Well, nerfing BM talents is no better than nerfing MM talents save for the fact that there are not many DPS taletns in the BM tree. But then again, if you don't take Marster Marksman or Marked for Death, you need to find a whole lot of talents. And given how, less than impressive a lot of the MM talents are (ahem Piercing Shots) I find that hard to do.
Any issue you associate with MM talents applies to BM too, but that seems ok. Why no nerf pet base damage? Or even better, nerf Cobra Strikes? As long as it is a DPS upgrade we will pick it, it just doesn't need to be as good.
But those nerfs MM and Surv, but you know what, not nearly as much as Steady.
What I meant about Surv is that Steady is important to them. What are they going to replace Steady with? Arcane? Multi? Aimed? Arcane is locked out, Multi is far too expensive for the value (and again Blizzard doesn't like that shot being single target DPS) and Aimed is still a talented shot in another tree, limiting the spec horribly. Survival is stuck with Steady. Nerfing Steady will then require a larger buff to Explosive. That in turn means Survival does unreliable DPS due to LnL proccing is so unsteady due to the low rate. Good DPS = luck. Nice eh. That in turn might lead Hunters to try and get as many LnL procs by trapping and taking a step back. That can work with PoNE (and trap talents) if Explosive is buffed enough. And Surv is back to being perhaps a little too good in PvP, but unreliable in PvE. Is that good?
Personaly I prefer Surv to have an evened out DPS, spread evenly among the three shots they use.
If they want us to use other shots than Steady, then make them better at the same time. Right now our choices are pretty bad and worse. MM at least already uses a good shot, and can talent another two shots up, if they so decide. Survival is stuck, and BM almost equally so. There needs to be some some carrot with the whip here.
[EDIT] Masterdragon pretty much said it. Buffs are buffing us insanely well right now. But while buffs will still be great, they won't improve. Kings on pets won't really do much as they don't recieve any other stats (affected by Kings) than Stamina. And the bonus from 10% AP buffs is pretty damn weak 2.2% of our AP gain since entering Naxx.
Last edited by KraxisSingular : 12/11/08 at 4:45 PM.
This thread seemed to be the best place to note this:
I use 2 Savage Cobalt Slicers (level 74 gear!) as they are not improved on until Cryptfiend's Bite 2H or raid gear 1H's. Be prepared to junk your slicers.
Cryptfiend's Bite is still bugged (only gives 20 RAP instead of 200 RAP). The issue is known however a fix is not listed in the 3.0.8 patch notes. Maybe it will get hotfixed.
Cryptfiend's Bite is still bugged (only gives 20 RAP instead of 200 RAP). The issue is known however a fix is not listed in the 3.0.8 patch notes. Maybe it will get hotfixed.
They said it would get fixed in a future patch I believe. Apparently not this one.
Shouldn't be really, but I guess it could be. What I think is the truth is that it is just not a high priority. It isn't a nerf. Fixes and required buffs tend to be pretty slow, or at the least one step at a time. It's sad since I know a fair few Hunters with it. Ah well I better find another two onehanders now my Slicers will be nerfed/fixed. But when they say they are being 'fixed' are they really? Or were the weapons just too well optimized for the stat-allocation?
Im rather new to actually paying attention to what happens with wow and not just playing it. This does seem like quite a few hits to our DPS as well as our pets even more. How often to things on the PTR get tested fully and then changed?
Im just a little worried about how hard of a hit this could possibly be. 10% pet damage and attack speed and around 400 DPS or so from steady shot could add up to more then it was meant to be. If there arnt people raiding on the PTR how would it be tested to see how this DPS drop would be changed in a situation like that?
Im rather new to actually paying attention to what happens with wow and not just playing it. This does seem like quite a few hits to our DPS as well as our pets even more. How often to things on the PTR get tested fully and then changed?
Im just a little worried about how hard of a hit this could possibly be. 10% pet damage and attack speed and around 400 DPS or so from steady shot could add up to more then it was meant to be. If there arnt people raiding on the PTR how would it be tested to see how this DPS drop would be changed in a situation like that?
Since it isn't necessarily important to know exactly how much dps we will be doing now, but rather or not we are still competitive and viable, I think they'll be able to extrapolate from 10mans and 5mans which will likely be run quite a lot on the PTR. Maybe a couple of 25 mans will run as well. Basically, the changes aren't really so fundamental as you make it out to be from estimates people are already making, and BM was already ahead by a very large margin (and thats where the nerfs focus). Not saying that debating the impact isn't meaningful, but I think they're not worried about Hunters (or even BM Hunters) becoming uncompetitive unless they see huge drops in even 5 man and 10 man dps samples.
I was only able to transfer my character and DL the initial PTR client, but the patch is, in fact, not available atm.
I did notice that the patch notes seemingly swapped out Unleashed Fury for Steady Shot on the nerf list. This could be promising that maybe further testing on their end showed the reduction to Steady Shot was too large of a hit for hunters across the board. As mentioned above, the Unleashed Fury nerf is a good one for further tuning down BM and also taking that "slightly" higher DPS edge away from MM while leaving Surv alone.
EDIT: Nevermind, the Steady Shot change is listed on the patch notes and I simply overlooked it. That means the Unleashed Fury nerf is in addition to the Kindred Spirits change. Hmm
I'll see if I can clarify my point about Master Marksman and Marked for Death. Those talents are not huge dps increases, and they don't create big scalars. There isn't a lot of room to nerf a 5/5 talent that goes up 1% per rank -- what do you do, make it 0.5% per rank? Additionally, things like piercing shots or barrage or efficiency or improved arcane are poor choices compared to Master Marksman and MFD now. Since you would have to nerf Master Marksman and MFD into the ground to make a noticeable dent in overall MM dps, all that would happen is that less attractive options become attractive. People might make barrage builds and use Aimed Shot, for example, since at that point it would be better than Master Marksman/MFD.
Let's say, for example, that Master Marks/MFD combined add 10% dps. Spending the points elsewhere only increases dps by 7%. You pick up Master Marks/MFD not because they are the only things that add any dps, but because they are the most dps per point, or most combined dps. If blizz wants to nerf MM damage by 5%, then they cut the value of MMarks/MFD in half. Again, this seems hard to do given how the talents work but we'll roll with it. The problem is that once they do that, people just pick up the other previously ignored talents for a 7% boost, because that's larger than 5% from the nerfed MMarks/MFD. Blizz is now 2% short of its nerf "target."
The same goes for Cobra Strikes in BM. Scorpid users don't always max Cobra Strikes, so nerfing it doesn't hit them the way it needs to if BM scorpid users are doing way too much damage. Plus Cobra Strikes only triggers from crits of certain shots, only up to 60% of the time, where it only adds damage to certain pet attacks. Using Shandara's pre-nerf spreadsheet, I only lost 2.6% dps when I went from 3/3 cobra strikes to 0/3. I'm pretty sure they want to nerf BM dps by more than 2.6%. Plus, I just took those 3 points and put them somewhere else (in the MM tree) and got half of the lost dps back, for a net loss of 1.3%. They are trying to significantly lower BM hunter dps, so it does no good to nickel-and-dime it or we'll get nerfed every patch. They are trying to hit all hunter specs, with the caveat that they want to give a little back to SV for being too low. Hence they targeted a shot we all use, and for the spec they want to hit harder (BM) they hit talents that everyone is going to get (lest they nerf themselves even more than Blizzard does).
Let's not forget that the designers believe (they specifically said as much) that a nerf to steady shot would nerf PvE damage while having less of an effect on PvP. That's another reason not to mess with MMarks/MFD -- nerfing those hits PvP MM hunters just as hard as PvE, and the last thing they are trying to do is mess with hunter PvP. Steady shot is a huge part of PvE damage, but not as much in PvP (it's still pretty big though).
The scaling issues are meaningless if all we do is complain that we won't scale as well as others. Blizzard has spreadsheets too. They plugged these numbers into their own models, and they have the luxury of being able to plug in stats from gear that we aren't anywhere close to seeing yet. They can run these against unreleased upgrades for other classes too. We need NUMBERS. We need to be able to identify the point where we can't catch other classes (if there is one). Is it at 8000 AP? 9000 spell power? Which abilities scale worse? GC said they aren't concerned with scaling issues if they don't crop up until unattainable levels of gear, because there will be other changes to address them by that point.
While Masterdragon brings up a good point, it's only the beginning of the story. A 1000 AP upgrade only adds 220 AP to the pet, but how much damage does 220 AP add to pet specials? If some other class has a .10 AP coefficient on an ability while pets have .30 on focus dumps (I just made those numbers up), then 220 AP on the pet is equivalent to 660 AP on the other player, and the scaling isn't as bad as we might have thought. 1000 AP adds 200 damage to serpent sting, plus another 30% if talented. Does 1000 AP add 200 damage to rupture? More? Less? How much? Can rogues talent rupture to do 30% more damage? I have no idea. These are the things we need to address.
Similarly, plugging values into our spreadsheet and saying, "with these changes my dps went from 3600 to 3240" isn't enough -- it's not the magnitude of the change that's important so much as where we stand afterwords compared to everyone else. The whole point of this exercise is to lower our dps because it's too high. Of course we will see a significant drop. We still need to plug equivalent gear into other class' spreadsheets -- if after the changes rogues in equivalent gear show their dps is 3200 or so, then mission accomplished. If the rogue spreadsheet shows them doing 4500 dps in the same kind of gear that only nets us 3240, and this also gets reflected in actual practice, then we have data that are worth talking about.
Originally Posted by KraxisSingular
What I meant about Surv is that Steady is important to them. What are they going to replace Steady with? Arcane? Multi? Aimed? Arcane is locked out, Multi is far too expensive for the value (and again Blizzard doesn't like that shot being single target DPS) and Aimed is still a talented shot in another tree, limiting the spec horribly. Survival is stuck with Steady. Nerfing Steady will then require a larger buff to Explosive. That in turn means Survival does unreliable DPS due to LnL proccing is so unsteady due to the low rate. Good DPS = luck. Nice eh.
Steady is important to every hunter. SV hunters aren't supposed to "replace" it. They are supposed to use it exactly as often as they do now, except now that it does less damage compared to instants and stings they won't have to ask dumb questions like "is it worth losing a steady shot for an arcane or explosive shot?" or "should I bother to use a GCD on serpent sting if it's not glyphed?" If hunters could replace steady with some other shot after this change, then they wouldn't be nerfing hunter damage.
Also, your point about LnL is a bit off. SV doesn't do "unreliable" dps just because LnL has a low proc rate. It's not like Blizzard doesn't know what the proc rate is or the average damage explosive shot will do to a stung target. If LnL procs are rare, then that just means they boost explosive shot to do more base damage because of the low likelihood of an LnL proc. They aren't going to tune the ability to only do decent damage on the occurrence of a rare event -- they will tune its damage on the assumption that most of the time, you won't have an LnL proc boost. Also it's worth saying yet another time that explosive shot may not be the only thing they do to boost SV damage. They may boost other talents too. It's not final.
I believe both are still there. So the total nerf tally ends up being:
Reduced Steady Shot Attack Power gains by 50%
Reduced Pet Damage by 10%
Reduced Pet Attack Speed by 10%
No, because they've reduced pet damage from both SA (10%) and UF (5%). Given the effects multiply... 17.5% pet damage reduction.
TrevyTrev - Unfortunately, the fact is that Blizzard have a poor record on correcting or even understanding scaling issues, or I'd agree with you. Also, the entire reason that certain pets are better than others is that their abilities scale well - and Blizzard are also nerfing those. (Note that's not a complaint, those abilites are too good right now, but it's why they're superior)
I agree we need to compare with other classes, and I'm trying to persuade Rawr to run so I can do that. (I've allways had issues with it, sigh).
To answer the question, 5-point Rupture scales with 30% of AP. Most abilities physical damage classes have which are on short cooldowns or finishing moves scale with 25-30% of AP...our equivalent, arcane shot, scales with 17.5%.
Maybe nitpicking, but you are both (and probably others) deceiving yourself a bit here!
Reducing a buff of 20% to 15% is not a 5% damage decrease, but something closer to 4% (if d was initial damage, you'd now do 1.15d instead of 1.2d, and as such 1.15d/1.2d (wich is about 0.958) of your previous damage).
This becomes very clear if you consider a hypothetical 100% damage increase buff - if that buff had been nerfed to become a 0% damage increase, no one would believe that the damage of the pet (or whatever) had been reduced by 100%, that is to 0.
TrevyTrev - Unfortunately, the fact is that Blizzard have a poor record on correcting or even understanding scaling issues, or I'd agree with you.
...
To answer the question, 5-point Rupture scales with 30% of AP. Most abilities physical damage classes have which are on short cooldowns or finishing moves scale with 25-30% of AP...our equivalent, arcane shot, scales with 17.5%.
Regarding the first part, there's not much point to providing feedback if you truly believe that the persons reading it are too stupid to understand it or too lazy to implement it. It's not like we here at EJ get to make the game. We can either (a) have more faith in Blizzard's abilities going forward, (b) come up with concrete data to help them understand whatever we think they don't or (c) go do something else instead of wasting time posting.
Regarding the second part, Rupture is more aptly compared to Serpent sting, not arcane shot, but that's still a 10% disadvantage (serpent scales at 20%). Arcane shot is 15%, not 17.5%, for the sake of completeness. So the point still is at what point does our scaling fall behind?
Last edited by TrevvyTrev : 12/11/08 at 8:53 PM.
Reason: clarification
Damn, I meant Cobra Reflexes. It adds almost as much DPS as full Unleashed Fury or Kindred Spirits after the nerf. And that for 2 pet points.
I suppose Blizzard has given up on having BM a viable PvP spec then. If the DPS talents of MM hurts PvP, it is safe to assume the same for BM. Then the question becomes, why have pvp aspects in the tree that only BM can get like Animal Handler. I know, not huge, but it is there. Why not come clean then? It isn't as if I have much use for 50 sec (rather than 60 sec) Master's Call when I raid.
If we look at the top WWS for Patch, and remove the #1 because it really is a strange one (looks to be a private server). Then Hunters do quite well. They top three, like HAT Rogues, though less considerably than them. The rest is various other classes. Of those three, two are stacking Call of the Wild, without that they would not be dominating those parses. And even in one of them a Mage sneaks in between the Hunters. Mages generally match Hunters in those, if slightly behind. Warlocks trail a little behind, and Warriors and Boomkins both manage to get up and harry the top DPS.
Now... these are likely very good players all, so I won't comment on their skills obviously, but it is relatively safe to assume they have a generally good gearing going on. Meaning, they are beyond the Blue/green stage and well into the Purple stage. Hunter do well, but nothing like the dominance we see earlier.
Is that scaling hitting us in the back? Or is it that only great players of other classes can ever match Hunter (but can), or do everyone byut those that can match Hunters generally suck? Personally I think it is none of that. I think it is because we go in with good Hit quite often, and out pets get that hit (overall). We Hit out very fast, other classes might not be as lucky. But by the time Naxx is over they are generally Hit out too. So they have caught up to that. Meanwhile the buffs that really boost pets have begun to diminish in relative value, so the huge returns from BS/BoM are absorbed a little by other classes getting more personal AP/SP.
A nerf to the positions in those reports won't hurt. Though, it wouldn't take much before those Hunters drop down the list a fair bit. If the nerfs pre- Unreleashed Fury were about 9%, those after would be around 11-12%. Taking that amount from the Hunters listed is hurtful indeed. They will no longer be even among top 5 with a single representative, and some will drop out of top 10 too. That's not great... And I hope as a class we can take such a hit.
If we could trust Blizzard on scaling and balance in general, then firstly we wouldn't need the PTR, secondly there would never have been downright bad specs. Surv right now comes to mind. It must have looked ok from their point of view when they nuked Explosive Shot. There would be good and better specs. Right now that isn't how it is. There are specs that just aren't good enough for what they do and bring. They do have their sheets, but apparently they fail more often than they would like to. And that is why I'm a little loathe to just nod and accept this nerf when we have barely touched raiding gear. If we owned the charts when everone was hitcapped and buffs were no longer so impressive (I mean my pet currently doubles AP with raidbuffs if not more), then it is safe to assume we were basicallt too good. Now it is much harder to determine if we are scaling even across the specs and classes.
Oh, forgot mention, we will likely take an indirect nerf too. JoW is currently listed as going to be a percentage of base mana. I suppose they didn't like ours and Enhancers' good synergy with JoW, and must have feared no Viper uptime at higher gear levels. But that one will have to wait until testing. I wonder if they will differentiate between the classes, I mean 3% base mana for a Mage is pretty poor given their slow casts and low base manapool, but for a Hunter it is an upgrade.
Last edited by KraxisSingular : 12/11/08 at 9:17 PM.
Regarding the first part, there's not much point to providing feedback if you truly believe that the persons reading it are too stupid to understand it or too lazy to implement it. It's not like we here at EJ get to make the game. We can either (a) have more faith in Blizzard's abilities going forward, (b) come up with concrete data to help them understand whatever we think they don't or (c) go do something else instead of wasting time posting.
Regarding the second part, Rupture is more aptly compared to Serpent sting, not arcane shot, but that's still a 10% disadvantage (serpent scales at 20%). Arcane shot is 15%, not 17.5%, for the sake of completeness. So the point still is at what point does our scaling fall behind?
The comparison was between abilities which are used periodically, if that's because they are on a short cooldown (Bloodthirst, 50% AP) or because they require combo points to finish (Eviscarate, 30% AP).
If I had faith in Blizzard, I'd not be posted here at all.
And yes, my bad, I was thinking of talented arcane shot.
KraxisSingular - Well, there are problems with HAT rogues and damage, they're using bugs to get extremely high damage. However, there are also issues with scorpids and the double dipping on AoTB. That, along with stacking call of the wild is certainly producing a distorted picture, as is the short fight duration and the hawk (beast)-viper regen model.
It seems to me that the readiness nerf, removing COTW stacking, and fixing scorpids alone would be enough to bring us in line with the returns I am seeing from other classes. There are a few People in my guild already riding my tail, now that I use a non readiness BM build.
I never really used COTW stacking, as we decided not to rush into raiding as a guild.
As I see everyone get gear now, everyone is catching up rather fast, while my new gear changes are not effecting me as much anymore as they did when I leveled.
My worry is the same as everyone else's: that these nerfs will ultimately mean we will fall behind quickly as new gear comes out. I already find it ironic that Boomkin are being left alone, yet they are a hybrid doing more DPS then pure DPS classes.
Rupture is a dot applied every 16 seconds (assuming combo points, which is all but certain after 16 seconds), and serpent sting is a dot applied every 15 seconds, so those seem more similar. The instant abilities with short cooldowns, like Bloodthirst, are more similar to arcane shot. That's all I was getting at.
I'm not really suggesting that anyone should have blind faith (or any faith) in Blizzard, but if they don't actually believe that Blizz will monitor the scaling issues going forward then there's no sense in pointing them out, even here. We should be trying to determine the impact of the changes and whether it will alter our rotations, gear choices or talent allocation.
Come to think of it, why aren't we doing more of that, again?
Even if steady shot is nerfed, it will still be used about the same amount of time as it is now, since everything else we have is on 10 second plus CDs, or has shared cool downs.
The most our rotations will change is using an arcane in place of every 4th steady shot, or using a aimed / multi.
Since arcane's CD doesn't fit well with a aimed / multi's cd, it is hard to use arcane every time it is up, as well as weaving a 15 second serpent.
I really don't want to be forced to have to try a cast sequence macro to maintain a proper rotation, as I find it important to pay attention to my surroundings, and having so many CDs to overlap might make that a bit hard.
Come to think of it, why aren't we doing more of that, again?
For me? Because the stated goals and what's happening are not matching up. GC stated he wanted to encourage me to use shots other than steady, but the spreadsheet, as things stand, mean that I'm not rewarded for this with anything but a more complex rotation.
Also, the premise of the nerfs themselves (that our damage is overly high) looks based at least in part on the AoTB bug.
It seems to me that the readiness nerf, removing COTW stacking, and fixing scorpids alone would be enough to bring us in line with the returns I am seeing from other classes. There are a few People in my guild already riding my tail, now that I use a non readiness BM build.
I never really used COTW stacking, as we decided not to rush into raiding as a guild.
As I see everyone get gear now, everyone is catching up rather fast, while my new gear changes are not effecting me as much anymore as they did when I leveled.
My worry is the same as everyone else's: that these nerfs will ultimately mean we will fall behind quickly as new gear comes out. I already find it ironic that Boomkin are being left alone, yet they are a hybrid doing more DPS then pure DPS classes.
Quite agreed *nods to Ketari*. Looking at those top 2-11 WWS for Patch which really should be our domain, short but not that short. Then the Hunters that do use non-Scorpids are the ones doing fair to good DPS. The Scorpid Hunters are the ones topping out. Considering that the non-Scorpids are all Cats, which get nerfed too... well the picture is not pretty anymore.
I haven't heard any Hunter comlpain about Readiness or Call of the Wild getting axed. Nor the Scorpid or even Cat (I just hope the Cat will still be good enough). Why not try those out as they were obvioulsy the big offenders? And even with those other classes are catching up.
Heck Boomkins got a nice AoE boost... as if they need that. We are top AoE with them, we get nerfed badly in AoE, and while a little too much for my tastes (given the cost), it is fair.
And now JoW nerf... JoW procs will grant us 101 mana (2% base mana from the looks of it). That's a pretty considerable nerf given our pools have been going upwards of 13k. That means more Viper and with Arcane entering the picure with it's great 15% scaling we need to either glyph for it or use Viper more. And worse yet, previously casters were so-so on JoW, but they accepted it, melee was harder to convince (save Enhancers), now it is going to be pretty tough given that a Mage will get a whopping 65 mana. So on a single Pally fight with just slight AoE JoL wins out easily. I'm not sold on using Arcane glyphed is going to be better than giving the better scaling Serpent Sting another tick (basically what that glyph does is lower the cost by 20% with the added benefit of a 1/5th GCD won) and forgetting Arcane existed unless we have loads of mana. Arcane has to get some carrot to the whip of Steady, it isn't very good right now and it will only get worse as we get better weapons and ammo.
Last edited by KraxisSingular : 12/11/08 at 10:26 PM.
I know nerfing is inevitable because of the way hunters top dps charts right now. But looking at the severe changes, I feel that pet survivability is all the more important now that our avg dps is lowered. I hope that Blizzard can give us something in return in regards to that. I don't like the way people are using Patchwerk to gauge which class has op dps and which not, because usually we don't get bosses where we just stand there and use all our cooldowns. There are always bosses like Sartharion, Globbulus, dragon in Nax which kills our pet. I mean, it doesn't help that the pet and the hunter itself are two separate entities and taking two aoe dots at the same time. Maybe a better mend pet, or a way to clear dot would be something I'll like to see.
I'm not sure where Blizzard is heading when they say that they wanted pets to have equal dps as they don't want to see hunters all running around with the same pet. To me, it's quite impossible to achieve that unless the pets have the same abilities. In intense raiding guild where every dps count, it's only inevitable that there is one pet that do the best dps, and hunters will thus bring that. The only way they could change that is to include non-stackable raid-wide special abilities of pets, like wolves' howl or something.
Finally, I hope that BM hunters will get a better 51 point talent. I mean it seriously doesn't make sense that most bm hunters do not place a point in the last tier of their main spec.
12/11/08, 4:36 PM
But when they say they are being 'fixed' are they really? Or were the weapons just too well optimized for the stat-allocation?
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