Patch 5.4 patch notes
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The latest patch 5.4 newsScattered Shots: Hunter mastery balance in Cataclysm beta
by Brian Wood 
Sep 27th 2010 at 9:00AM
With Cataclysm, all of our huntering skills finally progress to the next level. The apprentice surpasses the master, and we even get the new mastery ability and mastery stat on our gear to prove it. Mastery gives us a bonus that is unique to each spec, scales with our gear and provides a convenient knob for the designers to use to tweak our DPS as needed to help keep all specs in line with each other.
At least, that's the plan. Currently, our masteries, which haven't been touched since the re-implementation after the 31-point talent trees, range from nearly useless to "Holy bajeezus, Batman!" More alarmingly, if unchanged, there is a danger that they could represent scaling issues that would make it impossible to balance the hunter specs across raid tiers.
Join me after the cut for an analysis of the current state hunter masteries. If discussing the potential balance issues of in-development stuff is dull and pointless to you, give today's column a pass and hop back on Thursday for something different.
It ain't final, it's still the beta/PTR
As always, we're still in beta. Well, we're also in the PTR, which is considerably further along -- but the point is that we're still in development. The hunter class is like a newborn child; sure, it may look like a hideous, deformed, alien thing, but that doesn't mean it can't grow up into an uncommonly good-looking paragon of death.
Normally I don't spend a ton of time analyzing the DPS advantages of beta abilities, because they change every build or two. I figure we need to wait for them to settle down somewhat before really crunching the numbers. But with mastery, it's been a long time with no changes. Our masteries today are the same as they were first re-implemented over a month ago. Since they are starting to seem somewhat fixed and I still have concerns, it seemed worthwhile to take the time to run the tests and check the numbers.
Quick review
In case you've forgotten, here are the masteries for each spec:
- Beast mastery Master of Beasts
- Marksman Wild Quiver
- Survival Essence of the Viper
The DPS advantages of mastery, by spec
I ran some tests at level 85 to measure how much mastery is contributing to our DPS. Because the specs aren't yet balanced (MM is way behind, DPS-wise), I'm looking at mastery as a percentage of DPS rather than raw numbers. I did the tests in poor gear and with premades with varying levels of gear, from 288 mastery rating up to 1,500 mastery rating.
Since this is on the beta, the last patch never got applied. That means that pet DPS went down, but Kill Command damage went way, way up. Essentially, this means that all specs will probably see an increase in the percentage of DPS that mastery contributes.
Here's what the numbers are now looking like with very little mastery on gear:
- Beast mastery Mastery contributes around 13% of the total hunter + pet DPS.
- Marksman Mastery contributes around 1.6% of the total hunter + pet DPS.
- Survival Mastery contributes around 16% of the total hunter + pet DPS.
Here's what the number look like up around 1,500 mastery rating:
- Beast mastery Mastery contributes around 19% of the total hunter + pet DPS.
- Marksman Mastery contributes around 3.5% of the total hunter + pet DPS.
- Survival Mastery contributes around 30% of the total hunter + pet DPS.
Mastery DPS does not need to be the same
An important thing to note here is that the advantage of mastery does not need to be the same from spec to spec. It is perfectly fine if MM gets a 3 percent boost from its mastery and SV gets a 30 percent boost. All that matters is that the DPS of each spec is approximately balanced.
So perhaps MM gets little from the mastery stat, but the advantage of Piercing Shots or other talents gives it a big DPS edge that other specs don't get. The important thing is that DPS balances out in the end, and there are a lot of ways to adjust that.
Sure, it would kinda suck if your MM spec never wanted a piece of gear with mastery on it and your SV spec would never take anything else. Then you end up needing two different sets of gear just to play the two specs, making it far more likely that you'll get holed into just one or the other. I feel that way too, but we have to feel that way very, very quietly. If the hybrids heard us complaining about needing two gear sets, there would no end of lecturing.
The scaling problem
While it's fine if the mastery boost is different from spec to spec, it is not fine if the scaling is radically different from spec to spec. You can turn all the DPS knobs you want to, but if MM gets 20 percent more DPS from going up a tier of gear yet SV goes up 30 percent, then we have a problem.
Right now, it's looking like there's a problem with mastery scaling.
If we start at the baseline, then every point of mastery (around 179 mastery rating) is netting BM around a 1.33 percent DPS increase. SV sees around a 1.7 percent DPS increase, and MM sees a tiny 0.25 percent increase. Unless the other specs have a stat that scales comparatively better the mastery for SV, survival will pull ahead as gear levels increase.
Solutions
There are a lot of ways to solve the issue, and I don't doubt that Blizzard is considering many that I haven't even thought of. Certainly it looks like mastery is a bit too good for SV right now. The simplest solution to that would be to just reduce the percentage damage increase -- so instead of 2.5 percent increase to elemental damage, we make it 1.5 percent (or whatever seems appropriate). This is the great thing about the mastery system -- it's easy to tweak. Alternatively, you could limit the types of elemental damage the master affects (just fire and shadow, for example).
However, I do think that the MM mastery probably needs to be reworked entirely. While we could certainly increase the proc chance of its mastery -- or more likely, increase the damage of the proc -- I'm not convinced that's the best route to go.
Personally, I'd favor just giving MM an entirely new mastery. I like the idea of giving MM a flat percentage damage increase to physical damage. This is very fitting with the theme of MM and essentially gives us the armor penetration benefit, only without the wonky non-linear scaling that made armor penetration such a weird stat in Wrath. It also fits well with the hunter masteries in general and would scale well with them. (As a side note, my low-mastery hunter gets about 72 percent of hunter damage from physical shots, including Piercing Shots, and the SV hunter gets about 85 percent of hunter damage from magical shots).
But whatever the solution, I hope to see something change in the next several builds. Now that things are on the PTR, it feels more and more like we need to get the big changes out of the way so we can spend our time rooting out subtle bugs and tweaking things.
Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. Our Scattered Shots Resource Guide takes aim at everything from improving your heroic DPS, understanding the impact of skill vs. gear, and getting started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101.Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
B Sep 27th 2010 11:00AM
I doubt anyone has managed to test the raids and raid boss encounters, but I'd like to know about this as well, from solo levelling perspective, to 5 man dungeons & heroics pet survivability.
I imagine they still have the Avoidance passive talent?
Jesse Felt Sep 27th 2010 10:19AM
I have similar concerns about gear scaling on other masteries out there. I think that Mastery is going to take Blizz a bit to polish the rough edges off and we may end up with some early-wrath-like juggling.
Brock Soper Sep 27th 2010 10:32AM
The Survival tree seems so far from finished, yet it seems all they are doing is damage passes now. Counterattack needs to go, like yesterday. Black Arrow needs to be made unique and not just a ranged Immo trap (ranged traps were outdated with Trap Launcher, hence the removal of Freezing Arrow). The first few tiers of the tree don't even benefit you at the corresponding levels. Please tell me you have hope that they will sort this mess out before 4.0.
(cutaia) Sep 27th 2010 11:03AM
As a prot/ret pally, I fully approve of forcing hunters to carry more gear.
As a loot master, I absolutely oppose the idea of forcing hunters to carry more gear.
Stoop Sep 27th 2010 11:26AM
as a Hunter, I fully support carrying a DPS and a Tank set... :)
Artificial Sep 27th 2010 7:08PM
Everything is hunter armor? ;)
Jack Miles Sep 27th 2010 11:35AM
The thing about switch MM to increasing physical damage is that you then have BM increasing pet damage by a pertentage - dull, survival increasing elemental damage by a percentage - rather dull, and MM increasing physics damage by a percentage- dull. If you start looking at other classes mastery mechanics compared with those they just seem boring.
Matt Sep 27th 2010 11:01PM
I would rather our masteries be dull but evenly scaling, instead of interesting with wonky scaling. Who gives a hoot if the masteries are interesting if they scale so poorly that only 1 spec is worth raiding with in high levels of gear (just like MM was in Wrath)? You'd never even get to ENJOY the other interesting masteries.
Being able to reasonably bring whatever spec I enjoy most is far more important to me than having my mastery be "cool".
styopa Sep 27th 2010 11:39AM
So very much of the hunter talents feel 'in progress' that it kinda reminds me of Vanilla release with the Hunter very much NOT YET READY FOR PRIME TIME status.
Example: the first-line marks talent suckfest:
Here are your choices:
- go for the throat - 2 points, ranged crits cause your pet to gen 5/10 focus. Good for BM, almost completely worthless for MM, SV.
- rapid killing - 2 points, after killing green+ opponent, your aimed/steady/cobra shots do +10%/+20% for 20 sec. LOL, there isn't even a cobra shot any more. Further, these points are utterly wasted on any boss fight where there isn't a steady stream of adds to kill. For leveling, good. Meh for anyone in endgame.
- efficiecy - possibly the worst. 3 pts. Reduces focus cost of arcane shot by 1/2/3 and expl/chimera by 2/4/6. It's worth a talent point to 'save' 1 focus on a 25-point cost shot or 2 from a 50 pointer? Really?
...and then realize you need to put 5 TP's in this trashheap to get anything further in the tree.
WOW, ick. (crosses fingers for MUCH work to be done on Hunters in the next month)
Even if you're BM or survival, you're probably going to end up with some extra talent points to stick somewhere outside your tree, and as BM you probably want Sic'Em.
danfeucht Sep 27th 2010 12:14PM
- efficiecy - possibly the worst. 3 pts. Reduces focus cost of arcane shot by 1/2/3 and expl/chimera by 2/4/6. It's worth a talent point to 'save' 1 focus on a 25-point cost shot or 2 from a 50 pointer? Really?
Don't knock focus reducing talents on the main shots for each tree, this is the new system we have to get used to and you could learn a thing or two by glancing at the rogue trees and their energy reducing talents.
thebitterfig Sep 27th 2010 12:22PM
I think someone never played a rogue, or else you'd understand the utter insanity of saying that Efficiency is a bad talent.
styopa Sep 27th 2010 12:42PM
@ both
No doubt, this is foreign territory to me. But it just seems of such limited utility. Let's say that you drop all 3 points here, for a Arcane shot that now costs 22 instead of 25. Sure, it SEEMS like this might be good because with what, 4+ return per tick (ticks are what, each second? Each 1.5 secs?) If it's 4 a second then say 6 per GCD.
Without, you'd be
First shot 100-25+6 = 81.
2nd 79-25+6 = 60
3rd 60-25+6=41
4th 41-25+6=22
5th 22-25+6=3
WITH the 3 points in Efficiency:
1st 100-22+6=84
2nd 84 = 68
3rd 68 = 52
4th 52 = 36
5th 36 = 20
6th 20 = 4
So I guess you're right that it does add even at the most basic level, one arcane shot to every five (with a nearly-equal wait for the following shot, so it's apples to apples), so a straight 20% dps increase for 3 talent points.
Or could someone more adept/experienced with rogue-energy theorycrafting parse the numbers better?
So it seems that I concede on efficiency, but I think the point I made is still essentially valid that having to spend 5 points in that tier (if you're spending points in that tree at all) means that at least 1 of them is almost entirely wasted for any spec.
ALF Sep 27th 2010 11:46AM
Really good analysis, Frostheim. Great insights into the going-ons. Do you submit feedback or articles like this to Blizzard? I'm sure it would help them improve on working out the kinks in the balancing.
Oh, well, you probably do. Again, really nice insights and a very-well written article to explain it all.
Stridren Sep 27th 2010 11:55AM
wakka wakka
thebitterfig Sep 27th 2010 12:19PM
Well, I look at Wild Quiver only working off of autoshots as not automatically bad. Consider: in WotLK, Autoshot is any hunter's single highest source of damage. Survival come close with Explosive Shot, and ultimately it's probably just crit and such which determines which is higher between them, and even for a BM hunter, autoshot outdamages their pet (not by a lot, but just barely).
To this end, I'd love to know more about the damage breakdown for Cataclysm hunters, that is, how much comes from which shots, pets, etc. I can hit up WoL to find out roughly how it goes for raiding hunters, but don't know a handy source for a Cataclysm version of this, or at least an estimated cata version. However, given the loss of armor penetration, increased pet scaling in general, and blizzard's goal of moving people further away from automatic damage, it's safe to presume that damage is being redistributed away from autoshot into more active abilities.
However, the reason WQ sucks is pretty simple - it buffs autoshot much less than other hunter masteries buff pets or elemental damage. Let's presume that autoshot for MM is going to be as big a factor as pet is for BM (which is probably incorrect, BM's pet is probably a larger component come cataclysm, but presume it for the sake of argument). 10 points of mastery will provide a BM hunter with a 20+2.5(10) = 45% increase to pet damage. 10 points of mastery will provide a MM hunter with a 16+2(10) = 36% chance for a Wild Quiver proc, so you start out at 80% as effective, but recall that WQ shots are 50% of autoshot damage, so you get a 18% boost to autoshot damage. Less, presuming that Piercing Shots won't work with WQ crits. Going back to the original, false presumption of BM pet and MM autoshot being equal portions of the final damage pie, mastery is 40% as effective for MM as it is for BM, and that's a huge problem.
Thing is: I like Wild Quiver. It's a really cool ability, and I'd hate to see it go. However, if autoshot damage is half of what a BM gets from their pet, or a SV gets from elemental damage, Wild Quiver would need to be twice as effective at buffing autoshot damage as Master of Beasts or Essence of the Viper are at buffing their targets. Given that WQ is about half as effective to start, you'd need a 32% base chance to proc WQ with a 4% increase per point of mastery to proc a 100% damage shot in order to balance it out, which would start to get pretty insane and probably drive the PvPers into fits.
One last point, Essence of the Viper needs to be nerfed. Flat out, it does. If elemental damage is 80%+ of a SV hunter's damage at low mastery, then a 20% baseline, 2.5% per point mastery scaling is simply too damn high. A 20/2.5 mastery is about right for someone who gets just under half their damage from the Mastery's subject, such as a Frost DK's portion of frost damage. For balance's sake, SV's mastery should probably be something like a 12/1.5 mastery. It simply buffs so large a portion of the hunter's damage that it needs to have a smaller scaling factor.
Boobah Sep 27th 2010 1:25PM
One thing that annoys me about your comment (not really your fault, I expect) is that those 'default' numbers for mastery aren't for 0 mastery; they're for the eight mastery you get when you train the ability.
That your example is 10 mastery from gear (18 total), instead of 10 mastery doesn't really change anything; Wild Quiver as implemented is either very bugged (by description it should work on all ranged shots, and consequently boost all your damage aside from the pet and Serpent Sting) or just generally useless.
Skarn Sep 27th 2010 2:27PM
"An important thing to note here is that the advantage of mastery does not need to be the same from spec to spec. It is perfectly fine if MM gets a 3 percent boost from its mastery and SV gets a 30 percent boost."
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Ghostcrawler has stated that they don't want any class or spec to greatly value a secondary stat over the rest like crit, haste and mastery. The opposite is also true, that Blizzard doesn't want any spec avoiding any of the secondary stats because it's trash. I have no idea how crit and haste compare to mastery for each of the three specs (new article idea?), but mastery seems pretty terrible for Marks right now, in comparison.
No spec should be looking at their Mastery stat and going "eh, I'd rather take gear without Mastery." Mastery is supposed to be the big every-class-and-spec wants it stat, so if it's so lackluster for a spec, then it needs tweaking.
Noblebeast Sep 27th 2010 3:38PM
MM mastery should Wild Quiver + a haste boost. That way you ensure WQ procs more often and it will scale better definitely.
Hituro Sep 27th 2010 4:52PM
I'm glad to hear it. I couldn't understand 2.5% pet damage in Survival.
Nimal Sep 28th 2010 5:16AM
"If the hybrids heard us complaining about needing two gear sets, there would no end of lecturing."
But we didn't choose to be a hybrid ;)
"Personally, I'd favor just giving MM an entirely new mastery. I like the idea of giving MM a flat percentage damage increase to physical damage."
That would be the best solution. Wild Quiver doesn't make sense as a Mastery. Finally I reached the point at which I can master my spec and suddenly there's a big chance I can fail at it. :S