Brace Yourself

Brace yourself was the instruction given by a vacationing Ghostcrawler to his team recently. So what exactly are they bracing for? Class nerfs. Hunter nerfs.

Mists of Pandaria beta build 15913 gave Hunters power; lots of it. The level 90 talents doubled in strength. Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Black Arrow, Wild Quiver, Beast Master’s Mastery – all were buffed to unimaginable levels. Hunters were looking very good, alas too good. It wasn’t all buffs, there were some nerfs to be sure, but the net effect was that Hunters were stronger.

Now, it’s one thing if Ghostcrawler and team come out and say there’s a problem, but when members of the Hunter community, who are not Frostheim, come out and say it, then one must fear that things are too good be true, and there will be changes.

Exactly how changes will be implemented is yet to be determined. If one assumes that the pre-15913 numbers represent the floor then a best case scenario would be a simple across the board reduction of numbers to somewhere in the middle. But changes of this sort are never that simple.

No, it is more likely that some things will remain as is, while others will drop below the floor, and the rest drift towards the middle. Theorycrafters may resort to writing on tissues rather than napkins, as they are more suited to wiping away the tears from the depressing math that is sure to ensue.

It’s safe to say that Blizzard went way beyond eleven with these changes, but hopefully they keep Hunters at eleven or ten and don’t ratchet them towards the negative.

As of this writing the beta realms are down for maintenance as a new build is prepared. Perhaps it’s time to make ready the umbrellas and hard hats. Brace yourself!

Ghostcrawler – Please be gentle with the Hunter nerfs.
You are soon going to see damage go down for several classes and specs in cases where we overshot our targets or fixed bugs that required adjustments. Hunters are likely among these.
I am mentioning this because what inevitably happens is a host of posts across the Internet saying that x is now gutted, won’t get a raid slot, needs to reroof, was middle of the pack at best, and so on. It is most helpful to us if you want to argue that your DPS is too low (or high if you are being unusually honest) that you are specific about what situations you are talking about, against who you are comparing numbers and what those numbers are. If the Windwalker is doing 300,000 DPS in your challenge run, chances are that is not our new target.
(As I told my team recently, had I better access to a PC at the moment (I’m a long way from home as you can probably guess by the posting times), I would make a new version of the Ned Stark brace yourself meme image.)

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