Cracks starting to show?

[Setanta]

I've never enjoyed my hunter less.  The mechanics are just wonky.  Why doesn't focus regen faster when I'm out of combat, the way mana and health do?

Hunter changes seem half done to me. 

Can you give us some more detail as to the half done feel? I've been struggling to figure out why our hunters seemed to have issues when I was raiding with them, but I couldn't put my finger on it having never played one.

I've played hunter since release (worst or second worst class on release) and feel exactly the opposite. For me the class feels more complete than it ever has been and I'm truly loving it. I'll add the caveat that at the end of Vanilla I burnt out on it (MC/BWL/AQ40/early
Naxx et al) and rerolled as a healbot shammy. During vanilla I was one of the top 2 DPS - the other was also a hunter. Come TBC I moved to elemental shammy and druid tank but kept playing the hunter. As a shammy I nuked the hunter DPS and got bored and moved to druid tank. TBC I went enhance and tanked as a prot pally, still came back as a hunter on alt runs but never really felt the class as I had  in vanilla. In cata it just feels awesome - got over the mana dependency and loved the focus mechanic - I'm now back to playing it as the class of choice.

For me the shot rotations fit (surv/MM) and BM as ever is a poor cousin other than for leveling/soloing things that *should* require 3 players.

In PvP the focus regen requires more thought than it did when mana was the basis for the class but the shoot on move mechanic seems to cover this. My hunter was my main PvPer in Vanilla (only made Bloodguard though) and now it has a lot more tools and is fun.

Like I said, I'm a hunter again and loving it.

[Threash]

Yeah i got a hunter alt and i love the changes.  The mana thing always felt wrong.

[Xanthippe]

Or are we just all being entitled babies?

Yes. WoW's success was built around pampering to us whiners. It seems kind of funny that they are taking this attitude now. I blame hubris.

Game design is not a service industry?  I never knew.  What exactly was I paying $15/month for again?  I thought it was to have fun playing a game that was enjoyable. Damn, if only I played the game correctly, I'd be having fun right now.

Sounds like parts of Blizzard forgot where the money comes from that funds their paychecks.

Blizzard's public relations are at an all-time low.  Bashiok joins Ghostcrawler as being the public dickheads of Blizzard.  Bashiok should be fired or at least put into a back office.  Same with GC (I've never liked that prick).

Meanwhile, my ranger/bard in Rift is now 25 and I'm having a lot more fun playing an mmo than I have in a long time.  I love the way she feels.  Hunter/healer sounds weird but I think it's a gas.

[Xanthippe]

I hope you understand I was talking generalities and not you specifically. 

As for the latest changes, the last patch let hunters run and autoshoot, so mobility was apparently a concern even in PVE.  For PVP, though, you're really just going on luck of procs, I think.  If you don't proc a good string of high-damage abilities like Lock& Load you're just toast.  Part of why I gave-up on hunters as a main 2 years ago was the 'death by papercuts' approach to the class.  Now it's 'death by the RNG'   No thanks.

Not that hunters are as immoblie as they used to be.  They've got a lot of instant-cast shots these days vs the bad old days of "Stand stil 3 secs for aimed shot, 1/2 sec for multi.. forget you even have an autoshoot ability."

Yes, I know.

I realize that many people love the hunter changes.  I don't.  But I also don't like the getting rid of ammo change, the taming of pets change, and all the other little flavor changes removed that now make my hunter feel more like a stock toon.  I've played hunter as my main since vanilla, played some alts when hunter was insufficient but it was always my main.  I'm more into exploring and immersion than raiding with a lot of people to get loot so I can kill badder monsters to get badder loot so I can kill badder monsters with a lot of people. 

I also like to fish and craft, not as a means to get elite achievements or anything like that - I just like the whole immersive thing.  WoW became much more linear in Cata, and for me, less fun for that reason as well.  (As you all know, I have a laundry list of complaints).

[Lantyssa]

Do you not like the pet leveling, or the allowing you to tame and have more pets on call at once?  That's one change I think is very good.  Though admittedly I'm horribly biased about pet-based classes after SWG.  (But then I also populated a significant chunk of the defunct SWG Creatures database by myself.)

[Setanta]

Do you not like the pet leveling, or the allowing you to tame and have more pets on call at once?  That's one change I think is very good.  Though admittedly I'm horribly biased about pet-based classes after SWG.  (But then I also populated a significant chunk of the defunct SWG Creatures database by myself.)

I should have added this to my post - it and the pet differentiation are fantastic.

To deal with the OCD in me I got the 6/6 Spirit beasts, picked up The Beast from UBRS (pre tame nerf) for the challenge and grabbed Chrommaggus because omg it's a fucking raid boss (plus he looks awesome).

Not that I play BM anymore 

Since then I carry around my original wolf that I tamed at level 21 in SFK back in vanilla to use if there are melee that will benefit from howl, my undead bird of prey for PvP or for selfish DPS and a Boar for solo work (super pig is awesome). I also have other pets sitting in my stable for different situations and always have one slot free for a tame (got the spectral owl Olm in Felwood a few days ago - just stumbled on him). It adds another dimension to the game for hunters and the pet levelling isn't too painful I use the Toll Barad area to level them quickly.

TBH - I wish they'd ditch pet levelling - warlock pets don't need it ... but it's grind so by Blizzard's thinking it's good :D

[Xanthippe]

Do you not like the pet leveling, or the allowing you to tame and have more pets on call at once?  That's one change I think is very good.  Though admittedly I'm horribly biased about pet-based classes after SWG.  (But then I also populated a significant chunk of the defunct SWG Creatures database by myself.)

I do like that change, of being able to have more pets, and I think pets are probably at the best level now than ever.  However, having said that, there is no attachment to pets anymore, in any sort of immersive sense.  (I mean, when I started, if I didn't feed my pet enough, it would desert me and I'd have to get a new one.  That red face used to scare me right into action - now I ignore it, because nothing happens except the pet isn't effective.)

I'm not a fan of having to level pets.  I did like ammo (mostly because I enjoyed being an engineer so I could craft guns and bullets) even though it took a bag slot.

This is one place where hunter changes feel half thought out to me.  Why should we have to level pets at all?  Why can't they be our level as soon as we tame them?

And they removed aspect of the beast.  Why?  That makes no sense to me at all.

[El Gallo]

I understand where Blizzard was coming from.  Aside from a very few raid targets, in WotLK most of your ability book was worthless.  CC spells were worthless, all heal spells except one spell per class were worthless, and almost every button a tank had was worthless.  If you could successfully turn your computer on and hit the one or two keys that mattered with your forehead once in a while, you win.  

Designing Cata, they had two choices.  They could (A) keep the one-button-autowin system from Wrath or (B) make the other buttons relevant to the game again.  They picked B.   Understandable, but an enormous mistake.

You just can’t make the game harder.  WotLK was really, really great at making shittastic players think they were good.  For example, me.  Unlike everyone else in this thread -- who could be subbed into an Ensidia raid tonight and execute flawlessly and only hate Cata because they get dragged down by other people sucking -- I’m  going to bite the bullet and admit that I personally suck.  In WotLK, I got 10/12 Icecrown25 hardmodes.  Rolled every regular mode raid boss within 2 weeks of it being available except Yogg and Arthas.  And I’m fucking terrible.  I stand in fire all the time.  I have the APM of a retarded tree sloth on NyQuil.  The heroics were even worse.  I never knew, or cared to know, the mechanics for at least half the heroic boss fights.  I just knew to hit shield slam or cleave (or whirlwind and cleave, go cleave!) and purps fell out.  

In Cata, players like me have now been reminded that we, in fact, really do suck.  But it’s no fun paying someone money to tell you that you suck.  I mean, I know some people are into it, but I, like most people, hire my prostitutes to stroke my hair and tell me how great I am while I cry myself to sleep.  

WotLK may have been the fatal mistake.  Will players really keep paying for the same 1-button-autowin experience with new graphics every couple years?  Maybe.  But it really limits the gameplay options.  But once you make the game that easy, and let it stay that easy for so long, you just can’t make it non-trivial again without making a huge portion of your players feel like they suck.  Since those players are paying you $15 a month for you to tell them how awesome they are, this is a Bad Idea ™.

[Sjofn]

Did people actually use aspect of the beast? I suspect they usually didn't, and hunters were asking for them to get rid of dead weight like that.

I'm with you on the pet leveling, though. I don't mind it, exactly, but since they made every other thing to do with hunter pets either go away (I miss loyalty levels :( ) or barely matter, it's really just a relic they could stand to get rid of, I think.

Fake Edit: This is obviously talking to Xanthippe, EL GALLO BUTTED IN.

[El Gallo]

You said butt. 

PS: nerf colossus.

[caladein]

Pets being tamed at YourLevel-3 now isn't so bad, but I wouldn't complain if they cut the -3 part off that.  As for pet food, well... I think Glyph of Mend Pet is the best glyph in the game .

[Setanta]

What really hurt was losing the beast withing. For that alone I would play BM PvP :D

[Lantyssa]

Pets being tamed at YourLevel-3 now isn't so bad, but I wouldn't complain if they cut the -3 part off that.  As for pet food, well... I think Glyph of Mend Pet is the best glyph in the game .

Yeah.  I threw mend on my pet at random intervals standing around.  I just pretended it was the groom button.

[Merusk]

Did people actually use aspect of the beast? I suspect they usually didn't, and hunters were asking for them to get rid of dead weight like that.

Xanth is a PVP-server hunter and yes, they used it a lot.

What really hurt was losing the beast withing. For that alone I would play BM PvP :D

.

Er.. hunters still have The Beast Within...

[Xanthippe]

As a night elf hunter, I used aspect of the beast and shadowmeld quite often. 

I don't hate all of the changes.  Some things made a great deal of sense, such as being able to track hunter things and ore at the same time is as it should be. 

Somehow, in Cata, it seems as if the world shrunk instead of grew.  I really liked phasing when I first saw it - I thought it was brilliant and amazing - but now I just find it annoying, mainly because you can't join your friend because you're in different phases.

The game feels less world-y to me.  I like my immersion a lot more than my phat lewt, I guess, and never has the world felt less immersive.  Part of that maybe is the community, which seems - at least on my server - to have hit a real low.

I wonder how differently I would feel if I had started to play a year ago, or even with this expansion.  I'm sure my perspective is heavily influenced by old expectations and old habits.

[sinij]

I don't find content to be much harder, just more annoying. What Blizzard did is they increased minimum skill requirement without raising maximum skill requirement, exactly opposite of what they should have done. I for one lost ability to carry a heroic group, system now expects every member to preform at a basic level and regardless of how well *I* do, it will still wipe me when people stand in fire.

[Paelos]

I don't find content to be much harder, just more annoying. What Blizzard did is they increased minimum skill requirement without raising maximum skill requirement, exactly opposite of what they should have done. I for one lost ability to carry a heroic group, system now expects every member to preform at a basic level and regardless of how well *I* do, it will still wipe me when people stand in fire.

I agree with that. They increased the floor without letting people shine when they are awesome. The solution to this is easy, imo.

- Nerf the shit out of trash in heroics. Bite the bullet and do it. Lower all trash mob health by 30%. Lower all damage by 5-10%.
- Do an analysis of which heroics get bailed on the most. Nerf the primary complaint boss in those.
- Add a chest at the end of all heroics with 20 extra VP, an extra blue item from the loot table of all bosses in the place, and a small chance at a vanity mount or pet (2-4%).

[Ironwood]

That won't solve the problem you're making up.

[Paelos]

That won't solve the problem you're making up.

Sure it will. It cuts down on trash time, it removes the constant headaches of agonizing over every pull, and it incentivizes doing the runs to pull in more tanks with completionist items for fun and VP in addition to getting people to do the dungeons with overpowered bosses.

[Setanta]

Did people actually use aspect of the beast? I suspect they usually didn't, and hunters were asking for them to get rid of dead weight like that.

Xanth is a PVP-server hunter and yes, they used it a lot.

What really hurt was losing the beast withing. For that alone I would play BM PvP :D

.

Er.. hunters still have The Beast Within...

I thought they nerfed the hunter CC immunity from it. It is no longer

"Increases all damage you deal by 10% and while your pet is under the effects of Bestial Wrath, you also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reducing mana costs of all spells by 50% for 10 sec. While enraged, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed."

As such it was great in PvP - but I stopped playing it when I was of the impression the CC immunity for the hunter was gone. Time to log and check

[WindupAtheist]

They should make a series of devastating nerfs until all five man content is utter faceroll. Fuck you, facerolling is more fun than sitting in a queue. Five mans are spluttering and struggling under massive queues because they require three jobs and at least one of them is one that nobody fucking likes doing.

[Lantyssa]

Is that tanking, healing, or crowd control?

[Sjofn]

I'm gonna go ahead and say the number of hunters that used Aspect of the Beast is a very, very small percentage of the hunter population. I am positive not all the PvP hunters used it, because not all PvP hunters are going to bother, so we're talking fractions of fractions here.

"No one used it" was hyperbole, obviously, but I think by and large, it isn't that big an exaggeration. 

[Soulflame]

My daughter and I both used Aspect of the Beast on our hunters.  We were playing on a PvP server, but we also used it in BGs as well.

[Rendakor]

Aspect of the Beast was great in BGs on defense, when coupled with a good hiding spot, a stealthed pet and FD. I used it a lot in both WSG and AB on my hunter in vanilla.

[dusematic]

I just re-subbed because I moved to a backwater town for a new gig, and let me just say this:  there are no cracks.  The entire 1-60 is as polished and clean as the newest content.  It's actually a little jarring when you get to the Burning Crusade stuff because now that is noticeably a little lacking compared to everything else.

[Rendakor]

Most of the complaints in this thread center around the 85 experience; the 1-60 stuff is generally well liked except by the phasing-hating crowd.

[Ashamanchill]

They should make a series of devastating nerfs until all five man content is utter faceroll. Fuck you, facerolling is more fun than sitting in a queue. Five mans are spluttering and struggling under massive queues because they require three jobs and at least one of them is one that nobody fucking likes doing.

I dare them to change one, just one, of the current heroics back to a genuine faceroll, then see what the queue times end up being for it. Take it off the random daily to, so it has to be explicitly queued for.

[Rendakor]

It would never pop if it was off the random queue, because most people (or at least, those who are geared) only queue for their VP.

[caladein]

That's sort of what the Random Cataclysm Dungeon at 85 is right now.  140 JP on completion, 30 JP per boss, trivial difficulty even with 84s/fresh 85s.  Queue time as a Horde solo DPS in US Group D are maybe 30-50% less than a Random Heroic at around the same time of day.

[Fordel]

Last AV I was in, 15+ AFK honor bots.  


-edit- 15 on my team I should say. Not in the entire BG. 

[Ashamanchill]

It would never pop if it was off the random queue, because most people (or at least, those who are geared) only queue for their VP.

Ya guy, I think you're wrong. I think there's a decent amount of people out there who put their foot into heroics and said 'FUCK THIS!' They want JP so they can at least run heroics without being shit. I'm not saying most of the population, but probably like 15%.  I want them to use it as a goddamn weathervane. Are the queue times less then normal heroics, or the same?

I've read that normals give JP now, and yeah that's cool. But as has been said, 'THERE'S 3 OF THEM! and two of them fucking suck.

[Selby]

I've read that normals give JP now, and yeah that's cool. But as has been said, 'THERE'S 3 OF THEM! and two of them fucking suck.

We run HoO several times a day.  A few sucky trash pulls and the rest is mostly a cakewalk.  Now it's becoming a faceroll since we're pretty geared out from all the JPs we get from it.  7 bosses that aren't overly difficult is fun.  And it helps me finish out my reps so I can get even better gear ;-)

[Rendakor]

Making the zone faceroll and removing it from the random queue (so that it doesn't get VP) is effectively making it a normal; if you keep it heroic in name, all you're doing is preventing people from doing it more than once a day. People who want to run chain heroics will use the random feature and may do any given dungeon several times in the day, while yours can only be done once per day, and only by people who specifically queue for it. If you put some loot in there that a geared player might want (read: not just 346 blues) you might lure in the geared tanks and healers, but otherwise only people in mediocre gear will queue for it; this removes a sizable portion of the tanks and healers from the queue, making 40+ minute waits into an hour or more.

Honestly, how do you imagine (even by your estimate) 15% of the population generating faster queues than 100%?

[Paelos]

4.1 is going to bring in a new 5 man, which will effectively be Magister's Terrace 2.0 and will add in epics off the last boss I'm sure.

Every final boss in a heroic should have a chance at an epic drop, maybe 25%, and they should be on a shared table of 20 across all heroics.