Now, *He* Is “A Little Broken”
MMO-Champion has got their stuff together when it comes to collecting and organizing WotLK beta blue-posts. Good job, fellas, we certainly appreciate your diligence.
Let’s see what the latest Hunter gibber-jabber is about, shall we?
We plan to give all pets the master’s +hit.
A+ for effort. Yeah, this is critical. Even with 2/2 in Animal Handler, Hobbes “misses” more than 10% of all his attacks: Kill Commands, Claws, and regular Swings. That’s a huge chunk of DPS we lose and there’s nothing we can do about it right now. Granting our +Hit to our pets is wicked, and gets a BRK Growl of Approval.
The mana cost of new ranks is not just an issue for Hunters. We’re looking at lowering the mana cost of all new ranks among all classes. We also intend to do some improvements to Aspect of the Viper. Not to mention mana return mechanics in each of the tree’s (Invigoration, Rapid Recuperation, Hunting Party etc.)
Nice, nice, we approve. Moar mana, we like it, of course.
However. With proper mana-conservation techniques, hunters should not go OOM, except in PvP. Aspect of the Viper and Fel Mana potions should keep you going for a long, long time. Yes, we are happy to hear we’ll be getting better mana-mechanics, but we hope this doesn’t become a big-deal to the developers and sacrifice something else due to time constraints.
We’ll be doing some improvements to Chimera Shot. We’ll experiment with it refreshing the duration of the sting instead of consuming, and adding some base damage to the shot as well. It should act as an Arcane Shot replacement, doing significantly more damage (especially if serpent sting is on the target).
Refreshing the sting would imply that it would cost less mana than re-applying the sting, but it is not implicitly stated as such. This concerns us.
Let’s say a Serpent Sting costs 500 mana. If a Chimera Shot refreshes the sting, but costs 800 mana to fire it, then it would be a net-loss of mana to refresh it. It would make more sense just to fire another Serpent Sting.
But!
What if Chimera Shot worked like a Retribution Paladin? What if Chimera Shot refreshed all hunter stings on a target!
Your raid has three hunters: BM, MM, and SV. The BM and MM hunters apply Serpent Sting on a boss, the SV applies Scorpid Sting. The MM hunter hits the boss with Chimera Shot every 15 seconds which refreshes both Serpent Stings and the Scorpid Sting. Now that would be efficient and tasty.
Regarding Serpent Sting, we’ll bump the damage bonus you get from this effect up. We also want to make Serpent Sting more usable for Hunters.
Good, ’cause Serpent Sting both sucks and blows in its current form. It’s only useful when kiting, really. Many hunters aren’t even putting it on their action bars. We can’t tell you how many hunters smacked us with Scorpid Sting in AV this past weekend.
Tranq Shot will soon be able to dispel enrage mechanics (i.e. Warrior Enrage, Rogue’s Hunger For Blood, etc.). It should also be able to dispel Druids’ “Owlkin Frenzy” effect. Also going to lower the cooldown.
Yeah baby! Making Tranq Shot do its thing is a big bucket of Win. Now how about making it so that a Tranq Shot prevents rogues from Vanishing. Or even making it prevent enrages, not just dispel them?
In addition, Tranq Shot will also be able to dispel magic effects, and we’re removing that from Arcane Shot.
/think
OK, we’ll live with that trade. /signed off on it
Explosive Shot is intended to be three shots in one cast. Imagine Arcane Missiles, but not having to channel it. The spell isn’t quite there yet, we’re still not sure if it needs the AOE or not. It’s not intended to really be AOE utility.
It may not be intended to be an AoE, but it’s the only real AoE hunters have. No touch-a da Explosive Shot, Blizz! That’s our opinion, and we’ll bet all the SV hunters and SV wanna-be’s will agree.
We haven’t given up hope of fixing up your existing low-level pets.
Define “fixing up”, s’il vous plait. All a low-level pet need do is hold aggro, and if it can’t do that, it’s A Lot Broken, not A Little Broken.
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The improved mana regen mechanics are most likely due to the 1 pot per fight implementation. No more chain chugging of mana pots in the future, or so says the WotLK beta. So I guess we shall see just how beneficial this really is. It may be pure win after all.
Removing Arcane Shot dispel, while the addition was never asked for, pretty much makes Arcane Shot ridiculously less desirable now. With Kill Shot being able to take it’s place, what would be the point or Arcane Shot? Kill Shot will do less damage but cost 80 mana less and become more effective during crunch time on bosses. Blizzard originally though Steady Shot would only be used to fill in gaps when Arcane Shot was on cooldown since it would do less damage, and we saw how that turned out.
Megatf posted in the same thread that blue response was posted in agreeing that the removal of it is a big nerf, even if it is added to Tranq Shot.
Especially part of the talk going on is BigRedKitty will be on the list of things that can dispelled.
The +hit for pets is amazing though.
Low level pets might refer to (for example) level 70 hunters that have a level 50 pet tallstrider in the stable. The fix would be to bring up all low level pets up to current hunter level – 5.
Pet hit = hunter hit! A great change to be sure, but really benefits BM and MM hunters more than SV unless the Surefooted talent in the SV tree applies to pets as well.
So what would be the difference between a “three-shot” Explosive Shot and a beefed-up Multi-Shot?
That’d be fine with me, since a hunter’s job description doesn’t really include AOE dps. Perhaps they could make Explosive Shot into a Multi that always fired three shots… with the chance for all three to hit the same target, if only one is in range. (Or if it’s a big enough target? I sense boss-fight dps increasing).
I read the ‘fixing up low level pets’ as ‘making sure the auto leveling of a pet to 5 levels below you will work correctly with old pets you have in the stable that are lower level than that.’ I think Mania had a post about that as well.
Ditto Brian and Thar on the lowbie pet-fix
On Chimera Shot: I read that as keeping all the current effects, except swapping the ‘consumes the sting’ for ‘renews the sting.’ So you still drain mana with Viper Sting + Chimera, etc, only with this change you can keep the Viper Sting ticking almost continuously (3 ticks over 6 seconds, Chimera Shot, and then 4 more ticks over the next 8. 15 second cooldown, 14 seconds of mana drain.)
“Update 14:30 CEST – Fixed an error, the post about the hit % of the master being transferred to the pet was for warlocks, not hunters. ”
Update on mmowned, that the pet hit story is for warlocks, not hunters. That sucks, unless you’re a warlock.
When I originally saw the “pets get masters %hit” it was in regards to warlocks (see link in name), are we sure this applies to Hunters and their pets as well?
On top of the +hit going to Warlocks only right now, a lot more classes are going to run out of mana in the expansion because of the new Potion Sickness mechanic, so I would be praying for a better working AotV and spells that cost less mana.
“Let’s say a Serpent Sting costs 500 mana. If a Chimera Shot refreshes the sting, but costs 800 mana to fire it, then it would be a net-loss of mana to refresh it. It would make more sense just to fire another Serpent Sting.”
As a counterpoint, though, the original post says that Chimera is meant to replace Arcane. Thus, you’d have to compare the cost of Chimera Shot against the cost of Serpent Sting AND Arcane Shot, in which case it comes out ahead.
MM hunters need the better mana regeneration no matter what the form. Blizz is finally giving them some love in the respect and also hopefully they do fix Chimera(sp) shot.
Tranq Shot to dispel enrage effects. Well, duh. Finally.
Here’s an idea: Put a small cooldown onto Serpent Sting and make the effect stackable up to five times. Mmm, that sounds nice.
Are you getting something wrong about Chimera Shot, or am I?
It will not only refresh the sting, but also do 30% weapon damage+the special effect (40% of the stings damage in Serpent Stings case).
Sounds petty nice to me. (regarding the upcoming buff to Serpent Sting):)
Don’t forget Chimera actually does some damage as well. So it doesn’t matter that much if it is slightly more expensive than another Serpent Sting.
Oh, and the Surv Hunter is most likely going to be putting up Serpent Sting as well (BM can use Scorpid), since he might have the Potent Venom talent for 3% extra damage on Serpent and Wyvern stung targets.
I had a feeling the +hit was only for Warlocks. Animal Handler and that Tenacity talent simply wouldn’t make much sense then.
I think it’s a freaking joke that Blizzard actually considers Rapid Recuperation on the same level as Hunting Party and Invigoration. *sigh*
The +Hit for pets being synergistic is nice, though.
And yeah, if Chimaera actually refreshes EVERY Sting on a mob, then it might be nice, but I can already feel the vibe of “omg ur not bm ur not raidin wif us” that’ll originate just as fast as it did in TBC, regardless of the boon that Potent Venom from a SV Hunter could bring. *sigh*
They’re fixing the low level pets to get rid of the growing stray problem in many of the cities. You know, cats digging through the trash, wolves marking the warsteeds, tallstriders waking people up at daybreak.
Only you can control the pet population. Please have your low level pet spade or neutered!
another thing to consider about the mana efficiency is that the new potion sickness mechanic also applies to mana pots. so no chain chugging pots during boss fights.
Am I the only one who understood the post title and picture? lol
Drive safely everyone
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I don’t QQ, but this seems like more nerfs than buffs. On the other hand, from reading forums, you’d think the hunter class was broken and horrid. So not true. Mana problems aren’t an issue while leveling, you just need to balance your agi/sta with int/spirit. Pet aggro isn’t an issue all the way from level 10 to level 70 black temple geared. While leveling, you play your tricks, FD, disengage, aspect of monkey (yes!). At 70, you have more tricks (MD, intimidate – although you get this quite early in leveling).
It’s arena where hunters are seriously in trouble, and the simple solution is play another class which supports the LOS issues of arena.
The thing about reducing the mana cost has nothing to do with lvl 70 play or the new potion sickness. Its just that the mana cost of lvl 70+ spell is ridiculous, Explosive Trap costs 650 mana at lvl 61 (rank 4), at level 77 (rank 6) the spell costs 1700!! mana. And this is the thing with all spells, the mana needed to cast a spell is in most cases more then double the amount you need at lvl 70.