WoW Petopia Community

Junrei wrote:Lore actually hasn't been snarky. He's the only one that hasn't.

Sukurachi wrote:oy, the worst part is I've been sitting here singing the damned song since you posted that! LOL

Lore wrote:I said this 5 days ago, before a holiday weekend. We haven't somehow jumped ahead several weeks in development while everyone's been out of the office.

I know it can be frustrating to be patient, but that's just how our development process works. We're still pretty early in that process. As I've mentioned before, balance tuning typically takes place towards the end of the PTR cycle. Hunter sustained DPS in the wake of the Readiness nerf is a concern that we're well aware of and fully intend to fix -- when we get to that point.

Ghostcrawler wrote:@goingFISHing696 @Gridlock643 So how much damage do you think Stampede needs to do to be fair?

AdamSavage wrote:Lore replied again, and it was to his own quote that someone else quoted.

Lore wrote:I said this 5 days ago, before a holiday weekend. We haven't somehow jumped ahead several weeks in development while everyone's been out of the office.

I know it can be frustrating to be patient, but that's just how our development process works. We're still pretty early in that process. As I've mentioned before, balance tuning typically takes place towards the end of the PTR cycle. Hunter sustained DPS in the wake of the Readiness nerf is a concern that we're well aware of and fully intend to fix -- when we get to that point.

Ghostcrawler wrote:@goingFISHing696 @Gridlock643 So how much damage do you think Stampede needs to do to be fair?

Lore wrote:For clarity: we know there are other issues than just Readiness. Arcane Shot vs Kill Command is one such issue that, again, we intend to fix. I will make sure to bring up the other concerns to the team as well.

cowmuflage wrote:I do think people need to be patient. But who am I kidding since when have wow players been patient?

Counter Shot is now a baseline interrupt ability learned by all Hunters at level 22.

Silencing Shot is no longer a talent and is now an ability that replaces Counter Shot for Marksman Hunters.

Lore
Community Manager
Alright, I have a few updates, followed by a request. Here’s what the developers are currently thinking about several of the issues brought up in this thread:

Regarding Stampede: We’re happy with the damage it’s currently putting out in PvP. For PvE, we’re planning to buff its damage pretty heavily, so it becomes a substantially more potent DPS cooldown. We don’t want to give it any more utility than it has now, for reasons we’ve explained at length already.

Readiness is still under heavy discussion, and we haven’t made a final decision on what we’re going to do with it in 5.4. At the moment, we’re leaning towards just removing the ability entirely and giving the affected abilities shorter cooldowns or charges to compensate. If we end up taking that route, we will buff Hunter damage (most likely across the board, not just specific abilities), but as I mentioned, we’re still discussing.

Murder of Crows vs Blink strike is also still under heavy discussion. Our goal (with all talents) is that active abilities used properly will outperform passive ones. We haven’t decided yet what adjustments we’ll make to achieve that in 5.4.

Scatter/Silencing Shot: We don’t consider interrupts to be mandatory in PvE. If a Hunter would rather not take the Glyph of Scattered Thoughts, there are plenty of other players in the raid who could take on the responsibility. We like Silencing Shot as a Marksman perk overall, but we’re still discussing things. We may end up making a baseline Interrupting Shot that gets upgraded to Silencing Shot if you spec Marksman.

Speaking of spec differences, we agree that Hunter rotations feel cooler when your signature shots do a lot more damage than other shots, and we’ll discuss that some more. That’s part of the reasoning behind the Arcane Shot changes – our hope is that saving up more Focus for a bigger hit will feel better than firing off smaller shots more regularly.

As to overall Hunter performance and utility, we don’t think the issues are with the Hunter class specifically. Instead, we think that certain other classes are overperforming (in both) at the moment. Fixing those outliers will, in turn, make a good Hunter more attractive for their raid spot. You may have seen some (but not all) changes along those lines on the PTR already.

Pet pathing errors are unfortunately extremely difficult to fix. A lot of the time, the problem isn’t with the pet AI but with the environment or encounter. That means there’s no blanket fix here; we have to resolve every such error individually. When reporting these problems, it’s most helpful to be very specific. “My pet has trouble getting to the boss during this phase transition on this encounter” allows us to reproduce the issue and come up with a fix. “My pet is dumb” does not.

Which brings me to my request. This thread has a lot of great feedback put together by a good handful of Hunters who just want their class to be fun – which is amazing! The issue is that, in order to find those helpful posts, we have to dig through hundreds of other posts that contain no helpful information whatsoever (and instead focus on how class X got more blue posts this week, or employee Y must just hate Hunters, etc.). There’s always going to be some of that, and we expect as much, but this thread has been particularly out of hand.

I’m not bringing that up because it hurts my feelings or whatever. That sort of thing doesn’t really affect me. I’m bringing it up because it makes it incredibly difficult for us to figure out what you’re actually upset about. When we have to sift through so much noise just to find something we can actually bring up in our meetings and discuss, the end result is that we have less to talk about in our meetings. I’m sure there are still some concerns that I didn’t address above – if that’s the case, it’s 100% because they got lost in the pile. That sucks.

So please, try to keep things constructive. You’re only hurting yourselves and your fellow Hunters otherwise.

Quivering wrote:I didn't see the "interrupting shot" on the PTR yet, but by their wording, its a "might do" thing atm.

General


Arcane Shot had its damage and focus cost increased by 50%.
Counter Shot is now a baseline interrupt ability learned by all Hunters at level 22.
Explosive Trap had its overall damage decreased by 30%. Proportionately, more damage has been removed from the initial damage than the periodic effect.
Hunter's Mark now has a duration of 20 seconds while in PvP combat (down from 30 seconds).
Readiness now finishes the cooldowns on Rapid Fire, Feign Death, Deterrence, Disengage, and Camouflage when activated (was all Hunter abilities with a base cooldown of less than 5 minutes).
Revive Pet no longer requires the Hunter to have line-of-sight to their pet.


Talents


Aspect of the Iron Hawk now reduces all damage taken by 10%, down from 15%.
Narrow Escape's root effect is now a nature spell (was a physical spell).
Silencing Shot is no longer a talent and is now an ability that replaces Counter Shot for Marksman Hunters.
Spirit Bond now regenerates 3% of total health every 2 seconds while the Hunter's pet is active (up from 2%).
Wyvern Sting now has a range of 40 yards (up from 35 yards).


Glyphs


Glyph of Mend Pet now has a 100% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the Hunter's pet on each tick (up from 50% chance).
Glyph of No Escape now increases the ranged critical strike chance against targets affected by the Hunter's Freezing Trap by 100% (up from 20% chance).


Marksman


Binding Shot is no longer a Marksman Hunter ability and is once again a talent.


Survival


Explosive Trap no longer shares a cooldown with Black Arrow but can no longer activate Lock and Load.