It seems for me that history repeats itself. In preTBC patch hunters were way OP, nerfed below all DPS in first days of TBC and each following patches slowly regain their position.

Is really rake such a big problem? I'm more concerned about the crazy amount of multipliers for BM pets. My (admitedly napkin-ish) math indicates that BM scales better than MM (though probably within the error margin of my modeling) *and* has a head start (largely due to raid buffs on the pet giving crazy dps with all the multipliers)

I hate the change they do to WF.
Not only because they should fix the existing bugs first and see how it affects our dmg.
Now the raidleader will always put me out of the dmg group because WF is a great help to melee dmg and he will put a rouge in there and I will be stuck in the Tank or even caster group. Always the same.....
If we had a spare shaman it would always be me who got switched out of the group so he could trigger bloodlust.
And its not because I am a bad player....actually i am always at or near the top of the dmg....its because he thinks the others profit more from it

EDIT: Sorry, mis-read your post. Deleting this comment (reading too fast and trying to do some work at the same time).

I agree that at face value the WF change is not ideal for MM or SV. I guess we will have to wait to see how this change truly impacts those 2 specs overall. The increase in armor for bosses seems to put more added value on ArP for all physical DPS classes (especially for BM).

Yes, that's exactly what I said. My point is that they lowered the dps of survival and mm far more than bm with that change, but they then lowered bm by adding more armor to bosses, as that spec does not have an elemental shot at the end of the tree and relies on pets more who have no armor penetration.

Totems are raid wide now, you'll get them no matter what group you are in as long as you're within range. There isn't really a "damage" group per say anymore as nearly every group buff will now effect everyone.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking there is a list of all the changes.

The changes to raid buffs in the most recent patch mean that unless being in the "tank" group means you are so far away that you can't receive shouts/totems/etc. it doesn't really matter which group you are in. WotLK/3.0 are a completely different raid game when it comes to group composition, and it should really help to limit the politics involved in raid creation.

On another note, I'm curious to see how this change affects the value of haste on level 80 raiding gear. There were several pages earlier in the thread bemoaning the "wasted" itemization because it was so easy to hit the SS/GCD soft cap on haste. With this change, does it increase the value of haste enough to make it a desirable stat? Also, if it is desirable for MM/Surv, how much of it's value is lost on BM. Mages have complained for a long time that the spirit on their tier gear really only helps one spec (arcane), and I'm worried that with this change to WF haste will actually be good for MM/Surv (since it will be harder to hit the soft cap) but still relatively weak for BM.

Yes :/

We don't bring a reliable CC. Oh, we can pet-tank something outside a raid, but thats not going to work in a raid and it'd need additional healing even if it did. We really only bring the damage, so that has to be good.

Ghostcrawler also seems to think that BW isn't on the GCD.

Incidentally, steady cap haste values without WF's 20% are ~6% for MM and ~11% for SV.


As for "raid buffs"...in 25 mans, yes. In 10 mans there is a limited amount of setups which will get all the major bonuses (and Hunters are not, so far, involved in any I can find). It seems... severely sub-optimal to not take those bonuses in competitive 10 man raiding...

Hmmm.

I decided to run the numbers through Shandara's spreadsheet, using the "Shandara level 80 BM" profile and my own raid's expected buffs. After removing windfury and adding 10 percent more base armor to the boss, dps dropped by 622 out of 6843, a 9 percent reduction. WF was the more significant dps loss of the two at 343 dps; armor change was 279. I then switched a few talent points around to take the new animal handler talent, and got 45 dps back. Net change was 8.5 percent dps loss for 6221 calculated dps.

The MM profile's dps went from 6850 to 6229, with WF again being the larger nerf (371 vs 250) for an overall drop of 621. I found it very interesting that the difference in dps drop between the two builds was statistically insignificant. As one would expect, armor hurt BM more than MM, and WF hurt MM more than BM.

Essentially, WF change was, indeed, a white-damage only issue. The haste on naxx gear (a whopping 389 rating) brough steady down to 1.53 for the MM build. It would certainly be a larger issue prior to the accumulation of haste gear, but in the environment blizz is probably testing, their statement was correct: the WF nerf was of impact to autoshot only for all practical purposes. Given that the armor change is going to impact all phys dps classes (though hunters probably somwhat more due to the hunter/pet dps split), and that it would appear that the WF nerf will only impact us to the tune of 350-400 dps even at complete naxx-gear levels, This doesn't LOOK like a huge hit. To illustrate the nerf on a relative scale, if they took WF away from ranged attacks tomorrow, my BM hunter on live would lose 174 dps- and would still be trouncing every other DPS'er in the raid. If I were MM, I'd lose 213- but I could swap in some haste gear that had previously been undesirable, and mitigate that down to 170.

If anyone else comes up with numbers vastly different from these, please correct me, but at least using our current estimating tools this looks like about a 5 percent nerf from the WF change and a 3-4 percent nerf from armor, which will also be impacting other classes. Other than maybe increasing the desireability of haste and (marginally) arpen gear, this doesn't *feel* like a punch in the jaw... more like a mild slapping.

It's more that you've at least partly missed the issue, Zeuxis. Yes, I agree with your analysis on Hawk DPS.

However, we're being balanced to the current situation. The problem is that the current situation involves a bugged Judgement of Wisdom, which is proccing very frequently for us (we hit faster than other casters), and gives us a disproportionate benefit (we have a lower mana pool, with a lower throughput of mana so external regeneration helps us more) in any case - one JoW keeps our mana pool full.

While this is a not-so-big nerf to our Hawk damage, we're spending our entire time in Hawk. When JoW is fixed, we'll be spending time in Viper - and incidentally, this hurts MM and SV more than BM, partly because of aspect mastery and partly because spamming steady (the best way to regen mana in Viper) hurts BM dps far less. I'd also note that the haste removal means even slower mana regen in Viper.

I hope you can see the point now. It's not really Hawk damage I'm worried about, it's average damage. Our Hawk (and thus short-term) damage has to be higher than that of other classes.

Nah, I'm not oblivious to the potential negative synergies here. Between the viper change, the potential for JoW to be "fixed," and the wf change, there is a potential for a multiplicative effect on viper time. On the other hand, this also makes the changed version of viper look stronger by comparison, since the shot-based component will be weaker, though that's cold comfort. There are actually other potential negative synergies, most notably the "adjusted" pet damage coming in 3.0.3. We have no idea how hard the nerfs to the special abilities of the two "dps king" pets will hit them, and then the armor increase has to be laid on top of that. Overall pet damage might be reduced far more than I'm estimating.

That said, when addressing the effect of the nerf *in and of itself,* one understands that it is not the end of the world. If there is a marked change in mana efficiency, that will result in a change in talent desirability, (invigoration, efficiency, rapid recup) as well as the use of haste as a regen stat (hunters may begin using rapid fire solely as a viper-shortener, for example). Use of viper may also become far more tactical, with it being during short periods of downtime such as phase transitions, movement, or for set increments designed to provide "just enough" mana to get through the fight rather than regen-to-full. I don't discount the fact that things could be far worse than I predict, but I also don't discount that we may very well find creative ways to minimize or work around the changes.

I doubt this. In early TBC the issues were deeper than the potential issues arising from these nerfs. Back then it was the problem with shot weaving and hunter dps mechanics, low pet survivability and serious mana concerns. Now all those are dealt with. Shots are unlinked from autos, pets will survive most encounters, even if some require reasonable levels of micro managment and mana wise we have the new viper, which is fine, mechanic wise, for PvE.

Lowering or raising unbalanced dps is just a matter of tweaking a few numbers here and there now. The fundamental problems facing hunters back then are mostly dealt with, in a PvE aspect.

Your steady shots no longer keep your auto shot from shooting as long as you have the auto attack/auto shot function clicked in the interface combat options tab, so a 3:2 rotation and any "!auto shot" steady macro is unnecessary. As a level 70 BM your main rotation is just hitting your steady shot in-between using you and your pet's cooldowns. I know it is quite a long thread but all the advice you need is in it already if you can take the time and go through it.

I'm speaking in terms of overall DPS, LegendaHUN is referring to segregated DPS between Hunter and Pet. If 100% of our damage is Hunter + Pet, Hunter = ~50% and 40% of 50% is auto-shot damage.

Model deleted WF for just the hunter, in both cases. I believe your understanding to be correct; pets should still get the effect. Of course, the model is basically "recreational analysis." We won't be able to gauge real impact until beta testing begins and we see the effect of both the change itself and wildcard influences such as those Ketari has raised as concerns. What it does for me is really just solidify the feeling that this is an *attempt* by Blizzard to isolate and address autoshot damage. Whether they are successful in that isolation remains to be seen.

Understood. I do have the same concerns that Blizzard is taking too narrow a view of their approach and will end up nerfing us farther than we should be. (JoW fix = more time in viper + less ranged haste + more boss armor is all going to equate to a fairly significant nerf to our DPS.

Thank you for your input and analysis.

I posted this on the beta forums but wanted to run it by here as well just looking over some of the data thats been coming back.

Upcoming hunter changes
AOTV: not enough regeneration [9095]
Just looking over it, it really does look like they are baseing our nerfs off the bugged JoW in raid settings. I've kept up with the Beta Hunter forums and noticed that when they were doing DPS tests on the dummies, the values between the classes and even between the specs was fairly close. But now everyones been talking about our Raid DPS and seeing us 1000 dps higher and crying out for hunter nerfs. My 2nd post with the math behind is is fairly close when you factor in AotV. Even the 3rd post is shown that MM hunters have been dealing very high dps but outlined that with infinite mana, they would so. AotV was the limiting factor between Hunters and the other classes but since currently Hunters in a raid setting have not needed to use it due to a Pally bug, we have been seeing inflated DPS values.

No, not really. given it's 4/3% /s and with a 3 speed weapon even quiver haste means that you're losing mana regen, even before you start spamming steady. The change to viper away from 2xws% is pretty much that bad for pve, sadly.

And I don't see a "work round", we're in the situation where when JoW is fixed we'll probably be sub-par DPS...


Masterdragon - Looks right to me.

flimflam - The GCD is 1.5 seconds*. Steady shot is 2s base cast time. When steady reaches 1.5s due to haste, further haste can only affect our personal white damage and not our cast shots, and it never affects our pets. This means haste has a soft cap beyond which it sucks. For BM, thats all haste. For MM/SV, with the 3% haste raid buff it's ~6/11%.

(*although per GC we're casters, unlike them our GCD does not reduce with haste)

While Steady Shot still takes more than 1.5s to cast, adding haste means more Steady Shots and more auto-shots. Once your hit the haste "soft-cap" where SS is at 1.5s, then you can no longer can any more Steady Shots per minute, so haste only is affecting the number of auto-shot... thus diminishing the DPS gain per point of Haste.

So... SS > 1.5s means haste affects 2 forms of damage
SS <= 1.5s means haste affects 1 form of damage.

[edit]Also... what was said before me.

I've been using a simple work around to handle this which allows me to just mindlessly mash steady shot.

I replaced my steady shot hotkey with a very simple macro:

/focus
/cast [target=focus] Steady Shot

This means you are never calling /cast without a target specified and the game will never try to guess what target you meant. I haven't had any problems since I started using this.

I have a friend that is diehard surv, and given our recent troubles in pvp he suggested a spec to me to try out.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

now, keep in mind this is a pvp build. I was trying it out on test dummies to get a feel for it and I found that it was impossible to go oom.

with full points in ThotH, and just 1 point in hunting party, going full tilt on a test dummy with no buffs save hawk, my mana never dropped below 80%. I believe it's mostly due to explosive shot being able to return 40% of shot mana on crit, which includes the DOT effect, potentially giving you back more than you spent(just like a multi-shot triple crit). And with the right talents, he said he worked it out to having about a 75% crit chance on average(with about 40% base crit). At least thats what I saw.

combined with replenishment(which once again only 1 point seems needed for plenty of up time), the mana efficiency of surv is insane now. I bring this up, because I can see a raid spec surv hunter never going into viper, even with no totem, JoW, or SP. And with just consumables weaving volleys between explosive shots still wouldn't be enough of a drain to put you in viper.

If BM and MM hunters are spending a considerable amount of time in viper, and a surv hunter never has to, then this should be putting the surv tree at a considerable DPS advantage with the coming changes.

Has anyone else experienced this or have any thoughts on it?

Perhaps I was unclear. It makes the passive portion of the new viper look stronger in comparison to its OWN regeneration under the FORMER system, because any nerf to shot-based regeneration makes a fixed passive regeneration proportionally greater. This is NOT to say that it is better than the old system, which is patently isn't; you'd need a 10-12 percent per tick regen to pull that off. In fact, it's not even necessarily better than itself, it's just that the nerf only impacts the shot-based regen and not the passive. Therefore, *proportionally*, the passive regen has become a stronger mechanic than it was before. That doesn't make it a more desireable one.

At any rate, can you present a model that backs your claim of our dps being "sub-par" in the case of a JoW change? I'm not being snide, and I don't even necessarily disagree with you; I've just seen nothing concrete on fight lengths, mana consumption curves vs regeneration, or the actual mp5 difference between a "broken" and "fixed" JoW.

Hmmm... Master, the math in your second quoted post actually seems to work against you. Am I misunderstanding your argument? Assuming a "JoW Nerfed" figure of 5250 dps, you're still doing nearly 16 percent more dps than the rest of the raid. A 10 percent dps cut from armor/wf would still leave you as the top dps by about 5 percent. Don't get me wrong... that math appears horribly oversimplified, so I'm not in the least amenable to treating it as an estimation of ground truth, but IF we take it as the baseline argument, it appears to actually support that Blizzard is bringing us back to the pack in a reasonable fashion.

Firstly I think that spec isn't even close to a PvP spec. No points in Savage Strikes, Improved Wing Clip or Trap Mastery?

The mana regeneration from viper has nothing to do with spec but rather Weapon speed. How long it takes to go OOM IS dependant on your spec. Surv has far greater mana regen than the other two specs with Thrill of the Hunt and Hunting Party giving considerable mana return especially with high crit.

BM has Invigoration for mana return and TBW for mana reduction while MM has several options:

Master Marksman for mana reduction
Rapid Recuperation for mana return
Improved Steady Shot for Mana reducation and
Chimera Shot when partnered with Viper Sting for mana return.

In saying that by using Viper sting on your Chimera shot you would be gimping your DPS and probably better off going for Aspect of the Viper instead. But having tried all three build Surv is far ahead of the other when it comes to satying in mana.

F