What if they removed Aimed shot ? - Page 10

Fenrus · 08/31/06, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by LadyVex

Yea it was why I tried to modify the hunter's suggestion with something I thought made more sense.

A rage type of bar that built up more slowly, and had more to do with time spent on that target/inside combat than standing still. For instance:

Say they gave us...6 disciplines, at varying costs of endurance. A bar of endurance would be 100 points, and it would take awhile to build it up.

We'll use Twin Emps as an example since it's a nice rounded number of a timed fight. 15 minutes.

Say, it takes 3 minutes to build up 35 endurance. With 6 disciplines, there might be 1 that is 35 endurance, 2 at 45 endurance, 2 at 60 endurance, 1 at 80 endurance. They are on different timers, so say, activating the 1 at 35 endurance also cooldowns the one at 80 endurance, that way the ability to use some of the better abilities throughout the fight would be impossible; you'd have to pick and choose.

So, at 35 endurance, you activate the first discipline. Your 35 endurance and 80 endurance discipline are now cooldown'd, for whatever amount of time Blizz should decide. The endurance bar is reset to zero, the ability you've picked is activated for however long, and then vanishes.

It takes another 3 minutes to get 35 endurance, but your 35 endurance is cooldown so now you wait. You can choose to activate the 45 endurance one, but depending on which it is it would also cooldown one of the 60 endurance abilities, so careful decision making would be implemented. Activate the next one, and then wait for either 45 endurance for that one, or 60 endurance for the other one.

FDing and moving would not reset it, but either, main target dying (the twin emps) or being removed from combat for a long period of time than an FD would. (IE you can FD without adverse affects but being out of combat from the encounter being over resets it.)

There would have to be a few tweaks, such that sometimes in pvp you can get bugged or just be on several npcs threat lists (in AV) and not be able to drop endurance, but if they did it so main target dying wiped the slate, it would be impossible to activate these abilities in a pvp type of setting.

I think it could be nice, and it could work.

Conversely, they could just give us separate rulesets for pvp and pve and then buff us in pve without any adverse effects to pvp. BUT!

Yeah they had something called "focus" in beta similiar to this I believe.

Since more and more encounters seem to have us moving around, the "building up damage while standing still" mechanic wouldn't be ideal. However, I think a similiar concept of an ability that allows us to build up damage over time would be a nice way to improve our PvE damage without affecting our PvP damage.

I was thinking of a 41 point marksmen tree talent that's similiar to the Ouro trinket (Gom Jabbar?) increasing either our attack power or direct damage % (more scalable that way) with certain limitations.

In order for this ability to proc, you'd have to be attacking the same target for more than 10 seconds or so. You can't just be "in combat" for 10 seconds, you have to be autoshotting. If you change targets the proc and bonus would be lost. For example, once this ability procs, it increases your attack power by 80 every 2 seconds for 20 seconds or something similiar.

Edit: Once the proc goes up, even if you have to repostition you'll still benefit as long as you don't change targets

Rabid Rob · 08/31/06, 12:32 PM

I don't think we will see a huge rewrite where they do away with mana, anything that radical would cause a catastrophic level of forum drama. Personally, I'm willing to embrace large changes, but I'm sure many hunters are not, and thus the Blizz devs will be held back. I really like many of these ideas, but I suspect y'all are being too imaginitive.

I do have to say any method of building up DPS by standing still is probably a bad idea, our DPS is more sustainable while running around than any other class, that is one of our strengths. When you see hunters topping the damage meters, it's usually because:
1) multishot was hitting adds, or
2) fear or some other debuff messed people up closer than 41 yards, or
3) the encounter makes people run around a lot, or
4) the encounter is very agro sensitive

And with respect to being over powered, at level 70 barring major changes, I can look forward to nearly 2k RAP unbuffed and 40-50% crit, and that's just what I think an average lvl 70 hunter can push out with lvl 70 blues. I already crit enough to wipe out non-(warlock or very epic) clothies with 1 aimed/multi combo very reliably, and it's likely to get worse. Hell, I've melee'd down blue warriors, hopefully they were prot specced. I know I'm overpowered in PvP, and it's holding the devs back from letting us be stronger in PvE.

Edit: I feel I should add that, despite usually being #1 in kills in BG's, I'm a lousy PvPer. All I really have to do is follow a couple other folks on whatever objective needs fulfilling, and then hang back and obliterate hordies. So my class mechanic easily overcomes my lazy PvP skills.

Hypothraxer · 08/31/06, 12:42 PM

Another idea I had was that they would introduce a buff/combo system to shots.

Example: You start the fight with "practice shots". This basically gives you eight seconds to place three auto shots on a target. The auto shots only do ~80% damage. Once you've hit the mob three times the mob gets a debuff from the hunter (like the "Badge of the Swarmguard" debuff) that allows him to use "prediction shots" that allow the hunter to hit the target five times with auto shots that deal ~130% damage. Once that is over the hunter can chose to use a finishing shot if the target is below 20% health or to use another round of "prediction shots" or another shot time (elemental shots?). Of course once you'd change targets you'd have to start over again at the "Practice Shots".

As has been pointed out the problem with this, as with most other good ideas is, that it would need a large rework of the hunter class. And I'm pretty sure that the dev's don't really want to do that.

LadyVex · 08/31/06, 2:32 PM

had more to do with time spent on that target/inside combat than standing still.

Quoted the relevant part of my post hehe ^_^

That was what I said earlier. The standing still idea makes no sense considering as fights and tactics evolve you end up being more and more mobile. Heck even in purely standard pewpew situations I'd still end up moving, either due to tank placement, mob overaggroing on someone else, LOS issues if they're tanking in a corner, etc...

Something that worked along the lines of gaining bonuses as if you're "studying" your opponent.

Do I think they'll do it? Not really. But tbh other than separate rulesets a rework of our mechanics would go a long way to evening out the balance without becoming overpowered in areas that it matters. Anyone who yells about a hunter doing dps in the progression sense should be flayed alive really. Didn't DnT partially credit the rogue rework to their eventual 4H kill? Well, now your hunters do more dps too, and they haven't gotten any stronger in pvp, AND they aren't stepping on rogue toes when it comes to dps.

It just seems like a win-win-win situation to me; who would be against that?

Farstrider · 09/01/06, 3:14 AM

Originally Posted by Rabid Rob

I can look forward to nearly 2k RAP unbuffed and 40-50% crit

2k RAP yes, 40-50% crit no.

You'll probably need around 65 agility for each %crit at lvl 70 so your crit contribution from agi is going to drop by around 2%.

Then you need to consider the change from +1% crit & hit items to +hit/crit rating items, which is going to mean your old items give you less crit/hit at lvl 70 than they do now.

I suspect you'll end up exactly where you are now - around 25-30% - after absorbing an additional tier of items.

Incidentally although I think I understand the implications I'm not really too sure of exactly how the +hit/crit rating will work - can anyone elaborate? And won't it be incredibly hard for your average "noob" to understand?

Steelfleece · 09/01/06, 3:33 AM

I don't see why everyone assumes that current itemization of giving items +1% chance to critical will change.

After all, the new Eternium scope in the expansion gives +2% chance to get a critical strike. No "critical rating" there.

Farstrider · 09/01/06, 4:08 AM

Originally Posted by Steelfleece

I don't see why everyone assumes that current itemization of giving items +1% chance to critical will change.

I guess the logical reason why is that at some point it does need to change.

If you look at the current trend - going from say 16% crit change as a new 60, to 21-22% in DM blues, 25% in MC gear and 30% in current stuff - and then extrapolate - as Rob said 40-50% crit would be expected at level 70.

Maybe not a problem right away but in the next couple of tiers of gear after that it would seem very unwieldy to have crit chance greater than hit chance - i.e. above 50%.

Gamebreaking? Not really but the implications for PvP, which Blizz seems determined to balance for, are fairly powerful.

Northerner · 09/01/06, 4:14 AM

If BC does not inherantly produce a massive gain in HP I will be shocked. PvP is a watchword at Blizz and even with some tempering they are still unwilling to make alternate rulesets. If mudflation reigns (oh, and it shall) then there really is no way to prevent the 1-2 shot PvP without a *big* HP increase really.

We'll see, a lot of focus seems to be going into disorientates, stuns, bleeds, and other effects but in the end... I am not yet sold on the situational stuff. I hope to be proven wrong of course.

Fenrus · 09/01/06, 9:28 AM

Originally Posted by Farstrider

Originally Posted by Steelfleece

I don't see why everyone assumes that current itemization of giving items +1% chance to critical will change.

I guess the logical reason why is that at some point it does need to change.

If you look at the current trend - going from say 16% crit change as a new 60, to 21-22% in DM blues, 25% in MC gear and 30% in current stuff - and then extrapolate - as Rob said 40-50% crit would be expected at level 70.

Maybe not a problem right away but in the next couple of tiers of gear after that it would seem very unwieldy to have crit chance greater than hit chance - i.e. above 50%.

Gamebreaking? Not really but the implications for PvP, which Blizz seems determined to balance for, are fairly powerful.

Another possibility is they might cheese out and put a hard cap on ranged crit chance at 42% or something.

Rabid Rob · 09/01/06, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by Farstrider

Originally Posted by Rabid Rob

I can look forward to nearly 2k RAP unbuffed and 40-50% crit

2k RAP yes, 40-50% crit no.

You'll probably need around 65 agility for each %crit at lvl 70 so your crit contribution from agi is going to drop by around 2%.

Then you need to consider the change from +1% crit & hit items to +hit/crit rating items, which is going to mean your old items give you less crit/hit at lvl 70 than they do now.

I suspect you'll end up exactly where you are now - around 25-30% - after absorbing an additional tier of items.

Incidentally although I think I understand the implications I'm not really too sure of exactly how the +hit/crit rating will work - can anyone elaborate? And won't it be incredibly hard for your average "noob" to understand?

With a LR build I was able to get a bt over 30 crit (in old AQ40 gear!) before BoK + mongoose almost let me keep up with rogues.

I'm also assuming, which I didn't mention, that the gear at level 70 will be designed by the guys that have learned from the past mistakes. The new hunter blues/epics introduced to ZG/AQ20 a couple months ago are superbly balanced in stats and literally just shy (probably <10 DPS) of MC gear as far as our DPS is concerned, and if level 70 blues follow that pattern, those items will significantly improve on silly AQ gear. Socketted items, new talents, new epix, will even further favor more crittage.

OTOH, if resilience is an anti-crit stat, which seems like a likely tool to basically revoke 10 crit off of every physical dps (hunters won't be the only ones pushing 50% crit!), then everything is back to normal. Unless, of course, a warrior has "sunder resiliance" stacked on ya 5 times, then you are doomed!

Hmm, which would make resilience effectively a pvp only stat, essentially reducing our ability to do pvp dps... Err, I haven't seen anything official on resilence, and now I've intrigued myself as to the potential, has anyone got some solid info on it? :D

Fenrus · 09/01/06, 1:55 PM

Originally Posted by Farstrider

Then you need to consider the change from +1% crit & hit items to +hit/crit rating items, which is going to mean your old items give you less crit/hit at lvl 70 than they do now.

They're changing it from a percent base to some kind of rating? Just curious, where'd you see that?