for "no" cost, as mana is infinite, while we have to pay 10% of our resource that translates directly into damage, or suffer a 10 sec CD for ONE?).
Feign death and Misdirection are both hunter tools that helps combat threat, which in this day and time, is not even an issue anymore. I could see them doing something about it, as having two of these are deffo "utility bloat". Feign serves no real purpose in fights anymore either, except for easy resetting of bosses like Spirit kings. Gone are the days where you could feign Magmatron's flamethrower, in order to completly avoid the attack.
Hunters mark has already been removed from the bloat by making it "baseline".

This is all from a PvE point of view. From a pvp point of view, I really have no idea - but I imagine making serpent sting and widow venom into one sting wouldn't hurt too much, as it is an easily dispellable (and, due to its potency, SHOULD probably be dispelled) dot.

If they removed or changed Feign Death I would have to strike down on someone really badly, as this is a huge ability when soloing stuff. It's also decent in PvP.

Same with Misdirection. Need it. Dont take it away from me!

I still don't get the issue, though. We don't have too many buttons. The ones I don't use aren't on my bars (Most of those abilities are best for PvP and such).

[Lovestar]

To be fair, just because you ignore abilities that don't interest you doesn't mean that complaints about too many specialized abilities are invalid.

The other part of the problem is that different people have different ideas about which abilities are the "too much" ones, as this thread is making clear. Some hunters think the issue is the rotation being too cluttered or over-bound; others think there's too many niche tools; etc. And of course others argue it's just fine right now.

GC is correct that getting the entire community to agree on anything is rarely a realistic goal. :p

[Blingtown]

i also dont understand, i dont think we have to many buttons either. if u dont like focus fire, snake trap , masters call , scare beast or wateva just dont put them on bar and dont use them. simple your request has been granted there gone.
to op
-y remove rapid fire wat u cant be bothered to push a button once every 3min that makes u cast faster dont see whats wrong with it nuff to b removed.
-i like aspects now mainly cause i not really chage outa hawk so no problem if i do it usually when i cant mount and want to walk faster
-you already said camo wasnt for u but noticed lots of ppl saying they love it ( as i do) so covered
-serpent is your only good idea no wait GREAT IDEA
-readiness idea u can already do your self,hit ready then only use the def cd's u mentiond, everyone else who loves it can continue to use ther cd's twice. doesnt effect us who love it
-intim yeah fair call i just think give it to all specs no talent

[SL1200]

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..

I like this change. I think if they just did this and compensated our other abilitys for the dps loss hunters would be in a real good place. If not this then let Readiness be a choice in our specs. I would prefer not to deal with Readiness at all.

-readiness idea u can already do your self,hit ready then only use the def cd's u mentiond, everyone else who loves it can continue to use ther cd's twice. doesnt effect us who love it

I don't want to take Readiness away from people who like it, I'd just like to see it become a choice, with viable alternatives.

[solvexx]

i prefer having something to do ret pally is just too easy and that was my alt.

I have over 60 keybinds as a ret pala and use every single one regularly in arena matches.
You're wrong. Maybe you don't because you're not very good?

[iggie]

I have over 60 keybinds as a ret pala and use every single one regularly in arena matches.
You're wrong. Maybe you don't because you're not very good?

Everyone who pvps seriously (and not many bother anymore) have tons of keybinds. The class makes no difference in that regard. When it comes to a pve rotation, ret is fairly simple. Door is over there son.

[solvexx]

Everyone who pvps seriously (and not many bother anymore) have tons of keybinds. The class makes no difference in that regard. When it comes to a pve rotation, ret is fairly simple. Door is over there son.

Ret's rotation has just as many Damage affecting abilities as hunters do.

[PewPewIsWhatIDo]

The SS+WV merge would be fantastic if finally done.
I like your idea for Readiness, though I do like the reset on Silencing/Scatter Shot as well. Trap cooldowns are short enough to be excluded imo.