Feb 18th Hunter Hot"fixes"

#1 - Feb. 21, 2011, 7:04 a.m.

This is just a quick note regarding the impending hunter changes coming this Tuesday.

As far as I can tell, the goals you developers have for the hotfixes on Tuesday are:

I think i can speak for the vast majority of hunters in agreeing with these goals -- the implementation however could use some work.

Aimed shot changes:

For starters, the focus efficiency of aimed shot barely beats that of our focus dump against plate classes, except when they are above 80% health. While aimed shot has obvious merits against the lower armor classes, a flat damage nerf, especially of the caliber that is planned, is expected to relegate aimed shot to a proc-only cast, as 50 focus and a 2.9second cast for essentially no damage gain over rocking out two arcane shots just doesn't make any sense.

I don't believe it is out of line to try and keep aimed shot as a risk/reward spell, in the sense that being able to land one should yield a dps and burst increase, while risking lost dps during the cast. A decent analogy were your plans for buffing frostbolt for mages, attempting to give them some benefit for opening up their tree to interrupts, instead of just spamming ice lance (arcane shot)

Suggestions: Maintain the damage nerf, Reduce cast time and focus cost (2.4cast and 30focus, maybe?) and change Master Marksman to 100% proc chance for Ready...Set...Aim!

Aspect of the Hawk changes:

Oh how quickly you forget about our good friend, aspect of the monkey. If i'm not mistaken, Aspect of the Dragonhawk was created to alleviate aspect dancing. With this planned 1400 AP buff to AotH, hunters will be severely punished for not aspect dancing between fox and hawk. My experience with steady shot in pvp is about 90% of them being cast while moving, which requires AotF, and outside of that, i want AotH on for EVERY other shot i cast. This can literally lead to changing aspects every other shot in certain situations.

NOBODY thinks this is a good mechanic. Its not fun or skill intensive.

By buffing the AP on AotH, you condone and exacerbate one of the most annoying mechanics this class has.

Solutions (Pick one!)

1) Combine AotH and AotF. Aspect of the Walrus. We don't care what you name it. Having aspects with clearly defined roles (Damage, Mobility, Utility) is a good concept. Having multiple aspects that must be constantly switched between for the same role is not.

2) Recode Aspects to work like stances, so they can be efficiently macro'd to shots. (e.g. they don't recast over and over again) This is far and away a worse choice than option #1, but anything is better than the planned implementation.

Think it over please.

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#72 - Feb. 23, 2011, 1:29 a.m.

Reduce burst capability of marks hunters
Maintain the PvE dps of marks, while increasing the overall dps of the other two specs

That's mostly on target, but there's a little more to it. We actually had a few different goals with these hotfixes. While it’s true that we wanted to reduce Marksmanship burst in PvP, that’s only part of the story; we equally wanted to make Survival and Beast mastery more attractive choices in PvE. That involved bringing Marksmanship damage down a bit in fights where little or no movement is required, and reducing the amount of Aimed Shot spam once mobs drop below 80%.

Marksmanship's burst damage in PvP was indeed higher than we wanted, and we felt that Aimed Shot was the best place to bring burst back into line, so we've reduced its damage, including the Aimed Shot! generated by the Master Marksman proc, by about 20%. To help compensate for the loss of dps and improve Survival and Beast Mastery output, Aspect of the Hawk should now provide 2000 attack power at level 85. This will also make the talent One with Nature more powerful as well. The net effect of the change to Aspect of the Hawk should result in a buff to Survival and Beast Mastery in PvE and (in combination with the Aimed Shot nerf) a slight reduction to PvE Marksmanship dps. The changes should also make Aimed Shot less attractive once a target drops below 80% health and Careful Aim no longer applies.

This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes, Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds. Now that it is listed at 2.4 seconds, the actual cast time is now closer to 2.9, which is where we want it to be. We realize this caused some confusion (even for us), and we’re going to see if we can make the 0.5 second delay more visible in the future.

Finally, we also wanted to let you know that Deterrence is functioning properly: Deterrence now provides 100% miss chance rather than 100% parry chance and remains in effect even if the hunter's weapon is disarmed, but it's still possible to temporarily delay a hunter’s use of Deterrence with the judicious use of disarm effects. In combination with some of the recent adjustments to melee mobility, Deterrence should still be more effective overall. We'll continue to keep an eye on it.

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#92 - Feb. 23, 2011, 2:11 a.m.

02/22/2011 6:01 PMPosted by Lefuza
To help compensate for the loss of dps and improve Survival and Beast Mastery output, Aspect of the Hawk should now provide 2000 attack power at level 85.

This isn't in the game.

Noted, I misunderstood some information and jumped the gun. They should be live soon, however.

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#95 - Feb. 23, 2011, 2:14 a.m.

Finally, we also wanted to let you know that Deterrence is functioning properly: once in use, Deterrence cannot be canceled by disarm effects, but it remains possible to temporarily delay a hunter’s use of Deterrence with the judicious use of disarm effects. In combination with some of the recent adjustments to melee mobility, Deterrence should still be more effective overall. We'll continue to keep an eye on it.

Deterrence was never, ever, EVER able to be cancelled by disarm effects. This is a CHEAP answer to the fact that we cannot deterrence while disarmed. You give us a blatant NERF and try to call it a buff?

I don't know if you noticed... but we are at the bottom of the bottom in arenas. Nerfs aren't what we need.

In the past Deterrence provided 100% parry, which could only be performed with a melee weapon equipped. Now it provides 100% miss chance, which means that your avoidance will still work.

The real issue is that some attacks, especially rogue attacks like Cheap Shot, could not be parried. Therefore a rogue could Cheap Shot through Deterrence, which totally countered the intent of Deterrence as a melee defense. With this change, Cheap Shot should correctly miss a hunter under Deterrence.

Wait, is that all ranged attack or ranged physical attacks?

Cause if its all ranged attacks, as a spellcaster, all i can say is.... whaaaaT??!?

It applies to attacks based on the ranged weapon slot. Those are not the same as spells, and this largely applies to hunters. Other non-spell ranged attacks in the game tend to use the melee weapon (like Shattering Throw) or are instant (like Fan of Knives).

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#103 - Feb. 23, 2011, 2:27 a.m.

02/22/2011 6:17 PMPosted by Cheytac
Rofl this is definitely on par with the whole steady shot/cobra shot haste thing. This is exactly how deterrence functioned before. What are we going to get next patch, Aspect of the Fox now allows steady shot and cobra shot to be cast while moving?

I clarified what I meant in the follow-up post (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2112373390?page=5#95), and updated the original post to be more clear.

Also:

Now those hotfixes should be live: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2259389#blog

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#122 - Feb. 23, 2011, 3:04 a.m.

02/22/2011 6:12 PMPosted by Hollowpoint
Are you aware how the change to aspect of the hawk promotes stance dancing for hunters again in PVP? This was a mechanic you wanted to avoid in WotLK by introducing Dragonhawk, a combination of monkey and hawk. Now its returned and its annoying.

Changing aspects appropriate to what you're doing isn't necessarily a problem. With the old Aspect of the Monkey, hunters would swap only when being attacked until they could make some space again. Ideally, a hunter who changes Aspects has a reason to stay in that Aspect for a little while, at least.

We're okay with players making a tactical decision between a high damage, but less mobile Aspect, and an Aspect that offers mobile damage and focus generation.

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#174 - Feb. 23, 2011, 4:15 a.m.

I started posting many many years ago, and one of the first things I learned was that even the slightest discrepancy in your facts will get picked up on immediately. If I wasn't 100% sure of my facts, I would either go to great lengths to be certain, or would simply avoid opening myself up to that kind of mistake.

I agree, actually. I made a mistake, for which I apologize.

Daxxarri

Community Manager

#396 - Feb. 24, 2011, 1:16 a.m.

It’s a little late in the day, but I wanted to come back and address some of the additional questions that you’ve asked as this thread has progressed.

Aspect swapping has come up quite a bit. In this thread, more than one of you expressed some annoyance with ‘sound spam’ generated by Aspect swapping. We're interested in addressing the concerns about sound spam, and as a matter of fact, we've been thinking about sound design quite a bit lately, and we’d like to emphasize sound design more in the future. For example, we'd like sound to serve more consistently as a gameplay cue. That strays away from the point, though, which is that we want there to be a trade off for hunters between standing still and doing more damage versus moving and doing less damage but getting mobility and potentially other benefits. For now, the best way to achieve that is via Aspects.

Freezing Trap also came up quite a bit, in reference to multi-trapping. This ability was changed because we wanted hunters to be somewhat more consistent with the crowd control potential of other classes, and we didn't want any one class standing out as the absolute best at crowd control. We realize that it rewarded skill, and we like mechanics that do that. This wasn’t the right place for it though, and we think that hunters can be rewarding to skilled players in other ways.