Upcoming Hunter Changes

Lead game systems designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has outlined some upcoming hunter changes on the O-Boards, mainly because the developers are "concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes."

Here's one change you will likely see soon:

1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.

The rest of his post, which outlines other changes, can be found here or after the jump.

As I have suggested a few times, we are concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes. While we're trying to achieve closer parity among specs of all classes with regard to dps, and we want to particularly make sure that hunters, rogues, mages and locks are not left behind, we do think the hunters are too far ahead, particularly at 80, in good gear, when raid-buffed.

However, we have also tried to give hunters a substantial survivability boost in PvP and we don't want to do anything that hurts them too much in PvP.

So here are changes you will most likely see soon:

1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.

2) We are also improving the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to the dps of any class that does physical damage. For classes that would slide behind with such a change, we'll take steps to adjust them -- though it probably isn't as many as you think. The raid buff stacking overhaul was very beneficial to melee (and hunters). Sunder / Expose Armor alone can be a 20%+ dps increase, which is why we decided to attack the problem from this angle.

3) Now the armor change won't affect PvP at all and the haste buff change will only have a marginal affect in BGs and only in Arena teams that include certain comps. However, in order to make sure we didn't nerf hunters too much, we made two changes to Disengage. First, its cooldown dropped to 25 sec (from 30) which can be talented to 16. Second, it no longer requires a target, but does require you to be in combat. Now if someone closes to melee, you can leap back without having to select them first. We require you to be in combat though so we don't see a lot of hunters bouncing around IF / Org or using it like Blink to goofily speed up travel.

Comments

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BM hunters OP?
# Oct 23 2008 at 1:51 AM Rating: Decent
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1,882 posts
I seriously don't see the need for a nerf. My hunter is no more over powered than any other DPS class now is and certain not to the disgusting degree as the retribution paladins. I'm speaking from a purely BG PvP angle.

Yes, we do lots of damage. Yes, we get lots of kills. But its really not that hard to do when all you have to do is get lost in a crowd and start spamming damage skills. I do the same on mage. Only difference is with my mage every melee player in the game thinks it cool to gank me. As opposed to a mail wearing hunter many classes will ignore or leave as a secondary target.

I know that since the patch I am not terribly hesitant dealing with hunters anymore. Pre patch my mage was usually eaten alive, its not so bad anymore. Not any worse than any other class. Its those ret paladins that are scary. I was one hit by one the other day. 8.5k health and 220 resillience and I was 1 hit by one. Insane. You don't see BM hunters doing that.

I don't have a problem with the nerfs myself. They seem very minor and will not effect game play (much) for me.
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# Oct 22 2008 at 6:45 PM Rating: Decent
This is not even close to nerfing Hunter's(mostly BM) in a PvP sense. Maybe its different at 80, but in the 70's their as OP'd as pallies are, or were.
What?
# Oct 22 2008 at 12:08 PM Rating: Good
Ok, I have a 70 hunter, and I agree they are not as easy to kill when playing other classes. But having one and understanding how they work, I really don't seeing this being enough of a nerf as they need.

Perhaps, something simple like just an over all -1% damage drop or something. ~shrug~
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