NEW PTR build 9-23

[Slickrock]

From EJ:

Beast Mastery

* Kill Command now scales from 63% of RAP, up from 21%.
* Animal Handler (Passive) now increases your Attack Power by 15%, down from 25%.


Marksmanship

* Aimed Shot now scales from 26% of RAP, down from 40%.
* Arcane Shot now scales from 4% of RAP, down from 19%.


Survival

* Hunting Party now increases your total Agility by an additional 10% (down from 20%) and increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Speed of all party and raid members by 10%. (Down from 20%)


Pets

* Bite / Claw / Smack now scales from 7% of RAP, down from 14% of RAP.
* Spirit Mend (Spirit Beast) now costs 5 Focus

Wow... not sure what to think....

[Slickrock]

So it appears that they ARE making KC the BM "signature" shot. I imagine that it's scaling is so high because of the pet dps nerf. If they hadn't done the pet dps nerf, we'd likely see 30% instead of 60%.

All the cries about pets being too powerful have been heard, they've just had their nails clipped.

Arcane is a last-choice filler now.

Overall a lot of nerfage. Was hunter dps that high?..

It's also a lot of wild swings in the number changes. I suspect we'll see more of these wild changes.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

To much of a rebuff to Kill Command, and the nerf to basic attacks was needed, BUT let's see if they are to much, or just right. ALso, no BM specific buff to KC, meaning that the other two trees are still going to want to use it.

ANd yes Slick, it was.

[Slickrock]

To much of a rebuff to Kill Command, and the nerf to basic attacks was needed, BUT let's see if they are to much, or just right. ALso, no BM specific buff to KC, meaning that the other two trees are still going to want to use it.

Then BM just took it up the... Well, at least Arcane is back out of the rotation.

(I'm considering buying an expansive camera, maybe I can save money by quitting wow..)

[Palladiamorsdeus]

I want to see what basic attacks are doing before I comment on it. Same with KC, let the patch actually hit and let a little actual testing get done. I figured basic attacks were doing to much damage.

[Silvarain]

im a little sad that spirit mend cost focus now is pet mend the same as brfore? ive not seen any news on it

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Mend pet now goes off over a ten second period instead of a fifteen, so it ticks every two seconds. Which makes more of a difference then you'd think. Otherwise no, it hasn't changed. It only scales by level, not by any stat.

[Valashe]

Not really happy with this patch at all when it comes to Hunter nerfs. I'd like to see what those in the PTR have to say once it goes live.

I may be playing a different class after all..

Edit: the MMOChamp boards are saying that this patch hasn't reached live PTR status yet..

[cowmuflage]

Ah i hope they don't screw Aimed Shot up to much thats my fav shot of all.

[Lisaara]

See? Everyone got into a fuss over nothin before. They fixed it. I like how its scaling so far.

[Knobhead]

Please don't freak out about the Arcane Shot balancing. It'll be balanced back up in the near future as this reduction is a bit excessive.

[Saturo]

More nerfs to MM. -.-
*Puts hunters on shelfs*

[Nakari]

Frankly, I can't quite understand the people who say they'll stop playing their hunters because of some adjustments that are made in a beta version that gets new builds every few days. The damage in beta isn't even remotely balanced (for example, rogues currently do less dps than most tanks), so it's no surprise to see some drastic nerfs/buffs in the next few weeks. If you can't handle that, perhaps it's best to stay away from beta patch notes (no offense).

They have to find the "sweet spot" for the abilities so that all of them are useful (Arcane Shot for example needs to do more damage than Steady/Cobra Shot, but less damage per focus than KC / ES / AS / CS), and they need to balance the classes against each other so that hunters, rogues, mages and warlocks are capable of roughly the same DPS, with the "non-pures" slightly behind them - that's a lot of number tweaking, so not every adjustment downward is a nerf that will make our class unplayable / non competetive / ruined forever.

Edit: I don't say "beta is beta and everything will be fine", if you are in beta/PTR, by all means give feedback if you think ability X is too weak (or too strong) or if your DPS is lacking compared to other classes / builds, but reading some datamined number changes and then freaking out about them does them a bit weird to me.

[Anansi]

Those are significant decreases and I'm curious as to the reason for the dramatic scaling back. Hunter DPS was not that high, especially for Marksmanship. I'll hop on the PTR later today and see if these changes are in fact live and what impact they have, but it certainly doesn't read well.

[Saturo]

Frankly, I can't quite understand the people who say they'll stop playing their hunters because of some adjustments that are made in a beta version that gets new builds every few days. The damage in beta isn't even remotely balanced (for example, rogues currently do less dps than most tanks), so it's no surprise to see some drastic nerfs/buffs in the next few weeks. If you can't handle that, perhaps it's best to stay away from beta patch notes (no offense).

They have to find the "sweet spot" for the abilities so that all of them are useful (Arcane Shot for example needs to do more damage than Steady/Cobra Shot, but less damage per focus than KC / ES / AS / CS), and they need to balance the classes against each other so that hunters, rogues, mages and warlocks are capable of roughly the same DPS, with the "non-pures" slightly behind them - that's a lot of number tweaking, so not every adjustment downward is a nerf that will make our class unplayable / non competetive / ruined forever.

Edit: I don't say "beta is beta and everything will be fine", if you are in beta/PTR, by all means give feedback if you think ability X is too weak (or too strong) or if your DPS is lacking compared to other classes / builds, but reading some datamined number changes and then freaking out about them does them a bit weird to me.

It's not just the fact that BM seems to be becoming the best spec in Cata, it's also that MM is no longer MM. The playstyle has shifted far too much for me. It's essentially like SV now, and I don't like SV.

[Nakari]

I can see where you are coming from, but that's more a result of the focus system as a whole opposed to our current mana-based resource system. MM has a very static roation on live (CS, AS, Steady x4) unless you glyph Aimed Shot or Chimera Shot, and my guess is that's not really Blizzard's intention for DPS specs. Beta-MM still has a much more predictable / stable focus generation than BM (pet crits = focus) and SV (crits = focus refund), so it's not as hectic as those specs where you can get a sudden focus burst.

Also, it's much too early to declare BM the "best spec", as the numbers haven't quite settled down and there's no real data from level 85 raids. BM was the best spec at the start of WotLK (Naxx), but got "overnerfed" and was surpassed by SV, which was later surpassed by MM when gear with ArP became abundant. Still, the specs were *much* closer to each other than they ever were during TBC or vanilla, and with their new talent system and better pet scaling they'll have a much easier time adjusting a spec down- or upwards if it's needed, so I'm fairly optimistic all specs will be competetive.

[Bellatryx]

I can see where you are coming from, but that's more a result of the focus system as a whole opposed to our current mana-based resource system. MM has a very static roation on live (CS, AS, Steady x4) unless you glyph Aimed Shot or Chimera Shot, and my guess is that's not really Blizzard's intention for DPS specs. Beta-MM still has a much more predictable / stable focus generation than BM (pet crits = focus) and SV (crits = focus refund), so it's not as hectic as those specs where you can get a sudden focus burst.

Also, it's much too early to declare BM the "best spec", as the numbers haven't quite settled down and there's no real data from level 85 raids. BM was the best spec at the start of WotLK (Naxx), but got "overnerfed" and was surpassed by SV, which was later surpassed by MM when gear with ArP became abundant. Still, the specs were *much* closer to each other than they ever were during TBC or vanilla, and with their new talent system and better pet scaling they'll have a much easier time adjusting a spec down- or upwards if it's needed, so I'm fairly optimistic all specs will be competetive.

I don't think the balancing is done yet; I think we're in for more changes. I do like all of the points you have brought up. This expansion blizz is trying to make everything as equal as they possibly can and.. I'm going to my trainer right now to buy dual spec on the PTR to test MM.

I wasn't seeing that much of a change with Arcane shot, I actually and I have no idea how the hell this happened, saw my arcane shots crit for 2-3k (my hunter has bad gear) instead of the 900-1800 I saw before this patch. If you want I can link you her armory so you can laugh at her and/or get some perspective on how it might scale and such.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... =Bellatryx

I rushed her to 80 then didn't play her because I got wrapped up playing my druid.


Edit. I changed to MM and I actually really like the way it feels.

[Anansi]

It's not just the fact that BM seems to be becoming the best spec in Cata, it's also that MM is no longer MM. The playstyle has shifted far too much for me. It's essentially like SV now, and I don't like SV.

Yep. The trouble with BM right now is that it's careening back to TBC days with the easiest rotation and most damage, and when you couple that with the Wrath ease-of-use pet changes, a bit of contention is caused as BM ends up again as the most damage for the least effort.

Marksmanship does feel a lot like Survival which I really do not like. It feels so much like Survival that I'm not sure why we even have the two specs since they pretty much play the same. I guess MM is a little bit steadier and after a while some semblance of rotation does become apparent but it is still very reactionary which is the hallmark of Survival.
The biggest complaint I have with Marksmanship right now is as follows.
No CD on Arcane Shot means input lag can seriously mess you up (either you miss firing it or you fire it twice which leads to not enough Focus for Chimera when it comes off CD)
Readiness and Rapid Fire using a GCD. These using a GCD means you're using them instead of regenerating Focus, especially in the Readiness-RF combo where that's 2 GCDs. On live this is not a big deal, but when you want to be pretty full on Focus when these abilities are used, you have to lead up to them with just Steadies and not specials in order to not be Focus-starved when RF starts, otherwise you're just using RF to rapidly regen Focus which isn't the point.

There's a lot of management needed in MM for not a very appealing pay off damage-wise, especially when BM hits harder and with less effort. Now it's true that BM could be intentionally strong for the 80-85 leveling process and at 85 things change to be better for the other specs. Mob health has been pretty buffed up and it's expected that we will actually have a challenge in questing, so BM being potent at 80 could be the response to this situation.
Only the beta testers could address this but I do not believe these particular changes are in the beta client yet, just the PTR, where we can only test level 80.

[Nakari]

I'm not seeing BM as having an easier rotation than MM or SV. In fact, they are both very similar:

- All specs use Arcane Shot as filler / focus dump
- MM uses Steady, BM & SV use Cobra for focus regen
- MM uses Chimera Shot, BM uses Kill Command, SV uses Explosive Shot on cooldown
- All specs use Serpent Sting, MM refreshes via Chimera Shot, BM & SV via Cobra Shot
- All have a more or less random proc, Master Marksman for MM, Focus Fire for BM and Lock & Load for SV

SV still has the more difficult rotation, as it has Black Arrow to keep up as much as possible in addition to the above.

Edit: In this comparison I assume KC isn't a button Blizzard would want SV & MM to push (other than with a RiF-proc, which is more of a PVP talent).

[Raydex-of-the-dawn]

I never liked Marksman. My raids have been okay with me staying SV (I adore it, just like BM). Still, Master Marksman doesn't really require much a change in rotation, as opposed to Lock and Load or Focus Fire (which require paying some attention.)

IF MM and SV continue to use Kill Command as a focus dump as well as Arcane Shot, then they will have another thing to manage. Frankly, however, on Live, all specs are easy. If they're too hard you pick up an addon like BackseatDriver and then play.