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Q u o t e:

We’d rather just the pet didn’t die in situations where a player that can make intelligent choices wouldn’t have died. Hunters do have abilities to heal or rez pets, and those ideally should be sufficient.

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One question/issue with this statement. With WotLK pet health went up alot compared to TBC, and Mend Pet was never buffed as well. If I recall correctly the current Mend Pet heals for like 5200 over 15 seconds. When fully raid buffed, pets have 22k+ health. So unless healers are actively trying to help heal hunter pets, our Mend Pet spell isn't going to really help hunters keep their pet alive, when the Mend Pet doesn't or barely heals them 1/4 of their health over 15seconds. With as much damage that goes out on certain fights, that's just not sufficient.

Reserved for comment later today

No PVE dps question asking why hunters are the lowest pure and behind a lot of hybrids?

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Q u o t e:
But, we can’t just buff Arcane Shot (unless it is very deep in Beast Mastery) because Survival and Marks use that too. See the problem?

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Are... are you kidding me?

Okay...

This Q&A is Laughable.

Survial uses Arcane shot? REALLY? Cmon man. Do any of you play hunters?

I like the tidbit about ammo with spell effect to it that would be a nice addition to hunter utility to beable to bring a spell effect that would affect the boss more than physical damage would alone.

There still is Very much a dead zone and it's easy to get stuck in it.

I totally see the Idea of stings being like warlock curses but they are all so weak! and all cancel each other out. Wyvern sting is useless becasue it has like a 45 second cool down and elites are immune.

Regarding pet choice... Why for the love of god would you choose a pet that did less damage or provided less utility. IF you want to have more diversity in pet choice give the pets utility and the hunter could bring to the raid. Taking furious howl and making it hunter only was a hard nerf and made it harded for a hunter to justify his spot in a raid, Have pets provided buffs, Debuffs, Resistances so we can call on a menagerie based on the fight. Pets are boring they don't really do any DPS in boss fights and they are one shottable make them exciting.

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Q u o t e:

One question/issue with this statement. With WotLK pet health went up alot compared to TBC, and Mend Pet was never buffed as well. If I recall correctly the current Mend Pet heals for like 5200 over 15 seconds. When fully raid buffed, pets have 22k+ health. So unless healers are actively trying to help heal hunter pets, our Mend Pet spell isn't going to really help hunters keep their pet alive, when the Mend Pet doesn't or barely heals them 1/4 of their health over 15seconds. With as much damage that goes out on certain fights, that's just not sufficient.

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Just to add on to this; We are currently in 3.1. What will be the situation in 3.2 or even further out 3.3? Will our mend pet only be doing 1/5th or 1/6th (or worse) of a pet's full health raid buffed over 15 seconds? Pet health will continue to climb as better gear becomes available and no doubt bosses in 3.2 and 3.3 will have AE that hits just that much harder. Seems to me that Mend pet is already at the point of uselessness in raid situations and I sure can't see it getting better without a re-adjustment of some sort in 3.3 (since 3.2 seems unlikely to get a change into).

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Q u o t e:
No PVE dps question asking why hunters are the lowest pure and behind a lot of hybrids?

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Yeah this was overall pretty disappointing.

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Q u o t e:

Are... are you kidding me?

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Yeah, I was reading through it, sighing at some remarks, nodding at others, and then I got to this:

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Q u o t e:
But, we can’t just buff Arcane Shot (unless it is very deep in Beast Mastery) because Survival and Marks use that too. See the problem?

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And I sighed a lot more.

TLDR Version:


Hunter DPS is fine in PvP and PvE

Hunters need more or better PvE utility(huh?)

Pets are fine currently

Hunters need to use less buttons(but no actual plans for doing so)

Blizz is still looking into ammo

Survival uses Arcane Shot

Can we get some people who play endgame pve/high rated arena hunters to work for blizz plz? This is disheartning. I think my hunter is thinking of suiciding><

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Q u o t e:


I hadn't noticed that, thanks. It was the final question and became truncated. Here it is -

Q: Do we have plans to increase the number of stable slots available to hunters?

A:Obviously we increased it a lot in Wrath of the Lich King. We want to try and keep the pet as some kind of decision -- they aren’t supposed to be like mounts or titles where you just collect as many as you want. We expanded the size so that players could have say a Tenacity pet for soloing and a Ferocity pet for raiding, but we don’t want every hunter to have every family available here. Now one potential problem are the Spirit Beasts, which are collected by hunters and not trivial to replace. We have also discussed expanding the Spirit Beast concept to have rare skins of other pet families (that otherwise don’t convey a combat bonus). If we do that, we’d probably have to expand the stable slots.

We’ve also considered a model where the hunter doesn’t even need a stable and can work more like a warlock where they can just summon their pets whenever they want -- with the remote stable ability from the dual-spec feature, we’re pretty close to that already. If we went this route then maybe the stable could just become pet storage in the same way your bank has all those Invader’s Scourgestones and Zul’Gurub bijous that you don’t use often but can’t bear to part with.

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That sounds really nice.

Elemental arrows would be a neat addition I think. Though you do say we fill a physical rdps niche and adding elements to arrows (of what I can assume then the damage type would either be split between the two physical/respective element or entirely elemental) would perhaps detract from that. A frost arrow that slows the target, what a terrifying (and lovely) prospect for a hunter to have in pvp :O (and invariably making concussion shot worthless).

I still really like the idea of having nonconsumable arrows become an item type dropped off of bosses in raids/heroics instead of a consumable. It would truly be a hunter item that could set you apart from other hunters.

Go read the warrior Q&A and you will feel much better about yourselfs.

pretty sweet a whole Q&A based on beating around the bush and not answering things

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Q u o t e:
At the same time, we don’t necessarily want to give them one because then Arcane Shot risks just vanishing from the hunter rotation. But, we can’t just buff Arcane Shot (unless it is very deep in Beast Mastery) because Survival and Marks use that too. See the problem?

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clearly you have no one that plays a hunter in there cause you'd know by now that survival would never use arcane shot.

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Q u o t e:
1st page of a useless Q&A where Blizzard demonstrates once againthat they have zero grasp of the hunter problems.

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Q u o t e:
But, we can’t just buff Arcane Shot (unless it is very deep in Beast Mastery) because Survival and Marks use that too. See the problem?

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WTT the new "buffed" Catlike Reflexes for that BM Arcane shot!

I didn't see the problem.

Hmm. Not as bad as I figured it would be. I agree that Beast Mastery needs some changes, though. Nonetheless, the tree is fun as heck, and I'm a proud beast master. =) I'm currently putting points back in differently for my pet to maximize DPS, while still keeping its survival high.

Hunter pets do die easily in higher-end content, though. My pet died quite a few times in Naxx. The improved revive pet helps, but there's another thing that I feel many hunters overlook: Heart of the Phoenix. Heart of the Phoenix immediately revives the pet with full health, and I find myself using it quite often even though many decide to not spec with it. The only issue with that talent is the cooldown. Ten minutes is an awfully long time for PvE. Of course, 2 minutes or so would be too short. I believe that one good way to help hunters out would be to reduce the cooldown on that skill, though, making it even more viable.

I'm glad that you guys are actively working on stabilizing DPS, though. It is a bit sad to be specced into the tree that does the least amount of DPS, but it fits in fantastically with how I play. When I get dual spec specialization, I'm going into markmanship. Survival just isn't as enjoyable for me, and I prefer to play with whatever style's most comfortable, not with just what's "the best".

Now to wait for BlizzCon to see some of these other "long-term" changes that are being hidden from us. /laugh

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Q u o t e:


WTT the new "buffed" Catlike Reflexes for that BM Arcane shot!

I didn't see the problem.

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Hehe, I'll have to agree. Catlike Reflexes can add a bit of survivability, but I'm not too fond of having to use three of my talent points for that.

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Q u o t e:
TLDR Version:


Hunter DPS is fine in PvP and PvE

Hunters need more or better PvE utility(huh?)

Pets are fine currently

Hunters need to use less buttons(but no actual plans for doing so)

Blizz is still looking into ammo

Survival uses Arcane Shot

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Yeah. A lot of this has sadly been talked about and said to be implemented for a while. I just hope that Blizz will, "soon enough", get some stuff done. Pets aren't fine. They're a vital part of a hunter, but they just die too easily.

We need pets to stay alive. Another nice thing for us would be to take Mend Pet off the GCD. But...that probably won't happen. ;[