WoW Petopia Community

From the latest PTR Class feedback thread:

Hunter
- Aimed Shot damage +10%.
- Chimera Shot damage +50%.
- Steady Shot damage +20%.
- Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +15%.
- Hearing lots of concerns about Power Shot in PvP, so we may need a PvP-specific tweak there.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2544 ... -part-iii/

These are IN ADDITION to the buffs already applied to 5.2 from weeks ago. Holy Crap much? XD

Looks like they're really trying to close that gap to 2-3% rather than 10%. Marksman gets a HUGE buff, and Survival gets a small buff. Should put all 3 specs close to each other now.

I for one am happy. I like survival, but I love marksman, and was sad when I had to switch to survival to be anywhere near competitive.

For anyone who doesn't want to look, more specs from other classes are getting decently big buffs as well: Demonology and Destruction warlocks are getting buffed (Which I find odd, I thought for sure they'd nerf affliction, not buff the others, though I guess the fact they currently parsed like #10 and like 12 on realistic DPS does mean they did need a buff. xD Assassination Rogues got a decent buff, as did Elemental Shamans.

Oddly... frost death knights got a huge buff. Which is weird seeing as they were by far the top DK DPS spec. Lol.

I don't think Survival needed any buffs but Marksman certainly did. I will still play Beastmaster most of the time except in situations where more AOE damage is needed and then I'll go Survival temporarily.

Myzou wrote:Looks like they're really trying to close that gap to 2-3% rather than 10%. Marksman gets a HUGE buff, and Survival gets a small buff. Should put all 3 specs close to each other now.

Indeed.

So after fighting a bit with femaledwarf.com to get it to calculate (think it's overloaded right now) and testing with the PTR changes enabled (Z added in the latest changes).. looks like they REALLY balanced them out. In my gear...

BM 65k unbuffed, 91k buffed
MM 65k unbuffed, 90k buffed
SV 67k unbuffed, 91k buffed.

Pretty damn close... those could move up or down a bit with reforging, but that's too much work when more changes might come.

Well, that sure came out of nowhere. Hope your numbers hold up, Slickrock--it'll be nice if all three specs are close enough to each other that everybody can play their favorite spec without taking crap from the rest of the group.

And who knows, maybe I'll give Marks a try again.

It sure looks like they will be close.

However, I should note the cautionary note that hunters don't represent well in overall raid damage right now.. http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/

But, at least our specs should be balanced with each other.

The problem is that MM doesn't really have a niche to fill. :/
SV is best at AOE, BM is best at burst, MM is merely equal to them on overall/sustained dps on single target fights. Femaledwarf is designed to sim single target very well, but its hard to account for add fights on a sim spreadsheet.

Great news regardless tho ^^

deadman wrote:The problem is that MM doesn't really have a niche to fill. :/
SV is best at AOE, BM is best at burst, MM is merely equal to them on overall/sustained dps on single target fights. Femaledwarf is designed to sim single target very well, but its hard to account for add fights on a sim spreadsheet.

Great news regardless tho ^^

Given that though, since FMD is simming single target, any of the specs should be good to bring to a fight. Whichever you play/enjoy best.

Chimaera Shot getting buffed 50% is going to give Marksman quite a bit of burst, considering it already hits like a truck. >_>

BM is good burst every minute or so. MM will be good burst every 10 seconds or so. That's a niche.

Not to mention:

Beast Mastery: MOSTLY melee damage from pet, physical.
Marksman: MOSTLY ranged damage from hunter, physical.
Survival: MOSTLY ranged damage from hunter, magical.

Hunter has a niche. It's just most people seem to regard pets and hunters as one entity, when they're not. In fights where melee are disadvantaged, Marksman will pull ahead of BM in so many regards after 5.2. In fights where ranged are disadvantaged (I honestly can't think of any), BM would.

So, in general, MM would be a better choice than BM, simply because after the patch, MM won't have any fights they're disadvantaged at, but BM would have a couple.

Slickrock wrote:

Myzou wrote:Looks like they're really trying to close that gap to 2-3% rather than 10%. Marksman gets a HUGE buff, and Survival gets a small buff. Should put all 3 specs close to each other now.

Indeed.

So after fighting a bit with femaledwarf.com to get it to calculate (think it's overloaded right now) and testing with the PTR changes enabled (Z added in the latest changes).. looks like they REALLY balanced them out. In my gear...

BM 65k unbuffed, 91k buffed
MM 65k unbuffed, 90k buffed
SV 67k unbuffed, 91k buffed.

Pretty damn close... those could move up or down a bit with reforging, but that's too much work when more changes might come.

I'm not seeing things that close. I'm seeing MM and SV at 67k unbuffed and BM at 64k. I think they're overdone the buffs and they need to be toned down some. Without the PTR changes, BM is still at just under 64k, MM is at 61.5, and SV just over 64K. I don't think SV needed any buffing at all. I have other profiles with all best in slot gear and all buffs . I'll have to check what they say now since BM always scales the most with the raid buffs.

Okay, here are my numbers with my gear and full buffs:
BM- 86.4k without PTR changes, the same number with
MM- 79.9K without PTR changes , 86.2k with
SV- 84.0K without PTR changes , 87.7K with

With BiS gear it looks like this:
BM buffed without changes 108.2K, same with the changes
MM buffed without changes 97.8K, with the changes 105.3K
SV buffed without changes 102.7k, with the changes 107.2K

So, yes things look much closer but I still think SV got a bit too much.

So for you it's okay for BM and Surv to be above MM, but not okay for Surv and MM to be above BM? >_> And that's for your gear.

BiS gear is what they balance things around.

That is plenty close enough for each spec to be viable. They're within 3k dps of each other. MUCH better than the 15k dps disparity between MM and the other two currently.

Myzou wrote:So for you it's okay for BM and Surv to be above MM, but not okay for Surv and MM to be above BM? >_> And that's for your gear.

BiS gear is what they balance things around.

That is plenty close enough for each spec to be viable. They're within 3k dps of each other. MUCH better than the 15k dps disparity between MM and the other two currently.

It's nowhere near 15K. it's more like 10. Still too much but there's no need to exaggerate.

Danielfboone wrote:

Myzou wrote:So for you it's okay for BM and Surv to be above MM, but not okay for Surv and MM to be above BM? >_> And that's for your gear.

BiS gear is what they balance things around.

That is plenty close enough for each spec to be viable. They're within 3k dps of each other. MUCH better than the 15k dps disparity between MM and the other two currently.

It's nowhere near 15K. it's more like 10. Still too much but there's no need to exaggerate.

It's 15k on most of the sim sites I go to, actually.

Hey DanielBoone, before you go off and start calling for SV nerfs, I suggest you look at the link I provided above. You'll see that hunters are poorly represented in the top 100 parses, so any buffs we get are welcome, and we don't need any cross spec hate calling for nerfs.

I'm also not really interested in BiS gear comparisons, since it's highly unlikely that most of us even see one or two of those pieces. A better comparison would be a full normal tier set, or even the full LFR set.

And DanielBoone got his wish, several of the buffs have been rolled back by 25-50%.

Dismiss Pet now has a 3 sec cast time (up from 2 sec). This is to discourage swapping pets in the middle of PvP to get a different form of CC.
Powershot now cancels Camo when the cast begins rather than the shot landing. Powershot is much more effective in 5.2 since it is so reliable now.
Chimera Shot damage +25% (was +50%).
Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +10% (was +15%).

SV is still probably in a good place, but not sure about MM, the Chimera change was going to be a big boost. MM still might be left on the shelf now, not sure the overall changes are enough to get people to change mid-expac.

And Dismiss Pet gets nerfed because of PVP? Really? Is there ANYTHING that's not safe from PVP QQ tears?

Raidbots is totally unreliable and Blizzard devs including Ghostcrawler have recognized and stated that. My in game experience shows me Hunters always at or near the top and certainly always in the top 5. BM and SV are pretty equal right now with no changes except in high AOE situations. MM hasn't been in the picture yet and definitely needed major buffs. The reduction in the buff for SV is totally warranted but I'm not sure about the one for MM. BM and SV Hunters have been in a pretty good place since MoP launched.

Also my posts do not contain any kind of spec hate. They refer only to the balance between all 3 which I am totally in favor of and always have been. The preliminary numbers showed the SV buffs to be too much and now it has proven to be the case. I completely put my trust in the numbers Blizzard uses because they are the only ones with the ability to collect all the relevant data. I do not trust sites like Raidbots or any others like them which only reflect the numbers put up by the most elite players playing whatever the spec of the month is. Any numbers for other specs come from lesser skilled players and the whole system is rendered invalid.

Marksman has been WELL under the other specs since 5.0.

It was finally on par with the other specs, but now it's going to be useless again. People like you telling Blizzard they did too much caused this. Thanks. -.-

The day 5.0 came out.
Heheheheeee couldn't help it.

Danielfboone wrote:Raidbots is totally unreliable and Blizzard devs including Ghostcrawler have recognized and stated that. My in game experience shows me Hunters always at or near the top and certainly always in the top 5. BM and SV are pretty equal right now with no changes except in high AOE situations. MM hasn't been in the picture yet and definitely needed major buffs. The reduction in the buff for SV is totally warranted but I'm not sure about the one for MM. BM and SV Hunters have been in a pretty good place since MoP launched.

Also my posts do not contain any kind of spec hate. They refer only to the balance between all 3 which I am totally in favor of and always have been. The preliminary numbers showed the SV buffs to be too much and now it has proven to be the case. I completely put my trust in the numbers Blizzard uses because they are the only ones with the ability to collect all the relevant data. I do not trust sites like Raidbots or any others like them which only reflect the numbers put up by the most elite players playing whatever the spec of the month is. Any numbers for other specs come from lesser skilled players and the whole system is rendered invalid.

Oh... where to start...

My in game experience shows me Hunters always at or near the top and certainly always in the top 5.

So, your raid group consists of enough equally geared and skilled people to validate that hunters are one of the top dps specs. Really? Really? And all the other class specs are represented, so you can validate by yourself that Blizz's numbers are good?

*chuckle*

I do not trust sites like Raidbots or any others like them which only reflect the numbers put up by the most elite players playing whatever the spec of the month is.

So.. the best players playing the best spec of each class is totally invalid. Those same players that test different specs, will try dozens of different things to optimize their dps. Yep, invalid, totally worthless, completely meaningless.

*snort*

I completely put my trust in the numbers Blizzard uses because they are the only ones with the ability to collect all the relevant data.

Hogwash. It has been shown again and again that's Blizz's testing of dps has major loopholes, and also that they aren't always motivated to actually balance dps. Here's a hit. Blizz shifts dps up and down to manage the balance of class populations, which might mean some classes get nerfed or buffed when it was otherwise uncalled for.

But even though you call it meaningless, I'll still point to raidbots to show the top dps for each class in real fights. You'll see that hunters, even the mighty BM, is at the bottom of the pack. But it's still in the pack, it's not down where frost mages are.

So while you call for SV nerfs, I would like to have seen those stay, because it would have pushed hunters up in the ranks overall, even if SV overtook BM. Calling for SV nerfs when hunters as a whole are 10-20% below the top dps specs is just silly.

Myzou wrote:Marksman has been WELL under the other specs since 5.0.

It was finally on par with the other specs, but now it's going to be useless again. People like you telling Blizzard they did too much caused this. Thanks. -.-

LOL I never told Blizzard anything, I only mentioned it here. AND I only said the buffs to SV were too much. I never said that about MM. Blizzard realized completely on their own, using their own data, that they had "overshot the mark". It had nothing to do with what anybody on any forum had to say. Blaming me or any other player is totally uncalled for.