#0 - Nov. 26, 2006, 7:22 a.m.
NEW POST CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=93860412
A list containing some concerns, questions and comments regarding the TBC hunter.
While addressing every concern in as much detail would take a lot of time, some feedback would be most welcome =)
Last update: December 2nd, 1:40 AM
1. Itemization, Agility, (Ranged) Attack Power and Crit
a) Several items aimed at hunters have been updated due to the change in what Agility means for hunters. However, several are untouched, making them extremely lackluster in comparison to what they are now. Any word on items such as the ones listed below*? While some might not be targetted at hunters specifically, a lot of hunters use them, and would lose out on not having them changed. Similarly, enchants (and to a certain degree buffs) suffer from the same problem of being unchanged.
b) With the reduced Agility score, and the change making us only gain 1 Ranged Attack Power per Agility, Lightning Reflexes seems to have lost some of its power, even taking the upped Crit rate into consideration. Any thoughts on adjusting this talent in any way?
c) Slight itemization concern: With hunters no longer being so focused on Agility heavy gear, is there any plan of introducing more items with Ranged Attack Power instead of just Attack Power to make certain items more geared towards hunters?
d) New hunters do not have access to the updated items. Has there been any testing to see if the other changes (pet scaling, higher weapon DPS, etc) compensate for this? If not, will anything done to be alleviate this, for example making the 'of the Bandit' items available?
e) While Agility on some items were updated, +spell damage on for example the Striker's Garb set was unaffected. Since Arcane Shot no longer seems to gain anything from this stat, is this an oversight, or intended?
f) Set bonuses. With the changes coming, both to talents, skills and game mechanics, some old set bonuses have lost their relative value. The most mentioned being the 5/5 Striker's Garb bonus in relation to the new Rapid Killing talent (not stacking), and the 8/9 Cryptstalker Armor bonus in relation to which shots are used for PvE-damage.
g) A bug: Agility needed per 1% Crit and 1% dodge is changed. However, both on the Beta and the Public Test Realms, the Crit chance and Dodge chance gained from base stats seems unchanged, ~53 instead of ~33 and ~26 instead of ~20, respectively (Level 60).
2. Talents
a) Currently, both the Marksman tree and the Beastmastery tree seem to be very viable. Survival seems to be falling a bit behind. Partly due to the Lightning Reflexes concern mentioned above, but also due to seemingly being focused around procs a lot. Exposed Weakness not only needs a crit, but it then also has to actually proc of the crit to give the damage boost. Furthermore, it adds Attack Power based on the hunter's Agility, which, as mentioned, has dropped quite a bit. This might become less of a concern in the expansion, with sockets available to customize armor a bit more for each talent tree, but it's still a valid concern.
All in all the tree seems unfocused, some PvE-focused talents, some more PvP-focused, but without being as fluid as for example the Marksman tree. This might also stem from having 4 first tier talents and 3 second tier talents; it seems a bit of a mess. The 41-point talent also seems a bit underwhelming, since hunters don't really have that many long-cooldown abilities. Any thoughts on possibly improving or streamlining the talent tree? Examples here would be changing Lightning Reflexes, condensing the earlier tiers, making the following tiers less proc based... It is not doomed in any way, but I still think it could use some improvement, especially when compared to the other trees.
b) The Marksman tree seems, as I mentioned, to be pretty decent. There are some talents seeming a bit disharmonious, and I'll mention them briefly. Mortal Shots needing Aimed Shot, Trueshot Aura requiring Scatter Shot, Concussive Barrage seems a bit lackluster (what's its viability in endgame, will it boost Steady Shot?), as does Combat Experience (with current gear at least). Other than those, I personally have no major gripes with the tree.
c) I haven't played around too much with Beast Mastery, so I won't mention anything specific for now. It seems pretty decent, both for grinding, PvP and instances. However, the viability of a spec like this depends heavily on my next concern.
3. Pets
a) How well a pet-focused build handles itself falls heavily on the shoulders of the pet. However, pets are a part of the hunter class, regardless of build. While the stat scaling is a good start, I don't think it's enough in many cases. Are there plans on adding more survivability to pets? Either directly, by immunity to certain attacks (mostly PvE), avoidance, or more indirectly shared healing with the hunter, a better UI to actually let the healers see them, etc?
b) Any change in how we're learning skills / taming beasts? Will we, as was hinted earlier, be able to learn new skills without having to tame the beast in question (and thus not be forced to have a spare stable slot at "all" times)?
c) Any new pet skills planned? Some sort of AoE-mitigation or -avoidance, for example, would be welcomed, I think =)
d) Will some of the old pet skills be revisited and made to scale instead of being flat damage? Bite, Claw...
e) Related to encounter design, but for fights like Thaddius and Loatheb, both bosses boosting the standard damage output of the players, will hunter pets be taken into consideration? As it stands, a +5% damage boost gives less than that to a hunter, since our pet doesn't gain it as well. Basically, this is more of a petition: Please remember our pets when designing encounters, both in term of buffs, but also in terms of debuffs and damage taken.
f) Pets do not seem to gain anything from items giving the master Crit rating, Hit rating, etc. Intended?
g) Pet buffs. Would it be possible to let pets either be counted together with other pets, or together with warriors / rogues for Greater Blessings? As it is, they have to be individually buffed.
h) The character stat screen has received a overhaul, becoming much more detailed and useful. Would a similar revamp of the pet stat screen be possible?
4. Abilities and game mechanics
a) Steady Shot, our 'replacement' for Aimed Shot in terms of raid damage, doesn't seem to be working as the tooltip currently states. It seems gain less from Ranged Attack Power than listed (0.2 instead of 0.3, hinting at a 2.8 normalization), but as a trade-off gains damage based on your weapon (which also seems to be normalized to some degree?). This seems to be a pretty good idea, making weapon upgrades more of an actual upgrade, compared to if it weren't based on your weapon at all.
I What's the formula for Steady Shot's damage?
II Will there be later ranks of it (the trainers teach you Steady Shot rank 1)? If so, how do they differ to rank 1?
b) Kill Command
I What happened to Kill Command rank 2? Why did it disappear?
II Currenly, Kill Command triggers the global cooldown, making its use seem more limiting than it should be. It also seems to be counted as a player attack for most things. Bugged?
c) The change to Auto Attack (automatically changing from ranged to melee attack depending on target's range) is really annoying for hunters using traps / Scatter Shot. Any possibility of a toggle, allowing us to disable the automatic change based on target's range?
(A toggle so when Auto Shot is enabled, and our target moves in closer than 8 yards, we get "Target too close" instead of trying to hit him with our melee weapons.)
d) Aimed Shot.
I Last rank gives additional damage based on Attack Power. Is it intended that it's not Ranged Attack Power?
II Will lower ranks of Aimed Shot retroactively gain this scaling?
e) Weapon skill changing from affecting glancing blows to giving extra Crit chance versus higher level mobs. Is this change universal, or will weapon skill behave differently for ranged?
5. Scaling, other classes and other concerns
a) As it stands, hunters don't have as much to gain from buffs as others. Most "Attack Power" buffs only apply to melee, giving these classes an advantage when buffing up fully. Will this trend change? While asking for every Attack Power buff to apply to ranged seems a bit naive, asking that more do affect us seems reasonable.
b) Where do the developers see hunters in end-game? As a DPS class with other abilities and roles as an addition? How do we compare to other DPS classes, equally geared, in terms of DPS? What can we offer which makes us stand out and a vital part of any balanced group?
c) Certain parts of the hunter still seem to have no (or limited) scaling: Traps, stings and ammo. As we hit the level cap, can we expect these aspects to scale upwards as the hunter becomes more powerful?
*Vek'lor's Gloves of Devastation, Ring of Unliving, Cloak of the Shrouded Mists, Cloak of the Fallen God, Ossirian's Binding, Barrage Shoulders, Black Brood Pauldrons, Circle of Applied Force, Legguards of the Chromatic Defier, Doom's Edge, Dragonfang Blade, Huhuran's Stinger, Brutality Blade, Amulet of the Darkmoon, Wristguards of True Flight, Bloodsoul Embrace (set). There are more that would benefit (from a hunter's point of view) of an upgrade; this isn't a complete list to go through, but it contains a lot of the most mentioned items.
