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Stealth Cam Prowler snags undercover pics, videos
The zany methods available to spy on something (or someone) are constantly becoming more plentiful, and for hunters and stalkers alike who are tired of undercover nighttime footage turning out black, the Stealth Cam Prowler is your answer. This inconspicuous device sports a five-megapixel sensor for color day time captures, a two-megapixel sensor for monochrome nighttime images, and the ability to capture footage in the pitch black wilderness sans a flash. Apparently, the camera / camcorder hybrid utilizes 42 infrared emitters to "illuminate the area up to 50-feet away," after which it can snag programmable burst shots or videos up to 90 seconds in length. It also packs 32MB of internal memory in case a clever animal snags the evidence held on your SD card, and the built-in battery pack should ensure a night full of remote shooting fun in case you're too frightened to hang out in the rough. No word yet on pricing or availability, but we're sure those details will sneak out soon enough.[Via BeSportier]
BigRedKitty's List of Talent No-No's
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. The hunter talent trees stink. OK, that's an overstatement; not all of the individual talents are terrible, of course they're not. But there are several choice nuggets of rottenness that are so pungent they can befoul an otherwise pleasant afternoon of island-diving in Nagrand. Lest we forget, there have always been talents that people avoided like Stitches in Duskwood. (An aside: have you smacked Stitches to Undercity and back since you hit 70? Do it; it feels great.) Back in the day before the Burning Crusade, there were many analyses of the talents, mocking of the garbage, and culminating in the subsequent "correct talent builds". Eventually, the hunter community basically agreed upon the big three: 31/20/0 The Leveling Beastmaster. A common enough spec, yet very rarely used in instances as our pets were basically hindrances, both because of the weakness of our pets and the incompetence of the hunters who controlled them. Did you wipe your raid in Lower Blackrock Spire on the first jump? Of course you did. Hunters used this spec to level and get to 60, then they'd respec and do Zul'Gurub, Molten Core, etc. 5/31/15 The Raiding Spec. Proclaimed to be the best at maximizing steady DPS, this build eschewed crits for lots of Ranged Attack Power. There was nothing particularly wrong with this spec, it did it's job well. Equip a fast ranged weapon and let the Improved Aspect of the Hawk procs flow. It was also derisively called the "cookie-cutter build" by those of us who followed the other primary talent spec. You know, the one the cool kids used. 0/21/30 The PvP and Crit Specialist. If you wanted to one-shot squishies, this was your spec. Get a slow ranged weapon and lots of agility, stand at Iceblood Graveyard and when a late-arriving horde tried to get by you, crack him with Scatter Shot, back up just a bit, load Aimed Shot, wait for the crit... and take in the heady aroma of a beautiful one-shot kill. Golly, BRK has some fond memories of those days. Fast-forward to today, and the number of viable talent builds are too numerous to count. BigRedKitty has seen many examples of avante-garde talent specs that, while BRK wouldn't choose them, others have made very successful. In the Burning Crusade-era, we generally believe that whatever you select, if you can make it work, is just dandy. It's your $15 so do what you like. However...
BigRedKitty is thrilled to be here
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes Big Red Kitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. So here we are in our new WoW Insider beach-side bungalow, a home-away-from-home, as it were. It's spacious and clean, but begging for some paint on the walls, trophies on the shelves, and some Sporeling Snacks in the fridge. Let's see what we can do about that. My name is Damh and I've been a World of Warcraft addict since March 2006, and have played a hunter since that April. As this new year arrived, the expectation of the Burning Crusade expansion blossomed in our hearts, and the one-year-anniversary of making my wife watch her bad 80s movies alone came closer, I decided I just couldn't go on posting my ideas and thoughts in my guild's hunter forum where they sat alone and unread. Perhaps I was naive, but I wanted to impart some wisdom and hoped someone might learn from my mistakes, gain some of my insight into the hunter class, and laugh at my jokes. So I made a blog upon which I could yap and babble, knowing full well that nobody would read it. I didn't care; it was for me. Ridiculously, my silly blog has surpassed 40,000 hits and, in its prime, averaged almost 900 hits per day. Our hunter brethren are apparently thirsty for knowledge, so I wrote, got email suggestions, and tried to make the site very personal and like a community. Remember that WoW Insider ran a contest looking for new columnists? Well, someone forwarded that page to me, I applied, was accepted, and *poof* here I am. But how exactly did I get here? Read on...
Breakfast topic: Baleeted!
What's the highest level character you've ever deleted?I haven't deleted many characters at all-- when I first started playing I was on Cenarius, and I still have about nine alts all there just sitting around, never realizing that I probably won't be back. Now, I'm on Thunderhorn, and pretty much all the characters I've started I've kept. Oh, there's been a few level ones that I created for fun, and I believe I made it to level 12 or so with a dwarf Hunter before I realized I didn't ever want to play Alliance again, but I think that's it-- I just can't bring myself to throw away any characters I actually spent time on.But looking at the thread, I'm probably the exception. Lots of players toss their maxed-out characters all the time, either because they're frustrated with a class change, need extra room, or are just leaving the game for good.So what's the highest character you've deleted and why?
Forum post of the day: Hunters! Make your own mount!
Blizzard MVP Palehoof has come up with a pretty awesome idea in the Suggestions Forum: she suggests that hunters be able to tame their own mounts. Unlike paladins and warlocks, hunters would have to pay for their riding skill -- but after that, they'd be able to get unusual mounts. They could use Beast Lore to locate a creature that would be appropriate in size, shape and temperament (and not every member of every species would work!) and then use "Tame Mount" to turn it into a normal, inventory-based mount. She suggests that quests could unlock later levels of Tame Mount, so hunters could get epic mounts, flying mounts, etc. Also, rare reputation mounts like Wintersabers and Nether Rays could simply be untamable. I'm not a hunter, but I love this idea. Anything that allows players to make their characters individuals is fine by me. Just looking at Petopia, I can think of more than a few trainable hunter pets that would make great mounts. I'd love to see a troll go riding by on an albino crocodile, a tauren wandering past on a giant gorilla, or a night elf mounted atop a garish pink flamingo. In fact, I would like to see it mandatory that female night elf hunters be mounted atop garish pink flamingoes, but that's more of a personal prejudice. And no, Hordelings, you can't use gnomes as mounts. Stop asking. If I could pick my own mount, I'd probably try to tame the big dude pictured above. His name's Zarakh, and he's a spider boss found in one of the lowbie Draenei zones. Can you get any more menacing than that? What would you use as a mount if you could?
Surviving to see another ding
I'm facing exactly this issue right now (in fact, it's one reason why I'm thinking of rolling a hunter again and ditching my mage)-- Peterxt from Dragonblight want to know what the best class for surviving is. That is, what's the class that, when things go wrong, can get themselves out of trouble alive? I'm assuming he means solo-- everyone should stay alive in a group setting, or something is going wrong.The obvious answer, of course, is the paladin. It's one reason they're so hated-- they wear plate, they can heal, and just when you think you've whittled them down, they have that stupid bubble. In terms of solo play, paladins aren't the fastest killers, but they are very good at taking on adds one after another. When things go wrong, paladins have lots of escape routes.And in fact, mages have lots of escape routes as well. They fall apart easily when getting hit, but they have so many abilities to keep from getting hit that a mage with a little mana and their wits about them can actually survive almost anything-- drop a Frost Nova, Blink away, keep Frost Armor up to slow attackers when they do hit, and you can pretty much run your way out of trouble (not to mention, if you're frost, that ice block can be the ultimate survival tool). That requires a lot of technique, though-- if you really want to stay away from a graveyard, a mage isn't your cup of tea.Every class has their own escape plans (Vanish for rogues, Last Stand for warriors, and so on), but for my money, no class is better at surviving solo PvE then a hunter. Feign death is terrific, and if it doesn't work, there's always the option to let your pet tank while you flee. Or, now that they work in battle, traps. Or Scatter Shot. Or Concussive Shot. Heck, Misdirection even works on NPCs, so if you happen to see someone around that you want to tank for you, you can throw up Misdirection and exit stage left.Every class can survive if it's played carefully and well. But if you never, ever want to see a graveyard, I'd say hunter or paladin.
WoW Moviewatch: Huntard vs. Goliath
Paladinsucks points us to this fascinating video of a level 70 hunter soloing Azuregos. Yes, you read that right -- a single level 70 hunter soloing Azuregos. And before you say it can't be done, the hunter does say he spent 87 minutes working on this -- and if you can hold out for that long, I'm tempted to believe almost anything's possible.Previously on Moviewatch...
Forum post of the day: Beggars will be shot on sight
First, a word of caution: there is a possibility that Blizz may consider this strategy to be griefing, so employ it at your own risk. It is, however, awesome. Apparently, if you're a Hunter, you can get a beggar killed, in town, if you're near an NPC that you can declare war on. For this example, we'll use a Cenarion Circle NPC (which I think there are in every major city). To summarize the OP: Beggar asks for gold. Invite beggar to group. Set "at war" with Cenarion Circle, put Misdirection on beggar, and shoot the Cenarion Circle NPC. The NPC will attack and probably kill the beggar. Pretty sweet, eh? Of course, the more attention this gets, the more likely it'll be fixed, so I had to think for a while before deciding to post it here. However, the forum thread is pretty hot right now, so more than likely Blizz knows about it already. Check the thread for pictures; there's also allegedly a movie here.[Thanks to Brisk of Eldre'thalas for sending this one in]
Hunter Wiki is collecting hunter know-how
Eldariel on the EU forums has posted something cool for Hunters-- he's created a Hunter Wiki. Originally, it was created to just hold the lost stickied threads from when Blizzard cleaned out the forums a while back, but even though the wiki is still small, a little more loving care will set it on its way to becoming a one stop shop for everything you ever wanted to know about being a hunter.Right now there's only a few pages, but already there's lots of theorycraft, guides to hunter loot and quests, and even a round of hunter-oriented comics (well, some of those are better than others, but it's still a work in progress). They don't have nearly as much pet info as Petopia yet, but being a wiki gives them lots of room to improve.In fact, the wiki format lends itself very well to WoW info, just because this is a social game consisting of a lot of shared knowledge-- WoWWiki has been proving that theory for a while (and they've got lots of hunter info there as well, along with plenty of other necessary information). But it's definitely awesome to see a wiki dedicated to the ins and out of a particular class, and hopefully what Eldariel has built will bring lots more editors and contributors so more hunters can share what they know with at least a little privacy from the prying eyes of others. In fact, where's my Shaman wiki?
Forum post of the day: Pet demands
Wow, who knew Hunters were so unhappy with their pet situation? Zolberserker, of H-Eitrigg-US, has made an exceedingly long list of improvements he wants for Hunter pets, to be included in what he terms a "pet patch." These aren't mostly new demands, nor does he pretend them to be so, but it is a nice compilation of ideas. Some of the ones that caught my eye: Pet armor, giving pets simple proc bonuses or whatnot, preferably appearing on the pet. Saddles to make some pets mountable. I'm heavily against this, for obvious reasons (there's already too many free mounts in the game, Hunters already get a movement speed increase). Foods that give bonuses to pets (the Sporeling Snack is one such that is already in the game). Rare pets, including some doing non-physical damage. "All beasts and beast like pets should be tameable." Most of these, I'm sorry to say, seem a bit off to me. Pets are already quite powerful enough in PvP and solo PvE, and none of these address the problem of pets in group PvE. Although come to think of, the pet armor idea could be adapted to help them in group PvE: have pet armor give them a large amount of damage reduction (via straight armor, or dodge, or whatever), at the cost of reducing their movement speed. This would keep the armor from being overpowered in PvP, although it might make the pets a bit too good of off-tanks in groups. What do you guys think, those of you with more Hunter experience? What do pets need? Are pets really broken enough that a full "pet patch" is warranted?
More dev feedback for Hunters
Yay! That same old Hunter feedback thread in the European forums has been hit up again with some developer love. Before I get into it, I'd like to warn you that almost all the responses are either "the Devs see what you mean, but have no idea when/how/if it'll be fixed" or "the Devs see what you mean, but it's working as intended." This week they focused mostly on pet concerns, which is what they skipped last week. Here's a summary of the more interesting responses: Pet survivabilty: "Quite possible" that this might improve, but devs have to avoid making pets overpowered in PvP. Encounters un-pet-friendly: We see what you mean, and might improve in the future. Certain stats (e.g. crit, hit rating) don't help your pet, making gear with them less attractive: This is intended, but might change in the future. It's impossible to tell who out of multiple targets resists your FD: Devs agree, and would like to see it ifixed; no ETA. Pet kills don't count for player kills (for Rapid Killing, for instance) even when the player has tagged the mob: Fixed for 2.1. Growl scales by RAP, often giving MM Hunters better Growl threat than BM Hunters: Devs agree, but "no information available regarding what they will do to address this concern." Hunters' role endgame: DPS class, with utility as a bonus. "Hunters compare quite well to other DPS classes, but possibly a bit low, however this is something that is being looked at. Things will get adjusted here and there where required." People going through ammo too fast: Devs agree, considering what to do about it. It's good that the devs are being more responsive than usual about this, but it's a little frustrating to have so few concrete details. Vaneras's full post after the cut.
Pushing the limits of a class trinity
Relmstein is at it again, this time with a look at class trinity in MMORPGs. This is old, old RPG strategy stuff-- basically almost every RPG out there is based around three different class roles: that of tank, DPS or healing. Tanks (like Warriors and Fighters) take damage, DPS classes (like Mage and Rogue) dish the damage out, and healing classes (obviously) keep the party alive long enough to win the battle. For a while now, game developers have tried to vary up this class trinity, so that you don't just have the same options in every game. In WoW, hybrid classes like Paladin and Shaman can play more than one role, and classes like Hunters and Warlocks have extra abilities (crowd control and buffing/debuffing) that help them be something more than what the class trinity lays out for them. Or there are classes like Druids, who can play all three roles at various times.But the problem here is that while there are some extra abilities floating around, there aren't any new class types to speak of. The reason for this in WoW is because the developers want to give every class the option to go all the way to 70 solo, which means classes that could be total crowd control classes, like Hunters, are forced back into one of the class trinity roles (in this case, DPS). So far, we haven't seen a really pure crowd control class-- at least not like we've seen pure tanking, pure healing, or pure DPS classes.So let's put our minds to it. What kinds of classes could we make that would do something fundamentally different from tanking, healing, or damage?
Dev feedback on Hunter concerns
There's been a thread floating around the EU Hunter forums for a while listing some concerns Hunters have with their class (gear, talents, and pets), and today it finally got some answers. I love it when the Devs actually respond to things. Below is the post by Vaneras, copied in full for the work crew; unfortunately, there are no responses on the subject of pets (which tend to drop like flies in some high end instances). But first, or if you don't want to slog through the CM-ese, a summary: Hunters wanted to know if Hunter-specific items with ranged AP (as opposed to universal AP) were in the works. Devs say no, but maybe in the future. Hunters thought gear was too Marksman-centric. Devs think the itemization is OK, but they may adjust talents, like Lightning Reflexes, to work better with items. Hunters say the Survival tree is lacking. Devs agree, and will probably make changes to that tree, but "you should not expect any full class revamp or full talent reviews." Hunters say the MM tree is pretty good. Devs agree. I think not making items with just RAP is probably fine; I don't see why there should have to be items any one class has an exclusive claim over. And of course the Survival tree is lacking, so it's good to hear it's being looked at. However, this stance of "no more class reviews" worries me...what if there's something really wrong with a class? Something that a series of tweaks and adjustments can't fix? I don't think Hunters are there yet, I'm just saying. At any rate, here's Vaneras:Hi everybody :-) Good news... We have received some feedback from the developers today, which means that we now have a few answers for some of the concerns & questions posted in this thread. Here we go: Q u o t e:1. Itemization, Agility, (Ranged) Attack Power and Crit a) With hunters no longer being so focused on Agility heavy gear, is there any plan of introducing more items with Ranged Attack Power instead of only Attack Power to make certain items more geared towards hunters? For example an item with +x Attack Power, +y Ranged Attack Power [+other stats]. There are currently no plans for adding more hunter specific items with focus on ranged attack power, but this is a good idea that could prove useful in the future.
Blue Notes: Wind serpents and frost Mages
Hunters with wind serpents that have a lot of +spell damage gear (??), this is for you. Ommra declares:A hot fix has been applied. This fix reduces the amount of bonus damage that the Hunter pet ability Lightning Breath receives from the Hunter's +damage gear.Well, OK then. Do Hunters really wear a lot of +spell damage? I hear the Wind Serpent is a great DPS pet, and I doubt this is going to affect it very much.And here's a development in some news that's had the Mage forums in a bit of a tizzy:Mages Increased the chance Frozen effects are broken when the target is critically struck by a spell. *This note was unintentionally left out of the patch notes but is now properly listed.I'm actually a bit confused about this -- other blue sources state that all crits will break Frozen. Hopefully we'll get this totally clarified soon; if this note here is correct, and not what Tseric wrote earlier, the Mage nerf is significantly reduced.
AddOn Spotlight: Nudge
As I've discussed before, my main is a priest. So when the 2.0.10 patch notes came out...nah, just kidding, I've whined enough about this patch. I'm not going to talk about that now. Anyway, my priest is currently specced 14/40/7, in a strange holy DPS/healing hybrid, which works fine for farming as well as for healing Black Morass and Shadow Labyrinth and such. However, I'm anxious to start raiding, and to do that I really want a straight healing build (probably 21/40/0). Healing builds are great for healing, but I do still need some way to farm primals for my cloth transmutes -- what's the answer to this conundrum?Roll a Hunter. And thus my BM Hunter was born; he's currently level 50. This character has been a blast to level, as I've always heard Hunters are (previously, I hadn't gotten one past 30ish). One thing that took some getting used to, though, is the range limitations, and one thing that helped a lot with getting used to that is the mod Nudge (see? I was getting there). It's pretty simple; it provides a frame that changes colors based on whether your targeted mob is in melee range, your dead zone, ranged range, or out of range (i.e. 0-5 yd, 5-8 yd, 8-40 yd, >40 yd). It didn't take long before I was able to just watch Nudge out of the corner of my eye to figure out whether I was close enough to shoot or not. And yes, I could just look at my action bars, but Nudge is a lot more obvious and a lot easier to read at a glance. Green for melee, yellow for dead zone, blue for ranged, red for out of range. Of course, now when I see a red stoplight, I have a strange urge to edge closer to it until it turns blue...but I'm sure that's unrelated.The frame only appears when you've got a hostile mob targeted, you can move and resize it however you want, the text and colors are customizable, it takes into account Hawk Eye if you have it (at least I think it does), and altogether it feels like a well-made little bit of frill that's handy for any hunter. By the way, if you're not a hunter and are looking for something that'll simply tell you when you're in range of some given spell (40 yards for heals, perhaps?), Fudge is what you want.Download Nudge at WoWInterfacePreviously on the SpotlightDon't know how to use AddOns? Fear not!
And the award for world's worst WoW player goes to...
Now I don't mean to make fun-- maybe this poor guy just hasn't had a lot of experience operating a keyboard or playing videogames. Maybe he just hasn't quite yet or just isn't able to pick up the skills to play this game.But when Lynyrd, a 64 Orc Hunter on Drak'thul, puts up a PvP whine post on the forums about how he was killed and camped by a 34 warlock, you just have to wonder what's happening there. A few replies in, there's a mention of more players joining in to the fight (apparently Lynyrd was helping a few lowbie friends when they decided to gang up on some Alliance), but when all the dust has cleared, it really looks like a 64 hunter somehow got taken down by a 38 lock and a 37 priest. Lynyrd makes another appearance later in the thread (after a few more illegible posts by the interested parties, I'm ready to call shenanigans on all of this, but it's still funny), and posts his spec, which is very... umm.... "broad," I guess. Most hunters tend to specialize in one tree, but Lynyrd has chosen to go for the least of all worlds-- he's got the very uncommon 15/20/20 hunter spec.Again, I can't really believe this is what it seems like-- as players point out, any 64 hunter who knows where the autoshot button is should be able to drop a 38 lock without thinking twice. But a read through the thread itself is definitely chuckleworthy.
Blue Notes: Epic flight form and Hunter pet despawns
It looks like not only do Druids get the free flying mount we've all discussed, but they're going to get to quest for an epic flight form as well. From Ommra: We have upcoming development plans which we wanted to share now, as it could impact choices that Druids might make in the immediate future regarding flying mount riding skills or purchasing epic mounts: The regular Storm Crow form remains trainable at level 68 and moves at 60%. Also as previous, the normal flying mount skill comes with the form. An epic quest line will be going into an upcoming patch which will grant Druids an additional flying form with increased stats. The epic flying form will move at the epic rate of 280%, but basically fall under the same conditions as the previous flight form (i.e. can't run on the ground). However, the first prerequisite of the quest will require the epic flying mount riding skill, so it would not be a loss to Druids if they wish to purchase their epic flying mount skill now or in the near future. Obviously, one could then diversify their epic mounts beyond the Druid's casted epic form if they choose. I think it was the right move to make it required to train epic flying, since 5,000 gold, on top of the 1,000 from before, would be a little much for druids not to have to pay.And following up on the news about Warlock pets despawning when you flying-mount up, it looks like Hunter pets are getting the same treatment. Ommra again: This change should apply to hunter's pets in the same way.
New skills for Hunter pets incoming
A poster in the Hunters forum asked whether Hunters would, any time soon, be able to learn skills from beasts without taming them, or if not, if we could get more stable slots. Nethaera replied to let us know that new skills for Hunter pets are in the works, slated for the "next large patch" (she declined to give a patch number, but I'm thinking 2.1). Here's the pertinent information from her postings in that thread. The summary is that we will be getting new skills that are "trainable and transferable between pets," and autoattack/autoshot will be able to be toggled in the interface options.
Make your own talent tree
If you haven't seen this yet, it's pretty funny. A site called Unleashed Gaming has broken out a nifty little feature: it's a javascript setup that allows you to create your own talent trees. Now you too can not only create your own specs and share them with others, you can actually create all new talent trees.A few of them have been popping up in different places. Linde offers a Hunter's wishlist tree that's chuckleworthy (the 51-point Marksmanship talent is called Swoop: "The next item you loot costs 0 DKP"), and Menae has made a much more cynical (and therefore hilarious) Priest talent tree. Finally, Priests are able to get Holyform (the tooltip says that the talent was really put in place just to shut the forum QQers up), and my favorite is probably (one of) the 51-point Shadow talents: with Improved Shadowform, "Your character is replaced with a Warlock."Unfortunately, just like the WoW Item Creator, there's no way to track what other people are making-- I'd love to see a list of the "ten most-viewed talent trees," just to see what people are coming up with. But this thing is definitely a lot of fun to play around with, whether you're trying to perfect what Blizzard does, or just mock them. If you come up with a good one, post it below.[ Thanks, Ootah! ]
All aboard the nerf train in the BC beta
If you haven't been on the forums for a day or two, you may not have noticed: the devs finally pulled the nerf bat out for the expansion. Lots of classes are running around crying their heads off (droods I'm looking at you), there's lot of flaming going on, and the world is generally coming to an end. You haven't noticed? Strange.So here's the changes that freaked everyone out so bad. These appeared in the patch notes for the beta server, which we posted here without fanfare when they first showed up. Warriors got a big change to rage generation that, as far as I can tell (there's a lot of math involved) gave a nerf to anyone carrying around a two hander. Rage was normalized, especially on crits, so people are reporting from 3-4 to up to 10 less points of rage per crit damage. Of course, as gear gets better, so will rage generation, but the warriors aren't thrilled. Mage AOE took a hit, as well-- right now, AOE hits any number of mobs in a certain area (hence, "area of effect") for the same damage. After the patch, AOE will diminish (see point number 6) after a certain number of mobs-- beta testers are saying it's around ten or so. I didn't think this was a big factor (because when are you really fighting more than ten mobs, but I was proven wrong tonight in ZG, when we found countless numbers of panthers and spiders and the AOE was necessary to finish them. Hunter pets got "normalized" (more math-- anyone want to try explaining this simply), which means Cat pets will see a drop in damage and Bears will see a small gain. Also, Hunters aren't thrilled that The Beast Within (one of their BC skills) was nerfed to a 10% damage bonus from a 30% damage bonus. But they aren't crying nearly as much as the... Druids, who got hit big: there will now be a one second cooldown for all shapeshifting abilities. Also, feral druids were very excited to be able to use consumables (and weapon procs) in bear and cat forms, but the devs say that was apparently a bug, and it's not happening in the beta. That has got druids torn up more than anything else, so there is QQing aplenty over on the druid forums (though there may be hope yet). Now, I'll leave it to you guys to determine whether or not these changes are deserved or necessary. Right now I'm playing a Shaman and a Rogue, so I'm pretty much staying out of it, but feel free to unleash your rage (or, in Cat form, your energy) in the comments below).But I will say that I think it's inevitable the nerf bat had to be brought out eventually. Blizzard has been exceptionally generous, I think, with these expansion talents and spells (don't forget, mages still have Invisibility, and almost all classes are getting completely new spells and strategies to use), and so I'm not surprised at all that these changes came about-- and I won't be surprised if more show up as well (Shamans, I still expect a dual wield nerf for us).But at the same time, the Mage and Druid changes confuse me a little bit. AoE seems so fundamental to the Mage class, and you'll rarely hit 10 targets in a PVP setting, so why bother nerfing it in PVE? And even if the Druid consumable problem is legit (and I think it is-- Druids shouldn't be able to be replacement warriors in every situation), the devs just call it a "bug"? That's a pretty big bug to let float by for so long.Anyway, have at it. And if you've played on the BC server, are these changes as much of an issue as everyone thinks they are? Or is this stuff all just creating a river of tears for nothing?
