World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> 10/12 Upcoming Hunter Changes

Wryxian

Blizzard Poster

0. 10/12 Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:13:18 PST

Hunters of all specs, and particularly Beastmaster, are doing too much damage in PvE. We tested this a lot internally in beta and knew hunters were high but we hoped other classes would be able to catch up in a way they have as yet been unable to do. We want to be careful not to hurt hunter dps too much in PvP, so we’re taking most of the damage out of Steady Shot and Volley. Beastmaster hunters are in addition losing some of their pet dps. We still want BMs to have the best pets, but pet dps numbers are a little high at the moment. We are also still concerned about hunter survivability in PvP and taking the opportunity to jazz up Deterrence into something that looks and plays a little more interesting.

These are not all of the changes we are working on for hunters, but those changes we feel are ready for testing. We hope to get these changes up on the PTR so players will have a chance to test them out and respond before they go live.

Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
Kindrid Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
Growl— threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.

[Update 1 - by Ghostcrawler - 09/12]

These are not all the hunter changes we're working on. Some we haven't quite worked out yet and others (one exciting one in particular concerning ammo) won't be ready until Ulduar or so.

We think MM was too high and BM was way too high, but Survival is probably a little low. We are looking at buffing Survival, possibly through Explosive Shot, but we haven't finalized that yet.

The Deterrence change is definitely something we'll need to see in action on the PTR.

We don't want to do a disservice to all the good PvP feedback by attempting to boil it down too much. However, in general a lot of hunters were concerned about being able to do damage as much as they were concerned about being able to survive damage. We don't expect the Deterrence change to solve the former problem obviously. We're still working on that one, but we wanted to go ahead and announce what changes we have now so that you guys can be chewing on them.

Nerfing classes is never fun. It means that our initial tests and estimates didn't play out in the real world, which is a failing on our part, not anything the players did wrong. While buffing is a lot more fun, we think we'd get to crazy land too quickly by trying to make current BM dps the new benchmark. That would mean touching virtually every other class and spec as well as many encounters. While it might produce more positive PR in the short-term, it's a ton more work in the long-term that we would rather spend on new content or other problem areas.

[Update 2 - by Ghostcrawler - 09/12]

Sorry for the confusion on Serpent's Swiftness. We are not changing its effect on the hunter at all. The nerf just applies to the pet attack speed increase. Hunter 20%. Pet 10%.

[ Post edited by Wryxian ]

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
~ Buddha

Cptralle

Bloodfeather

1. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:35:26 PST

:( Well some of it sounds fair.. The new Deterrence change sounds nice :o but please dont make it so we have to face the target :(

And btw, Readiness never worked for Bestial Wrath :>

Bumbelbee

Rajaxx

2. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:48:42 PST

Hi,

-PvE
-inGeneral
-PvP

PvE
In my opinion a nerf is acceptable,but...
If the pet does to much damaga, why hurting steady shot soooo hard? If you dont want to make an extreme nerf, than why go down by 10% with every thing? I think you shouldnt nerf steady shot or just slow down by lowering on 15% everything and not by 10%.
I'm concerned that you nerf everything, so that in the sum we are not worth anything.

in General
I think you treat Hunters unfair. While I can understand the dmg problems, I cant understand the treatment in all other ways.
If I imagine Rogues (I played one) I get furious. Except Season 1, Rogues shined all Arena Seasons... They were much to strong! Stuns till your down to 40%? The same way goes a Warrior. Now he sucks, but he scales with his equip. Seeing them dominating again in a month or so. Druids even not mentioning.

I think you treat the %!@@ out of us, because we are such a small community. That shouldnt be a reroll class threat and so on. I keep my hopes up, that you will give us some day a moment to shine in arena (like you did to shaman).

PvP
Its just ok. Nerf the dmg of BM. So you destroy this spec for being viable in PvP. The only point in taking BM was the possibility to kite pillars, while the pet (like a heavy warlock dot) made dmg.
Nerf our dmg, ok... but gief us plz some strong abilities in every other case. All instants should be like drain life... go through pillars! Ok, this was some joke, but it shows what I mean...
Dont know...
Buff our lives or something like that. Let the survivalist talent give us +20% and the endurange training +10%. Its not the optimal way (the warlock way :P ) but its something for the moment till you finally fix the hunter problem in arena.
Give our shots the possibility to be magic and follow the target even if the arrow has to make an 45° angle.
Make Deterrence a good spell. Deterrence like it sounds now is... dont know... doesnt sound that nice, but as you said: need to be tested.
Give us a speed talent, pathfinding making the hunter faster by 7/15% (without the aspect)...

That are just ideas in which direction could go... there is only one thing you made good with wotlk in terms of PvP: we have one more instant (chimera) and aimed is instant... With 3 gcd of instants + Lock n Load we have some room for playing (but only as 0/51/20).

But Blizz: Plz do something in a positive pvp matter.

[ Post edited by Bumbelbee ]

"The stats don't show a lack of popularity for Hunter, they just show a ridiculous popularity for other classes in Arena".

Bumbelbee

Rajaxx

3. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:50:04 PST

Q u o t e:
:( Well some of it sounds fair.. The new Deterrence change sounds nice :o but please dont make it so we have to face the target :(

And btw, Readiness never worked for Bestial Wrath :>

It worked! Tested 50/21/0 last week. It was awesome. Specced back, 'cause I had only exotic pet at 80 :P

"The stats don't show a lack of popularity for Hunter, they just show a ridiculous popularity for other classes in Arena".

Cptralle

Bloodfeather

4. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:53:06 PST

woot :O how come me and my ingame friend cant take away the cd with it then? >.<

Brother

Dunemaul

5. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:54:27 PST

Q u o t e:

Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).

Bit worried about this change. This will affect Survival aswell which is a very underpowered spec compared to the rest at the moment, mostly due to poor itemization I think, there arent many super-high agility items out there which Survival actually needs and all the nerfs to Explosive shot made it pretty bad. Will those promised Trap mastery changes be implemented? They were promised to be "very cool" or something like that.

Q u o t e:
Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.

Justified.

Q u o t e:
Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.

I agree 100% with this change. Readiness + BW makes 51 BM close to useless.

Q u o t e:
Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.

Very nice change but will require some testing first. I don't have a problem with it being frontal only but many people seem to. Disengage is our very best friend! Still I believe it benefits MM in PvP more then BM, which is sad, would be nice if both specs could work. Readiness + dterence will be a most useful tool in PvP.

Q u o t e:
Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).

This was also a needed change, 35 seconds felt a bit too long but I guess this is to make up for some of the other nerfs, still pretty good.

Q u o t e:
Kindrid Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.

Should be added that this does not affect the Hunters attackspeed. 10% attackspeed won't make a huge difference with the new Windfury anyhow, will only make a difference if you actually lack WF totem.

Q u o t e:
All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
Growl— threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.

All pretty good changes in general.

Q u o t e:
Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.

Very nice. Scorpid poison is getting nerf after nerf, perhaps it won't do too much now, 3:rd nerf in a row? :)

Q u o t e:
Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.

Not really going to comment on these but I like the improved tracking bit.

I think that there is a chance that the majority of the Hunters will go MM now instead of BM, I don't know if this is what you are looking for but there will always be a spec that will have the "upper edge" over the rest, I believe with these changes and the scaling of Chimera shot that MM will be the end game spec, not survival. For survival to be efficient and good you need something extra, perhaps a bit more crit damage (since it's a crit based spec, more crit damage would improve the damage without breaking all other specs.)

BM scales okay, MM scales great and Survival scales pretty well, too bad it's just too far behind right now to actually scale ahead of any of the other specs, something really has to be done here unless you want to kill the spec.

What about Counterattack? It's a very nice abilitiy but as it has been said the RNG is way too high on that ability. Up cooldown and remove parry requirement would be a great idea, that way it would be useful in far more situations and I hope it wouldnt be too powerful. Other then that I fully accept the changes but this will make Survival suffer even more, without a doubt - even if the other specs also get reduced damage.

[ Post edited by Brother ]

Darkezra

< Darkened Angels >

Thunderhorn

6. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 00:55:33 PST

So let me get this right? BM hunters are too high dps so your going to nerf the entire class?
I can see logic in changes required for pets to a point but thats now going affect non BM hunter far worse (who already get a crap deal), and action is to be taken against a bugged AoE (which breaks our weapon) and an already nerfed shot!

Heres some logic why not nerf the BM attack via talents and allow the 20% damage to remain but be a bonus or increase via talents on survival tree and master marksman trees?

Why we are at it, how comes master marksmen have a slower attack speed than beast masters? Surely if you look at it with logic master marksmen are meant to be the best with ranged attacks so surely we should have had the attack speed buff that beast masters got via the talent tree?

If your going to reduce damage on one of the 'meat and two veg' attacks and the pet's dps for survivalist as well as marksmen what are we meant to do then?

As i said the most logical step i can see from my point of veiw if BM hunters have been the issue then nerf them via talent build and not of attacks.

While we are at it consider this unless if the pet dps is being dropped and we attack mobs and start to create high damage then the threat is on us unless your going to try and balance this but increased threat from the pet and increased melee defence ?
Sure we can kite them and so but with the cool downs its going to become unpractical as we will be waiting far too long before we can attack the next mob again.

It would have been nice if blizzard has asked the community what our concerns were before leaving our fate in the hands of an individual who never by the looks of it posts here asking for feedback?

Scarnik

< Wild Cards >

Bloodfeather

7. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:05:22 PST

Q u o t e:
Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.

Ha-ha, i was expecting something like that. But, i thought a better solution was to push Readiness deeper in MM tree, so that people willing to have BW+Readiness would have to sacrifice some other talents. Or, increasing Readiness cooldown (maybe adding extra talents deeper in MM that would allow to shorten it).
Still, i will forever remember days when mages used ice block, palas used bubble and rogues used vanish, hoping to wait till my BW wears off... only to face another one as soon as the fight continues =D Sad that i couldnt try this thing with a proper pvp set on me. But the nerf is fair, i admit. And i can finally go for 51st BM talent now.

[ Post edited by Scarnik ]

Bumbelbee

Rajaxx

8. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:11:37 PST

Oh, well!

What about SURVIVAL? Blizzard, I dont know what kind of pressure the bad bad Activision guys made, but its untypical that you ship out a game that is not "perfect".

Gief us nice imba Trap Talent. Something like Ice Trap killing the target (like the mark of death by archimond) ... :)

The Point in Survial:

If you look at the talent speccs of the PvEs they ship arround some typical survival talents, cause there to much pvp. The PvP people do not have enough points to take all the flashy things. But even if you specc this or that way: Survival is weak. Not worth to spend more than 20 pts. Gief this specc some love.

The trap talent can make the duration longer of ice trap, makes the area of effect bigger of frost trap, in addition it can reduce mana costs to 40% and reduces the duration by 10... (remove resourcefulness).
Or the best idea: Let ice trap be an area of effect trap. Every dirty enemy, taking his path through this gets in the frost trap. So if in 5v5s 3 of them are staying on my trap, all get frosted xD

Remove plz explosive shot. I know you thought it would be great, but it isnt. Dont even try to argue. You meant it good, but its just trash. IF you want this talent to stay, make it NOT sharing CD with arcane shot, so we can use it in PvP (as survivals chimera).

And the Hunting Party talent is a complete joke. 5 pts in such a sucky crapy assy talent? You are crazy ^^ Make this a 3 pts talent or even better: 1pt.

[ Post edited by Bumbelbee ]

"The stats don't show a lack of popularity for Hunter, they just show a ridiculous popularity for other classes in Arena".

Qefe

< The Templars >

Outland

9. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:15:22 PST

The pet nerfs are fair, they did alot of damage.

Volley is fair.

Steady shot is to silly for words.

Readiness + bw: cutting us dead in pvp, in pve it might be fair to 51 bm hunters.

Rest of em, this enforces my feeling that blizz don't know hunters and the guy that designed hunter prolly got fired along the way, and now clueless ppl are taking over

Celfydd

< Society >

The Sha'tar

10. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:18:12 PST

Q u o t e:
Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).

My gut instinct says that this is going to be too much of a reduction, and 15% would be more conservative, but we'll see. Steady Shot really is a bread and butter ability for all hunters. Given that survival hunters use Steady Shot too, and they are far from overperforming currently, I somehow doubt that Steady Shot is really the problem.

Q u o t e:
Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.

Note that Rake doesn't work properly with 3/3 Longevity either. It might be a better idea to simply make the DoT duration scale with Longevity for all pet DoT abilities, rather than trying to fix each ability on a case by case basis.

I'm perfectly happy with all the other changes.

"Don't make me get mediaeval on you." - Mountaineer Pebblebitty

Dorotka

< Toxicall >

Burning Legion

11. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:20:22 PST

"The BM nerfs probably are justified, which need to be tested as well, but steadyshot scaling nerfs MM and Survival which actually weren't over other classes/specs".
Look at history Wotlk patch steady shoot nerf 2.0 sec couldown dmg lowered + more dmg pet. Wotlk content - 10 % steady shoot dmg bonus t6 4 part + better statistic from new items. Overall everytime nerfing steady shoot but remember this is 1 ability which one you doing most dps in all spec. If you nerf this you nerf all spec too. Hunter dps is little high in statical boss imo but in dynamical encounter sounds like good.

[ Post edited by Dorotka ]

Ocard

12. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:20:33 PST

You better fix pet bugs instead of nerfing us again.

Should have rerolled instead of bringing my hunter to 80.

[ Post edited by Ocard ]

Kumø

Dragonmaw

13. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:25:29 PST

The nerf on steady shot is just stupid.

One of the reasons hunters is on top in dmg done is volly on trash, but when it comes to longer boss fights im falling down at 5-10 in dmg done (5/16/50) and normal a BM hunter on top.

If blizzard is going to nerf a specc, dont let it go out of all speccs for the class. The nerf on steady shot is a big nerf for mm/surv specc hunters that dont need that nerf. Rather do some nerfs in the BM tree.

Leave steady shot like it is now and nerf volly and BM hunters.

The other changes i must say i rely like

Gshock

< The Knights Templar >

Kul Tiras

14. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:29:00 PST

So detterence will be now just an ability that keeps you from death with an extra 5 sec (in pvp) hoping some peeps come and rescue you.
In pve , raids it will work fine , but that you have to face the attacker ? no way !
We hunters had actually a nice aoe ability , in the past it was crap , dont nerf it like that soon peeps have no reason to take a hunter in a dungeon/raid.
Freezing trap is bad fix it !

cd of kill shot is good (15sec) if its not nerfed !

Qefe

< The Templars >

Outland

15. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:29:26 PST

So blizzard,

You say: Hunters do to much damage in raids etc

and then you nerf call of the wild, wich obv buffs other classes.

Logic? None here (again)

Khatum

< Madhouse >

Talnivarr

16. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:29:48 PST

All in all, these are wonderful changes. Hunters are doing too much damage in PvE and don't say this is fine because we got silly PvP issues as a trade-off, PvE and PvP are two different things and should be treated as such.

The changes to BM are perfectly justified, no matter how harsh they seem. Pet-damage was through the roof (due to bugged pet-skills and too much raw +xx% damage). It's even sillier if you consider the amount of skills the BM Hunter had to use.

In the end I feel sad for the (few) Survival Hunters. So far they've gained nothing while losing something. Of course, GC said they're looking into Explosive Shot, but with this change to Steady Shot, they better up the damage of Explosive Shot a lot.

Now, I wonder. Does Blizzard acknowledge the bugged Steady Shot glyph in conjunction with the Marked for Death talent. I haven't tested this myself yet, but a lot of MM hunters are reporting this issue of the glyph no working if you have spent at least one point in this talent. If this is actually bugged, and Blizzard fixes it, the DPS of MM won't change at all.

Thus, BM got hit hard (as expected), while Survival seems to be getting the ginger-kid treatment. MM will hardly feel the effects of this. I'm a happy (MM) Hunter.

And to make a PvP statement: make that version of Deterrence a 360° skill, because if the facing-thing stays, it won't change a thing.

[ Post edited by Khatum ]

Slmhunt

< Huhuholics >

Tarren Mill

17. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:32:27 PST

Ah yes, hunter damage should be the main concern(!!). Not rouges having 3 points in Honor among Thieves and going 2k+ dps above everyone else?.

Kameril

< Taurens Ate My Hamst… >

Aerie Peak

18. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:36:29 PST

Q u o t e:
Ah yes, hunter damage should be the main concern(!!). Not rouges having 3 points in Honor among Thieves and going 2k+ dps above everyone else?.

http://www.aijaa.com/v.php?i=3218486.jpg

Rogues working as intended.

Vila

< Nemuri >

Draenor

19. Re: Upcoming Hunter Changes 10/12/2008 01:37:51 PST

Well, anyone who didn't see this coming a mile away was kidding themselves.

None of this fixes the class for the players though and just puts me a step closer to binning the hunter for good.

The exotic pets are ill thought out and in many cases a damned nuisance. I will never bring myself to have a bloody devilsaur - an option to turn off the thudding of the footsteps would be great (in the same way it would be nice to mute warlock pets now everyone and their dog has a felguard out).

Kill Shot change was needed but to be honest, even through heroics and much of Naxx, I am only firing it at bosses because everything else gets annhilated so quickly there is never a chance. Don't know about PvP but in PvE it is pretty useless for soloing or most groups.

Thing that strikes me: Kill Command was changed because it wasn't desired that hunters were macroing it in to a shot rotation. Some of us (when it was possible to manually weave a 1:1) preferred to do it ourselves because it made the class interactive. I have already seen macros that fire Kill Shot if they can, Steady if they can't. Reducing us back to a one trick pony that occasionally wakes up to activate cooldowns.

Many classes have reactive skills - Maelstrom Weapon for example or Sword and Board procs or insta-cast Pyro. Where is ours? Where is our inter-activity with our skills? Explain to me the entertainment value of most of our playstyle being reduced to Steady-Steady-Steady-Steady-Steady....

Oh, and we were told that the Survival tree would be repaired once the expansion has launched. Any sign of that? Or is the tree still just so much hackneyed and half-assed wreckage?

Not the enthusiastic feedback Blizzard were hoping for. But hunters have always had a lousy reputation and with our current playstyle we deserve it - top damage but absolute face-rolling.

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