mako

Why would scatter be any more necessary?

On beta deterrence has effectively become a cloak of shadows/evasion hybrid. It's the "Oh shit" button that those hunters seem to want.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

KraxisSingular

Having looked it over again, it appears from MMO Champion, so it is their little update... *phiew*

 

drole

I would consider that a severe nerf taking scatter trapping into consideration.

 

Shenzhe

I think an interesting solution would be to allow us to "make a decoy" we plant a copy of ourselves right where we stand. We turn invisible and can wander around. Once the decoy is destroyed, has small % of our health or some fixed value based on skill rank, we become visible again. The stealth effect could be a few levels below what an equivalent rogue or druid would have at that level since we're not really a stealth class. It fits with the hunter theme but would work to keep people off our back for a little while.

 

Catalept

The bone of contention, though, isn't the existance of 'oh shit' buttons, it's their availability. We're spending talent points to get medium-cooldown abilities that are supposed to compete with trainable short-cooldown abilities.

 

Kaejin

WoW Forums -> Pet Hit %

Blue confirms pet hit% for hunters as well. In addition to resiliance apprently being denied. Not sure I like the way Koraa explains players attacking pets as "CCing themselves," since it's more like killing part of the hunter than it is CC.

 

Arcazua

Would this ability be very helpful in PvE? Having played Diablo and knowing how I used Decoy with my Amazon (which granted did have different functionality,) I'm inclined to believe a human opponent isn't really going to fall for it. The only way they would bother is if you truly became 100% undetectably invisible and they had to kill the decoy first. Now what might be interesting is if they moved exactly alternately to you and your opponents sometimes automatically re-targeted to the decoy. Did he move right or left? One went each way...

 

TrevvyTrev

Because BM hunters aren't any tougher than anyone else. People just focus on you and kill you, or they run around a pillar, Vanish, bubble, ice block, or find some other way to wait out your TBW. TBW is only a 10% damage boost as far as the hunter is concerned, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at but people can survive it if they are smart. It's a bigger boost for the pet, but LOSing the pet is child's play, assuming they haven't killed it already (BM hunters routinely have to pop TBW *early* against competent teams, because they start to kill the pet and you have to pop it before it dies, which is really fast).

Additionally, if you are trying to do burst damage, you have to stand still. It's incredibly easy to outlast a BM hunter's damage if the hunter has to keep moving. He's only got arcane shot and serpent sting. Every other shot requires him to stand still, at least momentarily. What do you think the other team is doing while you're standing there "bursting"? They are killing you, or running around pillars. And in a BM burst setup (at least in 2v2), you don't have a healer. In setups when you do have a healer, you have no way to slow down the damage you're taking so that enough of the heals actually land. Finally, let's not forget that *everyone else* (and I mean every single other class) has some way to mitigate the damage that WE do, which decreases the value of burst damage in the first place -- without a defense, other teams win the war of attrition. Ret pallies are a "burst" spec, yet every single one of them pops a bubble at some point unless they are totally overpowering the other team or they are just stupid. Rogues are "burst" yet they routinely pop evasion. Mages are "burst", yet they ice block like mofos (while their water elemental nukes people).

It's like the old joke about two guys who are camping, when suddenly a bear attacks them. One guy says, "RUN!!" and the bear starts chasing them. The other guy says to the first guy, "do you really expect to outrun a bear?" And the first guy says, "no, but I don't have to -- I only have to outrun YOU." Other teams don't have to outdps you from a theoretical standpoint -- they just have to outlast the dps that you can put out *once you account for their mitigation techniques*, and you can't return the favor since well, you don't have any mitigation techniques worth noting.

Scatter Shot is a 4 second disorient. You use it, and someone either trinkets out of it or waits it out. Plus it only works on one target. It's not a survivability tool. It's a CC. A pretty good one, but a CC nonetheless, and BM hunters already have a couple of CCs (more when pets get CC abilities as family skills). What hunters need (all specs) is something to slow down the hurt when you are getting ganged up on, because everyone has figured out that hunters are the easiest class to burst down because they have no tangible defense to anything whatsoever (especially spells) and they can't do any damage when they are getting pounded on.

Deterrence (in wotlk) is 25% chance for ranged to miss, 50% melee avoidance (dodge/parry combined) and 60% spell avoidance. Why people think Scatter Shot is going to be better at keeping them alive is beyond me.

 

Catalept

That's confirmation that if they do it for warlocks, it'll be done for us... unfortunately, it's also confirmation that they're still undecided. It's rather annoying, because both warlocks and hunters have pet-centric utility... e.g. MC whiffing in PvP will sometimes mean the difference between life and death, yet we have no way to increase the reliability of pet abilities. Bah.

It's a salient observation if and only if pets can survive for more than 3 or 4 GCDs... which I sincerely doubt will happen if it's subjected to focused fire even in 3v3. The problem is that a pet that was as hard to kill as the hunter would clearly be OP, on the other hand, hunters need a way to recover the lost utility when their squishy pet does die. IMO, the solution is simply to make Heart of the Phoenix a rez that repops the pet with full health and happiness.

 

TrevvyTrev

As a follow up to my earlier point explaining why the push for Deterrence, when the designers only cite to that as the means in which they are improving survivability, then that's saying something:

They didn't say, "hey, you can spec scatter shot, remember?"

 

Gonkish

That's a pretty nice PvE buff, though I still wish they'd at least allow us a small amount of resilience scaling for pets. At least they're not completely excluding that option, though.

Why Hunters suffer...
Benefactor's Bar learns you some goodness quicklike...

 

TrevvyTrev

I worded that poorly. I didn't mean "abandon" in the sense of right-clicking on the frame and releasing them back into the wild forever. I meant "abandon" in the sense that constantly leaving something behind while you go do something else is abandoning it. It's more like you are "abandoning" the idea of ever using a chimera, devilsaur or other exotic pet in PvP.

Unless they create an exotic pet that gives you deterrence, no sensible spec will be able to use one in PvP, unless they are flagged for whatever reason and get ganked during some PvE stuff.

 

Kigale

I'd like to see a reverse Soul Link for hunters: a portion of the damage done to the pet is redirected at the hunter. Call it Spirit Bond or something. It would deter people from attacking the pet, since it's much harder to kill, it would also give hunters some CC immunity. But it isn't as OP as giving pets resilience since the damage isn't wasted.

 

Trogdor

Can someone in beta test a turtle's Shell Shield with Roar of Sacrifice, and confirm if the turtle's ability reduces the damage taken from Roar of Sacrifice? A tenacity pet in a raid environment is interesting to me, because pets do catch heals (mine does in SW) and maintaining damage absorption on a target seems kind of neat. Situational "oh shit" use of taunt or intercept to save someone/yourself. It's something different than the [relatively] fire & forget pet.

This isn't to say that I don't like ferocity pets, but they're more effective with BM hunters. I love how they do what I don't do with my pets in raids; healing and resurrecting. Still not fond of cunning pets.


I still think we should be able to change pets without having to hit up a stable. Stables are in the game only for the hunter class. Seems sort of silly to me

 

TrevvyTrev

That would have the opposite effect. Instead of attacking a 400 resilience hunter, you attack his 0 resilience pet, kill it in seconds, and get "free" damage on the hunter while simultaneously removing a significant portion of the hunter's utility. Plus it would give people a way to damage the hunter from afar. Anytime your pet chased someone around a corner, they would stop, attack it, and be damaging you while you couldn't hit them. Or druids would run your pet to well out of your shot range, and start killing your pet, etc.

 

Terp

For all the reasons you just listed? Because it doesn't have to keep you alive, it just has to kill them faster? Scatter Shot does so much more for CC and by extension burst that I don't see the point of not improving the one thing BM is good for over some meager survivability. You just said that BM requires substantial coordination and then deny how good scatter would be for it?

Hunter surviability sucks. Speccing for deterrence really isn't going to improve that. It's ten bloody seconds, worthless against melee when stunned (I'm tempted to say when casting steady too, but I'm not 100% sure), and requires you to actively daze yourself by making sure you are facing whatever is in your face. The developers crooning for Deterrence really make me wonder if they ever even used the damn thing, spell reduction or not.

And it's ten bloody seconds.

Edit: I don't even know where this is going. My original complaint is that Master's Call is inappropriate for the one talent spec that can actually get it. I also think that Deterrence isn't very meaningful for BM. To that end, I'd rather see Call become trainable over Deterrence if it comes down to one or the other and BM given a worthwhile tier 3. Or, hell, make Beast Mastery the tier 3 and give them a 51 pointer that might be used in pvp. Because I think we've established that this one sure ain't unless exotics come with deterrence or scatter.

 

Chul

I think having an ability to mitigate the incoming damage is probably the best way to go.

As for deterrance being that ability, wouldn't having +25% dodge and parry actually be harmful since they can trigger reactive abilities like Overpower and Riposte? Wouldn't a flat damage reduction be better?

Also, rogues get Dismantle in WotLK. So presumably we can't Wingclip/Scatter Shot or any hunter ability to get out to range. In that case, having an ability to soak the damage would seem better.

What do people think about this suggestion from the Beta boards?

 

• Intermission

Make it a 30-60 second cooldown to put it in line with half of the rogue/warrior abilities and we're a quarter of the way into fixing our mobility issues.

EDIT: Mana free and no GCD, of course.

 

Gonkish

It still seems incredibly strange to me that Blizzard would toss around knockback abilities for other classes (admittedly, ones that needed a "get out of my face for a goddamned second you mouthbreathing Rogue"-type thing), and then try to solve the whole Hunter mobility thing without, apparently, even considering a knockback.

I'm not even talking about an AoE knockback, just a knockback in general; hell, I don't even think it should be a ranged ability, just a single-target melee thing on a decent cooldown (15-30 sec. to put it on par with talented intercept, or shadowstep wouldn't be out of the question, would it?) with a reasonable mana cost.

Maybe they'll do something with glyphs, I guess.

Why Hunters suffer...
Benefactor's Bar learns you some goodness quicklike...

 

Quixotic

Has anyone seen anything about allowing wing clip/hamstring type effects to remain on a target while in frost trap aura, and/or being able to reapply snares while in a frost trap aura? It's probably my biggest pet peeve with the hunter class atm, having them not stack, but having both debuffs remain on the target would be nice.

 

TrevvyTrev

Maybe I would have a better time understanding how exactly Scatter Shot helps with "burst" if you explained the scenarios you're envisioning. It obviously doesn't help with "bursting" on the target you are trying to kill (because you would break it immediately), so the damage portion of the shot is irrelevant. I'm assuming you mean that it makes it easier to focus on one target if you can CC the other, which is quite true.

Still, scatter shot can be trinketed. Your partner can break it even through no fault of their own (target was dotted, you had to switch focus targets because of how the match is going, but the dots haven't worn off). And in a burst setup, my partner can CC the other person also. There's no shortage of CC.

No, I didn't. I said it wasn't the right tool. If I need a hammer, it doesn't matter how "good" of a tool a screwdriver is. Screwdrivers are fantastic at inserting screws. They suck at putting nails in a wall. Scatter sucks at helping me survive other dps classes with numerous "reset" buttons, or people nuking from a distance. It's great at other things. When I say that I would rather have deterrence available to all hunters, I just mean that -- not that I hate scatter shot.

Plus, I sort of feel like scatter shot cannibalizes the MM tree too much. There has to be some benefit to actually speccing MM, and cherry-picking the best abilities from it undermines that. The survival tree is largely unaffected if deterrence gets trainable, and it "matches" similar abilities that other dps classes get (ice block, evasion, bubbles for dps pallies, etc.)

No argument on survivabilty, it sucks. Still, Scatter shot is only 4 seconds, so I don't see how it's any better. And people can trinket out of it. They can't trinket you out of deterrence. Scatter shot is equally useless when stunned. I don't know how facing a target is actively dazing yourself (you can face a target and strafe at full speed), but okay. There's no indication you have to face your target for the ranged miss chance or spell resist to work, by the way. You have to be facing your target anyway to be able to wing clip and try to run, the difference being that you have a better chance of dodging/parrying hamstring, crippling poison shivs, kidney shots, mortal strikes and so on.

Again you seem to be confusing my argument of "I'd rather have deterrence as a trainable survivability tool" with "deterrence will solve every hunter problem that exists and scatter shot is horrible." Sure, deterrence is only 10 seconds, but it potentially applies to multiple targets attacking you. I'm not anti-scatter shot. I have no illusions that deterrence will skyrocket me to 2400 by itself. But it will make it harder for rogues to pop evasion and cheese me to death.

When you pop TBW, you cannot be stopped "unless killed." When you pop deterrence, you basically become twice as hard to kill. I think you're underestimating the synergy.

 

mako

We also don't have to be in melee range to do damage, but we do have a reasonable dps pet to help us.

It's comparing apples to oranges. Other classes have things because they need them to have a chance at all, in no way should that imply that we need the exact same things at the exact same cost.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

McInaction

On that note, I've always sort of wondered why explosive trap, a mediocre at best aoe that screws over nearly all your defensive abilities when used, does have some sort of neat effect. Would explosive trap having a 20 yard knockback on being triggered be terribly OP? I don't think so. Not when traps are all still linked.

Its about perfect; 30 second cd (less with talents) fair mana cost, and has a clear opportunity cost in not being able to use other traps. Oh, and being a trap it takes considerable more skill to practically use then just clicking intercept.


Also, does anyone find it odd that immolation trap is still a pathetically weak dot? You think they could increase the damage of give it a worthwhile effect.

 

Gonkish

The funny thing is that I don't actually mind a useless Immolation Trap, because it just means that I don't have to have yet another button on bars that are already overflowing with highly situational abilities that, regardless, still serve a purpose, however mild.

Why Hunters suffer...
Benefactor's Bar learns you some goodness quicklike...

 

Ravenfire

They would have to re-work explosive trap to drop the dot effect if it was given a knockback ability. And while it may be a mediocre AoE it is the best one we have atm, sadly (for groups larger then 5).

It depends on how you look at it. In a damage per mana comparison and with approriate talents it becomes one of the best Dpm abilities in the game (on the order of 13+ damage per mana). +30% damage and -60% mana (from talents) tends to make it great from this view but the application method drops it back down to a very situational dot (which traps AREN'T situational??). I do manage to drop these once a pull on Brutallus, Felmyst, M'uru, and KJ because I can drop these before the pull (free damage) where the tank is waiting for the boss to be MD'd to or while I am running past/through where the boss is/will be on the way to my position (any damage dealt while moving is good).

From a pure damage per GCD stand point all hunter dots are lacking and lacking badly. Serpent sting for a well geared BM hunter w/ 3k RAP will do 960 damage, while Immo trap will do 1285. A nude warlock can do corruption for 900 and CoA for 1356, yes a NUDE warlock can put out comperable dots to a well geared BM hunter. The dots a well geared T6 lock can throw just makes ours look like jokes. Blizzard has already stated that Serpent sting is going to get better. They can do this via better coefficients (ideal), straight up more damage (not ideal), or a combination of both. I'd love it if blizzard also reviewed Immolition and Explosive traps and similarly increased the damage they do via an increase to the scaling coefficient.

While we are on the topic of traps.... how is snake trap working in beta? Do the snakes match the hunters level and thus "scale" or is snake trap going to be a joke at 80 because it is spawning lvl 70 snakes that try and apply lvl 70 poisons to lvl 80 mobs/casters?

Edit: though i might make a list of abilities that scale and their current and WotLK coefficients

ability, live scaling, Wotlk scaling
SHOTS
Arcane Shot, 0.15 Rap, 0.15 Rap (might be changed with the removal of the purge component from arcane shot)
Kill Shot, N/A, 0.15 Rap
Steady Shot, 0.2 Rap, 0.2 Rap
Explosive Shot, N/A, 0.2x3 or 0.6 Rap
Chimera Shot, N/A, to complicated for me to bother with atm
Volley, N/A, unknown coefficient but it does scale with something

STINGS
Serpent Sting, 0.1 Rap, going to be changed based on blizzard comments

TRAPS
Immolation Trap, 0.1 Rap, 0.1 Rap
Explosive Trap, 0.1 Rap, 0.1 Rap
Bear Trap, N/A, 0.1 Rap

MELEE
Mongoose Bite, 0.2 Map, 0.2 Map
Wing Clip, no scaling, 0.1 Map