... only with more arrows streaming at your primary target.
As of today, though, it looks like Barrage just straight up does a "spray 'n pray" with its graphic:
You can very clearly see where things will and won't be hit by barrage while it's casting, though it's still the same animation at heart.
How do y'all feel about the change? I can see where this could potentially be very helpful, but I won't lie—it freaked me out a bit the first time I barraged after the change ("oh god I thought this was a sanctuary please don't tell me I'm about to get a million horde angry with me for attacking this fishing elemental and hitting them by mistake") and the spray 'n pray feels... I dunno. Less elegant? I don't really feel good about it, but I was also VERY comfortable with Barrage's cone and distance and can only think of two times in WoD where I pulled unintended stuff with it (to be fair, I was probably also overly cautious about it and didn't use it in a lot of situations where I could honestly have afforded to... but seeing the cone during the cast isn't going to change me not using it in those situations, so :x)
Yesterday I did mythic Eye of Azshara with some guildmates, including one of our other hunters, and that first trash pack as you zone in took about seven minutes because she kept misestimating her barrage and pulling more stuff—and she's not a bad hunter and often parses way better than I do. I'll be curious to see if that's still a problem for her with the new graphic—if that helps her it'll be worth losing the "coolness" that the directed arrows gave. If it doesn't, I may resent the change forever ;P
Edit: Hotfix notes for today have been posted, and it's not just graphical:
So overall a good change, but I'm very sad about the graphics (it's REALLY weirding me out, having now used it in something beyond outdoor questing) and the actual fire cone being smaller will be sad for old content. Not the end of the world by a long shot because it still looks like it's a 90-120°ish spread, and that part will probably not take much getting used to.Blizzard wrote:• Barrage now fires in a tighter cone, and its visual has been improved to better show its area of effect.
Developers’ Notes-- Barrage fulfills a fantasy of a wild spray of shots in a large area. Of course, that can be dangerous, and often Hunters accidentally pull additional enemies with Barrage, especially in Legion dungeons. We saw this as a failure on our part to convey what it actually does. This hotfix should allow Hunters to get a feel for the shape and size of it and build a reliable expectation of what will happen when they cast Barrage. No change was made to Barrage’s damage. We hope that this helps Hunters and their groupmates to have a more pleasant dungeon experience.
The Z axis is still really awkward, as both Kattii (the aforementioned other hunter) and I discovered in mythic Darkheart Thicket tonight, so it won't solve ALL our barrage woes :P