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.

March 4, 2009

Conformity is the only freedom

Should pet leveling be a thing of the past?

In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you’d be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you’ve earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

And yes, Piercing Shots is bugged on the PTR at the moment.

It’s a known bug. It should work exactly like Deep Wounds, which is smart enough to average in any new damage applied to the existing dot.

Standard caveat applies that we could run into trouble when trying to do this for some reason.

March 2, 2009

Never guess. Unless you have to

Rejoice Marksmanship hunters. Your mana problems have not gone unnoticed.

Marks running OOM too often we feel is a legitimate problem and something we plan on improving.

And, Wild Hunt, too good to be true? Yep.

Wild Hunt is being changed to 10/20% extra AP from the master. There was a bug where the talent was just applying the hunter’s AP to the pet twice, which is too generous.

If you have 6000 attack power, your pet probably gains 1320 attack power from you. With 2 ranks of this talent, it should gain 1580 attack power instead. Your pet’s attack power will be higher than this by a few hundred from other sources.

Feb. 28, 2009

QC > BF

Additions to the official 3.1 patch notes.

  • 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 in to Hunter Autoshot.
  • 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.
  • 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 re-designed: Stings the target, draining 4% of mana over 8 sec (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.
  • Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
  • 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 sec. 30 sec. cooldown.
  • T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.
  • Bullheaded now adds 20% damage reduction for 12 sec along with its current CC-removal effect.
  • Cornered: The crit 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.
  • New Talent: Shark Attack: This new two-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.
  • New Talent: Silverback: This new two-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.
  • New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.
  • Roar of Recovery cooldown decreased to 3 min, down from 6 min.
  • Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.

Does this mean that steady shot is no longer effected by the haste bonus?

No. We just wanted to remove the quiver without losing its haste bonus. Except for inventory changes, you should not notice a difference.

And about Explosive Shot:

Yes, we did nerf the damage of Explosive Shot a little more. After many of the changes to locks, DKs, warriors and the rest, we felt SV hunters were too high. MM may still be a little too low. BM seems on target at the moment, but we had a few bugs in new pet abilities especially that was making it hard to get accurate numbers.

I’m not sure what you mean about Survival compexity. Are you talking about the shots themselves or the organization of the tree? I think some players are still thinking they are supposed to trap dance in PvE.

For anyone who thinks pets are receiving more attention than player classes:

I understand the sentiment, but the pet data is very simple to change. With actual classes, you can run into tons of ramifications for changing where a talent is located or what it does. You have to think very carefully about the change, and in some cases making the change itself can be intensive. Classes have lots of spells that affect other spells, etc. There is definitely such a thing as prioritization, but we also try not to let a hundred quick and dirty tasks get bottled up behind the long and hard tasks.

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