Blue Posts and Other WoW News: Vial of Shadows bug, hunters, and official forum posts
by Adam Holisky 
Jan 3rd 2012 at 11:59PM
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Blue posts
Hunters
Quote:
4.3.2 just had a decent victory for Hunters through Vial of Shadows fix and Arcane Shot removed from Lock and Load.
The only thing remaining that I would really ike to see, seeing as there's no way we'll be let in on the 10% AP buff, is to boost Black Arrow's damage so it's used over Explosive Trap. After their 4.3 Lock and Load ICD adjustment, Explosive Trap is currently a 1-2k DPS gain over Black Arrow assuming proper timing, which is the reason for Survival's place on the meters currently (mid pack at best.) This makes an extremely clunky feel to the combat system and feels just feels wrong to forgo the use of Black Arrow at all. It also penalizes the Hunter greatly for latency or the boss making a quick movement which would then waste the cooldown entirely for no damage or procs.
Survival damage is in a relatively "decent" place especially after these patch changes. Just buff Black Arrow so Survival can reliably maintain the damage instead of taking a crapshoot on Explosive Trap to be mid pack.
4.3.2 just had a decent victory for Hunters through Vial of Shadows fix and Arcane Shot removed from Lock and Load.
The only thing remaining that I would really ike to see, seeing as there's no way we'll be let in on the 10% AP buff, is to boost Black Arrow's damage so it's used over Explosive Trap. After their 4.3 Lock and Load ICD adjustment, Explosive Trap is currently a 1-2k DPS gain over Black Arrow assuming proper timing, which is the reason for Survival's place on the meters currently (mid pack at best.) This makes an extremely clunky feel to the combat system and feels just feels wrong to forgo the use of Black Arrow at all. It also penalizes the Hunter greatly for latency or the boss making a quick movement which would then waste the cooldown entirely for no damage or procs.
Survival damage is in a relatively "decent" place especially after these patch changes. Just buff Black Arrow so Survival can reliably maintain the damage instead of taking a crapshoot on Explosive Trap to be mid pack.
Lock and Load not being caused by Arcane Shot is an intentional change. As many players have pointed out, there is just no need for it any longer.
We also intend to make sure Black Arrow is used over Explosive Trap, probably by buffing Black Arrow slightly.
We are looking a lot at hunter DPS right now. We think it is in a good place when compared to other ranged DPS specs (in equivalent gear), but falls short when compared to ranged DPS with Dragonwrath. The guilds currently posting heroic combat logs have a lot of Dragonwraths, and unfortunately, hunters are the only ranged DPS who don't have access to a legendary weapon. When more hunters have Deathwing weapons, their DPS will go up compared to the Dragonwrath users who won't be upgrading their weapons, and we'll see what hunter performance looks like.
It's likely that future legendaries won't be usable by so many classes and specs. For the present situation, one option is to just buff hunters to make up for their inability to have legendary weapons, but when you look at DPS casters who have no legendary, it's a tough option to take. We're not sure yet of the future of the attack power buff in Mists of Pandaria, but in the short term we want to make sure that there are some situations where melee can do really high DPS rather than routinely coming in below ranged DPS (which is how we felt about the last two raid tiers).
If we buff hunters, it will more likely be through other avenues.
Vial of Shadows
Just want to confirm: Vial of Shadows working only with melee attack power and not ranged attack power is indeed a bug.
Barring unforeseen complications, this will be fixed in an upcoming hotfix.
Thank you for the feedback!
Barring unforeseen complications, this will be fixed in an upcoming hotfix.
Thank you for the feedback!
Blizzard does read official forum posts
Quote:
No one from blizzard reads those posts
No one from blizzard reads those posts
This is wrong.
We do read those posts, as well as many other posts. Just because you may not see a blue post does not mean that we have not read it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rainee Sue Jan 4th 2012 3:07AM
... Deathwing weapons?
You mean the polearm that's about a 1% DPS upgrade, and the bow that would be about a 2% DPS upgrade IF THE PROC WAS ON MELEE HIT AND CRIT RATINGS INSTEAD OF SPELL, which it isn't?
The Deathwing weapons I can't get because, in comparable gear, my DPS is so consistently lower than my guildies (rogues, warlocks, ONE legendary-wielding mage) that I'm not getting TAKEN to the freaking Madness fight?
Yeah, THOSE weapons are going to fix everything.
I don't mind our damage being low -- everyone eats the ugly end of the nerf-bat from time to time -- I'm just sick of devs and people who don't play hunters constantly insisting to me that my class is just fine when my experience and that of 95% of hunters I know says otherwise.
SR Jan 4th 2012 5:38AM
My DPS went from top or second in charts (in a 25-man) for Firelands, down to the middle of the pack in Dragon Soul.
Granted I lost my bow to the other hunter in the guild and most melee DPS already has their Deathwing weapons, I doubt it would make much difference, as the other hunter has superior gear in nearly every slot now, including the bow.
Josh Jan 4th 2012 7:14AM
My little ten man guild killed Madness last week with a hunter, and we have no legendaries. They are certainly not required.
Emophia Jan 4th 2012 2:10PM
I'm sorry if your DPS is that much behind your raid that you're never even being taken to normal mode madness then you're the problem not the class.
Rainee Sue Jan 4th 2012 4:46PM
Well, to clarify, I'm in a very small guild that runs 10-mans and we're still working on regular Madness due to a lot of roster shifting after Firelands. I'm not being taken because we usually have anywhere from 5-7 DPS online, and I'm consistently on the bottom, and we need our top DPS to come anywhere close to succeeding.
I've consistently been one of my guild's highest DPS since Karazhan. Nothing about my dedication or amount of study into my class has changed since then. I follow the best known and available information about rotations, gear, stats etc. just like I always have. In this patch, I've gone from "usually in top 2, always competitive" to "almost always dead last." And I know other hunters who are as good as or better than me who've seen the same thing happen. If it was just me, nearly the entire hunter community wouldn't be complaining about it.
omedon666 Jan 4th 2012 4:59AM
Ok, these changes to survival might make the tug of war between survival and marksman on my hunter even more intense. Because you just gotta have a BM spec.
Arcane shot benefitting from LAL was just annoying, and a trapdoor for learning, newer hunters. I'd also like to see black arrow's cooldown match its duration, but I'm probably asking for too much there.
Sarahjane Jan 4th 2012 10:48AM
They had to remove Arcane from LnL since we're swimming in focus with our 2-piece bonus. Hopefully the possible buff to Black Arrow's damage also includes a change in the frequency of ticks (or even have it affected by haste like other classes' DoTs). Explosive Trap's damage is not that much higher than Black Arrow's, but the trap ticks every second as opposed to every 2 seconds, meaning the proc rate of LnL from the trap is twice as high. That's where the DPS increase comes from when using the trap; it's not the damage from the trap itself, it's the higher frequency of LnL procs.
Oh, and gotta have a BM spec? It's the arcane spec of hunters without the decent damage. It's so boring to play! Too bad they cut Rhumba in beta!
vthemechanicv Jan 4th 2012 9:19AM
Isn't the point of Legendary weapons that they give an amazing boost to the people that have them? By definition all other dps should be lacking compared to those that have Dragonwrath and the Rogue Daggers. There's always going to be someone at the bottom of the DPS chart and buffing classes just because they can't compete with amazing gear is not a good way to continue.
It's one thing when a class is broken beyond usefulness (4.2 fire mage), but hunters aren't. At all. By any stretch.
Sarahjane Jan 4th 2012 10:51AM
Every other class with a DPS spec has an above-average spec they can fall back on. Hunters are currently lacking that luxury. Not to say they're completely unplayable, but there aren't in a good spot at the moment.
SR Jan 4th 2012 11:57AM
Compare the DPS capability of melee classes 4.3, to that of a hunter's.
Emophia Jan 4th 2012 2:08PM
Wow, you;'re comparing a spec (fire mage) to a whole class (hunters).
Are you retarded?
vthemechanicv Jan 4th 2012 3:42PM
@Emophia
Do you feel better about yourself calling people names?
My point was Fire was BROKEN. Unplayable except for the masochist. Hunters aren't broken. The problem is that some people look at where caster DPS is right now and think their character is gimp. I think that's wrong from a developer point of view, since Dragonwrath skews the data in a very obvious way. And I think that's wrong from a player point of view, where some players are just flat out better than others.
My fire mage was getting trounced by a lesser geared ret pally in some 5-mans a couple days ago. Is fire still gimp? No, the pally was just a better player than me and rather than QQ I just mashed my keyboard harder.
gewalt Jan 4th 2012 5:28PM
@vthe
dont worry, its not you, its ret. it can produce absolutely retarded numbers on short fights (read 5 mans) because of the cooldowns it has. I am terrible at ret, but if the fight is under 2 minutes long, I can outdps any other class with better gear.
signed: rogue/dk main
nosoup4u76 Jan 4th 2012 12:03PM
I have to admit, I'm not someone who's played a hunter since BC, but are we really upset that hunters are "middle of the pack" when compared to mages, locks, priests and rogues who are all sporting legendary weapons? I'm not trying to start an argument, just asking for clarification purposes.
I mean, I still see plenty of hunters doing ok out there in PUGs and LFR. Not the best barometers of top end performance (granted) but still. I guess I just don't see too much major tweaking needed here if they're middle of the pack.
vthemechanicv Jan 4th 2012 4:15PM
@ Sarahjane
I see your point, but it's difficult for me to really agree. The what 20 (?) other DPS specs don't have a go-to for number 1 DPS. Is it fair to want Hunters to be stronger? Sure, but that doesn't mean the class is broken like some people would suggest. Maybe Hunters are fine, but everyone else needs to be reigned in a little?
@SR
Melee got a pretty significant AP boost as I remember (I loathe playing melee, so I didn't really pay a lot of attention TBH).
Personally I like the idea of and playing a glass cannon. Ranged, including hunters even, should be top of the heap. If we got to wear plate and parry attacks or whatever, then I could see melee being competitive with ranged DPS wise. But otherwise, what is the point of playing a clothie when I can get the mitigation advantages that, say, a ret paladin get and be the best DPS besides.
That said, Blink is still the best spell in the game...