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Q u o t e:
GC, I think the problem many, including myself, are having with the entire Focus idea is how it's going to kill our DPS. Right now, even though we're limited by mana, we can still string together quite a few shots, cooldowns permitting, and keep going. With focus, we get two, maybe three shots off and then sit on autoattack until regen kicks in. It's actually one of the most annoying aspects of vehicle combat for certain encounters (mostly solo/small group quests), and it's something we'd really like to avoid with the Hunter class. We already have two fairly weak specs (comparatively speaking vs. other damage dealers) - is this really necessary?

Instead of focus, wouldn't it have been a more clean cut method of doing things to do an AGL ->INT conversion? Even with a 1:1 conversion ratio, hunters would still eventually run out of mana, though nowhere near as fast as now. It'd put them on par with a shadow priest. The SPriest is the best comparison since a) they blow through mana like hunters do, and b) factoring out Shadowfiend, must kill their DPS completely for six seconds to regen mana (Dispersion).

Unlike rogues, whose abilities are ALL instant and rely on the GCD to force players to do the "hurry up and wait" for energy regen, not all of the hunter's abilities are instant. Steady Shot, a much used ability is a charged ability with a cast time, and unlike rogut abilities which cannot be "chained", SS can be chained into Chimaera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Kill Shot and Silencing Shot to name a few. But with focus, if you've only got enough for that SS and the regen isn't going to give you enough for the chained ability you'd be using in WOTLK, then you're just sitting waiting again.

I don't know about others, but that kind of playstyle is why the rogue is the least favorite of my characters to play. Every other class has at least some way to augment mainstream regen. Hunters don't. The only way I can see to cure that using focus is to make Go for the Throat affect the hunter and not just the pet, but that would then make Marksmanship the dominant spec by and large.

Please don't abandon mana for us. Give us a conversion for it, lower our ability costs, or both. But for the love of all that's good, don't force our pet's regen system on us.

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Q u o t e:


Some of your values are too low. Something like Explosive and Chimera will most likely be 60 focus but without cooldowns so that you can't use 2 of them back to back without an LnL proc or waiting for a bit of focus regen.

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Q u o t e:
If no more int is going to be on Hunter/Enh sham gear, what will the Int hunter Talent buff will be used for?

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Q u o t e:

They are completely revamping all talents in Cata for all specs and all classes.

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Q u o t e:
Using 2 ES back to back is a waste of focus already since the second would overlap the first. Also GC just clearly stated we'd see cooldowns on abilities.

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Yeah but I'm just thinking what other stats.... I mean Agility....Stamina....then what Spirit? O_o

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Q u o t e:


we already use 2 ES back to back on LnL procs. you just wait about half a second after the GCD is done. he did say we'd see cooldowns on abilities but not which ones. actually from what he said it seems that chimera and explosive might not have cooldowns at all and energy regen will be their only limiting factor. it also seems they might give hunters some sort of damage modifying stings/shots (ala serpent sting and black arrow but maybe more complex?) to make it so that we don't just simply spam the powerful shots once they don't have cooldowns anymore.

i might have misinterpreted what he said though.

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Q u o t e:

There are 2 posiblilities:

1. Stregneth GC mentioned a while ago that they felt it may be a good idea to increase melee capabilities. SO making Strength and Agi work like it does with melee may be interesting.

2. They are trying to focus more on core stats so it may just be Stam and Agi. Not enough data to go on yet.

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Q u o t e:
Attack power is being removed from gear. Death knights, paladins and warriors will still gain 2 attack power per point of strength, and all druids, hunters, shamans and rogues will get 2 attack power per point of agility and no attack power from strength

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Q u o t e:
GC clearly says: "Oh I'll just use all my focus on Chimera / Explosive once they aren't on cooldowns." which again means they will likely have cooldowns.

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Q u o t e:


Yeah I think that line meant they won't have cooldowns anymore. Otherwise I figured he would have said "once their cooldown ends". But like I said I'm probably interpreting it wrong.

There's also a quote that says shots will be from 30-60 in focus cost. I think it was from Blizzcon. Your post didn't have any shot higher than 40 correct? That's why I'm thinking the values might be too low.

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Q u o t e:
I see, I'm reading the line differently. Which now begs the question did GC mean that as a "situational" response (meaning in the moment I think "I'll blow my focus on ES/CS once the CD is up" or a meta-gaming response (i.e. Once they change mana to focus and remove CD from ES/CS I'll blow all my focus on ES/CS)?

Re-reading his post it sounds like the latter.

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Q u o t e:

I agree with the sentiment here. The only caveat I would say is that they haven't said what our abilities would cost. They haven't even alluded to

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Q u o t e:
They spoke directly about it. The powerpoint slide at Blizzcon said 30-60 Focus per shot. it may change though.

I'm worried about Hunter PvP. They haven't been able to fix it for any decent length of time over the course of seven seasons. And now an entire overhaul. Players will have to relearn the class - will we get facreroll status at first, like DKs did?

PvE rotations are the easy part, it's just a few math equations. PvP solutions are much more difficult to arrive at.

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Q u o t e:


You probably won't focus on Agi or Sta since it will be on your gear in relatively inflexible amounts already. You could gem or enchant for it though. You'd probably look at hit, crit, haste and mastery and decide what fits your spec and gear the best.

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Q u o t e:


Sorry, I meant if we remove the cooldown from those shots then someone might jump to the conclusion that hunters will just spam them. I don't know if we will be able to remove the cooldown or not. Shred does not have a cooldown yet Ferals use many other abilities. That is one way to go. Another is to keep a small cooldown, but in general we think focus will let us take cooldowns off a lot of hunter abilities since the income rate of focus will help us balance the costs.

In general (and with many exceptions) you can't balance mana-using spells around cost since casters have nearly unlimited mana at any point in time and certainly early on in a fight. Energy (and focus, and rage to a much lesser extent to where it's actually a problem) are limited at any given moment but come back pretty quickly. Mana-spells have to be balanced around cast times and cooldowns instead. Hunters generally lack cast times, so most abilities have cooldowns which lead to annoying collisions and a lot of timer-watching. Focus should help improve that. We hope!

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