BM 2B Buffed
I don’t pay a lot of attention to non-pet hunter news, but this post from Ghostcrawler, referenced on MMO Champion today, did catch my eye:
We talked about it a great deal today and agreed that we probably over-nerfed BM. Marks is in a good spot and Survival might be too high once we look at the changes we are making to all other classes.
Our plan is to buff BM before Ulduar, but I can’t give you a timetable more detailed than that, and things could change for any number of reasons. We are unlikely to touch Steady Shot for the reasons I have mentioned before. We are more likely to look at Kindred Spirits and Serpents Swiftness again.
Again, huge caveats: Predicting changes we are discussing making but haven’t made yet is fraught with peril. I only wanted to address this issue because it caused a lot of consternation in the community.
I don’t mind admitting when we make a mistake in the hope that it builds our credibility in the community. This was one. It won’t be the last. :)
I thought you guys might be interested.
136 Comments
Yeah.. over at The Lodge we’ve been tracking this pretty closely.
Honestly, the 2 most impressive items to me were:
1. GC listened. (Now we need to stop whining and help by testing and giving good solid feedback)
2. GC and the Dev team are looking at fixing the problems by altering the spec and not the class as a whole. Unlike the change in 3.08 with Steady Shot.
All in all, I think positive news. :)
Brigwyn:
I think there’ll still be whining, and kind of rightfully so. GC and the dev team had several people show them numbers and spreadsheets far before the patch was released and they didn’t listen. It’s nice to hear Blizz acknowledge their mistake, but it would’ve been nice if they listened to the feedback in the first place and avoided this issue X3
But you are right, this is positive news. So I definitely look forward to it. =)
Its like they don’t even test these things out. Its just some random guy playing Russian roulette with our classes. Honestly how can players that test the information for free and report it for free have more accurate data than developers of the bloody game… its baffling. Blizzard used to care about game quality but now its gone down hill and all they care about is $-$… this is evident by all the crap they are now trying to sell us on their homepage, forms, launcher… and probably other places I dare not go.
I’m still staying BM… and my dps is crap for it {full 10% lower than SV hunters in the same gear or worse}. I just cant give up my SB to the stables.
They should employ actual wow players and pay them 5 buck an hour to do the testing and actualy get some relevant data.
@Rikaku – Your right about the data being provided during testing. From what I gather after reading and following this a bit closer, is our data only confirmed what Blizz was thinking. We were relying too heavily on Steady Shot Spam and not anything else. So when we posted what the nerf would cost us, we didn’t think of where Blizz was trying to take us.
Now we can argue that Blizz isn’t open about class strategy much, and often times its AFTER the patch is released, but now I think we have a clearer picture and guide to use going forward.
@hantindash
Some of this is our own fault IMHO. For example, when the call goes out for hunters to test on the PTR, often times there we don’t do so. Or we use it as a time to check out stuff we don’t have currently. (Or so I’ve been told)
Testing is complex and tedious. Blizz probably does all of the basic player testing.
What we need to do, is test, but provide Blizz with a solid before and after picture. This is something I’ve seen Mania do and even if it wasn’t listened to at first, eventually Blizz did come around and in part to Mania’s solid testing approach.
Well, this is my opinion anyways. :P
There’s also http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14697620568&postId=146958981094&sid=1#3 that was around all last night on the first page :D
I REEEEMEEEMBER way back when [already posted on the eu thread about this so not gonna say the same thing here], there was a blue, I forget his name, insulted hunters and said ‘ok lol guys your shot rotation is auto/arcan and that’s what it’s supposed to be!’
Ignoring about fifteen people in a thread- then went on further to deny there was a growl bug, if I remember correctly, and I think accused hunters of just not watching their DPS. This was in the time when my orc was MM and I had to abandon my boar and my cat and go BM and get a raptor for a less breakable pet.
Then ofc it turns out all the hunters, and I mean all, the thread had quite alot of posts, were right about growl being broken and not going off- or going off and never registering and Blizzard doesn’t really admit oops we did wrong as ooh lets quickly hide this under the carpet.
I remember a big thread too about suggestions from hunters and what should/could be done to the class to fix it or balance it or make it better! And to my knowledge, about 100+ posts, and alot by people who know the class 50X better than I do posted. Yet everyone was ignored.
So to be honest, this is more like a slap in the face that GC and Blizzard are only listening now and bowing their heads. Yes part of me is glad that they finally did so, but the rest of me feels so insulted and belittled.
They pamper other classes, yet hit Hunters nearly the hardest with nerfbats.
Though hearing of the PrettyFail nerf was pretty lol too.
@Brigwyn
why is it up to players to test a game…
should that not be the work of developers/programmers/paid testers?
Blizz does a ton of development work…but you need to remember they work with code, numbers…hard facts. Like with any research type environment you toss in the Human Variable and it’s basically like studying chaos theory. Guesstimation is the best they can do.
Since we theorycraft/exploit/run the ragged edges of our classes to get the most we can out of them, i’d suggest that we apparently have some spare time on our hands. While we’re doing this, why not give our findings to blizz so they can improve the gaming environment in some of us obviously have committed far to much of our lives to living in.
As for BM and hunter “nerfing” “buffing” and “tweaking” in general…i hated playing my hunter during the BC expansion because the class was DISGUSTINGLY cookie cutter. Get a ravager, spec 41/20 or be the only guild hunter to be geared well enough to play surv…those were our choices (i speak in PvE terms, i could care less about PvP). If you enjoy such lack of freedom…enlist in the armed forces. You’ll love it…they tell you what to do and who to be 24/7. Oh, and you get a uniform and an S3 axe…(might be fibbing about the axe…but i wouldn’t be surprised).
Having unique advantages to each of the 3 specialization trees is what i enjoy most about the class. I’m not a dps queen or meter maid…i enjoy the utility of the class, if you dont…roll a rogue.
Forgive my lengthy rant…belive it or not, i’ve typed things longer than a shot macro before.
Cheers.
-Feignlife
Umm, ok.
I can’t wait for BM spec to resume its place as the all-purpose hunter spec instead of merely being the best for solo’ing and still decent for grouping… /sarc
In all seriousness I’d be alot more interested in hearing how they plan on making MM and SV more solo friendly than how they are working to make the best spec even bettererest…
(and I’m not speaking as someone with beastmaster-envy – I play 2 of them already, love them, and just mainly wish the other 2 specs had more solo-application)
Rather then…..Scott, are you even paying attention to the state beastmaster is in right now? It got nerfed to a spot a good deal below the other two. It was OVERNERFED. And as far as soloing goes, stop. Soloing is not hard for ANYONE anymore. Beastmaster can just do it a bit more safely.
As far as listening goes, heh. Ghostcrawler spent a week or more thinking Warlock pets had a hit point buff. The patch went LIVE and GC was still convinced it was in. The devs don’t listen. EVER. Things have to go live before they get a change. It is very rare for something to be changed while still in test realms. It’s just always been that way.
I suspect that they knew that they had over-nerfed BM, and that this was done deliberately. If you read GCs other responses in that thread (also posted on MMO Champion), it is clear that they wanted to spread the distribution of hunters across the three trees more evenly. If they had only nerfed BM a little, we might have lived with it, instead they have driven many hunters to try the other 2 specs. Some will like them. When they buff BM back up, some will come back to BM, but some will stay with the other 2 specs, which I believe is what they wanted to achieve. After all, they have to put development time and money into the other specs too, they want someone to be using that investment.
See more of my thoughts about this on my blog: http://wowwhimsy.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/beastmasters-in-308-nerfed-too-hard/
Scott:
I have to agree with Palla. Yes, it is safer to solo as BM then it is as SV or MM. However, that’s only due to the fact that BM is focused on the pet being buffed, and throughout your leveling/soloing life, your pet is your tank. So deep down, SV and MM shouldn’t be as good soloing as BM. And it’s not just BM, every class has a spec that’s just better survivability as soloing. Now, I’m not saying BM should be the best all-around spec, but it should be competitive with the other specs.
Hatindash:
Brigwyn is right. It is up to players to test the game. No matter what you write on paper, and no matter how much you test on a PTR, a PTR is NOT a live game. There is so many factors that change between a development realm, a PTR and the live realms. Yes, the dev and testers do test, but they cannot test every possible scenario that happens in a single realm that houses thousands of players.
Brigwyn:
Let’s hope that Blizzard has learned from this and that when many players bring legit numbers and spreadsheets showing the results of extensive testing, they’ll actually listen. =)
Hooray!
BUT, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m glad they’re gonna look into buffing up Kindred Spirits and Serpent’s Swiftness.
With my main having 800 resilience over 21K health and purple pvp gear, something is terribly wrong when several classes can still kill her in two shots.
Well, this is good and bad news for me. Good news because BM is possibly going to be un-nerfed which is better for hunters. the bad, I went survival. I knew as soon as i got explosive shot that it was goping to be nerfed… I killed a level 79 before my pet ever touched him! well, as long as they don’t nerf survival too badly it shouldn’t be a bad update.
‘When they buff BM back up, some will come back to BM, but some will stay with the other 2 specs, which I believe is what they wanted to achieve. After all, they have to put development time and money into the other specs too, they want someone to be using that investment.’
So it’s basically alright to >force< someone into a specc, not from their own choosing, but because it’s either specc that, or build an insane talent build+find the perfect pet, and gear.
Are you sure people are staying that specc because they like it, or they think Blizz won’t use the oops nerf button on them too?
BTW Rottingham- don’t get to glorious, SV might be next :/
The problem, Ryai, is that a lot of people out there want the ‘best’ spec. Even if a spec is a little bit ahead of another spec, people will take it just because, even if it is by a few hundred damage, it is the best. It is impossible to have three totally balanced specs. Personally, I have always prefered to find a spec I like, a spec I am comfortable with, and stick with it. I love beast master. I will always be beast master. That is just me.
@Brigwyn -
I like what they did to surv. It finally gave my most favorite Hutner spec the justice it deserves. And than some, yes, its a bit OP atm, but scale back the dmg by 75-100 points and i think itll be fine. Expo shot doesnt scale with rap like most other abilities, and we burn mana like a mofo spamming that crap. My Surv hunter went from 1100 dps to 2000 dps with the Expo Shot change on single target. I agree with it. The nerf to BM hunters however, in agreeance, was much to severe. Several BM friends lost 800-1000 dps from it. MM didnt exp really any nerf other than the basic SS 10% across the board. IMO, Surv got justice, and BM got dicked over.
That is all.
Haha, now I’m proud that I remained a BM hunter. While it doesn’t feel so great to be coming in 5th or 3rd on raid meters, with lower DPS than I expect, I’m still able to play the spec I love. I have tried every hunter spec, but have always gone back ot BM, and I’ve never cared aobut which one was most powerful.
Though it’ll be nice to be closer to the top again.
To those calling Blizzard clueless… Warcraft is a game with a *huge* number of moving parts. Latency, jitter, player attentiveness and coordination, the game servers, the databases, other players, buffs, debuffs, abilities, PvE, PvP, solo, raids, battlegrounds, etc, etc. As players, we have the luxury of focusing only on the bits that concern us at a given point in time, while the developers have to get the *whole* thing to hang together all at the same time. Division of responsibility works up to a point, but there’s a limit to how large you can make your development team before the lines of communication get too strained and the game starts to lose coherency. The player to developer ratio for WoW is more than 100,000 to 1 (11.5 million players, probably only a dozen or so people in the systems team, plus the art team, world design team, quest team, engine programmers, etc, etc) and that’s unlikely to get any better.
The warlock pet health problem is a good example – the buff went through on the internal test servers, it was there on the PTR, but when the change was pushed live, no dice. There was some underlying discrepancy between the test realms (both internal and PTR) and the live realms that had to be fixed before the warlock pet health buff would work on live.
The BM over-nerf is a case where players did a lot of theorycrafting, but not a lot of actual *testing* (fully raid buffed testing is hard to organise on the PTR). In cases like that, of course Blizz are going to believe their internal theorycrafting and testing over what the players are going to come up with. Even when people *do* organise proper PTR testing, Blizzard still have to take it with an iceberg-sized grain of salt, because players have a major conflict of interest when it comes to measuring the impact of a nerf. Just because *you* personally wouldn’t deliberately generate poor numbers to make it look like a buff was too severe doesn’t mean that Blizzard can safely assume that about everyone.
However, what can be hard for Blizz to judge is *how difficult* it is in practice to achieve the numbers they come up with internally. For that, there is no substitute for a whole pile of people running raids. And it appears to have turned out that in a real environment with real world distractions and ping times and what have you, the effective DPS output of a BM hunter is now below where Blizzard want it to be, even with the mana cost reduction on Arcane Shot and the two additional GCDs before Serpent Sting needs to be refreshed.
(As far as specs go, I personally went SV so that I would at least be providing the replenishment buff to my fellow raiders while I’m still in the process of gearing up, and also because my guild happens to be pretty light on for ret paladins and shadow priests. What I find interesting, however, is that the post-3.0.8 BM and SV shot rotations are actually very similar, with BM just slotting in Arcane Shot instead of Explosive Shot, and not having any L&L procs to adjust for).
Err, “make it look like a *nerf* was too severe”…
That’s good news…. I think. One can only hope that pets get the same fix too on some ability glitches that we all know about.
Whoot!! Hopefully BM will get back on par with the other specs. Fingures crossed that my hunter will be useful again. Also…not sure if anyone else noted this but Hyena’s have been given a cosmetic makeover. Their relaxed posture now has them with thier heads hunched down, and their idle animation has changed a bit. Also, they have a more notable spikey hair down thier neck.
Thats the problem Nimizar. It WASN’T on the test servers. Ever. I know, I had my warlock there. I logged in, literally, an hour before the patch went live, before the test realms went offline, and my felguards hit points remained at 7,400. At one point during the PTR my minions health was buffed…..to about 8,000. I think that MIGHT have been what GC was thinking, but it was way off. It was a total failure in communication, and that isn’t the first time its happened. I also can’t tell you how many bugs have been reported on PTRs, only to make it to live. Also, the hunters who DID raid on the PTR reported it to Blizzard repeatedly that the nerf was to much. I’m really starting to think that PTRs are just a placebo to make the population think we have some say so in testing.
May we propose some ideas to Blizz’s developers, not only test data?
My ideas:
1.About Kindred spirit: Stacking pure +(xx%)damage, the same as Unleashed Fury do, is redundant. A new talent should have its new way.
My suggestion is to remove +damage part, and new Kindred spirit:
When your pet is active, you and pet’s movement speed increase 2/4/6/8/10%. And your pet gains 20/40/60/80/100% of resilience, critical rating ,and haste rating from hunter’s gear.
2.Unleashed fury: change back to +4/8/12/16/20% damage.
3.Serpent swiftness: change back to +20% attack speed of pet, or remain 10%, that’s alright. Because pet can get haste rating from hunter’s gear for compensation.
I recall a blue post not too long ago that mentioned that the developers prefer to over-nerf and then buff back up to the numbers they want. Something about psychology and players remembering a big nerf + little buff more positively than a double minor nerf.
Of course, 4 years of using that tactic and players wanting to skin a few developers alive with a blunt knife should tell them that it doesn’t quite work like that.
Add to that little annoyances like a Prowl bug that is STILL ingame, and I’m going to take anything that GC says with a ton of salt. Even if he tells me the sky is blue and grass is green. ><
@ Ryai
“They pamper other classes, yet hit Hunters nearly the hardest with nerfbats.”
i think there’s a generual concensus in the wow community that hunters
- are imba, or OP, or whatever you want to call it.
- are all retards
- are ninjas (“it’s hunetr loot!”)
- serve no real unique purpose
even when it comes to DPS, all the time i see people prefer to take any other ‘DPS’ class despite me always scoring at least twice as much damage as any other dps-specced class i party with.
basically, what i’m saying is hunters need some good PR, not only with all other players, but within blizz too. :-/
Blizzard didn’t pay attention to hunters because they wanted their own proof, and refused to accept what they were told by the real hunters. Then they realise by themselves weeks later that they were wrong, and expect to gain sympathy and respect by admitting a mistake. That’s not how I role, we shall have to see what comes in 3.1 for that ship to sail.
For example,
any pet other than the gorilla who can AoE tank
Pets being able to actually hold aggro
Cunning tree being scrapped and redone so that Tenacity isn’t the PvP tree
…Don’t keep reading, Blizz dont listen to europeans so no more time being wasted here.
Palla: do you even try to solo with a spec besides BM? Yes you *can* solo with any spec/pet combo but quite honestly if you believe there is only a “bit” of a difference between soloing with BM (whose pets can hold aggro reliably) and the other 2 (whose pets hold aggro hit or miss at best), then you’re the one not paying attention.
I’m not talking about merely being able to play a character solo, I’m talking about being able to do it in style – being able to get the most out of your class in the solo environment; and if your pet can’t hold aggro reliably, then you aren’t getting the most out of your class – period. Any success you enjoy at that point is most likely due to superior gear.
So, if you’re ignoring solo play because you think it’s not worth discussing, stop.
Also, in re: MM/SV, I was being somewhat tongue in cheek about making them more solo-friendly; it’s fine for them to be more group/raid oriented and leave BM as the preferred solo spec… my only real complaint is that BM doesn’t need to also be the preferred raid and grouping spec too – if MM/SV are better for grouping and not as good for solo’ing, then it seems common sense that BM should go the other way, talking purely on the basis of class balance.
So good news about the builds being rebalanced but it would be nice to see the roles of each tree developed. I think they focused too much on explosive shot to buff suv they have taken away a unique aoe talent and damages a suv/hybrid build.
In the past there were still big issues but suv was good cc/pvp, mm was best raid dps and bm was good all round/pve tanking now they seem too amalgimated with shot use.
My biggest grype is the failure of the pet talents though ferocity is just so nice the other trees need some love or we will always just see spirits and raptors now. Um anbody notice glyph of the ghoul gives a DK pet over 17k hp what about some of that for our tanking pets ;)
Scott- “… it’s fine for them to be more group/raid oriented and leave BM as the preferred solo spec… my only real complaint is that BM doesn’t need to also be the preferred raid and grouping spec too – if MM/SV are better for grouping and not as good for solo’ing, then it seems common sense that BM should go the other way, talking purely on the basis of class balance.”
Absolutely. It’s good for player freedom to have the “best at X” spread out. As long as BM is by-far top leveling/solofarming spec, it probably should be somwhat lesser dmg in groups. (one can argue its “easier to play” too) I think this is part of Blizz’s intent here. Totally makes sense. What most of as are saying though, is that they went too much nerf. BM doesnt have to be all around top, but it shouldn’t be under the other 2 specs by *too big* of a margin. Ideally, all three should be viable, where you can go with preferance/whatever suits your needs and not have MAJOR damage differences. Right now the drop is too big.
I usually run instances with at worst 2, and at best 9 frames per sec and heavy lag. So the easier BM rotation was way easier on me than the SV slightly more complicated timing-wise rotation. BM caused less stress and punching of the computer when 2-sec casts take 3-4 instead.
Noba: I think your response was constructive however here’s the thing, if as you say, BM was and remains the “by-far top leveling/solofarming spec”, then why shouldn’t it be proportionately lower than the other specs for non-solo’ing purposes? Put numerically that’s kind of like saying it’s okay for spec X to be 1.5x as good at solo’ing as specs Y and Z as long as it is also at least 0.9x as good at grouping and pvp – and that’s not even really what the majority are saying; while you personally do acknowledge that BM is way better for solo’ing and at least agree with the idea of lowering the other strengths to compensate, what I’m hearing from most of the players in the “nerf” crowd is that *nothing* should have been changed in BM, or at least that nothing should have been lowered.
From everything I’ve heard, BM really was the “all purpose” spec prior to last patch; you had scorpid hunters topping the DPS meters in groups (scorpid stacks were *somewhat* nerfed since their original glory days but were receiving a substantial/persistent benefit from BW and trinkets), and while some claimed MM had edged out BM as pvp-king post 3.0, alot of the nerf crowd was still claiming that title as being lost only to the last patch.
So, when you say BM was due for a cut, we agree – just have to agree to disagree on the degree I guess.
In re: BM spec being “easy” – this I think is more due to complaints about BW in PVP in particular, combined with all of the general complaints people have about hunters in general being OP (FD, fast movement, etc etc etc) – and which are *not offset* by pet being unable to reliably hold aggro, as is the case with MM and SV when they solo.
If you leave that aside, fact is BM hunters simply solo the way you’d expect a hunter to be able to solo, and are about as good at it as most if not all other classes (DKs, prot pallies, ice mages, etc etc) – the only real issue there is that Blizzard needs to ramp up the overall difficulty/power level of the average outdoor mob to keep them up to date with all the increases in player power level from talent spec revamps and new spells… but that isn’t going to happen as it would dissuade too many face rollers from putting up with the new “difficulty” of leveling…
I’ve spent have of my hunter career as BM and half as SV. I’ve always loved SV, so that’s what I am now, and what I will prbably stay. I do wish I could tame the exotic pets, but this spec just clicks. I also hear it’s good for raids, although I’m not sure. I solo with SV. I don’t use any addons either, and only started using macros a while ago.
Lately, while running some dailies and doing a few quests, I’ve noticed that after the patch it requires much less effort for me to kill the same things at the same level in the same gear I was prior to the patch. Now, I don’t raid, and I usually don’t care about my DPS or my pet’s DPS or any numbers or anything, so I ususally don’t notice these types of changes. For me to notice something like that, being an extremely casual player, is quite significant.
The only thing it takes for me to kill a lvl 75 at lvl 78 is: Explosive Trap, which triggers Lock and Load, Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot. And I got some crap gear. So I guess SV is pretty OP now. I wouldn’t know about BM though.
^__^
I haven’t played my SV hunter post-patch but yeah, it sounds that way – making a spec able to “solo” by simply killing the mob before it can even close to melee is like “solving” the solo problem by giving everyone the firepower of a player decked out in full raid or pvp gear…
I guess it does show that the “solo balance” argument has become moot, thanks to Blizzard’s accumulation of subscription incentive giveaways… :*(
Scott:
I want to agree that yes, BM needed a cut. I totally agree that BM should NOT be the best dps spec, and I say this as a supporter of BM since WoW’s original launch. Logically speaking, it should MM (after all, MM focuses specifically on the Hunter and his actual ranged power) but enough of that. BM should be somewhat less dmg then the other two specs. However, currently, live realm BM is too MUCH below the other specs. It’s not even competitive. SV is doing on average 20% more damage than BM and 5-10% more damage then MM (averagely). That’s not competitive, that’s ridiculous. Yes, it’s the same thing that happened to hunters back in the BC days with BM and yes it was the same thing that happened back in vanilla WoW when it was “Go MM or Go Home” on raid nights.
Competitive should be that you can go in based on your playstyle. In other words, if a skilled BM comes to your raid and novice SV comes to the raid, then the BM should be able to keep up if not do better then the SV hunter due to skill and not necessarily spec. Skill should be the defining point in what spec you want to play as.
Yes, no matter what, there will always be hunters who take a spec or talent just because it’s 1% more dps then another spec. However, there’s a great many other players who rather raid comfortably then raid min/maxing.
Now, as a BM I have to say this… I’m gettin’ real sick of people sayin’ BM is easy, so it shouldn’t be higher dmg then the other specs. (See above, I agree BM shouldn’t be top dps spec, but not for this reason XD) I about had an anuerism when blues said it too. I don’t care who you are, or what spec you are, getting to 80 is easy no matter what. You can be a SV or MM and solo your way to 80 just like a BM, it will be harder, but you can do it. However (big however), any idiot in any spec can mash buttons in a raid and do damage, but every spec requires skill. Every spec requires timing, perfecting shot rotations, timing special abilities just right; And BM has to do that while micromanaging a pet more than the other 2 because we depend heavily on our pet. Every spec. BM, SV, MM they all require skill to actually master.
Ok, I think I’m done. XD
Anyone else think this maybe just a bs empty apology to get people to shut up? as much and as often as blizz screws up, do you really think this time is going to be any different than any other instance? Once again it’ll be up to us to figure out how to gear and do shot rotation’s to make the best of the situation, and maybe 6 months down the road we’ll see some kind of changes made. If so, all the SV hunters will complain because they are no longer the hunter gods and will have to re gear or whatever to be on top again. Just another strung out line of crap from blizz.
/end negativity
Rikaku:
The thing is, raids and groups already can, always have been able to, and (to a reasonable extent) *should* discriminate by spec, at least somewhat – you’re not going to let a fury spec do your tanking no matter how good he is with a shield and taunt if a prot spec is available… any more than you’d let a shadow priest or ele shammy be your main healer if a resto druid/priest/shammy is available. Etc, etc.
I don’t see why it needs to be different for hunters – especially with the upcoming plans on allowing dual speccing; I suspect that since hunters serve no clear role in raids beyond the default “dps”, that many players have come to expect to be more or less equally effective in that environment regardless of spec.
This is all a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic though; as others have pointed, solo’ing is easy. You may have to fumble and stumble your way through it if you’re MM or (pre lvl 60 now) SV with less than epic gear, but you will still get to 80 sooner or later – thanks to the general OPness of the new specs and the general UPness of outdoor mobs.
So in that disfunctional environment sure, by all means let everyone have whatever they want; this is the next best thing to Blizzard actually taking enough interest and allocating enough resources to making the solo experience actually become challenging…
What a shocker, no one predicted they went too far.
Sometimes I think the buffoons trying to fix the economy are moonlighting at blizzard.
Scott:
Yes, by no means am I saying let the the Shadow priest main heal or a fury warrior tank. However, Hunter is not like those two comparisons. Our specs are DPS, DPS, and DPS. No matter what you are, you’re DPS. Your Warrior obviously has a choice, DPS or Tank; so the comparisons aren’t really fair, but I get what you’re saying ;)
However, I really don’t see much discriminating anymore in raids/groups (for hunters) as I used to. Yes, Go MM or Go Home was a real deal back in the day of vanilla WoW. I’m sure some guilds made you raid BM in TBC (personally I have no idea, our guild doesn’t really care what spec your Hunter is as long as you do the dps you should for your spec). However, being pigeonholed into a spec is not what Blizzard wants to do. Blues have already stated that and are trying to move away from that. Variety is also a great way to bring more buffs to a table then just top DPS. I imagine that a raid with a SV, MM, and BM hunter would more than make up for the “shortfall” damage whichever 2 specs weren’t top dps out of the Hunters; as opposed to all 3 being SV, or BM, or MM.
Perhaps it’s just my experience though. In either case, that’s my opinion on it.
By the way, speaking of upgrading solo mobs… here’s a couple things I’d do if it were up to me:
1) For any given area with non-elite mobs, upgrade 1/3 of them to elite
2) For a select 25% of outdoor areas, make ALL mobs elite
3) Give “tank” mobs an intervene like ability to redirect some portion of damage applied to their companions to themself, so long as they aren’t stunned – this right there would give mob “parties” (with some kind of tank/rogue/healer/wizard type of makeup) the ability to actually leverage some of their strengths rather than getting lolpwned by any idiot who knows to take out the squishies first.
4) Update quest rewards accordingly – esp in old world where 99% of it is total garbage.
5) Make old world factions mean something – every group should have its own rep chart, and rewards don’t have to be very big but even a tabard or better than average mana/food item would be better than nothing, and rep grinds are a nice incentive to level 1-60.
6) revise existing factions to give better rewards.
7) all leader/boss mobs upgraded to elite
Uniquetamer
Yes, blizzard does respond to outpouring of player discontent. It is one of the few measures they have to gauge if they have gone over the top. In reality it doesnt matter what the true potential or power of class is, only its perceived power. And everyone, not just hunters, can SEE the bm nerf in the meters, plain as day. People who were at the top slip, and people notice. SO now bliz will bring us back.
I dont think its empty. I think they will bring BM back up a bit, but I dont think they feel bad for not having caught it sooner. It is easy to blame the complexity of the task they have in giving us balance. At the same time, it didnt take anyone more than 3 minutes to realize things had hit them too hard. So, how is it that this escaped their notice?
- Hunters are known within blizzard for our intense ability to figure out what is the best possible shot rotation / pet / skill set / talent configuration, and disperse this knowledge en masse. They have repeatedly said that they wait to see how we react because they KNOW we will adapt and figure out how to improve.
Take shot weaving before they unlinked specials and autos. I GARUNTEE you blizzard had no idea we would be weaving shots and pushing back autos and squeezing steady shots in between autos. Sure it was easy to take the macro and spam it, but that macro was born of many hunters’ deep understanding of shots, timing, and theorycraft. The fact that you could hurt your dps by just spamming whatever shot you felt like whenever it suited you was unheard of.
That is why they unlinked auto. It was too compicated and too unpredictable to be weildy. So they ditched it.
Im rambling now.
I really do hope they buff BM, but do it in the right way. I think they really need to make exotic pets better. “4 extra pet talent points and a marginally better, if that, pet” doesn’t make for a good 51-point talent, which should be the “ultimate” talent for the spec.
I think the DPS between the 3 specs should be similar, but for different purposes. BM, as it is “beast mastery”, should make it so you and your pet combined are doing similar damage to a MM or SV hunter (along with their pet). Alone, the hunter might not do as much damage, but when combined with the pet, they should be roughly equal, pure number wise (skill would be a factor, obviously)
scott – I never suggested any numbers, or exactly how much lower BM should be than SV/MM. I dont know. It’s not my decision. Personally, I’m inclined to say they shouldnt be “punished” end-game with equal proportions to how less effective the other two specs are in solo (such as your example of bm is 1.5 times more effective at solo, and should then be 1.5x less at instance). I think that is too much because solo/leveling isnt AS big of a part of the game for most people as instances/raids are. But hey, Blizzard will decide regardless of what we may think, be it in agreement or not. So, oh well.
rikaku- I mean no offense saying bm is arguably easier. I love BM, thats what i always was with my hunter :) Yes,pet management is huge, and requires skill and attention(ex, manually moving the pet around on stacking “stillness” debuffs). It’s just the shot rotation (well, before serp. sting and arcane were useful much), was more simple than a SV rotation. With SV you have more timing, and the rotation is variable and must be switched when LNL procs, and there is currently no super good macro for it. I personally find BM easier to use when dealing with large lag/poor framerates (or distractions).
But on the topic of soloing, solo-farming at 80 as SV is not bad from my experience so far. I just changed over to SV and am not having a problem farming eternal elements. No,my pet does not hold aggro, but my target is dead before it reaches my feet even though i am standing still and not kiting at all. (But I suspect this is largely due to explosive shot, and so it may be more of a problem for low level sv hunts to solo/level.)
Yes, when I said SV wasn’t great for solo’ing I was going by my experiences prior to the explosive shot buff; still holds true for levels 1-59 but agreed once a SV hunter makes 60 everything now changes massively thanks to one OP shot.
As far as “most” people finding instances to be a bigger part of the game – I can agree to the extent that instances – when you’re not in a bad pug – are a helluva lot more exciting on average than solo’ing, but that notwithstanding (unless you have some hard numbers) I tend to suspect the majority of all wow hours logged are nonetheless done solo and not in group, if for no reason other than individual time constraints. But that too is ultimately speculation…
That’s pretty likely that _ore hours are spent solong/far_ing/dailies than instancing. But i suspect if you did a survey, _any would state they enjoy instances, or a portion of ti_e spent soloing/far_ing is killing ti_e waiting for an instance to get together or for LFG to pop up. It’d be an interesting survey/study if blizz ever did one. (_y dog just ripped a single key off _y keyboard about 5 _inutes ago. Sorry for the difficulty reading the post. In case anyone cant tell, its the key next to “N”.. )
Noba: My first computer was a Commodore 128, which like most computers of that day had an integrated keyboard rather than a detachable one. I used it for so many years that the N key quit working. However, the only thing I used it for was BBSing — arguably the very early precursor to this blog. :> And luckily all my BBSing was done through a program that supported text macros, so before the N key quit entirely I macro’d “n” and “N” to Shift-1 and Shift-2 respectively. And over the next year I learned to type quite well despite the freque[Shift-1]t i[Shift-1]terruptio[Shift-1]s.
Sorry .. you just reminded me of that. :>
lol _ania. i didnt get co_puters till ~99 or 2000, so i _issed out on fastened keys i think. but _acroing it was a good idea there. cant say i_ surprised you typed on it so _uch it quit working though. :p This dog attack was rather sudden. he was on the couch, and as i pulled hi_ down,he didnt want to go. thrashed all around, his back foot clawing up a key. :/ (b_ nerf bat _ust not have hit Boo_er.) gonna take it up to the store and have so_eone who knows what they’re doing try to pop it back in.
Okay, Scott? What part of the BM tree gives a pet more threat generation outside of white damage? I HAVE leveled as Marksman, and I HAVE leveled as SV, thank you very much, both to old world levle sixty, one on a PvP server as horde and one on a PvE server. And this was back in the day when it was, ya know, kind of a challenge. Its called CONTROLLING YOUR THREAT. *GASP* Amazing thing? I did it BEFORE the Wrath patch, so don’t try and feed me that crap. If you can’t lay off long enough to let your pet get in a growl or two before going shot happy, thats your problem, not the BM trees. What I said was they over nerfed BM. Period. Before the patch my beast master killed things as fast or faster then my other high levels. After? The only thing he can kill faster then is my HOLY PALADIN.
I do not want beast master to be the be all end all. In fact, I hate it when it is. Stupid people flock into the spec and you get all the “OMG, you didn’t spec this way?!” things going on like they know your spec better then you do. What I AM saying is that the balance needs to be better. The BM tree was over nerfed, and the SV tree over buffed. If you want to focus on soloing, great, be my guest. But don’t get pissed at people for not wanting BM to be the lowest tree, either.
CONTROL YOUR AGGRO. Do I need to say it again? Use a tenacity pet, take guard dog, let it get off TWO growls. Six seconds won’t kill you. THEN you can unload to your hearts content, and when/if aggro comes off on you, you won’t have to melee long. If I can keep aggro on a GHOUL for any length of time, you darn well better be able to keep aggro on a tenacity pet. This is a serious matter of you learning how to adjust your play style JUST A HAIR in order to make things easier for yourself.
On elites you’ll have to improvise. There’s that word, improvise. Mend pet, and let your pet take a beating. Use your better judgement, if you can wait for three growls, great. If not, play it by ear. If your above seventy, misdirect and unload, starting off with either chimera shot or explosive, spec depending. If your marksman hit it with serpent sting BEFORE misdirection, just in case, then misdirect. The keyword here is to unload. Your TRYING to take aggro off of your pet. Since your not beast master you don’t have the 5% additional health and 20% additional armor boost, so it can’t take quite as much, and you don’t want it to die. ((As an alternative, take a ferocity and if something goes wrong, you have heart of the phoenix. Not a good alternative, as dying wipes your pets threat, but it is there.)) Once it comes off on you, melee it and let your pet get in a few more ticks of mend pet. Try not to take to much damage, because the next time you take aggro you’ll have it for a little bit. ((Also note, traps are important here. Lay one down before the fith starts. Wait for most of the cooldown to be up I suggest immolation trap since it is a single target elite we’re talking about, but use your judgement)) Now feign death. Feign death is your BEST friend, and thirty seconds is not to long for it. Lay a new trap, preferable right on top of your target, then step back. Let your pet take a beating again. You probably won’t be able to wait to long, so make sure you have mend pet. Unload. This is the part where you’ll probably take some damage, but the new disengage and deterrence are wonderful stall tools. Use them. Potion if you need to, then feign off the second the cooldown is up. Mend pet before you feign! Rinse, lather repeat.
Don’t tell me it doesn’t work. I just respecced three times for the sole purpose of testing it, and for the sole purpose of testing my ‘soloing’ capabilities as the other two specs past seventy. I pulled aggro faster then usual when I did unload, which was to be expected, but funny thing there, they were usually dead before they got to me, or close enough that a few melee’s or a disengage and a chimera/explosive shot finished the fight nicely. In fact, if anything soloing was EASIER as those two, simply because it went faster. I also took the liberty of testing it on the closest group quest mob to my level, Harold Lane at level seventy two, three man quest. It was EASIER then when my beast master did it PRE-NERF, simply because my damage was so much higher.
And now I have written a small novel. But seriously, scott, if you having trouble soloing, stop trying to blame the spec, and start looking at your play style. I have been playing pet classes since Everquest, and making them work fairly well. It isn’t hard, but some times it does require something more then just ‘pew pew pew’. And don’t you DARE say “But I shouldn’t have to wait to unload!” Please.
*pokes Palladiamors*
To redirect some of your anger from someone who probably has a rogue for a main, there is a problem now with growl and pet threat overall, this is not of ‘omg unloading everything’ or even me trying to blame a specc like this user. And this isn’t a defence.
A friend and I were farming those shadow spirit deals in WG for the daily, my pet was Jupiter, my Spirit Beast, Jupiter got off an intimidate a couple of growls and I used one arcane and one auto. The Auto crit.
I imidiately got to 80% threat according to my threat/aggro meter.
Before this, I had my Rhino with me farming mobs. One crit and I nearly pulled threat off from my Rhino- yes it has Guard Dog and no I was not unloading everything into it. You may have a point BM was to strong, and you do agree it is to over nerfed, but they shouldn’t have nerfed pets as badly as they did, atleast have kept KS at 20%
The ONLY pet of mine that is not having trouble atm is my Hydra, so I’m thinking they could have done something to Exotics when we weren’t looking :/
Know this is off topic but trying to divert a all out war
Palla – I’ll say whatever I please, fyi – and here’s a much needed lesson in observation for you… if you had spent less time assuming you know my playing style and more time just reading what I wrote, you’d have realized there was no need to compose a wall of useless banter that simply demonstrates you know nothing about me – great, you know how to hold back until your pet gets
two“TWO” growls off – whoop dee doo Captain Obvious… we all know how to sit back and take fights niiice… aaannnd…. slowwww… lots of excitement there, to be sure. You’re going to wait for 10 seconds (if we’re still talking about trying to solo with a non-BM spec that is) of growls when the average (BM) solo fight is over in 10-15? That’s great.After 3.0 hit, I specced a couple of my hunters for SV and MM, and found they were pulling aggro with nothing more than autoshot – in one case from a “gorilladin”; and yes, this was done by the numbers – send pet in, wait for contact, wait for growl, then just turn on auto shot and… voila, mob was ignoring my pet within a couple seconds.
Now, on my SV hunter I adapted by using movement inhibiting pets, traps and regular backwards leaping, and that worked out pretty well, but A) there’s only so many movement inhibiting pets, and B) it’s nice not to *have* to do that every fight. As for MM – using chimaera right up front before your sting has had much time to accrue dmg isn’t very mana efficient; still not a bad tactic but it’s not going to enjoy anywhere near the efficiency in solo that explosive shot will.
There’s a reason why the overwhelming majority recommendation for solo spec is BM (or at least was, until explosive shot became the new “I win” button); it’s because common sense tells us that if solo’ing is really your bag, then there is no reason to put up with the slow, drawn out method when a BM spec can do it faster simply because his pet keeps aggro – otherwise, if solo’ing is just something you do to kill time before the next raid then yes by all means go MM or SV; that’s a perfectly valid justification.
Now I’ve said explosive shot is OP, and naturally will be throwing off stats on dps charts – however leaving that problem aside (and hoping it gets looked at further by Blizzard), I don’t mind doing 10-15% less damage than MM specs in a group with my BM hunters in exchange for them being able to solo at full power instead of holding back like 50% of what I could be doing – if I wanted to group more I’d just respec to something with better firepower and put up with its delicate solo needs the rest of the time.
Pretty simple really.
Hey Ryai, is claiming my main is a “rogue” the way to “divert an all out war”? Really?
*sighs* I know, Ryai. I noticed that myself earlier. But I managed to make it work anyway. I do apologize for exploding, but I am more then a bit aggrivated about being over nerfed. I have two characters I consider my mains ((Although they aren’t always my two highest levels)) and those two classes and specs I enjoy. Enjoyed. My holy paladin, and my beast master hunter. The wrath patch? Saw my paladins seal and judgement damage cut in a third and a half, respectively. Holy shock recieved a fair buff, but that also saw me relying on a more expensive form of DPS. But my real issue there was that every other healing class got a fair sized DPS increase with the spellpower change over…..and my spec just happened to be the only one with a damage cut. It wasn’t a huge damage cut after holy shock was figured in, but it was a cut, and it required substantially MORE mana to bring myself back up to speed. My HEALING went up (Whoo hoo!)) but I got exactly one sub par healing tool to work with, beacon of light. This is NOT an AoE heal. This is a sub-par way of trying to save multiple targets after an AoE attack. It requires more attention then usual to make it effective, a fair sized chunk of mana for each cast, and far to effected by lack of overheal. Paladins were relegated, once more, to ‘tank’ healers, while druids were given ‘enough tools to flesh out their kit’ and even shaman were given an HoT.
I was more or less okay with my hunter. His damage was to high, can’t deny that, and freezing arrow is….less then stellar at the moment. And then we get a nerf that chops off around a quarter of our pets damage? The steady shot nerf wasn’t as bad, but the arcane shot nerf didn’t make up for pets losing so much DPS. It’s just infuriating that people told Blizzard and told Blizzard, repeatedly that the buff was to much. The hunters on the PTRs who did test it took it to them, the theory crafters ((A nessecary evil)) told them, and I wouldn’t be suprised if an internal tester or two told them. Now we get “Whoops! Well, look at that, we were wrong. Well, you’ll get a fix in the next two/six months!”
Its just……annoying.
No from how you phrased things from what I glanced over and how pissed off everyone was getting. Whenever I’m in a BG, or viewing a thread someone on a rogue, alt or main is causing trouble somewhere.
The divert the fight was my poke at Growl.
And tbh I don’t think that is a valid reason cause ‘oh SV and MM have tough times soloing!’ I have a couple alts, one is mm the other was rerolled mm, and they aren’t having problems. Ofc they’re both under level 40, so this is probably the point, but it’s >wrong< to say BM should suffer in PVP and PVE just cause it’s got ‘good soloing capability’
So does that mean Tankadins should suddenly NOT be able to tank so well because smart people can farm with them?
Tyvm. Really.
I’m not going to repeat myself. You are showing an extreme lack of knowledge here. You wait ten seconds. You drop it in the next ten. A beast master can go full on for the same amount of time, but without using beastial wrath, guess what? Its still a twenty second fight. At MOST, we are looking at a five to ten second difference in a fight ending. And past sixty? THAT ADVANTAGE GOES TO MM AND SV. Beast masters get BEAST MASTERY at sixty. BEAST MASTERY. Which does VERY LITTLE for the damage done from our pets. Beastial wrath is STILL the go to button for hunters, and it STILL has at LEAST a one minute fifteen secondish cooldown, talented and glyphed. Pre-sixty…..if your having problems leveling pre-sixty that don’t involve not dying of boredom, then I truly pity you. After sixty you have access to Chimera or explosive, and since your survival, that gives you the currently overpowered explosive. That means that by holding back for JUST those few seconds, you can then end a fight JUST AS FAST AS A BEASTMASTER DOES. Don’t believe me? Go try it. You’ll find that your survival spec is killing faster and with less downtime then your beast master.
The reason Ryai said that? Because your acting like you want to go full on, all the time, with no reprecussions. “WAUGH, why can’t I go full on all the time like beast master?” BECAUSE YOUR NOT. That isn’t your spec, you don’t want to spec that way. Fine, thats great. Don’t bash another spec JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN’T PLAY THAT WAY.
lol double post >->
/pat
I’m figuring this could be a way to ‘force people to respecc’ or Blizz is just being lazy :/ I don’t understand why cut healing or damage from classes, cause even tho you did mention Druids got buffed, Lifebloom was nerfed and my friends are balance and their speccs got fiddled with as hard as BM did.
If you think you’re outburst was bad well :c see a mad druid sometime.
But that’s not really the point, with what you mention about your pally, and what’s going on with hunters, yet again, it seems Blizzard only really favors, the rogues, the warlocks and well mages.
I’ve seriously seen mages twoshot people >.o
I would suggest rolling retrilol if you didn’t like holydins so much, but then that’d also be like me saying it’s ok to respecc when Blizz screws you over! .-.
I also hate what they did to the seals and judgements, ok sure it was a nice change but now I have so much crap on my bars and I’m a mouse clicker so it’s like xxxx seals and xxxx judgments and then my heals and my bubbles and can’t forget HoW!
It’s why I like BM hunters ._. I really don’t mind being a ‘one button class’, it’s easy, simple, and I can go full out kapew when I choose to, and not every single fight like with my pally
I tried on the beta. *Chuckles* I did retri for a while, and….it just isn’t that character. I am leveling a new paladin for the purpose, but I am going to stick to holy. I love my spec, I just hate the treatment it is getting, ya know? Que sera, sera I suppose.
I love BM and Ret as much as you love BM n Holy lol so I understand, Ryai just didn’t feel right as MM or SV on the PTR even when I was doing more damage with non exotics.
Ryai was BM from lv 10 lol- even when a friend who has a shammy insulted the class for as I said ‘one button class’, I liked it, just felt right, I was a hunter, I had a pet, so hunter + pet = Beast mastery in my eyes. Big Red Pet is win too.
And yeah whatever will be will be :s
But if Blizz really DID want to even out hunters- why not flatline the dps for all hunters, same with pets. So it really is the skill not the class. And to stop the complaining about exotics get 10% buff so bm automatically gets xx boost, drop exotics, make nearly all beasts tameable.
No whining no crying, no rock, scissor, paper deal. Everyone is fair and equal.
But bet someone would still complain.
Hey as a Balance druid I get full rights to whine at the resto cracks at us and starfail and you know it :) Blizz and their infamous sledgehamemr cracks… Well as Druid is my favourite and being Balance I get hit by them a lot unfortantely (And the beloved, whoops we forgot your gear!) so know the feeling exactly.
I worry also as Ryai is our Tank (Hydra ftw!) when I’m on a less suicidal conscious kick so any screw ups they make knocks that too :/ Glad my Hunters aren’t high enough to be ping ponged this much just yet.
Some one will ALWAYS complain, Ryai. *LAUGHS* It is the way of some people. Things have to be overwhelmingly in their favor before they even start to consider it fair. I’ll work with what I have. I leveled 10-current 72 as holy, and holy I’ll stay. Same with my hunter and beast mastery ((Aside from the occasional test respec)). It does bug me when they nerf me so hard, but eh, I’ll deal with it. Anyone who loves the spec will deal with it, and keep going. Its the same with any spec. As always, the min/maxers will just keep doing whatever is popular and currently best. That’s just how some people are.
*LAUGHS* Yes, Aria, you get full ‘whine’ rights. Honestly, so does survival, they have been so bad for so long. Beast master only gets partial whine rights, for being over nerfed. Not for the nerf itself, which was needed, but for it going to far.
And trust me, the whole gear thing I have understood for years. Spellpower plate is virtually non-existant before Outlands. In Northrend, the new craze is haste for spellpower plate, which I despise. But eh, you learn to play cards and deal!
I leveled in Vanilla WC, Balance gear simply did not exist. It was heal gear or hybrid (Since even Ferals had to go Rogue) and you were grateful for it. Oh and everyone was Resto and you got ridiculed mercilessly for daring to refuse to heal. I don’t miss those days at all; it was hell. Then we got to Outland and holy crap, gear! One of my few glee moments I admit there :)
But isn’t it typical that they wham one spec and end up slamming another worse or buff one whilst nerfing the other (Looking at you Resto). I refuse to go Resto or Feral though, I love my class and I love my damn spec no matter how much they wreakingball it in the name of balance (Ironically). I’m sure there’s many a BM who feels the same way :)
*laughs Aria, finding intellect on plate back in the day came down to trying to find ‘of the eagle’ stuff. Forget spellpower. Paladins couldn’t really tank, couldn’t really heal, and couldn’t really do damage. *Chuckles* I definitely agree, I don’t miss those days all that much. Finding feral gear was easier…..ish. You had to fight rogues for it, who were always going “OMG, your a drood! You should be healing!” I did that on my druid too, unfortunately. *LAUGHS* I think the only class that wasn’t really restricted that I played was the warlock. Course people always seemed to look down on me for being demonology instead of affliction. Ahhhh, the old days! *off sarcasm*
*laughs* * For my classic correction double post! And something little this time too. Oh well.
How many of you showed up to MC raids in vanilla as BM?
I enjoyed (and still do) the BM tree, and agree it should be on par with the other 2 specs. The point i was making was to balance the trees so each is raid viable.
Note: I made no mention of DPS…we are not a pure dps class…BC babies are the only ones that think so.
I’m pretty sure paladins could heal – my brother healed raids pre-BC as a paladin.
Not to say it was exciting.
Flash of light… flash of light… flash of light… flash of light… flash of light…
No Cal. We couldn’t REALLY heal. We could sort of heal, but our real main stay was our longevity with mana. Since we could pretty much just flash of light ad infinitum, we managed to heal more and last longer then most other healers. But it wasn’t really effective, and like you say, it was boring as all get out. Sad thing? Flash of light is still pretty much it. You can spam holy light at high levels, but…..why waste the mana?
You know what, I am going to call myself on that. We could heal, but like everything paladins did, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as a pure class. We have gotten better, but we still haven’t gotten all the tools the other classes have gotten. Eh, que sera once more.
Feign, I take it you remember when Spirit Bond was the 31 point talent? Yea, those were not good days to be a BM. But still, it was fun in its own way.
…. may as well join the arena here…. but I think what Palla said makes more sense. I’ve also played since the vanilla days and Survival always struck me as the odd tree out for a hunter. Granted a hunter had never been my main, but a shaman and a druid were my first toons before I tackled the hunter. Going by abilities and skills alone, hunters are more of a weaponized caster class than true casters or true weapon users. We barely have enough abilities to melee well…. OP explosive shot regardless, we’re more or less a poor man’s unholy spec Death Knight without it. I admit I love survival because the rotations ARE a challenge and take actual strategy with each fight, but it made more sense as a Hunter (if I had my way) to simply merge both BM and MM together with a dash of Survival thrown in between. But that’s just me…… everyone has his or her own playstyle… whatever works for someone does not necessarily mean it will work for the next person. Though I do admit to a truism that your starting character (or main, in this case) does bear some influence on how you play and look at the next class you decide to roll for.
To clarify, I have healed just about everything as a holy paladin. I healed everything up to Naxx pre-TBC, and the only reason I didn’t heal that was because I’d taken a break. I didn’t heal as much TBC, for some reason I lost a lot of my drive there, and I am back to healing again in Wrath.
Yeah, i do 300 DPS right now as an 80 in mostly blues and a stray purple… my druid does 1200 in mostly greens. I’ve been playing my druid recently :D
Well, i was all down in the dumps and was very reluctant to play my hunter after the nerf. Now i can feel good about my hunter again! =D
Reading over the bosts I realise how bad it could still be for BM.
Then I lol at the scary thought of Spirit Bond being even worse than it is now.
But you are right about the whining level’s valve to shut off, Palla, I am still uncertain about the nerf being needed [as well I never got the high numbers anyways :c] but my whining really is the pet nerf cause for BM, pet’s get to be 50% of ur damage.
Dooooh D8
I’m fine with balancing, I’m not fine with over nerfing. But since you already agree everyone is happy and for the most part people have stopped wanting to torch blizzard :x
Tho like Aria I am worried- atm we’re just really running Strat for Pony and SV for rep, tho there’s been a couple close calls in SV.
But we’re still working out the kinks of NO DONT BREAK ICE TRAP anyways XD
But after a two man of Aria and my Belf thru Underbog [oh boy that was fun, pull wrong instant death!] sadly I am thinking that non exotic tanks might have been the only ones >not>
Guess I got testing to do when my realm is back up [if I remember to test this out between dailies and leveling lol]
I forgot the brackets cause text to be ate /doh
‘not affected as even on one mob, a lv 80 going full out took a while to peal aggro off the warpy.
Cause I mean it’s just, strange, my main is pulling aggro/threatening to and the ones I use the most are exotics, yet a warp ate face and held aggro better >>
Guess I got testing to do when my realm is back up [if I remember to test this out between dailies and leveling lol]‘
Backbutton ftw.
Well aside from Boglords, they liked me far too much for you to get aggro off me :(
scott: With those “tougher solo” ideas, you sound like you want leveling/questing to be a group thing, and in that case, you’re playing the wrong MMO.
Although nonelites did seem to die much faster when I finally replaced my BC weapons/armor, that felt pretty awesome.
So we get to sit around with a sub par dps spec for 3 or so months. If they can ninja nerf my pally 3 times in a week, they can ninja buff my hunter the same way.
Know i have been BM for a long time on my main and i got tired of it when i hit 80, well when blizz realeased the 3.08 patch notes i thought i should change so i tried surv and found it fun since shooting explosive shoot was fun and was different, well it was rather hard climbing the dps meters as surv (though tanks liked my trap lock)survivail just couldn’t make enough dps.. so i waited and with the new changes explosive PWNs so i don’t complain… but common i could be in top of the dps meters in heroics by sending in pet and volley’ing
I admit I haven’t read all the comments… but that’s because most of you are whining like rogues or mages. (to rogue/mage players that don’t whine, I apologigze.)
Yes, Bliz over nerfed BM. Yes, there are still pet skill autocast issues. But they acknowledged they over nerfed BM within a month of the patch. That is a very good sign. We must stay positive, and give real feedback and real numbers for them to look at. I think of it this way: If the hunter community whines the least, and gives the most constructive feedback, and posts testing numbers they can use more than other classes, won’t they be more likely to work on our problems first? When I have a long list of things to do of equal importance, I always knock out the easier tasks first, and I’d bet the blizz team does too. If you really, truly believe they never listen, and that they secretly hate hunters, and that they’re “worse than , leave and take your negative attitude with you. You’re not helping. Really.
In short, you should be ashamed of yourselves for bitching. There is a line between stating a problem and flat out whining like a spoiled child, and I’ve seen far too many hunters slide into the latter category recently. We are not broken, just wounded. If we act with some dignity, we can at least look better than every other class that whines when a nerf comes around, and we just might get rewarded for our maturity too.
Ralowae:
“I think of it this way: If the hunter community whines the least, and gives the most constructive feedback, and posts testing numbers they can use more than other classes, won’t they be more likely to work on our problems first?”
No, no they aren’t. Now I’m not saying people can’t whine, hell, they paid their $15 a month, they can whine all they want ;) However, Blizzard screwed up this. Big Time. Hunters DID give constructive feedback. Hunters DID post numbers. And what did Blizzard do? NOTHING. They went ahead with a patch that SEVERAL reliable testers called “overnerfing” right from the start. I don’t think Blizzard deserves a not whining day.
This is like in those cartoons when henchmen say “hey boss, let’s use plan A!” and the boss ignores them, then 5 minutes later after realizing the error of the first idea, the boss says “Hey, I know, let’s use plan A!”
Am I whining? Possibly. But I have every right and intention for doing so. Why should I give Blizzard a pat on the back for realizing their mistake when thousands of others, myself included, posted numbers and spreadsheets from testing on the PTR saying “Hey guys, you’re making a mistake; look” and they not listen?
“When I have a long list of things to do of equal importance, I always knock out the easier tasks first, and I’d bet the blizz team does too. If you really, truly believe they never listen, and that they secretly hate hunters, and that they’re “worse than , leave and take your negative attitude with you. You’re not helping. Really.”
There’s no other way around it this time. Blizzard messed up. People are upset. They have a right to be. What good is the PTR if Blizzard isn’t going to listen and adjust things PRIOR to the patch release? If Blizzard cared about easier tasks being fixed first, then why isn’t the autocast bug fixed? Yet they fixed mount animations for the red drake and white drake to look different. What the hey- those weren’t even Broken like Autocast is, but they got fixed in a single patch while the autocast bug has been present for quite some time now.
Yes, people are going to whine no matter what. I agree that some people whine like kids while others whine a little less. But this time, I say, let them whine! Why should Blizzard be cut some slack for a mistake they made? And we don’t even know WHEN this is getting fixed either. It could be next week, it could be until 3.1 content patch.
Sorry if I sound rough, I’m not meaning to, I just want people to realize that while people are whining this time, I personally find it justified.
I’m afraid I haven’t really been following this discussion thread that closely. To be honest, the topic is a bit outside my current interests (i.s. not about pets directly). I’ve skimmed the responses but not much more. And you guys seem to be doing fine on your own. :>
But I did want to mention this: if you feel that someone has stepped over the lines defined in the comment policy here, please e-mail me and let me know.
I’m not bringing this up for a particular reason and this is not a reflection of anyone who commented recently — I just thought I’d better add a caveat since I’m not reading as closely as I usually do.
I think everything is over now, Mania. Tempers are high, and triggers are activating on a hair right now, so everyone is jumping the gun and onto each other. I personally have just been rubbed raw by Blizzards two talking. “We want all classes to be equal! Oh, wait, not that class, it can be behind.” “We want to give druids enough tools to fill out their kit! Paladins? What, flash of light, holy light, and holy shock aren’t enough for you?” “Retribution is OP, so we’re going to slap it on the wrist. Beast master is OP, so we’re going to destroy about a full quarter of their DPS.” …….if it were just this time, I’d get over it. But any of the old timers, people who have been here since at least months before TBC, have seen this song and dance over and over. Those are just recent examples, and honestly those are just a few, and of my favored classes. It just gets old after a while.
At LEAST Ghostcrawler apologized, which is about the only thing about the whole blasted situation that gives any indication of hope. Usually Blizzard spouts some nonsense about “Working as intended” no matter how nasty the nerf or buff is. SO maybe that is a step in the right direction, eh?
@Rikaku
I worded some of what I said poorly. Let me clarify.
I am in no way shape or form saying we don’t have the right to be upset or that bliz didn’t screw up. I’m saying we need to be more careful how we express it. If every complaint is accompanied by evidence that blizzard screwed up, it isn’t just whining.
Griping is totally justified, I’m just saying we need to do it constructively.
I am not condoning the ‘whiner’s in any way. The thing is, whiners usually accompany their whines with insults or other deaming behavior that really just makes us all look bad. However it is hard to tell when what we’re saying is getting through to Blizzard. I hate to sound the pessimist, but usually it doesn’t. Every community has explained its problems down through the years. Sometimes Blizzard listens ((I am not going to point fingers at which classes are the most listened to, its a tired old argument)), usually they don’t. That isn’t nessecarily bad. However we have had problems as simple as the dead zone bug that hung around for three years, and wasn’t addressed until much later. How many times have hunters asked, and rightfully so, for pets to get a portion of quest experience? ((I bring this up because I just did a quest chain in Zul Drak. During this quest chain you had to kill a total of five mobs. Five. Mobs. And the chain gave me roughly a half a level in experience.)) How many times have we asked for our pets to recieve a portion of our resilience? Things like this, what amount to major, but fairly important things that go totally unheard.
It is important to make yourself heard. It is also important to do it in a constructive, helpful manner. But almost as important is to not be to suprised if no one responds.
I would be happy if pets didn’t need to level at all- you want to tame a pet your level or below your level? Shazzam! It’s level xx like you! [if it was below your level], I mean I just find it sad DK and Warlock pets level up with their ‘masters’, mean between the times of my constant fiddling with my DK’s tree, he was more unholy than blood, turned in a quest, DING GOES THE LIGHTS- and up went the lights for my pet too.
Since Loyalty is no longer a factor, because pets don’t need it anymore for talents and huzzah you can make a pet happy via using growl, carrion feeder or feed pet! And mend pet for those of you without the broken glyphs! They should cut out the silly leveling deal period, I mean it just doesn’t make sense anymore- sure keep the factor of being unable to tame pets higher than your level, ingame, but anything lv 60 and below, 70 and below or 80 and below that is tameable, should jump right to your level.
And speaking of DZ, I’ve had times when it pops up, not often mind you, not often enough to get the fear back into the hunter comunity, but it’s really strange when the mob shuffles, and you pause in attacking, or all a sudden your hunter is wielding the bow like a 2hander and it’s just, no, just no.
And I did check to make sure it wasn’t a graphic error, a wall of pet/mob damage and none of mine kinda proved that >>
Palla, you could reroll a rssto shammy btw, not as a fix or lolz you should cause blizz screwed you, way either, but when a shammy pops the chain healing correctly it’s just a mass of lines.
And it heals pet too :D
*Shot**dies*
In all seriousness I just wish Blizzard would realise there is NO true balance, even Rock vs Paper vs Scissors will fail, from skill/luck/timing.
And kiting. I nearly defeated a paladin 1v1. >.o stupid shield throwing attack and bubbles
*chuckles* I have one, Ryai. I bounce between enhancement and restoration. My druid bounces between feral and restoration. The only two I can’t seem to bounce are my paladin and my hunter. Its really odd, I just have to create new hunters, or a new paladin. Unfortunately, leveling a paladin is a lot like watching grass grow, no matter your spec…. “OMG! Seal of command went off! Yay!”
Blizzard: “All classes are equal….but some classes are more equal than others!” XD just tossing a little Animal Farm in there, as it seems to fit. lol.
Oh it fits perfectly…. *LAUGHS*
Noba:
You just got yourself added to a forum signature man XD
I have … 25 hunters. Only three got past lv 40 atm 8D
lv 52, 68 and 80.
And yeah, I can agree with that, only got one paladin, and the only reason I was able to get him to lv 40 was the single mantra of HORSE HORSE HORSE HORSE HORSE HORSE ding yay HORSEHORSEHORSE
ohcrap pulled to many mobs, bubble CD bubble #2 cd! LoH cd! ohcrap *death*
Leveling my pally is more fun nwhen I drag my friend around on his druid alt, mass pulls = insanity. Especially when you’re trying to CLICK AROUND THE BIG BUTT OF BEARDRUID :v
Tho my pally bounced between Prot and Ret untill I realised lol I don’t have the skill or attention span to tank, and went back to Ret.
And Lol @ Noba, and unfortunately, your statement is true XD
After reading through some of these comments. I find myself sitting here laughing at a few people over comments that say BM is the only solo talent tree for the hunter. I will admit that it is the easier tree to level up with but it is not the only tree. I have leveled a hunter from 1-70 as MM and changed to BM for raiding, the changed to a MM spec to level up to 80. BM is a good spec and was the only spec for raiding in BC because of the cookie cutter crap that all hunter were pushed into.
But in all fairness, MM and Surv (Never touched the Surv tree yet) are just as good a tree for leveling/raiding now in the new expansion that hopefully we will see more MM hunters running around.
*chuckles* Crush, in vanilla WoW, MM was considered to be the best of the three trees. BC, well, cookie cutter BM and steady shot ruled there. I think its about time for survival to be on top for a bit. Not at the cost of the other two trees, mind you, but it does deserve the boost.
I think Palla, that you and I have probably been playing around the same time. Most of the Hunters I’ve met say that BM has been the best for as long as they can remember, which means obviously they weren’t around in the days when people literally bombed Ogrimmar and Ironforge with their pets after MC runs. Literally, I remember when you HAD to be MM to raid back in the day. Most guilds wouldn’t even let a Hunter have their pet out during a raid cause of the paranoia that pets would screw something up or aggro and what not.
It is good to see SV finally have some love, but I’m with Palla not at the expense of the other 2 trees. Though, i’m still BM as we speak and I have yet to see a SV hunter top me in heroics (though our guild SV hunters, both of whom are very good hunters, do top me, but they topped me even as BM when they were BM X3)
*chuckles* Yup, I remember those days. Rikaku. ‘Is that a pet?! WHO BROUGHT A PET!!! /raid kick”. Can’t say I miss them. *LAUGHS* I THINK more then half of the people playing WoW now started out in The burning crusade. For some reason the first expansion was this signal for a huge influx of players. I ain’t saying that they aren’t qualified to comment on the current situation…..just that people who have been around since the beginning and closer to the beginning understand the situation a bit better. People who started in TBC started in the BM hayday. All they’ve ever known was a strong BM spec. Those who started before, well…..as I said above, our thirty one point talent used to be spirit bonds, and it was worse then then it is now. Now it at least adds a plus to healing. However, these people didn’t know the joy that was the original beastial wrath. Doubled attack power for twelve seconds. They tried to justify it by saying that it last longer meant more damage, but that was Blizzard calculators going ’1+1=yellow’ again. 50% for eighteen does NOT equal 100% for 12. ((As a side note, you do actually get more damage out of the ability itself for the eighteen second span. But that is only because it goes for six seconds longer. Add in the damage your pet will be doing for the 6 other seconds for the 2x damage version of beastial wrath and you get more damage out of the old one. I pulled up a calculator just to make sure I wasn’t being stupid.)) I was also a much bigger fan of the old mend pet, though FINALLY getting the rank 74 version has softened me up to the new one a bit.
Speaking of which, and this is a total side note, but mend pet needs to scale with SOMETHING. I am sorry, but my warlock can restore close to triple the damage to his minion as my hunter can to his pet, AND HEALTH FUNNEL SCALES. So it’ll just keep getting better and better….. I say this as some one who solo’s a LOT and doesn’t always have a healer handy. *Read:Almost never* I STILL have no real clue as to why mend pet doesn’t scale.
As a side note, the damage for the other six seconds was figured in as normal damage, not on a 2x modifier for the old beastial wrath. The difference wasn’t huge, only about 1/10th really, but this was probably the first major beast master nerf. Believe me, it was pure joy to watch a pet in those twelve seconds. Course pets didn’t SCALE then, but for some reason they still managed to feel stronger then they sometimes end up feeling now. How odd.
Okay…this is disturbing…I’m totally disappointed with Blizzard’s way of “equalizing” classes. All they did was nerf BM so completely because a bunch of newbcakes QQ’d about BAD hunters who don’t trap, don’t MD, and do nothing but spam steady shot and serpent sting.
I am a proud BM, I am a professional. To me the Hunter is all about the pet, and I love them all… I know my class, I do decent DPS even after the patch, but i’m NAXX-25 and T7.5 epic’d out (won’t give up my sphere of red dragon’s blood tho…wow that trinket needs to be epic it’s so good), and I’ve noticed my pets took a big hit. I know my spec, I know my pet’s optimum spec, and I’m widely considered the expert on rare pets on my server…just because of a few QQing whack-jobs we didn’t deserve the nerf we got slapped with. For god’s sake…
I am Harana of Frostwolf, US. I implore BLIZ to fix Kindred Spirits and restore most of what they took away…on behalf of my sweet, cuddly and cute pets, I Implore you!
Petition Signed by:
Wiggles – L80 Spirit Beast
Stompy – L80 Green Devilsaur (AKA King Krush)
Sprinkles – L80 Purple Chimaera (AKA Nuramoc)
Snowflake – L80 Albino Ape (AKA Uhc’Loc)
Angel – L80 Ghostsaber
I didn’t play a hunter in vanilla WoW, but I remember – BM and Surv were more or less a joke. If you cared at all you specced MM.
As for these nerfs… sigh. I tried to go to Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum as BM and it was possibly the most embarrassing experience of my life (I’m having to reassure my friend that I’m not an idiot, honest, in the hope to get invites ever again). I respecced Survival (for now… I’ll test MM later) and immediately shot to nearly the top of the DPS charts. Yay. T_T My poor Spirit kitty is sitting in the stable, getting all lonely now…
Here’s hoping it doesn’t take five months to fix.
Pyrn, no offense, but ‘If you cared at all you specced MM.’ is wrong, and was wrong then. If you were a MIN/MAXER then you went MM, but you could make survival and beast master work. Beastmaster was actually the harder of the two in the very beginning. Beastial wrath thankfully made that a lot easier. Back then skill really could help pop you up in the meters if that was your thing. I was one of maybe three hunters in my guild who was actually encouraged to be beast master. It was just my forte, and I could then, and do now do some interesting things with it. Just because it isn’t ‘best’ doesn’t mean you can’t work with it. Just some food for thought.
I actually left a few guilds because of my close minded “Hunter Class Guild Leader”. She refused to acknowledge the viability of BM in vanilla wow. Sure, I couldn’t beat her MM spec (though to be fair I was in like 2 pieces of giantstalkers while she had a whole set), but I beat all the other MM hunters in our guild. Finally one day she told me spec MM or gtfo, I told her to shove it and left.
I bumped into her again in the BC, it was amusing to see her sporting the spec she always spat upon. *snicker*
It is my firm belief that you should never have to play a spec or class that you don’t want to. Am I saying that you should leave your guild high and dry because you don’t want to respec? Thats debatable. If your in a small guild, just starting out, you do need to consider a respec. Nothing permanent, and make sure its known that you are NOT going to stay that spec permanently, but do think about it.
HOWEVER, if you are in a larger guild that has everything covered, you definitely should not let them force you to respec. Do what you enjoy, and don’t let some one else ruin your enjoyment with it.
The problem with this, of course, is that no one really wants to tank anymore, and no one really wants to heal. Everyone has this DPS craze where “OMG MUST DPS!!!” As hunters, well, thats what we’re supposed to do anyway. But paladins are going mainly ret, warriors are going fury and arms, druids are about 33/33/33 at the moment ((Although I swear I have seen more boomkins around lately…)) and most death knights wouldn’t know what tanking gear was if it smacked them in the face. Don’t get me started on the healers.
one thing i wantewd to ask [because i got into a huge argument with a dude over this so much that hes ignoring me =P] is was it confirmed ALL classes gettin dual specs eventually or just the hybrid classes?
also glad to hear bm is gettin buffed, my dps has been in the dumps lately =P
It’s all classes. Everyone will be able to pick two specs, and switch between them. We don’t really have any other confirmed information though. Most likely it’ll be around the Uldar patch, but look for Blizzard to push it back further.
‘and most death knights wouldn’t know what tanking gear was if it smacked them in the face.’
I thankfully know what tanking gear for a DK iss [tho I'm starting to fear pre WotLK areas my poor belf is gonna have to roll on pally gear too. But I know the most important stats are Parry and Hit :D
Anyways this isn't really about that, my belf hunter managed to snag a Durn run and Cherry my Devilsaur was my only dps pet high enough for me to feel comfortable in taking, Cupid being a cunning pet/dragonhawk squishes to much to possibly off tank like I feared my pet would possibly have to do [and I unfortunately was right]
Alright anyways first run equaled a wipe because of the ninja-lock who started the last part of the instance, the Epoch hunter, or whatever the infinate dragon was named. We didn’t realise untill after the second time and it was oh shit get down and busy guys!
Cherry off tanked two, TWO of the dragonkin, eating their faces and smashing them good, she did such a good job, WITHOUT Growl mind you, the DKs could NOT pull either mob off her and the priest realised this and oh I love the player, started healing Cherry wrong< with mend pet.
‘and most death knights wouldn’t know what tanking gear was if it smacked them in the face.’
I thankfully know what tanking gear for a DK iss [tho I'm starting to fear pre WotLK areas my poor belf is gonna have to roll on pally gear too. But I know the most important stats are Parry and Hit :D
Anyways this isn't really about that, my belf hunter managed to snag a Durn run and Cherry my Devilsaur was my only dps pet high enough for me to feel comfortable in taking, Cupid being a cunning pet/dragonhawk squishes to much to possibly off tank like I feared my pet would possibly have to do [and I unfortunately was right]
Alright anyways first run equaled a wipe because of the ninja-lock who started the last part of the instance, the Epoch hunter, or whatever the infinate dragon was named. We didn’t realise untill after the second time and it was oh shit get down and busy guys!
Cherry off tanked two, TWO of the dragonkin, eating their faces and smashing them good, she did such a good job, WITHOUT Growl mind you, the DKs could NOT pull either mob off her and the priest realised this and oh I love the player, started healing Cherry <3
The second run was when I tried to do the Thrall quest but he glitched :D anyways, doesn’t matter, we run into a path doing the plant the bomb part of the ‘pre quest’, and we pulled a pat accidently. Cherry is eating face and taking names of the mob right?
I cast mend pet [this is AFTER she used intimidate and had done about 3k or so worth of damage. Maybe 4k] and go back to hitting on the mob with teh skull on it.
All a sudden the mob Cherry has pings off and starts eating my face- and I never touched it! I had even FD’d prior so Cherry would have all the threat! But mend pet ticked just once, and I had 100% threat.
Something is wrong with mend pet.
Edit* as I forgot BRACKETS DELETE PARTS OF POSTS D: /StupidRyaiIsStupid
Glyph of mend pet is borked for me at the moment, and aggro for hunters at the moment is….odd. I can do absolutely nothing, and mobs will come off on me. Mend pet combined with a regular barrage will usually pull mobs off on me fairly early, forcing me to feign. Weirdness. I have also seen things literally aggro from seventy to a hundred yards away.
Sheesh reading these posts makes me gag anymore. Half of it is just flaming and whining to me. I agree BM got hit hard. My hunter didn’t do nearly as much damage (though to be fair, my gear isn’t that great either). But at the same time I don’t think Blizz necessarily ‘ignored’ people. It’s kinda hard to find any relevant feedback among 11.5 million players of various classes and builds within the mindless whining of the 12 years olds. Blizz certainly has their hands full, but they should definetly listen to the players more. After all, they’re not the ones paying money and playing the game…WE are.
I enjoyed BM and tried to play it well, but I ended up respecing to survival after the nerf. The nerf wasn’t entirely to blame, though. I’ve been BM so long I’ve never had the chance to try the other trees and I was wondering just how viable they could be in raids. An officer in my guild helped me spend my talent points and got me a shot-rotation, and so far, I’m liking it. I had ended up dropped any exotics I had (NEVER found the damn Spirit Beast, and if I do, I’ll kill the damn thing), and I raid with a tallstrider. Each talent spec is meant to fullfil a specific role, but a GOOD hunter will know their class well enough to succeed no matter their prefered spec or play style.
Also Scott…I’m not sure I understand what you mean by saying BM should be specified as solo while MM/SV should be pvp/raid. In an extreme case, that would mean a BM hunter would be forced to respec MM or SV to even be able to raid, and that just isn’t fair. BM focuses on the pets damage (hence the name), Marks is burst damage that boosts the hunter, and Survival is more sustained damage and survivability. Each tree should be able to produce similar, not necessarily equal, amounts of dps and allow hunters of any spec to raid/solo/pvp well regardless.
Regarding the duel-spec…it’s a nice idea, but I seriously doubt it will work. It just seems like a very hard think for Blizz to implement…not to mention all the bugs it will have. If they pull it off, I’ll be impressed, but in the meantime, I’m not holding my breath.
Duel speccing is also planned to switch out glyphs when you switch out specs. I honestly have no idea how this is going to work, to be perfectly honest. It’ll be great for my druid and my shaman, but my hunter and paladin are set in their ways. Maybe my warlock, but then it’ll just be different degrees of demonology. Not to mention my paladin has a hunter to follow him around, so it isn’t like soloing is hard for the lucky fellow.
Ryai, before I forget, not all death knights are tank-stoopid. Just the majority, it seems.
And back to Selesti. Here is my problem with what your saying. First, let me explain. Some people take the test realms seriously, and honestly go to test out the changes, and provide detailed feedback to Blizzard. In most cases, these players are some of the better players around, people who really know how to play their class. They provided sound, well calculated numbers before the patch was released. Numbers on targetting dummies, numbers in raids, and numbers in PvP that supported that the nerf was to much. Blizzard said lets wait. These people are the not-whiners, the people who really care about the class, and want it to do well.
The patch goes live, and in come the whiners. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of whiners. THEN Blizzard seemed to understand that, whoops! We messed up. I thought test realms were around to prevent this sort of thing, yet very rarely do you see progressive testing in test realms. During the beta, that was different. But during test realms, very rarely does Blizzard hear what the players say. Do I think Blizzard is ignoring people? Not per-say. But I do think that Blizzard has an agenda in mind, and that test realm feed back very rarely budges this.
Another issue with the ignoring thing….I don’t think it is ignoring, once again, but I have seen GC CONVINCED, fatalistically, of something. Then, no matter how many people told him otherwise, he would continue to harp on the same ‘This is how it is, are your numbers different?’ I understand the lack of communication to an extent, but I don’t understand GCs inability to log in, or have a co-worker log in to check the simple things, like the warlock minion health thing. It was a simple oversight, it may have even been in an internal build but not in the test realm build, yet GC didn’t bother to confirm it. I know this, because I was there, I read as warlocks reported a lack of a hit point buff, and Ghostcrawler just kept brushing it off.
Its things like that that irk me. I know its a big company, but is it really so hard to just log in or have some one else log in to confirm things for yourself?
I’m sure you’re right on the test realm thing. Most people who log onto them probably wish to test out all the changes and provide useful feedback. Some (like me somewhat, only got on PTR once) only get on to play around with the new ideas rather than test. And I do agree…Blizz supposedly made the test realms for the purpose of people testing it and giving them feedback on what works and what doesn’t. But despite all this, it seems they just go ahead with the live patch even when people tell them that such-and-such a “fix” is too much. Granted live realms is very different from the PTR (as someone stated regarding raids), but if Blizz really cared about us testing it out, they should at least listen…maybe delay the patch until they’ve taken another look at it at least. I guess that’s human nature for you…and it’s not likely to change anytime soon.
Also Palla, I agree with you on the duel-specing. It would be great for my druid or priest (shadow or dis solo, dis/holy for healing), but for my hunter it’s rather useless. Plus it’s likely to be very buggy when it first comes out (if it even does) and my concern it what effect it will have on our “normal” specs and glyphs. Once again…we’ll see if it works out.
When dual speccing comes out, it won’t be such a big deal for my hunter. I seem to have no problem using my raid spec to farm with since both involve BM. If I have trouble I just switch from Ferocity pet to tenacity pet and go on my way.
Dual speccing for my druid on the other hand…that….that shall be a glorious day.
I’m just hoping I don’t have to wait til Ulduar for BM to be viable. Otherwise there are going to be some long raid nights.
I am glad we are on the same foot, Selesti. *Smiles*
Rikaku, Blizzard has stated that BM will be fixed in a content patch before Ulduar, or 3.1. From the sounds of it, it isn’t slated for the next patch, which kind of irks me. How many patches before Ulduar? How much longer are people going to have to wait for new content? If its anything past six months from the release of WoW ((Aprilish)) then it’ll have been too long in my opinion. We only started out with one raid instance, after all, and it is more or less agreed that it is on the easy side. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, since 3.1 is also going to introduce some changes to the hunter class.
I haven’t had a huge loss in dps on my hunter. Truthfully, I never relied on Volley or Rapid Shot to do decent dps. I am still BM and will remain BM, however, I do not have the 51-point Bm talent. Come to think of it, when I do instances with people I am not familiar with, I purposly take a Tenacity pet into the instance. I have been having lot of trouble with my pet taking aggro away from the tank. My pet Carrion Bird (Trachela) consistantly does 2200 point crits, and if you string a few of those in a row, that is a lot of aggro. So, I have been using my pet slime a lot in instances. Somebody had mentioned that nobody wants to tank anymore. To a degree I agree. People who have tanked enough to be good at it want to try something different. this means you have a lot of people switching to tanking because they know they can get into a lot of groups. This kinda means that inexperienced players are filling the niche left bhnd by great tanks wanting to try something new. same thing with heals. It is happening in my guild, and I am guessing it is happening elsewhere as well. I guess the point I am getting at: pets are pulling aggro more oftn because of the tanks aren’t as skilled, not because th pets are overpowered. Seems pets are takig the heat because of other classes not beiong able to perform the way they are supposed to. i am sure there is more I wantt o say, but it has beena long day, and i can’t think staright.
One last thing… and Iam trying somthing out of the cookie-cutter hunter mold, and i could really use a ton of feedback. I started a new hunter in hopes of coming up with somethingt o tank with. Iplan on loading up on dodge and parry to try to make an “unhittable, tanking hunter”. Anybody have any suggestions on gear i should try to get? I already have my pets planned, and I am Jewelcrafting (for +27 dodge rating Dragon’s Eyes) and Enchanting (Jewelry enchanting). But, I could use some advice on armor and weapons and the like. Please send all suggestions no matter how silly they may sound. Would like to get dodge as close to 100% as possibl. Thanks…and please don;t laugh. i am serious about this. lol
Give me a few minutes to do some research Dweezil and I’ll get right back to you.
Your going to want agility. A LOT of agility. Most mail doesn’t usually have flat out dodge, so your going to want to optimize what stat you can. If I may ask, how are you planning on speccing? A link’d be great. And are we talking about easy to aquire gear, or instancing gear?
Okay, I was pretty sure of this, but let me tell you what your problem is going to be, Dweezil. The patch just before Wrath hit, our dodge was shot. Not sort of shot. Not kind of shot. Shot dead. I lost anywhere from five to ten percent dodge, and I wasn’t even epiced out. At eighty, an agilty of 1208 only confers 9.5% dodge or so. Add in dragonhawk, and your looking at 27% dodge.
Pre-wrath, I’d have have said you had a good chance of making it work. Wrath? I don’t know. But give it a shot anyway.
Palladia,
I am planning on using raid and instance gear. I am in a really good guild who is willing to help me try this. There are a lot of people in th guild who have odd-specs and they ar cool about helping me find the gear I am gonna need. naturally, some of the guild “leaders” aren’t thrilled about it, but they are willig to help me as long as I am not rolling on gear NEEDED by other guildies’ main specs. I was doing this on my main when i was leveling up, and at level 35-40, I had about 60% dodge (if I remember correctly). That was pre-Wrath. As far as my spec…. I am deffinatly going into the SV tree. A lot of stuff in there that i think will help. after that, I am not sure if ia m gonna go MM or BM. Both hav some mid-tree stufff that will help. I just have to make sure i spend every point wisely to pull this off. And like I said, I know I am goig to have to go Jewelcrafting/Enchanting as well.
Now, I do have some questions for ya. I knew I eeded a ton of agility and dodge rating. What about defense rating? I know pre-Wrath that helped, but Ia m not sure if it helps now. Any suggestions on that?
Defense will help, but keep in mind that stats scale down as you level up, so that you need more to make it work. Since mail doesn’t have tanking stats, you’ll always be sub par, but dragon hawk might help you make it up. Duel wield tanking weapons with defense stats to help. It’ll help your dodge a whole lot better then agility will right now.
As a side note, I had a while long thing typed out there…..and then internet explorer went and died on me. Stupid thing. I’ll try to remember exactly what it is when I am not trying to pass out.
soloing was never a problem, even at L80 most typical mobs have 12,600 health. any hunter spec can take that out with an arcane/explosive and a multi.
yes, we got nerfed and it was a long time coming. we could just afk autoshot in soloing because our pet will soak up aggro, the dps shows more than most classes too.
in regards to group settings we’re still on top par the occasional DK. mana regen is fine on my sting-explosive-multi-steady rotation, i rarely drop below 6,000 mana and BoW basically means my rotation goes endlessly. i MAY go oom, if I’m taking on something with over 10 mil hp and even then i can just pop viper and go melee for 8 seconds and be back at full before using disengage and retreating back to my 30-40 yard range.
hunters are good, it was a well-placed nerf and just because you may actualy have to push buttons now doesn’t give you reason to QQ. rogues need to get buffed back up more than we do
Palla:
Oh I completely agree with you. The problem does lie in just how long BM hunters have to wait for these “fixes” to come through. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not changing from BM for quite awhile, but this is a glaring issue.
Though, perhaps our prayers have been answered. It seems theres a blue post on MMO champion about releasing some changes early. Whether they mean on paper or on actual live realms I don’t know, but I really look forward to it.
@Palla:
“working as intended” is (c)1999 by 989Studios/Verant/Sony Online Entertainement – seeing this here gives me several flash-backs to Everquest *gg*
Blizzard should never again introduce a new class to WoW – they couldn’t even handle the balance before the introduction of the Death Knight.
Thought they had learned from the mistakes SOE made, back in the years, when Furor and Tigole where leaders of the top raid guilds in EQ – and ranted a lot about those big mistakes *eg*.
@Chetala “hunters are good, it was a well-placed nerf and just because you may actualy have to push buttons now doesn’t give you reason to QQ”
What game are you playing? Or are you playing on some “private” server?
Hunters beeing outdamaged by hybrid TANKS (aka DK) is wrong on many levels!
It has nothing to do with “being too dumb to press some buttons” – get your language right next time.
Been busy so not had time to respond.
While I don’t like the fact that other people have the same problems as me with lolaggro off pets, I don’t like it. This is exactly like how it was in what patch 2.4? When you could just for some hunters, do only one crit, and bam the mob is on you.
@ Chetala; ‘yes, we got nerfed and it was a long time coming. we could just afk autoshot in soloing because our pet will soak up aggro, the dps shows more than most classes too.’
How does soloing equate into this? Any pet class can solo mobs. Hell when my warlock was leveling as demo and before I LEARNED what warlocks do, I would just Send VW/dot/wand.
And btw ever think it’s cause of your specc as SV that’s helping you regen mana? If I remember right there’s a talent or two where you regen mana- I’m still having problems with mana. Yes ofc I have AotV but when I forget to switch back to AotD that’s when things get messy for my dps.
AND.
‘hunters are good, it was a well-placed nerf and just because you may actualy have to push buttons now doesn’t give you reason to QQ. rogues need to get buffed back up more than we do’
I CRY ROGUE. Rogues’ are buffed enough to the point of over buffing, I’ve seen rogues kill everything but like resto druids, in a few seconds. If anything they and DKs are nearly as Over Powered as a Resto druid [if you don't believe me there was a resto druid with half a WSG team on it and we chased him from our base to the ally base and he just didn't die] and you dare come to us and say, hunters deserved to be overnerfed, and rogues need more buffs? God for shame- you have no skill or no class, I’m sorry but you’re no better than the ones that whine and cry on the forums for WoW, degrading what little respect for rogues there is because you can’t two shot plate.
And you dare act like ‘oh lolz u haz to push teh buttonz now’ I ALWAYS USE MY SHOTS. When I have the time I spam SS even if it’s crap, I blow AS whenever it’s on CD, I pop Intimidate and TBW and warstomp and detterence and disengage and FD and even got a glyph for FD as -10sec for Detterence’s cd is imo crap unfortunately.
Do you know what my survival chances are if I get got by a DK? About 40-50%. And that’s with my CDs. Do you know what my survivability is when it’s against a rogue? 10%. That;s with my cd’s.
Do you know what it’s like for a warlock? Oh sure Rogues can twoshot Zeldei- and Zeldei had to face this god awful twink in lv 60-69 BG. But Zeldei has a 50/50 chance of winning hands down, unless they get the jump first. Why is that? Because Zeldei has less abilities on as large a CD as hunters do.
I rolled an OP class when it was still OP and I know what OP is. It’s roll ur face across the keyboard- and rogues are no different. Just because we have fewer abilities and buttons to use at any given time does NOT mean we all lolz auto n afk for anything but solo.
/rant
I hate ranting it makes me feel like an idiot sometimes.
Ghanur, I can’t say everything is Tigole and companies fault. I mean I used to get so angry just about every time Kalgan would post. But it is a big game, and I like to think that more then one or two people make the decsions. The arena, for example, wasn’t a bad idea. It still isn’t. Its implimentation, however, sucks, and it being a MAIN focus is a horrible idea. Now if it were a main focus along with traditional PvP and BGs, that’d be fine, but right now it is taking precidence over BGs, and that is a big no no and a fairly major design flaw. See, BGs have been around since about ten months after WoWs launch and love them or hate them, they became a major part of the game then. Then TBC comes around, and Arenas pop in…..and are forced off on everyone as THE E-Sport of WoW. For an entire YEAR of more any classes changes made were made to balance the arena. …..pardon? You were already having trouble balancing TWO aspects of the game, and now your going to toss in a third? Even worse ((For hunters), a small number of people on a small number of people, where certain classes are going to have a very massive advantage? Bad idea. I dare say its the minority of WoW players who actually enjoy Arenas, and everyone else does them because, well, you pretty much have to.
They want to do arena right, they need to monitor it and MAKE CERTAIN CHANGES TO JUST THE ARENA. Once you enter combat in an arena, you should stay in combat. Use the standard pulse effect you use in PvP, so that if you ARE a rogue who just vanished, you have five seconds to do something with it. No going out of combat to eat. NO BANDAGES. Let me stress that again. NO BANDAGES. You can’t use potions, but you can bandage? Real smooth, Blizz. None of this stupid ‘buffs laying around’ crap anymore. The final part I don’t have any suggestions for, because frankly it isn’t an easy fix. Burst damage is way to high for certain classes. That being said, certain healing classes can’t really be killed without the bursties. It is a stupid problem, to be sure, but both are serious problems. The entire problem with Wrath, always has been! Is that damage is tooled to high. It was tooled to high back at seventy, when we first recieved the patch, and it is WORSE at eighty. Blizzards vaunted Resilience? Does very little to fix it.
*Takes a deep breath* Rant over. Chetala, it isn’t about the nerf. Anyone here with a lick of sense knows it was needed. It was that it was to much of a nerf. Soloing…..is a joke. Heck, if you use a ferocity and pick up blood thirsty then your pet does a fair job of healing itself. In upper levels its worse, I find myself regularly taking on four to five mobs with very little if any difficultly. Three man quests vary, though the main problem tends to be that mend pet, even the higher ranked versions, suck so hard.
No, what the problem was, and it is now a problem acknowledged by Blizzard, is that the nerf went to far. They chopped off to much of BMs damage. Course I am still just arcane, aimed, and steady shotting and that usually ends the fight in short order, but that is the deal for most of my classes. Just my hunter takes a noticable amount longer then’ee used to.
Another problem with your statement, Cheetala, is that pre-nerf BM were sort of encouraged to just push one button. I never did, mind you, and I tended to catch flak for it, but my damage was consistently higher then most BMs. ((Ahhh, to think of TBC as back in the day…..)) I just had more mana issues. *LAUGHS* Now BMs are having to learn a totally new style of play, which I think is BEYOND a long time in coming. People are always going to whine when you toss a wrench in their proverbial gears. The good ones will figure things out for themselves, and the bad ones will look up something cookie cutter. But we’ll all live. *Smiles*
As a side note, Explosive shot caught a stealth nerf. The co-efficient was dropped in a hot fix.
My third…..ugh. My brain isn’t working well. Just a thought…..they can stealth nerf explosive shot, but they can’t stealth buff anything BM?
@Palladiamors (and without reading the 124 previous replies) – you are missing the point, at least as far as I’m concerned. The problem is not whether certain classes/items/abilities have been “nerfed” or “imba-ed” (if that makes sense).
My problem is that I’m now paying 13 euro per month to play a game in which nobody knows what the rules are, and in which the unknown rules are subject to arbitrary change without notice. Seriously.
I predicted, in a post here, that WotLK would not be ready for release before summer 2009 and I stand by that prediction. It WAS, of course, released in November 2008 – but there have been 3 major revisions since release, each of them fundamentally changing the basic nature of the game.
If you had asked me to write a piece entitled “How to play Hunter in WoW” 6 months ago, I could have done it. Today, I wouldn’t even try to begin such an article, because patch 3.1 (or 3.08.05, or whatever it will be) will probably completely alter the basic mechanics of the game in the same way that 3.0, 3.02, 3.03 and 3.08 did, rendering all expert commentary on the game obsolete.
I NO LONGER KNOW how to play hunter. I’m looking forward to a period of stability when I can learn how to play again. Maybe I’ll drop my subscription and come back in 6 months. Maybe not. Maybe Blizzard’s beancounters care. Maybe not.
Oh no, I got the point Lovemypet. But it isn’t just hunters who had that happen. Paladins got turned on their ears when Wrath came out, and several other classes had things change either early or up in the seventies. IN THE SEVENTIES. Whoops, all of a sudden your class handles differently! Sorry about that.
I even said that. One of the problems with that last patch was that beast masters had to relearn how to play. Now the problem I personally have with that is that it was a change that came about in TBC. I started well before TBC, and the thought of just sitting there spamming steady shot never really appealed to me. But for the majority of hunters, yes, it was another major blow. Blizzard really doesn’t seem to know HOW they want hunters to play, especially beast master. “Well, do we make the pet really powerful but the hunter weaker, or do we buff the hunter to do better damage but make the pet an unkillable tank?” is something they’ve said before. And they STILL don’t know what they want to do. I’ll agree with you, it makes it hard to play when your class is having its staples torn from under them regularly.
Your absolutely right. Wrath was so far from ready when it was released that it wasn’t funny. If I had to wager, Activision was pushing for a holiday seasons release, and obidient little Blizzard had to follow. Its annoying, but what can you do?
I only have to say I disagree that Wrath wasn’t ready for release. We all knew Wrath was coming out in 08. They announced that far before WAR’s horrid horrid timing of release. If anyone jumped the gun on release, WaR is guilty of it the most. Of course, this is just my opinion <3
Regardless of how you look at it, every once in awhile a system changes. Hunters changed drastically just with the pet system overhaul. Changing the talents and spec powers like 3.0.8. did just accentuated it.
Palla:
Your hot fix thought is almost exactly what I was thinking. They can apparently stealth nerf but not stealth fix. go go blizz
*chuckles* Before I start Rikaku, I want you to know that I am not arguing with you to be spiteful or anything. Now onward.
WARs release date was announced well before Wraths. A month or two at the least. And then Blizzard JUST SO HAPPENS to release the pre-Wrath patch….. within a week of WaRs release. Huh, interesting, that.
Now then, was WAR ready? No. I love the game, don’t get me wrong, but it could have used a lot of fine tuning. That being said, it is a NEW game, fresh onto the market. They are allowed to make mistakes like that, as long as they learn from them, which they are showing every sign of doing.
Now on to the part I was apologizing for. You can’t say Wrath was done. Bugs, fairly major ones, were being reported, imbalances were being reported, tuning problems were being reported, class errors were being reported, problems were just all around major and unavoidable. The state of PvP was and still is a mess, the state of PvE was blaugh at best, and we got one, count’em, ONE ‘end game’ raid. The pathetic Naxxaramas. Which, if I might add, was just a redo. They didn’t even have to redesign it, they just ripped it whole hog from its old form and tossed it into Northrend with a myriad of tweaks. To make it easier, of course. We get the leveling process of 70-80, and then we get meh heroics, and an almost more meh raid. Players were and ARE left with very little content that could have been helped along or even out right solved by taking just a few more months to design the game.
All of that is just basic fact. Here is where I get controversial. I think Blizzard expected everyone to jump on the achievements bandwagon, and keep themselves pre-occupied. Personally, I have ALWAYS hated the thought of achievements. Maybe its just me, but I am not that interested in showing off what I have and haven’t done. I’ve done a lot. I enjoyed it. Doesn’t mean I need a big sign on my forehead that says “I achieved!” Anyway, achievements have more or less failed as far as I can tell. Sure you have people who are going out of their way to get every single one, but most people have finished most of what they can, and are now either annoyed with the things that are wrong ((Why are myriad and many)) or just plain bored. I realize that content takes a while to put in. But Blizzard needs to do something before they start losing customers en masse because they’ve run out of things to do.
Is it just me, or is Blizz trying to make it so hunters can only be played in one way… very cookie cutter. before the 3.0 patch you could stack up dodge, defense, and agility, and viola! You could actually tank as a hunter. You could get near (if not to) 100% dodge. The way it is set up now, you have one choice….. dps. Don’t get me wrong, I don;t mind dpsing. It’s fun. but I would like to have the choice of other roles. Paladins can heal, tank, or dps. same with Shaman. warriors can tank or dps. Priests can heal or dps. Hunters ar down to one role. DPS. And now Blizz is takig away our ability to do that. If we had more choices, I could maybe see taking some things awayfrom us. Truthfully, I have been bored with my hunter as of late. The only reason I log into him on a adaily basis is my pets. Just seems to me that Blizz has made it s hunters can only have one role, and then they decide that that one role is too powerful. Either gimme my dps back, or give me the ability to take on a different role.
Palla:
HOW DARE YOU NOT LIKE ACHIEVEMENTS!? JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!??! ;) I kid. I love Achievements personally though. (Seriously, that Blue Dragonhawk mount is mine *cackle*) And no worries about spiteful, you’re probably the only other person I’ve debated with before and generally we seem to have the same responses XD
Ok, I’ll give in to those facts (since some of it I honestly didn’t know) However, I didn’t “feel” like Wrath was bugged or anything. Perhaps, I greatly missed all the bugs (I’m sure I did. I focused on leveling and camping a stupid spirit beast for 5 and half weeks. I missed a ton of stuff). I compared that to how I felt with WaR, which always felt “incomplete”. So thats why I said it’s just my opinion. You presented facts, I hand the winner of the debate to you for sure, but I still feel like Blizzard didn’t rush Wrath because of WaR.
“WARs release date was announced well before Wraths. A month or two at the least. And then Blizzard JUST SO HAPPENS to release the pre-Wrath patch….. within a week of WaRs release. Huh, interesting, that.”
This is true, however, Wrath’s unofficial release was mentioned at the 07 Blizzcon and it was stated in early 08 that Wrath of the Lich King WOULD be out by 09. Did we know it’d be 2 months after WaR? No. Did Blizzard? I’m sure. But considering how late in the year Wrath came out (considering they said Wrath would be out by 09), I don’t think WaR was the real reason Wrath came out so early. The pre-expansion patch? Possibly.
I think the only thing I have to completely disagree with you on (and of course, lovingly <3) is the “fine tuning” bit to WaR. I played the beta and that headstart deal and from my own opinion that game wasn’t just in need of fine tuning, it needed some serious overhaul. Not sure if you played White Lion or not, but that class in and of itself needed some serious fixing. And I agree, they are learning from it, but judging from how so many people are quitting on WaR as well, I think it’s safe to say they’re just as slow to address problems as Blizzard.
I think the reason Blizzard didn’t really “overhaul” Naxx was because of the whole idea of not alot of people ran old Naxx. Other than Mania, judging by most of the comments here over the time, I believe we’re two of the few people who were hear long before TBC came out. Naxx came out so quickly before TBC, that not many guilds saw it. Majority of the active players now (Almost 11.5million players now right? When I joined it was 7.5-8million players) are post TBC launch. So maybe that’s their reason for not revamping it.
Don’t get me wrong, not trying to defend them, just presenting ideas. But again, this is all just my opinions =)
Off topic but
/raise hand
I never saw Naxx, AQ and haven’t even been in any instances past UK.
Well did manage to snag a VoA run when we grabbed WG but at the end some people just took the time to insult my friends for having some green gear, then insult me, so I thought meh and left.
We had enough DPS the tanks were just stupid and kept dragging the damn boss Out of Range for all caster and pet classes :/
Dunno if your still paying attention to this one Rikaku, but overhauled was a bit much. It did need work, but I have seen much, much worse. MUCH worse. I do play a white lion, actually, around rank 30 now but I haven’t had much time. It does have some issues ((Most notably my pounce. I LOVE my pounce. But sometimes I go flying and just….nothing happens. At all. Not to mention it deposits you at a point some feet behind them if they are moving, forcing you to get off a slowing attack in mid-flight to have any chance of catching them)) I think all of them can and will be resolved. Mythic has Blizzard beat hands down in customer service and in actually caring about the quality of their product, where Blizzard is happy to just keep doing the same things over and over. And over. And don’t even get me started on Blizzard ‘fixing’ things. If it isn’t something some one is bitching about twenty four seven ((Which they will then stealth hot fix)) then it doesn’t get fixed. Oh, and if its a pet? It’ll probably get removed instead of fixed. Yay Blizzard!
On the up side, I have been getting into some PvP in WoW lately, trying to get a feel for the eighty bracket. If it doesn’t have a healer, its dead in ten seconds. If it HAS a healer, I’m dead in twenty. I am actually enjoying the upwards of eighty BG experience more then I enjoyed the seventy experience. There I felt like I had to pluck away at people forever, while here I just have to sort of grin and let fly. My pets are surviving so much better now thanks to lick your wounds and much improved mend pets. I actually tend to die well before them now. Masters call is an amazing tool IF your pet is close enough to you. If not then your almost losing more damage then you can afford.
Ok, to all who say BW is or was OP in PvP:
Rogues get stunlocks, Warriors get facecrusher skills, Warlocks get minions, fear, AND DoT, Shamans… Nevermind that, Mages get Arcane Barrage, Priests get bubble, fear, and DoT, Paladins get everything you can f’ing think of, and Death Knights get Death Grip, ghouls, DoT, and the same facecrushers and self heals as Paladins and Warriors.
And BW, our only ‘Oh crap’ button, DOESN’T EVEN LOWER DAMAGE WE TAKE, is OP.
So what are we supposed to do in PvP? Feign Death and hope the other players don’t see the glove turn into a sword when they go to take our insignias?
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