3.1 Upcoming Changes - Page 32

stoagie · 03/03/09, 8:04 AM

I know this is a minor change but I still think BM and MM hunters should be allowed to trigger LnL with SS. Removing it reduces our Pvp playstyle options and I think MM and BM hunters need all the pvp help they can get.

Of course trapping is the best way to trigger LnL but you can't always rely on a trap: cooldowns; easy to see; Freezing Arrow aim time. I liked knowing that I had a chance of additional burst whilst on the move, kiting or strafing.

Seems like an unnecessary change to me but perhaps it is to enhance the uniqueness of Survival playstyle.

Uzug · 03/03/09, 8:08 AM

My concern over the current changes with Black Arrow, and rumoured changes with Trap Launcher, is to what it does/will do to SV Hunter cc capability.

On live atm, the maximum possible SV raid dps may well be by trap dancing, but it is marginal increase over Sniper Training, and would be even smaller if the hidden 30 second cooldown affected Frost Trap too, which we suspect to be a bug anyway. If fixed, any extra dps through trap procced LnL (over straight Sniper) would be fairly minor and pretty situational, depending upon Boss encounter.

On Test atm you have BA, itself a DoT, not only proccing extra LnLs but also providing a boost to the rest of your damage. As BA shares a cooldown with our traps you immediately have the issue of Max Damage = No traps.

If the proposed Trap Launcher changes go ahead as well, assuming that a refreshed Immolation Trap also resets the cooldown on traps, you are pretty much locked out of trap based cc if you want to maximise your dps, and let's face it, SV Hunters will be dps balanced by Blizzard based upon use of those two Talents. Mages don't have to give up Polymorph to maximise their damage, Priests don't have to lose the ability to Shackle Undead etc, why should Hunters lose the ability to cc with traps, to be able to maximise theirs? It just seems wrong to me.

I guess my point is that I believe this is just poor, clunky/lazy design, and brings up concerns about just what we will see in Ulduar and beyond. I was hoping that the AoE-fest that WotLK has been so far would be moderated somewhat with more reliance on cc in the future, especially as more classes have some cc now. The current Blizzard mantra of "bring the player, not the class" can still apply, even if the amount of cc needed is ramped up.

I find it ironic that if all the changes and proposed changes go through, MM and BM Hunters will be the ones able to trap an add whilst still pumping out max dps and SV won't.

Breakerone · 03/03/09, 9:23 AM

I might see a valid concern about PvP, but I dont really understand what leads people to think that the refresh of the trap by ES will reset its cooldown. Is there something similar going on with skills from other classes? If not, I dont see a reason, why a duration refresh every 6 seconds should reset a much longer trap cd, because it would definetly make one of both worthless, so why implement it in the same tree? (Unless the whole trap launching thing was not meant to be for PvE)

Right now I would think it could work quite well for single target bosses, launching the trap at the beginnig of the fight, and using all subsequent cd's for BA and refreshing the trap "duration" with ES. I dont see a reason to interpret too much into it until its implemented. Who can say how trap launcher will work? It might just as well have its own "launcher" cd, independently overwriting or not using the regular trap cd, which is only used for direct placement of the trap.

Uzug · 03/03/09, 10:06 AM

Maybe using the word "assuming" in my line about refreshing the trap cooldown wasn't the best route to take considering it was pretty irrelevant to my main concern, so let's ignore the refreshing of Immolation Trap for now, as you rightly say, we have no idea what mechanic Blizzard will use with Trap Launcher yet. I guess simplifying my concern would be that atm BA shares cooldown with traps, meaning to have on-demand traps for cc'ing you would have to sacrifice the 3% from BA boosting, plus the BA damage itself, plus whatever extra damage you'd get from BA LnL procs.

I have no problem with Immolation, Explosive or Snake Trap sharing a cooldown with BA but I really think the pure cc traps of Frost, but particularly Freezing should not. It cripples utility and that's not good when you might be fighting for raid places against other classes that don't lose utility whilst maxing dps.

Kiera · 03/03/09, 10:32 AM

removed

JSorrentino · 03/03/09, 11:33 AM

Another minor change I had seen on PTR is in shot macro'ing kill shot into somthing like steady or whatever.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Kill Shot
/cast Steady Shot

.. now this will break your shots on PTR. Not sure if it's intended (probably), but just something to note.

It's annoying because I could simply ignore KS and let the macro do the work, add in BA and KS as manual casts now. Just seems Blizz is trying to complicate our SV rots more and more. More fun yes, more of a pita, yes.

SenorPez · 03/03/09, 11:41 AM

Originally Posted by JSorrentino

Another minor change I had seen on PTR is in shot macro'ing kill shot into somthing like steady or whatever.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Kill Shot
/cast Steady Shot

.. now this will break your shots on PTR. Not sure if it's intended (probably), but just something to note.

It's annoying because I could simply ignore KS and let the macro do the work, add in BA and KS as manual casts now. Just seems Blizz is trying to complicate our SV rots more and more. More fun yes, more of a pita, yes.

Kill Shot is back on the GCD which breaks the macros, and it was announced that it was an intended change. With the long cooldown, I don't think it's that much of a complicator, though there's currently no advantage to placing it anywhere in the rotation as opposed to just firing it as a high priority when it comes off CD, since it's high damage for the cost, in terms of mana, and the opportunity cost of now having to use a GCD.

alienangel · 03/03/09, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by JSorrentino

It's annoying because I could simply ignore KS and let the macro do the work, add in BA and KS as manual casts now. Just seems Blizz is trying to complicate our SV rots more and more. More fun yes, more of a pita, yes.

"Letting the macro do the work" is generally something Blizzard doesn't want to allow. I don't mind having to choose when to use KS manually; the downside of the change is just that it adds another GCD to juggle in an already messy attack queue. As it stands on live, if KS had a GCD attached it would still be second priority to ES since ES does equal or more damage, procs more things, and has a shorter cooldown so a delay in casting it hurts its DPS more.

Tsook · 03/03/09, 11:58 AM

When you say it breaks your shots, do you mean, even if Kill Shot is on cooldown or the mob is above 20%, it will not fire the second shot in the macro? Or do you mean that the GCD from Kill Shot prevents the second shot firing at the same time, but pressing the button again once the GCD is over will fire it?

In 3.0.3 and before (when Kill Shot was on the GCD), a macro that looked like this:

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Arcane Shot

would cast Arcane Shot normally but Kill Shot instead if if was available. In 3.0.8, when they took Kill Shot off the GCD, it would fire Arcane Shot, and additionally Kill Shot if it was available.

I'm wondering if they've changed the unique nature of Kill Shot that allowed it to come first in a macro and 'fall through' if it is on cooldown or not available yet, or merely changed the GCD back to 3.0.3 behavior.

JSorrentino · 03/03/09, 11:59 AM

Pez, yes I am aware, maybe I should have elaborated as to why it's broken. Never-the-less, it does not work any more - i posted this because a hunter on my server asked me about this the other day.

"Letting the macro do the work" is generally something Blizzard doesn't want to allow. I don't mind having to choose when to use KS manually; the downside of the change is just that it adds another GCD to juggle in an already messy attack queue. As it stands on live, if KS had a GCD attached it would still be second priority to ES since ES does equal or more damage, procs more things, and has a shorter cooldown so a delay in casting it hurts its DPS more.

I'm aware. :-)

KraxisSingular · 03/03/09, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by Uzug

Maybe using the word "assuming" in my line about refreshing the trap cooldown wasn't the best route to take considering it was pretty irrelevant to my main concern, so let's ignore the refreshing of Immolation Trap for now, as you rightly say, we have no idea what mechanic Blizzard will use with Trap Launcher yet. I guess simplifying my concern would be that atm BA shares cooldown with traps, meaning to have on-demand traps for cc'ing you would have to sacrifice the 3% from BA boosting, plus the BA damage itself, plus whatever extra damage you'd get from BA LnL procs.

I have no problem with Immolation, Explosive or Snake Trap sharing a cooldown with BA but I really think the pure cc traps of Frost, but particularly Freezing should not. It cripples utility and that's not good when you might be fighting for raid places against other classes that don't lose utility whilst maxing dps.

Even talking about Trap Launcher and rolling Immolate Trap is pretty much conjecture at this time. We can't expect it to happen, we can hope (and I certainly do) based on the comments on the "updated trap mechanic" GC has mentioned. But this can have very long prospects. I mean, we still haven't gotten the 'might break on damage' back on Freezing Trap yet, despite we were told it was intended and it needed only the pet to be fixed so it didn't kill the trap all the time (pet on Passive = win?). So hoping is fine, but directly trying to discuss balancing etc of a mechanic we don't even know will make it into the game anytime soon, if ever, is stretching it. I don't want this to end up like Camouflage.

Maybe we should compile a few questions? It seems to have worked to some degree in the past. The current looks of the Survival tree is a bit messy, and a bit of clarification would be highly appreciated.

Like:

'Is Trap Launcher something we can expect within a reasonable timeperiod, or is it effectively gone?'
'Will there ever be refreshable Immolation Traps (as was noted in the TNT talent for a few hours)?'
'Has the idea of traps having a breaking threshold been removed entirely, or is it just a low priority?'
'Are each crit with Piercing Shots supposed to refresh even if it is a lower value?'
'Was the pet normalization intended as a DPS nerf to Ferocity pets?'

JSorrentino · 03/03/09, 12:04 PM

When you say it breaks your shots, do you mean, even if Kill Shot is on cooldown or the mob is above 20%, it will not fire the second shot in the macro? Or do you mean that the GCD from Kill Shot prevents the second shot firing at the same time, but pressing the button again once the GCD is over will fire it?

In 3.0.3 and before (when Kill Shot was on the GCD), a macro that looked like this:

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Arcane Shot

would cast Arcane Shot normally but Kill Shot instead if if was available. In 3.0.8, when they took Kill Shot off the GCD, it would fire Arcane Shot, and additionally Kill Shot if it was available.

I'm wondering if they've changed the unique nature of Kill Shot that allowed it to come first in a macro and 'fall through' if it is on cooldown or not available yet, or merely changed the GCD back to 3.0.3 behavior.

Put 2 shots in a macro and see the results yourself. Arcane/Multi Arcane/steady, etc. Anything with a GCD will break *this type* of macroing. Cast sequence macros will just not work for SV.

Blizz removed this functionality before because of the fact that hunters were throwing this into a single macro to let them do dps and use shots in the proper priority if placed in the macro in the right order. I think this was a good call then, and now because it separates the good from the bad hunters. (or the lazy from the not - however you would like to look at it.)

;-)

Evio · 03/03/09, 12:05 PM

This may seem like a silly question but as far as I knew ES still doesnt refresh imo trap. have I missed something that would justify it still beeing considered part of a SV rotation?

alienangel · 03/03/09, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by KraxisSingular

'Is Trap Launcher something we can expect within a reasonable timeperiod, or is it effectively gone?'
'Will there ever be rolling Immolation Traps (as was noted in the TNT talent for a few hours)?'
'Has the idea of traps having a breaking threshold been removed entirely, or is it just a low priority?'
'Are each crit with Piercing Shots supposed to refresh even if it is a lower value?'
'Was the pet normalization intended as a DPS nerf to Ferocity pets?'

My small suggestion would be that if such a list of questions is posted (it would be good to do so IMO, although this late in the PTR it will be hard to not have the thread drowned out by reposts of various bugs), avoid using the phrase "rolling immolation traps". Rolling brings to mind things like Ignite and deepwounds, accumulating damage with each refresh. While that would be ridiculously good DPS, I don't realistically expect that to be the implementation, and would rather just find out if we can hope for the trap duration to just be refreshed, with no damage accumulation.

If you want to ask about both refresh and rolling as separate questions though, go for it

A question about whether their design team is conscious of the number of different GCDs Survival needs to juggle and the counterintuitive effect it has on certain cooldowns (e.g. glyphing aimed shot down to 8s being of debatable value just because an 8s cooldown doesn't necessarily fit into an integral number of GCDs, or various spells having artificially extented cooldowns (also an MM issue) because the come off cooldown at the same time as other spells) would be good too - given his last response when someone asked about survival complexity, I don't think Ghostcrawler at least is aware of the silly amount of math MM and SV hunters do just over GCD-tetris.

Tsook · 03/03/09, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by JSorrentino

Put 2 shots in a macro and see the results yourself. Arcane/Multi Arcane/steady, etc. Anything with a GCD will break *this type* of macroing. Cast sequence macros will just not work for SV.

That's not true. In 3.0.3, even though Kill Shot had a GCD, it was somewhat unique in that you could put it in a macro and if it was on cooldown or the target wasn't under 20%, it would fall through to the next ability in the macro. Have you confirmed that is no longer the case? I'm sorry if I'm being pedantic here, it just seems like your point has been "It's on the GCD and that means the macros won't work," but that doesn't necessarily follow for this specific ability.