March 31, 2009

I know there was a plot

I was hoping the thread might have evolved a bit more, but it didn’t. So, here’s the latest from Ghostcrawler. Back in January it was hinted that hunters would have some “big changes” come 3.1 and no one has been very certain with what they were going to be, since it was never announced. Someone asked if there was some upcoming announcement regarding said changes and GC replied:

We wanted to do more with ammo than we were technically able to do in the short term.

But it also reminds us of the concern regarding how we would end up scaling in 3.1.

You have to convince us there is “this scaling problem.” At what gear level will hunters start to fall behind just because of gear? If that doesn’t happen until players have attack power greater than 12,000 then it isn’t going to affect you this expansion. As long as your damage increases with gear upgrades then you are scaling. If your damage increases slower than other dps classes with similar upgrades, then a problem exists.

Rabble rabble.

Every class and spec on these boards is arguing their damage is too low for Ulduar. I haven’t seen a ton of evidence yet to suggest that hunters are suffering worse than any other class.

There is this perception I think that we nerfed hunters because of ammo changes. We nerfed hunters because they were doing too much damage (and SS was a larger portion of total damage than we wanted).

I did say that we were going to redo some portions of the hunter equation for 3.1, which we did with changes to Explosive Shot, TNT, pet talent trees, Chimera Shot and all the other changes in the patch notes. When we redo ammo, we’ll have to redo them all again. We made sure that hunters will continue to scale satisfactorily into the next couple of tiers of content, but if you think we made a mistake somewhere, feel free to point it out. But you need to be specific. Saying “We don’t scale” isn’t sufficient, because you in fact do.

March 19, 2009

To lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose

With another new 3.1 build deployed, it’s probably high time for a recap of all the Hunter changes.

  • Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built into the hunter’s Auto Shot.
  • Aspect of the Pack is now raid wide, and radius increased from 30 yards to 40 yards.
  • Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30-minute cooldown.
  • Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses. This should make more pet families feel viable, while additional talents have been added to distinguish a pet’s abilities based on its specializations.
  • Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 seconds.
  • Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered. Now reduces speed by 50% (previously 60%).
  • Pets now inherit more spell hit from the hunter. Pets with magic attacks should not require a player to stack additional hit compared to pets with physical attacks.
  • Viper Sting redesigned: Stings the target, draining 4% of mana over 8 seconds (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster’s maximum mana), and energizing the hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per hunter can be active on any one target.
  • Animal Handler: No longer reduces the cooldown of Master’s Call, but instead increases the duration of the Master’s Call effect by 3/6 seconds.
  • Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
  • Chimera Shot: Mana cost reduced from 16% to 12%.
  • Concussive Barrage redesigned: 2-point talent. Now causes your Multi-Shot and Chimera Shot to have a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 4 seconds.
  • Efficiency: Increased to 3/6/9/12/15% up from 2/4/6/8/10%.
  • Piercing Shots redesigned: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 seconds. The damage done by this talent no longer receives modifications from effects that increase or decrease damage done by a percentage.
  • Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
  • Rapid Recuperation redesigned: You gain 2/4% of your mana every 3 seconds while under the effect of Rapid Fire, and you gain 1/2% of your mana every 2 seconds for 6 seconds when you gain Rapid Killing.
  • Silencing Shot: No longer on the global cooldown.
  • Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an Auto Shot to 80%.
  • Entrapment redesigned: When your Frost Trap, Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Snake Trap are triggered, you entrap all afflicted targets, preventing them from moving for 2/4/6 seconds.
  • Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%. The periodic damage from this ability no longer triggers Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Light.
  • Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3 points, and now increases your total agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
  • Lock and Load redesigned: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
  • New Talent: Black Arrow: Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and doing periodic shadow damage for 15 seconds. 30-second cooldown.
  • T.N.T.: Gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.
  • Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9, and is now a 3-point talent.
  • Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.
  • Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.
  • Wyvern Sting: Duration increased from 12 seconds to 30 seconds. PvP duration reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
  • Bullheaded now adds 20% damage reduction for 12 seconds along with its current CC-removal effect.
  • Cornered: The critical strike reduction when this ability is active has been increased.
  • Feeding Frenzy increased to 8/16% damage up from 6/12%.
  • Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn’t up 100% of the time.
  • Gorillas now have a new family ability, Pummel, which works like the warrior ability and has a single rank.
  • Grace of the Mantis and Roar of Sacrifice are now also available to Cunning pets.
  • Great Resistance increased to 5/10/15% magic damage reduction, up from 3/6/9%.
  • Roar of Recovery cooldown decreased to 3 minutes, down from 6 minutes.
  • New Talent: Shark Attack: This new 2-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.
  • New Talent: Silverback: This new 2-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.
  • Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
  • Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.
  • Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.
  • Turtles and Crabs now dwell in waters of and off Eversong and the Ghostlands, giving Blood Elf hunters access to local Tenacity pets.
  • New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new 2-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. Increases the contribution your pets get from your stamina by 20/40% and attack power by 10/20%.

Also, the new Tier 8/8.5 (10 man/25 man) set bonuses have been released. Two piece Scourgestalker increases the damage done by your Serpent Sting by 10% and four piece Scourgestalker causes your Steady Shot to have a chance to grant 600 attack power for 15 seconds.

March 12, 2009

9684

More changes to Test.

  • Wyvern Sting cooldown has been lowered from 1.5min to 1min.
  • Frost Trap now slows down the enemy by 50%.
  • Resourcefulness now also effects Black Arrow.
  • Entrapment – When your Frost Trap, Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Snake Trap are triggered you entrap all afflicted targets, preventing them from moving for 2/4/6 sec.
  • Animal Handler – Increases the duration of your Master’s Call effect by 6sec.
  • Concussive Barrage changed from 3 to 2 ranks, now gives your successful Chimera Shot and Multi-Shot attacks a 50/100% chance to Daze the target for 4 sec.
  • Efficiency now reduces the Mana cost of your Shots and Stings by 3/6/9/12/15%.

Also, a new spirit beast has been added – think a transparent version of the Winterspring Frostsabers. It also appears to be a rare NPC though so camping will still likely be necessary to obtain it.

March 7, 2009

That's fair feedback

The new re-arrangement of the pet talent trees are making some feel like they’re a bit bloated in terms of what you can take and what you have to leave behind.

One of the problems we had with 51 BM before was that hunters could scoop up all of the “useful” talents without their extra 4 points. If we give away more talents for free, we risk ending up back in that situation again.

March 6, 2009

An attack on one is an attack on all of us

A new Test patch, with many Hunter changes.

  • Aspect of the Pack now affects the whole raid, range extended to 40 yards.
  • Animal Handler now increases the duration of your Master’s Call effect by 3/10 sec.
  • Chimera Shot mana cost lowered from 16% of base mana to 12% of base mana.
  • Rapid Recuperation now gives you 4% of your mana every 3 sec while under the effect of Rapid Fire.
  • T.N.T. now affects Black Arrow.
  • Trap Mastery now affects Black Arrow.
  • Wyvern Sting now has a 1.5 minute cooldown.
  • Pummel (Gorilla) cooldown has been increased to 30 sec and silence effect duration lowered to 2 sec.

There’s also been some changes to racial abilities. Stoneform is no longer going to give an 8 second immunity to disease, poison, and bleed effects. It was previously reported that Gift of the Naruu was going to dispel as well as heal but this change will not be going live.

We are going to lower the cooldown on Stoneform from 3 min to 2 min. We are also reverting the change to have Gift of the Naaru dispel, and just change it to a direct heal instead of a hot.

There was also an interesting treatise about the class balance philosophy.

It is not our goal that you (or any class) have crappy versions of other buffs so you feel like second-class citizens. To be fair though, a lot of players make this claim about their raid buffs. Some of these complaints are totally legit and some are just thinly veiled requests for damage / healing / tanking buffs. We are trying to adjust areas where your buff feels inferior to another buff, either because it is too expensive, doesn’t last as long, has an opportunity cost or whatever.

What we are not interested in doing:

— Buffing a spec because their buffs are inferior. (We would rather fix the buffs.)
— Giving any spec unique buffs to make sure they will earn a spot.
— Buffing a spec because another spec with those buffs is “always” in the group. (The intent is that “always” depends on the guys you run with.)
— Coming up with an over-specific or unrealistic model where warriors are 1% above druids and 3% above shamans or whatever. Such a design would shatter the first time someone upgraded their gear.
— Start defining things in terms of half-hybrids or two-third hybrids or whatever. Related to the previous point, having fewer larger buckets works better for a number of reasons.

Apologies if I sounded snippy. I am just surprised that anyone who follows these forums would not know our goal for the stack rank of dps classes. The topic is perennially on the first page here.

What I didn’t mention is that in BC the goal was to keep hybrid classes far inferior to the dps of the rogues, warlocks, mages and hunters. We want it to be much closer now. If you know your class cold, I mean really know it, then there is no reason you can’t be topping meters. But some (key word) of that responsibility lies with you and not with us juicing the numbers in your favor.

And, although this discussion seems to favor casters in terms of who it’s really directed at, here are some comments about Replenishment.

I think at this point the discussion is less about clarifying our position and more about some players just not liking the concept of Replenishment or wanting even more flexibility in who they invite. I’m not sure logical arguments are going to sway anyone’s position. Nevertheless, I will attempt to outline the design from our point of view:

  • We want you to group.
  • We want you to be more powerful when you group.
  • One way we do that is by letting you benefit from buffs that other players bring.
  • We can’t give everyone a unique buff that guarantees them a raid slot. We tried this in BC. What happens is that the classes with necessary buffs are brought and the others are ignored. There are 10 classes and 30 specs in the game. You can’t bring them all to a 25-player raid or certainly a 10-player raid.
  • We asked some cutting-edge raiders during LK development: How many balance druids, ret paladins or death knights are you going to bring? The answer was probably none. They didn’t have any space.
  • So our solution was to give you multiple ways to get the buffs. Different specs bring different versions of the same benefit that do not stack. Hopefully those specs will be attractive, but not so attractive that you want to stack the raid with them. You have more flexibility. You can make decisions about which players to bring.
  • In BC, Shadow priests brought the buff that we now call Replenishment. As a result, Shadow priests were pretty much mandatory to raid in BC. Great for Shadow priests. Bad for other dps classes. Our solution was not to cut the mechanic but to offer it to more specs to give you more flexibility.
  • Now we could have cut the mechanic. We could have tried to come up with another cool benefit that Shadow priests, Retribution paladins and the others bring. But the mechanic worked. Groups were happy when they had a Shadow priest. Shadow priests were happy that their groups were happy.
  • Depending on who you ask, there are other buffs that are mandatory. Bloodlust / Heroism and battle rez get brought up a lot. Kings and Fort are pretty huge. We don’t assume you have any of those, except Replenishment. We assume you have a tank, healer, dps, some form of crowd control, and a mana battery in your raids.
  • As a hedge on that bet, we also made the introductory content easier. Far more players have experienced Naxxramas compared to Karazhan, and we think that is a big win.
  • If you didn’t raid a lot in BC, you may not remember how bad it was then. Perhaps you want even more flexibility than we offer today. That is a valid standpoint to take, but it definitely does get harder for us to offer content of an appropriate challenge (meaning neither too high nor too low) when your group can literally be of any composition with any medley of raid buffs.
  • Similarly, if you are skilled and organized, you can likely get by even without essential buffs like Replenishment. Some of you will probably beat hard modes without Replenishment. Others of you won’t dream of trying without it, Bloodlust, Prayer of Fortitude, Blessing of Kings, Mark of the Wild and so on. We are not at all guaranteeing every group will be able to beat the hard modes. Remember, Algalon feeds on your tears.
  • We don’t think you need Replenishment (or any buff) to do heroic 5-player content. You do need a tank and a healer. You probably don’t even need a tank or healing spec, depending on your skill and gear (meaning an Arms warrior and Ret healer could do fine).
  • We don’t think you need Replenishment to do a 5-player Arena team, but it can be a nice bonus.
  • We don’t think you need Replenishment to solo. The issue of how often various classes or specs should have to take a break while soloing (i.e. drink for mana-users) is something we discuss a lot. Some specs don’t have to do it at all, such as any priest with Spirit Tap. Classes with healing spells, especially druids, can top themselves off and keep going. Other classes without mana, especially warriors, have a lot of down time to eat or bandage. It’s a larger discussion, but you can certainly make a compelling argument that every spec should have around the same down time.

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