Finally the patch has come. Whether part of you is cheering or booing, it’s happening regardless. But what is a poor Hunter to do? What will change about our play style? Let’s just jump in shall we?
Obviously we can talk about the elephant in the room. The change to Bestial Wrath and Readiness. This was intended to be a PvE adjustment, as a way of slowing down 50/21 DPS. Getting rid of back-to-back Bestial Wrath also has the far-reaching effects to hit Arena as well. Variations of the Readiness spec is also the most successful Hunter PvP spec for Arena at the moment. Perhaps it will still be. We might lose the extra 18 seconds of Bestial Wrath, but double trap, Intimidation, and Deterrence are still a pleasant dish to serve up.
But as it’s intent to nerf PvE damage, Blizzard felt the need to take a few more steps to tone down Hunters as well. Steady Shot took a huge hit to it’s scaling coefficient. Instead of receiving a bonus from 20% of our Attack Power it is now only receiving 10%. So instead of the calculation looking like Weapon Damage + Ammo + [RAP * 0.2 + 252] we are getting that .2 change to .1. What exactly does that do to our Steady Shot? A lot actually. Given 4400 Attack Power and Frostbite Bullets our Steady Shot like this:
584 + 46.5 + (4400 * 0.2 + 252) = 1762.5
With the scaling changed our Steady Shot now looks like this:
584 + 46.5 + (4400 * 0.1 + 252) = 1322.5
Ouch. In fact my Steady Shot won’t be hitting for 1762.5 again until I reach 8800 Attack Power. So that is a monster change we also have to live with until Blizzard thinks it was much too much.
Now we also have to remember that Beast Mastery isn’t the only Hunter talent tree. The Steady Shot change is going to hurt Marksmanship and Survival just as well. In fact Marksmanship received no notable buffs to compensate for the beating they took with Steady Shot. Survival can probably take comfort in knowing that Explosive Shot was buffed but had the AoE portion removed. The final change Blizzard decided on is doubling the Attack Power coefficient from .08 to .16. So with 4147 Attack Power (which is what I used in this post), expect Explosive Shot to come in just under 1100 damage a tick.
And all that Explosive Shot goodness came with a price. And that was Lock and Load having a 30 second cooldown. So the trap-dancing idea was run, you technically still could if you wanted to, to insure LnL, but the effectiveness of is diminished since you won’t be able to trigger it repeatedly from traps and Serpent Sting.
Jumping back to BM changes for a second, you’ll remember that cats and scorpids were all getting a nerf to “to prevent unreasonable scaling with attack power.” Blizzard’s words. In fact, Scorpid Poison doesn’t stack anymore. You’ll get a single application of the poison. And this also has Arena effects with the new dispel changes, that being that no offensive spell will receive spell resistance. Hammer of Justice, Poisons, etc. All gone on the first try. Sure, if there is more than one debuff they have a chance to get something else, but now they will always get something.
Kindred Spirits and Unleashed Fury had their pet damage bonus reduced by 5% each, and Serpent’s Swiftness also had the attack speed bonus for pet’s reduced to 10% instead of 20.
It’s going to be a rough day as specs are re-evaluated, numbers are re-crunched, and we figure out which spec is coming out on top for PvE DPS. I hope Lunchmoneyy didn’t plan on doing Arena tonight because I have a date with a target dummy.
Thoughts, opinions, the spec you think is going to come out on top, post it here.
Related Posts
No related photos.
Also, did they increase the Serpent sting proc of LnL, and is it proccing often enough to justify the not trap dancing? I’ve been trap dancing for quite awhile now (until I went on leave of course) and the extra damage from Immolation Trap with Trap Mastery+Immolation Glyph+T.N.T. was nice, and the two points in resourcefulness let me do it pretty often.
I guess my question is if Sniper Training is now better then dancing… lol, sorry it took me so long to get to the point :P
Tealyon,
I’ve been wondering the same thing. My hunter is not yet 80 so I can’t say I’ve been able to test it accurately either. My hunch is that trap-dancing is still going to beat-out sniper training specs in fights like patchwerk, but on movement fights sniper training specs might win out.
re: resourcefulness. Drop these talent points now mate. LnL has a 30s cooldown on it now, and dropping a trap eveyr 24s will actually lower your proc rate and waste dps.
@ Tealyon
I have read some SV hunters that have been trap dancing and with changes they chose Sinper Training and only use trap im opening of the fight. i.e. run in lay trap run out start rotation. This is what I have chose to do.
I was BM 50/21 I will play whatever brings the most DPS being compared to other classes we don’t bring any major buffs to the raid. So I see my #1 job is dps .
I am just furious that this nerf was so heavy all at once. I also have seen a huge decrease in my dps I will be raiding tonight for first time as SV spent lots of time at the dummy yesterday to refine my spec. Then Changed glyphs and few gems. I was 8th last raid which was a first for me being so low, in its current form I will not be going back to BM.
@Dro I noticed it looks like you ran the 2/18/51 spec and was curious to how you liked it? I am running it as well and was happy with the results it yielded last night in two wings of Naxx.
Has anyone noticed a large difference in dps when fully hit capped? I have been going the route of utilizing all gem spots with the rigid autumn’s glow in favor of the agility or attack power gems. Is this a mistake?
@Harvesting I know exactly how you feel. I ran BM through one wing in Naxx was 6th in dps. Proceeded to be laughed at by a Shaman in our party, switched to the 2/18/51 spec and ended up out dpsing him by 600 in the next two wings we did and took back the top spot.
So is everyone running to SV at this point then? Or is anyone bothering to work on their BM rotations and spec to see if they can still compete? I am just worried that hunter players are turning into 1 spec wonders, when there is so much potential in other specs.
I’ve never believed that damage is the only thing that hunters bring to the table; and although we don’t have any ‘major’ buffs, I feel that each spec/tree has something unique to offer to every raid that isn’t just pertinent to topping the damage meter every fight. It’s why I went SV in the first place; and if the only reason that people spec’d BM or whatever was for topping damage, then maybe Blizz (and the hunter base) needs to look at the unique opportunities that the spec offers, rather then just how much damage it does.
Just my two cents of course, feel free to disagree.
@Tealyon I see what you are saying but the role we as Hunters play is limited. We dps or we control that’s basically it. I have found in raid situations it is more about the dps than the control. What else do you feel we bring to the table? No way for us to heal and tanking wouldn’t make sense when you have a plate wearing class in the group. Although would be quite funny watching a Hunter tank while a prot warrior stood back shooting it’s combat shotgun. At least I could then QQ about my repair build…..lolz