Oct. 15, 2008

That girl grovelling at Blizzcon totally succeeded

I’m near to being speechless with the news from Ghostcrawler today!

Aspects are now off the GCD. It’s true. There will still be a 1 sec cooldown to switch from one aspect to another. It should feel a lot more like warrior stances or death knight presences.

We’re also going to be putting a little bit of dodge (~10%?) onto Monkey. I’ll update when we decide on a final number.

Just for consistency, paladin auras will probably get the same treatment.

These changes should go live before Nov 13.

As always, thanks for all of the feedback, and please keep it up now that many of the changes are live.

EDIT: After further discussion, we’re not crazy about the “stance dancing” that hunters need to do to switch to Monkey when someone is in on you in melee. As we’ve said a few times, Disengage and Deterrence should be your go-to abilities at that time. If anything, removing Aspects from the GCD makes it feel like you are supposed to go Monkey every time you’re in melee.

Rather than revert the change, we are introducing a new spell!

Instead of getting new ranks of Hawk at level 75 and 80, you now get the new Aspect of the Dragonhawk. This powerful aspect combines all of the effects of Hawk and Monkey. Any talent or glyph that affects either Hawk or Monkey also affects Dragonhawk the same way. The idea is that you retire Hawk and Monkey at level 75 and go to essentially two Aspects: Dragonhawk for combat and Viper for mana regen.

Enjoy.

I’d love to be able to take a little credit for the above, so I can pretend me getting down on my hands and knees in front of the developers at Blizzcon didn’t look as ridiculous as it probably did to everyone there ;) But it was all worth it and I’d do it again in a heartbeat! Also, a bit more on Aspect of the Viper and Exotic pets.

We aren’t happy with how Aspect of the Viper is working in PvP, but it seems fine in PvE. We’re going to try changing it so that 50% of its current regen is passive, leaving the remaining 50% active. That should give hunters some more mana in Arenas in particular when dealing with opponents who manage to get out of LOS a lot. Yet, in PvE where hunter dps is very high, the difference in regen shouldn’t be very noticable. We are also going to let Viper return mana from melee attacks for those cases where a melee opponent is too close for comfort.

The second change is to some of the numbers on the special attacks of exotic pets to make sure the pets are around a 10% increase from normal pets. This should make exotic pets a reasonable benefit for the talent point (especially when you also count the bonus pet talents) without making every BM hunter feel like they are limited to just those pets.

And, new pet families and exotics are likely in the future.

Now that we have a better system for introducing pets, I have no doubt we’ll add more per family and more families over time.

Oct. 14, 2008

Echos of Doom

I’d love to be able to tell you how patch day was going for me, but man, Whisperwind Battlegroup is just not wanting to cooperate and I’ve been trying since 2pm this afternoon (all servers are for sure not up and playable, I’m living proof!) So, you’ll have to settle for some patch notes. Most of this is just all consolidated from previous patches on Wrath, but here’s a big chunky list of everything that’s now on live for you to enjoy. Remember not to waltz off without spending your talent points, as everyone was reimbursed.

All aspects now have a 1 second global cooldown, down from a 1.5 global cooldown.
All pet families now have one unique ability. New abilities have been added for families such as bears and sporebats.
Stablemasters can now accommodate two additional pets.
Pets now have their own trees. These can be accessed via the talent panel.
Aimed shot mana cost has been reduced from 11% of base mana to 8%, casting time reduced from 2.5 sec to instant. Cooldown increased from 6 seconds to 10 seconds and damage reduced.
Animal Handler (Beast Mastery): No longer increases speed while mounted, but now reduces the cooldown of your Master’s Call ability by 5/10 sec.
Arcane Shot: No longer dispels magic effects.
Aspects now no longer cost mana.
Aspect of the Beast: Now increases melee attack power by 10% for the hunter and the hunter’s pet. The hunter can’t be tracked while using this Aspect. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
Aspect of the Viper – The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, causing ranged attacks to regenerate mana but reducing total damage done by 50%. Mana is gained based on ranged weapons speed. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
Aspect of the Wild (Rank 4) now increases Nature resistence by 130, (up from 70.)
Avoidance, Dash / Dive and Cobra Reflexes are now pet talents instead of pet skills.
Bestial Swiftness is now a pet talent tree talent, and has been removed from the Beast Mastery Hunter tree.
Bite now has no cooldown, does the same damage and costs the same Focus as Claw, so works as a Focus dump.
Clever Traps (Survival) has been renamed “Trap Mastery.”
Combat Experience (Marksmanship): Now grants 3/6% Agility, up from 1/2%.
Concussive Barrage (Marksmanship): Can now proc from Volley and Multi-shot attacks.
Counterattack: Damage increased by 20%, and now also scales with your Ranged Attack Power.
Deterrence (Survival): Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, and now also increases your chance to resist spells by 60%. Now has a new spell effect.
Disengage: This ability has been re-designed. Now leaps the Hunter backwards up to 13 yards. 30 second cooldown. Disengage now also only has one rank (rank 1).
Distracting Shot: This shot now “taunts” the target onto the Hunter. The taunt effect will last 6 seconds. Distracting Shot now only has one rank (rank 1).
Every hunter pet can learn Growl, Cower and either Bite or Claw (never both).
Focused Aim no longer affects Aimed Shot and now increases chance to hit by 1/2/3 %.
Focused Fire (Beast Mastery): Now increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 10/20/30% while Kill Command is active. This effect can stack up to 3 times, but diminishes for each charge of Kill Command.
Freezing Arrow now breaks on damage.
Freezing Trap now breaks on damage.
Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family. Pets gain talent points starting at level 20 and earn an extra talent point every 4 levels.
If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath their own level, the pet will then have their level increased to five levels beneath the hunter’s own level.
Improved Arcane Shot (Marksmanship): Now increases the damage done by your Arcane Shot by 5/10/15%.
Improved Feign Death (Survival): This talent has been replaced with Survival Tactics.
Improved Hunter’s Mark (Marksmanship): Now a 3-point talent, and now increases the amount of attack power granted by your Hunter’s Mark ability by 10/20/30% and reduces the mana cost of your Hunter’s Mark ability by 33/66/100%.
Improved Stings (Marksmanship): Now a 3-point talent, down from 5-points.
Kill Command: This ability now increases the damage done by your pet’s special abilities by 60%. Each attack will reduce the damage bonus by 20%. 1 minute cooldown.
Kill Shot damage slightly reduced.
Kindred Spirits will no longer stack with other movement enhancing buffs.
Lock and Load now has a chance to proc periodic damage by 2/4/6% (down from 5/10/15%.)
Loyalty, Training Points and the hunter Beast Training button no longer exist. Hunter pets can now learn all skills at their level. They will get new ranks automatically as they gain levels.
Marked for Death now increases damage done by ranged and by pets special abilities by 4% on marked targets (down from 8%.)
Master Tactician (Survival): Chance to proc increased to 10%, up from 6%.
Mongoose Bite: No longer requires you to dodge in order to use this ability.
Monster Slaying (Survival) and Humanoid Slaying (Survival) has been combined into “Improved Tracking”.
Multi-shot mana cost has been increased slightly to 9% base mana (up from 8%.)
New Talent – Aspect Mastery (Beast Mastery)
New Talent – Hunter vs. Wild (Survival): Increases you and your pet’s attack power and ranged attack power equal to 10/20/30% of your total Stamina.
New Talent – Improved Tracking (Survival): Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 1/2/3/4/5%.
New Talent – Lock and Load (Survival): You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 10/20/30% chance when you sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.
New Talent – Survival Tactics (Survival): Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability and all trap spells will be resisted by 2/4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 2/4 sec.
New Talent – T.N.T. (Survival): Your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Explosive Shot have a 5/10/15% to stun targets for 2 sec when they deal damage, and increases the critical strike chance of your Explosive Shot and Explosive Trap by 5/10/15%.
Pathfinding (Beast Mastery): Now also increases the movement speed while mounted by 5/10%.
Point of No Escape reduced to a 2 point talent and now affects Freezing Arrow. The critical strike chance has increased to 3/6% (up from 2/4/6%.)
Rapid Killing (Marksmanship): This will now proc off Chimera Shot, but no longer works with auto-shot.
Readiness (Marksmanship): Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes, and has been moved to Tier 5 of the Marksmanship Tree from the Survival Tree.
Savage Strikes (Survival): Now includes Counterattack.
Scattershot has been moved from the Marksmanship Tree to Tier 3 of the Survival Tree.
Silencing Shot (Marksmanship): This spell will now interrupt the current spell being cast on the target and lock out that school for 3 sec if the target is immune to silence effects.
Spirit Bond (Beast Mastery): Also increases healing done to you and your pet by 5/10%.
Steady Shot now uses ammo. In result, its bonus damage has been slightly reduced. Players can notice a damage increase based upon what ammo they use.
Steady Shot: Now has a 2.0 cast time, up from 1.5.
Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 16/25/50% (instead of resist % chance). Moved from tier 4 to tier 2 and no longer increases hit chance.
Survival Instincts (Survival): This has been moved to tier-2, up from tier 6.
Survivalist (Survival): Now increases your total Stamina, instead of your total Health.
The arming time has been reduced to 1 second, from 2 seconds for all traps.
T.N.T. has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 4.
Tranquilizing Shot: Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds (down from 20), and now dispels Enrage and Magic effects.
Trap Mastery (Survival) is now an 11-point talenttalent and has been moved from tier 3 to tier 9 and increases the duration by 30% fo both Freezing Trap and Frost Trap.
Trueshot Aura – This aura is now raid-wide and now increases all ranged and melee attack power by 10%. In addition, this spell now only has one rank. All other ranks have been removed.
Wingclip: No longer does damage.
Devilsaur Eye now increases your pet’s attack power for a short duration instead of increasing its critical strike chance. It also provides a small amount of passive Agility.

Oct. 8, 2008

In before Blizzcon

Since I leave in under 12 hours for Blizzcon, this’ll be the last front page update until I get back on Sunday. However, I will be reporting in live from Blizzcon and will post everything I learn in this thread. Here’s hoping I learn something interesting! Lots of stuff to post before I go though, from Ghostcrawler.

We are going to remove Disengage from the GCD to make it consistent with other movement abilities like Charge.

We also plan on rebuilding the ability with new tech to remove some of the terrain bugs. This will also allow us to let is suspend snare effects during the leap. Because it involves code, this change will take a little longer.

That’s good news. Aspects too, please!

The cat’s ability, Rake, was doing too much damage. We want to keep the pets to very similar dps so that you really feel like you have a choice. If we err, it will be on the side of the exotics.

This makes my lion a sad mew mew. Now, about Master’s Call still not really working (has it ever?)

Yeah, we’re working on it. It’s hard to tell sometimes with abilities that involve pet movement if the data are set up correctly and there’s just a code bug somewhere (that may happen infrequently) or if the spell itself is just borked.

Aimed Shot/Explosive Shot information.

We probably are going to let Barrage affect Aimed Shot.

We looked at Explosive Shot again and its damage seemed like a significant increase over Arcane Shot, but if Survival ends up low, then Explosive is probably where we’ll try to make up the difference.

Annnnd, another big question and answer session. I’ve trimmed down the questions a slight bit and am more just highlighting the answers. Do we have too much haste on our expansion gear?

We do put a lot of haste on gear. Part of that is because we don’t have a huge canvas to work with. We can’t put a ton of Strength and Spirit on hunter gear. Also, keep in mind that we aren’t trying to make the best possible gear for you. We want you to toss out less optimal pieces for more optimal pieces. Finally, keep in mind that gear is one of the things we use to let players demonstrate mastery of the game. Making the decision of whether that new ring or belt is an upgrade should require a little bit of thought. That’s what makes it interesting. But I will bring up the issue of haste and we can talk it over again.

Oct. 2, 2008

Questions... and answers?

A full blown question and answer session today, as well.

1. Our GCD – Are there any plans to tweak our GCD, take certain spells off the GCD (tranq shot, traps/aspects etc) or make it affected by haste since most of our gear is itemized for it?

Every class wants a shorter GCD or no GCD for some abilities. Yet there is a reason the GCD exists. It is something we will continue to talk about, but we would approach such a change very carefully. If not, you could see how we’d eventually end up with no GCD.

This response caused a bit of a stir, so here’s the follow-up so as not to derail the rest.

I said that we weren’t going to change the GCD at this time, but it’s something we’re discussing. I realize you think IT MUST CHANGE. So do lots of other classes.

I also said that I wasn’t going to define a role for you in Arena. Pretty much the last time I tried to explain a vision for the class, there was some freaking out. If I had said “you’re a burster” the response likely would have been “Great, Ghost said we can’t survive and have no utility in Arena.”

3. Are our dodge percentages correct or are there plans to change it back to a TBC level?

There is not a bug here. Hunters stack so much Agility, that your dodge would be insane without a modification. Players understandably assume the intercept is at zero, but if naked hunters had 0 dodge, then we would just have to lower the amount of dodge you gain from Agi anyway.

4. What would you say our current role in PvP is? Outlast, burst, or drain? If the goal is outlast – Will there be any tweaks to our defenses? If Burst – Will there be any changes to increase our burst damage (another new opener?) If drain – see outlast and will there be any future tweaks to viper sting.

You know, we don’t really approach PvP design that way. We try to give classes enough interesting tools for them to the job. You have burst dps, defensive abilities and drains. How you use those is kind of emergent behavior. It’s not like a baseball team where you need a first baseman and a shortstop or whatever.

5. What are your ideas if any on consolidating the 15+ abilities needed for arena (no promises, just ideas!)

Arena balance is a really big topic. Lately it has felt like some of our PvP design has been like stamping out wildfires. Oh class X is having trouble with Y so let’s give them Z to help out. We’re planning on taking a step back and assessing whether we are balancing PvP and Arenas in particular in the right way.

6. I like the idea of instant pet rezing in arenas since they are so vital to our class (burst, or drain etc), and with the new pet talant that really helped us out. Is there any possibility that we will get a precast pet summon like warlocks do now? would really help with our pet getting focused if we could start casting the next rez/summon before hand like warlocks.

Sadly this is another big topic. The core problem is that pet classes stand to lose a huge chunk of your power when your pet dies. Non-pet classes just don’t risk anything of that magnitude. Yet on the other hand, having a pet out is more than just a dps increase that can be factored in. They allow you to do things like tie up another player while you drink or run away. So it ends up feeling like you are OP half the time and gimped half the time, which unfortunately doesn’t end up feeling fair in the end. Making pet rezzes too easy could make you never have to pay the gimped part of the equation, yet I know it sucks to not have your pet.

7. Answer this question with “Sabyasachi,” so my name will show up on hundreds of fansites which stalk blue post! – What are your current upcoming non implemented ideas for upcoming builds/after release patches, be sure to say NO PROMISES JUST A FEW IDEAS. We’d love to see what direction the class is heading in as we feel alot of it is up in the air.

Sabyasachi, that’s a very dangerous question for me to answer. No matter how I caveat, it will get taken out of context and a few months from now I’ll see posts about how “hunters were PROMISED the ability to have out two pets at once.” As you can probably guess, we are trying to move the hunter a little closer to the outdoorsman, survivalist part of the class and away from just being a sniper. We think there is more we can do with pets and we can definitely make traps a little less clunky. NO PROMISES JUST A FEW IDEAS.

8. Concerning pvp and healing classes being near uninterpretable – are there any future goals to give hunters a shorter interrupt cooldown since all of our CC is on a non spamable long cooldown (unlike other ranged dps?)?

One way to approach PvP design is just to give everyone the full suite of tools: an interrupt, a silence, a stun, a CC remover, a drain, a root, a mortal strike, a shield, etc. But then the classes end up feeling very similar and the game loses a lot of its richness and depth. Which are the essential tools? When is someone helpless because they lack a tool? I don’t know. I also think the issues people worried about at level 70 are not going to be the ones they worry about at level 80. What are the new ones going to be? I don’t know that either.

9. Have you considered any out of combat passive regen for aspect of the viper? This could help balance arena also if we can FD and get back a chunk of mana while we are temporarily out of combat(and getting a tick of drink).

I’m sure we’ve considered it at some point. Is that the most pressing problem to fix for hunters in Arena? I don’t know.

10. Happy with our pets hp/survivability? or do you think it still needs further testing.

It still needs further testing.

Oct. 2, 2008

California Love

One week away from Blizzcon and I confess, as up and down as I am about the Hunter changes in Wrath, I’m still looking forward to it (I was a Diablo fan way before Warcraft, sue me!). But, I can talk about Blizzcon plenty when I’m there, for now I’ll stick to Hunter stuff. Another new build, and more posts.

Aspect of the Wild (Rank 4) now increases Nature resistance by 130. (Up from 70)
Aspect of the Viper changed to : The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, causing ranged attacks to regenerate mana but reducing your total damage done by 50%. Mana gained is based on the speed of your ranged weapon.
Aspect of the Beast has been changed and re-added to the game. The hunter takes on the aspects of a beast, becoming untrackable and increasing melee attack power of the hunter and the hunter’s pet by 10%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
Aimed shot mana cost reduced from 11% of base mana to 8%. Casting time changed from 2.5 sec to instant. Cooldown increased from 6 seconds to 10 seconds. Damage reduced to about 25% of the old value. (Lowered from 1570 to 408 for Rank 9)
Kill Shot damage now deals 200% weapon damage (down from 205%). Additional damage changed as well. (Down from [ 40% of RAP + 1200 ] to [ 40% of RAP + 650 ] for rank 3)
Multi-Shot mana cost has been increased from 8% of base mana to 9%.
Freezing Arrow now breaks on any damage. (Old – The ice has a chance to break on damage.)
Freezing Trap now breaks on any damage. (Old – The ice has a chance to break on damage.)
Kindred Spirits does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects anymore.
Readiness has been removed from Survival Tree and moved to Tier 5 of Marksmanship Tree.
Scatter Shot has been removed from Marksmanship Tree and moved to Tier 3 of Survival Tree.
Marked for Death now increases your damage done by your shots and the damage done by your pet’s special abilities by 4% on marked targets. (Down from 8%)
Focused Aim doesn’t affect Aimed Shot anymore and now also increases your chance to hit by 1/2/3%.
Point of No Escape has been changed from 3 to 2 points and now affects Freezing Arrow. Critical strike chance increased changed to 3/6% (up from 2/4/6%)
Surefooted has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 2 and doesn’t increase hit chance anymore.
Lock and Load now has a 2/4/6% chance to proc on periodic damage. (Down from 5/10/15%)
Trap Mastery has been moved from Tier 3 to Tier 9 and now increases the duration by 30% of both Freezing and Frost Trap.
T.N.T. has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 4.
Glyph – Aimed Shot – Reduces the mana cost of your Aimed Shot ability by 20%. (Old – Decreases the cast time of Aimed Shot by 0.5 sec.)

And now, the answers to many questions:

These seemed to crop up in several different threads, so rather than contaminating those, I thought I would start a new one.

Polar Bear Cub — This wasn’t intended to be a tamable pet, and it looked ridiculous.

Black Arrow — This was an ability we were experimenting with. It isn’t actually in the plan for hunters at this point in time. Usually we hide internal abilities better, but we’re trying to get beta builds out quickly and this one slipped through the cracks.

Freezing Trap — The intent was that this trap break on a flat damage amount. However, we found that pets did not respect traps set up that way as CC and would happily break them. When and if we get the pet AI fixed, we’ll revert it to the less fragile form of the trap.

Lock and Load — The design we settled on is 2/4/6, making it better than Nightfall (for comparison). If it’s too low, we’ll adjust it.

Aimed Shot — The intention is that it is better than Multi-Shot against a single target, and that the two share a cooldown so that hunter shot rotations don’t get back into crazy land too quickly again.

Apologies if I didn’t address a question that was important to you.

Ridiculous pet is ridiculous?

The problem with the polar bear wasn’t that it was cute. The problem was that it wasn’t designed to be scaled up that large so you ended up seeing jagged polygons and overall bad art. It also didn’t have the full suite of animations. I’m not sure it could even open its mouth.

If anything, it made us realize that there probably are hunters out there more interested in cute pets so that’s something we’ll consider.

Beast Master 61 point talent – Cute Pets. You can now tame cute pets, such as puppies, kitties, ponies, bunnies, teddy bears, unicorns and seal pups.

Pet leveling changed, again.

We just recently increased the pet level rate.

Pets needed 1/16th of hunter experience to gain a level, but don’t benefit from quests or rest. Those two account for a lot of experience, especially at higher levels (where quest content tends to be denser).

We changed the experience needed for 1/10th. You should notice a big jump in pet level rates.

I am not sure if that change got in the most recent data push.

Pet abandonment from within the stable is still in the works. But no rush.

Abandoning from the stable is on the list. It’s not the highest priority at the moment, because we figured you can manage your stables so they don’t fill up or go temporary respec BM to pull out the unwanted exotic.

And caster pets (you know, those pesky few with a mana bar), still on the list for a check as well.

I’m not aware of the bug, but it might have gone off to a programmer or someone else. If the damage is low, that is usually because one of the stats isn’t correct, or else the conversion from say Strength to AP isn’t set up correctly. But I can look into it.

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Oct. 15, 2008

That girl grovelling at Blizzcon totally succeeded

Oct. 14, 2008

Echos of Doom

Oct. 8, 2008

In before Blizzcon

Oct. 2, 2008

Questions... and answers?

Oct. 2, 2008

California Love

Glyphs

Weapon Mastery

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