Hunters, Consumable Ammo, and Weapon DPS

#0 - Jan. 22, 2010, 7:19 p.m.

So, there was lot of whining when the ammo for 3.3 was introduced. Mostly just "OMG this is too expensive!" or "Now I HAVE to be an Engineer?"

Now we see how that's changed. The 91 dps bullets on my server go for 3-3.5g for a stack of 1000. Cheap as dirt. Basically you get 2 stacks for the vendor value of 1 sucky green item.

That's nice, but I'd still like to know if we're on track to remove consumable ammo from the game, if we're going to have no ammo and have our weapon DPS just scale to compensate, or if Blizzard has something a bit more exciting in mind.

Something like allowing us to enhance our ammo. Like dropping a crystallized fire onto a stack of ammo which would cause it to do a few more points of fire damage or place a burning DoT on the target. Something to make hunters a little more interesting. Hopefully not something we'll have to clown around with in combat, I've got too many buttons already

Thanks!

Ghostcrawler

#8 - Jan. 22, 2010, 9:19 p.m.

Q u o t e:
That's nice, but I'd still like to know if we're on track to remove consumable ammo from the game, if we're going to have no ammo and have our weapon DPS just scale to compensate, or if Blizzard has something a bit more exciting in mind.

Something like allowing us to enhance our ammo. Like dropping a crystallized fire onto a stack of ammo which would cause it to do a few more points of fire damage or place a burning DoT on the target. Something to make hunters a little more interesting. Hopefully not something we'll have to clown around with in combat, I've got too many buttons already

We haven't announced the Cataclysm ammo change yet, except to say that it will no longer be a consumable.

The simplest solution is certainly that ammo goes away and guns, bows and crossbows just don't ever run out of ammo. More complicated features might be more exciting as you say, but have potential downsides too. Applying fire to your arrows sounds cool, but is ultimately any more interesting than just having a "Fire Shot" ability. Do you really conceive of a lot of situations where you'd rather do Fire damage over physical damage? Having different kinds of arrows sounds interesting until you consider the delivery mechanism of having to "catch them all" through rare drops, badge vendors or the like. As you say, hunters do have a lot of buttons and a pet to manage, so I'm not sure they really need a whole additional mechanic to worry about.