A sincere thank you

Thanks for listening

seriously..I have been here since release and despite all the negative comments I can honestly say it is nice to know that we have a blue audience to in the very least hear our concerns

For the majority of us whoa re unhappy with the nerf, I can honestly say this post best sums up our concerns:

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Q u o t e:

Nethaera-

I think this poster's statement is the one I would particularly like addressed. I'm level 70 now, and all along the way I noticed other DPS classes scaling pretty nicely and getting some nice new 'toys' to play with to up their damage. What did we get? Steady shot that hit and crit for less than autoshot (I have Ash still), and Kill Command, a highly lackluster ability that basically wastes the global cooldown. My damage output, even with the newer ranks of arcane and multishot didn't go up by THAT much. By a little, but not by as much as I noticed other DPS classes doing.

Were we overpowered in pvp at 60? Hell yes we were a bit overpowered. Why is that though? My thoughts are because we were essentially doing the same damage we would be doing at 70, but at 60. I had essentially the same RAP at 60 as I do now at 70 (maybe around 100 more at 70, which isn't a whole hell of a lot).

(PvP sidenote) Now, during that month or so where we were level 60s doing almost level 70s damage, we dominated battleground scoreboards. Other classes noticed us sometimes doing 2x the 'damage done' as other DPS classes. "WTF?!" they said (one thing you'll notice is that according to some other dps classes, hunters supposedly aren't allowed to be doing any sort of decent damage). It's just the way hunters can do damage though, especially when faced with opponents who don't know how to neutralize us--let us stand in the back of the group with healers and multishot 3 targets that can crit for ~1500 and that damage done just racks up over the course of the game. Compare that with a rogue, warrior, or mage and they just can't compete with total damage done--although they might have absolutely destroyed several people from 100% to 0% throughout the game while our multishot spam only took people down a bit. You know what other classes dominated the damage done charts though? Warlocks. Why? Because they could dot up multiple targets. It's in effect the same principle of how hunters spammed multishot and why we were usually on top of the score charts. (/end PvP sidenote)

Anyways--on to Beta. With MANY people at 70 and from browsing the forums and talking to others I knew in beta, NO ONE thought hunters were overpowered. There was even a thread where beta players at 70 could rate other classes 'overpoweredness' and you know what? The majority of players--AT LEVEL 70--thought hunters were balanced (the thread is here if you care to take a look: http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1441133&sid=1).

FACT: This hunter nerf occurred BEFORE even a handful of players even reached level 70.
FACT: This hunter nerf went in with what, 2 or 3 days of PTR testing?

And what's the magical thing that happens to players as they make their way to 70? Oh yes, their amount of HP (even in level 60 gear) increases quite dramatically. Let's talk about one class in particular that has almost ALWAYS been hunter fodder--the mage. Mages at 60 in not the best gear seldom had more than 2.5k hp. Well geared ones had around 3.5k hp. It doesn't take many 1500 arcane and 1800 multishot crits to kill people with that little HP and armor mitigation (I had/have 7/9 Tier 3). Now that there are a couple of mages in my guild at 70, how much HP do they have? 6k. This is even before getting stamina-heavy level 70 gear. Warlocks have in the neighborhood of 8k hp, again in level 60s gear. Let's not even talk about warriors with 9-11k depending on spec, again without level 70 gear. 1500 arcane shot crits no longer seem like a big deal now do they? Or 2k multishot crits. Or even 1k silencing shot crits. I'm not even taking into account the fact that if we DON'T crit our damage output won't even make a DENT in our opponents with as much HP as they have when they FIRST reach 70 without any 70s gear.

And what did you guys decide to do? Oh yeah, nerf the damage output of a 41 point talent (go on the druid forums and notice druids defending their 41 point talent against posters saying it's overpowered by saying "IT'S A 41 POINT TALENT, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE POWERFUL!!11!!"---oh ya, just not the hunter ones, k) that only even DID much damage if you had a very slow weapon with a high damage range. Then? You straight up nerf the base damage of arcane shot, and make it so the better gear we get, the HARDER the nerf gets to our damage output. THEN, as if that wasn't ridiculous already, you nerf Barrage, which for SOME reason, was NEVER considered overpowered in HOW MANY YEARS? But oh, all of a sudden you have level 60s of every class complaining about again, level 70s damage output at level 60, you deem it overpowered BEFORE THE PLAYER BASE EVEN HITS 70 AND PVPs. That's what really kind of angers me. That there was almost no whining about hunters at level 70 on the beta forums, except perhaps for silencing shot, and you decide to nerf barrage? Barrage is a bread and butter talent for ANY marksmanship hunter for PVE damage as well as PVP (hell, even our TIER 1 set had essentially barrage as the 8 piece set bonus). Then, again as if that wasn't enough, you also nerf improved barrage. What did we get in return? Nothing.

Again, I think what angers the majority of the hunter community is that these nerfs came down before anyone really hit 70 and PVPd. They were almost solely based on level 60 PVP whining and had no basis in level 70 PvP. But what do these nerfs also affect? Oh yes, PvE damage. You know what was kind of nice in the 2.0 patch? Actually being kind of wanted in 40 man raids. Do you have any idea the amount of resentment and hatred a lot of clases have/had towards hunters before that patch? "Why do we need another hunter, a [insert other dps class here] does way more damage and brings more utility because their crowd control/stuns/whatever actually WORK in here?" Patch 2.0 comes along and lo and behold, hunters can actually somewhat keep up with the rogues and mages on the damage meters and we're somewhat welcome again on raids as a REAL contributor. Now that raids are no longer going to be 40 man and will instead be 25 man, you nerf our PvE damage output to basically level 60 levels again, and now we just dont contribute as much. Misdirection is a decent ability, but we are a DPS class and have to compete for raid spots with other DPS classes. For some reason, other classes don't think hunters should be doing any damage (/boggle).

Again, I apologize for the long-ish rant but I just wanted to get that off my chest--this essentially feels like an unjust nerf. If it turned out we were overpowered at 70 PvP and we were two shotting everything that moved, then yes, nerfs would probably be in order. But these nerfs happened with practically NO ONE on live having hit 70 yet, with VERY little PTR testing, and DESPITE MONTHS of beta with people at level 70 NOT AT ALL complaining about hunters except maybe for silencing shot.

What would I personally like, and what I think the majority of marks hunters would like? Rollback the nerfs except for the silencing shot damage reduction. Just roll them back. The ONLY nerf I could even possibly see as justified is the change to silencing shot, even though I am hesitant to agree with it simply because it IS a 41 point talent, only silences for a whopping 3 seconds, and only really crits for 1k or so, and against opponents with 6-11k just isn't that much (compare that to shadowfury for warlocks with is basically an AOE and aimable equivalent with the same cooldown as silencing shot that can crit for as much or more than silencing shot before the nerf from what I've seen of it). Roll the nerfs back and let people play at level 70. Take in feedback from THAT. NOT from level 60 for the reasons I said above several times (practically level 70 damage being done in level 60 battlegrounds against opponents who don't have the massively increased stamina levels that going from 60 to 70 provides, irrespective of gear).

Thanks for listening.

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I am sure you have read it already but I thought I would repost it and pull it out of the other thread to re emphasize the core concerns...

thanks again

*Edited the title- Nethaera