That doesn't gel with the "We want the good hunters to be able to distinguish themselves with gear choices" at *all*. In fact it's pretty insulting. They create a set of gear specifically designed for hunters and then mock people for using it? What? Fucking what?

Yes, it strikes me as ridiculous. It's the DST issue again, except for a lot more items (since non-set gear often has low drop rates). I'd note that Enhance Shamans are apparently in much the same boat so we're in competition for it too. And Enhance Shamans offer (at least for 10 man raids) considerably greater synergy.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but don't you think you should re-roll Mage? They're the class you're looking for, the ranged DD class with no pet (Frost notwithstanding).

EDIT: I should learn to read, someone else said this response already ignore me sorry

I absolutely agree. However, I also think that we should get some sort of bonus for times when we can't use our pets, like on Felmyst. Warlocks can sacrifice their various pets or added bonuses, why can't we do the same? Not that I want to sacrifice mine, our relationship with our pets is a bit different, but if our pet is put away, there could be some sort of "I'm pissed now" kind of bonus.

Hunters can, and should use pets on felmyst...

Seeing that we are "the pet class", it would be silly to offer a spec which doesn't rely on the pet for damage at all. It would likely lead the DS/Destro warlock issue all over again.

They mean that being limited to a smaller number of useful stats forces them to use some itemization budget on less optimal stats, or else they run into stat inflation. They know we need agi/sta/int, and in fact these stats are on the very gear we're talking about. It's not like the tier sets or hunter/enhancement itemized gear has nothing but haste rating on it. Hit is a cool stat and all, but it caps even harder than haste does, so there's only so much of that they can put on, particularly in light of hit from debuffs, other player buffs, and talents. Similarly, they can't just put crit and hit on everything or else eventually we end up with 60% crit or whatever as the expansion progresses.

Let me put it another way. Suppose they want a particular gear set to be a 5% dps upgrade from the previous set. Suppose also that they put all of the itemization points into hit/crit/armor pen, and it ends up being an 8% upgrade. Their only choices are a) underbudget the set, b) nerf basic hunter mechanics or c) spread the stats around some more so that it only ends up as a 5% dps upgrade. They appear to be leaning toward c). But in this example, the final set is still a 5% dps upgrade. Many people are focusing on how much better an upgrade could be instead of how much of an upgrade it is.

It's far from useless. If they scale our dps in tier sets, then they end up compensating for whatever flaws it has. If they set a dps target, and we meet it in the tier sets, then it doesn't really matter how we got there. It's not like they set the target, run the numbers in the sets, find that it falls short, and just say, "oh well then, guess it sucks to be a hunter." And they don't scale dps just in tier sets, they scale it in available gear. If there are non-set pieces available with tier sets, they test dps in those, and in various combinations of tier and non-tier gear.

No, you don't want to "ditch" haste gear just for the sake of ditching it. There's no reason to go treating gear with haste on it as though it's covered in the ebola virus or something. When you are level 70 and leveling, and if you aren't BM specced, then haste will provide a benefit even for your steady shots, unless you are constantly leveling with a shaman or DK who gives you a haste buff. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: haste always gives a dps upgrade, with all other things being equal. The question is the same tradeoff question we've been asking for years: Is x amount of one stat better than y amount of another stat? The answer is the same as it's always been, which is: it depends.

We can't reduce things to hit > haste, for example, because sometimes hit is better and sometimes it isn't. For one thing, if you're hit capped then haste is a whole lot better than hit is, because more hit does absolutely nothing. Moreover, even if you aren't hit capped, the magnitude of the upgrade is important. Trading hit for haste might lower dps if the amounts are equal, but if an item is going to make you lose 2 hit rating but gain 24 haste rating, that may very well still be an upgrade. It depends on what your gear and dps is at the time. If we just repeat "ditch your haste" as a mantra, then people are going to make some bad decisions.

You're reading way too much into that. They almost certainly mean that they want people to swap out non-set pieces, and even upgrade lesser-itemized set pieces for future ones. If T7 is perfectly itemized, what's T8 going to be, more perfectly itemized? What about non-set pieces for that extra RNG goodness we've come to know and love? They don't want every mail piece to be an guaranteed upgrade -- it might be better for another player, if for no other reason that they have an existing piece that is even worse. And as mentioned above, they can't just say a t7 piece has 50 crit rating and a t8 piece has 75 crit rating and a t9 piece has 100 crit rating because a) it's hella boring and b) we could end up with way too much crit (for example).

Still trevvy, i can't see why haste can't reduce our global cooldown, like it does for other ranged dpsers.

As long as blizzard think we are a melee class our gear will not be properly itemized, at least now they made us so much mana dependant that we will think more that twice before wearing rogue items.

That dosn't work though, unless every single piece of gear a Hunter can reasonably use has haste. Otherwise, the non-haste gear which has an higher effectiveness just became the new Hunter Gear.

I can't see why it can't either. Maybe Blizzard has a good reason for it (like other ranged casters can't autoattack/shoot while casting) or maybe they are just being stubborn. Maybe it's on the horizon as something that can be in the works but they aren't messing with it now because they would feel the need to change certain other mechanics or scale back dps in other ways. Remember that if hunters are topping meters even with haste being sub-optimal, then if it gets "fixed" to scale better with steady shot and instants, then the net result is that hunter dps just goes up even higher. Other classes' dps has to go up to compensate (and NPCs have to get boosted to match) or hunter dps has to come down in some other way to keep other classes competitive. Again, if we're doing 3000 dps, and other dps classes are doing 3000 dps, and everyone agrees these numbers are okay (I'm making those numbers up, by the way) then why exactly does it matter whether we hit our dps target shooting 1.5 GCD steady shots or 1.0 GCD ones?

At some point, all the complaining about haste starts to look like complaining because a cashier gave you your change in nickels instead of quarters. Sure, you probably preferred the quarters, but getting the nickels doesn't mean you were shortchanged.

I think mako is dead on with this.

After a certain point, we don't want hit or haste, but aside from our set pieces 'ideal' gear is going to be those pieces with agi/int/crit/arp, and we'll probably have to wear a bunch of agi/int/haste gear until we can get our filthy hands on those better items.

I'm really saddened that the ammo solution is 4 more slots on our bags. 800 extra ammo, which I still have to fly to Shattrath or Tanaris for, is kind of annoying. Nevermind that, like warlocks, we're out a full 16-22 slots for everything else.

EDIT the second: I realize I may have misunderstood your point, Trev. Argument withdrawn.

Do any other classes have this sort of itemization problem where they get worthless stats? Or is this a hunter only thing?

I guess haste for other physical classes would be a similar issue, but it doesn't seem like casters have a stat problem like we do.

For the most part, only physical damage MAIL wearers dislike haste. And everyone else seems to be either ambivalent or enthused about the stat. Melee classes (save Enhancement Shaman) like haste because it affects a large (50%~) portion of their damage output.

I'm not sure it really matters. Ghostcrawler mentioned a few times throughout beta that hunters were at the very top of the DPS heap along with the "balanced" Deathknights and Ret Pallys. Now, some of the WWS I've seen indicate that we're right behind DKs/Rets and both are half a step away from getting molested with the nerf bat. That would leave us top spots on the meters, even with our under-optimized gear.

Someone mentioned a while back that the haste stacking on our gear may be a purposeful way to throttle our entry level DPS. If that's the case, that means when our gear gets better optimization towards T9, we will most likely be in an even better position on the DPS heap.

I'll ask the question another way, then. Cat druids have a 1.0 GCD all the time, right now on Live. Are they better off than hunters are? They can fit more actions in than we can and presumably have less downtime. On the flip side, warriors don't have their GCD lowered by haste either, and have to put up with a 1.5 GCD on a slew of offensive and defensive abilities that they do use. Are they unable to perform effectively?

The fact that you have more downtime between actions doesn't matter if those actions pack more punch when you fire them. People are assuming that with a lowered GCD we could get more actions in and therefore do more dps (ultimately). This assumption only holds true if hunters aren't doing enough dps already. The designers aren't going to increase hunter dps unless it is falling behind where they want it to be for some reason (edit: as Tyranna pointed out, we're topping the charts notwithstanding the 1.5 sec GCD), so if we are doing appropriate dps, then they will have to nerf something else. That too, is "simple math."

I guess I'd be ok with that if it didn't require me being BM. One of the major reasons I was looking forward to WoTLK early on was the seeming equality between our trees.

Oh well, I guess some people will be happy with this.

As a whole, the Hunter class's dps is good relative to the other dps classes. I don't think we've got any reason to worry about losing a raid spot on that end, even with gear that isn't optimized like sunwell.

Spirit and mages don't get along too well.

To echo what Trev has said thus far, a lot of people are getting worked up over stats and this entire things is getting rediculous and out of control. People are mad about Haste because most people play as BM and having more haste, versus more AP or AGI, doesn't help them. Other people are mad because there isn't much Hit on our gear and they'd much rather gem for DPS stats vs Hit making all of the haste seem like an insult.

What people don't seem to understand is that Haste increases the DPS potential of your stats exponentially. I know this because I've been trying to help out Survival Hunters in the other thread grasp why it is that Haste is good. BM Hunters stumbled across it as gear improved and it took the SV Hunters a long time to get on board (this was because the gear constraints were massive). Let's assume the following:

- Two hunters with the same exact gear and stats. Both do 150 damage per Auto Shot w/ 30% base crit and a 3.0 draw speed (before haste) and both have gemmed for max Hit.

- Hunter 1 has convinced a Dev to remove all haste from his/her gear in exchange for an additional 3% crit. Hunter 2 retains all haste and now has a 2.5 draw speed. You end up with the following:

-- Hunter 1 fires 100 Auto Shots over 5 minutes w/ 33 critical strikes. Hunter 2 fires 120 Auto Shots over 5 minutes w/ 36 critical strikes.

The above ugly non-sensable scenario supports what Trev is saying. While we all don't want haste because "OMG, it doens't help specials", it does boost DPS. And while everyone wants more determinant stats on their gear, haste actually does benefit you more so than the stats that you want. AND, the one thing that people really REALLY don't get, if you're not hit capped, Haste actually allows you to do more DPS while hitting less often due to a higher number of attacks.

I know that many of you probably never played Everquest. But, as a 4 year player of the Monk class, the whole concept of maximizing your character was speed. Sure, you wouldn't hit as hard as the other monk using the 2handed staff. But, it was a death of a 1000 bee stings. And, given the same period of time DPSing, the lighter hitting faster attacking player won out. It is 100% the law of statistics.

Oh, and by the way, the reason that the Enhancement Shaman community hates haste is because 1) they're still stuck to the 3.0s rule for Wind Fury and 2) they haven't had a game mechanic, to-date, that has allowed them to actually use a fast off-hand. For years, Rogues have used Slow/Fast to maximize damage. The slow main hand is what specials utilize and ensures that your primary attacks hit hard. The fast off hand ensures more poison attacks and off-sets the equalizing off hand to-hit issue. When TBC was introduced and they were given Envenom, while a very crappy skill for boss raids, it did, in theory, allow them to do more DPS because of the added poisons through Envenom.

Shamans have never had that and, because of this, have been stuck with Slow/Slow w/ double WF. Now that they have Lava Lash and Maelstrom Weapon combined with the interaction of Flame Tongue (they're casting more spells so this is even better for them) and Elemental Fury adding more crits, they have a reason to go back to a fast off hand. The ONLY thing keeping them from joining the rest of the game and realizing that haste is a good thing is because someone along the way convinced them that 3.0 is the best way and only way because of the timing line-ups with Wind Fury. They ignore the fact that they only have a 30% chance of proccing WF every 3s and, thus, turn a blind eye when it comes to haste. I argued with a guildy of mine for what seemed like forever because I said that a 1.5 main hand would be better than a 3.0 speed main hand because you're applying your stats more often, taking more advantage of his crit%, and giving him more of a chance to get Flurry, Shamanic Focus, and Mongoose/Executioner while still being in that 3.0 area for WF crits. He wouldn't listen and neither does the Enh Shaman community. You can't play a game in the scope of a model and/or hard math. The world is fluid.

Well bovii, you are comparing 20% haste with 3% crit. Kinda unfair isn't it?

You need to compare raitings. As far as is know in item budget building 1 haste rating = 1 crit rating. In terms of dps tho 1% crit = 2% haste or something near that since crit affect all of your shots and haste only auto which is arguably 40-50% of your personal dps (excluding pet here since crit rating doesn't affect it anyway).

Now, you can increase the level of complexity much much deeper, since you should add pet dps to you, affect of diminishing returns when spending item points (the more point you spend in a stat the more it cost adding 1 more point to it, which means that items with more stats that just plain AP, for example, are usually more powerful assuming the same itemlevel), and the mutual scaling of the stats (the more AP you have the more crit and haste are important in terms of dps and viceversa).

In the end you will see that haste is not that bad, still is not really the primary stat you should look for and should be really rebalanced in order to give it the same importance it has for the other classes, in order to have the itemization work as well as for the other classes.
Note that the problem will just became more important as the gear get higher item level, as i said the more useful stats you have on a item the more efficient the item points are spent and consequentely the better your class will scale.

Obviously I'm not syncing up appropriate ratings and such. Hence the comment that I made "The above ugly non-sensable scenario..." The point is, though, that haste actually increases your overall stat contribution by applying those stats more often. The unfortunate aspect is that people want more and they want it now. The community doesn't have patience for calculating the additional DPS of one more shot. They'd rather scrap 100% of the haste that we have and apply it all to Armor Pen, RAP, AGI, etc. And while I can appreciate that, the simple fact is that haste isn't a bad stat, it just has a bad rap because people are seeing haste from Wind Fury Totems and Improved Icy Talons so the thought process is, "Why do we need more when we can have <insert stat> instead?" Again, that isn't necessarily a bad thought process but getting lost in the I WANT mentality isn't beneficial.

Well, there is a specialty ammo vendor in Dalaran as well in the Hunter's Reach.

But there is another way to conserve bag space for ammo. Carry ammo crates instead, which now hold 10 stacks. For 8 bag slots you have 16,000 bullets/arrows.

Obviously, still not perfect, but it is helping somewhat. And of course that only applies to the Engineering-crafted ammunition as far as crates go, but at the moment that's better than anything else out there.

Since the haste subject came back up, here's a post by GC on haste.
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