Ghost, I'll be the first to admit that Hunters exploded out of the proverbial starting gates in terms of DPS when everyone hit 80. I'll be the first to admit that things were actually downright out of hand and a little too good to be true for us for a long time.

However, I really feel like Blizzard didn't give things a chance to settle out and see how things developed. Hunters are quickly being outpaced by Rogues and as I see other classes get more geared, they are starting to do very impressive damage as well.

You guys have been in this field for a long time now, I'm really surprised that you went and nerfed the Hunter class as hard as you did before having (what myself and many others feel) sufficient information on how things are shaping up as gear levels rise and the playing field really develops.

Let me preface this by saying that I hate the BM playstyle and spec, so my arguments aren't out of fear or anger here at all. But did you consider that a BM Hunter has the smallest requirements of 'softcap' stats of any DPS class? All we had to do was get 5% (4% for Alliance) hit at 80 and then every single itemization point was being thrown into pure, all out, DPS stats. No other class had this luxury. Casters have somewhat steep spell cap requirements as well as poor fresh 80 regen (coupled with raid bosses dying way slower when we were in blues, mana was very tight). Melee have big expertise and hit requirements.

I think you also need to understand that a lot of us are kind of sitting here scratching our heads and wondering if (and I really mean no offense) you guys really know what you're doing. Explosive Shot was 60% scaling in Beta and deemed to be massively overpowered. You have now decided to put it back to 54% up from the previous 24%. I really can't wrap my brain around you guys over-nerfing the BM spec and over-buffing the Survival spec at the same time.

Even looking at the Volley nerf from an objective point of view; Hunters were dealing massive AoE damage, there was no doubt about that. I was playing Marksmanship with Barrage and the numbers were quite monstrous and yet, for all that... we've got Tri-spec Death Knights in the guild right now who can come close to rivaling my AE DPS and sometimes even pass me. Yet in the coming patch, you've decided to drop our AE damage by a truly whopping 30%, and in the same sweep of changes, you take Howling Blast off cooldown? Where's the logic?

I just completely fail to see the consistency in any of this. I love this game and everything about it, and while I know a lot of uninformed players always scream about nerfs and you get lots of forum QQing; when the intelligent people are sitting here scratching their heads and wondering how decisions are being made, that's when I think you need to worry.

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Q u o t e:

...you just said "yeah, we were op, but you didn't give it enough time"

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Yes, that's exactly what I said. We were absolutely blowing every other class out of the water when everyone had first hit level 80. There's no denying that at all.

However since we've gone from level 187 blues to now level 213 and 226 epics... the tables have really shifted quite a bit. Rogues are beating everyone, DKs are starting to get insane, Mages, Warlocks and Boomkin are WAY up from when we hit 80.

Our raid DPS charts used to look like this:

Accuria-------------------|
#2----------------|
#3---------------|
#4--------------|

Now they are more like this:

#1-------------------------|
Accuria------------------| (sometimes I'm #1)
#3------------------------|

The playing field has VERY much started to even out. And yet Hunters are being nerfed seemingly based on data gathered at a completely irrelevant gear level?

Good post.

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Q u o t e:


he said they were op without gear, and now the other classes are scaling better

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I'm not even sure they are scaling better. They just are finally starting to realize their potential as things like spell hit cap, expertise caps, melee hit caps and haste reach levels that allow them to do the DPS they were meant to be doing.

Like I mentioned earlier, BM Hunters are haste soft-capped by default and we only needed 4% hit. While everyone else was gemming expertise and hit, we were just doing pure AP. As item levels increase though, a smaller and smaller % of your total itemization points are spent towards capping or soft capping various stats though. And that's what we're running into now.

I think if we give things another month or two and everyone is nearly full Naxx/EoE/OS 25 geared, the difference would be even smaller.

There's a few classes like Ret Pallies who are still getting utterly killed on DPS meters, but that's because once again, Blizzard knee-jerked and went way overboard. Only now (3 months later) are they starting to get a bit of love and hopefully have their DPS put back up to par with the rest of us.

People shouldn't be looking at this issue as a players versus Hunter matter. Things like this set the precedent on how Blizzard handles ALL things.

Just think about it objectively, how would you feel about watching your class get utterly dismantled before any serious conclusive data is collected at all? How would you feel seeing your class being handled the way we are?

Hunters scaled excellently in the previous expansion.

Starting high + scaling great isn't so good =/

The immediate hunter nerfs didn't make any sense, the next changes like this are going to be sweeping PvP changes that will make the game retarded come s6.

The bm removal from readiness was needed though.

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Q u o t e:


Yes, that's exactly what I said. We were absolutely blowing every other class out of the water when everyone had first hit level 80. There's no denying that at all.

However since we've gone from level 187 blues to now level 213 and 226 epics... the tables have really shifted quite a bit. Rogues are beating everyone, DKs are starting to get insane, Mages, Warlocks and Boomkin are WAY up from when we hit 80.

Our raid DPS charts used to look like this:

Accuria-------------------|
#2----------------|
#3---------------|
#4--------------|

Now they are more like this:

#1-------------------------|
Accuria------------------| (sometimes I'm #1)
#3------------------------|

The playing field has VERY much started to even out. And yet Hunters are being nerfed seemingly based on data gathered at a completely irrelevant gear level?

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Hunters are not designed to exclusively hold the top number is damage output, nor is any class for the matter. I can understand why this change it performance would bother you, but the reality is that pure dps should be be very competitive with each other. This means skill will play a larger role in dps performance.

I would like to point out though that the only reason rogues are topping the 'meters' in raids is via the HaT exploit. I will also say that the majority the WWS reports for high end raiding/top tier guilds show Hunters sitting comfortably at the top consistently.

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Q u o t e:
Hunters scaled excellently in the previous expansion.

Starting high + scaling great isn't so good =/

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But we aren't scaling any better than anyone else at this point. The DPS playing field is becoming extremely even, if we could keep things as they are currently and see how everything shapes up once we're in full T8 Ulduar gear, I'd be willing to bet some classes are passing up Hunters.

Tri Spec DKs for example; extremely crit dependant, yet also need to be hit and expertise soft capped... but if you were to try and max out all this stuff on an ilevel 200 budget, you'd find yourself sorely lacking in attack power. Fast forward a few tiers and they're now able to dedicate all potential item budget to attack power cause of all the hit, expertise and crit already on the gear.

A class whose cap requirements are easily met will likely scale less than other people. Haste does very little for BM, you require very little Hit, Crit isn't even that great since it doesn't xfer to your pet. So we've got several major stats here that are found in more and more abundance as we advance through gear levels which add less to BM DPS than other classes.

Anyway that's not even the issue really at the moment. The issue is that Blizzard pulled the nerf bat out way too soon and swung it way too hard in a situation that they didn't even wait to see pan out. That's really not a great way to run things.

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Q u o t e:


But we aren't scaling any better than anyone else at this point. The DPS playing field is becoming extremely even, if we could keep things as they are currently and see how everything shapes up once we're in full T8 Ulduar gear, I'd be willing to bet some classes are passing up Hunters.

Tri Spec DKs for example; extremely crit dependant, yet also need to be hit and expertise soft capped... but if you were to try and max out all this stuff on an ilevel 200 budget, you'd find yourself sorely lacking in attack power. Fast forward a few tiers and they're now able to dedicate all potential item budget to attack power cause of all the hit, expertise and crit already on the gear.

A class whose cap requirements are easily met will likely scale less than other people. Haste does very little for BM, you require very little Hit, Crit isn't even that great since it doesn't xfer to your pet. So we've got several major stats here that are found in more and more abundance as we advance through gear levels which add less to BM DPS than other classes.

Anyway that's not even the issue really at the moment. The issue is that Blizzard pulled the nerf bat out way too soon and swung it way too hard in a situation that they didn't even wait to see pan out. That's really not a great way to run things.

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Maybe they nerf hunters too heavily, maybe they didn't. Either way, rest assured that if hunters start falling off compared to other classes Blizzard will address the issue.

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Q u o t e:


Hunters are not designed to exclusively hold the top number is damage output, nor is any class for the matter. I can understand why this change it performance would bother you, but the reality is that pure dps should be be very competitive with each other. This means skill will play a larger role in dps performance.

I would like to point out though that the only reason rogues are topping the 'meters' in raids is via the HaT exploit. I will also say that the majority the WWS reports for high end raiding/top tier guilds show Hunters sitting comfortably at the top consistently.

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Actually HaT is working as intended other than the people abusing the bug with multiple HaTs in one party.

And yes, Hunters are still either at or near the top... but my point is that the delta between the Hunter and the next guy has shrunk SO much over the last weeks. I can't help but think that in a few more weeks, the gap would shrink even further and we'd possibly be surpassed. As I said; Haste, ArP, Crit... this stuff keeps getting more and more abundant and yet none of it transfers to the pets which were dealing 45% of our damage.

You have to admit that something as huge as a (by all credible estimates) 20% DPS nerf when the meters have been getting as close as they are lately is pretty insane. Especially since this nerf was put into motion based on data from when people were just barely stepping foot into Naxx 10. Now there's times where I'll barely edge out the next guy by a figure smaller than 0.5% and I'm probably the most well geared player in the raid.

That's my issue with it. If we need nerfs, that's fine. But it's a new expansion and you need to let things play out and settle down for the first few months before you make such huge sweeping changes and nerfs.

This might not be a great example, but bare with me; Frozen Orbs were over 1000g a pop when people were just hitting 80, can you imagine if Blizzard decided to make 5 drop per instance based on a 1 week window of data suggesting the price was too high? That is basically what's happening right now.

You are correct that HaT is working as intended, but that's not the problem. The problem is stacking HaT rogues to exploit the mechanics. If the stacking mechanic is fixed you will stop seeing rogues using that particular spec. I'm not arguing your concerns you have I'm just pointing out that it's not accurate to gauge your dps by comparing your dps to that of a 3-4 stacked HaT party. But, not to hijack the thread, sorry.

Believe me, if Hunters start to slip down the hill I'll gladly come back and help you get some love. But right now it's hard for me to suggest these nerfs are over the top just because you sometimes are 3rd or 4th instead of 1st in raids.

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Q u o t e:
You are correct that HaT is working as intended, but that's not the problem. The problem is stacking HaT rogues to exploit the mechanics. If the stacking mechanic is fixed you will stop seeing rogues using that particular spec. I'm not arguing your concerns you have I'm just pointing out that it's not accurate to gauge your dps by comparing your dps to that of a 3-4 stacked HaT party. But, not to hijack the thread, sorry.

Believe me, if Hunters start to slip down the hill I'll gladly come back and help you get some love. But right now it's hard for me to suggest these nerfs are over the top just because you sometimes are 3rd or 4th instead of 1st in raids.

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But the point is also that I'm the best geared DPS that we have as well, so it seems very reasonable for me to be either at or near the top.

I also happen to know the class inside out and backwards (not that it's hard, but there's always levels of finesse) and you can't always say the same for other in the raid groups. Our top DPS absolutely know their stuff though so I feel they're a great gauge. I'm lucky to beat some as I said by margins less than 1% on some fights and I know I'm playing pretty optimally because my Patch DPS is ~5k despite being geared for Marks/Survival (I hate BM).

Buffing Survival by giving them a SINGLE attack on a 6s cooldown that has a scaling coefficient of 54% AP is insanity. It's also the spec with by far the highest AP making this even more insane. Eg: as BM, I have 5350 AP raid buffed and as Survival I'd have 6970 AP raid buffed. We're talking a single attack that ignores armor and deals ~14,000 average damage with my current DPS stats. Hell I could just strafe all fight hitting Explosive Shot every cooldown and still do 2400 DPS.

It just seems like the whole thing lacks a lot of forethought and logic to it.

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Im not really sure why everyone feels this is so OP. Yes, we are immune to stuns and snares, yes it makes our pets hit harder.. but does no one realise that it has a sweeping weakness? The pet is literally a JOKE to kill. When the pet is dead, the hunter becomes near worthless. Even with it, are hunters flying up on the pvp representation charts? No. They are at the lower end of the pack.

-Tokki Anetheron

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Well in fairness I think a big part of that is most Hunters have largely given up on Arena at this point. I'm only going to be playing on my DK and just using this toon to help friends get some points here and there.

Also pets getting healed are less squishy now than ever with their passive 40% healing buff. 36s is a long time of CC immunity, I gotta admit.

Not to derail. If hunters will be ahead because of scaling or something that Blizzard knows and we don't then it may be justified but are you really surprised? This from the people that released the 3.0 ret pallies and then hotfixed them into oblivion after beta testers had been saying ret would not be received well at all on live?

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Q u o t e:

However, I really feel like Blizzard didn't give things a chance to settle out and see how things developed. Hunters are quickly being outpaced by Rogues and as I see other classes get more geared, they are starting to do very impressive damage as well.

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Comparing yourself to bugged HaT rogues is not helping your cause.