Sapa

This will be... rant. Long one.

More that I read this thread more of "We are pet class, but using them as fire and forget is not a problem, getting range is." type of "general vision" I'm getting.

Instead of talking about how PET and Hunter could work together and how pet would be more focus of Hunter class than mashing shot rotation. We have melee-hunTARDnes talks. Blah. Decide already what your hunter is. Archer with dog pup or someone who has f*** bear for kitty.

If Blizzard decides to buff our melee... who cares. We are PET class. Not ranged or melee... PET.
If I had power to change design of hunter... 1/2 of our skills on our bars would be Pet-Hunter related (would be pet abilities like working as KC. Hunter spends mana, issues command, pet delivers) and we would have less shots and more melee abilities. Pet should play far bigger part of hunter play style. And hunter would chose his play style by choosing one of 3 talent trees. 1 melee buffed (BM). 1 range buffed (MM). 1 utility/mix(SV).

Rename all stings to pet abilities for instance.
Serpent Sting -> Infectious Bite. Pet bites mob, mob gets poisoned. Better damage (lock range) due delivery system.
Or Concussive Shot. Rather than primary defensive ability make it Crippling Slash (pet daze). And make Hunter actually hunt someone (with pets help in slowing someone down) rather than running away.

* Would it hurt BM (most pet dependent) hunters if they had to spec MM (least) to retain same gameplay? They did respec from MM/sv to BM/mm when TBC came...
* Would it hurt our Arena ratings with pet that takes as much beating as we do regardless if we are ranged or melee? Combined with lower hunter dps and bigger pet dps+survival?
* Would it hurt or PVE if MM was same as BM is now (send pet, watch pet, do rotation)?

So problems with melee vanish if we can compare hunter melee+pet to "true" melee dps.
Problems with chasing people around pillars. Get pet on them to daze/slow them get in melee range and beat the crap out of them(IF speced into it).

Elemental Shaman. That's Ranged class. Try once. It's a choice too, one that hunter doesn't have with 3 trees doing same thing. (elemental-enhancement -> ranged-melee).

Now I'll just wait for first one to yell at me that I'm totally wrong and that we are Ranged class and if I want to melee I should play Rogue. Whoever has for his primary concern of Hunter class listed: "Getting away from Melee" will get answer that he should roll Druid/Mage.

Before you do, yes I would melee if I had to, but far far more I would like to actually use my PET. (right now.. it's Fire and Forget (sv spec..))

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...jerks/Sapa.png

 

Trident

I wouldn't mind it dispelling Bestial Wrath if it could also dispel Druids' 51-point feral talent (though I'm not sure if "Berserk" is the same as "Enrage").

 

TrevvyTrev

Meh, I don't think it should dispel that either. It's one thing if one class can dispel a long CD ability that you get trainable (mass dispel vs. ice block or divine shield), because you don't have to make any sacrifice to get those. Obviously it sucks to have a long CD poof on you, but it doesn't neuter most of the talent points you spend in a tree. It's also not bad if a class can dispel talented abilities that easily can be refreshed -- warrior enrage, owlkin frenzy, hunger for blood --(which, incidentally, is another reason why the CD is a bad idea -- if I dispel hunger for blood, the rogue will just put it right back up. It may not even cost him any energy to do it, depending on other debuffs. You can dispel enrage, and a warrior gets crit again the next second and it's right back up, etc.) because you aren't cut off from using them for a comparatively long time.

But 41-and-51-point abilities that are on long CDs are a whole different story. And I don't see how improving hunters versus other hunters and possibly feral druids (even enhancement shamans ... again?) really is the right way to go.

 

KraxisSingular

Can only agree. Such central and 'hard to get' talents shouldn't be so easily countered. Already BW and TBW appears to be targets of the Warrior trained ability, Bloodbath, that provide a fairly strong bleed that does 4 times the damage on enraged targets. Ouch if we happen to get that in our face with the numbers seen so far.

But fair enough I guess. Blizzard has relented on the entire "all spects much be viable raiders", and said something like taking 5 specs and making them PvP specs (still only 'perhaps' and 'maybes', but they are easing up). I suppose along with that is making other specs of the classes affected less viable in PvP, and it could be Beast Mastery ends up there. I just hope that isn't reason enough to let such things happen. I doubt we are going to need such powerful counters against BM.

 

WarTotem

As it stands now, I'm actually looking at MM for PvP spec. Scatter, Silencing, Chimera, dispel resist on HM & stings, technicly the tree with high crit & crit dmg bonus + pushback interrupt (although everyone will prob take those ofcourse). Not to mention that MM is the only tree with no effective mana return. It has a 10% cost reduction, but no talent to give mana back from just auto-attacking.

 

Vilyah

It's not really the same ability though, is it? The frostfire bolt does fire damage *or* frost damage if the target is more vunerable to frost damage. Unfortunately I would expect Froststorm to get a nerf.

 

Trogdor

See that's part of the problem with everyone QQ'ing; the labels. People label hunters as a "pet" class or a "ranged" class. People get stuck on a hunter's role as a "puller", and get upset when they feel left out of raids or groups.. and maybe go to the WoW forums with questions like "waht's my roll in a group????!!? hunters sux ...".

Hunters are a DPS class. It so happens that our primary strength lies at range, and a secondary strength is the use of our pets (for every conceivable reason). Posed this way, the function of a hunter is much more open to positive possibilities, which is the fair truth of it all. It made my brain hurt to read the WotLK hunter forums and see people with beta keys screaming, "survival hunters need tools to SURVIVE, that's why it's called SURVIVAL, give us something to SURVIVE more because that's how our talent tree is labeled. Explosive Shot is stupid because it has nothing to do with SURVIVING". People get narrow-focus and don't realize they have tools available; the real problem is that they don't know how to use what is present, yet continually cry for something else.

In terms of getting caught in melee, the ultimate outcome is either the hunter dying or the opponent dying. The opponent can die either by the hunter getting range and finishing the kill, or sticking to melee and finishing the kill. We certainly know that we can finish off quite well at range, but blizzard has given us some edge to try and do likewise at melee while trying to get range. Wingclip, entrapment, snake trap, bear trap, counterattack (heh), scatter shot, intimidation, frost trap, surefooted, aspect of the monkey, improved aspect of the monkey, deflection, deterrence, survival instincts, survivalist. That is a LIST of abilities and talents to help us live and get away.. and people want more? I'd rather be able to finish in melee more effectively as I am trying to escape.. so savage strikes, the 10% melee bonus from AotB, no pre-req mongoose-bite.. those are intended for us to shame any cocky aggressors, much like Trev said. Add some teeth.

Putting more emphasis on the pet as a source of damage is only going to hurt hunters when the pet dies, which will cause a bunch of more tears. It should be a choice; that choice is the BM tree. Saps says that the pet should play a bigger part of the hunter style... sure, do it. Spec BM. There are those hunters who want the pet more as a tool than a significant part of DPS. Don't push your limited view on the preferences of the entire hunter community.



Changes that we want to have happen need some good thought, or else we're going to get upset from "being screwed". People have been complaining about having too many abilities to monitor. People have also been complaining about going OOM too fast and how ret pallies are a necessity to raiding and how we shouldn't have to drink mana pots etc etc etc. So from all this ignorance.. what might Blizzard be deciding?

Put Kill Command on a 2-min CD and change the ability's dynamic. It's one less thing to constantly monitor or have macroed, and it's saving 900 mana/min from constant spamming. Great.

Blizzard is obviously going to ignore any dumb ideas that require so much rework to the class, and that's mostly the type of feedback requests they get. If only I had a beta key to post and support the small, reasonable ideas and fixes that would have the greatest chance of success into the beta forums..

 

WarTotem

Although the tooltip is very misleading, it does Frostfire damage and pierces resistance and absorb mechanics of either spell.

 

Vilyah

Any word on how the worm's Acid Spit compares to the Sporebat's Spore Cloud? Seems like a similar ability except Acid spit lasts over twice as long and stacks.

 

Disargeria

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Wrath of the Lich King: Beta Patch Notes

Uhhh... What's going on here?

 

Zorane

They mentioned that they wanted the melee damage of hunters to be "beefier"

Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Chimera Shot - Discussion

 

Disargeria

Exactly. So why does Counterattack scale with RAP now?




Edit: Looks like that's a typo on Blizzard's part. It scales with AP.

 

Aerynlore

One thing that it seems people have been commenting about, and that Blizz has mentioned, is that there is no real "penalty" for moving into melee range of a hunter. Look at mages and warlocks... they'd rather sit inside of 5 yards on us then outside 5. As such, they want to make it a little more painful if someone actually sits inside melee range.
AotBeast now doing +10% AP bonus means that our melee swings will hit for a little more.
Mongoose Bite having only the GCD to contend with means it'll hit more often.
And now that Counterattack has some actual damage behind it, that means warriors, rogues, ferals and DKs are going to actually get a small sting when we parry (as survival).

I can see where they are going, and I'm glad that (for the most part) they are beefing the skills we have instead of adding even more buttons. However, we can still cut down even farther. My favorite being the idea of combining AotMonkey and Beast and dropping one of them.

It's also a small nicity to see that they want to have Chimera and (if I remember correctly) Explosive Shot replace Arcane Shot... as in, just remove it from your bar. Of course with Tranq being useful, they basically just split Arcane into two shots, so I'm not sure if that really "saved" us a button.

Here's my question, though: for each of the "oh gawd, less buttons", what talents that add an ability can be changed to a passive? And what more passive bonuses can we get beyond what we already have - +crit, +crit damage, -pushback, +AP, +haste, +health, -resist chance.. What else is there really to add?

I would caution against unloading too many talent points into passive effects, especially things that may end up being just situational gimmicks and more "please dear gawd proc" moments.

 

KraxisSingular

I suppose I was a bit unclear now that I read it again. Yes, that was my assumption too. But that doesn't make it any less ok for the 41/31 pointer to be so effectively countered by trained skills.

 

Remf

I like the "hunters are a dps class" approach a lot; the whole pokey-ball pikachu pet crap has gotten really old. I really don't see a non-RP "I miss my furry" type of argument why there shouldn't be a viable no-pet option for hunters. Make it some type of tradeoff, and not a ranged dps buff, and the whole "melee huntard" concern goes away; hunters will still WANT to be at range with their pet out... but won't be totally gimped if they aren't.

Obviously it shouldn't be the "best" option in all or even most cases, but it also shouldn't entail losing 30%+ of your DPS and a huge chunk of utility either, which is what happens now when yer pet goes poof.

Regarding the mongoose changes, I don't suppose they'd consider giving us a 1.0 sec global cooldown, like rogues have, to go with it perhaps? Oh, and add a 4-8 second or so "spell lockout" type effect for enrage/frenzy to tranq shot to make it actually worth using vs. melee classes, so the effect doesn't just get immediately re-applied.

 

Trogdor

That's it right there. Even with Tranq on a 15s CD with a lowered mana cost, preventing the re-application of the buff (and maybe even new buffs) for a duration (6-seconds seems reasonably fair to both sides) would make it worthy. Cleanse and purge are limited only by the GCD (and anything else I might be forgetting), so if Tranq has to have a CD then it should be a little more persistent.

 

Serpent's Choice

Either I'm confused as to their actual goals for our class or they are. In the same build that gets us a more robust Mongoose Bite and the Aspect of the Beast mAP bonus, Wing Clip has its damage removed entirely (but not, notably, its missing 10% snare returned). Likewise, I'd feel better about AotBeast if I thought we were doing more damage when in melee: Raptor Strike is still pretty terrible, and with Wing Clip a zero-damage power, the new Mongoose seems to be the only yellow-damage we'll be producing when not at range. +10% white damage for an off-focus combat condition is pretty terrible, regardless of what else can be said about "melee hunters". Has anyone done some modeling to determine what sort of actual dps we might produce in melee?

 

TrevvyTrev

Well, as you mentioned above, one thing is to roll the AP bonus into aspect of the Monkey, and leave Beast as the "I need to hide from this hunter/cat druid" aspect. This actually gels better with Aspect Mastery (which has its own set of problems that need to be resolved, but first things first). It doesn't "feel" right to have an offensive ranged aspect, an offensive melee aspect, and a defensive melee aspect. It makes more sense to either have an offensive aspect and a defensive one, or have a "ranged" aspect and a "not ranged" one. I favor the latter approach. Use Hawk at ranged, use Monkey when in melee range. Much more streamlined. The other "situational" aspects can be solved by making it easier to switch between aspects in the UI. There's a reason that "aspect bar" mods were very popular before they all got broken/abandoned.

Another thing they should do (which doesn't exactly answer the question you asked) is to look at ways not to "pigeonhole" class traits into specific trees. By that I mean that they should look at ways to make it so that improvements to a particular area don't exclusively reside in a particular tree. It's a little difficult to do conceptually (shots are marksman abilities, traps are survival abilities, etc.), but it's not impossible. Look at what they are doing with mages, for example. Talents in the fire tree are being changed to affect all spells, not just fire ones, and the same is true of arcane and frost. The idea is that mages shouldn't feel that the only way to improve frost spells is to spec frost. Obviously speccing frost will be more of a benefit to frost spells than speccing fire, but it shouldn't be the only way.

So, for example, with Kill Command being changed, Focused Fire might need reworking. Replace the KC crit bonus on it (assuming that it won't really work) with something like, "and increases the pet's chance to critically strike targets afflicted by the hunter's traps or stings by x%." It's not a direct boost to traps or stings in the BM tree, but it makes traps and stings more attractive for BM hunters, and makes pets more attractive for MM or SV hunters (especially if they invested in Sting/Trap talents respectively). Similarly, Marked for Death could specifically boost *pet* damage in addition to its normal effect. Readiness could reset *pet* cooldowns also. Hunting Party could restore pet focus. Concussive Barrage could have a chance to daze trapped targets (would need a rename), or improved concussive shot would double the duration of concussive shot against trapped targets (would make immo trap + concussive shot more attractive than always using frost/freezing trap. Imagine getting damage from immo plus a couple of damage boosted steadies. You'd get at least one even if the target invested in 50% snare reduction). If the AotBeast changes are rolled into Monkey as suggested, then Improved Aspect of the Monkey might be more attractive, if it improves both the AP and dodge portions of it -- plus this gets us away from the (mistaken) idea that SV is the "melee" tree. Efficiency could reduce pet focus costs also (assuming again that the focus costs get reworked to make more sense, and that the regen gets "smoother").

I could go on, but I have to get back to work. I wish Blizz would give me my beta key already (I have a "guaranteed" one since I got the laptop for X-Mas).

 

WarTotem

We're not the only ones though. Druids(1), Mages(1), Paladins(1), Priests(2-3), Shamans(7 with totem) and Warlocks(1) all have talented abilities on relatively long cooldowns that are magic.
Hunters, Mages, Priests, Shamans, Warlocks can all dispel any of these within at the most 10 seconds from eachother.

In the expansion they are giving all Warriors a dispel (Shield Slam), making 6/10 classes able to dispel (granted Hunter's will have the only CD above 10s) and they give Hunters the ability to counter their own brethren on the same dispelling ability. Tbh, I think working around the cooldown is a very important tactic. If you play with a healer, have him buff/hot/shield you. The other hunter now has 2 choices:
1) Dispel it, knowing you will probably instantly pop Beastial Wrath right after it
2) Wait untill you pop (T)BW, allowing the heal/buff/whatever to stay on you.
In the end it's only 1 class that can counter your talent. And if he is BM as well, you can return the favor. If not, well you will have to go respec MM then I guess :P

 

Tyranna

I can only come up with a few enrage/frenzy effects. Are there more I missed?
Enrage (warrior)
Owlkin Frenzy (druid)
Shamanistic Rage (shaman)
Hunger For Blood (rogue)
The Beast Within (hunter)

 

WarTotem

Copy+Paste my complete list of possibilities:

All effects are speculation until a source with clear proof(blue post or ingame tests) has been posted.


Enrages:
Druid Bear Form Enrage ability
Rogue Hunger For Blood talent (blue post)
Warrior Bloodrage ability
Warrior Berserker Rage ability
Warrior Enrage talent (blue post)

Frenzies:
Druid Owlkin Frenzy talent (blue post) <--- needs new confirmation due to new information
Hunter Frenzy talent (pet)

Other effects:
Druid Berserk talent (Berserk)
Hunter Bestial Wrath/The Beast Within talents (physical)
Shaman Shamanistic Rage talent (physical)
Warrior Deathwish talent (physical)
Warrior Rampage talent (Rampage/physical)

That's about all the possible abilities you could discuss.
<edit> made it a bit more readable, keeping updated with recent changes to keep a condensed list of abilities.

 

TrevvyTrev

Your count is much higher than mine. I don't think things like POM/Nature's Swiftness count very much, since they are often consumed at the same time as they are activated, so they only get dispelled in rare circumstances where timing is perfect. The shaman totems and earth shield don't have long cooldowns as far as I know. I'm not sure what paladin talented ability with a long CD you mean. Priests have Pain Suppression, but that has 65% spell resistance plus every priest who has it specs for a base 20% dispel resist, for a total of 85% chance to resist being dispelled. I'm not sure what the other two are offhand.

Still, that begs the question of what Blizzard is trying to do. Out of the list of possible classes that can be affected by Tranq shot, the MOST affected would be either Hunters or Shamans (Enhancement), because they are the only two with long CD frenzies/enrages. Given that, what is the point of giving hunters a counter to either of those classes? It can't be a move to increase hunter representation by giving them a counter an underrepresented class -- people at high brackets aren't going to be like, "we need to grab a hunter to help counter all the high-ranked BM hunters that we rarely see in the first place." Enhancement shamans are a PITA, but they will be slightly less affected due to the possibility that they will have other self/junk buffs dispelled instead.

 

Sapa

Agree. Yes labels are bad. (I should say DPS class with Pet. Not pet class.) But claiming hunter should be ranged only because current melee sux is wrong. Ranged and Melee... both are DPS.
As far pet goes. Frost mage's WE is more of a pet that my Wind Serpent is. Warlock pets too.

That's my point too. And more and more people want some extra knock backs, clos like abilities and whatnot.
Because as it happens we excel at range and everybody would like to stay there.

It's not just damage. It's function of pets that should be extended. WE snares, Felguard intercepts, FelPup dispels, FE AoEs,... Hunter pet deals damage (oh and we have scorpid for poison masking).

Spec BM to have pet "bigger part of class" is BS. Right now all 3 (yes 20/41/0 too) specs can do same dps with same amount of pet management and that's send pet, call pet back, send in + mend if needed. Only thing that makes pet bigger part is Intimidation, BW and KC. I played with BM in Raids (since AQ40/Naxx->T5) and it's no different than MM or SV. Well it was harder to do it back then that's about it.


Changes can be radical. That's why alpha/beta builds are for. To check things out how they play out. If anytime to test such things that time is now.
To many abilities. Yes like 7 bars each with 12 buttons filed with macros, consumables and ton of class abilities. And about 10 more in wotlk. And still people want more. I don't want more, just bit different.

Rename Sting shots to Commands. Have them use KC mechanics. Now you can Viper that LOSing healer without doing much damage to him, but if he insists on negating our range have him pay for it bit more.
Changing skill to use different but already done mechanics is cake to do. No more buttons, no less.

Yes your pet becomes more important for any spec with such thing. Maybe even enough to get bit more scaling and maybe resilience too witch Blizz is inclined to give. Pet now is far more valuable to hunter and bigger pain to enemy. Lets gib the pet, tanking one with resilience and talented last stand? Now that IS actual penalty for enemy since they wont Instagib the pet like now and in further wotlk. Is it OP? Hell no. If they manage to kill it you are without Mana Drain and some other neat stuff.

Blizzard stated that they want hunters to use their pets more regardless of spec. It just won't happen if they use Pet Focus for neat abilities + focus for dps or leave them at that 0-30% of hunter class.
Right now from what I have seen in Beta. I'll stay SV and pet will... well be there next to me while I grind to 80 downing mobs before they reach me. It will tank to fast elites to kite. And then there will be raids where I will use my loyal Turtle waiting near me at 100 focus to save someones ass.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...jerks/Sapa.png

 

TrevvyTrev

I'm not so sure about this list. For starters, "physical" is not the same as "not an enrage/frenzy". There are several "physical" effects that you have on the "will be affected" list, so what's the distinction?

 

mako

You seem to have contradicted yourself quite a bit, Sapa.

"Right now all 3 (yes 20/41/0 too) specs can do same dps with same amount of pet management and that's send pet, call pet back, send in + mend if needed."

Implies that your pet does enough DPS for SV to keep up with a BM hunter who uses his pet. Thus, you are losing significant DPS by letting your pet rot by your side instead of letting it chew on the boss. Mind explaining what you mean?

As for hunters desiring more escape mechanisms or utility, being exceptional at range is meaningless when it is trivial to close the gap and prevent the hunter from escaping far enough to attack properly. As a hunter without scatter shot, you need to trap/wing clip/trinket to escape, and then pray you can get enough shots in before the melee's shadowstep/intercept/etc is back up to get in your face again. It's cycle of running away and catching up, but hunters simply don't have as many opportunities to escape as other classes have to catch them.

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