Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Aimed Shot, Barrage, and You.

Why does it seem to me that every buff we get is something we have needed for years?

Apparently Blizzard knows that we blow.. Ghostcrawler has flat out said we suck in arenas multiple times. They try to fix the problems by tiny little tweaks.. which basically all the tweaks are doing is making the class less of a pain in the ass to play, but not as much towards balance, while we don't get anything "new".

The new fun and shiny thing we would have gotten was camo.. but that has not only died, it was hung, beaten, flayed, and then burned, ever so cruelly. It was replaced by the crap sho.. uh.. trap shot. It's good and all that they removed the arming time (which was totally bogus to begin with) but it isn't very much a trap, nor is it hidden.

Dictionary.com says a trap is:
2. any device, stratagem, trick, or the like for catching a person unawares.


Okay, not only are traps not hidden, but the shot makes a pretty blue rainbow and then makes a frost nova when it lands.. totally inconspicuous.

I know I am beating a dead horse with trap shot.. but it's just a great example of "whats not new" Its the exact same as freezing trap.. just with range and a lot more noticeable.. even shares the CD.

Disengage? We needed that, sure, but its not like we haven't been needing it forever.. hunters have never had any escape abilities short of freezing trap, and that was not even an escape ability, it was a CC. We also got masters call.. but it has a longer cooldown than any other snare remover, and requires LoS of your pet, and requires your pet to be alive. It also removes stuns.. but it can't be used while stunned. I won't even bother with that one.

Instant Aimed shot? The moment arenas entered we needed this one.. honestly anyone who got hit by an aimed shot was either CC'd or a moron. The need for this increased once we got a MS effect on the shot... which made it the worst MS in the game. It also got its damage removed with a swift kick to the groin. "It will do more damage than multi-shot" they said.. it didn't. Granted, in the end, the new aimed shot will do more damage than the old one, since you can actually get it off whenever you want, including being able to jump shot it, but our burst is gone.. they just replaced multi-shot in our burst rotation with aimed shot. We are "Casters" thus we should have burst.. but we don't anymore.

Deterrence? I asked for that buff at level sixty. Hunters never had caster mitigation, and now we still don't. Deterrence WAS a good buff, but they nerfed it. I guess a worse ability than CloS on a five times as long CD is op.

Scatter shot? I like this change personally, although in the end it does absolutely NOTHING for me, since I feel explosive shot is fail and I would rather get scatter over it anyways, now, instead of getting scatter over explosive shot, I'll get readiness over explosive shot. It needs to be trainable.

Tranq shot? You can't tell me the first time a hunter got this book from luci they haven't wanted it to dispel frenzy/enrage effects in PvP too, or remove rage/energy. This change is only like 5 years late.




Basically, hunters in WoTLK = we get everything we have been needing for years (Except caster mitigation, bastards.) but nothing new and shiny.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

A reason to spec BM



I'm sorry, for that I would go 51 points in BM.

So what if you outdps me, and own me in arenas and pvp.. I GOT A FUCKING DEVILSAUR IN MY SIDECAR!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

@Rilgon

I got my scope recipe from Kara.

Get owned.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Holy Instant Jumping Aimedshot Batman!

Upcoming Hunter Changes
Greetings.

I have some good news, and some bad news. First, the bad news. Unfortunately we won't be able to do the Aspect of the Viper change I discussed yesterday (passive instead of requiring you to attack the target) at this time because of technical limitations and its potential to shake up our current balance goals. However, we will evaluate it as an option for a future patch.

Now, the good news.

- Aimed Shot - This shot will now be instant cast, its damage/effect/cooldown will remain unchanged.
- Scatter shot - This will now be an 11-point Survival talent.
- Readiness - This will now be the 21-point Marksmanship talent.
- Trap Mastery - This will now be the 41-point Survival talent. Granted, not very sexy for a 41-pointer but we'll do some changes there in a future patch (after WOLK ships).
- Surefooted is swapping places with T.N.T. (so Surefooted is now in tier 2)

These changes will be live in an upcoming beta build.

[ Post edited by Koraa ]
Class Designer



Holy Instant Jumping Aimedshot Batman!

Not only that.. 11 point SV scattershot?

Survivalism triumphs again!!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Glimmer of Hope

Hope.. we haven't seen that in a little while.

The mana is not based upon your damage. It is a general rule now to not make your mana scale with damage or healing etc., because mana doesn't scale as fast as those stats. What it does is regenerate a % of your base mana relative to your weapon speed (nullifying the need to have a fast or slow weapon to game the aspect).

What we're going to do is balance the passive regen to be around the same as if you were attacking the target.


So our afkautoshot viper got changed to a passive. This is a large step for hunters in arenas. It went from being godly with the 100% of your damage, to being crap, to being slightly less crappy, to back to where it started. Walking around in circles...

But on the bright side, it won't scale with intellect anymore. Gravy.

Things are looking grim for us right now still.. But it is still beta, and there is still hope.