The Great Hunter Nerf of '08

[Slayerik]

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/12/09/the-great-hunter-nerf-of-2008/

Main stuff:

# Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
# Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks.
# Readiness - no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
# Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
# Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
# Kindred Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
# Serpent's Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
# All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
# Growl - threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).
# Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
# Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
# Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
# Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don't have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
# Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.

[Ingmar]

I am so completely not surprised by the volley nerf. I'm guessing hurricane gets it soon too. Get ready moonkins! 

[Paelos]

I am so completely not surprised by the volley nerf. I'm guessing hurricane gets it soon too. Get ready moonkins! 

And then CoH is getting it.

[Ingmar]

I am so completely not surprised by the volley nerf. I'm guessing hurricane gets it soon too. Get ready moonkins! 

And then CoH is getting it.

Also wild growth is on the 6 second cooldown plan like CoH.

I'm a little more interested in how the AE damage thing will shake out, really - it seems to me from where I sit (tanking) that volley and hurricane are the dominant AE things, but we don't have a mage or warlock at 80 yet so I don't know how they're stacking up. The word is AE damage is too high across the board, which makes me think that maybe the elemental AE damage changes they've talked about will get put off in favor of nerfing everything else.

[Fordel]

I am so completely not surprised by the volley nerf. I'm guessing hurricane gets it soon too. Get ready moonkins! 

Just more reason to Typhoon 

[kaid]

I would not be surpised at all if hurricane gets nerfed a bit. Its hilariously better than it was in TBC especially speced fully for it. Also before it had a one minute cool down and now there is no cool down. I would expect the talent to get chopped from 50% damage boost to 25% damage boost and the base damage lowered a bit.

[MrHat]

As long as the knockback on thunderstorm is not affected by anything, I'm happy.


I love knock back skills.

[Fordel]

The thing I expect to get nerfed on Hurricane is the Attack Speed Debuff. The Top rank has a 50% decrease, it's a pretty huge damage decrease on the tank when a bunch of crap is attacking.

[Merusk]

I'm a little more interested in how the AE damage thing will shake out, really - it seems to me from where I sit (tanking) that volley and hurricane are the dominant AE things, but we don't have a mage or warlock at 80 yet so I don't know how they're stacking up. The word is AE damage is too high across the board, which makes me think that maybe the elemental AE damage changes they've talked about will get put off in favor of nerfing everything else.

Mage is a little weak if the two I've run with are any indication. They were always way behind both me and the 'lock on damage meters when we were AOEing stuff.   Part of it is that everyone hates that fucking explosion/ knockback thing, so mages are back to spamming Arcane explo or Blizzard instead of having 2 ae abilities at once.   Lock seems to be doing just fine what with being able to seed and hellfire.   DKs will be getting nerfed at some point because, my god D&D + Unholy blight + Pestilence/ BB is fucking awesome.

AE WILL get nerfed, becuase it's just ungodly right now.  There is no CC in instances, round shit up and nuke it down.  It's too easy and fun, so it must be changed.  I see it coming and that's why I've tried running Heroics as often as possible.  Farm badges now while it's easy.

As for the hunter stuff, yeah, no surprise here. S'why I stopped playing one. They're awesome for a short while, then get nerfed into line and continually suffer in any 1v1 pvp vs the same effort in any other class.  I'm tired of it.

[Xerapis]

I'm always happy when hunters get nerfed.

Because I love playing a hunter.

Now, hopefully, a nice big chunk of the retards who love playing a hunter will all go running to Death Knight.

It's long past time that some other class got the "designated dumbass" label. Yeah, I know, rogues. Still not assumed to be as disastrously moronic as the average hunter. Much less *elf hunter.

[Vash]

Well, most people knew this was coming with hunter dps being so out of control atm.  I've seen numerous WWS reports with hunters sustaining well over 5k dps, and not with best of the best in every slot type gear either.  I see they're really trying to tone down the pets which was needed for BM with them pushing towards 2k dps with raid buffs.  

I'm guessing frostfire mages will see a slight nerf in the near future as they're not far behind hunters and rogues seem to need some love.  Personally I think it's pretty ironic how hunters and rogues have completely flip flopped raid viability from pre-BC to now.  Neither has a ton of utility to bring (edit: hunters are lot better now with raid buffs in each spec but dps is still priority); pre-BC hunter dps was very weak compared to other dps classes by the time AQ and Naxx were out but got raid spots thanks to tranq shot, now hunters are the dps kings while rogue dps is struggling but they have a tranq shot equivalent in the new antiseptic poison and even a misdirection equivalent of sorts in tricks of the trade.  Glad I'm not playing a rogue atm, I'd be hard pressed to justify my spot in a raid.  Blizzards love of making non-mele friendly fights typically means there's only room for a select few mele dps and once raid content stops being pushover easy (T8 and/or T9 mabey?) I can see them possibly losing their spot to any other mele dps if something isn't done.  They're near the bottom of the mele dps barrel and every other mele dps offers some sort of significant utility/buffage or superior dps.

I think a somewhat problematic issue may arise with the new raid wide buffs and having them not stack.  Obviously it was designed that way to allow lots of flexiblity in raid composition for 10 man content, but with only a few classes providing alll the buffs you need, every spot left to fill after you have the buffs covered is gonna be purely dps(or threat/mitigation/hps/etc.)  based and certain classes look like they could get the shaft thanks to how their new talents turned out.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Actually the new priest spell mind sear is pound for pound some of the highest dps aoe out there, it's like a pulsing seed of corruption, every hit per mob is crittable, benefits from almost all shadow talents and has VERY high dmg coefficient.

It's not unsual for my mindsear to be critting regularly for 2200 every pulse which is one per sec.

So yeah spriests might get a nerf but i swear to god they had better not take this away from me...we've waited so long for a good aoe...so long...

[Merusk]

Actually the new priest spell mind sear is pound for pound some of the highest dps aoe out there, it's like a pulsing seed of corruption, every hit per mob is crittable, benefits from almost all shadow talents and has VERY high dmg coefficient.

It's not unsual for my mindsear to be critting regularly for 2200 every pulse which is one per sec.

So yeah spriests might get a nerf but i swear to god they had better not take this away from me...we've waited so long for a good aoe...so long...

Fear not. There have to be people playing priests for them to be nerfed.  It's why Druids got away with so much. Until folks started rolling them in large numbers, that is.

I'm always happy when hunters get nerfed.

Because I love playing a hunter.

Now, hopefully, a nice big chunk of the retards who love playing a hunter will all go running to Death Knight.

It's long past time that some other class got the "designated dumbass" label. Yeah, I know, rogues. Still not assumed to be as disastrously moronic as the average hunter. Much less *elf hunter.

I felt the same way for a long, long time.  (In fact, it's hard to find a person who hates hunters more than another hunter. ;)  ) Then I rolled a different class (lock) and PVP'd with it for a bit.  The amount of effort I had to put forth to do well was so much less than as a hunter I was disgusted with the class and gave-up. Fuck, I even had inferior gear when compared to my hunter and I was raping face.

Blizz doesn't have clue one what to do with the class as a whole and I'm tired of waiting on them to figure it the fuck out.  Particularly when most of the competent, informative hunter community posts are greeted with stupid shit like, "Well hunters want EVERYTHING off the GCD." (Which they've gone and done anyway.) 

[Paelos]

I await the day when the next big MMOG realizes that pet classes can't be tuned, and shouldn't be included in their game.

[Lantyssa]

They can.

It's allowing the player to have their own attacks and abilities on top of their pets' that things get tricky to balance.

[Chimpy]

Ya, because entire zone WWS reports where a hunter can volley non-stop are a reason to nerf steady shot.

They should have just put a 10 or 15 second cooldown on volley so it can't be chain cast, or made it not get the full benefit of the crit bonus from Mortal Shots. The no-cooldown instead of 60sec was probably a little much after they boosted the dmg on it.

But oh well, my work schedule means that I wont be able to even know what stuff is like until after the nerf anyway.

Nerfing deterrence is dumb, just give us our damn dodge back and put it back in the survival tree. The readiness thing is understandable I guess. I like the kill shot change as 35 seconds was pretty retarded, though I bet the shot gets nerfed as mine already crits for 13k+

[Nebu]

I await the day when the next big MMOG realizes that pet classes can't be tuned, and shouldn't be included in their game.

Add stealth and CC.  Particularly if the game has PvP.

[Oban]

Good.  I was getting tired of hunters sitting at spots one and two in twenty-five man raids wearing 76-79 blues getting 5K+ DPS while my fully 80 epic rogue was in third place with *only* 3.5KDPS.

Seriously, nerf them in to the ground.

[Slayerik]

wah wah

[WindupAtheist]

Nerf everything but ret pallies! 

[Paelos]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed? Are you that retarded? It's one thing if you're not raiding and you can't get in because nobody will take your low-dps-ass, but being actively upset at the people are #1 who are pumping up your overall DPS towards the win?

Honestly, if a person actually said something like that to me as a raid leader, I doubt I'd keep them very long.

[Oban]

Most raid leaders are Hunters these days.

[Ingmar]

Nah, most raid leaders are protection warriors, and we're too busy worrying about the other 3 tanks stealing our jorbs to worry about what the DPS slap fight of the week is.

[Merusk]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed? Are you that retarded? It's one thing if you're not raiding and you can't get in because nobody will take your low-dps-ass, but being actively upset at the people are #1 who are pumping up your overall DPS towards the win?

Honestly, if a person actually said something like that to me as a raid leader, I doubt I'd keep them very long.

Probably for the same reason you said retarded shit like, "Good, Pallies can heal or GTFO."

[Paelos]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed? Are you that retarded? It's one thing if you're not raiding and you can't get in because nobody will take your low-dps-ass, but being actively upset at the people are #1 who are pumping up your overall DPS towards the win?

Honestly, if a person actually said something like that to me as a raid leader, I doubt I'd keep them very long.

Probably for the same reason you said retarded shit like, "Good, Pallies can heal or GTFO."

Yeah, expecting somebody to actually try to spec for a job that's needed instead of going into the 80% pool of DPS. That's completely insane. You caught me.

[Valmorian]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed?

You really can't figure that out?  It might have something to do with feeling like your contribution to the raid can be improved upon by ditching you and getting another character with better DPS.

[Paelos]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed?

You really can't figure that out?  It might have something to do with feeling like your contribution to the raid can be improved upon by ditching you and getting another character with better DPS.

First of all, if one class is doing obvious (and by that I mean 5% ahead of anybody else) dps, they will get nerfed. The hunters knew it was coming, as did we all. That doesn't mean you have to be like "Yeah, fuck THOSE guys on my team." Second, leaders/healers hate when dps get so fucking focused on the meters that I watch them fuck up the important stuff like, "hey don't stand in that glowing shit on the ground." A good leader is never going to replace you because you're in the middle of the pack on DPS meters.

The only type of DPS the leaders care about is the overall number needed to get the job done. Beyond that, there are the DPS who are obviously way below or not in the ballpark, retarded, or can't respond to basic commands. Those get booted. The only kinds of RLs that would fill a raid with only hunters because they were jacked up are the Elitistic Jerk types.

If you wanted to keep a DPS job, my advice would be to worry less about the meters and more about your survivability/utility/taking pressure off your healers.

[Ingmar]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed? Are you that retarded? It's one thing if you're not raiding and you can't get in because nobody will take your low-dps-ass, but being actively upset at the people are #1 who are pumping up your overall DPS towards the win?

Honestly, if a person actually said something like that to me as a raid leader, I doubt I'd keep them very long.

Probably for the same reason you said retarded shit like, "Good, Pallies can heal or GTFO."

Yeah, expecting somebody to actually try to spec for a job that's needed instead of going into the 80% pool of DPS. That's completely insane. You caught me.

Pallies are low on the healer desirability list right now. I can't say the same thing for their place on the tanking or DPSing desirability list.

[Paelos]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed? Are you that retarded? It's one thing if you're not raiding and you can't get in because nobody will take your low-dps-ass, but being actively upset at the people are #1 who are pumping up your overall DPS towards the win?

Honestly, if a person actually said something like that to me as a raid leader, I doubt I'd keep them very long.

Probably for the same reason you said retarded shit like, "Good, Pallies can heal or GTFO."

Yeah, expecting somebody to actually try to spec for a job that's needed instead of going into the 80% pool of DPS. That's completely insane. You caught me.

Pallies are low on the healer desirability list right now. I can't say the same thing for their place on the tanking or DPSing desirability list.

They could be dead last on the healer desirability list. People are still short of healers and would take them for a spot, I assure you. As for tanking, yes they are without a doubt the best AE tanks. However, in a 25 man you need 3 tanks and how many healers?

[Valmorian]

That doesn't mean you have to be like "Yeah, fuck THOSE guys on my team."
...
A good leader is never going to replace you because you're in the middle of the pack on DPS meters.

1.  Nor do you have to be like "Good, Pallies can heal or GTFO."  Seriously, these statements are closer than you think.

2.  Who said anything about the LEADERS?  You wanted to know why people are pissed off about other characters outperforming them and being glad when they are nerfed.  It's pretty obvious why this would be so: Bruised Egos and Envy.

[Fordel]

Why do some people in dps classes who raid get happy when other DPS get nerfed? Are you that retarded? It's one thing if you're not raiding and you can't get in because nobody will take your low-dps-ass, but being actively upset at the people are #1 who are pumping up your overall DPS towards the win?

Honestly, if a person actually said something like that to me as a raid leader, I doubt I'd keep them very long.

Probably for the same reason you said retarded shit like, "Good, Pallies can heal or GTFO."

Yeah, expecting somebody to actually try to spec for a job that's needed instead of going into the 80% pool of DPS. That's completely insane. You caught me.

The whole 'debate' began with you bitching about Prot Paladins, stealing your jorb even. 

[Paelos]

I didn't say it wasn't obvious. I asked why they were so HAPPY about it, and are they really that short-sighted and retarded. From what I'm gathering the answer is an astounding yes, which explains why people hate raiders. Fuck the team, it's all about me. I do what I want, GTFO of my way. Give me my loots, now.

To be honest, I don't raid with people like that, which makes me happy. If they exist en masse in the game, I'm glad we've weeded them out.

[Paelos]

The whole 'debate' began with you bitching about Prot Paladins, stealing your jorb even. 

Meh, the prot pallies don't bother me much anymore. They have their place, and most of them do a good job at it. They aren't going to take the place of every tank in every raid, but they are pretty badass in 5 mans. With the changes to all classes, every one of the tanks has a chance at AE tanking. Also, tanks don't have their jobs stolen. You create your own job through your leadership skills.

EDIT: That's also not to say that if a raid needs one more healer and I've got 2 pally tanks and a ret pally whining to get in, I'm not going to /sigh.

[Fordel]

It's all about the team, as long as the warrior tanks 


<Insert "Warriors don't have a Holy Tree" argument here>


<Insert "It's fine as long as *I* get to play my desired spec" defense here>


Repeat x20, lock thread.

[Paelos]

It's all about the team, as long as the warrior tanks 
<Insert "Warriors don't have a Holy Tree" argument here>
<Insert "It's fine as long as *I* get to play my desired spec" defense here>

I don't care if I MT. I've lead many runs as the OT with pallies and druids. My point was once you get your ego out of the way your team might actually do pretty well.