I would caution people to manage their expectations when it comes to using steady shot on the move. It is very helpful for generating resources while you are moving out of the fire, but when you are "trained" by people who get up in your face to keep you from shooting them then it has less of an impact. In those situations, the problem is more about being able to start casting it in the first place.

GC said the developers aren't keen on the idea of removing the minimum range altogether because they don't want hunters to keep shooting at melees and others who are up in their face. It's not so much about overpowered or not but how they want the fight dynamics to play out.

One thing they could do, however, is add a couple of special rules for Steady/Cobra, simply to remove the problem of being able to jack up resource gains by positioning. They could remove the min range for those shots. Or, they could make it so that you had to start the cast from 5+ yards away, but that it wouldn't be interrupted if the target moved into melee range, for example.

Indeed, this is less about what we know or expect from this, but the impact others believe it might have. As well as the stated aim Blizzard has laid out for on the move DPS. Which is supposed to be penalized. I just think they meant more than Autoshots and associates.

Btw Elcher, with the loss of Autoshots on the move, Hunters will still lose a considerable amount of damage. Counting not only the direct damage, but also stuff like the MM Mastery (a portion of it at least), GftT procs and, well that might be it.

Stutterstep, my friend, stutterstep. (unless of course you have to all out kite and can't take a fraction of a second to stop every couple seconds while moving)

Since Elcher mentions 'trained' we are in a PvP setting. Stutterstepping is not really an option unless it is going to make you kill the target just as they catch up.

I believe the MM mastery will proc of any ranged attack, not only auto-shot like today's wild quiver. At least this is how the mastery tooltip is worded.

I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying that the change to fox isn't as awesome as some people think it is, so they need to dial back their expectations. We talk about "heavy movement" mechanics, but not all movement is the same. There's moving out of the fire or chasing someone on one hand (where steady on the move is good) and there's trying to move away from someone who used deathgrip-chains on you while your CDs were down, and steady on the move doesn't help with that very much.

Put anther way, it depends on what people mean by "trained." If it's just being focused, then you can strafe-attack etc. while casting steady and Fox will be helpful in its current form. If it's having everyone sit on top of you the whole match, then steady on the move won't help with that. That's all I meant.

And so (if you already went there I will glady finish that thought) Hunters reliance on only 1 Focus regenerating ability (regardless of the amount of focus or the usage) makes the class hard to balance, tweak and play. Thus some other ability with which we could regenerate focus with when say in melee range (say 4-5 Focus max) would be nice, as Hunters wouldnt have to be balanced around "you cant ever ever get into melee range", but more around "what can/should I do when in melee range?". This would also further enhance a Hunters playstyle while still giving him/her choices when out of their comfort zone.

1.Right now, I believe them to be used for "utility", unlike warrior stances where they are a DPS gain or loss. Our aspects (regarding Fox and Hawk) seem to enhance our DPS in "situational" ways right now, Hawk when you dont need to SS on the move and Fox when you do. Its not beneficial to stay in 1 of those 2 for an entire fight due to encounter mechanics, but having them is quite Important.


2.They mentioned that Pet scaling will be introduced in another patch sometime "soon". The way I imagine this to work out is that all buffs Hunters receive are relayed to the pets by say, 40% (GC posted something about the real numbers, but thats not important for explanations). This would help the BM hunter and other Pet-reliant classes to not fall behind on "gimmick" fights where say, the Hunter is bitten but the Pet is not.

Balancing buffs etc is not important right now, but the idea and "how to" much more so.


3.,We are the only ranged melee-magic hybrid (Cobra Shot ex.), specc defining the percentage of Ranged/Magic. We also have minimum range and a tameable pet. Makes us special in my opinon.


4.Mastery, talent point strenght, pet scaling and Buff buffing (see the 3.1. someting HM buff from 2min to 5 and from 300AP to 500). All of these can be adjusted on the fly and dont need major patches to be deployed.


5.Not sure what the point is but yes, mastery is basically a "new stat".




6.Kalgan said something about exactly this in this Interview at Gamescom, which said something around the lines of "We took that out due to the new Talent Tree revamp". For thos that want to see the whole interview here are the 3 parts. (Nothing on MMO champion at the time of writing about this).

YouTube - Interview mit WoW Lead Game Designer Tom Chilton Gamescom 2010 (Part 1) [Part 1]

YouTube - Interview mit WoW Lead Game Designer Tom Chilton Gamescom 2010 (Part 2) [Part 2]

YouTube - Interview mit WoW Lead Game Designer Tom Chilton Gamescom 2010 (Part 3) [Part 3]

Edit: Edited the 3rd Link to the Kalgan interview, something else managed to sneek in.

There seems to be a bit of confusion about the new build. First Rhumba is gone, then it isn't, now it is listed as gone again. I hope it isn't, it is one of the rather few fun and interesting talents. If it is, then what is holding BM back from speccing Imp Steady, going completely against the "Cobra Shot is the new BM signature shot"? It's going to be Survival like this... So, what's up? And what's with Marked for Death? That seems like a pretty big reduction in power, but more importantly, where to put the points? It isn't as if MM has a lot places to spend points, not even in utility. Again, I hope it is merely a mistake.
Heavy confusion right now. These changes appear to be the first step in some rebalance or something, but still, it isn't pretty at all.

[EDIT] Oh, GC commented on Rhumba. MMO-Champion BlueTracker | So, why delete Rhumba? Still seems like a bad move. And it isn't as if there is much utility worth the name in the tree.

Rhumba IS gone in the current build. Edit : Actually GC didn't say a word about Rhumba so this is incorrect: I think GC meant Rhumba will be back in a few builds (as the minimum range)..

Serpent Spread is working and, interestingly, it does Improved Serpent Sting damages to each target of Multishot (I would say 30% of the damage of a full Serpent Sting though it only applies the debuff at 60% duration). As of now, the instant part of Improved Serpent Sting does roughly the same damage than Arcane Shot. I'm wondering if it could be used in place or Arcane Shot for focus dump.

Cobra Shot hits twice as hard as Steady Shot does in the current build, at least for me in a BM spec. I haven't tested any other spec. These are totally napkin numbers but with my beta leveling gear Steady hits for around 1800 and Cobra for about 3800. Using these as an example, Improved Steady is only worth it for me if 8 seconds of haste gave me more than 4000 damage, because I would lose two cobra shots for every ISS proc, and that's not counting the fact that I lose out on extending my serpent sting by 12 seconds (which doesn't seem to be working correctly right now, but that's another story). It doesn't seem to come close (autoshot hits are down in the steady shot range) to being worth it.

The standard caveat applies in that I might be affected by some bug I don't know about, etc.