[PvE] Hunter hotfix concerns

#1 - June 10, 2013, 5:20 p.m.

I can understand why taking away pet special use is an attractive nerf for Hunters from a PvP standpoint, and even from a technical standpoint in PvE. All those abilities being used by all those pets could really stress the system.

I don't have a huge problem with the pets not using their buffs/heals/stuns and the like. It'll affect solo play in PvE mostly but maybe that's just a sacrifice that needs to be made.

What is a problem is that I also assume this means they don't use claw/bite/smack or rabid. That's a HUGE nerf to a dps cooldown. A dps cooldown we're going to pot during. A dps cooldown whose dps is nerfed over 60%.

And to compensate... a 15% damage buff to arcane shot?

On paper I realize this might math out (and it does on FemaleDwarf), but the mere fact that we are going to tend to stack Stampede with our pots and trinkets means this becomes a nerf in practice.

Accounting for that in FemaleDwarf with my gear, the Arcane Shot buff would have to be at least 20% to properly compensate.

My proposal, and my preferred solution is to go ahead and remove ability usage from pets in stampede EXCEPT growl (this is very important utility I am unwilling to give up and has ZERO impact on PvP), but buff their damage to 65% of pet damage from 25%. Stampede base damage remains the same but no pet specials i.e. extra buffs/heals/cc. Failing that increase Arcane Shot buff to 20%.

P.S. Totally willing to give a breakdown of my calculations if asked but as they are rather simple, I assume you can figure it out Blizz.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#50 - June 12, 2013, 12:47 a.m.

We’re aware that the latest round of hotfixes caused some confusion for many Hunters, and want to offer some insight into the logic and reasoning that led to these particular changes.

Patch 5.3 resulted in Hunters feeling a bit stronger in PvP than in 5.2, where we feel they were in a much better place overall. Stampede in particular has been proving troublesome. We originally designed it with an “empty your stables” theme primarily for flavor–we wanted you to be able to see all of your favorite pets. In practice, it turned into more of a “deck building” mini-game, where Hunters were managing their entire stable to bring as much crowd control, raid buffs, etc. as possible. That’s opposite of our intentions with the Mists stable redesign; we want you to be able to pull out whichever pet you feel is ideal for your current situation. If you’re instead filling your stable based on whatever’s ideal for Stampede, you lose that entirely.

Furthermore, this min-maxing led to Stampede being a bit stronger of a DPS cooldown than we’d really like, especially for Beast Masters (who are already quite bursty in PvP). The hotfix lets us tone Stampede back just a little, and once again allows Hunters to keep whichever pets they like in the stable.

With Blink Strikes, our goals with the original 5.3 changes were to reduce Hunter burst for PvP as well as give them a passive talent option. Generally speaking, we prefer active talents to be slightly superior to passive talents in the same tier. No one will choose an active talent if it requires more work for the same reward. So, we wanted Blink Strikes to be DPS-neutral. Instead, it ended up being a PvP buff, hence the hotfix.

Regarding the changes to Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, and Steady Shot, we had originally only buffed Arcane shot, but there was some risk that it would change Hunter rotations, which wasn’t our intent. We simply wanted to compensate for the Stampede and Blink Strikes changes. Ultimately, our goal with all of these changes is simply to tone back some of the outlying behaviors that were causing Hunters to feel a little too strong in PvP in 5.3, without much impact elsewhere.