Upcoming Hunter Changes - Page 18

Skyrider · 12/12/08, 6:06 PM

hopefully they find a way to make it so that it takes some skill and practice to be a good hunter again. I am a little irritated that they removed so much of the mechanics of the class and now people who used to be horrible at being a hunter are now leading in damage by huge amounts just because they can actually manage to spam a button.

You say this, but there are still plenty of terrible hunters that can just barely break even with other classes as is.

Fact of the matter always is a good hunter is infinitely better than a bad one, shot macro or no macro.

tieren · 12/12/08, 6:07 PM

Originally Posted by Faerdael

Of course mileage will vary greatly on the value of this talent. If you're MM, the extra Chimera you get also means a bit more. Also have to factor in Rapid Recuperation talent, your level of haste (which will decrease its benefit), where else you would spend this talent point, etc.

My thought was that it frees up points for more playing room with imp arcane, or efficiency and imp mark, or even focused aim if not hit capped.

Mastodon · 12/12/08, 6:53 PM

Originally Posted by 3.0.8 Patch notes

Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60). Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid. Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them. All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.

Am I reading this right? Is Blizzard planning on making feral staves into a viable option for hunters?

With the armor and feral AP on weapons changes, it seems like they are trying to move from druids being the only class that wants them (and them being the only ones druids want). I looked at a number of the feral staves from Naxx, and if each point of STR was converted into 2 AP, some of them would be as good as, if not better than, the polearms and 2h swords currently available to us. [The Undeath Carrier], for example, would be amazing if the 77 STR were converted to 154 AP.

It certainly would be a welcome change, as the current 2h options for us are severely limited at the moment. I've also always wondered if they were ever going to give us another staff after Lok'Delar.

I guess the only question is, how much are druids going to bitch when we start rolling on "their" weapons?

Alex234 · 12/12/08, 7:25 PM

Have someone tested already "new" hunter on PTR ?

Skyrider · 12/12/08, 7:32 PM

Originally Posted by Alex234

Have someone tested already "new" hunter on PTR ?

I was unaware the PTR was even live yet.

Dralmoo · 12/12/08, 7:54 PM

PTR is live but very laggy.

One bit of good news, [Cryptfiend's Bite] does appear to be fixed and granting the correct amount of RAP.

Skyrider · 12/12/08, 8:05 PM

Thanks for the info, I'll be sure to set my WWS up and get to running tests with the different shot rotations, changes.

What's the best time of the day for PTR testing 4 am?

Ketari · 12/12/08, 9:10 PM

Originally Posted by Blizz patch notes

* Glyph of Serpent Sting - Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 6 sec. (Up from 3 sec)
* Spirit Strike (Spirit Beast) now deals its damage over 6 seconds, down from 10.

Okay.

So spirit beasts are fixed and... an allready good glyph is now pretty much essential. Hmm.

Perforate · 12/12/08, 9:30 PM

Originally Posted by Ketari

Okay.

So spirit beasts are fixed and... an allready good glyph is now pretty much essential. Hmm.

Wow at serpent sting glyph now. Thats 4 GCD's before I have to refresh it? And its a damage increase for serpent overall isnt it? Seems like it lasting 6s longer per cast will net much less casts of the skill during a boss fight and save you some mana.

greendef · 12/12/08, 10:44 PM

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

Here are two changes we are going to try on the PTR.

Explosive Shot -- damage increased substantially (e.g. from 260 to 520 base at rank 4), and additional scaling added to compensate. No longer deals AE damage to other targets.

Arcane Shot -- mana cost lowered to the cost of Steady Shot.

It seems Arcane Shot might actually be used now, as for Explosive, I guess we'll have to test it and see if it makes Survival competitive. No mention about Explosive shot DoT effect though, so I guess Survival hunters will still have to alternate Explosive and Steady on LnL procs.

Edit: Clarification.

KraxisSingular · 12/12/08, 11:44 PM

Originally Posted by Ketari

Okay.

So spirit beasts are fixed and... an allready good glyph is now pretty much essential. Hmm.

Ok, that glyph just killed the current Arcane Glyph, I as already not convinced it was better than Serpent Sting glyphed up. I really hope that glyph changes to 20% damage, which would make it very much interesting. Think about it. Steady is 10%, but it is our most spammed shot even post-nerf. A cooldown affected instant like Arcane is limited in how effective it could be. Talenting it would still be rather hard to argue for, but it might just be a viable option. It would begin to sit there in the sweetspot where people can't say one way or the other is best. And I assume that's the place they want stuff to be in, especially for a new 'essential' shot. And one musn't forget, Arcane is not Steady in mana, so 20% less mana is a very small amount (50 mana in fact) given it is only gained over 6 seconds. Poor returns as mana reduction.

Btw, Spirit Beast isn't fixed like that. Spirit Strike's synergy with Longevity is... No mentin of critablity or scaling better. Currently I have seen it from WWS reports to tick about 30% more than my own cat's Rake ticks, and it can not only crit but it has three ticks on top of the hit. But it is good to see this change, it was kinda stupid that the pet almost required Longevity in some format, but didn't work with it. Pretty bad design, but one that has been fixed now.

The overall small changes are moving in the right direction (there is some carrot coming for us), however it doesn't change my own worry about scalability come Ulduar, or even in highly geared raids currently. We'll see I suppose.

milkabull · 12/13/08, 12:33 AM

Can anyone verify how badly the cat and scorpid were nerfed in the PTR?

Has anyone found a winning shot rotation and spec yet?

Just looking for any new info.

XereX · 12/13/08, 12:40 AM

I have read the post by GC where he mentions, skill coefficient is changing for Scorpid and Cat but he dose not explain the new values.

Anyone done some testing to see how much of nerf those two pets recived? I am to a degree, less interested in the actual DPS lose on fight like patchwrek and more interested in knowing what the coefficient value changed too.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Catalept · 12/13/08, 4:59 AM

I wouldn't read the Serpent Glyph change as a guaranteed buff. Certainly for MM hunters it's a flat DPS boost, and was probably done for that exact reason. However, at +6 seconds it becomes a 21-second duration, which aliases with 6 second shots (Arcane, Explosive).

IMO, BM and SV specs should treat Serpent as an 18-second duration for the purposes of calculating rotations, with the added 3 seconds functioning simply as a buffer against lag to ensure that Serpent doesn't fall off before it gets refreshed... i.e. it guarantees that the Steady glyph (and Noxious Stings) applies to every single shot.

Æthien · 12/13/08, 5:07 AM

Originally Posted by Perforate

Wow at serpent sting glyph now. Thats 4 GCD's before I have to refresh it? And its a damage increase for serpent overall isnt it? Seems like it lasting 6s longer per cast will net much less casts of the skill during a boss fight and save you some mana.

It's a 40% upgrade from the serpent sting portion of Chimera damage over an unglyphed sting.