Hunters will be FINE in arena @ 80.

#0 - Nov. 14, 2008, 6:06 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Look at the differences between Hunters before WotLK and after. Hunters get:

DISENGAGE on a 20 second cooldown (any PvP hunter without the disengage glyph = instant fail). 16 seconds with talents. Disengage makes such a huge difference, if you don't think so, learn to play.

PETS are far sturdier... they have more hit points, more resistances, and talents that make them pretty awesome. Tenacity pets are pretty much unkillable with the 40% healing buff. Other pets get crazy utility, like interrupts/stuns/cast time debuffs, or things like instant ressurection, permanent sprint... the list goes on.

Yes, Blizzard did screw up and force hunters to keybind even more skills. The only real nerf was to arcane shot when they removed the dispel. But guys, seriously. Hunters will be FINE. Don't worry about it.

Especially in 3s and 5s. You have a 41 yard mortal strike that can be immediately applied, all you need is a paltry few hundred mana and LOS for a split second. No other class has that ability.

Hunters will be just fine. Have faith. ^_^
#23 - Nov. 14, 2008, 10:38 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
More hunter threads please.


I would agree that it's not the best use of the forums to launch many threads on similar topics. It just makes information, which already isn't easy to find, even harder to find.

Now I don't mean to disparage the thought that went into many of these hunter PvP threads. There are some really good points being brought up (as an aside one in particular that is getting a lot of talk around the office right now is hunter vulnerability to magic damage).

I am a little disappointed to see hunters say that their issues were not acknowledged however. Granted, most of those discussions took place in the beta forums, but I know that information is still readily available to anyone who is interested. You may not agree that our solutions to some of the problems will work, but I don't think it's fair to say we haven't discussed the issues at all.

I'll just leave it at this:

-- Do we think hunters were underpowered in the previous Arena seasons? Yes.

-- Do we think they will continue to be underpowered? We don't know yet.

-- ZOMG didn't the beta prove that hunters are still underpowered? This requires more explanation. PvP relationships are notoriously difficult to theorycraft. Mostly it just takes a lot of games. While we had some talented players in beta, it's still a very small sample size. Nobody was playing with their "real" character. Few players went through the effort to gear up (meaning enchant, gem and try out options) the way they will on Live. The balance in beta was changing very rapidly, including many bug fixes. We did give hunters some new abilities, some of them potent, and we did change several other aspects of combat that will affect balance. Hunter dps is by most accounts on the top of the charts in PvE, so clearly the problem is more complex than just buffing dps. We also realize that PvP balance can change over time without us doing anything? How can that be? Well, players experiment and adapt. New strategies and counters arise. Now that isn't an excuse for us to never address balance problems, but it is an acknowledgement that balance is dynamic, not static, even without our involvement.

-- Will we take steps to adjust hunters if they continue to be weak in Arenas? Yes. This is absolutely a concern of ours. To some extent my reputation is on the line here because I keep trying to assure players that we will make adjustments, and I know you'll throw it back in my face if we don't deliver. :) The game has only been out for a few days though, so it's just premature to make sweeping changes yet. I realize some knowledgeable hunters are convinced the changes we made were not enough. At the end of the day though, it is us, not the players, who need to make decisions about game design. We will always listen to your feedback when making our decisions though.
#28 - Nov. 14, 2008, 10:53 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
Thank you for the post - odd that you chose a flamebait trolling thread to post about hunters, however. Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised.


I read many pages of hunter threads trying to find the best one to respond to, but in the end I decided I was just taking too much time trying to figure out the best one. :)

Q u o t e:
Any chance you could actually pick one of those "in depth" hunter posts and address the specific concerns in there? Or is this "saying a lot without saying anything" trend going to continue?


I will try to do this soon. We have a lot going on right now -- which is not just code telling you I have to get to 80. :)
#56 - Nov. 15, 2008, 12:27 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
<sighs>

We've explained this, repeatedly.

Most of our PvE damage comes from Auto-shot and Steady Shot. Easily 50 to 80% (depending on individual skill, spec, and shot rotations of course). Both of those two shots are largely inaccessible to us in the Arena: They require us to be standing still, they require range, neither of those luxuries are in great supply for Hunters in the Arena.


Ooh, busting out the sighs. I like that. You could even try something like "We've explained this. Repeatedly." I kid. I kid. :)

We're agreeing here. I said boosting hunter dps is not what will make them move Arena viable. It's more complex than that. The damage actually needs to reach the target.

Q u o t e:
You'll have to forgive us. It's been 4 seasons of us not making the grade, so we're discouraged. The changes you've (again, the Dev team, not you specifically) have made don't look to be sufficient (to us). We're nonplused by your continued stance of "careful, incremental changes" when that's really all we hear.


I understand that, but it sort of throws a big tree trunk down on the path blocking further discussion. I say we'll fix hunters if they are still broken. You say you don't believe us. Well, we're kind of done talking then, yanno? The message I take is oh, what they're really trying to do here is just high five each other about how bad their class is or something.

We're talking to you a lot more on the forums now. You can take that as a sign that we might be handling things differently. Other than that, we're just going to have to let some time elapse and see where we stand. On both sides. (See what I did there with the fragments? You're not supposed to use them, but they can be pretty powerful.)

Q u o t e:
I wish you'd have said something like this on the paly forums when our entire front page, and the five pages behind it were covered by mages druids rogues and warriors the day after the patch hit. I went to actually discuss changes in holy, and spend the next two weeks sifting through mages in blues screaming it wasnt fair an S4 paly two shot him.


Well, okay, but now you've come in to post on what is essentially a hunter thread. I'm not sure that's going to buy you much sympathy from them. :) While we recognize that some amount of moderation is impossible to avoid, it's actually in your best interest to require as little of that as possible. My time here is X - Y where X = total time and Y = moderation time and a lot of you are asking to make X as large as possible.

While I feel your pain, it wasn't just the skilled S4 paladins killing people.

Q u o t e:
So while technically they are not a class, I do believe they should be treated as such. All specs (that mostly spec into one tree, i.e. hit 51+ points) should be viable in the arena.


That is our ultimate goal, but it will take some time. In the interim, if you can't have 3 viable Arena specs, a nice backup is to at least have 1 viable Arena spec. The alternative is to reroll.
#155 - Nov. 17, 2008, 11:46 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Parts of this thread were pretty good. Please try and keep it that way. If I have to spend time deleting replies that don't add to the discussion, then that is less time I have to read, respond, or you know, actually work on the game.