#5 - Jan. 1, 2009, 2:27 a.m.
Q u o t e:
It bothers me that after years of testing and months on a beta no one thought about us being able to spec into readiness. I assume that readiness was moved up so that we can use it in BM as well as the other 2 specs since it is a major talent.
We did consider it, and thought it was an interesting talent build choice, but it ended up dominating. We made some changes pretty late in the cycle that ended up inflating hunter damage, especially the chunk coming from pets. We also went back and forth a little on which raid-wide buffs would affect ranged attacks. Hunter dps just ended up being higher than we thought.
Q u o t e:
As far as steady shot goes wont that hurt all 3 specs? MM and SUV much more than BM?
It affects all 3 specs, but we changed Arcane and Explosive to offset that some, as well as fixing a glyph that was hurting Marks. Steady was just a huge portion of hunter damage, and not a particularly interesting ability (in that you can just sit there and mash the button without worrying about timing other abilities around it), so when we wanted to bring hunter dps down, it was an attractive target. FWIW, ammo was another one. We considered nerfing how much damage all ammo in the game contributed, but went with the SS change for the reason I stated.
Q u o t e:
Also for years hunters havent had a great AOE ability, hitting with the original volly was a joke, now its great maybe a bit op on trash but I dont think anyone cares who is topping the trash meter and I have never seen a volly used on a boss.
I agree with the first part, which is why we buffed Volley quite a bit. But in retrospect, we buffed it too much. We didn't want hunters to have the highest single-target damage and highest AE damage, as well as bringing great buffs and CC to the group. With the new Volley, I expect every PvE hunter will still be using that button on large groups, but going back to Multi on smaller ones.
I disagree with the "trash meter" comment. For one, players do care about trash. Elemental shamans and rogues for example felt like there was so much AE'ing going on that they were not attractive specs for raids. Players can say "nobody cares about trash," but we don't buy it. Raids wipe on trash. Raids are called when trash respawns. For speed clears, to satisfy a hard mode achievement or bear-mount style challenge, the rate at which you can clear trash very much matters. If it didn't I'm not sure you'd mind a Volley nerf at all.
Second, you AE on an awful lot of bosses too.
