First of all I want to underline, this is not an empty firing post, just sharing idea about incoming changes, dont take it offensive.
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Q u o t e:
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.

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I suggest, better trying with same level geared dps warriors and (using boomkin+elemental shaman in raid) trying a same level pyro-lock can result almost same dps on Naxxramas bosses. Also mentioning, at some specific boss encounters (Loatheb-pyro lock can get nearly %99 crit rate with mushroom buffs, Heigan-pet cannot attack during whole encounter) this classes can out dps a Hunter.

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Q u o t e:
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.

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Agree with volley issue. Since hunter isnt designed as AOE class (again mentioning Dps warrior wasnt designed as AOE class, but can easily out dps at AOE encounters whole classes with whirlwind) can outdps lock-mage-boomkin AOE effects.

If you check an arena match or even in a duel, you will see that steady shot use out isnt high, instant shots as chimera-arcane has more percentage but mostly you will see auto shots. So i think these are mostly pvp nerfs.

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Q u o t e:
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.

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I only agree with scorpions. A defensive pet must not do higher than an aggressive pet. And yes its dots are too high with raid buffs. In all classes 51th. talent of the top of the talent tree is the best in that spec. So exotics pets like Devilsaurs damage is acceptable.

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Q u o t e:
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.

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I think this PvP issue isnt caused by any of the classes except Paladins and DK's. If you want to balance PvP better give all classes a chance versus Paladins and DK's. I bet in none of your tests a Hunter cant down a Paladin (retro). Simply impossible. Scenario is simple, rependance, Bubble 2 judgements divine storm, you loose. No trap, slowing effect stun daze works at bubble, you cannot outrange the attack even if you are BM and use BW.

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Q u o t e:

Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.

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This is both pve and pvp nerf.

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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.

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I dont know any stupid melee players who will still attack from face to face when you pop-up deterrance. This seems only useable vs spell caster classes. Discuss which one is more useless? Spell reflect (warrior) - Deterrance (Hunter) - Ice block (Mage) - Bubble (Paladin) - Cloak of shadowss (rogue) - Anti magic zone thingy which I couldnt remember its name correctly (DK) - Dispersion (Priest) -Metamorphosis (Lock)

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Q u o t e:

Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).

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Correct. Even at 25 man bosses we can use Kill shot once. and if it is not a crit, it hits funny.

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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.

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.[/ul]

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Mostly BM hunter nerfs. Improved tracking will be better like this I agree. Raid wise Aspect of the Wild, I m sorry but at all instances from SSC TK MH BT SWP Naxxramas Malygos Eye of Eternity, I never seen someone using this skill.
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Lets look at the useless or too less effective skills.

Invigoration: Tested too much, effects doesnt worth to get talents on it. Too low income, you can use 2 talents to get more effective dps to another ones, aspect of viper solves the issue.

Aimed shot: Tested too much. Even with spending points on 3/3 barrage and 3/3 piercing shots, arcane shot-chimera shot max damage and total damage ratio is better. Since no healing effect reduce buff, you can even delete this.

Rapid recuperation: Usable only single farming and some kinda 5 man, if u want not to pay gold to water. Zero effect at raids. Also imported tests at excel graphics, while using rapid fire, its bonus is sucky.

Wild quiver: at 3/3 gives %10 chance to proc %50 nature damage with an auto shot. You use auto shot at a ratio of %30-40 at a PvE boss combat. Used at a 5 minute boss encounter, proc number: 10. Funny useless. Cos you can waste 3 points to somewhere more effective.

Lock and load: serpent sting chance on proc rate is too low.

Explosive shot: I cant still believe, how can a 51th talent can be so useless? Super low damage out put.

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After seeing in the TBC warlocks doing 1k dps more than hunters for 2 years without getting a nerf which the top dps could be around 3.5k, now with top dps limit over 5.5k, a hunter does 1k more than other classes in specific combats (like a warrior cant be able to attack whole time of the combat) and our dps is too much?

Please look more inside the situation. In the end what will happen do you know? As old TBC times, there will be 1 max 2 hunters in a raid, not able to get over the top 3 dps ers which will probably be warriors and pyro-warlocks. I dont know who told you hunters are doing too much dps in PvE, except AOE encounters I dont see a big problem like this in PvE especially between dps warriors hunters and pyro-locks. I dont aggree with steady shot damage lowering, as I mentioned before, pet scaling can work, but nerfing primary PvE attack skill of hunter class will get Marksman and SV spec hunters to fall. A BM hunters top dps skills are like this at PvE encounters : 1. scorpid sting (dot) 2. steady shot 3. scorpid claw-swing of normal shot. In total damage output, Pet will do %30-45 of total dps, and hunter him/herself can do %70-55 of total dps depending on encounter type. But at MM and SV spec hunters, Hunter does %70+ of damage him/herself and his top dps skill is steady shot. If you want to balance PvE dps, without killing MM and SV specs, a. dont touch steady shot b. if you touch steady shot, improve chimera shot and explosive shot more. Please dont tell me MM-SV hunter cant do more than 7k damage on a raid with a skill with 10 second cd. Even with my gear i can see only 6.5k as marksman, pyro locks doing 10k crits with same gear level with shorter cd skill. Dont tell me it unbalances PvP which is already unbalanced thanks to Paladins (retro) and ez-mode DK's. I wont believe anything said about this. A 10 second cd 51th talent doing only max 6k as marksman, a pyrolock-mage which is also a ranged class crits you 8.5k with lower cd skill?

In the end I have terrible suspects about our future in PvE and PvP. I hope everything goes well soon.
Thanks for reading.

The funniest thing is, these changes will go through even though several intelligent concerned replies have been posted here with NO response from any dev...


"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. "

This is just a load of bull... So we're, like children, supposed to settle for the fact that you can't find the time to acctually do some real longlasting changes to our class instead of horrific nerfing because you can spend your time on something more important??

Thnx alot... some of us has really played our hunters, and love them, for several years and are getting really tired of the yo-yo from suck to really fun...

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Q u o t e:


Now can some Blue tell me why we, priests, have to spent 51 pts in shadow tree for a similar spell while hunters get it for free

QQ

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no need for blue. the answer is easy. every class is different =)

it seems that people dont like pets very much ne? well i agree kinda. (Yes you hear it from a BM Hunter)

Steady shot.... call me a noob or what but i never used it. maybe cuz i didnt like it. anyway. i have no opinion about it.

kill shot.

thanks. now we can use it faster. and i wont have to wait as much. especialy nice since i usualy killed my mobs withing 15 seconds.(no more waiting to use kill shot =) )

Call of the wild.

i dont realy see the use of this one. it will only hurt your party/raid members. unless you guys see people actualy going hand in hand from lvl 1 - 80. and having a pet on later lvls wich gives both. wich wont happen much. so.... no dont6 see the use.

BM is very OP.

mmm yes it kinda is.. in PvE that is.. no offence but in PvP hunters aint realy in the top 5 of best PvP classes. usual way to kill a hunter is stun pet. and then dps the hunter down. or even better. stun hunter while the pet is away.

MM is OP

yes yes.. i totaly agr...... wait WHAT!? you pull aggro off your pet and have to kite things around. making it a dif. spec to play with already. it might me a bit more suited for PvP but damm. PvE is kinda weak. opposit of a BM hunter

Suggestion.

well if a blue reads this it might be worth it.

People are QQing bout hunters with aspect of viper for a while already. maybe it can be changed so it will auto debuff when the mana is at 95-100%
that way you wont have hunters who let their pet do the most DPS while they themself do less damage(idiotic actualy... less damage. more time for mob kill. more bullets wasteing... more bullets buying..... ruining econemy even more.... wall street will even lose more..... damm idiots)

sigh.. my two cent

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Q u o t e:
The funniest thing is, these changes will go through even though several intelligent concerned replies have been posted here with NO response from any dev...

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Maybe they see that Blizz is wrong, and don't know what to tell us....

I've read through this thread from beginning to end and what I've noticed time and time again is the hunters agreeing on most points.

BM hunters are doing too much damage and readiness/BW does deserve a nerf. Then we have all the hunters and some other classes agreeing that a 10% reduction to SS will cripple the class across all the three specs.

The reduction in mana cost for arcane shot will not help fill that gap, the damage you get from it is pathetic even with talent points. Explosive shot for a 51 talent is horrendous when you look at what other classes have, it's like bringing a rubber knife to a gun fight.

You gave the flimsy excuse of wanting hunters to use other shots instead of spamming SS because you think it's boring. Firstly, we know we can't spam those shots regardless of spec because of the terrible mana costs, they still don't do as much damage as SS and they have ridiculous cd's and shared cd's. Secondly, it's not your job to tell us what shots to use, we'll tell you if we're bored and we haven't.

As one of the hunters above me pointed out you seem to be jumping on us rather harshly after just over a month of WotlK yet I don't remember you jumping on other classes in TBC, especially the warlocks. But regardless of past events you seem to be ignoring the fact other classes are now gearing up through raids and heroics and are catching hunters up and over taking specs like MM and Surv. Rogues, warriors, paladins and DK's are almost on par with MM/Surv if not better. Yet you still want to cripple the entire class which is already worthless in PvP and will soon be worthless in PvE.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Keep all the other nerfs in but leave the SS nerf out, I bet that the dps of BM hunters will fall back into line with the other specs and after another couple of weeks we'll be seeing other classes overtake hunters with higher dps. Please try and work at the issue instead of taking the lazy alternative and ruining our class. It's bad enough you don't know how to fix us in PvP because I won't stick around for another 6-12 months until you realise we're screwed in PvE and we need a boost if you carry on with this nerf.

And if we actually get a blue response in this thread looking to chat about these issues I swear to god I'll run naked through Sheffield city centre with "For the horde" painted in neon green paint on my back.

Yes I am that confident of no reply :P

OK... so the reason for this change is because hunters were out-dps'ing everything in sight and the other classes have not yet caught up with us?

Consider this: in order to optimize dps in BC, a hunter had to do a LOT of work optimizing shot rotations and agonizing over minute details of gear, weapons, buffs and so on. This is something that we are used to doing, regardless of spec. Heck, as an MM hunter I have spent hours nuking poor Dr. Boom and more recently the training dummies in Orgrimmar in order to maintain credibility in raids up to T5. One hardly ever hears of mages or warlocks doing the same, and perhaps they should just be given a bit more time to catch up with us.

When the new shots and skills came out, hunters were probably just a bit quicker than other classes to understand how to make the most of them, and worked hard to test how best to use them... and our hard work should be rewarded with commensurate damage output.

You also mention that you don't like those of us of the BM persuasion spamming Steady Shot, but isn't that what other classes do, more or less? Warlocks with their Shadow Bolt (pausing once in a while to refresh a curse or Immolation) and mages with their Frostbolt?

I like the more varied MM rotations, and my favourite rotation looks like fruit salad with all the shots crammed into it. It is great for burst damage while leveling, but I could never use that in a raid due to the extreme mana cost... in fact, I will probably have to respec to BM for raiding, which is sad because MM is just so much more interesting to play, so much harder to master (perhaps not as hard as Survi) and I believe that the rewards should be commensurate.

In BC it was barely possible to retain credibility as an MM hunter in raids up to Tier 5, but it became impossible after that as BM just took over completely, no matter how hard we pondered where we could possibly squeeze out some more damage output. BM seems to be easymode compared to MM, especially now that Steady Shot no longer clips Auto Shot.

I would have preferred that you give other classes a month or two more to get over the shock of the DPS differential and figure out whether they can optimize their rotations to compete before smacking us with the nerf bat... that would also have provided a more sensible nerfing, if that were still required.

Also, I would have preferred to see MM really come into its own, rewarding effort put into complex shot rotations and use of a greater variety of shots with insane bursts that average out at the same level as or slightly better than, BM hunters' steady dps, while not penalizing us so heavily with the mana penalty inherent in using a greater variety of shots.

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WotLK is an amazing expansion, even though I feel that mobs are too easy to kill while leveling and from what I have heard the PvE content is just too easy to complete. I am sure that some of that will be remedied in patches and when the next raft of group and raid instances is introduced.

Thanks for the effort, and thanks for the originating post - it proves that Blizzard is ready to listen to our opinions and actually cares.

But now that you've shown us some love, please spare us the nerf bat unless it is really, really necessary - and darn it, give us a decent answer to those pesky melee classes! ;-)

Just as I was beginning to really enjoy playing my BM hunter, I find to my great disappointment he is to be nerfed again. I have been playing WOW for a little over a year and have never minded the minor tweaks, but groaned when I read about this latest news. I admit I am far more powerful than pre-expansion, but it has made the game fun for me, and in contrast to the prevailing line of thought, I think that this should be the benchmark for all classes given that Death Knights completely unbalance the whole game at the moment, PVP and PVE. It would be far better to increase the powers of all the other classes rather than push them down and increase the gulf, and especially if future plans are for further hero classes because all that will happen is that you will then have a Caste system within WOW, with everyone wanting to play the hero classes and the classic classes becoming second rate citizens. This whole matter needs some serious thought with an eye to where things will go in the long run.

Warhammer Online draws me closer and closer!

great i ll just go reroll then

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Q u o t e:
I suggest, better trying with same level geared dps warriors and (using boomkin+elemental shaman in raid) trying a same level pyro-lock can result almost same dps on Naxxramas bosses. Also mentioning, at some specific boss encounters (Loatheb-pyro lock can get nearly %99 crit rate with mushroom buffs, Heigan-pet cannot attack during whole encounter) this classes can out dps a Hunter.

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Idd. Fury warriors have better dps on abowe of 50% bosses in Naxx, (BM hunters can out dps them if warr have to pay attencion on aoe like on Sapphiron).
Moonkins and DK's have also much better or as good as BM dps. But did enyone think for a while to nerf them too?! No, easiest way is to nerf hunters because most hunters are just under 14 age kids with autoshot/arcane shot and dont care about nerfs, or even dont know what is it.
What is more, Blizz should first take care of enormous laggs in 25 Naxx. Most guild farm it at same time and it become unplay able or wery long and annoing.

As of today Warlocks are back on top in my guild, their aoe dwarfing my own as MM hunter...

On patchwerk in 25man, a straight up dps race BM hunter topped followed by 2 locks, shadowpriest, rogue, mage and then me.

Yeah, steady shot really needs nerfing...

what a big ghome you are.

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Q u o t e:
Yeah, steady shot really needs nerfing...

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Steady already was nerfed once, in last pacth before wotlk. 1.5s cast to 2 sek. It shouldnt be nerfed because already week SV will do less dmg then they do now.

If you want to nerf the PvP aspect of hunters then work on their doge ... add/increese the CD to wingclip , consusive shot traps etc

The dmg we do in pve is just fine the way it is , not all fights are pet firendly and we don't scale up the same way as other classes

The hunters can't tank , can't heal and can't buff/debuff like other classes the only reason we get raid spots is because the MD , witch is becoming pointless with the new agro changes
it's the same thing as rogues , but they do their part on interrupting in some boss encounters

Take the dmg away from hunters and you take away raid spots thus becoming utterly useless in PvE
Next step delete hunter class

i wanna see a blue reply to gicu`s post plx

What ever is the reason for the nerf. I don't understand it. Does Blizzard really base their opinions regarding DPS on some silly screenshots made by overbuffed hunters reaching 5-6k DPS. And it just happens that no other class on those screenies did get that high.

F*%& that. Ever since Wotlk came out properly specced DK's have been on the top of DPS. By a large margin. Be it 5mans 10mans or 25mans. There's just not a chance i can see myself catching up to a DK DPS wise. And now i'm getting nerfed. GREAT.

On all of the 25mans i've been to DK's were at least 1k dps higher then the next people on the dps meters.

Might aswell roll a DK myself and enjoy it.

Why nerf steady shot and then buff arcane shot.

BM's can use arcane also. Plus I bearly have enough mana when using auto steady rotation and you want me to put arcane in there also. I'll be out of mana in 60 sec, even if it is lower mana cost.

Volley dosen't need a nerf , why give us AOE in one patch and then take it away in another. Other classes AOE is even stronger than volley and they aren't getting it taken away.

This just isn't fair, you are never fair to hunters.

You just keep giving us neet talents then take tham away. NO MORE

The hunters are topping dps meters on fights where you and your pet don't get bothered ( ex: changing targets , wirlwind , moving from aoe zones etc etc)
So in a fight where the dps-ers have to STAND and NUKE then yes hunters are 1st

Are ALL boss encounters tank and spank ?? answear = no

I admit on Patchwerk i am 1st on dps no buts about it , but that's the only fight when i can just focus on dps and don't care about anything else

I don't evan come close to top on other fights due to the reasons i sayed before

why the nerf ? why do mages and locks have to be 1st on dps ?
U will take a mage in a raid for food and intelect anyhow no matter the dps , locks the same , cursess , SS , HS

Hunters have NO usess in a raid except the dps , i dono what logic do you use when twinking the classess dps
If a hunter or rogue gets overdps-ed by a mage or fury warr or enchace shammy , Blizz , give a good reason to the raid leader why he should take hunters or rogues in raids

For pvp i don't particularly like this i mean hunters aren't particularly strong without there pets and apart from the we depend on our ranged weapon so by nerfing us your basicly trying to make people quit hunters altogethor where as we have problems with outher races ones that can have strong ranged and melee like rouges for instance who can stun and paladins and warriors stun and stop us moving altogethor. Now before yes we could do that too for all specs as concussive shot could do that and it was low in the tree but you took that out and now we just have bm intimidate. I don't think we need nerfed you seem to love other classes more ie mages they can polymorph us or our pets and their crits are huge so stop nerfing us and start it on some classes who are so big headed about their power because they never get nerfed.(i've never speced in very far in the other two so don't know that much)