Just had a quiet thought.
What would happen if Aimed shot was removed in Bc and and hunter dps leveled out either through a new instant ability, or buffs to multi/aimed.

Wouldnt that fix the hunter mechanics ?
Or would the change be too radical ?

I'm supporting Blizzard in whatever direction they want to move it. I think doing something like this (not knowing the alternative) would certainly limit our burst DPS. Without using timers or anything crazy I've always been of the opinion that hunters have a ridiculously high burst DPS in say...PVP. Aimed/Multi/Auto all in quick succession, and when they crit your target is screwed.

As a priest I'm all for it but as a hunter alt I'm appalled you'd suggest such a thing!

I think moving aimed shot to a special shot rather than something spammed would be great. Make it a 1 minute cooldown, 200% weapon damage + 250 with an improved aimed shot talent that gives it a 30-40% increased chance to crit. Give it a hefty mana cost.

Fix arcane shot to scale with AP and weapon damage (make it similar to multi except do arcane instead of physical damage) rather than spell damage, and we'd use aimed as a pvp opener or once a minute on a mob only, and use arcane/multi for dps, and weapon scaling would be right with the world again.

Aimed shot is fun. They may change the mechanics on it but don't expect it to be removed.

Aimed Shot
Rank 7
Requires Level 68
35 yd range370 Mana
3.000 sec cast
An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 870.

?

Log out and back in.

Well, hunter mechanics need fixing somehow. The cycle thing may be interesting from a theorycraft perspective, but a higher-DPS weapon being worse purely due to its speed is wrong. They fixed that for warriors and rogues - it would be nice if they fixed it for hunters as well.

Another instant swing attack(like Multishot) would be problematic due to the unparalleled ability for the hunter to kite. There's also a conflict in that we honestly don't know where in the tiers Blizzard intends hunters to fall(from a damage perspective). I would assume that they have two general bins: DPS only(mage/rogue) and DPS + Utility(Warlock/Hunter/Warrior). Depending on what their actual perception is, the new mechanic would vary a great deal.

Aimed Shot
35 yd range
370 mana
2x wpn speed cast
an aimed shot that increases ranged damage done by 250% and increases crit chance by 5%


Would be a lot more interesting in terms of making all sorts of cycles and all sorts of weapon speeds viable, in my opinion.

Fixing the cast time is the first problem if you think about it - as soon as you fix cast time, you have a weapon speed that will fit that cast time best. If they set the cast time to 2x the weapon speed even Hurricane would be work quite well with aimed shot.

I wonder if this has anything to do with our delayed talent trees. I've always been of the opinion we need more party utility. I've seen something along the lines of having a group Aspect of the Monkey which I've been discussing with our MT as a possible buff, which he liked. I was hoping all aspects would be changed to party buffs, so a "hunter party" with a shaman might be able to get Monkey/Hawk/Wild. I could see them putting us in line with shaman. Shaman are healing/partybuffs. Hunters could be the same...(DPS/buff).

The problem being that hunters have very little utility.

You need to fix the CD too

Wait wait wait, how the HELL are mages "DPS only?" What about Polymorph, frost kiting, Arcane Intellect, Remove Lesser Curse, etc...

The problem being that hunters have very little utility and mages very much utility.

Just make hunters do more damage than mages. Fixing hunter utility and looking at aspects is comparitively difficult.

Yeah, we have very little utility (aside from pulling trash or pulling adds on Gothik encounter), our only "strength" being that we basically do close to our max DPS on every encounter. Of course, that doesn't mean much when other classes can try harder than us and do more DPS (pushing the limits of aggro and using damage consumables), so we're left with uh, Gimmick Shot, Pulling and shooting webs off a wall.

Yes, rerolling a Rogue does seem like a good idea.

As for the Aimed Shot mechanic, aside from removing it from the game, I can't think of much you can do with it. That is, the skill by itself makes perfect sense in game, you take your time to aim a shot, damage done to you interrupts your aim causing you to aim longer, and when you do fire it off, your shot does a lot more damage than it usually does. The suggested change to Aimed Shot from above (250% weapon damage, 2x weapon speed cast time) would indeed raise PvE DPS as well as make faster weapons more viable. However, given the damage that I can do now, I'd be critting Aimed Shot on Cloth without any damage buffs for 3k. As if they would let that fly.

Oh, and mages have more DPS because they're significantly more fragile. You know, a PvP balance issue.

Did I really just see someone list Warriors as a Utility class rather than dps? Tell that to all the Fury warriors breaking 850 dps on patch.

I say we derail this thread with discussions of pet DPS tying into our overall DPS, and how pets are fun on all encounters! :)

No matter the ideas that we come up with I'm sure Blizzard has already made a decision and our issues are being addressed (another "class review"!), so I'm saving the majority of my energy for a longwinded post on what I think of their changes to hunters :)

*edit* I studder...

They obviously have the capability to add "quasi-instants" though- Multishot has a tiny cast time and is unusable while running; Stop for a second to multishot and eventually you get caught.

Regardless of the specifics, the mechanics really, really need an overhaul. I'm sure we can see that the method of DPS with a hunter is probably by far the most contrived, due to the shot timing thing. I don't even care if they take the class in another direction, or give the trees more options (Perhaps more 1 talent point skills that really make a difference in the play style, as opposed to the total lack of variety we have now) so long as something changes. Given the track record for blizzard and hunters, I would be pretty damn surprised to see any talents that make me want to do something other than 31 marks/30 survival. Either that, or re-roll shaman.

As far as utility.. barring major changes, a hunter's raid utility comes no where close to that of the classes that can also smash our dps, like a mage. Even our "I win no agro" button is less and less relevant as other classes get their own deagros, or we face bosses that provide tanks with more than ample rage to keep agro over us, FD regardless. This could change in the expansion with 25 mans and new encounter dynamics, so obviously I'm still stuck waiting to see. Hell, even some mroe radical changes to pets, maybe moving them in a more warlock-ish (read: usefull) direction would be a great start. Making pets act like totems for AoEs would go a long way as well.

Yup, like a few people have mentioned already, tieing the cast/cooldown to weapon speed would help. They could make it an 'on next attack' ability, but then it probably wouldn't be interuptable like it is now and it wouldn't feel like an "aimed shot", so it's hard to say if the developers would go for that.

Banking autoshots or autoshot damage during the aimed shot cast period is another possible solution, but it would make our damage too bursty and everything Blizzard has done with the hunter class indicates that the want to keep our burst damage reigned in. We in general have a lower crit rate and higher attack power than other classes for example, and of course the old MS nerf.

Honestly I can't imagine what they'll do but I hope they do something.

Why not just allow autoshot to fire through aimed? That plus normalization pretty much eliminates the speed issue without massively changing hunter raid DPS and without massively changing PvP burst.

Because it changes PvP burst. Half the use of aimed shot comes from timing it as a shock opener against trapped/polyed/wyvern stinged' targets, which goes out the window if you blip them with an autoattack during the windup animation. Unless you had to manually enable or disable autoattack during aimed shot, which is just inelegant.

Other than the fact that it would be kinda wierd to keep shooting while "aiming for a shot", I wouldn't have a problem with it. It might still be considered too bursty though, people already complain about the aimed/auto/multi pwnage in PvP.