Speculating on a new resource system for Hunters
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 27th 2009 at 6:00PM
As we said on the podcast this weekend, one of the most interesting things to come out of the Hunter Q&A last week was that vague about "long-term plans" to "[remove] the need for hunters to rely on a different resource system then mana." That one kind of came out of nowhere, and the answer was even more vague: basically, they promised to talk about it at BlizzCon. Of course, that's what our attracted our attention: is Blizzard planning on getting Hunters off of their mana system completely?That would be quite a change -- since the beginning of the game, Hunters have relied on mana as their "resource" -- Warriors have Rage and Rogues have Energy, but Hunters somehow got looped in with the other DPSers as mana users. That doesn't make much sense -- not only does it depend on Intelligence (a stat which Hunters don't really have a reason to go after anyway), but it's lead to the problem of keeping Hunters powered up. Hunters are almost continually out of mana, and Blizzard has made some wacky mechanic tweaks (with both AotV and Replenishment) to try and keep them up and running.
So maybe a non-mana system is the way to go with Hunters. But what would it look like? A Rune-style system, where spells are based on cooldowns of limited resources? Brigwyn recommended "Ammo" as the new resource system on the podcast, and maybe that's the way to go: unlimited ammo, but with a certain number of "shots" per second, that regenerate like a Rogue's energy, where the strategy lies in choosing which shots to take when. It seems late in the game's life to make such a big change to the way the very popular class works, but we can't wait to hear what Blizzard's thinking in a few weeks at BlizzCon.
Filed under: Hunter, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Classes, BlizzCon
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Leonffs Jul 27th 2009 6:03PM
I really don't get why they can't just use energy. It would make perfect sense. That's how it should have been in the first place.
Deadlock Jul 27th 2009 6:38PM
I really hope it's not energy, I found that system really irritating and switched from rogue to hunter because of it.
eblume Jul 27th 2009 6:51PM
In fact, that's how it WAS done at first. Up until one of the late beta patches (I think the one right after hunters were added) hunters used "Focus", a mechanic that was identical to rogue's Energy. You may notice that Focus got moved over to the animal companion's bar. As I recall, originally hunters and their pets SHARED the hunter's focus pool. Maybe they had separate pools though, I can't quite remember.
eblume Jul 27th 2009 6:55PM
Nope, I got the Focus mechanic entirely wrong. See the comments below for the actual mechanic. Isn't it funny how our memories deceive us?
Rakah Jul 27th 2009 7:09PM
There are so many things about hunters that are so wraped around intellect at the moment, talents like careful aim for example but more importantly GEAR ITEMISATION!.
All that intellect would have to become more useful if the resource system was changed (say increasing the regen rate of an energy like system) or new gear entirely would have to be added, something i'm sure blizz will try to avoid.
Anaughtybear Jul 27th 2009 9:24PM
I also hope it is not energy. That system is rather clumsy, particularly at lower levels. I can't imagine hunters functioning with that limited, time-based method. There are way too many abilities to constrained to energy.
Seloth Jul 27th 2009 11:59PM
I imagine if hunters did make the move to energy, a lot of the gear in place would undergo stat changes, ie. Pally 2.4 or whatever it was when they took the +INT off main pally gear like instance drops etc and upgraded the other stats.
To this day you can still get some quest reward greens from TBC quests with +INT that are aimed toward prot pallies.
Funkier Jul 28th 2009 10:25AM
Apologies for replying on front page. Post is inaccurate and clarifying comments are buried on the fourth page.
Interview question was about changing hunters to use _ONLY_ mana, not
the other way around.
Original question: "Are there any long term plans to possibly
removing the need for hunters to rely on a different resource system
then mana?"
Let's clean that up a little: "Are there plans to remove the need for
hunters to use resources other than mana?"
Finally, get rid of the double negative: "Are there plans to make
hunters depend on mana as their sole resource?"
dbuzzzy Jul 28th 2009 11:27AM
@Funkier
Thank you! I was completely confused by this post. It seems like we should be talking about how to make non-consumable ammo interesting.
Deech Jul 28th 2009 1:19PM
What about a resource system that used cast time of shots to build up power to give a feel of using a weapon instead of casting spells. Say they gave hunters 2 shots that had cast times, maybe 1 being a 1 second cast building up 10 power and the other being a 3 second cast that generated 30 power, then having powerful instant cast shots like Explosive Shot, Chimera Shot, Kill Shot, Aimed Shot that used take power to use. Then they could reduce the cooldowns of the shots.
ayalafatalis Jul 27th 2009 6:05PM
Didnt the first manifestation of a hunter use a 'Focus' system like thier pets? This was in Beta or Alpha vanilla, I think.
might be something like that
Karilyn Jul 27th 2009 6:08PM
I might be missing it, but (before the changes to Energy so that it regan'd smoothly) wasn't Focus identical to Energy in every single way?
Improbable Jul 27th 2009 6:25PM
It was dropped very early, so I don't know too much about it, but as I recall the first system for Focus for Hunters was something like Energy but also had to do with how much they were moving. So that you had to stand still and aim to do full dps.
It's pretty obvious why they dropped this and ended up retaining nothing but the name for pets.
I don't understand the original quote, though. The first question is about removing the need to rely on something other than mana. What do hunters rely on other than mana, except for ammo? Or did they mean to add a reliance to another resource?
My guess is the reference to Blizzcon is just the rep dodging a question that made no grammatical sense.
outdps Jul 28th 2009 10:45AM
Well, to keep things consistent, we could use a similar mechanic to focus or energy, but make it fit the weapon we use- "heat" for guns, and "fatigue" for arrows. The hotter your gun gets or the more fatigued your arm gets, the slower you fire auto shots, and special attacks cause heat and fatigue. Cooldowns like rapid fire could serve to reduce the heat/fatigue.
alpha5099 Jul 27th 2009 6:14PM
Wouldn't that throw itemization off? I mean, there's lots of mail lying around with stats that should appeal to both Enh Shamans and Hunters. If you take them off mana, are Hunters gonna want that Int?
XionFyre Jul 27th 2009 6:19PM
Meh, they'll just give hunters a ton of talents based off of INT or something... Kinda like how they wanted Ferals to share gear with Rogues so they gave them a bunch of mana conservative talents...
Wellandus Jul 27th 2009 6:25PM
Definitely. After all the gear consolidation, if hunters stop using int completely, enh shamans will need to as well. Its possible enh shamans could go to a system like ret pallies where their gear has no int on it and they survive by having a low burn rate and high mana return from abilities. Of course, without int on mail, it might start to look a lot like leather and you'd have more hunters/enh shamans cherry picking leather gear, or ret pallies/warriors/dk's cherry picking mail gear.
Bod Jul 27th 2009 6:58PM
There's a far simpler way to resolve all this. Dump AoTV, always a bloody stupid complex mana regen tool, and give hunters equivalent of shamanistic rage.
Normalise their damage output to something reasonable and you removed an annoyance. Doesn't need a whole new resource system.
Blorc Jul 27th 2009 7:42PM
That's basically how enhancement shamans were in BC. We just stacked str on our gear, int was considered a completely wasted stat.
mordecai Jul 27th 2009 6:14PM
wow this could be really big, i dont have a hunter and most likely never will but i see this changing a lot in pvp. mana drain will do nothing, also it will make it a lot stronger i think any ways.