Trogdor

Right, because I'm sure that you have some argument that PONE will provide a greater, consistent DPS application in 10-25 person encounters, over ST. Either way, 3 points need to be spent, and anything that was previously skipped in the SV tree wasn't directly DPS related either. Despite the fact that the talent may have either/or use in a raid makeup, there may also be those situations where ST happens in conjunction with all other available buffs.

Regardless, both PONE and ST have applications more practical towards PvP. Hunting Party provides group regeneration, and Explosive Shot (provided they don't tweak and nerf it) provides a substantial source of damage. ST is fine. It's the totems that should have a greater range.. at least to halt the tears if not actually have cross-class buffs and talents mesh better.

 

TrevvyTrev

Another possibility would be to replace some INT on physical dps itemized mail armor with +MANA, so we could increase our mana pools with a more efficient stat. That seems as though it would require a lot more work than tweaking the RAP formula, though. The designers have shown some willilngness to tinker with base formulas -- the druid "agi nerf", shamans gaining AP from AGI, etc., so it may not be out of the question.

 

Kukulzaa

The major problem we have with itemization is the fact that we have to spend three talent points to make our gear still sub-par to dps leather. If we're investing three talent points, the dps mail should come out ahead of it's leather counterparts. If nothing changes, we would be better off spending those three points elsewhere and continuing to use leather.

 

RogueLeaderX

I was a little surprised they didn't decide to give us 1 ap from str at the same time they made the shammy change, considering all the gear consolidation changes they're making.

Back to the ST conversation. What I don't get is why ST is in survival at all. Can anyone with access to the beta forums ask that? There's a whole bunch of melee talents in survival (useless for raiding, I know) and then a talent that requires you to stand far away on the same teir as a talent that requires you to be in/near melee (to drop traps.) It just seems very out of place.

I also hope someone from Blizzard saw the discussion on buff range. The only thing I can think of is they want hunters to sacrifice being long-range dps (and the damage avoiding benefit that sometimes provides) in exchange for buffs. If that's the case it'd be nice if they just told us (and took away talents that ran counter to that vision for hunters *cough* ST *cough*.)

Another topic change!

Aspect Mastery + Beast Mastery reminds of live MT + Readiness. It will come down to if the added utility + slight dps boost (from devilsaur / 150AP) out-weighs spending those six points elsewhere. I don't know about you all, but I'm kinda looking forward to finding out. Gives us something new to test. For me, WoW could certainly use something new.

 

Bynn

See blue post which is post 15

 

Harwin

With Aspect of the Viper up, and Careful Aim, int is actually more itemization points to us than pure AP.

1 mp/5 ~= 4 AP (judging by the blue quality gems). With AoTV up at 0 mana, 1 int provides 1 ap and .5 MP/5, or about 3 AP equivalent (in base itemization). I'm not sure where the cutoff point is where AoTV is 25% of int, and they're stable (ignoring the fact that you also have a larger mana pool)

Now, this doesn't directly address the problem that as your gear gets better your mana consumption doesn't go up, but if we assume that 25% AoTV is not enough to spam indefinitely at entry raiding but if 50% AoTV were, then it would buy us additional ability to spam. When we get low we switch to AoTV until we hit the point where it's just keeping us stable, and then we burn it down again at the end of the boss fight during an enrage.

Now if JoW is as big as it looks it may screw that up, since once our regeneration is "enough" without AoTV, the mana gain from int is worthless, but that depends a lot on how they balance that.

 

TrevvyTrev

In the frenzy of discussion of the subject, a blue (Koraa, I believe) said that ST was in Survival because Hawk Eye is. They acknowledge that some talents could arguably be MM ones, but want to keep them in SV so that it isn't simply traps + melee. Koraa qualified that, though, by saying that a big restructuring of SV was in the works still.

As for 1 AP from str, we already get that -- sorta. We still get one melee AP from str. Plus, it's not a particularly good solution to the problem of overpaying for INT unless we talent for it, and possibly still overpaying for it even then.

 

Shenlong

[Embrace of the Phoenix] compared with [Carapace of Sun and Shadow]

With WOTLK Careful Aim, you get +2 agi, +6 haste rating, +14 AP, -30 hit rating, and a red socket in place of a yellow one. Of course haste isn't as good as it used to be for us, but you can see that Blizzard's itemisation has clearly improved loads, and will likely continue to improve come the expac. What hunter would need that much hit in Sunwell?

[Linked Armor of the Sphere] and here's an example of WOTLK itemisation of around the same level (thought T6 was only to be replaced by new Naxx gear? Ah well). AP stays the same, agi jacked up by 24, (so 6 less assuming three [Delicate Crimson Spinel]) int up by 10, with 28 hit rating in place of any haste.

 

ligghtpro

Looking at the changes to pet special ability cost Ghostcrawler mentioned being in the works, I can't help but feel that the mechanics themselves are still going to be problematic. Having the costs be used as a form of priority system works well for focus starved pets, but a pet with a full focus bar is still very erratic in its selection of specials. Notice that the proposed highest focus cost for a pet ability is 25 focus every 1.5 sec for a bite/claw/smack, then look at a hunter with a 2.0 speed weapon, 25% crit rate, 2/2 Go for the Throat, and a standard BM hunter build. With a hasted auto shot and steady shot both occuring about every 1.5 seconds, the hunter will average a crit around every 3 seconds, generating 50 focus. This averages out to match the pet's maximum focus consumption rate (25 every 1.5 sec), even without using any of the pet's natural focus regen. The pet will end up with more focus than it can possibly use, assuming the hunter is able to keep his shot rotation up, and the limited-focus priority system has no effect (making the Bestial Discipline talent worthless, too). The pet will pretty much cast random abilities every GCD.

Let's look at a Devilsaur being used as a soloing tank. Talented, he can have on autocast: Bite (No cooldown), Growl (5 sec cooldown), Monstrous Bite (10 sec cooldown), Charge (25 second cooldown), Rabid (30 second cooldown), and Call of the Wild (5 minute cooldown, not on autocast, emergency use). Assuming specials are used at random* and not limited by focus, after his initial charge, a simulated attack sequence would be:

Growl | Bite | Bite | Monstrous Bite | Bite | Growl | Bite | Bite | Rabid | Growl | Monstrous Bite | Bite | Bite

Notice the Monstrous Bite and Rabid bonuses aren't utilized until pretty far into the fight, and luck could easily allow the buffs to fall off before the abilities are chosen to be used again. What's more, since the pet is always using a special, Bite would have to be toggled off, along with any other ability not currently on cooldown, before Call of the Wild could be activated, making the ability largely inconvenient, if not worthless.

My proposal to help alleviate this situation, without relying on an elaborate priority system, would be to remove the bite/claw/smack focus dumps from the global cooldown completely, and give them their own independant 1.5 second cooldown, leaving only the cooldown based pet abilities (growl, ferocious bite, rabid, etc.) affected by the GCD. This would far more flexibility for pets to front-load their cooldown based abilities and raise the focus generation cap significantly. An attack sequence under this system would be:

Growl/Bite | Monstrous Bite/Bite | Rabid/(Bite if extra focus from crits) | Pause from focus starvation | Growl | Bite as focus allows | Growl/(Bite if extra focus) | Monstrous Bite/(Bite if extra focus | Bite as Focus allows

A much smoother ability usage, and better eventual regulation from the focus cost of abilities. Even from a threat standpoint, allowing the pet to double up on its opening focus dumps would be a huge boon to the problematic soloing a lot of hunters have been experiencing. Emergency pet abilities are also made much more viable, without having to completely disable the focus dump abilities to allow their use (In particular, think of how much easier Nether Shock from a ray in PvP would be to manage under this system, where growl and the other cooldown based abilities aren't in use). Some adjustments to the cost and damage of abilities may be necessary to regulate the potential of this change, but it certainly seems a fairly simple way to handle most of the current problems.

Note: I'm assuming there's no actual priority system in place, last time I played my hunter, there didn't seem to be much of one.

Also note: I have no currently active account, so if anyone would like to support my idea, post it to the General or Beta forums for me.

*: I assigned each ability a number and rolled dice to determine the outcome

 

WarTotem

I was told once that the order in which you put them on your pet bar mattered, but that seems faulty with the statement of blues that you don't even need an auto-skill on your pet bar.

What I would like to see is a basic in-game priority order of Growl/Cower > talent ability > pet family ability > focus dump.
Growl seems ratehr obvious and well, nobody uses Cower atm, so I have no idea to place it in WLK. Talented abilities should ofcourse get prio over any others and pet abilities should get prio over focus dumps, as you want that CD up again ASAP. Focus dumps then effectively become "I got Focus to burn, I'll just spam my GCD with a pure dmg ability".

 

Arcazua

Regarding the whole Sniper Training argument, I think Blizzard is maybe saying to us, "Hey, you're survival. You're the utility spec. Why are you ignoring all these utility talents?" I know that may not sit well with the DPS-uber-alles mentality many raiders have, but I know that I really like picking up talents like Resourcefulness even if they are of limited value in your typical boss fight.

Nobody really disputes that you need to pick up either Sniper Training or PoNE to get the 45 points in survival en route to Hunting Party and Explosive Shot. What nobody is discussing is the fact that Hunting Party is not really worth investing 5 points in either.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ngParty08b.jpg
(big image, don't want to [ img ] it.)

That's a screenshot of a spreadsheet I made to analyze the mana return on Hunting Party. Once you hit around 30% crit, (and who knows how quickly we'll do that with new crit conversion factors,) the internal cooldown makes it prohibitive to go 5/5 in Hunting Party. The fifth point is only good for about 7% of the total effect. 3/5 gets over 80% of the effect. I think I made some kind of comparison somewhere by making come guesstimates with current numbers that the second point at 35% crit was almost equal to a point in Hunting Party at a gain of about 1.5% mana per minute on that point. The points after that are significantly less effective.

We'll probably make arguments similiar to Frenzy about how 4/5 is just as good as 5/5. Depending on mana concerns, or lack thereof, we may end up with only 2 points in Hunting Party. If this is true, we could be freeing up as many as 3 points to spend lower in the tree. If we're already trying to simply come up with justification for putting any points into Hunting Party or PoNE, isn't this going to help push us toward other lower-end talents that were missed earlier? Heck, even something as simple as an extra 2% HP per point might be worth pursuing. Survival's bottom end is filled with B-class talents. Not horrible, just not shining gems that make us go "ooh ahh." But I don't think we should completely forget about them.

This is, of course, all assuming that Explosive Shot doesn't get nerfed into the ground or moved into marksmanship or something. If we have no use for the ultimate, then 2/5 Hunting Party and stopping at 47 might be good enough.

 

Sympa

Edited for length. People have made the same argument about having 3/3 exposed weakness vrs 2/3 because it only looses a very small amount of uptime for the debuff. The question becomes at what point do you want to draw the line. To me survival is a group/raid synergy spec and should provide the greatest group benefit they can within reasonable bounds. Again though with mana tide totems becoming raid wide and itemization improving you may be right.

 

Sapa

It works well with my build tho

Traps+PvE?

Should be fun for heroics and all 10mans to gear up fast. Without any weakness really in 25mans. (entrapment<->hawk possible)
Just hoping SSting gets buffed adequately with bear trap working on bosses (bleed+ponr).

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/511456SFyyX.png

 

Chul

I wonder why they increased the mana cost of Intimidation from 6% base mana (as is on live) to 8% base mana in the latest build.

Bear Trap still seems to be 100 mana, which is interesting, and I've only really now looked at the mana cost of Mend Pet; it's jumped from 300 mana at lvl 70 to 750 mana at lvl 80. Wow.

 

KraxisSingular

I just read a rumor in the Elemental thread that downranking is effectively dead because all offensive (maybe healing too?) spells now cost a percentage of base mana. Could anyone confirm this?

We haven't talked about mana in a while now, because it began to look quite good for us. I think this change might be good. It means Blizzard will expect everyone to use max rank every time as lower ranks simply aren't worth it (Lightning Bolt is actually 13% mana at rank 1 compared to 10% at max). So they know what kind of mana usage we will see over a given time, and can then easily tweak manaregen to fit with their views of how it should be.
But it also means we won't be able to downrank Steady Shot or Multishot should we end up in a bad mana situation. Hence, losing a few crucial classes ealy in a fight can be rather more hurtful than previously (mana pots out of the question too).

An interesting change that I welcome for the time being, if only for the stir it will cause among the caster classes.

 

WarTotem

Arcazua, the latest builds have the talent reverted back to 20% per rank, not 10% + 10% base. [E] And your bottom row shows % increase of top column, not total. The coloring also puts you on the wrong track really.

As for mana goes, I threw some rough numbers in a spreadsheet to see what the base mana would have to be for the same cost, I ended up with around 7500 base mana at level 80. Currently, we're sitting on half of that. With an estimate of a good 4k base mana, we'll see a mana cost reduction of ~40%. Definately looks like a great boost

 

Delanar

7500*4%(steady shot) = 300 mana per shot. I don't see any reduction from 280.

 

Spiry

wowhead has arcane shot 11 (a lvl 79 skill) at 540 mana, so it would be a reduction in cost.

 

WarTotem

I might not have explained it clear enough:

Now it's 280 mana for the highest rank, regardless of your actual level.
After change: 4% of you base mana. Int does not change this number.

Note that base mana is nothing but the mana you have with 0 Int. It grows each time you ding as (apart from stats) you also get X health and Y mana each time you ding. The amounts X and Y depend on the level and your class.

Now, if you want to know if this actual a good thing, simply find the turning point:
280 = 4% * X where X is the base mana pool or X = 280 / 4% = 7000.
This means that you need 7k base mana before this change is nullified. Considering Hunters have 3383 base mana at the moment (Source) and we certainly aren't getting 3.5k extra mana over 10 levels, it's definately a good thing. Actually, if we go at the same rate as we are going now, we should hit ~4k base mana. That means a Steady Shot cost of approxiamtely 160, not 280. That is 57% of what it is now, or a 43% reduction. That's exactly 400mp5 gained if you can spam Steady on the GCD.

 

Delanar

Edit: I see, I misunderstood the way you were doing the calculation, my apologies

 

mako

Wrong. I'm being very generous with the 19 stam traded for 19 crit. Even compensating for the higher cost as you have more of x stat on the item, 19 is probably more than it'd be worth.

The problem is that, at best, int will be worth 1 ap, but has an item budget cost of roughly 2 ap. So as far as straight DPS stats go, it is always going to be inferior.

 

• Playered

World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Hunter -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

Has some updated Survival and BM talents.

Beast Mastery:
Aspect Mastery T3 1/1 (replaces Masters Call).
Spirit Bond increasing healing done by 5/10% in addition.
Seperation Anxiety (replaces the old Aspect Mastery) - when your pet is 20 yards or further from you it gains 2-10% extra damage, when you are both within 20 yards of each other both you and your pet have an extra 2-10% movement speed.

Survival:
TNT (T2) 3/3 provides 5-15% extra crit chance of explosion shot/trap, and 5-15% chance to stun the target for 2 sec when they take damage from immo trap, explosive trap and explosive shot.
Trap Mastery (T3) NYI
Deflection 3/3 and replaces Deterrence.
Surefooted is 50% reduced duration on movement impairing effects.
Lock and Load (T4) 3/3 33-100% chance when you trap a target and 5% when you sting a target to make your next 3 Arcane or Explosive shots trigger no cooldown, no mana, and consume no ammo.
Hunter vs Wild (T5) 3/3 increases you and your pets AP & RAP by 10-30% of your total stamina.
Hunting Party - cooldown removed but only procs from Steady, Arcane & Explosive.

Marks:
Chimera Shot reduced to 125% damage, refreshes your sting on the target.
- Viper instantly returns 60% of the mana drained to you.
- Scorpid attempts to disarm the target for 10sec (1min cooldown on this effect).
Improved Stings now 3/3 instead of 5/5.
TSA raid wide & 50 yards.

There are probably other changes but I'm not fully aware of everything relating to Hunters yet :P

 

Ravenfire