Upcoming Hunter Changes (12/9/08)Follow

Pre-LK patch, Hunters topped the Raid damage meters if they were being run right. The only time I ever fell into the #2 or even sometimes #3 slot, in Kara, was when a MUCH better geared Hunter, Mage or Lock was with us and the Lock was only useful in some places in Kara. I never felt embarassed.

After the initial LK patch (but pre-LK), you couldn't strip me out of the #1 spot except for another BM hunter and we were usually very close. It was rediculous damage bonuses. Volley rocked so much that in the AOE mob groups I was routinely beating out a better geared Lock in AOE. Nothing lived long enough to hit me more than once or twice.

This is why the comments of 'you should have seen this coming' are being said.

Blizz will work out realistic numbers on the PTR so just take what you see as preliminary numbers, it says so in the posts. Let them work it out, almost all of us saw this coming after the first week of the patch release and we collectively went 'wow, whatta boost!' just look at the past threads.

Most hunters do not PvP because right now, PvP'ing Arena-wise is an exercise in futility. BG's are another matter, currently we rock if played right. World PvP, we suck if we don't get the first shot in we are dead against most melee classes. Against ranged classes, we should eat their lunch and dinner even if they get the first shot in. If you are a BM hunter, any ranged caster class should see you and run the other way unless they way out-level or out-gear you.

So when Blizz is talking PvP here they mean 'Arena'. There are a lot of problems with Hunters in Arena and I think they'll find that Deterrence won't fix crap. It's the build of the Arena's. Make 1 or 2 Hunter friendly ones and you might see some team balances change. As it is, a Hunters' strengths run opposite of the 'blood and gore' in the middle concept Blizz wants out of their Arenas. Hunters need to have slightly elevated, limited access, edge bound positions to overlook and fire across long LOS positions. Catwalks, raised pathways, etc. would allow a team to fully utilize a hunter as fire support. Mages do not need this, Locks don't need it. Hunters excel at these kinds of open field fights. We then need the tools to disengage when someone is in our face. Most are already there but need a little polish, now we just need the arena designs to cooperate. That's just my $0.02 on the Arena PvP and "Why Hunter Suck" topic. I could be entirely wrong... ^_^

I know this is an odd question, but to a hunter like me, around level 22-23, does this do anything significant to hinder the fun of a hunter? I only PvE and I hear most of the changes are around that.

i actually never used Volley so I'm not too disappointed

like the kill shot though! :D

Also, just in case it wasn't clear in the original post:

It's confirmed that the proposed nerf to Serpent's Swiftness only applies to the pet. So fully talented (5/5) Serpent's Swiftness would read:

"Increases ranged combat attack speed by 20% and your pet's melee attack speed by 10%."

My hunter is only 75 but I seem to be topping instance DPS without my pet included.

I agree Hunters need a nerf but I think this might be overkill.

You know, comparing damage while leveling in 5mans is not a very good base for a fair comparison.
While leveling I also topped DPS charts, by quite a bit. With a full set of T6 + Sunwell gear + Thoridal and all enchants you can get, most had not the slightest chance to compete.

At 80, with everyone having replaced their equip (my raid group is currently in 70-90% lvl 80 epics) things look a bit different.
Yes, I really stomp the charts in 5mans and heroics (though some classes can compete there).
But in raid instances, the dps output of all classes is lot closer. Hunters do not lead the charts in every fight. There are some fights where hunters are really strong, and there are quite some fights where are other classes come out 1st.
A small nerf is warranted, but the nerfs discussed here are just a bit too much.

I believe blizzard is looking at this the wrong way.

Alot of classes are doing significant DPS right now and the reason is the near complete removal of the threat cap. It also makes playing dps classes alot less challenging. I almost never need to FD now, hardly ever look at omen, ect. This used to be one of the challenges to playing the game and has made everything alot easier.

There are WWS out there with rogues/mages/warriors doing sick dps on patchwerk.

Nerf to volley and slight pet nerf was in order for sure, but until aggro management comes back a group can be heavily weighted for any class to do crazy DPS.

ok, volley was definatly comin, so it a mile away. i think its to much but won't qq till i see what actually happens. Same with the pet dps. I do think that exotics however should have 10% dps or so over normal pets just to give BM's a reason to spend the point in BM. Right now there is no reason to carry that huge and loud devilsaur around if it dosen't out dps the cats or raptors. deterrence sounds great and would proably help a lot more with a faster cool down on disengage. I'm dreading losing dps on steady shot, think you guys could try the volley and pet nerfs first, that seems like enough to bring us down to par with other classes. Also could try a bigger armor buff for our lack of survivability, Just my thoughts though, i'm not a dev.

This was actually changed during the beta. The current behavior is intended and far better if you think about it. Usually there is a reason a pet died, and if they insta rez they could simply die again. I think it's nice to have the control to rez them whenever we want.

Taking BW off of readiness simply kills the 50/21 build.

I understand these are for now just PTR changes, and that they are over-doing the nerfs to see how bad it really hurts our dps then they can scale the nerfs back to bring us back in line.

6) Kindrid 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.

I think either one of these is a huge nerf by themselves and would probably fix the problem. The nerf to steady shot is just insane and I can't see that making it live. That would probably put us from #1 to #10 on the 25man charts. Our advantage is only slight, and the moment our pet can't dps (either becuase its dead or has to back out of aoe damage), we are no longer #1. The change to serpents swiftness not only will hurt pet dps tremendously, its going to lower FI uptime and we are going to lose out on invigoration procs since the pet is attacking slower and getting fewer crits becuase of it.

I don't think the change to volley is a bad one. Especially since they are saying they are going to probably nerf the aoe of most classes. But I don't think volley is over-powered either. In my raids if there is any type of AOE the shadow priest is raping the charts, not the mages or locks, much to my surprise.

/changed stance

/hope on


Hmmm,...After reading these and many other threads on this elsewhere, I have been crunching some numbers. I like Xsarus also think that SS nerf may not make it to live. After looking at it from all angles, I declare the glass to be "Half-Full".
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Oh yeah, missed that one.


Its not 1000dps every fight, all the time. Our latest patchwerk we had 4 hunters in the raid, 2bm's, 2 marks. The 2 bm's were #1 and 2, one MM was 4th, adn the other was not in the top 10, as his gear wasnt on par with the rest of the raid. Mages, boomkins, and even shadow priest are competing, all of us being within 5-6% of the #1 dps. On Grobulus, the mage and shadowpriest are tops, and the hunters were more middle of the pack because our pets can't really dps the boss there most of the time. I still contend we are not miles ahead of other pure dps's with similar gear.

What has changed the most for hunters is how well pets are scaling with our stats. As gear improves, this difference will be less and less, and the QQ'ing should be less also. Pet dps will eventually top off (hit a soft cap, if you will), but everybody else's will continue to improve.