Thanks to Nimizar for pointing out this post by Ghostcrawler about how the upcoming dual spec feature (which should make an appearance in Patch 3.1, the next big content patch) will work with hunters:
Q u o t e:
Obviously they’re going to have to do something for hunters. Otherwise, they won’t be able to switch between BM and anything else on the fly.Yup. I think you’ll like it though.
I haven’t been paying much attention to the dual spec thing (although I am hoping that it will make some testing somewhat easier for me), so I don’t have much to add. What do you guys think?
[edit] Ghostcrawler also posted a bit about further hunter PTR changes in this thread on Arcane Shot and Explosive Shot buffs:
One of the concerns with nerfing Steady Shot was hurting the dps potential for Survival hunters. One of the opportunities with the nerf was to make other shots more attractive so that hunter dps wouldn’t be so much about auto + steady.
Here are two changes we are going to try on the PTR.
Explosive Shot — damage increased substantially (e.g. from 260 to 520 base at rank 4), and additional scaling added to compensate. No longer deals AE damage to other targets.
Arcane Shot — mana cost lowered to the cost of Steady Shot.
I never have anything useful to say on non-pet stuff like this, but it does seem like something I should point out.
I don’t mind the range thing. In PVP, the Wingclip/Disengage trick works marvels to keep people at range. Hell, I remember the Days of the Deadzone! You think it’s sucky NOW…. Try it when some lock or mage decides to stand where you can’t even TOUCH them and burn you down like a birthday candle?
But I digress. What -I- want is to be able to shoot and move. People have running gunfights in RL all the time, no other class has their autoattack broken by movement… it’s such a simple simple thing. Will it happen? Heh, probably not. But I can hope.
*Laughs* Nactwulf, do you remember the cry of outrage and anguish that went up from the casters when the deadzone was fixed? Very rare is it to see so many tears flowing…they flooded the forums. So sweet.
*Coughs* Sorry. At the moment we can use arcane, our stings, and aimed shot on the move. Oh, and concussive, thats important. You can drop a trap, but with the arming time thats hit or miss, not to mention people often avoid it.
Nacht & Palla:
OMG Deadzone D= Don’t remind me of those horrible days. But I did love those sweet sweet tears when it was fixed.
Heh, I absolutely loved it when some uninformed mage or warlock would run up to the dead zone….and promptly die anyway, that lock of shock on their faces.
Dual specs means F*%$ All to a hunter. Currently we can do almost anything. Casdia you are not the only Marksman. I love all the hunter specs and have played them thoroughly from the entertaining BM exotic pets to max AP & Crit hybrid MM/SV.
Whatever your spec you can solo grind/quest, you can OT non heroics with a tenacity pet, take on elite mobs, do good dps in raids with or without pet.
Those who think a pet can OT in a raid or heroic are deluding themselves and even a dedicated pet tanking specced BM hunter’s pet wont last 5 seconds without strong healing. The plain fact is pet health is too low and they also dont have anywhere near the mitigation a full tank does. With chain healing on a pet then yes it probably might survive but at 12-15k pet health you are looking at 1/2 – 3/5 the health of a decent warrior tank.
We can already do what we need to with 1 spec. The dual spec for us would be a bit of fun to do our dps differently but really shouldnt make or break your ability to play in all capacities that you already can.
A tank swithcing to healer or dps between boss fights is a whole other world of versatility!
Wow, lots of opinions about the dual specs. Didn’t read through all of them either, especially the long posts. Anyways it’ll be nice to play around with 2 specs. I’m looking forward to it.
Were this vanilla WoW, Drina, I’d have disagreed with you. But I’ve run some instances at this point, and mobs, even on non-heroics, really hit to hard. Even if a gorilla could hold aggro on multiple targets, those multiple target’d tear the pet apart in a hurry. Its a very painful truth for some one like me to admit, but its the truth just the same. You’d have to over gear the instance to have any real chance at it on heroic.
@Palla & Drina:
I think the notion of pet offtanking has only come because GC and other blues keep mentioning they want that kind of capability for Hunter’s pets (presumeably BM hunter pets) to be a goal of the future.
However, as it stands, there’s no way my pet can off tank in a serious manner. Sure, he can offtank those non-elites that get burned down in a matter of seconds, but I don’t see my Gorilla being the serious OT anytime soon.
At the dual specs, I never changed specs anyways between raiding and soloing, but I would consider making a “glass cannon spec” (as some know BRK pointed out) for raiding, and keeping a basic BM 51/20 for soling content. But it’s not my biggest deal.
However, my druid? Yeah, she’ll love the dual specs.
The only choice for me for dual-specs is choosing whether to have a marksman PvP build or a survival PvE build to go with my beast mastery build. I may be wrong but I believe GC has stated that dual-specs are meant more for hybrids, as in they’ll obviously get the most benefit from it. Need a healer? Throw on your resto set and swap specs. Need a tank? Throw on your sword and board and swap to tanking. Want to pewpew? Don your glass cannon gear and swap to pewpew.
Shagrat – no “glass cannon” wear for me! I don’t want to wear anything that is “see-thru”. Scare everyone to death :)
*looks thoughtfully at Sig* *COUGHS* Anyway, yea, no, glass cannon doesn’t suit me. Clothadin never did either, even though I had half a guild urging me for it at one point in time. I LIKE my ability to survive, danke. As far as I am concerned, my hunter should never take enough damage to be a healer alert on fights where I can avoid it, and in those rare times I DO take damage, I’d rather take as reduced an amount as possible. Same with my paladin, only more so….I tend to forget to heal myself, so its kinda important that I not take ooo-goolies of damage when I do take damage. I have a once every five minutes divine shield as my ‘fade’, so….yea.
Yerse, I realize I sort of countered myself there. But accidents do happen, and I don’t like being totally destroyed in two seconds when they do.
Uh, wait, what? They’re letting us BM hunters have our exotic pets and then respec MM?
A: What happens to our exotic pets?
B: What happens to our pet’s 4 extra talent points?
The only reason I’m still BM is because I have Loque’nahak and the rare Silithid from Thousand Needles. I tried MM for a while, didn’t like it, tried SV, loved it, BM is just how I’ve always been, and I like the exotics. Frankly, that’s the only reason I bother with the tree. :/
Oh, and massive DPS, too, but… I’d enjoy being utility more than DPS, frankly. But the lust for utility is outshadowed by the lazerkitty.
Oh Palla, I was making a joke! :) Glass – see thru, lol. Trust me on this….
Drakara – good questions!!! Same thing I asked (in another form) up at post 47. I would bet we can’t use the pet then. Now, if Blizz maybe thinks on this and realizes that if someone has their primary spec as BM, then it would just carry over when using the secondary or maybe we will get our wish and out pets are like warlock pets – carried on our petbar, like the mounts/cuddlely pets (as mentioned up in post 22). We can change out and that would be nice.
*Laughs* I know Sig, I was just picking at you since you tend to down yourself. And yea, switching out of beast mastery unsummons your pet and prevents you from resummoning it. You can take it out of the stable master and put it in, which means that our new form of pet switching will allow something similar, in my best guess.
Correction, you can’t take it out of the stable master, sorry!
wow, lots on whining. so I think ill try to just comment.
swapable pets on the fly would be great, seeing as warlocks can and it would solve dual spec and 51 point BM.
BM damage needed a nerf. I do a significantly larger amount of damage as bm than any other class, using a spirit beast,helps to be well geared.
Blizz needs to make up its mid on hunter shots for this expansion, Aimed shot is not very useful raiding, and multi isn’t always useful so if you are nerfing steady, a bm hunter without aimed shot specced is severly nerfed on siblge target or using a lot of mana doing multi’s to one target.)
I say ride out the nerfs and hope that what ever aspect of hunters they mess up this time, will be quickly addressed.
Balance
1. Balance can only be achieved if every class can beat every other class.
2. Blizzard has repeatedly stated they are against making the classes equal.
3. Blizzard talks about team composition as way to balance, but this clearly in never the case.
4. You must pick the season’s OP classes and forget trying to get Blizzard to be fair or balanced in class ability.
5. Favorite OP classes last season were: druid, warrior, loc.
6. Current OP classes are: RET pally (shield, stun, dps dead before you can even fight back), loc (fear and dot to death before you can fight back), DK (more dps than any other class), rogues (stun to death). See the pattern? Kill without fighting. Kill without a fair fight. Kill without the other player having a chance. If you don’t think they are OP, then check current arena rating statistics.
7. Expect DK to get even more OP despite everyone’s complaints. DK is current Blizzard pet class.
8. Favorite classes to nerf and keep down: hunters, shaman, priests.
9. Arena will continue to be a joke: not about skill as it is about OP classes.
10. Arena will continue to be about how to combine the current OP classes.
11. Case in point: hunters were statistically last in all 4 arena seasons. Nothing was done to change that because Blizzard is in no way about balance. Hunters will make it 5 for 5 this season.
12. Case in point: arena for money was played by only 3 classes at the top anywhere in the world (druid, warrior, warlock). Any fix come for the other classes at any time during the entire season? NO! Any nerfs come for those 3 OP classes anytime during the entire season? NO!
13. Every time I post this, Blizzard deletes it quickly. I tried to spam it to get it out there, so Blizzard banned me from the forums.
14. I waited an entire week and posted a rewritten version once. I got banned for a week.
15. Blizzard cannot stand the truth.
Blizzard can’t nerf Death Knights yet because not everyone has Wrath of the Lich King. It makes good marketing sense.
Hey peeps! Uhm, I don’t know too much about the nerfing, but I also feel kinda weird that a lot of people JUST rely on Steady Shot. I mean as a BM/Survival hunter(I switch :] a lot) I spam arcane, steady, multi shot, serpent sting(The one that does damage over time, not sure if it was serpent sting though), and lets not forget Explosion shot :D. I believe that nerfing steady shot though will make survival hunters EXTREMELY rare, cause I think survival should mainly rely on steady(not that much :D), as should every specced hunter. Oh, and on the portal stable master… Bring it in please! I’ll go on my knees and kiss the floor that you stand on if you do :]. And duel specc is nice.. :D
the thing with steady shot is it’s the most efficient skill to use. so in a raid the damage vs mana usage kept it on top. solo/5 mans are a different story.
Arc and Chimera do not share a cd either. in BC, as Surv or BM i used a combination of arc and steady, we had some nice pallies for JoW alot =)
Bring on the dual specs. be interesting to see for sure. looking forward to swaping them around. wonder what they’ll do with the pets though. they’re talent points reset when you swap out of BM to marks so i found out.
Again, I see more anti-dual spec posts.
This is NOT a slap in the face. Those saying so are quoting the current fad of “it’s all about hybrids, Blizzard doesn’t do anything for DPS classes,” blah, blah.
I see the complaining, but I see no proposals on what YOU would do to benefit a pure DPS class. Oh, I’ve seen comments about give the DPS classes a hybrid tree as well, “make us all hybrids!” Does that even make sense? At all? Should a Rogue have a healing tree? A tanking tree? What then is your true proposal? If your only real reason on disliking dual specs is because it doesn’t buff the crap out of your hunter class and it’s not AS MUCH of a big change for your personal choice of class … well, I don’t know what to say.
Not everybody reaps the benefit of every change from every patch. But you know what, now you don’t have to step out of the raid when your guild needs an extra healer for Saph in Naxx … the Pally off tank just swaps gear and specs and you can still be in for the kill. Who do you take out of the raid when you’re in a healing intensive fight? The Off-tank that does crap DPS and is not needed and you replace him with a healer. Who do you take out of a DPS-intensive fight? The Off-tank that does crap-DPS, or the Healer that isn’t needed. In a raid that is organized even with only half a brain, your pure DPS classes should never have to be kicked … it’s the healers and tanks that always “take one for the team.” So, yeah, you’re not a hybrid. But, now your BM exotic pet won’t die 15 seconds into the fight and totally gimp you. There are many benefits to this, more so for Hunters than the other DPS classes, in my own humble opinion. Dual specs are not being placed into the game to screw you over, they are coming to fix a problem that has always been around, including when DPS saw all the situational upgrades in previous years.
I don’t see a reason to cry here.
Besides, in a raid environment, you’re generally only allowed to roll on your main spec gear items. So when that Epic-geared Off-tank is asked to swap to DPS spec, he’s going to don his crappy ilevel 174 items and he’ll be doing 1.5k DPS, a whole 200 more than his prot spec. And if the raid wipes because it’s still not enough, who do you think they’re gonna call? The Ghostbusters? Heck no … they’ll call on the Hunters, Rogues, and Mages, that are all at the top of the DPS charts with 2-3k damage per second and are geared for it, and can dual-spec swap to slightly more advantageous roles or situations that we’ve already discussed to make sure they aren’t DPS-gimped and/or can provide something a little extra that a tank turned crappily-geared DPS or DPS turned healer could not ever possibly provide.
If you still refuse to at least wait instead of throwing curses at Blizzard for finally fixing a problem that has existed since the game went live years ago, and can think of nothing but your own class … well, not gonna say it. Just see if you can’t find it in you to wait.
BTW:
“Buffs taken away or made available across a whole raid” this applies to all classes.
“Dual Specs give hybrids the chance to go switch between dps/healing/tank.” This was always the case. A hybrid class could always hearth, respec, and get summoned back into the raid. Dual-specs does not change the ability to do so, just makes it easier and saves a ton of gold. And, how many times have you needed a tank or healer and somebody went and respecc’d just for your party, spending their own gold? I’m sure you’ve seen it as much as the rest of us.
“The Pure DPS classes dont really compete in damage with the hybrid dps specs so far from what I have seen” I have yet to see any class out-perform a Hunter in equal ilevel item gear in regards to DPS. I also don’t think the nerfs will put us back into the dark ages, either, just even it all out. The mages will likely now be the top-DPS, and they’re not a hybrid class. Rogues continually are in the top tier of DPS, varying by fight to fight. The only times I have seen a hybrid class at the top of the charts is because they outgeared the pure DPS. Your milage may very in your raids, but I doubt by very much.
Somebody is always going to cry during every change. Either it’s the tanks get no love, the healers get no love, the DPS gets no love, or the hybrids get no love. And failing all that, everybody falls back on complaining about Warlocks.
So, I’ll say it again. This isn’t a nerf for anybody. This isn’t a change that couldn’t be done before with a hearth/portal and 50 gold. This isn’t a buff. It just makes it so that people don’t have to sit out, and can have a 100% complete ont he raid they started with, or do some PvP afterwards, and without having to respec 7 times a week.
That’s it, that’s all it is. How you use it is up to you, but you will benefit from it if you choose to.
/endrant
@ Rikaku … I totally agree! Arena stinks! I hate it soo much.
Lvl 70 PvP gear didnt require arena points yth should Lvl 80 PvP gear cost arena points??? There is no one in my guild that does Arena, but we do tackle Wintergrasp and have fun with that, quite crazy out there sometimes.
As a casual player with lots of RL responsibilities (including kids)j I would love to be able to get some purple gear without having to plan to be part of a 2 hour raid (where I may not get anything anyway) just like we did at lvl 70.
/sigh