Hunter Changes

[tomas]

Upcoming Hunter Changes

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
Hunters of all specs, and particularly Beastmaster, are doing too much damage in PvE.

We tested this a lot internally in beta and knew hunters were high but we hoped other classes would be able to catch up in a way they have as yet been unable to do. We want to be careful not to hurt hunter dps too much in PvP, so we’re taking most of the damage out of Steady Shot and Volley. Beastmaster hunters are in addition losing some of their pet dps. We still want BMs to have the best pets, but pet dps numbers are a little high at the moment. We are also still concerned about hunter survivability in PvP and taking the opportunity to jazz up Deterrence into something that looks and plays a little more interesting.

These are not all of the changes we are working on for hunters, but those changes we feel are ready for testing. We hope to get these changes up on the PTR so players will have a chance to test them out and respond before they go live.


Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
Kindrid Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
Growl— threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.

EDIT: The "only" on Serpent's Swiftness meant 10% pet attack speed instead of 20%. The hunter bonus is unchanged.

[...]

I did say these are not all the hunter changes we're working on. Some we haven't quite worked out yet and others (one exciting one in particular concerning ammo) won't be ready until Ulduar or so.

We think MM was too high and BM was way too high. Survival is probably a little low. We are looking at buffing Survival, possibly through Explosive Shot, but we haven't finalized that yet.

The Deterrence change is defintely something we'll need to see in action on the PTR.

I don't want to do a disservice to all the good PvP feedback by attempting to boil it down too much. However, in general a lot of hunters were concerned about being able to do damage as much as they were concerned about being able to survive damage. We don't expect the Deterrence change to solve the former problem obviously. We're still working on that one, but we wanted to go ahead and announce what changes we have now so that you guys can be chewing on them.

Nerfing classes is never fun. It means that our initial tests and estimates didn't play out in the real world, which is a failing on our part, not anything the players did wrong. While buffing is a lot more fun, we think we'd get to crazy land too quickly by trying to make current BM dps the new benchmark. That would mean touching virtually every other class and spec as well as many encounters. While it might produce more positive PR in the short-term, it's a ton more work in the long-term that we would rather spend on new content or other problem areas.

Also, the sky is not falling. We're posting here so we can get feedback. Threats of rerolling or that sort of melodrama aren't really giving us any information we need. I can understand while you might want to vent a little bit, but posts with nothing but QQ aren't helpful.

[tomas]

My thoughts on the changes:

First off, I am honestly wondering if my poor damage in raids is due to poor gear or poor playing. I think its the gear, I hope its the gear. But I know I haven't seen any of this "Hunters are king of DPS" type thing.

Steady Shot
Pretty much halfing the damage of Steady Shot kinda sucks. Obviously won't effect PVP, it's kinda weird that auto attack will probably now be doing more than 50% of your damage in a fight. Also wonder if it makes Glyph of Steady shot worth it, or infact using Steady at all. Sure you'll do more damage with it, but will you do enough damage to be worth the time you spend in Viper to make up the mana? Probably, but who knows!

Volley
Fair enough to be honest. I know my DPS is higher using Volley than not using it if there is more than 1 mob. The damage it's putting out is really good, so much so that doubling the damage of Volley (two mobs in the AOE) can give me 2500/3000 DPS easily, where as over 1800 on single target DPS is difficult. Hopefully this also means they'll nerf Shadow Priests AOE as well.

Readiness
Mixed feelings really. The idea that a 50/21 build is better than a 51/20 is stupid. Readiness feels like it's in the right kinda place, but there shouldn't be the choice between a 21 point talent and a 51 point talent, and the 21 winning. But I do think Readiness should reset everything, even Wrath. Then again, it resetting Wrath is a big strong, but, most BM hunters will have it on a 1min cooldown anyway, so not a huge deal... Like I said, mixed feelings.

Deterence
I wonder if "prevents you from attacking" includes dropping a trap, and I wonder if "preventing damage" will also stop you from being stunned. Otherwise I can see rogues/warriors simply seeing that, stunning you while it runs out, and you're very little better than you were before. But I love the idea it'll stop a high powered mage spell or something, but a similar question with stuns, will a warlock simply fear me while it runs out?

Kill Shot
So, I can use it more than 1 on a boss? Cool! I know sometimes i've hit it twice on a boss, but mroe often than not its 1 shot per boss, which is hardly great. Nice to know I can use it a couple of times now

All the pet stuff
Biggest nerfs are obviously 5% less damage, and 10% less attack speed. Not huge differences, but a downgrade to worse. I couldn't care less to be honest, they're still good abilities, and if some stuff i've been reading is true (I've seen screen shots of a hunter's pet being 1st on a damage meter) then it's probably needed.

Improved Tracking
This is uber, having to switch what you're tracking sometimes every group (and sometimes during a group!) was a pain, nice to know I'll get the damage buff, usually I keep forgetting to switch (Human to Undead to Giant for example) as we move through an instance.

Overall
A couple of nice changes, a few bad ones. The main thing being Steady Shot. If I have 4000 AP, then Steady Shot is getting 800 Damage from my AP, now it'll only get 400, so thats a drop of 400 Damage. Assuming I cast it every 2 seconds (no haste) thats 200 DPS I'm losing from this change. I recon every single hunter will now always have points in Improved Arcane Shot.

I don't know the damage calc for Steady off the top of my head, but I think mine does around 1k, meaning with Serpent Sting up, the shot gets +100 damage. If the shot now does 600 then the glyph is only giving me 60 damage, which is 30 DPS, So probably still a nice glyph to have, since 30 DPS from a glyph is still quite good.

[cronulus]

Deterence
I wonder if "prevents you from attacking" includes dropping a trap, and I wonder if "preventing damage" will also stop you from being stunned. Otherwise I can see rogues/warriors simply seeing that, stunning you while it runs out, and you're very little better than you were before. But I love the idea it'll stop a high powered mage spell or something, but a similar question with stuns, will a warlock simply fear me while it runs out?

...
It's an ice block in which you can still move! It owns! Will be great in arena to stop you from being focus fired.

[ash]

I have noticed pets being a bit "wtf" in terms of damage. I've jumped a few hunters and in situations that I should have had no problem, I've finished them and then noticed I had like <5% health... Which kinda surprised me, considering they only got a few ranged shots off (they got out of dead zone for about 4 seconds or so). I then kinda realised the pet was shredding me up.

Well, not sure about the other changes.

[tomas]

Hunter pets now do decent damage, they obviously just made them do too much damage in respect to the Beastmaster talents. A hunter pet doing a fair bit of damage to you should be expected, hunter pets are supposed to be part of how we deal damage, not just some sort of gimmick.

The biggest thing is Steady Shot. Having your main shot do less than 600 damage seems really bad, ah well, I suppose they think its balanced :p Personally, I'm half tempted to give up on achieving much on my Hunter and going for another class :p

[Greentitch]

Personally, I'm half tempted to give up on achieving much on my Hunter and going for another class :p

I'm not quite sure why you think you'll be better off with another class. The plan is to make all classes do a similar level of DPS if they have the same gear and skill. So there won't be any overpowered DPS classes once Blizzard have finished fiddling around. Hunters will do the same damage as everyone else if played correctly.

[sirdeaz]

I'm afraid you'll hit a brick wall dps wise on every char you'll level up to 80. Why don't you give it a couple of weeks before you give up entirely? xD

It's just amazing how much decent items people have acquired in such a short amount of time. Met a warlock yesterday near the dummies with a couple of naxx 10 items and a mix blues/greens and he had 600! more +damage, 7% crit and a bit more haste than me

You've already mentioned in another topic where smuigh had 1k more than attack power as you. There's nothing stopping you from getting as much!

[sirdeaz]

Personally, I'm half tempted to give up on achieving much on my Hunter and going for another class :p

I'm not quite sure why you think you'll be better off with another class. The plan is to make all classes do a similar level of DPS if they have the same gear and skill. So there won't be any overpowered DPS classes once Blizzard have finished fiddling around. Hunters will do the same damage as everyone else if played correctly.

Not sure how you're gonna measure skill though. With my current build I've to keep track of 6 dots ticking and fill the remaing seconds I've got with filler spells like shadowbolt and drain soul. How can you compare this with 1/2 button dps classes?

[Greentitch]

Not sure how you're gonna measure skill though. With my current build I've to keep track of 6 dots ticking and fill the remaing seconds I've got with filler spells like shadowbolt and drain soul. How can you compare this with 1/2 button dps classes?

Which is one of the reasons Affliction locks played perfectly are the highest DPS currently and Frost mages arn't. Don't worry though, I'm sure I read a blue post about how they are making affliction easier to manage but will therefore have to nerf the damage a bit

Some classes will always be more complicated than others, that's just the way it is. However even 1 button dps classes can be played badly.

There's also the argument that if it was based on skill then the tanks should be top of the meters Oh wait...

[tomas]

I'm afraid you'll hit a brick wall dps wise on every char you'll level up to 80. Why don't you give it a couple of weeks before you give up entirely? xD

I'll never give up entirely. What i'm looking at really is

1) Instead of hanging around trying to get groups (the LFG system sucks so much) leveling another character. If someone wants a DPS for a heroic, I'll more than happily come (and hopefully get my Hunter some decent gear so I can make the top slot)
2) At some point, make a different character my "Main" over my hunter. In Burning Crusade my Hunter was main, and my Paladin came after. If I wanted something for my Hunter for a raid, I'd want to take the Hunter, instead of seeing if I needed something on my Paladin, and if so taking that for preference.

I'm not talking about giving up playing a hunter forever, or anything that drastic. Simply prefering to play another character. Not even as strong as some people like Ropey, who seemingly has no intention of doing anything on their hunter. I'd suppose abit like Gwayne, who didn't do much on Greentitch.

While I can't comment on other classes, this is the second expansion, and just like the first, our class has changed a bit, then we get nerfed. Fair enough it might be needed, but our main shot for 600 damage just annoys me a bit when I see say a Paladin or Death Knight mention they just got a 12k crit.

[ash]

You want big numbers every minute or so, or over average numbers for most of the time?

a DK or Paladin cannot produce a xK crit on demand necessarily, cooldowns can effect it.

I personally see some classes as ones which can wear you down (resto shaman), some which can burst you down (no example needed), some which are middle of the road (maybe hunter?), some which a bit above that, and some which are a bit below.

Its down to playstyle. I like burst and control. Theoretically I guess that would make me a mage or rogue

My warrior has always been about PvE really, and that is more about being consistent.

That way I get a mix of things.

Don't despair, its barely a month into this expansion. Give it a month or so and I can guarantee there will be more changes/gear into the mix that ensure practically any class will be happy in some shape or form.

[Beckie]

Big numbers are not always best.

Sure you can get 12k ferocious bite crits (with druids), but it costs you 5 combo points and 100 energy (and certain buffs up), or you could rip with your combo points and get better damage, but split over the next 19 seconds. Big hits should not be the basis of any decisions.

Also if your main prority is getting into heroics/raids id suggest building a golden trio (tank healer dps) rather then a variety of dps who you may consider do or do not cut it, depending on current nerf/buff status by blizzard.

[tomas]

Don't despair, its barely a month into this expansion. Give it a month or so and I can guarantee there will be more changes/gear into the mix that ensure practically any class will be happy in some shape or form.

To be honest, I've been having bad thoughts about Hunters since 2.0. While I'm not gonna list everything I perceive as bad about the hunter class, especially since alot of people might disagree with alot of the points, but it's not a task that would get me anywhere.

As far as Burst vs Wear you down, if we're talking PVP I'd say Hunters didn't have enough of either to do well at either, but that'd be before this Expansion, where the Burst is alot better, so it's pretty much a "Wait and See"

For PVE, I've just spent a few hours reading a 6 page post on Elitist Jerks about these changes, and most of them seem to suggest that the reason hunters are doing more damage than anyone else, is mostly becase of Call of the Wild, and how it stacks in comparison to other hunters, and other buffs. One of the other things they mention is how in TBC some classes got early nerfs, like Shadow Priests (I think..) cos they were too good, but later in TBC, they were scaling poorly with gear, which is what could potentially happen with Hunters.

For another class, well Death Knights look good to try, and I am one of the Death Knight Class leaders, so was just wanting to focus on that abit more.

And as for having a DPS + Tank + Healer, I'd like to do that so that I can experience all three, still not really done raid healing, but will get round to it. But I know playing a Tank was alot more rewarding than a DPS.

[Greentitch]

To be honest, I've been having bad thoughts about Hunters since 2.0. While I'm not gonna list everything I perceive as bad about the hunter class, especially since alot of people might disagree with alot of the points, but it's not a task that would get me anywhere.

Virtually everyone feels like this about their class.

{My class} is underpowered and they nerf us. And then they have the cheek to buff {insert class that last beat me on DPS meters/ganked me/looked at me funny}.

We could all make a list of things that are bad about our class (please don't). When you go and play another class you don't notice these things for a while but eventually you'll work them out. Personally I think most of the classes are reasonably balanced, but obviously there are still areas for improvement.

I doubt the "massive nerf" will hurt Hunter DPS that much. Not to the point that you won't be able to compete with other ranged DPS classes. Hunters are also unique as the only physical ranged DPS class, which means there is noone with the same mechanics to compare individual fights with (while mages can compare with elemental shamans or boomkins for example).

[tomas]

You want big numbers every minute or so, or over average numbers for most of the time?

I'd definatly prefer average numbers most of the time. One thing I didn't like about Beastmastery was keeping track of a 1.5/2 minute cooldown since I needed to activate it every time to get decent DPS.
I also find it annoying when a fight finishes 10 seconds before my cooldown finishes on something like Rapid Fire.

I'd have to say, one of the main things I like about a hunter is the wild variaty of skills that allow me to do things like, say, trying to control 3 adds on Lurker while still do damage to him. I doubt people would be happily *at all* if I respecced to Survival to get Wyvyrn Sting for raids :p