136 thoughts on “BM 2B Buffed”

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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*

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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.

7. ‘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.

8. ‘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

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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?

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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

16. Give me a few minutes to do some research Dweezil and I’ll get right back to you.

17. 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?

18. 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.

19. 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?

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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.

23. @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.

24. 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.

25. 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*

26. As a side note, Explosive shot caught a stealth nerf. The co-efficient was dropped in a hot fix.

27. 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?

28. @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.

29. 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?

30. 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

31. *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.

32. 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.

33. 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 =)

34. 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 :/

35. 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.

36. 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?