#0 - April 22, 2009, 9:41 p.m.
That being said, as good as survival may have been pre-3.1, the nerfs were way overdone. Blizzard made tweaks to every aspect of hunters, which seemingly did nothing too severe to hurt us. However, what people may not realize is that these collective nerfs add up to an overall nerf to the class that is much too big and bring us right back to the 'gimp' state we were in TBC.
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T.N.T. - Had to go, RNG stuns are a stupid mechanic, they always have been. However, the crit part of this talent being completely removed and not compensated for anywhere else (9% in total) is too much.
Explosive Shot damage - Had to be toned down as it was slightly over the top damage wise. Good change.
Disengage - Cooldown increased is a nerf that really hurts hunters in arena and is probably uncalled for. Classes have many ways to close in on hunters, the old disengage almost mirrored an intercept stun. As is right now, it makes it very difficult to get range on any melee. The biggest problem here is that hunters still have the melee deadzone. We're not casters in the sense that we can continue to do damage when someone is in melee. Hunters need reliable ways to get out of melee. The old disengage was perfect. Unnecessary nerf.
Aspect of the monkey glyph - Again, many people might not realize this, but this glyph was crucial for getting out of melee range. If a hunter were slowed and the melee were wingclipped, the hunter could slowly get out of melee with a sprint proc. Right now, wing clip does absolutely nothing since every class has spammable slows that are often more of a snare than wingclip. The RNG mechanic of this glyph may have been flawed, but there should be something to compensate. This along with the disengage nerf make it extremely difficult to get out of melee range.
Frost Trap and Entrapment - The slow was moved from 60% to 50%. Again, this suggests the same problem with the spammable snares. Frost trap is doing nothing to help a hunter get out of melee now. Especially when crippling poison and chains (f.e.) snare for more. As for entrapment, I agree that the RNG mechanic of it was quite imbalanced, however, it DID help hunters get out of melee. The new entrapment works fine except for one thing, it's too easy to immune a whole trap now. Nevermind that a trap being down is crucial for current Hunter dps given Lock and Load. The 2 second arm time being put back on traps isn't helping the case at all either. The 1 sec arm time on traps needs to be reimplemented and the 'immuning traps' NEEDS to go.
Wyvern Sting - Maybe this ability was over the top. 45 sec cd (glyphed), 10 sec instant cc may have been too good even though it could be dispelled by 3/4 healers, 2 totems and 2 racials. However, nerfing the cooldown and the duration together is going overboard. Either one or the other should have been implemented, not both.
Roar of Sacrifice - This ability can no longer be used on party members. I understand that chaining this on a tank in PvE can make most of the boss fights trivial, but did Blizzard fail to see the implications of this nerf in PvP? This ability was probably one of the best Hunter utilities brought to arena. Nerfing it because of PvE exploitation and leaving the ability gimp in PvP is wrong. Another solution should have been presented to disallow chain Roaring on the tank, while still allowing it in PvP. Perhaps a debuff?
Viper Sting - This ability is now completely broken. It is quite clear that Blizzard does not want hunters to drain anymore, and that's fine. No one liked the drain game. So, they presented a utility to Viper sting that benefits the Hunter's mana pool directly. It costs more mana to put this ability up than it does return given that 3/4 healers can dispel it. Remove the drain completely, keep the mana returned aspect and make it a full instant return.
This is essentially all the Hunter nerfs that have been implemented in 3.1. You take each one individually and it may not be such a big deal, but collectively, it gimps the class once again.
Now, these nerfs are more or less a result of survival hunters being too good in season 5. I've presented the nerfs and the major problems associated with the nerfs, hopefully something can be done.
Another issue of concern is that hunter's have been stuck into one good spec for some time now. I understand that the MM tree has been looked at and I understand that Blizzard is trying to make it viable again. However, the main problem with the MM tree is a) mana and b) too reliant on sting/debuff application.
