On the other hand, and this one may be a matter of opinion, but there have been a lot of changes made that the community disapproved of and were right about that were never changed. The difference there is that, well, this is Blizzards game. It is going to go the way Blizzard wants it to go.

There are three kinds of complaints on the WoW forums. The first are “WAUGH, MY CLASS IS BEING NERFED AND IT’S JUST BAD, I CAN PROVE IT!!!” where a class with an overpowered ability ((Or several, in the Death knights case. *Shudders*)) just had said ability reduced. I refer to this as the nerfing whine, and don’t pay any attention to it. The second is “WAUGH, THIS CLASS HAD AN ABILITY THAT WAS MADE/IS OVERPOWERED, I CAN PROVE IT, NERF!” in which case a class that usually can beat most classes easily, say warriors or frost mages for PvP, or rogues and mages in general for PvP, suddenly found themselves bested by something they didn’t know how to handle and immediately whined about it. This tends to happen a lot after changes or made, or after certain specs start to become popular. This is the “NERF!” whine type, and again should just be ignored. And then you have the third type. “We have run extensive tests of this ability, and found that it is lacking/maybe a bit to much, and here are the numbers to support it.)) This is done by the people who actually know how to play, and can go either in favor of a slight buff, or even in favor a slight nerf. These tend to be the people who really care about their class and the game, or perhaps the people who are really just more hard core about what they do. It is THESE threads that I listen to, and more often then not the threads that get ignored the most.

So reading over it, in a way the numbers actually support you, Nimizar. By and large, the community is GOING to be wrong. But there almost always some of the more serious players who will do strong testing, and come to these conclusions. Part of the problem, TWO parts of it really, is that Blizzard won’t listen to them, and some how didn’t come to the same conclusion in their internal testing. Beacon of Light, the beast master nerfs, release level death knights, I can probably think of some more but those are fairly large examples for the moment. How do these get past blizzards testing?

On a tangent, I have to disagree with you about being self interested in nerfs and buffs, HOWEVER, I have to state that people like me are in the minority. I think it comes a lot from having so many higher level characters that I am able to sit back and say “Okay, this needs to be done, and that needs to be reduced, but that could probably take a buff.” For a wide range of classes. Like I agree with the time reduction of Beastial wrath, but I don’t think we were properly compensated for it. It’s because of this wide range of class selection that I can tell you that, far and away, paladins are the worst healers in the game. My druid, and even my up and coming priest, can do everything my paladin can do, only better. HELL, my enhancement shaman can almost heal better then my HOLY priest, and that is a very, very bad thing. The beacon of light buff came at the cost of the holy paladins niche, mana conservation. Now a holy paladin can fully heal two targets….for about half as long. Meanwhile my priest can spam circle of healing, and my druid can HoT up and wild growth, then focus on keeping the tank up and it really takes a lot less effort. I also find it really funny that nearly every healing class ((Shaman are borderline, but are still in a better place then holy)) have all the tools they need, but holy paladins are still expected to be a niche healer. And the only buff to them nearly killed their niche, and gave them what was, at most, a questionable buff that would allow them to keep tank healing even when some one else sniped a heal with one of above AoE healing abilities.

I could point out other imbalances, but that one has just always struck me the most. It only got worse in wrath, where holies sort of got an HoT, recently….but it requires preparation in the form of Sacred shield. Oh, and holy shock get’s an HoT!…..if you have 2pieces of T8….

Rant over. I have actually retired my holy paladin, at least until Blizzard decides what they want to do with them. Having one of the healing classes rounded into a corner of niche healing is just bull. And the sad thing is, beacon of light USED to be good, back at the start of beta. It had so much potential to fix paladin’s AoE healing problems…..and then they turned it into that.

*Coughs* Sadly, none of that was really biased. I didn’t say I couldn’t heal on my paladin, I can still heal with the best of them. I am just tired of it being so much more of a hassle for paladins then any other healing spec.

This kind of biased reflection on past events happens all the time with events in real life (aka “Eagle Eye Hindsight”) and it’s complete bollocks there as well.

And Scott, I explained the reason for the nerf over in the other thread. This is the second nerf to Beastial Wrath since its inception, and the largest of the two. The first nerf took Beastial Wrath from 100% damage for 12 seconds to 50% for 18. Within their respective time periods, this was a ‘buff’ as explained by BLizzard. However, if you added in the normal damage that the original beastial wrath would have done for those additional six seconds ((And why shouldn’t you, it’s the same time period after all)) then it turned out to be about a 10% damage nerf, and once again a sizeable burst nerf. Beast masters are great with damage over time, and just plain suck in the ‘right now’ damage department.

110% dmg for 10 seconds doesn’t even come close to 100% dmg for 18 seconds; even if they upped it to 120% for 10 sec it still wouldn’t come close.

Back when 3.0 came out I thought Blizz finally had a clue about hunters, but then I discovered they’d removed dragonhawk AOE… and made gorillas “the” pve pet… and then all the business with BM DPS… but at least I could say “well 18 seconds is enough for the average encounter, so my BM hunters can still rate”… but now… sounds like that’s going away as well.

Hope they plan on offsetting the loss in some (meaningful) way, but not holding my breath…

Meanwhile silithids remain borked – starting to wonder if that will be fixed before Cataclysm…

As if BM wasn’t ALREADY Dead. They nurf the only upside of the Tree AGAIN!

They also Nurfed Armor Pen which, as a MM Hunter, pissed me off.

So I don’t think anyones forgotten cases where the community is wrong, I just think that well when someone who doesn’t influence the game is wrong, its not as big a deal as when a creator of the game is wrong and never listened to the community in the first place. =)

The community wasn’t wrong in 3.0.8. Most Hunters werent saying “BM isnt too OP, It doesnt need to be nerfed”. Most were saying that BM was getting overnerfed in that patch. They said it since day 1 on the 3.0.8 testing. At worst, the players saying BM wasn’t too OP were ill-informed and didn’t even have justifications for their incorrectness. But the players who gave numbers that it was an overnerf weren’t illogicals. The had the numbers to prove that while BM needed a nerf, it was too much.

Blizz just reassured us that the “community was wrong”. Then after it goes live we get a blue saying “Ok we do think BM got hit pretty hard.” “BM’s numbers are too low.”

So again, no ones forgetting the community of any class has been wrong, but why does it matter in comparison to the devs? We don’t alter the game, they do.

As you rightly point out, Aimed is pretty much compulsory in hunter PvP specs (it’s also handy in PvE for firing on the move, even if the theoretical top DPS spec for BM skips it).