More on Ammo Changes
Eyonix posted on the Blizzard forums today about the upcoming Hunter Ammo Changes:
In our 3.1.0 class updates post, we had announced plans to remove consumable ammunition from the game upon the release of the next major content patch. Our original plans were to change ammunition so that hunters would no longer need to utilize bag space, while adding some new functionality that would continue to make ammunition a compelling element of gameplay. Unfortunately, this intended change will not be completely ready in time for patch 3.1.0.
We still fully intend to move forward with this change when the additional functionality becomes available, and for 3.1.0 we still intend to remove the need for pouches/quivers by greatly increasing the stack sizes on arrows and bullets, and the haste bonus from the bags will be preserved in another fashion. We’ll be sure to inform our players with further updates once they become available.
So if I understand thing, in Patch 3.1 I will be able to reclaim the bag slot that currently holds my quiver, but I will need to sacrifice one or more inventory spots inside a bag to stacks (really big stacks!) of arrows. Well, that’s not perfect but it is a decent compromise.
And like many of you, I am very much looking forward to clearing out that quiver slot!
(Thanks to Palladiamors for very helpfully getting his comment about this news in the moderation queue so I was more likely to see it. *grin*)
45 Comments
*LAUGHS* Your welcome!
I was hoping to save money on ammo come Patch 3.1
*sigh*
Oh well (Unless they make Ultrasafe Bullet Machine/Saronite Arrow Maker create whatever the new stack is instead of 200)
While the idea of having more bag space is welcomed, Blizzard has made no mention of how this might affect Leatherworkers and Engineers that produce ammo/quiver bags and ammunition as a means to make gold or gain trade skill points.
I agree with most post on the WOW forum that the main concern with most hunters is bag space. I constantly grind on my hunter and with my gorilla food, skins, and drops i can barely get experience on my hunter before its time to roll into town. While I enjoy the solo grinding to get leather, I am definetly tired of running instances and having to toss out semi decent drops to make room for better drops simply because I have less available bag space. I have dished out the 200 gold for decent bags( for my level atleast) and still have less bag space than other classes of a similar level who have significantly cheaper bags. And being a skinner makes this situation even worse. I hate having to loot everything from a monster in order to loot. I wish there was a destroy item button in the looting process because it does slow down my leveling/grind time to have to destroy 50 grays in order to skin 50 monsters.
WHB, food isn’t a nessisity anymore for pets; if you’re high enough to spec it there,s Carion Feeder, Guard Dog and Blood Thirsty, all of which allows the pet to regenerate happiness without feeding. The only times I do have to feed is if I’m in a PVP enviroment and rezzed my pet and ofc can’t use growl.
You’re not the ‘only one’ to suffer bag space. Ever roll a warlock? Ever roll a warlock before a dungeon run? Zeldei had to craft a 20slotter soulshard bag, and only at 72 have I gotten around to get skill up high enough for a 28 slotter, but even that’s not enough because since one soul shard = one use, I get paranoid and farm about 20 more mobs for shards. Then there’s food/water when I’m lazy, and yada yada… you’re not the only one with bag issues, but, there are smarter ways around your problems.
And since you’re a skinner you could just buy a LWing bag, keep it untill patch 3.1.0 hits, and bam, 28 slot bag for skins and leather.
Sides be happy it was worse being a hunter if you were a mount and pet collecter. Or worse- both. :c
And I wish they could just make a damn quiver/ammo slot, you equip that, equip your chosen stack, and blamo. Done. Because now about 300g I spent is now wasted :/
/sigh
I guess I shouldn’t complain about them atleast fixing our ammo problems tho.
I just hope we will maintain the visual quiver on our backs. If that goes away ill be a sad panda
i wonder if the stacks go for OVER 9000! (I had to I’m sorry)
maybe instead of making a quiver/ammopouch we will make some sort of haste thing which attaches to the ranged weapon and not taking the scope slot of the gun I hope if they do this way
bleh what they should make is a quiver be a bag item or a keylike slot, in case of beign a bag item easy let it have a good number of arrow stacks and let us refill with a vendor in a simple click, now for a keyring like slot it could just keep working as a normal quiver while not ocuping a bag slot
With the need of no longer needing stacks of amo I wonder if we will start to see some changes so that training to use a throwing weapon on a hunter will actually be worth it like some “Arcane throws”
What I would most like to know as I am a skinner and leather worker is, is it worth me continuing to grind lower city rep for the 24 slot quiver or do i just level my hunter alt with a 20 slot and wait to see what happens? imo the key-ring type slot idea would be best for both hunters and warlocks.
Baladeen: I’d advise against it, be a waste of time unless you’re wanting to get rep up with LC, and a bit of a waste of gold
And reading the posts have made me realise, we’re gonna lose that 15% speed/haste and I don’t like that :/
This may seem a stupid question but do haste enchants work on bow/gun speed? Never got them before so :s
Wellhungbull, try getting the GarbageFu addon, you don’t need fubar to use it, and it’s as close to a “destroy item” button as you’re ever going to get. (You hit the button and it’ll drop the most worthless item in your bag)
Other than that, looking forward to the ammo changes, maybe this’ll motivate me to get my hunter up to 80!
Seems like a nice change all around, tho I can’t say I ever missed the bag space while playing my hunter. (Likely because my main is a lock and we’ve never had the luxury of bag space *shrugs*)
I’m more worried about how they plan to change the Leatherworking/Engineering patterns that will be affected.
They are going to preserve the 15% haste some how, Ryai, that’d be to big a blow to our DPS if they didn’t.
Informant addon tells me that Badges of Justice stacks in lots of over 21 million
:D
Yes, I see you point about it being a time waste. However as a LW I like to collect patterns, especially ones i can craft for friends or to sell. My hunter is an alt, albeit my favourite but most neglected. Oh well my hunter will now be leveled to 80, and if they keep quivers/ ammo pouches ingame I’ll probably go back for it. :D
I wonder if they are going to do a similiar thing with Warlocks as well only because I do run one as well and while I know this is a hunter forum they do run into a similiar issue with shards vs ammo.
It would be nice if our abilities did work with a throw weapon since it IS a ranged weapon. as for ammo and arrows, again, why not just make us have a slot for such things? kinda like they do for keys. I do wonder though how they will be preserving the ammo bag buffs…it will be interesting to find out.
As a Leatherworker though I wonder if we will get any compinsation for some of our best selling items to dissapear…hmmmm.
All we can really do at this point is speculate.
Yeah why don’t they just turn the ammo slot into a quiver/pouch slot and we move our current quiver there. They can still give us bigger stacks of ammo. That seems like it would be the simplest change, compared to the apparent mountain of work it will take to remove ammo totally etc etc.
I just wonder if wouldn’t be easier if Blizzard will modify: Ultrasafe bullet machine/Saronite arrow maker in such way that they will grant 15% haste.That’s my solution for removing quivers/pouches.And in this case ammo will be taken exclusively from Ultrasafe bullet machine/saronite arrow maker and free spot for another bag.Lets admit it keeping 2-3 cases of ammo is better that ammo will be held in bags.
One way to preserve the speed buff from quivers is to add in passive attack speed increase to Aspect of the Hawk. Or simply lowering the attack speeds of all ranged weapons. Or add a speed bonus to ammo. There’s a lot of viable options to be considered.
The real question is, why can’t they have it out in time for 3.1? I don’t know what Blizzard’s timetable is, but thrown weapons already work using the same principle (one item for many shots). And there are bows that generate their own ammo. This kind of thing already exists within the game, all that’s left to do is modify it.
Guess Blizz intends to keep Aspect of the Hawk this way it is now to force hunters use better ammo due to nerf of steady shoot.Still BM dps after 3.0.9 is a bit improved but I just wait 3.1 in hope to play again BM for raids.
As for the comments on my bag space. I must point out that I’m still a low level and haven’t specced into the happiness generating specs yet.
Are there any new updates that will effect me other than ammo/bag space? Something along the lines of damage or cooldowns? I heard that my pally buds were getting buffed and the priest inner fire was upped to 30 minutes.
I guess I’ll try battlegrounds next time my brother comes from college.
@Well: The only other hunter changes that have been announced are things that won’t affect you until higher levels–namely, a new tier of pet talents (beyond the ones already implemented) and some changes to the deeper Survival/Marksmanship tree.
Simple solution (lvl 80 Hunter here)
Make Sould Shards and Ammo stackable in large quantities, say 100 for SS and 1000 for ammo/arrows. I carry 5K ammo at any one time in my ammo slot so 5 stacks in a bag would be alot better than losing a bag slot (say 18 slot bag less 5 slots is a 13 slot net gain)
I have a lvl 20 lock too and having the SS not stack is stupid frankly.
The single most important thing that a lock can have and it cant be stacked??
Thats my 2 coppers on the subject
I think Rahar is getting somewhere with this!
Equip the quiver where the ammo should be! And, perhaps, use the ammo on the quiver like an enchant-type of thing. That way, the leatherworkers could make their quivers and pouches and the engineers could make their ammo, and we have bag space and our quiver and ammo pouch loading animation.
They probably might not do it that way though.
Just a thought. ^_^
): I’ve kind of grown attached to using a quiver, when using a bow you can see it on your back :D
Plus that’s what makes hunters unique in my opinion, quivers/ammo slots. I know the bag space would be amazing but couldnt they just make quiver’s somewhat like the key ring? A secondary space thing.
-_-; thanks for the post (:
Ultra-safe bullet machine – saronite arrow maker
right click to make a stack of 2000 bullets. 10 charges.
Current quiver/shot pouches – no longer bags
On use: Increases your ranged attack speed by X%
at 80: So swap out your quiver/pouch for a 20 slot bag. Drop a engineered ammo maker in 1 slot, a stack of 2000 ammo in another slot and your quiver/pouch in a 3rd. Click on your pouch to activate your never ending aura (a la Trueshot Aura) and you have at your disposal 17 extra bag slots, a 15% haste bonus, 20,000 ammo and still have happy engineers and leather workers.
@Sinjara-
You sir,have just won the interwebs!!
Awesomesauce idea!! 10/10
If you are complaining about bag space, you have a very narrow view of the classes and their capabilities. With a quiver, and a full PvP set of gear I have my 16 slot backpack open and a 22 slot bag thats mostly open (sometimes has some stuff from event quests).
I’m ready for any situation. I have my engineering trinkets that I use, two stacks of pet food, two stacks of my health/mana food, two stacks of stat food, pots, elixers, etc, etc, etc…
Warlocks have it just as bad, and other classes have issues too. I know shamans, warriors, druids, etc that carry spare off sets with them at all time. Maybe this boss or trash requires them to heal or tank or dps as off-spec. Our guild’s MT carries full PvP, Tank, and DPS sets with him, plus some resistance gear.
With the quiver, since we could only single spec, we really didn’t have too much trouble.
Don’t get me wrong, I know what to do with the free 20 slots lol. My biggest concern though is the haste. A lot of people would give up a bag slot for 15% haste, just ask the casters in your groups. How is Blizz going to keep this? Will it be attached to ammo, so you’ll have fast weak ammo and slow high dps ammo? Will it be talents? So everyone needs to change their specs to adjust to this? Will they just grant us 15% haste? Will they ditch it all together and explain that we have haste on a lot of our gear (including tier gear, which makes it less valuable to BM hunters), so deal with it (they’ve done stuff like this before, so don’t laugh).
This has me more scared than elated for sure. The fact that they aren’t indicating to us how it will work has me even more concerned. If it was good news, why not tell us now?
I have to agree with previous post. I’ve always felt since playing hunter years ago that the cost of arrows, and the sacrifice of a bag slot was for the class dps output and utility, course this was pre-nerfs. I’ve never had space issues unless I was soloing an old instances, collection all the cloth and greens. If anything, it’s far easier now than it was years ago; on most servers, you can just mine some copper ore, auction it, and pick up some cheap netherweave bags.
However, spending hundreds of gold a week for raids, yeah. I can see this being very helpful. But count me as apprehensive first. I’m almost expecting consumable ammo to be removed, and quiver haste bonuses to be missing for half a year.
Blizzard has stated, time and time again, that the haste will be preserved in one way or another, so why belabor it? They can’t leave out that quiver haste, that is a staple of the hunter class, and has been from day one. Its like Autoshot. And warlocks? Didn’t always have shard bags. Those were added later so that shards would stop cluttering up normal bag space. In all due honesty, warlocks probably have it a bit worse, since shard bags do exactly zero for the warlock class aside from shard storage.
Relax. Seriously. Just stop your hyperventilating and wait and see what happens. I for one think it is a good thing. How many classes have to sacrifice a potential twenty slot bag JUST to do normal DPS? One other class, and they at least have the option to use a normal bag and just use as much of it as they need for shards. How many other classes have to spend, and spend, and spend gold just to do their NORMAL form of DPS? MAYBE rogues? And even that system has been simplified to the point that I am expecting it to be removed. How many classes have to spend so much extra time if they want to do something even slightly different with their pet? None. How many other classes lose most of their DPS just because something decided to close distance with them? None. I could probably go on, but I think you see the point. Why should one class have so many caveats attached to it?
I just disliked having to swap ammo and exchange quiver/pouch every time I changed-over from bow [preferred] to gun… I’ve never liked the “bang” of the in-game guns.
I picked-up the Nesingwary [sp?] 4000 for the dps, but prefer to “downgrade” to a bow for quieter farming – and especially when working on rep for pre-WotLK faction-rep for the achievements.
Having to completely empty the quiver to swap-in an ammo babg, and vice-versa, is such a pain.
I finally just installed a Gun Silencer mod that replaces the “bang” with a recording of a silenced rifle – and just use the gun all the time… but I prefer the animation & visible quiver of a bow. :(
Mod is here:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12060-GunSilencerSuppressor.html#info
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php
“Nethaera: What about hunters? Often their pet talents are set up to match the talents of the hunter. Will they be able to switch their pet specs as well?
Ghostcrawler: We will wipe the pet talents. However we are going to remove the respec cost for pet talents so that players won’t feel like they need to jump through an additional hoop to respec their pet. In addition, we are going to provide hunters a new core ability to let them remotely access their stable on a long cooldown. This way if their exotic pet heads off to the stable, they will be able to get a different pet. We hope to be able to discuss this new spell in more detail when we get a little further along.”
I’ma get this stuck in the thingie for you, Mania, because I thought it was interesting! A remote stable access!
If you want to talk about cost of raiding, then this change is bad, straight up. Sure, it will be cheaper for us to raid, but we already don’t suffer much there, so it really imbalances things. Your tanks and melee walk away with 50-60 gold in repairs from a good wipe free run….I’ve spent a few minutes picking up mats and 10 gold to clean the dust off my gun. Even if your run is bad and full of wipes, others are paying out hundreds, we FD and escape several deaths lowering our raid cost considerably. Sure, if you are using Saronite arrows exclusively and are not an engineer, it’s expensive, but most hunters are keeping a few stacks of Saronite arrows for bosses with most of their quiver using cheaper store bought stuff.
Ammo is our raid expense.
That’s how I’ve always seen it. Anyways, loosing the expense will suck as I’m an engineer and it’s also a source of income, but oh well. I like Sinjara’s idea. It maintains the status quo, but lets us gain a bag slot. No one is hurt, hunters are helped.
I’ve seen blizzard mess with all kinds of classes, and even tell them that the balance will be maintained only to change the mathmatics on gear, or just flat out say the stats you need already exhist, go regear, regem, reenchant and deal with it. They could very well take the 15% away from us, redo gear stats, and say that the 15% haste is handled through increasing haste stats on gear. All they’ve said is that they will maintain it in some fashion. That doesn’t mean you will just get the 15% haste bonus, it just means there will be some way to obtain it…maybe it’s built in, but why not tell us that then? The system is already in the works, so why not share the info now?
So many hunters ignoring haste now days is the kind of thing that gets on Blizzard’s nerves. The DPS point for point on gear stats has shown that even for non-BMs, haste is not your biggest priority. It helps, no doubt, but crit, agi, and atp can help more. The fact that BM hunters almost try to avoid it all together probably really irks them. Upping the haste stats on gear at the cost of other stats while maybe modifying our mathmatical gain from haste would be right up Blizzard’s alley if you look at the past changes they’ve made to various classes.
If they didn’t have a history of that kind of stuff, or hadn’t recently been using the SV and BM specs as a ping-pong ball in the game of nerf vs buff, I wouldn’t be nearly as concerned.
I personally would rather be aprehensive now, and overjoyed if it’s good, then trust that they aren’t going to come in swinging the nerf bat only to have my dreams smashed once again. Recently it seems like the live servers are being considered the hunter’s PTR for changes.
As for caveats, I don’t think we really have all that more than anyone else. And the few we have actually give us more flexibility.
Sure, a hunter loses his DPS if you close on him, but we’ve had ways to deal with that, and more so now than ever. It’s no different than a melee character dealing with a ranged MOB or player, they lose most of their damage for the same reason, distance…but they also have ways to close the gap.
As for pets, that’s what gives us so much flexibility. We can do huge damage while a pet holds the agro for solo work…people thinks thats seriously OP, and it gives us a huge advantage for solo play. Sure, milking the most out of different pets takes time and effort, but it also gives us a lot of flexibility that other classes don’t have, and all without respeccing which is very expensive, plus with the auto leveling to just 5 levels below us, the amount of time it takes for us to handle pets has been drastically reduced.
Dave, I have numerous high level classes. You used the tanks as your main example, but you didn’t bring up any other DPSers, with whom the hunter class SHOULD share similarities with. You brought up pets, but failed to mention that warlocks have the same flexibility, with out the leveling downsides. You brought up melee not being able to take on ranged, but failed to mention that melee can attack on the move, and nearly every single melee class has a move to close distance and a form of slow.
Flexibility. Hrm. I will admit that pets do have a lot of family abilities, but have you even tried to level a pet at eighty yet? Five levels doesn’t take forever, but it does take anywhere from three to eight hours, mob density and killing speed depending. Also take into account that, well, you have to do this every time you tame a new pet that is on or below seventy five, and it gets real old, real quick. BUT, at least they are now no less then five levels below you.
Dave, my hunter take the most maintenence of any of my characters, by far. Am I complaining? Not per se. I love my hunter, he is one of my two favorite characters. What I am saying is that I think the clear imbalance is getting a bit old at this point. Warriors and rogues had their ranged weapons simplified a long time ago, but hunters had to slog through with the old system for, literally, years afterwards.
You can’t really use soloing as any sort of example. Warrior, rogue, mage, none of them have posed any sort of problem, and all of them kill as fast, and in some cases faster then my hunter. What my hunter does offer is a layer of safety in the form of a pet for when I aggro to much. Soloing now days is just stupidly easy, unless your like me and try to do 3 man and up quests.
Massive….damage from range. I’ll give you lots of damage from range, but at this point, I’ve been criticaled for over nine thousand damage. I can’t match that. Even in the days of 3 second cast time aimed shot, no hunter could match that. While things like explosive shot and chimera shot are damaging, their cooldown is a seriously limiting factor on the damage they can deal, especially in PvP when you don’t have a lot time to live.
I am not….nessecarily disagreeing with you, Dave. My two favorite classes are my holy paladin and my hunter, the most screwed spec and on of the most screwed classes in game. I am more then used to Blizzard finding….intereseting ways to mess things up. But I don’t think this is something they can or will screw up. But if they do, I’ll be here to apologize to you, and admit I was wrong.
Mania’s Arcania » Dual Talent Spec Details - February 12th, 2009 @ 7:58 pm UTC
[...] our forums (thanks for getting that started, Ryna and Nimizar) and in comment threads there (thanks Palladiamors ) — not to mention all over the greater internet, of course — I wanted to call it out [...]
Regarding the ranged haste: Death Knights have an innate class ability which automatically grants them 200% damage on spell critical hits. They just have it as part of their class mechanics – no talents, no spells, no auras, no items, it’s just there.
The simplest thing for Blizzard to do to replace the ammo haste is to give hunters a similar innate talent that grants the 15% ranged haste.
They best attach a quiver/ammo graphic to the range weapon when drawn, I know several people that go out of they’re way to make they’re quivers shown. To simply attach a quiver styled to match the bow, for example, would increase the bow’s appeal, I think.
It’s a shame they can’t just make ammo pouches/quivers similar to our keychains so they could still exist but not take one of the dedicated bag slots. Seems that would solve the problem for hunters & the crafters who rely on us.
Same could be done for locks and their shards and even shamans and their totems.
Something simpler to me seems to make the quiver and ammo bag open from one bag spot. Leaves room for a one more new bag, and when you open the quiver it would still have whatever you want 16, 20,24 slots. Leather workers, engineers would not be affected, stacks could be bigger still but no other changes would be required. That would allow one quiver full of arrows, and one bag full of gun ammo to be used by only switching the bow and quiver or shot bag and gun, no emptying ammo to change weapons. etc etc etc.
Same thing again for locks and shamans,,,
Not sure I made that clear enough. Make the quiver and ammo bag open from like one spot each in your back pack or one spot each in any of the other bags you carry.
on a simmilar note to what wellhungbull said I would love to see a change to the skinable creatures left behind by players who dident loot them compleatly so that a passing Skiner could skin them and make use of the leather rather than letting it go to waste.
To at least make the leatherworkers happy, I could see turning quiver/ammo pouches into an enhance item, attached permanently to the ranged weapon, like leg armor. Of course we would have to choose that or a scope, but given all the things that have already been given to hunters including more stable slots and now ammo consumption at the cost of repairs, its a fair trade. Blizz also said they were going to work in retainment of speed enhancements, perhaps by adding stats to the ammo icons. but dun hold yer breath.
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