I posted this on the EU PTR forums. I wanted to repeat it here and see whether Petopians agree, or if I'm just seeing doom and decay everywhere what with the Cata launch ;P
Any opinions? When I was tooling around in bgs, on both this and on my fire mage, I got the impression that all classes are just being dumbed down a lot. It's currently more bursty and less intelligent than even now, although I'm aware things will change with 85 gear, so maybe folks on the actual Cataclysm Beta can throw me a bone here and let me know if burstlol is as big an issue.Hello folks. First off, if this is better off in the Hunter category, apologies in advance. It's an opinion on the state of BM hunters on the PTR.
* I'm aware things are balanced around level 85 combat and stats.
* I'm aware it's PTR. I feel I would be remiss NOT commenting before patch release.
* I don't hate BM on the PTR. I play it now, I like the new hunter abilities, and I just think BM could use a tweak or two.
The issue I have:
BM hunters seem to be a lot more about burst, and less about tool usage, and it makes it feel a bit less fun to play.
I've been playing BM through WotLK as a raider and a PvPer, and I enjoy it. I like the feel of micromanaging the pet, using the many hunter abilities available to me to change the tide of battle, and being completely in synch and in partnership with the pet--by managing the pet's movements and mine, and coordinating them both.
Three things missing for BM hunters in this next patch:
* Volley
* BW Immunity
* Improved Revive Pet
Volley is a tool to get rogues out of stealth; I generally pop flare in one direction and volley in another. However, the trap launcher makes up for that imo; I can drop a nice explosive trap instead of volley. So, BW immunity. Bestial Wrath no longer makes me immune to CC. I can deal with that; if it was considered OP, then I'll eat the nerf. Then Imp. Revive Pet got removed entirely. Stopping to res a pet in a raid, as an 8 second cast time, is rather ludicrous; same in PvP. In a perfect world, i.e. WotLK raid environment, the pet won't die--but Cata is meant to be challenging, and I'm concerned about how that 8 second cast will affect us. In addition, in PvP it makes it nothing short of impossible to recover; the combined loss of CC immunity (meaning you cannot control your pet; a lock can fear you both and then nuke down your pet if he so chose) and no speedy revive turns it nasty. HotP has a cooldown.
On the other hand, when I went to the training dummies on the PTR in Darnassus, there were 8 people there. Three were Balance Druids, and five were BM Hunters. That makes it pretty clear to me that the burst is nuts. I tried a few bgs and yup, even without the (I assume bugged) insane numbers of Kill Command, the pet and I hit like a -truck-.
So we can't really un-nerf the BM abilities while leaving burst as-is, because then we'd be OP. I'd rather have the tools back, but we'll see how it goes.
I have tried the other new hunter abilities, and I enjoy them. Perhaps Camo will entirely make up for the loss of the other abilities utility-wise, and burst will be toned down on 85 gear. I do like the new Focus system, and the various abilities to regen focus, including the 50-focus return cast--that does lend another tool-ish button to the playstyle. I also have faith in the devs, but I just spent an entire expansion trying to PvP on my fire mage and I don't wish to repeat that fiasco with BM. Possible suggestions could include changing the glyphs of BM abilities to these:
* Glyph of Bestial Wrath: Your Bestial Wrath and Beast Within spells now reduce damage done by the hunter and pet by 25% and makes both immune to all forms of crowd control for the duration.
* Glyph of Revive Pet: The cast time of your Revive Pet spell is decreased by 5 seconds.
In summary--I just want to express my concern about the direction BM is going, and say that I, as a BM hunter, would prefer the feeling of utility and power combined rather than pure, raw, unhealable burst.
Thanks for reading.
~Acherontia
Thanks for reading--again