Upcoming Hunter Changes Reduce PvE Damage

Allakhazam poster Tabstopper has posted in our hunter forum regarding some official upcoming hunter changes. Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street outlined them on the O-Boards, noting that "Hunters of all specs, and particularly Beastmaster, are doing too much damage in PvE."

We want to be careful not to hurt hunter dps too much in PvP, so we’re taking most of the damage out of Steady Shot and Volley. Beastmaster hunters are in addition losing some of their pet dps. We still want BMs to have the best pets, but pet dps numbers are a little high at the moment. We are also still concerned about hunter survivability in PvP and taking the opportunity to jazz up Deterrence into something that looks and plays a little more interesting.

Ghostcrawler lists 13 changes that will hopefully be hitting the PTR soon so players can test them before they go live. You can read the list below and you can discuss them in Tabstopper's thread.

These are not all of the changes we are working on for hunters, but those changes we feel are ready for testing. We hope to get these changes up on the PTR so players will have a chance to test them out and respond before they go live.

1) Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
2) Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
3) Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
4) Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
5) Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
6) Kindred Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
7) Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
8) All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
9) Growl— threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
10) Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
11) Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
12) Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
13) Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.

Comments

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What.?
# Dec 10 2008 at 9:47 AM Rating: Decent
The hunter is already week as it is you might as well take awayt the pet it has always been like this they always make the hunter weak and thats why we get owned so much all the time and im tired of it i want to do not only PvE but PvP and actually challenge someone so instead the should make the pet with more DPS.!!!
it would help out so much i could deffinetly save alot of time by not dying.!!
What.?
# Dec 10 2008 at 5:04 PM Rating: Decent
I agree with you. In fact as far back as I can remember they nerfed the crud out of hunters with every single patch. Seriously its ridiculous.Its a joke so I don't give a flying continental about PVP or PVP talents.
this is getting rediculous...
# Dec 09 2008 at 11:25 PM Rating: Decent
why is it that anyone who doesn't want to do pvp for their toons gets screwed in the gear dept? the above notice is going to make it almost impossible for those of us who don't have the top gear and don't pvp to get anywhere.
this is getting rediculous...
# Dec 10 2008 at 6:16 AM Rating: Default
I can understand the Volley nerf. Most hunters saw this coming. 30% seems a tad harsh, but these are just preliminary figures as they stated. But truthfully...if your CD on FD is up and you are on trash or just farming multi-mob groups soloing...you can boost Volley back up by running in, using explosive trap, using FD, running back out and then popping off volley...explosive will tick for the entire time Volley is channeling...and Viola'...there is your AOE DPS back where it was or better.

I think the Steady-shot nerf is going to make Hunters of ALL spec's mad/disapointed...but once again...preliminary.

Kind of disapointed on BW's nerf in synergy with readiness.



One thing that makes me take issue with these changes to Hunters in general is that Hunters have had ISSUES with other "Bugs" with their skills/talents since patch 3.0 came out...and yet they haven't been seen as "Important" enough to fix.

For instance, many times when in PvE and You are soloing...when you FD the pet stops attacking and the mob evades and runs back to it's position and resets. {and my pet was actively attacking it before} Or...even weirder...you hit FD and the mob doesn't run away and your pet doesn't disengage...but the mob's HP's reset to 100% again... I have talked to many Hunters who have also experienced this repeatedly.

Also...Lick your wounds doesn't work properly nor does Phoenix. You can't rely on the pet to manage THEIR OWN skills...which is a bug..and is a well known one. With lick your wounds, the skill should automatically go off on your pet when it is down to about 30% HP's...it doesn't...you have to manually click it. If you can't or don't notice because you are trying to deal with an add...now you have a Dead pet. Same with Phoenix...when the pet dies, the tooltip says, it is 'instantly' brought back to life.... Not so...he will stay dead...and you will then have a mob up in your grill trying to eat your face off. You have to manually click the skill for it to work...which is far from "Instant" and is yet one more thing I have to watch out for, and one more button I have to push.



To me, the above are pretty significant "Bugs" that should be addressed BEFORE the DPS issue. Bugs>nerfs first IMO
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Edited, Dec 10th 2008 10:06am by PrometheusUnbound
this is getting rediculous...
# Dec 10 2008 at 6:49 PM Rating: Decent
Quote:
Also...Lick your wounds doesn't work properly nor does Phoenix. You can't rely on the pet to manage THEIR OWN skills...which is a bug..and is a well known one. With lick your wounds, the skill should automatically go off on your pet when it is down to about 30% HP's...it doesn't...you have to manually click it.

Eh... not to burst your bubble, a few hunters might have this problem, and then some don't. My g/f's Devilsaur does Lick Wounds like every 25-30% and I or she never had to click the ability as it was set to automatic. Now a glitch I've experienced is with cower constantly coming back on after pulling out a pet or logging back in and while dismounting/dismounted automatically and my pet's action bar dissappearing until I relog.

Also, hunters stop complaining you get nerfed every patch, you aren't the only ones. Ret pallies had it the worst until 3.0, then they kicked *** and now got nerfed to a reasonable spec. Now if you'd pay attention you'd realize some hunters could out dps mages, now that should't be too big a deal, but mages and hunters should roughly be the same dps in total with a difference only in gear and trinket/weapon/spell/ability buffs. So it shouldn't be much higher or lower. Hunters the only thing you should complain about is enhancement shammies stealing your gear. other than that don't complain, otherwise blizz might just make you guys just like the former ret pallies..completely useless.
this is getting rediculous...
# Dec 11 2008 at 12:07 AM Rating: Decent
Dorojin wrote:
[quote]Also, hunters stop complaining you get nerfed every patch, you aren't the only ones. Ret pallies had it the worst until 3.0, then they kicked *** and now got nerfed to a reasonable spec. Now if you'd pay attention you'd realize some hunters could out dps mages, now that should't be too big a deal, but mages and hunters should roughly be the same dps in total with a difference only in gear and trinket/weapon/spell/ability buffs. So it shouldn't be much higher or lower. Hunters the only thing you should complain about is enhancement shammies stealing your gear. other than that don't complain, otherwise blizz might just make you guys just like the former ret pallies..completely useless.



excuse me, just cuz some hunters out dps mages so the whole class gets a nerf? do you know how many hunters out there can't even dps pass the tank nvm mage? hell, better yet, i see some tank running no.1 dps in group, maybe we ought to nerf that class. blizz always use pvp as scale to "balance" pve classes, that is just wrong. who gives a rat's **** about pvp? not i.

give me a break, fix bugs frist before you ***** around with any class.
not nice
# Dec 09 2008 at 7:42 PM Rating: Decent
I don't PvP because have not been able to survive more than 2 seconds within getting attacked. So I quest and quest and quest. Now you are going to take away my survivability in that. I like WoW over other games for the soloability of the game. If I wanted to HAVE to group up to do anything in game, I would still be playing Everquest.

As far as my pet goes, she should do more damage as opposed to other "summoned" pets. I tamed her when I first got the ability to tame. She is a part of me, we are a team. She fights with me and to protect me. Other classes summon their pets from the air. Those pets should not have the same relationship with the summoner. They are forced to be there and fight. Yes, my pet was forced at first, but she became a loyal friend as we fought and grew together.

Edited, Dec 10th 2008 10:43am by ladyleo
good
# Dec 09 2008 at 5:08 PM Rating: Decent
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Yes they do need nerfed. For a class that has a pet they do way too much damage by themselves. I would rather see them nerf them in PVP personally as about all my defenses as a mage are useless on many hunters. Can't snare survival hunters, can't do any type of stun whatsoever despite the fact they use mana silence does nothing to them. Then you get to top it off with overpowered pets that do all sorts of funky stuff.

Now if they would just do a proper nerf to paladins.


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Hi
Nerfing Hunters again?
# Dec 09 2008 at 11:37 AM Rating: Default
Sounds about right. The class that needs nerfed the most (Death Knights) keeps going on and on. Hunters do not need the nerf bat again. Love the above post..
Nerfing Hunters again?
# Dec 11 2008 at 5:34 AM Rating: Decent
I agree with this. Why in the world would you even worry about Hunter DPS when DKs coast through areas 3 or 4 levels above them. Frankly, I don't care whether another class has an easy or difficult time in PVE because it rarely has a direct effect on me. I DO care about their power in PVP because that impacts everyone in the game, especially given the fact we are forced to participate in PVP if we want gear that won't get us laughed off the server. Any nerf to Hunter PVE will invariably impact us in PVP. It ain't broken so please don't fix it.
Thx
# Dec 09 2008 at 11:31 AM Rating: Default
Hunters: Hey Bllizard we suck in the arena

Bliizard: Don't worry we'll help you out.

Hunters: Great, how?

Blizzard: We're gonna nerf you PVE damage

Hunters: What the fudge?
Thx
# Dec 09 2008 at 9:05 PM Rating: Decent
haha that made me laugh so much! lol

:D

and so true ><

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