Hunter nerfs inc

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Ringo Flinthammer
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Hunter nerfs inc

Post by Ringo Flinthammer » 09 Dec 2008 11:33 am

Although, hey, my bear will hold aggro better now, and my cat won't be the must-have raid pet:
Ghostcrawler wrote: Hunters of all specs, and particularly Beastmaster, are doing too much damage in PvE.

We tested this a lot internally in beta and knew hunters were high but we hoped other classes would be able to catch up in a way they have as yet been unable to do. We want to be careful not to hurt hunter dps too much in PvP, so we’re taking most of the damage out of Steady Shot and Volley. Beastmaster hunters are in addition losing some of their pet dps. We still want BMs to have the best pets, but pet dps numbers are a little high at the moment. We are also still concerned about hunter survivability in PvP and taking the opportunity to jazz up Deterrence into something that looks and plays a little more interesting.

These are not all of the changes we are working on for hunters, but those changes we feel are ready for testing. We hope to get these changes up on the PTR so players will have a chance to test them out and respond before they go live.

1) Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
2) Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
3) Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
4) Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
5) Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
6) Kindred Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
7) Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
8) All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
9) Growl— threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
10) Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
11) Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
12) Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
13) Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.
Aspect of the Wild is still so mediocre ...

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Re: Hunter nerfs inc

Post by Orsco » 09 Dec 2008 04:23 pm

The only bad parts i see really are Steady and Volley. I know most of that stuff doesnt effect me, but it seems pretty tame as nerf's go. The growl improvement is nice, for warlocks too it seems.

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Ringo Flinthammer
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Re: Hunter nerfs inc

Post by Ringo Flinthammer » 09 Dec 2008 05:29 pm

Beast mastery hunters, particularly those with cats or scorpids as their primary pets, will find them to be pretty substantial nerfs, I suspect.

And yeah, I've been volleying my way through non-heroic instances. It's REALLY good now. If a hunter's AOEing more than a mage does, it's probably nerfbat time.

The Kill Shot change is nice. I've been getting 5k crits with that, and that's with my old gun, so having those twice as often is good.

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Re: Hunter nerfs inc

Post by Sanlear » 10 Dec 2008 06:13 am

Ringo Flinthammer wrote:Beast mastery hunters, particularly those with cats or scorpids as their primary pets, will find them to be pretty substantial nerfs, I suspect.
Sorry to hear it. If I were still playing a hunter (my blood elf was a BM with a cat), I would seriously be considering a MM spec now.
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Re: Hunter nerfs inc

Post by Ringo Flinthammer » 10 Dec 2008 12:09 pm

Sanlear wrote:Sorry to hear it. If I were still playing a hunter (my blood elf was a BM with a cat), I would seriously be considering a MM spec now.
It's a very different playstyle, though, especially with Chimera Shot. Hopefully most BMs who are unhappy with cats being more comparable to other ferocity pets will just look for a ferocity or cunning pet they enjoy more, like a dragonhawk for your BE. (And the lynxes are still great-looking cat pets.)

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