hunter-nerf
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Beast mastery hunters may escape Stampede nerf
Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street posted a lengthy Dev Watercooler yesterday, focused on Mists of Pandaria PvP. Within that Dev Watercooler, one thing he mentioned was the extremely high burst being put out by Beast Mastery Hunters, saying: Ghostcrawler Beastmastery Hunters – We agree that stacking too many cooldowns to blow someone up is not interesting, skillful, or fair. (I also want to be clear that with all of these issues, we're not blaming players for using the tools that we gave them; we're blaming ourselves.) We're taking a hard look at the various Hunter cooldowns with the intention of reducing their burst. Hunters are receiving a buff in that they will no longer need to swap between Aspect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Fox. We also hope these changes help result in higher representation of Survival and Marksman Hunters. source Very shortly after the Dev Watercooler was posted, Ghostcrawler took to twitter, announcing that a substantial bug had been discovered, which only affected beast mastery hunters in the arena: Good news. We found a bug with Stampede being too high only in Arenas. That accounts for why feedback can be so varied. More info later. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 31, 2012 Community Manager Zarhym emailed us late last night to inform us that the bug had been isolated and added to the beast mastery hunter-specific section of the blog. The bug is now detailed as follows:
Scattered Shots: Hunter changes in 3.0.9 and 3.1
Dear Blizzard: Undo the Beastmastery nerfs or the cow gets it. Signed, Scattered Shots.So as you heard the other day, the dev team admits it. They were a little too overly enthusiastic in their nerfs. Beast Mastery is too low, and will be seeing some buffs "before Ulduar," probably related to Serpent's Swiftness or Kindred Spirits. Of course, Beastmastery Hunters could have told you a while ago that the nerfs were too much, and did. Ghostcrawler not only told us that we had the wrong numbers, but that it hardly mattered because everything would change with Ulduar anyway. So to see him change to this degree is a little disorienting, I must admit. But anyway, this column is not meant to rake Ghostcrawler across the coals. I think he's a pretty decent guy all around. Besides, it's not the first time he's put his foot in his mouth, and it probably won't be the last, either. Overall, I'm glad he's at least communicating, and that he, as the "face" of the dev team, is at least willing to come out and communicate and admit when they were wrong. What I'm really interested in is exactly where the class is going.
Updated patch notes for patch 3.0.8
Early this morning, Wryxian of the European forum team posted an updated set of patch notes for the patch 3.0.8 PTR. That's pretty good news, because the old set was getting really, really outdated. Ghostcrawler hinted about this a couple of days ago, so we figured it was coming sooner or later.Nothing in the patch notes is that shocking that I can see, it's mostly just the changes we've heard about and maybe a more robust bug fix listing. It's just nice to see all of the additional changes that have come along gathered in one spot, instead of hunting around to make sure we're not crazy when trying to remember something. The patch notes on the EU website have been updated, but as far as we can see, neither the US forums or website have been. So if you're somewhere that you can't access the forums or official sites (work, school), we have them right here for you. Just click through the cut below!
Scattered Shots: New Year's Resolutions for Hunters and for Blizzard
Welcome to Scattered Shots! This week, your author has managed to take a break from lamenting that the stores about to stop selling eggnog to make a few Hunter-specific resolutions.The New Year is considered by many people to be the time for a fresh start, a time to wipe the slate clean of past missteps, or just to make some changes to your life to make it even better. In that spirit, I'd like to propose some Hunter-related resolutions for both Blizzard and for Hunters in the spirit of promoting peace, harmony, and understanding in the new year for all Survivalists, Marksmen, and Beastmasters.
Breakfast Topic: Patch 3.0.8 excitement
Last week brought us a lot of news on patch 3.0.8, and with no sign of it hitting live realms particularly soon, we're bound to see a lot more. It's not a full blown content patch, so no new dungeons or raids, nothing of that sort. That doesn't mean it's not packed full of cool stuff, though.What are all of you looking forward to the most? There aren't a whole load of major class changes for my personal favorite class, Priests, but the one change there is for Shadow excites me a whole lot more than it really should. Glyph of Mind Flay will just cause the spell to slow the target a little less, rather than removing it entirely. Small change, but it will make life as a Shadow Priest so much easier. When dual specs roll around, I can just have a Healing set and a Shadow set of glyphs rather than a raid set, a soloing set, and a healing set.
Post 2.3 hunter chaos - updated
As many of you may have already heard, the Hunter forums are in an uproar today over several changes and bugs that have come with Patch 2.3. Unfortunately, some of the clamor is shadowing other important Hunter issues. Amanda Rivera pointed out that hunters have lost their ability to double, or even triple, trap, and although many hunters were not using this exploit, a large proportion were. Even though this might be a fair fix, I imagine that for many hunters, the raids they have "on farm" will suddenly be much more confusing. As Robin reported earlier, hunters can no longer use feign death on a boss fight in order to be removed from combat (you can still drop aggro) and go have a drink. Officially, this is a bug fix, and in fact, many hunters had not even realized that they could go take a swig during a boss encounter. Unfortunately, this is not just impacting a Hunter's ability to pump up their mana pool; it's also affecting their ability to feed their pets. It is being reported that pets are losing happiness at a faster rate post-patch, and that while raiding, because a hunter can no longer feign death and feed their pet, the prospect of using their pet while raiding, or achieving maximum benefit from doing so, is looking somewhat grim for many.
