Jan. 4, 2010
Yours should be a face that smiles
That Zod’s Repeating Longbow is bugged has been confirmed and it will be hotfixed. If only they could do that with the Call Stabled Pet bug…
Zod’s should not reset your autoshot. This is a bug. We can and will hotfix the problem with Zod’s Repeating Longbow. This hotfix should be deployed in the next day or two, barring unforeseen issues, etc.
The proc might even be getting a buff!
The general answer is “yes” since I already recently mentioned a change we’d like to make on Nibelung. What we won’t do is make a lot of really fast changes to procs. Some procs can start out pretty weak, but we are well versed in our players’ abilities to find ways to use things and need to be careful on buffing something as tricky as a proc.
As a more detailed explanation, our itemization philosophy has evolved a lot from vanilla where in comparison to today’s gear it almost seemed like random stats were thrown together like everybody’s classic favorite Strength and Spirit items. One of the biggest risks we feel like we face currently is itemization becoming too stale and predictable where the only thing you get out of a new tier of content are the current item with a few more stats on it.
Procs are one of the ways we’re trying to address this and we expect you’ll continue to see a lot more of them for the future. With any new feature, though, it’s going to take time to figure out which implementations succeed or fail. Also keep in mind that we know we haven’t always had the best track record with items that give up some of their stat budget for procs which is particularly true of casters.
We aren’t ready to announce any specific changes at this time, but rest assured we do intend to tweak the procs over time. This is a model you’re likely to see a lot more of in future content.
Will the issue with the Zod proc be addressed as well? Currently when it procs it’s resetting the autoshot timer, which negates a large portion of the damage gain from the proc. It seems like this is a bug in the implementation and not intended but it would be helpful to have a clarification.
We are looking into the proc on this weapon as well.
What’s going to happen to our gear (specifically that itemized with Armor Penetration) come Cataclysm?
There isn’t a cut and dry sort of answer that we can give you on this just yet. There are many different factors that will need to come into account.
There is potential for anything that is currently considered Best in Slot now to not be once changes begin going in for Cataclysm.
You will also need to take into account potential changes in talents and abilities (as well as any other game related changes), and it leaves a bit of wiggle room for some theorycrafting once these changes start being discussed and experienced in more detail.
To that end though, we don’t plan to leave anyone high and dry and are planning out a series of informational releases that should start giving out more detail on these sorts of changes. We’ll be doing what we can to answer as many questions as possible on the changes to stats in particular since we know that it is an area that many people focus on. We also want to make sure that these changes are easy to understand and leave room for any additional developmental adjustments that are needed. As always, we’ll be keeping an eye on constructive feedback and discussions as well.
We still have some time until Cataclysm rolls around which means plenty of time for us to take a look at things that we feel might need a change before then. I can’t promise any specific changes on Armor Pen just yet for Wrath of the Lich King, but that doesn’t preclude us from taking a look at this stat sooner rather than later should we feel it needs attention prior to then. We don’t want to lock ourselves into the idea that changes won’t happen until Cataclysm so that if something sticks out to us as bothersome, we can do something about it if there is room in the plans for it. It’s easy to fall into the, “Wait 'til Cataclysm” mantra, but we don’t want to have to stay within that mold if we don’t have to.
Dec. 23, 2009
Well, they get by somehow, I'm sure
Do we take things out of context? No, never! But we sure will pounce on CMs who make comments about Beast Mastery.
Wasn’t there some design goal to have all specs of all classes viable in PvP and endgame raiding? Wasn’t “leveling tree” supposed to be a bygone concept?
We’d love to have every spec viable for all aspects of the game, it just rarely turns out that way since balancing can be pretty tricky. At this stage in the game we aren’t planning to make many (if any) big changes to classes since we are already working on doing just that for Cataclysm so that’s why I wouldn’t expect much in the near future.
I think we all knew by this time that pets inheriting stats wasn’t going to happen but it’s, nice (I guess?) to hear it pretty much confirmed.
Small changes are still being discussed a bit, but nothing has been determined at this point.
And, just to tie it all together.
I know some of you were reading into my comments a bit much so I’ll try and explain things a little more.
The wolf is overpowered when compared to the other available pets, mostly because it buffs the master. Buffing all of the pets to that level would require a number of different changes to different pets and the chance that one of those buffs would be too much or not enough is reasonably high. When you have say 10 or more things all roughly equal and then one that is outside of that group, the one that’s outside is called an outlier. Defining it as the new normal isn’t smart game design and just like we do with classes, we are likely to nerf the single thing at the top than buff all the others.
It might not be possible to ever get the pets completely identical (see comments below), so very competitive raiders will probably still only take the best one. But if the best one is only slightly ahead of the others, then it will feel more acceptable to some players to run with the pet they like. For most players, improving their own game will have a larger effect than picking the “best in slot” pet if they are comparable.
As far as the Spirit Beasts are concerned, there are several reasons why they would make a bad “best” pet. There are not very many options to choose from and all of them require “farming”; a rare spawn that is more of a testament to blind luck than any kind of player skill. As we said before, there is no advantage to having a wider spectrum of pets to choose from if there is only one right choice.
We have talked about literally making all the pet families identical and letting the player just pick one based on looks. That certainly homogenizes the game quite a bit, which is why we haven’t done it, but it would ultimately allow pet choice to be cosmetic.
In the end, yes, we do want to get BM competitive with Survival and Marks. We even did some buffs in 3.3 to help them get there but the reason for my comments earlier is that we’d rather have two viable raiding specs than just one so Hunters as a whole are not in terrible shape. Eventually we do plan to get all 3 there. Just remember that when players obsess about 1% differences in dps you can understand why that task is pretty gigantic. There are probably more raiding BM hunters in 3.3 than in 3.2 and probably a lot more than there are Subtlety rogues (sorry for the example rogues, but you/we know it’s true). It’s far from a dead spec.
Dec. 21, 2009
Now... fight!
Still no ETA on a fix for the Call Stabled Pet cooldown and jumping into an Arena skirmish is still the quickest way to reset it.
Some things can be hotfixed, and some things simply cannot. Whilst the solution you were offered is not ideal, it’s not what will be considered a permanent fix for the problem. :)
Don’t look for any major changes coming to Beast Mastery on a server near you.
wanna make some controversial buffs to the BM tree maybe? Since it is pointless in real raiding.
It may not be great for raiding but is still good for leveling while both Marks and Surv are competitive for raiding. I wouldn’t expect any big changes for now.
And Spirit Beasts will likely remain unchanged as well. Wolves, however…
The spirit beasts are not the real issue from our perspective. We this spirit beasts are doing fine and we don’t want them to be the only choice for BM hunters since speccing BM should give a player more choices for pets (ideally) and not less.
The problem mainly lies with the wolf just being overpowered. We did consider nerfing them for patch 3.3 but decided that the nerf to pretty much all hunter PvE dps was not worth the benefit of providing more options for pets. Keep in mind though that we have and will continue to make unpopular or even controversial nerfs if we feel they are a benefit for the game.
Dec. 15, 2009
Don't change your number, I need to make you mine
The Call Stabled Pet bug still exists (I was hoping that maybe the downtime today would have resolved it, but alas). Blizzard is aware though.
A number of Hunters are reporting that their Call Stabled Pet ability displays a 25-day cooldown after changing specs within a cross-realm instance. We are currently investigating this issue in hopes of providing a resolution as quickly as possible; however, we have received reports that this issue can be resolved by queuing for and participating in an arena skirmish. Should the issue persist after you’ve left the skirmish, please feel free to open an in-game petition so that our Game Masters may be able to provide additional assistance.
Alas for me, no Arena team.
Dec. 11, 2009
I've been used and wasn't even aware of it!
Seems to me that they’re just sort of digging in their heels now about the whole gnomish/goblin engineering ammo situation now.
If you can’t afford to AH the ammo, you probably can’t afford to get the best gems and enchants for you new gear which would probably be a bigger dps increase. That is going to affect the economic decision of looting more than the ammo I suspect. I don’t think the ammo will be outrageously high on the AH given the mats. It may be high for the next week or so while it’s scarce, but as I’ve said, we don’t really want every hunter in the game to be able to get ammo which is tied to a rep grind and rare drop on day one.
You may not be able to afford to constantly switch Engineering specs, but we’re not trying to make that a very attractive option in the first place.
Are Hunters being balanced (in terms of PvE raid DPS) around having this high-quality ammo, or not? Are we expected to be competitive with Rogues, Warlocks, and Mages using ordinary ammo?
Hunters with older gear are being balanced against mages, rogues and warlocks with older gear. Fully geared hunters are balanced against fully geared mages, rogues and warlocks. Ammo is part of your gear, much like your weapon. The Icecrown weapons are not readily available to every hunter in the game. Neither is the Ashen Verdict ammo. However, more of the ammo and other craftable items will trickle down through the economy over time.
Apples and oranges, GC. Ammo represent a constant cost for the raiding hunter where as gems and enchants are a one time cost for that gear/spec. Right now, on my server, the ammo is selling for 50g a stack – that might change, but a constant 50g/stack is reminiscent of TBC ammo prices, which is what the ammo changes were designed to avoid.
I don’t think they are apples and oranges. If you buy a very large amount of ammo, it will last for a long time. It’s totally under your control how much you buy, assuming there is enough product available, and there almost certainly will be over time if the demand is there. When you get a new item, you have a big investment to make to finish that item. When you run out of ammo, you have a big investment to make to restock.
Some of you are still arguing about the cost of ammo or the fact that it’s a consumable or tied to a trade skill, but all of that has been true for some time. The Engineering specialization didn’t affect any of that to a large degree. It may affect cost or availability for a short time, but that is true of most new and valuable resources. What is Primordial Saronite selling for on your server? Do you think it will still be at that price in a week? In a month?
The materials to make the ammo are not hard to get. The recipe itself is quite hard to get. Therefore it will probably take awhile before the ammo is widely available at a low cost. That’s what we want. After the ammo is widely available it would basically take a unified cabal of Engineers to keep the prices inflated. Almost always in those situations someone blinks because the loss of selling things for cheaper is a lot better outcome than not selling anything at all.
Relying on a server’s economy for maximizing dps has always been a finicky matter with me.
You will deal with this constantly in the game unless you make all of your potions, gems, glyphs and enchants yourself. The game is structured so that you generally need to interact with other players. To some extent gems and enchants are just as consumable as ammo and potions unless you’re in a situation where you never plan to upgrade your gear.
I still think there’s too much noise regarding the whole issue – as Ghostcrawler points out, there are people complaining about the cost issue (which, sacrilegious as it might sound, I actually agree with him about the price going down and it becoming a non-issue in a few weeks on the majority of servers). To me, it’s more of an engineering quality of life. There’s no consistency in the restriction as, as it’s been pointed out, other professions lose nothing by having specializations and all along, EITHER type of engineer has been able to craft either bullets or arrows. And, there’s simply nothing “fun” about the new mechanic, no matter how you look at it (and this was used as an argument as to why it was made this way – that they think it’s fun, er what???). The simple, please everyone solution would be to allow either type of engineer to make both types of ammunition but that gnomish engineers have a chance to create more bullets and gnomes have a chance to create more arrows. Hunters are happy – there’s likely to be more ammo available due to extra procs, which would help nullify the discussed issue of cost. Engineers are happy because it wouldn’t force them to re-spec to either accommodate their own needs or that of their guildmates. Blizzard would be happy because we’d stop complaining. It’s win/win/win.
And a bug fix.
- Hunters, Rogues, and Shaman will once again be able to roll need on off-hand weapons when the need before greed looting system is active.