Another week and another set of responses to concerns about Hunters.
IE of mech. simplification: SV LnL proc fishing via BA/trap swaps. IE of mech. play: BM focus fire delay for Wild Hunt
Getting rid of the LnL trap swap was a really common hunter demand. Felt more annoying than skilled play to me personally.
I always felt that having Black Arrow and Explosive Trap share a cooldown was annoying. It led to balancing issues, where the developers needed to ensure that Explosive Trap wasn’t more beneficial to use over Black Arrow, and it forced you to choose one over the other, which was especially problematic in PvP. I like the decoupling of the two. I also like having Explosive Trap available for AoE situations, as well as for knockbacks in PvP. Not the I PvP mind you.
If the idea was for Stampede to only damage shouldn’t it be the same for the Shaman? Just want to understand design decision
With wolves, you just get what you get. Problem with Stampede was it became this meta game of configuring your stable.
You can make a pitch for a stable meta game, but what we were trying to do was let hunters use the pets they wanted.
The stable meta-game was indeed a problem early on when you could do crazy things like stack five Spirit Beasts and turn Hunters into a virtual healing class. Obviously gimmicks like that were never the intention of this ability. It’s been buffed for Patch 5.4 and probably has achieved a good state of damage and fun. I still wish the visuals on it were better. I hate that in a raid encounter there is usually too much going onto appreciate Stampede in action.
Then why do we still need to be a specific spec and use a specific pet to get bloodlust?
There are 6 other specs that bring Bloodlust. The hunter version is just there as a last resort.
We’d consider letting all hunter specs bring any pet buff though.
The notion that every spec can bring every buff is something I endorse. Keep exotic pets in the game and allow them to bring two buffs, but let every spec be equal in terms of what they can bring.
So, why wasn’t Exhilaration buffed to compensate for the removal of Readiness? Now it’s even worse than it was before.
Removing Readiness was intended to be a nerf to PvP defenses. Took us a long time to get hunters PvP viable, but they are now.
Along the way we had given lots of small PvP buffs that became OP in MoP, probably because of the min range change.
Movement was sort of a buff, but only to less skilled players since skilled hunters always Aspect twisted.
So they answered why they didn’t buff Exhilaration, sort of, but they didn’t explain why it’s so weak that nobody would ever to choose to take it. The goal was to help with Hunter survivability, but I expect changes to this in 6.0.
If we’re still talking about Hunter button reduction, can I ask your thoughts on Aspects? Necessary or could they be baked in?
They were never that interesting IMO. Keep pack as a toggle and lose the rest I say. #notanannouncement
Not an announcement, but certainly and indication that those with the power to make changes don’t like aspects. I fully expect them to be gone in 6.0. They are the new ammo.
Going into Cataclysm there was a lot of talk about changing ammo and making it more interesting. We certainly had lots of ideas for that on the podcast.
While I’m sure the community and Blizzard could come up with interesting things to do with aspects, my sense is they’ll take the easy route and bid them farewell and focus on other areas of the class.
So there you have it. Patch 5.4 is right around the corner. No podcast tomorrow, but we will back on September 7th, with special guest Zeherah.
Good Hunting!
That’s rather sad, aspects aren’t exactly contributing to button bloat. If anything the only thing holding them back is making them direct damage buffs. Bake in Aspect of the Hawk and add new aspects that are more quality of life improvements. Let’s say that they bring back Fox and that’s our “default” aspect, but they include things like Aspect of the [insert sea mammal of choice here] which increases the time we can spend underwater, and maybe a single defensive aspect which reduces damage done and taken by 25% so we only use it to help healers on major damaging moments. This would bring back Aspect dancing, but wouldn’t make it so essential that failing would ruin it.
The main reason nothing interesting was done with Ammo as far as I’m aware, is that it would mean introducing an item only one class could use (which they’ve now done anyway), and would only complicate matters because there would be a “best for DPS” one that everyone would go after. Not to mention adding a whole new type of item to the game and all the complications that would come with it.
Aspects aren’t like that at all and it would be a real shame if they went the same way as Ammo when they hold so much potential for fun. If anything they’re more like Eyes of the Beast, a fun little extra that we didn’t really need, but made for an enjoyable ability all the same (see also Eagle Eye), but was gotten rid of because it was one button too many. I for one would mourn the passing of aspects more than any other hunter ability.