April 9, 2010

Oh? Now the anticipation is going to kill me.

It’s what we’ve all been waiting for. Pre-PS. lolcamo

With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm many game elements will be changing, and each class will be receiving a number of tweaks. Here, we will explore the changes that are being made to the gun-wielding, pet-training hunter. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the new hunter abilities!

New Hunter Abilities

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

Resource Mechanic Change

Here we come to the meat of the upcoming hunter changes.

Hunters will no longer use mana; instead the class will use Focus. Focus generates much like Energy, by building up. It will not be affected by Intellect at all. Haste will improve its generation. Hunters will generate roughly 6 Focus per second, slightly less than rogues’ Energy generation rate of around 10 Energy per second. Below, we have listed some examples of how we intend Focus costs to operate:

  • Steady Shot/Cobra Shot: No cost. Generates 9 Focus per shot (or 12 per second instead of 6).
  • Arcane Shot/Chimera Shot /Explosive Shot: 45 Focus.
  • Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot: 60 Focus.
  • Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
  • Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the resource change and new abilities listed above, we intend to make adjustments to some of the other abilities and mechanics you already know well. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we’re going for with each spec.

A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags — though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change — and we will not be making any additional quivers.

Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.

Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:

  • Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
  • Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy’s Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Blood Frenzy).
  • Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).

Other Changes

  • Stings and other periodic effects will now benefit from haste and critical strike ratings. Hasted damage-over-time abilities do not lose duration, but instead add additional damage ticks.
  • Viper Sting will now restore 9 Focus every 3 seconds.
  • We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. To this end, the class will now start with ranged abilities at level 1, and we will be removing some melee abilities, such as Mongoose Bite.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.

Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.

Rapid Recuperation will cause Rapid Fire to give 20/40/60 Focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.

Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, and Arcane Shot.

Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.

Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter’s Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Beast Mastery

  • Ranged Damage
  • Haste
  • Pet Damage

Pet Damage: Many of the passive benefits to pet damage will no longer be available in the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, these will be provided through the new Mastery mechanic.

Marksmanship

  • Ranged Damage
  • Armor Penetration
  • Double Shot

Double Shot: The hunter will have a chance to launch a free attack off of the global cooldown for 50% damage.

Survival

  • Ranged Damage
  • Ranged Critical Damage
  • Elemental Damage

Elemental Damage: Improves the Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature or Shadow damage of abilities like traps, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind that what you’ve just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you’ll see these planned changes as well as others continue to develop in response to feedback and testing.

And some additional follow-ups.

A clarification of Camouflage and what becoming obscured actually means

Camouflage is not stealth. Your enemies will never wonder where you are. We’re trying to use the new Cataclysm water effect to put a shimmering PREDATORY visual on you. It’s protection from ranged attacks and it gives you some combat bonuses, but it’s not like Shadowmeld or rogue/druid stealth where players can’t find you.

The idea with it is that Hunters are only vulnerable to melee attacks or ranged AEs while they are in the obscured state. If you target a camo hunter or a rogue using Smoke Bomb, you will get an error message saying something like “Target obscured.” You can see them and target them, but can’t use your attacks. Imagine they are behind a pillar or something. You can try and get off an AE near them or you can move to melee.

As most of you know, we tried Camo once before, but because it was true stealth it was very hard to balance, plus it felt like we were just handing out the same cool abilities to every class instead of coming with unique mechanics. Hunters were so overwhelmingly excited about the basic idea that we wanted to try it again, but not as stealth.

(Is it just me, or are they saying they want hunters to sparkle?)

Regarding Cobra Shot sharing cooldown with Steady Shot:

At this point in time it’s not actually a cooldown. Cobra Shot has a 2 sec cast time, but Beastmaster has a talent to reduce the cast time to 1.5 sec (as well as a few damage hooks). Both generate focus so there is no reason for BM to ever use Steady again.

Regarding focus and how much of it Hunters will have:

Hunters will get 100 focus

The focus costs mentioned in the preview are just examples, so it is a little too soon for you to try to min / max your rotations just yet. In general, the basic rotations of all three hunters work okay on live today. With focus you might hit moments where you don’t need to Steady at all, and you’ll never run dry again for long periods of time like you might with mana.

If the costs of some of the defensive cooldowns are too expensive or even need to be free that’s certainly the kind of thing we’ll consider.

Regarding Ammo in Cataclysm:

There is no ammo slot on your character sheet in Cataclysm. It no longer exists.

April 6, 2010

Cataclysm Class Information Coming!

Beginning Wednesday, April 7 we will begin releasing class previews containing an overview of some of the changes currently being planned for each of the 10 World of Warcraft classes. The type of information you can expect from these posts are a list of the new spells from 80-85, the new passive mastery bonuses for all talent trees, a brief outline of some of the talent changes we’re currently planning, and in some cases new low level spells for select classes.

These changes will by no means be comprehensive, and are subject to change between now and the launch of the expansion. It’s also important to understand that some classes are currently further along in the development process than others, and as a result the amount of information will vary from class to class. Please do not let this frustrate you should your class be amongst those which are on the “lighter” side of things, as all classes will receive the same level of design attention before the expansion is released. Additionally we’ll be providing more information for all classes, especially as we move into the beta phase.

Below is the schedule for each class:

(blah blah classes no one cares about)

Hunter – April 9

These posts are being coordinated internationally so they’ll be posted at different times throughout the day and night on the given dates to give players around the world the ability to see posts made at a convenient time. This thread will be updated with links directly to each class preview as they’re posted.

Since this sounds like new information and not rehashed from Blizzcon 2009, I await with barely suppressed anticipation.

Also, there was a post regarding the changes to dispel mechanics for Cataclysm. If you want the highlight though, here you go:

  • Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.

March 25, 2010

Spirited Away

Always talk talk talk about Spirit Beasts. Old School Humar represent!

The Spirit Beasts were added as a way to capture that old feeling of having to hunt (which really means be very patient and very lucky) to get rare spawn pets so that you’d feel awesome and be able to show them off. Making those creatures actually more powerful than other pets goes completely counter to that design. If the frustratingly rare spawn is needed for highest possible dps, there would be a lot of exasperated hunters out there, and I think they’d be totally justified.

Spirit Beasts are the hunter equivalent of the Time Lost Protodrake. They are there for bragging rights, not max dps.

We’re not sure yet what we’re going to do for hunter pets in the future. I fear that even if the dps gain was marginal that hunters would still go for the highest dps pets, so really there only exists an illusion of choice. We could literally make all of the pet families do the exact dps and have rather watered down special abilities (because otherwise one of them might grant a 1 or 2% dps benefit and that would end up being the pet again).

In other words, I can see a design where pet choice is purely cosmetic and pet stats are identical or I can see a design where pet choice matters, in which case you don’t really have that many to choose from on content that matters.

Hotfixed:

  • The NPC Halthenis is properly appearing again which allowing Hunters to complete the Beast Training quest.

March 23, 2010

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.3

Technically it’s live but I’m still battling the blue bar of death. Your mileage may vary.

  • Ferocious Inspiration: This ability is now an aura and provides 1/2/3% damage to all party or raid members within 100 yards and boosts the damage of Steady Shot by 3/6/9%.
  • Heart of the Phoenix: Cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
  • Explosive Trap: Low ranks of this ability were receiving no bonus damage from attack power. That has been corrected.
  • Immolation Trap: Tooltips for lower ranks should now display more accurate damage.
  • Rapid Fire: Now triggers the global cooldown correctly.
  • Sniper Training: Reduced the time it takes to gain this effect so with lag it will feel more consistent with the 6 seconds stated in the tooltip.
  • Lock and Load: Fixed a bug where Lock and Load always proc’d 100% of the time from the first tick of Explosive Trap and never from additional ticks. It should now be 6% as advertised.
  • Master’s Call: This ability will now function correctly when the pet is affected by one of a death knight’s diseases.
  • Mortal Shots: This talent was not correctly buffing Serpent Sting by the full amount.
  • Glyphs which modify a pet’s stats in any way will now force a recalculation of the pet’s stats when they are equipped or unequipped.
  • Darkmoon Card: Berserker!: This trinket is now triggered properly by ranged white attacks.
  • Needle-Encrusted Scorpion: Volley and Explosive Shot can now properly trigger this trinket.
  • Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn now provide their bonuses to player pet health and damage, as well as the absorption amounts of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield.

March 21, 2010

It's deceptively spicy salsa

Another Beast Mastery follow-up.

Judging from a quick perusal of the Internet, my hastily written post up above confused some people. My apologies. The point I was trying to make was that 3.3.3 BM seems pretty close to SV in a lot of cases. We’re not going to know more until we see more humans and fewer spreadsheets try it out. Players raid SV today and can be relatively competitive on meters. Therefore hopefully players who like BM can do the same thing. Are all 3 hunter specs within 1% of each other on all gear? No, and I don’t think that’s a reasonable goal. We’ll try to narrow the gap where we can without forcing every player to respec to the whatever the current flavor of the month hotness is or creating balance nightmares in PvP.

With my current gear, my BM spec trails a SV spec by 7.8% in potential dps. Compared to MM, BM is 13.4% behind. When I plug in the BiS gear in every slot I find BM trailing SV by 8.9% and the gap between BM and MM increases to 16.7%. I also have to add that I did not gem for anything but Agi in any of the specs so the ArP factor is reduced. I only have 426 passive ArP with my gear. Even without massive amounts of ArP, BM still is way behind MM and considerably behind SV as well.

We didn’t obviously compare the gear of every hunter out there. We looked at a few different levels of progression and BM is pretty close to SV in a lot of cases. Eurytos up above thinks BM is pretty close to SV, and in fact I’ll quote him in a minute. If you’re a BM fan I think you can raid as BM in 3.3.3 without utterly embarrassing yourself. Are there hunters out there who can out dps you? Sure. But there would be hunters out there who could beat you even if you were both MM. Any of us can pull out parses where the Elemental shaman or Shadow priest or Blood DK is topping the meters for that particular raid and still making ICC progression. Let’s assume BM and SV are 1500-2000 dps behind MM. At that level, the damage is probably close enough where skill and gear are going to have a much greater impact than your spec for most of you.

Is that acceptable for Lich King 25 hard mode? Probably not. But the guilds at that level of progression are obsessed about even minimal dps gains, and they need to be. I’m not sure we can ever balance all 3 specs of a given class to be within 100 or so dps of each other on the most challenging content given that the specs have different mechanics that produce different strengths and weaknesses on different encounters. Balance at the hardest of the hard core is different from balance at the rest of the game, and much of the community would do well to focus less on maximum dps potential with the best gear and focus more on what they themselves can do. BM in 3.3.2 was unacceptably low in PvE. I’m not sure it is now.

Well, we will have to wait and see…

1) BM is still the lowest DPS at any ICC raider gear level.
2) BM still has the highest reliance on the pet for damage and suffers tremendously if it dies or otherwise cannot participate.
3) BM’s raid buff is shared by Ret Pally’s and Arcane Mage’s and only 1 person with it is needed, whereas it’s optimal to have 2 sources of replenishment and the only other prominent raiding specs with it are Ret Paladin’s and Shadow Priests.
4) Survival offers higher DPS while mobile.
5) Survival has higher survivability.

1) Lowest isn’t of particular concern. It’s unlikely to ever be a 10-way tie. Magnitude of the haves and the have nots is more important. Subtlety, BM, Arms, Frost and Frost were so far down that it was unreasonable to expect players to raid with them. We buffed them where we thought it was safe without, as I said above, pushing every existing player into that spec or creating PvP problems. It’s not a 10 way tie now, but it’s closer than it was in 3.3.2, and to be fair, probably closer than it’s been at any time in WoW previously.

2) and 4) are legit points in my opinion. Pet reliance is a really sticky wicket, because if we make you rely on the pet, then it’s really terrible when you do lose it, and if we don’t make you rely on the pet, well that pretty much kills the theme of the tree.

3) You shouldn’t be brought for your raid buff. Awesome raid buffs shouldn’t be a lever to get an underperforming spec (or player!) into a raid. With very few exceptions the raid buffs are not going to be so significant to make you want to take a bad player over a good one. Sometimes we’re tempted to just nerf all of the raid buffs to the 1-2% level in Cataclysm just so players focus more on what’s fun and less on raid buffs.

5) I’m going to downplay this one too for the simple reason that I think you guys would dismiss it if I offered it as a reason for why you’d want to play a particular spec (in PvE). Now, personally I think this is a consideration in building your character and I wish we could get more players to care about it because it would give us more tools in developing talent trees etc. You’ll see the occasional non-tank who gems a little Stamina to survive fights with tons of raid damage, but for the most part players will take even a tiny dps gain over survivability (in PvE) and just blame the healers (or the designers).

This said by GC earlier so I guess mentioning calculators and spreadsheets isnt going to help the discussion. I thought a lot of the input GC and the others get are from a lot of the theorycrafters that make these spreadsheets? Maybe I’m wrong.

Spreadsheets and simulations are awesome and some of them have become quite sophisticated. There are still plenty of situations where actual players can’t get anywhere close to those theoretical maximums. Now there are other situations where really exceptional players can bump up against those predicted numbers. For most players, their potential dps (in game) is a lot more relevant than what the spreadsheet says their potential dps could be.

As an example, imagine that Survival required a really punishing shot rotation. Very good players (the kind that get insane actions per second on Starcraft maybe) might eek 14,000 dps out of that rotation. Mere mortals might only get 9000 dps though. On the other hand, imagine Marks could pump out 10,000 dps for almost any level of player. If you’re going by the spreadsheets alone, you’d be dumb not to play Survival. Going by your logs, you’d be dump not to play Marks (unless you’re in the 1% bracket). You could come up with similar examples for one spec only beating the other with best possible gear, or one spec only beating the other on fights with no movement. And so on.

This is a theoretical example. No need to respond with “But Survival isn’t harder to play.” :)

Yes you do have to be careful with numbers like that . The issue is though that we’re seeing numbers like this across the board. BM is 10% behind Survival which is then 10% behind Marks.

Now with the FI change BM should be 7-8% behind Survival and 17-18% behind Marks. Thats still too much of a gap in my opinion.

So what are you saying about those players who estimate BM will be very close to Survival with the changes? Are they wrong? If so, talk to them instead. We don’t really expect the community to come to a consensus on anything, but on the other hand, when some players are saying “they’re close” and some players are saying “they’re not” then more than likely, someone is wrong. :)

Again, if you really like BM, you should be able to raid as BM with this change. Your raid leader may ask you to respec for the hardest Icecrown fights, but if you’re on those fights, then you’re probably used to being asked to make specific changes in order to maximize even the most marginal efficiency gains. At that point “close enough” might not be enough. At that point swapping for a 1% dps gain might be worth it. We’re not going to get every class within 1% of each other in every situation, and players on that content know that.

On the other hand, if you’ve been wiping on normal Festergut for the last four weeks then I can almost promise you that swapping from BM to MM is not what’s going to suddenly buy you success.

I’ll try to articulate my argument again. Overly-worrying about the best SV hunter being at 10,600 dps when the best MM hunter is at 12,000 dps doesn’t make a lot of sense when your dps is at 7000. You will see a far greater gain by closing the gap to that 10,000 dps hunter than you will ever see from a buff that we make. Players often tend to put too much emphasis on class mechanics and not enough on skill and gear, which is where the real dps gains stand to be made.

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