Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBigRedKitty: It's hunter-pinata time, part III
by Daniel Howell 
Dec 10th 2008 at 9:00AM
1) Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
Since the primary part of BM-hunter DPS is Steady Shot, it makes sense to downgrade the RAP-bonus to see how its affected. If 20% is too much, it'll be bumped back up. But it's much better to test at 20 and move it up to 15, then start at 10 and move it down a second time to 15, don't you think? Blizzard does too.
2) Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
Hunters were never meant to be an AoE class. Right now, we are an AoE class. Heck, we were a pioneer in the Gorilladin Offensive that combined an AoE pet with an constant AoE attack. Volley should be useful, but not mage-powerful, c'mon. 30% sounds heavy, we admit, but you'll still be able to grind away the days with your gorilla. But we won't be making mages wonder if perhaps a reroll as a tank might guarantee them a more secure spot in raids.
3) Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
How many spells really benefit from Readiness? Silencing Shot, Wyvern Sting, Kill Shot, Scatter Shot, Counterattack, and Bestial Wrath. (Hope we didn't forget one. Apologies if we did.) All of these, save Bestial Wrath, are primarily PvP-oriented. Is there a reason BM isn't a surprisingly effective arena-spec? Yes, because the primary power of the BM tree comes from getting out of melee range while attempting to stand still and Auto/Steady stuff to death. Readiness + Bestial Wrath = much more effective BM hunter in PvP! Changing this is precisely the opposite of what hunters need; more options for PvP, not fewer! If Blizz wants to remove Bestial Wrath from the effects of Readiness, perhaps they should just admit that the Readiness talent belongs at the 41st point in the Survival tree and chunk it back where it belongs.
4) Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
Now we only did arena for one season; we achieved a state of anger much too quickly when we lost, so we abandoned this portion of the game. But it's our initial impression that if a hunter pops Deterrence and becomes basically invulnerable, but also becomes impotent, then the other team is just going to switch targets and focus-fire someone else, like the healer. This could be a fine tactic for one-on-one fights, allowing the hunter to quaff a healing potion or something, but this doesn't seem to address any of our critical class-issues in PvP. Hooray for new toys, boo for not fixing that which needs fixing.
5) Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
Sounds great, but what's a huge buff doing in a list of hunter-nerfs? /suspicious
Finally a PvP-oriented fix we've been asking for! Just don't pop Deterrence...
6) Kindred Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
This is a reduction from 20% to 15%, and if this is a "major" reduction, we'll live with it. Pet-DPS has been outstanding in WotLK, and if Blizz needs this adjustment to make them happy, even we, BRK, will bless it. But if pet-DPS needs to come down, then pet-Health needs to come up, and pet-Resilience needs to be introduced. When feral druids are running amok with 40k health and our Spirit Beast has 10k, something's amiss. When our pet can be two-shot by a mage because Hobbes has zero resilience and the mage can go crit-berserk on his furry butt, somethings blatantly wrong. Pet-DPS too high? Fix it. Pet-Survivability too low? Fix. It!
7) Serpent's Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
Pet attack speed is the place from where all hunter-goodness begins. Faster pet attacks means more pet crits, which mean more Ferocious Inspiration procs, which means more DPS for the hunter's entire raid. But here's the kicker: if we get fewer FI-procs, our entire raid's DPS goes down! This isn't just a decrease to hunter-DPS, but to total raid-DPS! This isn't nerfing BM hunters, it's nerfing the desire of the raid leader to bring a BM hunter to raids.
OK, that's a little overboard. We would guess that no hunter would be uninvited to a raid because his pet is going to FI-proc less frequently. But the main point remains sound: this is a raid-DPS nerf, not a hunter-DPS nerf. It doesn't fix the supposed problem.
8) All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
The big one for us is Heart of the Phoenix. No longer will we have to wait for the global cooldown before we can insta-rez our dead pet. Of course, HotP is terrible borked already: it won't insta-cast, one has to use a macro manually; and many times a HotP-rez'd pet will be "grayed-out", unable to perform any actions whatsoever. Frankly, instead of this "buff" to pet abilities, we'd like the Cower/Growl/Prowl bugs fixed so they don't keep changing auto-cast states. Fix the broken stuff before "fixing" stuff that seems to work adequately, that's all we're saying.
9) Growl- threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
Although pet-threat isn't a problem, when we put #7 into effect, pet-threat will be decreased as well. A buff to Growl would prevent the decreased attack speed from making our pets less-able to hold threat while soloing, so at least Blizz is looking ahead and trying to anticipate the effects of their DPS-changes.
10) Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
Call of the Wild currently affects all party members. Making it only benefit the hunter and his pet is a net-increase to hunters, as compared to the other classes! If we remove the benefit to party members, their DPS is going to decrease. But it'll still buff the hunter, so his DPS will remain the same. This change flies in the face of the concept that hunter DPS is too high and makes no sense whatsoever. If we want to decrease hunter DPS as compared to other classes in raids, this buff's benefits should be made raid-wide, so everybody is buffed up, not down.
11) Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
Cats and Scorpids have been doing more DPS than any pet but Devilsaurs, and sometimes even more than them. The concept is that exotic pets are supposed to do a little more DPS -- we've read 10% -- than non-exotic pets. This isn't so much a nerf as it is putting these pets back in their proper place. Hobbes, our beloved Winterspring Frostsaber Pridewatcher, will still sit Shiv'ah, though.
12) Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
This is a personal grudge we have with Blizz over the Spirit Beast. We begged them to let us tame one in the beta so we could analyze its performance. No dice, they said. Find one yourself, you'll get no help from us. Well guess what, the pet came out of beta borked. Longevity does cooldown the cooldown of Spirit Strike, but does not cooldown the delayed damage debuff the spell puts on its target. So it sounds like they're going to make the dot have a seven second cooldown, so Longevity will "play nice". If we'd been allowed to play with a Spirit Beast in the beta, perhaps we could've made some noise about this issue. /still hurt
13) Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don't have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
Alright, we'll accept that this is an entry-level talent and making it a basic "Increases damage by 1/2/3%" talent doesn't bother us too much. We're always tracking something, right? But it sure makes Ranged Weapon Specialization look really dumb, doing almost exactly the same thing as Improved Tracking, as a 26th point talent. Marksmen hunters should have a "ranged weapon specialization" obviously; they're marksman! Swap RWS with
something like Focused Aim, and we'll make the change to Improved Tracking without further comment.
14) Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.
/blink
Now when was the last time we needed nature-protection raid-wide... Hydross the Unstable? No, that was just one of the two tanks, right? Perhaps Blizz is telling us something about a future raid, or maybe this was just forgotten in the huge list of spells that were to be raid-wide once WotLK arrived. Who knows. It's a buff, thanks, but... OK, thanks.
So if we look at all this, what concerns us the most is... none of them. Really, if BM hunter DPS is tamped-down by the nerf to Steady Shot, let's accept that with grace, dignity, and poise, and move on. A small decrease to pet attack speed isn't something we'd wish for, but at least we're not going back to all running with Ravagers.
Now let's move on to getting some freaking help in arenas, shall we? And the Survivalist tree is still honked up. Heart of the Phoenix, one of the best reasons for getting the Beast Mastery talent, isn't working properly. There aren't enough level 80 pets to tame. Why can't we tame Mammoths!
And fix Cower, for Elune's sake! COWER, people!
Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Big Red Kitty
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Gazoo Dec 10th 2008 10:31AM
BRK, get your head out of your ass.
Blizzard HAS people who are paid to talk to the community, they are called Community managers. Blizzard has had some of the best and the 'community' chewed them up and spat them out.
Remember Tseric? Fangtooth? Caydiem? Community Managers. We treated them with nothing but disdain and disrespect and burned them all out in record time.
Blizz has been down that road. GC is/was the next try by Blizzard to present information in a calm and straight forward manner. Now YOU have hopped on the 'lynch GC' bandwagon.
Nice. You haz no cheeseburger.
/stop reading brk columns
/sad
Gurluas Dec 10th 2008 10:08AM
The worst is the volley nerf, hunters always needed a form for AOE...
Khel Dec 10th 2008 10:12AM
I have played a hunter since day one of WoW. I lived thru the BC hunter buff and nerf with grace.
This nerf goes way too far. I think we should have our AoE nerfed. I think some loopholes should be removed. But this is a smackdown and I feel like the air was knocked out of me.
I've heard plenty of QQ before. I don't want to have to leave BM just to DPS. I don't want to have to leave my main just to get a group.
lile Dec 10th 2008 10:20AM
not to mention counterattack becomes really weak with change of how deterrence works. wonder if they'd thought of it..
Max Dec 10th 2008 10:26AM
As a paladin i feel your pain but 3 whole pages of QQ....
take it easy bro
TO THE GROUND, BABY!!! (couldnt stop myself)
Lord Negatron Dec 10th 2008 10:26AM
Hrm, WoW just had a "4 year anniversary" recently, andsome of us are shocked at the "nerf" system?
News is news, in order to keep a blog going. That is how i am going to swallow this pill. As for diplomacy, you have a point. Yet i can't go that route due to the fact it will not change the outcome of any nerf. Lewd offensive tones are not used, therefore diplomacy is not needed. Leave that to video game consoles with their BS jargon. o_0 @ MS , Nintendo and Sony...
"As of last year "system y" has sold 2.5 million units, blah blah blah..." (what does that have to do with the games & who cares besides trolls/ shareholders?) Soon in 2012 we expect to see..... /facepalm
Malkie Dec 10th 2008 10:31AM
On diplomacy: meh. Ghostcrawlers lack of tact is why we love him so much - until he turns his steely gaze upon our own class :-)
The first three items on the nerf list are the most significant imho.
1. Fair enough, I realize I should not be quite so far ahead of my fellow raiders and this seems like a reasonable way to do it right now. HOWEVER, I'm concerned about the effect this has on dps scaling with gear upgrades as we progress into future content. This may level us out for now but leave us lagging behind in the future.
2. Volley. The main issue I have here is that as previous posters have said, the instance game has changed. Crowd control seems to be a dying part of the game. On trash pulls larger than 2, volley is now absolutely my main attack. 30% seems high.
3. Other posters have talked about rapid fire, that's a biggie. Misdirect... sure, but on a 30 sec cooldown it's already seeing a lot of action. Trapping is also affected... but see my point 2.
So, bestial wrath imho tips the balance on taking readiness or not. One other thing to think about here: to get readiness as a BM hunter you have to give up your 51 point talent. I know people who were doing exactly that. Nerfs to cats + buffs to exotic pet dps + this change to readiness... seems to me like we're being pushed toward taking Beast Mastery. I'm ok with that.
Maulgrym Dec 10th 2008 10:45AM
At times perhaps a bit more diplomacy is warranted, but frankly I think GC pretty much rocks, and his giving straight answers with straight detail is a lot better than the generic, "we've seen issues and will be making tweaks" that doesn't tell you anything we used to get.
Also, since GC came on board it seems like you can actually expect changes that need to happen to actually get on live in a reasonable amount of time. In the past I wouldn't have really expected much for fine tuning changes w/i the first 3 months of the expansion. Many things would have been left a year or more.
Now for the specific changes.. as a Hunter myself up to WotLK I don't think they look that bad. Hunter's absolutely needed a bit of a tweak in the amount of damage they could put out. Some of the numbers look pretty big in the changes, but overall it sounds like it'll end up being pretty close to what's needed. The steady shot change will also hopefully open up the possibility of buffing instants later to help in pvp. The only concern I'd have is with how Hunter's will scale down the road. But, it seems like they've always been a class that scales really well so maybe it won't be an issue.
germ0nik Dec 10th 2008 11:01AM
GC is probably my favorite dev yet, but he can be controversial.
In regards to his diplomacy, his method has pros and cons. He seems hell-bent on justifying the changes to even the trolls (which is the majority of the official forums) for whatever reason. Other then that, I think it's quite fine.
In regards to the changes, a few strike me as odd. There are enough hunter raid buff nerfs that it seems that may be the real issue they are getting at. Which is really strange.
I think the big issue with hunters is how easily they are getting to the top of the charts. My guild brings four of them because their DPS is so much higher then every other class, and they require much less upkeep then the melee. Two of our BM hunters are very consistently able to easily break 4300+ dps on Patchwerk, which very few of our other DPS'ers can do, even when signifcantly more geared.
darian Dec 10th 2008 11:02AM
I love BRK's commentary and videos, but I think he's asking for more than anyone, even a veteran politician or diplomat, can give.
First of all you need to take into account audience. You, the savvy and famous blogger, know the ins and outs of the game, the system, and the forums. You've been around the block enough times to know that Ghostcrawler is a game designer, not a PR rep, and you don't need to be told this. In fact, it's just shy of insulting that he constantly prefaces his post with that fact.
But you aren't the WoW population, or even remotely representative of it. A lot of people *wouldn't know Ghostcrawler wasn't a PR rep* if he didn't *constantly* remind them. This seems odd given his propensity for reminding us, but it's a simple truth that a very large portion of WoW's populace is nowhere near as informed as your savvy and famous blogger.
This audience is far from a homogeneous whole, and is extremely varied. Over the past *years* blizzard has tried communicating with the players in many different ways *including* the detached diplomacy a government uses with its citizens. It really didn't work so well.
Do you remember the days of Fangtooth and Caydiem? Do you remember how much they sucked in terms of communication with Blizzard? Once a month (or less) you'd see one of these people post some official business and maybe a quick response here and there, but aside from Caydiem's famous fake patch notes the whole thing was very official, impersonal, infrequent, and completely inadequate for interacting with the forum community.
This style of communication brought on the Warrior riots, Bus Shock and other significant PR nightmares. Players clamored for a more direct line of communication. "The devs" were a faceless shadow entity intent on nerfing everyone from behind the robotic responses of the CMs. This was not good.
So yes, Ghostcrawler isn't a Madeleine Albright, but he shouldn't be. There isn't any way for him to possibly communicate his message without raising hell because his message is bad and the WoW Forums have always overreacted to everything. There are posters who lie in wait for these opportunities to stir up trouble and they've gotten very good at it.
It certainly doesn't help that he's made posts in the past that are very much in keeping with your suggestion. They were summarily ineffective at fire proofing his messages.
It's a mistake to think that the method of communicating a similar message to DKs was why there was no outrage. The biggest and most obvious reason is because no one was *invested* in the class. A lot of people have been playing Paladins or Hunters for *years* and have very strong and important ties to their character. DKs were new, and the worst thing that could happen is you just wouldn't roll one when the expansion hit.
I don't know enough about Hunters to make any comments on the actual changes themselves, that would be truly foolish, but I know enough about communication to know that you've requested the impossible because Blizzard's already done it. They stepped away from diplomacy because it didn't quiet the unreasonable people and it isolated the reasonable ones. Even if the new style may chafe a bit more for those of us who don't walk around the forums gasoline can in hand, I much prefer to hear direct from the developers what they're thinking over being handed a bunch of changes from a CM and realizing I haven't the faintest idea what the developers are thinking.
/end rant
JohnC Dec 10th 2008 11:03AM
im not trying to be a BRK preacher here but that post is completely right.
you've constructed you're points carefully and they are easy to understand the criticism of without people needing to say "stop QQin", all of you contradictive points are valid and tbh makes blizzard look very silly with some of the changes they have made. rather than lower hunter dps in parts they have just made hunters are less desirable class to bring to a raid thats all, with the changes to some spells e.g. SS, that as such doesn't increase our dps but it doesn't lower ours, just other classes, what were blizzard thinking there.... it defeats the whole object of what they claim they are doing.
gives me a good excuse to revisit mm i suppose but id just rather they focused on fixing bugs than handing us new moves to play with....
as a pvp based hunter the changes aren't soo bad i suppose but they still aren't a help especially in the current hunter arena "crisis"
Belthazar Dec 10th 2008 11:05AM
Think you missed the point on this one:
"10) Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet. "
Or at least didn't comment on what it's intended to fix. CotW evidently stacks with itself. 3-4 hunters in a group could stack the ability for massive DPS. The fix should have to make it non-stacking. Instead they made it self only.
gothfae Dec 10th 2008 1:37PM
My only problem with the Volley nerf is that it's a hunter's only point blank capable ranged skill. For year paladins and mages have been able to gather large groups and burn them down, mages through application of a touch of CC and a whole lot of DPS, and Paladin's through applications of plate armor and massive PBAoE. For a short time my hunter was able to gather a group of mobs and actually burn through them, with a liberal application of bandages afterwards. 30% less damage, means 30% more time that group is beating on me. My hunter will live, my paladin has lived, and so have my priest, and warrior. But it was nice to be able to do a few tricks that other classes had been able to do for so long.
Gyvien Dec 10th 2008 11:11AM
Meh, I agree that Blizzard could use some diplomacy. Yes, yes, they are a team of designers and shoved all their points in intelligence and wisdom, but think about other corporations who realized that there is SOME benefit with charisma.
(Alright, ending that nerdy tid bit there...)
My point is, all corporations have a PR representative. So if Blizzard is going to make announcements over forums and they DON'T want so many people crying foul, then they need to have someone there that can make the announcements artfully. It isn't that hard- there are PLENTY of PR people looking for work and hiring one person to make announcements is fast, easy and simple. It doesn't mean that GC can't make announcements or that he does a bad job - but he said it himself- he's a game designer, not a PR. He still can answer questions and all that jazz, while the PR person announces big changes and smoothes things over. Is it going to stop all the flamers and trolls? Heck no, but it can't HURT and it'll lessen the angry mob blows at least a little.
here is a thought Dec 10th 2008 11:17AM
would you mind touching on how this affects those still leveling vs those already at 80?
Where I can see these changes may be needed to balance groups at 80 I think they are really going to hurt those hunters that are not there yet.
I was honestly a bit confused when I read that Hunters are doing too much damage in PVE. In leveling my MM in northend I find he is taking twice as long to down mobs as other classes I am playing with. Not to mention burning through mana like there is no tomorrow. Mostly I am playing along side an Ele-Shammy and while she drops shoveltusks in 3-5 shots I am more in the 6-9 range; and she is having to wait for me to sit down and drink after downing around 3 groups of them; she never has to drink anymore.
This seems to be a bigger issue at blizz when looking to balance, if they approach balance based on lvl capped well geared chars then the rest of us can get hosed.
Jp Dec 10th 2008 11:23AM
NR Resist raid-wide? For Ulduar, obviously! Seriously, Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone have so many mobs that like to pew pew lightning, I can't say I'm surprised they're expecting Ulduar raid to have a lot of lightning-shooters, and plan accordingly.
Pet Threat Gen is fine? Says the BM hunter. As MM(without a single pet buffing point in the BM tree), unless I just want to auto-shot the whole fight, my pet doesn't hold agro.
Naix Dec 10th 2008 11:24AM
BRK you know I love ya but this post is just dripping with QQ. Sure the delivery is a little harsh but Ghostcrawler is matching his tone with the tone of the nurf...harsh. Sure the extra Hunter DPS is nice in instances and raids, but at what price do we pay? You think hunters are upset just think about the rogue who feels useless. What about the fire mage wondering what went wrong. How about the warlock who is red eyed from crying about the nurf after nurf, who has been reduced to taxi service. Or what about the DPS spec death knight/warrior who just feels adequate. How about the boomkin/kitty that think they should re-roll a hunter. How about the Shaman who....well they are about on part with hunter DPS. Anyway my point is sure hunter damage has always been great, but every DPS class should not want to be a hunter.
anonymoose Dec 10th 2008 11:30AM
BRK, I very much enjoyed your post and was more than suprised at both the apparent lack of reading comprehension skills AND the jerkish personality of some posters. Gratz on having your dbag stats be inversely proportional to your ability to grasp what was written folks.
BRK wasn't actually crying, he was assessing the situation and a great deal of what was authored agrees with and even provides explanation for some of the method behind the madness for the incoming hunter nerf. How some people failed to miss this is beyond me.
Well written post, hoping for the best for my hunter friends.
Gungadine Dec 10th 2008 11:32AM
Summary of events
1.) ignore Hunter arena representation stats for 4 seasons
2.) Relase Wrath
3.) GC posts on forums asking about why hunters are not represented in Arena and for suggestions (Like the same issues havent been presented 1000 times for the last year)
4.) Hunters get PVE nerfs because BM DPS is too high
5.) Hunter arena and issues ignored again
Blizz still has totally ignored the hunter arena problem and still have yet to offer any potential changes to the mechanics that leave hunters where we are, at the bottom. These events prove that Blizz for all the money they make still cant figure out how to fix hunter's core PVP mechanics. Survivability/utility/value/etc But GC posts on the FORUMS asking every toolbox with a subscription what they think, instead of asking the the best hunters in the game (Privately) for suggestions to fix said mechanics. "HEY!! Let's ask every moron out there for input on the hunter instead of the hunters that played in beta and/or achieved 2000+ arena ratings despite our mechanical/utility issues. This is a more politically correct way to handle this issue. At least they will think that we're care about the class and the problems its having and are trying to address the issues instead of the wait and see response, which we know they're tired of hearing." Intelligent and fair suggestions have been made by players (far more advanced than me) for a year. Why ignore them? Why address PVE issues first? Why doesn't the squeaky get the grease? I guess I dont understand, can someone explain the business process of this?
Carrie Dec 10th 2008 12:55PM
The only 'fix' to Hunter PvP is to remove the Survivability tree completely, give Rogues an auto-shot, and be done with it.