Readiness Nerf and Hunter PvE pt2

As I've mentioned before, we're still discussing Hunter concerns. When we have an update, we will share it.

Please do not mistake silence for ignorance; we're following the discussion closely, and your constructive feedback is extremely valuable as part of the testing process. If we didn't want to hear it, we wouldn't have a PTR Discussion Forum (or even a PTR) in the first place.

07/02/2013 01:21 PMPosted by Lore

As I've mentioned before, we're still discussing Hunter concerns. When we have an update, we will share it.

I said this 5 days ago, before a holiday weekend. We haven't somehow jumped ahead several weeks in development while everyone's been out of the office.

I know it can be frustrating to be patient, but that's just how our development process works. We're still pretty early in that process. As I've mentioned before, balance tuning typically takes place towards the end of the PTR cycle. Hunter sustained DPS in the wake of the Readiness nerf is a concern that we're well aware of and fully intend to fix -- when we get to that point.

For clarity: we know there are other issues than just Readiness. Arcane Shot vs Kill Command is one such issue that, again, we intend to fix. I will make sure to bring up the other concerns to the team as well.

He can be our man on the inside and a champion for our class. It would be risky and challenging, but, if he cares about this game and us, he absolutely should do it. If I could walk down the hall and force Greg to hear these issues I would do so in a heartbeat.

This is starting to get pretty off-topic, and I apologize, but I want to be clear: this is exactly what I do. Daily. For every class. My job as a World of Warcraft Community Representative, as it turns out, is to represent the community. I take my job very seriously. We all do.

I know all too well how frustrating it can be when you're concerned about something and it appears that we're being silent. I was in those shoes myself until very recently. Just please be aware that silence isn't necessarily a bad thing. In many cases, including this one, it means we're still actively discussing things and just don't have anything we're comfortable sharing yet.

We really do appreciate all of the feedback, both on Hunter concerns as well as how we can communicate better. This thread in particular should probably stick to Hunter concerns, but I want to be the very best (like no one ever was) and can always work to improve how we interact with you guys.

Alright, I have a few updates, followed by a request. Here’s what the developers are currently thinking about several of the issues brought up in this thread:

Regarding Stampede: We’re happy with the damage it’s currently putting out in PvP. For PvE, we’re planning to buff its damage pretty heavily, so it becomes a substantially more potent DPS cooldown. We don’t want to give it any more utility than it has now, for reasons we’ve explained at length already.

Readiness is still under heavy discussion, and we haven’t made a final decision on what we’re going to do with it in 5.4. At the moment, we’re leaning towards just removing the ability entirely and giving the affected abilities shorter cooldowns or charges to compensate. If we end up taking that route, we will buff Hunter damage (most likely across the board, not just specific abilities), but as I mentioned, we’re still discussing.

Murder of Crows vs Blink strike is also still under heavy discussion. Our goal (with all talents) is that active abilities used properly will outperform passive ones. We haven’t decided yet what adjustments we’ll make to achieve that in 5.4.

Scatter/Silencing Shot: We don’t consider interrupts to be mandatory in PvE. If a Hunter would rather not take the Glyph of Scattered Thoughts, there are plenty of other players in the raid who could take on the responsibility. We like Silencing Shot as a Marksman perk overall, but we’re still discussing things. We may end up making a baseline Interrupting Shot that gets upgraded to Silencing Shot if you spec Marksman.

Speaking of spec differences, we agree that Hunter rotations feel cooler when your signature shots do a lot more damage than other shots, and we’ll discuss that some more. That’s part of the reasoning behind the Arcane Shot changes – our hope is that saving up more Focus for a bigger hit will feel better than firing off smaller shots more regularly.

As to overall Hunter performance and utility, we don’t think the issues are with the Hunter class specifically. Instead, we think that certain other classes are overperforming (in both) at the moment. Fixing those outliers will, in turn, make a good Hunter more attractive for their raid spot. You may have seen some (but not all) changes along those lines on the PTR already.

Pet pathing errors are unfortunately extremely difficult to fix. A lot of the time, the problem isn’t with the pet AI but with the environment or encounter. That means there’s no blanket fix here; we have to resolve every such error individually. When reporting these problems, it’s most helpful to be very specific. “My pet has trouble getting to the boss during this phase transition on this encounter” allows us to reproduce the issue and come up with a fix. “My pet is dumb” does not.

Which brings me to my request. This thread has a lot of great feedback put together by a good handful of Hunters who just want their class to be fun – which is amazing! The issue is that, in order to find those helpful posts, we have to dig through hundreds of other posts that contain no helpful information whatsoever (and instead focus on how class X got more blue posts this week, or employee Y must just hate Hunters, etc.). There’s always going to be some of that, and we expect as much, but this thread has been particularly out of hand.

I’m not bringing that up because it hurts my feelings or whatever. That sort of thing doesn’t really affect me. I’m bringing it up because it makes it incredibly difficult for us to figure out what you’re actually upset about. When we have to sift through so much noise just to find something we can actually bring up in our meetings and discuss, the end result is that we have less to talk about in our meetings. I’m sure there are still some concerns that I didn’t address above – if that’s the case, it’s 100% because they got lost in the pile. That sucks.

So please, try to keep things constructive. You’re only hurting yourselves and your fellow Hunters otherwise. :)

There are only so many ways I can say "We know that Hunter DPS is low and we will fix it when we're satisfied that we're done messing with the underlying mechanics." This thread has long passed from being constructive, and quite frankly, the PTR forums are not the place to vent.

We know your damage is low. We are going to fix it. If you don't believe that, that's your choice, but ranting about it isn't going to accomplish anything.

My apologies to the Hunters that are being rational and constructive, but it's well beyond time for this thread to be closed.