Monday, August 27, 2012

Monday Random Thoughts

- On the monday before a major patch the random thoughts of a natural born hunter turn to hunterly things.

- Of course not all are just for hunters.

- Like AoE looting.

- We hunters can share that one, we are nice like that.

- But we are keeping fetch to ourselves thank you very much.

- /targetlasttarget  /cast fetch  and we never need to move to loot again.

- There are a few things that confuse me in the changes.

- Our pets get 50% of our hit as hit and expertise and 50% of our expertise as hit and expertise.

- Why not just 100% of both?

- I think it is a way for them to force hunters to cap both.

- I still say expertise should be removed from the game.

- Said it before hunters needed it, still say it now.

- Missed shots now refund 80% of our focus.

- I can't remember the last time I ever missed.

- I'm a hunter, I don't miss, ever.

- Don't even like the prospect of that being possible.

- With my horrible luck my DPS would drop like a rock.

- Even if I only have a 1% chance to miss I bet I would miss 10% of the time.

- That is how my luck works.

- I am the only person I know that has ever went an entire 10 minute fight without the staff from deathwing procing.

- Not kidding.

- Even checked recount to see if maybe I did not notice.

- It never proced once.

- That is how my luck works.

- I wonder if that means misses due to effects count as misses for focus regen reasons.

- Would an absorb count as a miss?

- I doubt it, that would be so over powered in PvP.

- But that would be cool.

- Sorry, but like I said I never miss, so I don't know if things like absorbs count as misses for mechanics like that.

- Anyone else excited for exhilaration for soloing?

- A lay on hands for our pet tank on a two minute cooldown.

- Yes please.

- And it heals us for 30% too.

- Soloing just got so much better.

- AoE looting and a lay on hands for our pets.

- We will need it because our pets are losing a crap ton of armor.

- But that is not all we have for soloing.

- Growl is now a true taunt.

- Readiness for all specs might mean I solo in something other than marks.

- Love the change to kill command too, with a built in dash if your pet is not in range.

- Target switching your pet just became a skill that a good hunter will shine at.

- But will the cost of kill command be worth it for marks and survival?

- Now that is a snap judgement thing where skill and knowledge will make the biggest difference.

- Aspects are now on the global cooldown too which will really show some skill also.

- Being it is on the cooldown now that means you lose a shot.

- I hate that.

- But now the skilled hunter, besides being sharped dressed and stylin', will know when to switch and when not to and it will reflect in a much larger DPS gain/loss to do it at the correct time.

- Speaking of growl being a true taunt now, I was talking about that right, I can think of so many raid applications for it.

- It better work on raid bosses.

- Camo can be used in combat now, that should be a neat addition, even if it is aimed more at PvP.

- Lets not forget one of the biggest changes to hunters, no minimum range.

- I can not tell you how many times I yelled at my screen because of range issues.

- No more will I have to stand a little back and possibly miss a bit of the AoE healing.

- No more will the tank shift the mob causing me to move.

- No more will I have to step in to raptor to decrease damage.

- Well, no more raptor now either.

- Glad they gave us concussive shot back.

- I wanted to cry when they removed it.  It is such a huge shot for the knowledgeable hunter.

- They said to glyph arcane and that will make it do a concussive as well.

- And pay focus and waste a glyph spot for something that was free, no thank you.

- It was a great day when they added it back and a huge win for the hunter community.

- Immolation trap is gone along with our melee abilities and I won't miss it.

- I'm trying to figure out if I ever used it.

- And I am a hunter that used all his abilities, so much so I had over 100 key binds at one point.

- If I did not use an ability, the ability had no use.

- Being I did not PvP this expansion I lowered my number of key binds a lot.

- I have only 58 right now.

- And I do not bind a lot, like professions, mounts, or things like that.

- Goes to show you how many things are PvP only.

- They say hunters have the highest skill cap in the game in PvP.

- I'd say they do in PvE as well, even more so now.

- Easy to play, hard to master.

- That is a hunter 100%.

- I don't think I like the idea I am carrying around a whole freaking zoo with me however.

- Thank god we do not need to carry around enough food to feed them all to keep them happy now.

- Could you imagine them all turning on you?

- Murder of crows and stampede make for a massive amount of animals and I fear for the poor soul with an old computer in a 25 man that has 6 or 7 hunters in it.

- Lag city for them.

- Upgrade those graphic cards now if you play a hunter.

- Or play with them.

- It is almost like army of the dead on steroids.

- And much cooler looking.

- I remember calling out the crows and stampede with a snake trap on those big 1M hit point spiders on beta.

- I never even needed to fire a shot, they ripped everything in their path apart.

- Don't expect that now, they tuned them down quite a bit since then.

- But that was sick.

- I walked around and an army of animals killed everything.

- As fun as that was and sounds, I would really like to go true marksman.

- Just me and my long ranged shots killing everything from a distance.

- Speaking of traps, we were speaking about traps right, I love that trap launcher is now a toggle ability.

- I leave it toggled on all the time and just position the trap.

- One less key press is a good thing.

- Hunters look like their rotation now makes warlocks look like arcane mages.

- Number of buttons wise for the standard rotation that is.

- But at least we don't have to deal with all those dots.

- I can't wait to try out all those toys but I worry there are too many of them.

- I also worry that all those toys will confuse the young hunters and make the gap between good and bad even larger.

- It looks like quivers might be making a comeback.

- I wonder if we could choose skins.

- My hunter with his epic bow and his epic quiver.

- Now that would be cool.

- I don't transmog much but I would transmog that.

- The quilen pets look kind of cool and come with a battle resurrection ability.

- Makes you wonder what class it next in line for a battle resurrection.

- Cool thing is with all pets being able to fill all roles that pets fill, damage, tank or PvP, you can bring the buff you want easier.

- That means if you are BM, which seems like it might be viable again, you can bring hero/lust, you can bring a battle resurrection, heck, as BM you can bring anything your little pet collecting heart desires.

- I can see some 10 mans wanting their hunters to roll BM as long as the DPS is in line even if slightly less just because it makes them the most versatile class/spec in the game buff wise.

- About the most lackluster new ability hunters get is thanks to symbiosis from druids.

- We get dash.

- Yes dash.

- It might have some uses but come on.  This is a chance to do something awesome and we get to run fast?

- Give us a healing spell from resto, a healing touch, lifebloom or something nice like that.

- Give us some sort of CC from balance like cyclone or entangling roots.

- Give us berserk from feral so all our shots hit 3 things instead of 1.

- Give us barkskin from guardian druids.

- Heck, if you were going to give us one spell from all and it remains the same, barkskin would have one thousand and one more uses than dash does.

- So for the worse new hunter ability, look at druids.

- If druids really wanted to give the hunters something useful, how about giving us the ability to tame them.

- I know a feral druid I would tame the first chance I get.

- Who wouldn't love a pet that could do 50K DPS all on its own?

- Okay, guess that is aiming too high, I'll settle for barkskin.

- Heck, anything but dash would be nice.

- One thing that hunters are seriously missing is more stable slots.

- The game keeps adding new rare pets that they want us to have fun taming and makes sure they give us a challenge to get them, but they don't want us to keep them apparently because we have no space for them.

- It is a catch 22 here.

- No new unique rare pets and keep our stable as is or give us more and force us to choose.

- If we get more we have some hard choices to make and if we don't we get nothing new.

- Look at it this way, we are lucky, no other class in the game gets something put in just for them like hunters do.

- We get unique tames that take time to design.

- The down side is, we get unique tames that take time to get.

- And if you are not a camper like me, you don't have any.

- Except those darn spiders in the molten front.

- They seem to always be there, now at least.

- Besides those that like to mog things you know the worst thing about losing our melee weapons?

- We can not have our ranged weapon and a fishing pole equip at the same time.

- I always liked that I did not need to switch my weapon if I got attacked while fishing.

- I am going to miss that more than I miss having a melee weapon.

- For now I am done but I will leave you with one thought.

- Vegetarian is a native american word for bad hunter.

- Don't be a vegetarian.

- Have a great day.

4 comments:

  1. You missed something important with the no melee weapon. No longer will giant hunters run about the raid. :o(
    Still. We would only have that for another month anyway.

    For me the patch happens tomorrow (being from the UK) and I am at work anyway. But I agree that people shouldn't moan. It is certainly better now than on the 25th.

    Fetch will be awesome. Although I think I would prefer having a companion that could auto-loot (A little version of the money goblin from D3?) would be even better.

    I too am confused about the miss chance. Maybe it will help with leveling when your hit/expertise is usually far from correct.

    I am not sure about exhileration. I might take the one that heals (like BM does now, 4.3). Will mean less down time between killing mobs.

    I did not realise about the pets losing armour. Have to look into that. Going to seriously effect the pet tanking ability!

    Personally I think putting aspects on the GCD is bad. I know there are some idiots out there that macro their aspects to shots (Cobra and instant fox). Which has got to be such a dps loss. But I think this takes away from the hunters who were good and could change aspects at will when they wanted. Any time when I was running and wanted to get a couple of Cobra shots off to get my focus back up, that will now be gone. Can't waste two seconds changing to fox and back again. Will just have to make sure I have focus for those small moving sections or put up with what focus I have. In DS I am struggling to see a single fight I would want to change to fox. In fact the only fight coming to mind right now is Atramedes. Won't see many of those I think.

    I don't do much PVP. But I do want to try and get into it again in MoP. That will be interesting with either being in fox or hawk. Hmmmm.

    The minimum range thing never made any sense to me. You know what, makes as much sense as hunter's using mana. Crazy thought right. You ever seen a guy/girl not shot someone (with gun/bow/crossbow) in a movie or whatever just because they were stood too close. Reminds me of Legolas shooting through several orcs at close range. Oh that would be cool. New hunter power :D

    Never used Immolation trap either.

    Really looking forward to tomorrow. Think I might reforge tonight to save me time to play with the more fun stuff.

    I hope that the patch is up for you when you get home. Happy Hunting :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Macroing cobra/steady to fox always was a lose. People needed to be smart and know when to change and not change automatically. I tried to macro it but never felt comfortable with it and did it on my own.

      I was a bit upset about the armor loss as well. I like pet tanking and that loss will mean a lot to use in that aspect.

      Yeah, minimum range never did make sense. You saying I can not shoot someone at close range? I agree. Bow I could understand maybe, but gun? Never made sense.

      Hope the patch when better for you than it did for a few of the people that posted here.

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  2. Hunter has the highest PvE skill cap? Come now, Ge, that's going a bit far.

    I'm not going to argue that warriors are rough going (quite the opposite, actually), but many people play hunter alts in PvE precisely BECAUSE they're dog easy to play and get results on.

    Warlocks remain the highest PvE skill floor and ceiling on live. I'm not even convinced hunters have the highest ceiling in PvP, but I could at least be persuaded about it.

    Question, though:

    A friend of mine was talking about the placing of Aspects on the GCD - not being much of a hunter myself, how are you finding that particular change and can you reasonably explain why they took that route?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You question first:
      I do not like it. Glad they are changing it back.

      The reason I do not like it is that you lose a shot to change aspects. It would become a huge change in an already difficulty timing or a rotation, even more so for marksman which one mistake of even half a second means you lose 20% of your DPS.

      So lose a shot and possibly screw up your rotation or just move and don't shoot for 1 second keeping your timing. The second would be best in many cases, but now the hard part.

      Will you need to move again right away? If so, you were better of using the GCD on fox because now you are losing more. If it is off the GCD you can change is as needed and keep going. On the GCD you need to not only think of it is worth shifting it now but when will you be able to shift it back and are you going to need it long enough to be worth shifting.

      Why they did it? They did it because they wanted to make it feel like an actual choice and not something you macro in. Apparently they did not realize the only way it can be macroed means every shot need to have 2 macros. So it was an actual choice. Make all those macros and use them all or do it with two button clicks. It was still a matter of skill on when you could squeeze it in or not and when you use it. Giving it a GCD removed the skill of it and made it a completely mathematical equation.

      They are removing if from the GCD again. So it is now a non issue. They noticed they were wrong.

      Now to the rest.

      "easy to play" are your words and I notice you did not say "easy to play well".

      Yes, hunters are the easiest class in the game to play. They are good right out of the box. You can do respectable just going in and picking your top three damage dealing abilities and do quite decently. If you are swift enough to add 2 more things and a cooldown or 2 you will probably even beat 90% of the people you see in LFR. So I agree, they are easy to play.

      You will get no argument from me there.

      The big difference is when you start talking skill cap, moving from that respectable number to that fantastic number it is harder for a hunter and now with the added abilities it is hardest for a hunter.

      There is a line that I am many other say, even the blues have said it on the forums about hunters. Hunters are the easiest class to play and the hardest class to master.

      That has always been the way in PvP and is starting to become the way in PvE. If any one thinks they are a good PvPer and they do not play a hunter, I suggest they give it a try. The hunter toolbox is insane and unless you can bind over 100 things and recall them all on the fly, (which I still can't after many years) you will be decent at best as a hunter in PvP. It is brutally difficult to be good.

      I might be a main hunter but I play all classes and I can say from actual experience on all of them that the only class that can hold a handle to hunters on the skill level needed to play well are warlocks and warlock need to be played well even from the beginning unlike hunters.

      Either way, any class is hard to get close to 100% out of. It only seems hunters are easier because they start off that way. Like I said above, you will never hear me argue that. It is the end of the learning process that makes the hunters hardest to master.

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