◊ s4dfish

And on the Seventh Day, Tank Time rested.

 

Starwind

I was thinking about this and in my version the hunter would receive a run buff when within 20 yards of the pet as opposed to or in addition to a seperation buff when further than 20 yards from your pet. Overall I agree with your position that we must have a method to ensure that we know how far we are from "something" for specific talents and I think your buff suggestion would probably be the easiest to implement.

 

Kedour

Sorry, but did you just suggest getting exactly what Separation Anxiety does right now, or did I misunderstand?

 

Aerynlore

BM Tier 2 already has 4 talents, so it's impossible to fit another talent there. I concur that we have one throw-away point to get to T3, but there's no room to fit a fifth talent. You can't drop Imp RP or FF because those are the staple 4 points. Are you suggesting dumping Imp Monkey or Thick Hide? By doing that, you either upset some BM PvPers or those who hope for the MainTanking Pet.

It feels like Blizzard was hoping BMers would go 2/2 ImpRP OR 2/2 FF and then 3/3 ImpMon OR 3.3 TH. And we just thew that out the window. We can't really move either of the 3 pointers into T3, because there is already a "mandatory" 5/5 pointer there. That's why I suggested replacing Catlike Reflexes. It's deep enough that you aren't going to be getting it from the MM or Sv specs, but shallow enough that you still have lots of choices about how to get to it, and how to avoid it if that's just not your style. I think adding to the -hit on spells would be a huge boon to the PvP side of BM, but it might be a little too powerful to allow an MM or Sv spec to have it.

 

Iod

I believe he was suggesting that an actual buff/debuff show up (or perhaps even the Combat Text pop up up something like it does with ensnares in beta) to give a visual cue that the skill is in effect (and which aspect of it is active).

Edit: Nevermind, I don't think he saw that you get a speed increase when your pet is near you.

 

Kedour

Okay. I'd imagine that will be the only way it works (or at least showing the Separated buff and leaving the run speed increase as default), since they never really show us any other information about range besides a skill being usable or not.

 

Galred

One question which keeps coming up for me as a BM hunter is this:

For a 25-man raid, does Blizzard want to have 2 of each class plus 5 "whatever" slots, or does Blizzard want 2 of each class plus 5 "decide which great stuff you'd like" slots?

The reason it comes up is that I can see how a raid will want an SV hunter for sure, and with the buffs to MM a Marks hunter (raidwide TSA, solid DPS) is a good investment, but without changes to Ferocious Inspiration a BM hunter looks less attractive to a raid leader.

Now, the fix that has been tossed around is making FI raid-wide, and would certainly fit in better with the current design of making buffs for the whole raid. Unfortunately doing so would move the MM hunter into the less-desirable spot (3% damage buff > 225 AP buff for physical DPS only) even if FI didn't stack, which it shouldn't if it's a raid-wide buff.

What I suggest instead is making FI more powerful but remain party-only: 3%/6%/9% instead of 1%/2%/3%. I feel this would make a BM hunter pretty desirable for your "best DPS" group without becoming a requirement for your raid group, especially if BM remains the highest-DPS hunter spec.

The other change I'd like to see is turning Animal Handler into 50%/100% of your hit rating going toward your pet. This would help BM pets scale even better, and it's far down enough in the tree that only deep BM builds will take it.

EDIT: Typo.

 

Spiry

Move Thick Hide to T1, drop it to 2 points, same effect. Shrink ET to 3 points, 2/4/6% (so 1% buff). Maybe link the two? Add "Poisoned Fangs" to T2 for 2 points.

We then have in T1: 5 3->2
and T2: 2 3 2 2

A nice filler to T3 (may only take 1/2 iRP) and synergy with scorpid sting!

 

Grelif

I believe Blizzard have already said that pets will be receiving full benefits from their master's hit rating in response to warlocks, which would make any version of animal handler unnecessary. I'm pleased with what I'm seeing so far with these changes.

 

Galred

My recollection is that Blizzard said IF they bive the master's hit rating to warlock pets they'd probably give it to hunter pets also. I haven't been following the warlock changes, does anyone know whether pets are getting the master's hit rating in the current Beta build?

EDIT: Here's the link:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Pet Hit %

"If we do it for Warlocks, we'll do it for Hunters too (%hit). "

 

Starwind

Sorry, I wasn't clear. You would receive a run buff icon when within 20 yards of your pet if talented for SA.

 

Lhivera

Misdirect + Distracting Shot now = send loose mob wherever you want, regardless of current threat?

At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.

 

Crowbite

You're over reacting. We don't know what the final numbers look like and remember Marksman looked like the highest dps tree when TBC came out. A raid wide TSA is hardly a good enough raid buff to drop the BM hunter unless they are almost exactly even in term of personal dps. Also a 9% party DPS buff becomes a must have buff, especially if it stacks like the current version does.

 

◊ s4dfish

interesting synergy that could see some 'unintended' perks for keeping clothies in line :P

And on the Seventh Day, Tank Time rested.

 

Kedour

I'm not sure what Blizzard plans, but I think BM will still be up there in DPS. I think people are underestimating a 51 point BM's pet, especially with the abilities that Devilsaurs and Chimeras have. On top of them having great DPS, they'll have good group buffs.

It seems that a Survival Hunter, Beast Mastery Hunters (with pet specceds something like this: Pet Calculator - Wowhead), a shaman and a feral druid in a group will still be incredible DPS. With Call of the Wild (any beta hunters want to test if this will stack, and if so how many?) I think it'd be incredible to have Bloodlust/Heroism go up with 2 of these. Otherwise use them in succession for the full 40 seconds. The other thing is this group could be very low on the healing needed with Improved Leader of the Pack and high crit rates, and very mana effective with BM Hunters having Invigoration and Survival Hunters having Hunting Party.

We may also have more of a place in 10 mans right now, since there would be fewer physical DPS to benefit from Expose Weakness and True Shot Aura, and we'll have the superior group damage buffs (at least compared to Marksmanship).

 

Aerynlore

The wording on Misdirect is that it moves your threat around. I thought it interesting that they chose to compare the new Dist Shot to Mocking Blow, and not Taunt. Mocking Blow just forces that victim to attack you, but doesn't change your threat. Taunt forces the victim to attack you and ups your own threat to match whomever is highest. So basically, Mocking Blow does no threat, so I'm sure that it won't "synergize" with Dist Shot.

Also, then rogues would really hate us, because we could instantly kill them at any point. Much as I would love that.

 

TrevvyTrev

Nope, I wasn't suggesting replacing anything in tier 2 -- I just spaced on actual physical limitations to spots in a given tier, so my idea won't work. Catlike reflexes is a possible candidate, but I'm not sure people are going to want to spend 3 points for scorpid synergy that deep in the tree -- it's pretty heavy already, as you noted. That deep, people tend to expect damage boosts or significant group utility. Some combination of both our ideas might be worth 3 points that deep, however, and we could add the pet dodge bonus into the Tenacity tree if needed (similar to bestial swiftness). My sense is it might be more trouble than it's worth, though.

edit: One final thing we could do is remove the spell hit portion from my proposed talent, and add it to Tier 1. I'm just not sure whether we could make it interesting enough to convince BM to use stings, yet balanced enough so that it wasn't OP for Tier 1.

EDIT:

The issue with this is that it just redistributes the "throwaway" point. You either go 1/2 imp revive (probably not) or 1/2 poisoned fangs ("PF"). The "leftover" point comes from 2/2 FF and 2/2 Imp revive, so we're looking for someplace to put one after you've maxxed those. Your proposal works better if PF is only 1 point, with the only problem being that Blizzard might view 3/3 ET in Tier 1 as too easy of a pickup for the other specs.

 

msg

0 sec - Viper Sting
7 sec - Chimera Shot
15 sec - Viper Sting
22 sec - Chimera Shot
29 sec - Viper sting
37 sec - Chimera shot

Etc.

Considering that viper sting lasts 8 sec (and you can alternate either Viper or Chimera every 7-8 sec), you can keep it up permanently.

 

Spiry

With regards to this. Assume that the 2/3 Thick Hide is the new 2/2 Poisoned Fangs, and remember that animal handler (as it stands) is slated to be useless (for pve dps) as pets get the Hunter's hit rating. While there may be disagreements with the top of the tree (I do quite like longevity), the fillers throughout the the tree would still mesh.

 

Tyranna

I'm inclined to agree with this and also add a little. Spell pushback, which is the main reason to stick a pet on a caster is going away in WotLK. So aside from mediocre damage, I predict arena pets will be chosen for what sort of extra utility they can add to the hunter, not how much extra damage they can do. You can go with a tenacity pet for the reasons stated above, or cunning for a little addition to your bag of tricks. I don't see ferocity being so big in arenas except maybe on DPS heavy burst teams as BM. All in all, I think this indicates that there might really be some pet diversity in 80 arenas.

 

TrevvyTrev

I see the sting refresh as key to making Chimera Shot worth the trouble, so the way to go here might be to give priests a little more defense against Viper, without necessarily giving them a free pass on poisons. What if they made PW:S absorb mana drains too? So if a PW:S absorbs 3000 damage, it would absorb any combination of damage and mana drain up to 3000 points before fading. That way you'd still have an incentive to group with a poison dispeller, but you wouldn't be totally defenseless against Viper Sting without one. Plus, you'd still have to use some tactics to break LoS long enough to keep the hunter from doing a perma-cycle on you, just as people have to try to LoS Manaburn, etc.

I wouldn't count out ferocity -- Heart of the Phoenix is a free rez, while Bloothirsty could result in some decent health regen to offset some of the damage that people are going to unleash on it. But the real sleeper pets could be cunning. They will be extremely hard to get away from (dash/dive can be up constantly, focus permitting), and with the devs expressly declining to apply any resilience to pets, the only crit protection available to any pet is through the Cornered talent. Cornered + Blood Frenzy + Kill Command + Kill Shot = PAIN.

 

Galred

Allow me to clarify a bit!

I very much like the idea that each hunter spec is useful for a raid. The debate about which spec your 2nd/3rd hunter should have will play out during the expansion itself, since so many things are being changed and tweaked during Beta. My preference would be to have 2 hunter specs offering a raid buff and one spec (BM) offering a really good party buff because I think that is a more interesting tradeoff than "which raid buff would we like more". Improving FI seemed like a natural way to go; it would be up to the design team to make sure it wasn't so overpowered as to be required.

I expect BM to be noticeably ahead on personal DPS when compared to an MM hunter in the expansion, just not as huge a gap as we have now in TBC. Some hunters prefer MM over the other 2 specs and it would be great if they can be viable but not necessarily 'best' in WotLK.

The initial part of my post wasn't necessarily directed only towards hunters (need more coffee today, clearly). It's a design question... assuming 2 of each class, will the talent builds be such that the raid would like 1 of each spec of each class and that the people building a raid, and by association a raiding force, will need to decide which buffs and synergies will be best? Or is it that we will build a "core" of 20 raiders, and mix up the remaining 5 spots according to what works best for the raid encounters?

 

Kaejin

Definitely curious about how this will effect Misdirect, but I'm still glad for the change. No more trying to use Distracting Shot over and over late into the fight to save my pet or else someone else in a raid only to have it do nothing because I'd recently FD'd or something.

I'm kind of sad to see Bear Trap go, but this is a good change. Freezing Trap becomes less brittle, we regain a keybinding, and hopefully we finally gain the ability to use Viper Sting while the target is trapped.

Now, if Bear Trap had summoned an actual pack of bears, I would be pretty upset.

I really like this idea. The idea of traps in the first place is to catch someone off guard, and when they see a hunter all of that kind of goes out the window.

I suspect when Koraa says limited, that means we'll have to unstealth before we can start attacking or something similar. Kind of like how they changed Shadowmeld so NE couldn't Aimed Shot from it anymore. Now I'm just curious about the cooldown.

Now I'm pretty excited about the talent in general, but this part makes me really curious. Will anyone who chooses to trinket out of Freezing Trap then be rooted? I can only hope. Also, more snakes can only be a good thing, but it would have been interesting if the talent instead made them immune to AoE or something like that.

 

Rivkah

It seems to me that the solution to the making int valuable to hunters problem is not entirely in the area of careful aim, although it's a step in the right direction. Really since hunters are pretty much the only high mana using class that does not gain any benefit from spell crit, I think they should give us a certain amount of trained benefit to int instead of making it all talent based. Perhaps, something like 0.5 AP per int, then make careful aim a 1 or 2 point talent that gives us the additional 0.5 AP per int and perhaps tacks on a small amount of crit too. Something along those lines anyhow- it just seems silly to require a 3 point investment in a talent to get any real benefit from int given how many other more valuable talents are already stuffed into that area in the marks tree.

In terms of the people saying that FI should be raidwide, unless things are vastly changed I still see BM being the dominant dps tree, so FI doesn't really need to be raidwide to make it competitive, it's already a fairly strong buff. Plus, with a higher focus on 10 mans, raidwide buffs are only going to really be exciting in 25 mans, in a 10 man you're already getting a large percentage of the value of the talent.

 

TrevvyTrev

Typically trinkets and similar mechanics (like Cloak of Shadows) count as a "remove" instead of a dispel, and don't trigger reactive effects that could result from a dispel.