Cataclysm Hunter Changes - Page 30

Ratek · 07/12/10, 10:03 AM

I don't think you can expect ISS to be available for all three specs. In the 51-point trees there were a three pointer for each tree about using Steady/Cobra Shot and gaining a bonus of some sort. It would be somewhat bad design if one tree has two proc talents that proc from using 2 consecutive focus generators. Especially if both are the same.
Logic would dictate that the proc effects would come from different sources.
Also, it doesn't seem terribly 'fair' for one spec to only get access to one of these talents. To me it is clear, that the fact there are three trees and three quite similar talents that each tree will have it's own.

Nooska · 07/12/10, 10:57 AM

@Elcher

You come off very pessimistic to me. The situation you describe is nothing special for hunters, any class that is focused will be locked down to some degree, also the comparison you are presenting is flawed/unfair. You mention warriors getting healed when being critted, thats not an inherent trait of being a warrior, and neither of us know if that will stay in cata. So you are looking at what the others can do today, and comparing it to your very pessimistic view of what a hunter will be able to do in cata. Even though I just mentioned that the talent trees you've seen are gone, finito, lost in the void, you are referring to them for how things work. Since the focusreduction talents have been put in the trees for the cata change, they are designed around the 51 point trees, and, most likely, they will be among the easiest talents to cut to reduce the treesize. Since they reduce the cost of an ability they might as well reduce the abilitys basecost and balance the trees around something else. Remember they had to fill up the trees balanced around the amount of points we have, not the other way around. Now we have fewer points so they can remove some of the fillers and just apply them directly - perhaps as a part of the specialization choice "and reduces your [insert signature shot] by X focus" poof, only one spec can get each reduction, poof gone are useless talents, poof trimmed tree. They did say that they will be removing the talents that everyone has anyway because they are mandatory first - I can't see any (serious) player in either of the 3 specs not picking up the focusreduction talent for the signature shot, can you?.

Elcher · 07/12/10, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Nooska

@Elcher

You come off very pessimistic to me. The situation you describe is nothing special for hunters, any class that is focused will be locked down to some degree, also the comparison you are presenting is flawed/unfair. You mention warriors getting healed when being critted, thats not an inherent trait of being a warrior, and neither of us know if that will stay in cata. So you are looking at what the others can do today, and comparing it to your very pessimistic view of what a hunter will be able to do in cata. Even though I just mentioned that the talent trees you've seen are gone, finito, lost in the void, you are referring to them for how things work. Since the focusreduction talents have been put in the trees for the cata change, they are designed around the 51 point trees, and, most likely, they will be among the easiest talents to cut to reduce the treesize. Since they reduce the cost of an ability they might as well reduce the abilitys basecost and balance the trees around something else. Remember they had to fill up the trees balanced around the amount of points we have, not the other way around. Now we have fewer points so they can remove some of the fillers and just apply them directly - perhaps as a part of the specialization choice "and reduces your [insert signature shot] by X focus" poof, only one spec can get each reduction, poof gone are useless talents, poof trimmed tree. They did say that they will be removing the talents that everyone has anyway because they are mandatory first - I can't see any (serious) player in either of the 3 specs not picking up the focusreduction talent for the signature shot, can you?.

The only option I would have to gain focus in such a scenario would be to target a ranged/healer and steady shot him/her while eating big chuncks of damage from the melee alone or from both, depending on skill. - this doesnt seem like a viable concept to me, you disagree, fine; but I still fail to see what a hunter is supposed to do when he/she reaches around 20 Focus and is being focused. Maybe Lay traps, flare, mark and then wait another second to fire an arcane shot?

Edit: edited out as much as I could while still making this post "valuable" - PM me if more should go out.

Adyssa · 07/12/10, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Elcher

I still fail to see what a hunter is supposed to do when he/she reaches around 20 Focus and is being focused. Maybe Lay traps, flare, mark and then wait another second to fire an arcane shot?
Doesnt seem too viable to me, seeing as one is able to do this every 28 seconds as MM (pvp set bonus).

If you specced LnL as MM, that trap could give you two free Arcane Shots.

So if they close, you can drop frost trap to entrap and snare them. Then drop immolation trap while backing up followed by a Raptor Strike. Then, once you get to minimum range, drop at LEAST 2 Arcane Shots into them back to back.

That seems like a lot of time, but with the reduced GCD, you can do all that in 5 seconds instead of 7.5. And you spent focus on what? Raptor Strike?

Gunjin · 07/12/10, 2:50 PM

Originally Posted by Adyssa

If you specced LnL as MM, that trap could give you two free Arcane Shots.

So if they close, you can drop frost trap to entrap and snare them. Then drop immolation trap while backing up followed by a Raptor Strike. Then, once you get to minimum range, drop at LEAST 2 Arcane Shots into them back to back.

That seems like a lot of time, but with the reduced GCD, you can do all that in 5 seconds instead of 7.5. And you spent focus on what? Raptor Strike?

I can't imagine any way that they will let MM have access to LnL with the new trees. It's pretty much a "core" Survival ability, and the new philosophy seems to be that they don't want things like that accessible from other specs. Hopefully they roll the new trees out soon so we can see what we have to work with.

TrevvyTrev · 07/12/10, 2:54 PM

Originally Posted by Adyssa

That seems like a lot of time, but with the reduced GCD, you can do all that in 5 seconds instead of 7.5. And you spent focus on what? Raptor Strike?

Not even that. Raptor Strike and Wing Clip don't cost focus. Raptor Strike currently isn't very worthwhile though. Mine hits for about 40% of the damage of a white hit, maybe less.

Going back to Elcher's question of what to do when low focus and focused, another answer is pop Rapid Fire (specced for Rapid Recoup, of course). If you're MM, not only should you have a 3-minute RF, but you can reset it with Readiness. That also assumes that you don't have Fervor. Currently you can get it as MM, but it may not be available to all specs when they revamp the trees.

No one has been able to test the Cata PvP model. The idea, however, is to let PvP encounters focus less on exploding people in a few globals and more on coordinating a damage burst on someone that is low health. It's not the end of the world if you and your teammates whittle away at someone's health -- pooling resources for that "burn phase". You use steady shots to build up focus before you need it, not after you've burned through all of it and are desperate.

So, for example, Serpent-Steady-Steady is a terrible start in today's world, where Serpent does awful damage and there's no reason to Steady Shot unless you have nothing else to press. In Cata, that does better damage, plus it refills focus, which sets you up for a Chimera-auto refresh-serpent- and free 4-second daze.

Another example is Aimed (from Camo, when you're untargetable by pesky wizard cleaves)-chimera, which blows through your focus, but also does more damage than 3-4 shots currently does on Live. You can afford to get off fewer shots in Cata if each one counts for more.

Finally, it's possible that Fox is really underrated right now. I know everyone says they stutter step, but the truth is that almost no one keeps that up permanently. We also don't know the full exent of "while moving." No one fires autoshots during a disengage, even if they stutter step. For all we know Fox lets us do that.

Adyssa · 07/12/10, 2:55 PM

Originally Posted by Gunjin

I can't imagine any way that they will let MM have access to LnL with the new trees. It's pretty much a "core" Survival ability, and the new philosophy seems to be that they don't want things like that accessible from other specs. Hopefully they roll the new trees out soon so we can see what we have to work with.

In the old trees, you could get LnL but not TNT, which means LnL would only proc on a frost or freeze trap and that's it. I don't see any reason for them to take that away. LnL has, I think, always been accessible for MM builds but it's never been worth it because Arcane hit for too little and other utility talents were simply better.

At any rate, I was just speculating more optimistically to play devil's advocate. We'll really have to wait to see what the new trees look like.

TrevvyTrev · 07/12/10, 3:54 PM

On another note, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot appear to be bugged on the beta. My tooltip says they should have a 1.28 second cast time, yet their actual cast time is ~2 seconds (tested by stopwatch).

This both affects how the shots "feel" overall and how easy it might be to get the shots off on an approaching target.

Adyssa · 07/13/10, 2:22 PM

So, considering that bug, all the reports of difficulty using Steady/Cobra are skewed negatively. Especially so if people tried to pop haste cooldowns or trinkets in PVP so they could get the cast off. It would have not been doing anything.

How low can you get the cast time (in the tooltip) with using Rapid Fire and other procs?

Gunjin · 07/13/10, 2:36 PM

I'll check multiple haste points for tooltip casting speed when I get home from work, but I do know that even with rapid fire I was never able to get it down to the GCD ( I specifically checked for that).

XereX · 07/13/10, 3:53 PM

I haven't played my hunter for long time so please correct me if i am wrong but is it not true that GCD for hunters is 1.5sec and un-effected by haste while Skill cast time however is effected by haste.

So even if we are able to gain SS that is faster then 1.5sec; We can not really cast it any faster because of GCD. I don't really understand the whole idea of next expansion where there is a great amount of focus on haste.

Perhaps it is time for our GCD to be changed to 1.0sec as well just like rogues and druids.

Adyssa · 07/13/10, 3:56 PM

Originally Posted by XereX

I haven't played my hunter for long time so please correct me if i am wrong but is it not true that GCD for hunters is 1.5sec and un-effected by haste while Skill cast time however is effected by haste.

So even if we are able to gain SS that is faster then 1.5sec; We can not really cast it any faster because of GCD. I don't really understand the whole idea of next expansion where there is a great amount of focus on haste.

Perhaps it is time for our GCD to be changed to 1.0sec as well just like rogues and druids.

The GCD for Hunters has already been lowered to 1 second in the beta.

Ratek · 07/13/10, 9:52 PM

So the new build is out, and Hunters get some interesting level 10 abilities, if at this time less interesting than say the Death Knights. Obviously it might have something to do with it being so soon after the new build arrived.

Anyway, all specs gain pushback protection and Hit. Both are quite welcome, though Hit is something that would be nice to work with more interactively. Not a loss, but if there could have been something else... But the passive abilities are boring.
Marksmanship gets Aimed Shot. Not really a surprise there. Aimed Shot is pretty iconic, especially with long casttime again. The big hitter. This sort of implies that the previous Careful Aim talent will be back. Could make MM leveling very fast.
Survival gets Explosive Shot. Again, no surprise for me. Basically the only thing from the tree that was clearly a good tool regardless of level and encounter length. Perhaps LnL, but it would be messy.
BM gets Intimidation. Now that's both a surprise and not so much. It's a surprise in that it isn't actually as useful as the other two abilities. It is going to be used a lot less, and is not useable in pretty much all situations. At the same time the only other real option was Beastial Wrath, and I think Blizzard didn't want it available at level 10.

Grogzor · 07/13/10, 11:44 PM

I think that if the hunter talent trees are correct on MMO-Champion, that marksman is going to need some work. As it is now, there is a block at third level where you are essentially forced into wasting 4 points to get past. Unless they change bosses to be affected by daze.

Edit: Never mind, it just seems the entire tree fails to flow for a raiding hunter. Requiring us to get a talent that uses Kill Command even though I don't believe us to be using Kill Command that much is kind of not good.

There are some nice talents though, Posthaste will be awesome for PvP.

Adyssa · 07/14/10, 12:08 AM

You don't have to get the daze centric talents or Resistance is Futile. You can get one point in Rapid Killing, which is decent for trash or adds. In the off chance you get the killing blow, you can get 50 focus for it (via Rapid Recup). Then, you can take Careful Aim, which sucks, but assuming bosses can't be dazed, at least it has a chance of doing SOMETHING in a raid build.

Feels pretty weak though, especially with no way to get Fervor or LnL as MM anymore. I can only find 28 pts total that I actually *want* to get in the MM tree (for a raid build), which isn't enough to get to the bottom even IF they were in the right order.

Of course, if they DO make bosses able to be dazed, it suddenly becomes very cohesive and straightforward.