So Blizz has the nerf bat and we’re the battered Big Red Piñata this time.
Stay positive.
I think it will be okay.
If we have to work harder for BM DPS now, then that makes it all the more fun and exciting. Not as easy to top DPS now? So be it– maybe we can finally shake the huntard stigma.
Hang in there everyone! /group hug
There you go: optimism. 🙂
Because optimism is all we’re going to have left if these changes go through the way they are listed… /grrr
Frankly, we needed it. If you’ve been looking at the numbers hunters are putting out in raids at 80, we are completely DOMINATING every other DPS class. Of the first 25 Patchwerk kills worldwide, something like 16 of those featured hunters at the top of the damage meters.
That’s excessive. No one class should have a stranglehold on raid DPS like that. Topping the damage meters in instance runs and raids shouldn’t be mindless, especially now that our shot rotations have been dumbed down somewhat. And mindless is really what it is — even if you’re still leveling, if your gear was any kind of decent before the expansion hit, you were probably dominating the other DPS classes in any instance runs you happened to find yourself in.
This won’t be a big deal for good hunters. Good hunters will still own the damage meters. All this will do is give a few of the lesser classes a chance to catch us.
After all, The Hunt is about the challenge, right? 😉
I still maintain this is nothing on the Great Ranger Nerf of ’05 in FFXI.
Yes, this will probably change how desirable we are for grouping. It might make us die a little inside.
It won’t totally change the way we play the class!
…
I’m just used to the Nerf-Bat. People think Blizzard is bad, try Square-Enix.
/grin
Of the first 25 Patchwerk kills worldwide, something like 16 of those featured hunters at the top of the damage meters.
Yeah, and how many of those 16 are 50/21/0 with Scorpids or Cats?
Pike – No matter how optimistic I try to be I’ll never reach your heights. 😛
I’m trying to determine which is worse –
A) The Nerf bat
or
B) The Announcement of the Nerf Bat on same day I post your interview. 🙁
– Brig
I don’t think a nerf is unreasonable, but it seems too much at once.
And taking BW off Readiness is just cruel. Don’t nerf FUN, Blizz. And I disagree with what GC says about buffing other classes – high balance is much more fun than low balance.
Removing BW off of readiness is almost like removing Water Elemental from Cold Snap. It makes me die a little inside as a mage, understanding the analogy to that extent.
Hunters, if there’s anything you need, anything at all…
Hunters, if there’s anything you need, anything at all…
Conjured Mana Strudel. With the white swirly icing on the top.
/cry
BW off of readiness is just common sense… just like the nerf to volley. It was fun as all hell, but disgustingly overpowered.
I can’t see how these changes will affect the true BM lovers. If you love a spec, you love a spec, and no number of nerfs/buffs to other classes can change that. Rilgon and I are tributes to that statement.
*nerfs/buffs to other trees
(And by affecting the true BM lovers, I mean the loyalty to the spec. I’m all about equality of trees!)
Not totally unexpected. Being able to burninate groups of 5 mobs that are +3 levels on me with the Gorilla tank…. yeah.
I’m just a little disappointed that they’re looking to force me over to something other than Beast Mastery. I remember the first time this nerf stick came out, and I thought they beat Hunters with it so hard it broke. Looks like I was wrong.
That’s it. I am sick of hearing about this.
We are Hunters dammit! I must be a rare spawn somewhere…..
Someone please find and tame the Nerf bat.
Then they can’t use it on us =)
Some of the nerfs are necessary. Lets face it, we knew it was coming.
There is some good stuff happening though. I bet everyone with a spirit beast, you lucky… people…
In anycase! anyone with a spirit beast is happy, and we got a pseudo-bubble.
I’m not upset really.
We’ll be fine. Hell, they buffed more than they nerfed, anyway.
I think the thing I’m most worried about is the nerf to Steady Shot, because it’s a fairly large nerf and it will affect MM and SV as well when those two specs don’t need nerfs.
The pet nerfs were fairly expected, I think. It doesn’t seem right to have a pet being able to pull over 1200 to 1400 DPS. (My cat’s numbers from the last 10 man Naxx, anyway) I mean, I’ve seen a double in my pet’s DPS while raiding from pre 3.0 to post 3.0.
Readiness not affecting BW was also pretty expected, I think, since that alone was making people skip the 51 point BM talent. I don’t think Blizz likes the idea of people going “eh” at what’s supposed to be their top talent. (I’m still not sure the 4 extra talent points for pets is worth it, and frankly there are no exotics save for the spirit beast that I really want to have. And trying to camp that thing is a lesson in depression/frustration.)
I am highly disappointed that my new BBF, Volley, is getting nerfed! Yep, I’m one of “those” hunters – round up the mobs, mend pet, burn ’em down.
Yeah, I like being OP’d….
Dax
I’m cool with the nerfs to the pet and since I refuse to use a cat on my main hunter the nerf to rake doesn’t affect me at all. It might be nice to see a variety of pets instead of walking around Dalaran and seeing cat, cat, cat, oh there’s a devilsaur, cat, cat, cat, gorilla, cat… I think you get the idea. As Pike said in her post, this may be a chance to shake off the huntard stigma that’s been stuck with the class since vanilla WoW. I just ask of them to not implement the nerf to steady shot. That would be like nerfing shadowbolt, or nerfing eviscerate, or wrath, or mangle, or heroic strike.
Pike the problem is that as a Bm hunter you cant “work harder” ….. once you run an optimal rotation you literally cannot do anything to improve your dps other than get more gear 🙁
last in pvp and last in pve 🙁
atleast rogues can open locked doors 🙁
@ llwynog-
You can, if you realize that we may have to rebuild BM hunter from the ground up to work around these changes. You can, if you realize that BM hunter involves things like glyphs and pet selection and pet talent point selection and carefully fine-tuning your own talents. There may be a glass ceiling but I don’t think anyone has come close to hitting it yet, BM hunter or not.
Of course, if you’re not having fun, then that’s a different problem entirely. I will stop playing a BM hunter the day I stop having fun. That day is a long ways away.
Getting nerfed sucks, no matter what the details, so /hug.
Went through the retpally nerf while Kinnavieve was leveling, and it were pretty darn harsh. Took her from being able to aggro whatever the heck she wanted, kill it and its friends, and walk away whistling, to having to pay attention to what she was doing and exercise a bit of caution. GC were a boob fer calling this “nerf to the ground, baby!” ’cause it weren’t. It were balancing things out to where they oughtta be.
Is this the same? Nope, but I think the general idea be similar. With it at least being tested on the PTR, ‘stead of going straight to live in a hotfix the way the pally nerfs were (couldn’t even wait til the next tuesday, the buggers) hopefully the final version’ll be a reasoned and fair.
Having been through the 3.02 Shadow Priest nerf, I can tell ya THAT were a NERF. Pretty much every reason ta play a spriest got chucked out the window, and then some intern got assigned the job of recreating the class as see-through mages, but with not so much sheep. That were a nerf not only to the technical abilities, but to the very fun of being shadow. Which be why so many of us quit. Pretty sure that’s not what’s going on here.
The two things that worry me the most:
Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
The Steady Shot alone is about a 15% nerf to all hunters’ personal DPS.
The Volley nerf… it’s my belief that hunters should NOT be an AOE class. That should be left to the mages.
The volley nerf i can maybe understand (although blizz seem hellbent on making us just AoE raids instead of needing cc ala SSC) but nerfing steadyshot was just totally uncalled for… if the pet nerf and serpents swiftness fixed the “bm is overpowered” thing then why keep going?
In the back of my mind im semi-convinced that alot of the other players getting “beaten by 30%” in the data blizz are looking at are just BAD PLAYERS….
Atleast my alt is a rogue so i can just switch to him and go do some mega dp… /facepalm
The nerfs scare me, mostly the nerf to Steady Shot. The volley nerf I can understand, as long as its reasonable… everything else…
Let’s all withold judgement till we can get on the PTR. damage meters and screenshots are our best tools to keep things from going too far. If we have solid numbers they do seem to actually read it.
BM huntering is about fun for me. I won’t give up my hunter till he’s no longer fun. I run with good enough people that if I do my job in the raid, it doesn’t matter if I’m not doing more DPS than another mage, as long as I’m competitive. And from what I’ve been hearing, you don’t need to min/max your raid dps to succeed, you need skilled players to handle the fight mechanics. (Correct me if I’m wrong, raiders.)
Ralowae: The best players are the ones who use the lump between their ears. There are many, many, many fights where being a smart player is better than being able to pump out top DPS. There are very few really tough DPS race fights that I know of (Brutallus pre 3.0 is the major one that comes to mind) and many more fights that are simply “Do you know how not to stand in X? You do? Epix for you then!”
It’s been my experience that well prepared players and those that are situationally aware are the most desired players. Because after all, dead DPS does no DPS.
I think what Blizz did with Wrath in the way that you don’t need to stack raids for max DPS anymore is a very good thing because it means you never have to bring *that guy* just because you won’t get the boss down without a second heroism, you know?
Theaah: I agree. I’m in a small guild that’s trying to get the numbers back to gear up and raid. We don’t want to do anything more than 10 man, and we certainly aren’t going to be recruiting hardcore. Our goal is a group of friends that can see content without it becoming a second job. It seems to me like Blizzard made everything 10 mannable for my situation exactly, and I thank them for that.
With a little luck, everyone can play what they want to play, and we can still have what we need to raid. While I’m here, if anyone is on Zangarmarsh and looking for a small guild, contact me!
Ralowae and BlackTooth, Zangarmarsh