Burst Vs Tools

[Acherontia]

EU Forum Post

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

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

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.

Thanks for reading--again

[Anansi]

After playing Marks all through Wrath, I'm quite familiar with having a burst-oriented Hunter and from my messing around on the PTR, I do see that BM is now the burst spec. Still, BM's burst is far more frequent than Marksmanship is on live, so I think BM is just fine in that regard. It seems that BM and MM have swapped places in the sustained vs burst category, with MM now being a more sustained DPS spec.

But with BM having a very frequent burst, I'm confident it will be just fine for raiding and there isn't anything to worry about.

[Acherontia]

I think you missed my point entirely Not to sound mean, lol.

**I am concerned that BM is all about burst and has no tools for PvP.**

Yeah, my walls of text are a pain to chew through.

[SgtMakkie]

Hmmm maybe I'm wrong but doesn't BM only really have two tools in PvP currently? (BW and intimidation?). Now I think we get scatter shot now (but I might be wrong but still). BM never (imo) really was a PvP spec.

No disarm, no silence, no scatter shot (currently) as MM does. The increase in damage is very nice and maybe that is Blizzards way to make up for the lack of tools for CC.

[Raydex-of-the-dawn]

The big ones were Bestial Wrath (heard of Beast/Cleave?) and Imp.Revive Pet. The former was very popular in arenas.

[The Insect Man]

Surely in pvp our pets are our toolkit - disarm, silence, stun, root etc. And BM have a slightly bigger choice of pet.

I mean, I don't pvp, but I assume that's the case from the skills the pets have been given.

[Kalliope]

Scatter shot is baseline now. All hunters get it.

Chimera shot no longer has scorpid sting to work with. Marks hunters no longer get a disarm (on themselves; obviously they can always grab a pet that can).

Trap launcher+explosive trap isn't going to pull out a rogue unless they're not paying attention, due to the arming time of the trap.

I'm not a fan of the BW glyph that you've proposed since that's a MASSIVE damage nerf, one that isn't worth the tradeoff of becoming immune. I'd rather be CCed and have my pet gnawing on the opponent's butt. I really expect to see the revive pet glyph come into existence, though. I want THAT "baseline."

As for BM and survivability, Crouching Tiger Hidden Chimera shortens the cds on two of our best defensive abilities. I look forward to testing that when gear settles down a bit and everyone isn't dying in three seconds.

As an aside, I have a friend who was able to dabble in fire mage pvp during LK. He's usually frost, but fire had enough tools to be very very dangerous and still retain some survivability. He still went back to frost, but there was a period of fire-ness.

[Turgus]

When I first heard of the changes I was not happy, my awesome 10 seconds of CC immunity was going to go away.
But then I saw what the changes were, instead of 50% off of mana cost while under its effect it was 50% focus cost.
I have a feral druid and I know just how awesome Berserk is for them, so I look at the new Beast Within as being something closer to that.

Personally I like the way The Beast Within changes are going. Its going to be 10 seconds of pure unadulterated damage vs. the 10 seconds of CC immunity and a little bit of extra damage.
Of course I will miss my CC immunity, but I am willing to trade that for the burst capacity these changes will give.

The Beast Within will become a special tool that goes into the toolbox, instead of being the multi-tool that it is now.
Almost regardless the situation right now, if the cooldown is up on TBW, you pop it.
With these changes you will have to be much more careful when you use it, and maybe one of those other abilities in the toolbox will be a better fit to the situation (like Masters Call.)
So personally, I think that this change will actually make hunters better tool users.
Combine it with the new tools that Hunters will be getting, Trap Launcher, Aspect of the Fox and Camouflage, I think that the future is very bright for BM Hunters, and Hunters in general.


As for Improved Revive Pet, I think that some of the issues with keeping a pet up will be fixed with the changes to Mend Pet that have been noted in another thread. http://forums.wow-petopia.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4910

[Anansi]

I think you missed my point entirely Not to sound mean, lol.

**I am concerned that BM is all about burst and has no tools for PvP.**

Yeah, my walls of text are a pain to chew through.

All Hunters have tools for PvP, we're exceptionally well kitted out for PvP regardless of spec. BM will have massive burst in PvP and be immune to CC while in Big Red (no you can't use it to break CC buy still...) so under burst you will be a killing machine.

There's no need for concern about PvP from any Hunter spec.

[Kalliope]

I think you missed my point entirely Not to sound mean, lol.

**I am concerned that BM is all about burst and has no tools for PvP.**

Yeah, my walls of text are a pain to chew through.

All Hunters have tools for PvP, we're exceptionally well kitted out for PvP regardless of spec. BM will have massive burst in PvP and be immune to CC while in Big Red (no you can't use it to break CC buy still...) so under burst you will be a killing machine.

There's no need for concern about PvP from any Hunter spec.

The nerf is actually to The Beast Within, but yeah...BM hunters won't be immune to CC while in big red anymore. That was what prompted this post.

BM still has tools. Immunity for the hunter just isn't one of them anymore.

[MaximumOverdrive]

I think you missed my point entirely Not to sound mean, lol.

**I am concerned that BM is all about burst and has no tools for PvP.**

Yeah, my walls of text are a pain to chew through.

All Hunters have tools for PvP, we're exceptionally well kitted out for PvP regardless of spec. BM will have massive burst in PvP and be immune to CC while in Big Red (no you can't use it to break CC buy still...) so under burst you will be a killing machine.

There's no need for concern about PvP from any Hunter spec.

I've used it in PvE to break CC...dunno if it breaks CC in PvP, but it does in PvE, which I always found useful.

I think I would prefer more working of things rather than just burst damage...to me it would see more boring to play if yer just there to cause a ton of damage and nothing else (kinda like now). I'd like some more utility things to help out in crazy situations.

[Kalliope]

I think you missed my point entirely Not to sound mean, lol.

**I am concerned that BM is all about burst and has no tools for PvP.**

Yeah, my walls of text are a pain to chew through.

All Hunters have tools for PvP, we're exceptionally well kitted out for PvP regardless of spec. BM will have massive burst in PvP and be immune to CC while in Big Red (no you can't use it to break CC buy still...) so under burst you will be a killing machine.

There's no need for concern about PvP from any Hunter spec.

I've used it in PvE to break CC...dunno if it breaks CC in PvP, but it does in PvE, which I always found useful.

I think I would prefer more working of things rather than just burst damage...to me it would see more boring to play if yer just there to cause a ton of damage and nothing else (kinda like now). I'd like some more utility things to help out in crazy situations.

It currently breaks it in both. But that won't be the case in Cataclysm.

[Acherontia]

BM will have massive burst in PvP and be immune to CC while in Big Red (no you can't use it to break CC buy still...) so under burst you will be a killing machine

As said above, this isn't true in Cataclysm

I know hunter still has tools, but it feels like BM, for one, is trading some tools for burst. And regarding the person above who said they'd rather be CC'd with the pet gnawing on the opponent's buttocks--fair enough But generally, when I'm cc'd in group (world or bg) PvP, so is my pet. Warlocks are the new bane of my existence; I can't silence them, I've only one stun. They can easily lock me down and dot me up, and then I'm dead. And I've no way to counter that; it's immensely frustrating.

The whole feel of the class now in PvP (well, the spec) is "QUICK! NUKE IT TO DEATH IN 3 SECONDS BEFORE YOU DIE!"

That's what I've been playing through WotLK, albeit with tools, as a Fire Mage. And now both of my classes of choice are "burst or die." I just don't like the urgency of that playstyle; I prefer having tools in hand, ready to use, and some form of control

Edit--a hunter opened on my fire mage. He popped BW; I blinked into his face, used Dragon's Breath, bomb, blast wave + flamestrike, then ran toward him spamming scorch. He was dead in seconds--and I still have ice block & trinket if he decided to try and control me. With BW he could have strafed off, intimidation, nuke when I got out, and it would have been at least a competition of skill rather than wtfnuke : /

[Kalliope]

The whole feel of the class now in PvP (well, the spec) is "QUICK! NUKE IT TO DEATH IN 3 SECONDS BEFORE YOU DIE!"

That's going to be EVERY class in early Cata until gear stabilizes and such. Might take a full season to do that. Maybe longer.

[Anansi]

The whole feel of the class now in PvP (well, the spec) is "QUICK! NUKE IT TO DEATH IN 3 SECONDS BEFORE YOU DIE!"

That's going to be EVERY class in early Cata until gear stabilizes and such. Might take a full season to do that. Maybe longer.

Pretty much. Since we'll be hitting Cataclysm with our Crit intact, even higher depending, we'll all be doing pretty big burst damage. But that will diminish as we level and stats start to change to Cata levels (eg Crit plummeting) and the new gear re-calibrates our stats.

I didn't know the big red effect was losing *all* CC-thwarting usage. Last I had read (not being particularly keen on BM so I've only been tangentially aware of how it's changed) the ability to break CC was gone but you were still immune to CC while under TBW. I do see that was changed, only the pet is immune. Which in all fairness is still pretty good, most players will as a reactionary act try to take down the big red beast trying to eat them and not be looking for the Hunter off in the distance. Better players will search out the Hunter of course, but that's all part of the PvP game. Arena would be different again but BM will probably not be the best Arena spec, but I'd leave that to individual player preference and skill to determine.

But back to the tools theme, I maintain that all Hunter specs are well equipped if not differently than in Wrath, and it will take the player a bit of time to re-learn their proper use (many specs are like this, it is not just Hunters - my Shaman for instance has in both specs a lot of new mechanics to play with and learn) but it strikes me that there's more utility than before. It's just different, possible distributed across specs differently, and with some changed mechanics, but it all looks solid I think.

[Acherontia]

I do see that was changed, only the pet is immune. Which in all fairness is still pretty good, most players will as a reactionary act try to take down the big red beast trying to eat them and not be looking for the Hunter off in the distance.

Pet isn't immune either : /

It's just impossible to take down anything that has control, now. At least we have scattershot, I guess.

Btw, I know gear isn't normalized for 80 now--I did mention it--but because everyone has so much burst & cc, it's just a stupid frantic fight atm, imo anyway. I'm hoping it will improve...

[Kalliope]

Pet should still be immune.

[Acherontia]

You know, my Loque got death coiled while BW'd, so I hadn't bothered to check the tooltip until now. I'm going to test it in some bgs and see if it was a fluke/one-off, or if I somehow wasn't seeing it right, or if the tooltip's wrong.

[Acherontia]

The pet is NOT immune to CC while BW'd. Just for the record : /





From what I can tell, you can use it to break CC on you or the pet, but if you're cc'd during, you're nailed (same with the pet).

[Saturo]

The pet is NOT immune to CC while BW'd. Just for the record : /





From what I can tell, you can use it to break CC on you or the pet, but if you're cc'd during, you're nailed (same with the pet).

Excellent. You shall be easy to kill...
*Readies the Fear button* :twisted: