I had this great idea for a post. One that I still plan on doing because I am very interested in what people will say. But now we have some other topics to address. :)
Yes, the recently announced, not-quite-definitive Hunter changes and what we can make of them. If you haven’t seen them:
Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity. A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent. Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter. Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec. Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot. We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.
One step at a time shall we. No more consumable ammunition.
OH HAPPY DAY! Get the best ammo you can and no longer have to worry about replacing it. No more throwing money at bosses (at least in the form of projectiles). We know we will still keep our haste bonus in some other form, which definitely sounds like we will be getting a 5th bag slot as we will no longer need to equip an ammo container. Once just a special group of people who had a Thori’dal, now available to the masses is the ability to have 6 usable bags.
The second item on the list can only be speculated. Obviously Blizzard realized with the 50/21 build that the last point in Beast Mastery wasn’t worth picking up over Readiness. This reflects on how they handled pets.
Sure, your pet got 4 more pet talent points, but in a PvE situation you could get all the good DPS ones without the talent. This next tier of talents is going to attempt to make exotic pets and those 4 extra pet talents significant.
Third up, the change to Hunting Party. Currently a medium geared Hunter can easily get away with 2 or 3 points in Hunting Party and maintain a near 100% up-time. If Blizzard is intending to keep it so the max talent is 100%, with it being 33/66/100, you will see Hunters still only putting 1 point or so.
The question is, what is the passive bonus for the Hunter going to be? And will it warrant putting 3 points into it? One can assume some type of mana regen, but whether not Hunters need it or not is another question. In 25-man content I *can’t* use all my mana.
Piercing Shots has become Deep Wounds for Hunters. We know the diminished effectiveness of Armor Penetration with Blizzard’s changes to make it percentage based. They are even changing Sunder Armor to be a percentage rather than flat amount. So rather than a Armor Pen talent, what we have now is Hunters getting a bleed effect from all their shots. We don’t know exactly how the ability will work yet. Will it be crit based, like Deep Wounds, or just a DoT applied every shot unless a more powerful bleed is active?
Of the 3 shots listed, we know Chimera Shot will be doing the most damage, and therefore creating the largest bleed. This could be a decent DPS boost for Marksmanship. When you are able to apply a DoT that has the potential to do 2000 damage or more due to a big Chimera Shot crit, it is inevitably going to affect your DPS.
The change to Sniper Training is a very solid change I think everyone can agree on. No longer do you have to be concerned with how far away you are. Once you get down into your shot rotation, Sniper Training takes effect.
Additional trap functionality to Survival. We can’t say too much about that one. It is vague and only lets our little imaginations run wild. Time will tell.
That’s what we know for now. Are you excited? Disappointed? Thrilled you won’t be dropping cash into an ammo vendor? Thoughts, comments, etc. Post ‘em!
Also, a HUGE grats goes out to Zenge and the rest of <Encore> for now being known as the Immortals.
Thanks for this roundup :) Looks good for my baby hunter
Igfad’s last blog post..Igfad: @Kadomi I couldn’t use my email address to post a comment on your blog, I had to use an old hotmail account :P
I don’t like the ammo changes. I leveled my DK and taught him engineering to make my own ammo and now what… But my wallet will like it, somehow.
Raufe
Minor glyph of change the fucking frost arrow to any arrow trap you want!. Thats what I wanna see =P.
I need to look back through last nights parse but I KNOW I’ve seen 10k+ chimera’s on non gimmick encounters. That is most DEF a masive buff in my book. Would be neat if we got a different bleed for each shot albeit pretty OP.
The entire hunter community up at arms about recent changes should be able to breathe a sigh of relief at these potential changes.
Thanks for the mention Big Drotara, you da man!
http://www.encoreraiding.info/coppermine/albums/userpics/10001/WoWScrnShot_020609_033730.jpg
Shameless plug lol!
I thought about that. I guess they could change the one-time ammo purchase. Make it more expensive to buy the first time so engineers could sell it or something. Who knows. :)
Yo can imagine it! 24 new bag slots! :D
Gio’s last blog post..¿Rotación o prioridad en SV?
to be honest, the changes scare me.
If you noticed that last batch was hunter, paladins, dks, mages. 4 classes that have been whined about the last week or two.
yes, the changes posted now are nice, but blizz has stated they are only a partial list. since the listed changes are all buffs, its safe to assume that it is just to butter us up for the upcoming nerfage.
not to mention, warlocks going to mega-buffed i have a feeling, will really hurt us in the arena as they are pretty much a direct counter when played well.
6 buffs….hmmm i’m thinking they will shmack a nerf on Xplosiveshot but whatever they do those 6 seems very smart on there end…it’s going too balence the 3 talent trees if you ask me, and thats what it’s all about..no longer should 1 tree be for Max dps, all 3 should be viable, depending on your lvl of play.
Does anyone else think it’s funny that in the notes it says “damage per second (DPS)”?
Is there anyone reading the notes that doesn’t know what DPS stands for?
@Tier4Armor Just reading posts on WoW forums I feel there are many many many people that haven’t a clue about most things much less dps.
Can’t wait for Ulduar now! Heck, I’d even be mildly contented with the PTR!
Tora’s last blog post..Hot Press – 3.1 Hunter Changes
Wow. I take one day off from work due to a car going ‘spoldey, don’t check any wow stuff while actually playing… and I miss *this!*
No more ammo! OMG. The only sad part, not being able to make fun of the other hunter who runs out of ammo on bosses (he always has boxes of Mammoth Cutters though, not the end of the world.)
I really like these changes, though I have a couple reservations. I’m not sure I love the fact that Surv is shifting to the ‘trap’ tree. But, if there is still a PvE viable spec ignoring those talents, then it’s all gravy. Kinda like how we can ignore all the damn melee talents.
The Bleed effect on MM shots seems really high. As it stands right now, you’ll basically get 30% of your Chimera Shot damage as a near constant bleed, with a couple second of Steady/Aimed bleed in between. Given that Chimera crits rival KS crits… seems like it’s gonna be nerfed.
I really like the change to Sniper Training though. It’s still ‘situational’, but in a situation that will come up an awful lot of the time. Malygos is the only fight where it’s not gonna be up a whole lot, but even then it will be up for key situations, like in the dps boost zones, and the free dps time.
The other show will drop soon, I fear to keep myself sane. But with big boosts to MM and BM, maybe they are ok with Surv dps where it is, contrary to what was said a couple weeks back.
Remua’s last blog post..Further Thoughts
No more ammo. This is great! For one, I will get a ton more bag slots. Yay! For a second thing, I can dump 20,000 rounds into a training dummy for free to see how bad they nerfed us each patch =)
riffraff’s last blog post..Retro Friday
I’m excited by the prospect of new trap functions for survival.
I’d have to eagree with Zenge to some degree. My money is on some kind of ranged trapping ability besides freezing arrow, to be able to proc Lock and Load from outside melee range. This would keep you from reseting your Sniper Training buff every time you step in to trap dance.
Gringott’s last blog post..EU PTR UP
What I’m hoping for on piercing shots is that it maintains a higher bleed instead of refreshing every other shot.
@Kargos I would hope it would do the that, similar to any other effect when a more powerful version is present.
I stand by my statement, one bleed for each shot =P.
it’s all pretty vague, thats fo sure :*
my expectations r at an all time low and hope already left the building after 3.08 :)
waiting for ulduar nontheless
“Additional trap functionality”
Bear on a stick!
Bear on a stick!
Bear on a stick!
I hope Sniper Training retains the 15% crit chance bonus for Kill Shot and that trap functionality lets me shoot any trap as arrows. Snakes in yo face!
I’m also looking forward to what the new tier of pet talents are. I hope they expand out the pet skill bar for this.
Hmm funny that they couldnt have waited till this patch to sort es than try sneak it in on the sly.. its funny what they can do in a sec when they want to and other times they spend next to forever to fix something small elsewhere.
I have to be the cynic here and expect that theres somethin pretty bad comin down the road for hunters.. the removal of ammo seems to be something they give us to keep us happy if not quite for now. They seem to be doing things liek this just to give themselves some work to do instead of working on bigger idea’s.
Overall ammo removal is ofc great and is a big money saver,
Bm tree extras is nice i guess if you like bm.. wont make any differecne to me persoanlly as i never go bm. I dunno maybe the scrubs and there cookie cutter spec will be able to go back to it now.
H-party.. i guess they finally copped no one was putting 5/5 into it, i like what they have done with it.
Piercing shots.. hmm well id have to see exactly what it can do and how effective it is but it sounds good in theory.
Sniper – hopefully it will keep the 15% killshot bonus, and also it will be interesting to see how this works.. bit sceptical about it though,
Traps – the only 2 traps worth firing are slowing and snakes..
@ Drotara:
I still wouldn’t put it past blizzard to play dumb about it. There’s still going to be the pros and cons about applying higher bleed effects through your shots, especially since it will (hopefully) focus around your chimera shots’ damage when applying the bleed since I don’t see Steady/Aimed Shot having much bleed uptime, especially with a two second window. They didn’t happen to say how often the bleed would tick did they? 1-2 seconds I would assume.
@Kargos I would at least assume the bleeds would work liks any other tick damage. DoTs, bleeds, etc.
“I dunno maybe the scrubs and there cookie cutter spec will be able to go back to it now.”
“Traps – the only 2 traps worth firing are slowing and snakes..”
Dude is out of his mind, first of all, on any motion sensative, pet unfriendly fight the BM spec is largely the hardest DPS spec in the game. If they end up giving our pet back much of its DPS but not buffing the hunter himself it will make this spec all that much more volatile.
I guess the scrubs incapable of keeping their pets alive and getting rewarded for it with huge damage can just stay whatever spec they currently are.
I would also maintain that weaving a immo trap were it possible might be decent PVE DPS.
Um, no….
“Quote from: Eyonix (Source)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. “
I was gonna’ write something about this in my blog, but I kinda’ got a little frustrated by it. Doesn’t anyone besides me see the whole removal of consumable ammo as a great big red herring? Granted, it would be nice not to have to constantly buy ammo, but all it really does is save us a few gold. It really doesn’t improve us in any way, ala the “rebalancing” promised in 3.1. In fact, depending on how they implement it, it could turn out to be a major reduction by requiring a hunter to get a special ammo token from a rare drop/mob.
I agree with Drotora on Hunting Party. Probably nothing significant there. One or two points spent whether a five or three point talent is no change.
BM changes… could be good, but Blizzards recent comments indicate they think the BM is the easy/noob spec and that harder (SV) specs should be rewared with greater dps and makes me think they plan for BM to still underperfom.
I totally disagree with Drotora on Sniper Training. If it’s a fight where you can plant your feet for 6 seconds, you could just as easily do so at 30 yards out. Way too many fights requre more movement and will completely eliminate any benefit of Sniper Training.
Seabrat’s last blog post..One Night in Naxxramas
Thank god :) finally just before a raid or a hc i wont have to say oh shit guys brb, then when i creep up behind them i see /s “fs kick the hunter he’s taking too long”
the sniper training thing is also pretty good now i dont need to be 100 yards back from a boss/mob before it kicks in :)